WASHINGTON—Months of intense focus on the Republican race—and front-runner Donald Trump—have reverberated through the Democratic field, prompting front-runner Hillary Clinton to turn her attention to her would-be GOP challengers and leaving her chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, gasping for airtime.
Now, after spending weeks largely out of the spotlight, Clinton plans to intensify her campaign schedule from an almost incumbent-style effort to a more aggressive, first-timer approach.
With just six weeks left before the first round of primary voting, Clinton plans a series of multi-day swings through Iowa starting in January, interspersing trips there with stops in New Hampshire and other early primary states.
Her campaign will also unveil what Clinton has called her “not-so-secret weapon,” sending her husband, former President Bill Clinton, out to hit the stump after months of behind-the-scenes activity, wooing donors in private events.
And in a sign of the escalating battle between the two party front-runners, her campaign was forced to engage with Trump on Tuesday after he called Clinton’s bathroom break during the recent debate “disgusting” and said she was “schlonged” in the 2008 race for the Democratic nomination, using a vulgar Yiddish term to describe her loss to now-President Barack Obama. On Twitter Tuesday, Trump denied the word was vulgar and said it simply means “beaten badly.”
In an interview Tuesday with The Des Moines Register, Clinton said: “I don’t know that he has any boundaries at all. His bigotry, his bluster, his bullying have become his campaign.”
