Immigration: From talking point to sore point — At NBC debate, Clinton struggles to court various groups key to campaign.

By Marc Santora - Nov. 1, 2007

It was a moment that crystallized Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggles in Tuesday night’s debate. Questioned about a plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, Mrs. Clinton at first seemed to defend it, then suggested she was against it, until finally, pressed for a direct answer, she accused the moderator, Tim Russert, of playing “gotcha.”

Her verbal twists and turns provided her opponents with fodder for their central critique of Mrs. Clinton, which coursed throughout Tuesday’s debate: that she was trying to have it both ways on the issue, much as she was trying to portray herself as antiwar while voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

Like the debate over Iraq, the exchanges over granting licenses to illegal immigrants underscored the tensions for Mrs. Clinton as she seeks to court various interest groups who are the building blocks of winning the Democratic nomination.

She had not taken a stand as recently as a week before it was voted on