Clinton Defends 'Exuberant' Jobs Promise During 2000 Senate Campaign

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton abandoned her "elitist" line of attack against Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama on Tuesday amid questions about her own success in helping economically troubled rural areas in her home state of New York.

Those questions were raised following Clinton's speech to a joint meeting of several newspaper industry organizations, and they forced the New York senator to explain her failure to deliver the couple of hundred thousand jobs she promised upstate New York when she first ran for the state's U.S. Senate seat in 2000.

Clinton, who has admitted the number of jobs promised was "a little exuberant," said Tuesday that when she made such a promise, she expected former Vice President Al Gore to be elected president and to continue most of the economic policies of her husband's administration.

"I had every hope that Al Gore would be the president, and that we would build on the economic successes of the '90s, taking into account business cycles, the need for adjustments and everything that obviously happens in an economy every time," she said in response to a question after her speech. "I was exuberant because I really believed we could create a lot more jobs, because I had thought, in particular, upstate New York hadn't had the opportunity to take advantage of some of the benefits, and be creative about how to do just that. Well, that didn't come to pass. And unfortunately, much of the positive economic policies that we saw in the '90s were slowly, steadily dismantled."

For the first time in days, Clinton did not mention the controversy over a recent remark by Obama about how some working class Americans cling to religion and guns and are receptive to anti-immigrant sentiments out of bitterness over economic difficulties. Clinton has described those remarks as "elitist," but most polls show the controversy is having little effect on the upcoming confrontation between Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania's primary next Tuesday.

To help the economy recover, especially for working class Americans, Clinton on Tuesday reiterated a number of her fiscal proposals, most notably her plan to let expire the Bush era tax cuts for Americans making more than $250,000 a year and to eliminate tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

"It seems to me that we've got to go back to rewarding work instead of wealth," she said. "And the feeling amongst so many hard working Americans is that the deck is kind of stacked against them."

She added: "This question about jobs is not only about economic trends. It's about choices, choices we make or fail to make. And I think we need a president, again, who makes the right choices to grow and keep good jobs and give people a chance at rising incomes again in our country."