Hillary Rodham Clinton has concluded to end her historic presidential campaign additonally stopping her choices open to retain her delegates and promote her challenge agenda, a campaign official says.
The former initial lady informed House Democrats within the duration of a private conference demand Wednesday the she is planning to express substantiation for Barack Obama’s candidacy and congratulate him for gathering the fundamental delegates to be the party’s nominee.
“Senator Clinton may be hosting an concern in Washington, D.C., to thank her supporters and express her substantiation for Senator Obama and party unity. This concern serves to be had on Saturday to accommodate a multitude of of Senator Clinton’s supporters who would like to attend,” her communications director Howard Wolfson said.
Also in the speech, Clinton is able to push once-warring Democrats to focus on the over&wshyp;arching election and defeatiang Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
The announcement brought to a conclusion an epic five-month nominating stave off pitting the beforehand extensive female candidate against the many healthy brown contender ever.
Obama Tuesday night secured the 2,118 delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, but Clinton discontinued very brief of comprehending the current milestone, arguing she would.
An adviser declared Clinton and her lieutenants had gone over multitude of ways a presidential candidacy can end, not excluding forbearing the campaign to retain control of her convention delegates and uphold her visibility in an endeavor to promote her signature matter of well being care.
The greater number of choices store freeing her delegates to returning Obama and ending her candidacy unconditionally. The official stressed this neither Clinton nor her inner circle had determined specifically how direction to take a good amount as opposed to to know overly the active arrangement of her bid to become the nation’s chiefly female president had ended.
On the telephone requirement amid impatient congressional supporters, Clinton was urged to attractiveness a end to the controversial campaign, or at the very least express validation for Obama. Her decision to acquiesce caught multi in the campaign by shock and left the campaign scrambling to finalize the logistics and specifics behind her campaign departure.
On her mainly campaign visit to New Hampshire in February 2007, Hillary Rodham Clinton was confronted by a voter who demanded she explain her 2002 Senate vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
“I need to recognize if ideally here, best now, after and for all and without nuance, you can say this war authorization was a mistake,” Roger Tilton queried Clinton. “I, and I am sure a lot of more chief voters — until we hear you say it, we are not more than likely to hear all the a greater amount of exorbitant situations you are saying.”
Clinton replied, as she might repeat in the in the wake of months: “Knowing how we can appreciate now, I might never undergo voted for it.”
Her refusal to admit error failed to satisfy Tilton, a 46-year-old interest analyst from what i read in Nashua a great deal although he loved her position on quality of life attention and capping Iraq troop levels.
That exchange, pounced upon by specific reporters to the displeasure of Clinton’s aides, foreshadowed her demise. Her refusal to coming back off such a vote tethered her to the outside of and to an unpopular war. It embodied her campaign’s rule miscalculation: the decision to most recent her as the standard-bearer for Washington experience, set for office on Day One.
As these it was a telltale second in the former first lady’s dizzying 17-month downturn out of prohibitive front-runner to also-ran — upended by Barack Obama, a first time on the nationwide political scene, and by his message of change, in a year voters hungered for change.
By itself, Clinton’s Iraq vote did not worth her the nomination. There got more and more culprits: her ever-changing campaign themes, unpleasent financing planning, squabbling members and a field organizing program intended for quick victory fairly as opposed to a 50-state delegate hunt.
And there got happenings along the way overly got omens of her downfall — the majority of not completely understood in the bright glow of her near-universal and cr recognition, endorsements according to the party organization and extensively instigate in the beginning of polls.
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The mainly quarter of 2007 finished provided a big shock for the Clinton campaign, the reputed powerhouse of Democratic fundraising: Obama articulated $25 million of a good amount of as opposed to 100,000 donors in individuals 3 months. While the New York senator had cited $26 million of 60,000 donors, only $20 million was for primaries, $6 million for the entire election. Obama’s general included $23 million for the primaries.
At first, word of Obama’s stunning prosperity led to near-panic throughout the Clinton team. Eventually, the agitation gave way to a wary calm. “He talked about a lot, we talked about a lot,” spokesman Howard Wolfson mused. “He’ll buy a lot of ads, we will buy a lot of ads.”
But by now, Obama had eternally shattered the association technique to soliciting campaign cash.
Clinton’s traffic had appear for the most part out of squeezing wealthy those of us for the maximum legal contribution of $2,300 for the primaries and $2,300 for the over&wshyp;arching election. The Obama campaign mined the Internet for pithy donations on individuals who am able to be re-solicited within the campaign.
Obama are able to eventually step up a good amount of as opposed to $265 million for the primaries of a large amount of as opposed to 2 million individuals. Clinton brought up around $215 million, and will end her campaign greater number of as opposed to $30 million in debt. Most important, Obama’s simpleton of little donors brought in for the impressive field company he would build, drawing on grass-roots substantiation around the world and penetrating argues Clinton couldn’t purchase to contest.
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In May of survive year, a leaked memo out of Clinton deputy campaign manager Mike Henry both foreshadowed and helped form dire occurreneces for her campaign. Henry recommended the New York senator skip the leadoff Iowa caucuses. The document roiled her campaign and revealed the principally of most members disputes. It as well ought to boost seal her faulty cropping in the market cycles later, that gave Obama a risk to substantiate such a grey voters are able to substantiation a brown presidential candidate.
All along, Clinton’s advisers had fretted regarding her probability in Iowa. Bill Clinton did not campaign in the neighborhood in his primarily presidential run in 1992, and the couple had never constructed the establishment needed to win the caucuses.
Supporters such as former Gov. Tom Vilsack warned too Clinton was appearing dangerously late and needed to visit the region more. Campaign purchasers troubled such a Clinton was sticking to a rigorous schedule in the Senate, not spending considerable age in Iowa until late summer 2007.
Although the concept overly she wouldn’t vie in the campaign’s initial contest was never majorly thought by top campaign aides, Henry had the thought of different in the campaign — combined with top adviser and delegate-hunter Harold Ickes — and he was encouraged to put his trepidations on Clinton’s Iowa risks in writing.
The leak of Henry’s memo — that accurately pointed out so Iowa was Clinton’s weakest neighborhood and is able to motivate a multimillion-dollar possession which should be proper exhausted elsewhere — was a suck who put her on the defensive in Iowa for the remainder of the campaign.
Sure enough, it prices Clinton $25 million to end third in Iowa — narrowly behind John Edwards but swamped by Obama, whose organizers had dubbed thousands of young, first-time caucus-goers to appear out for him. Henry left the campaign not extensively after.
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Clinton delivered solid performances in a for a long while succession of televised debates, but overly streak came apart in a single second in Philadelphia in late October 2007, when she was surveyed throughout a forum on MSNBC if she should substantiation a proposal by her state’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, to make it easier for illegal immigrants to find driver’s licenses.
“I did not say such a it given that be done, but I positively can make out why Governor Spitzer is working to do it,” Clinton said.
That response, and additionally non-answers too night, acquired her appear evasive and opportunistic. Media coverage, until later more often than not respectful, turned critical.
Privately, the New York senator informed friends that Spitzer had identified her shortly before the debate and surveyed the present she validation him on the issue. “I took a hit for him, and it lose me,” Clinton claimed.
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Until January of the current year, former President Clinton had continued viewed as an asset for his wife amidst her helps and supporters. Although reviled by conservatives for his affair in on a White House intern, Bill Clinton remained a beloved are certain amidst Democratic audiences, truly blacks, who remembered the 1990s as fairly prosperous and his efforts on this behalf.
That adjusted in South Carolina, at which the former president campaigned vigorously for his wife. Her advisers, conscience of his penchant to go off message, had urged him to remain ensured and blabber up her accomplishments, not criticize Obama.
But Bill Clinton chafed at the campaign’s reluctance to issue the Illinois senator, exceptionally in how the former president viewed as conflicts between Obama’s rhetoric of opposition to the Iraq war and his voting record. So he took it on himself to speak out, amongst calamitous results.
Obama soundly won South Carolina, and Bill Clinton when that happens created situations worse. He seemed to reduce Obama’s achievement by noting this civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, never the presidential contender who Obama had presently become, had additionally won the state’s number one decades earlier.
Once so popular amidst blacks he was called the initial brown president by author Toni Morrison, Bill Clinton had helped force folks voters away based on data from his wife. Obama’s currently enduring brown substantiation ought to climb to as a good deal as 90 per cent of the brown vote in subsequent contests.
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Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5 looked at chiefly to be a steady shooting for Clinton, even though not the knockout completely stink her camp after anticipated.
In fact, a miscalculation right about the day propelled her extensively and stable decline.
Although she won enormous economy primaries — California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts — she all but ceded caucuses to Obama in properties as Colorado, Minnesota and Kansas. By the closing count a few days later, Obama had collected a few a greater number of delegates as opposed to Clinton of the roughly 1,700 at stake overly day.
Clinton had grown an aversion to caucuses once her bad undergo in Iowa; she nonetheless publicly referred to as them unrepresentative and undemocratic. Combined provided harmful budgeting and a shoddy state of affairs of the party’s method of proportional allocation of delegates, so led to catastrophic strategic planning for the Super Tuesday contests.
When Clinton was that much riding excessive in the polls, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, primary strategist Mark Penn and further advisers thought she should turn up end to clinching the nomination by lucrative sizeable — if costly — chief states. The campaign had budgeted accordingly.
Other Clinton advisers, and also Ickes, had vainly warned which proportional allocation can aide Obama to select up heaps of delegates in the argues Clinton won on Super Tuesday and dozens a great deal more in the caucus suggests if Clinton did not contest them.
Those concerns headed generally unheeded and the big-state Super Tuesday strategy failed badly. Clinton’s campaign was left almost broke, among no true procedures for how to method the contests to come. Obama scored 11 straight wins in February alone, additonally Clinton was required to to lend her campaign $5 million easily to remain afloat. He took the over&wshyp;arching delegate cause Feb. 12 and never lost it.
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In March, a self-inflicted wound did !no! as opposed to anything and everything else to undermine her contend of out of country policy suffer — and her efforts to reassure voters of her trustworthiness. More as opposed to in the wake of she myself depicted coming up underneath sniper fire as above all lady in an 1996 airport landing in Bosnia.
“There was projected to be specific sort of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but rather we just recently ran amidst our heads lower to get to the vehicles to get to our base,” Clinton alleged within the duration of a worldwide policy speech in Washington. In the hours and days afterward, her say was discredited by video of the landing that surfaced on television to hear and YouTube. But Clinton stuck to her story for a week before ultimately identifying she misspoke. “A tinier blip,” she referred to as it.
Her helps considered it to be everything but. Privately, properties got horrified by the gaffe and saw basically no feasible way to defend it.
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In New Hampshire on Jan. 4, the day following she lost so catastrophically in Iowa, Clinton was questioned by a reporter whether Obama represented an invincible force this she would be powerless to contest. At the time, Clinton batted going back the question. But she reimbursed to it for the duration of drinks investing in reporters cycles later.
“I are sure you may suffer been heard on to something,” she said.
In the end, none of the mistakes by Clinton and her campaign committe was fatal in and of itself. She and her husband got pros in extricating themselves based on data from death-defying jams.
But Obama proved to be more and more as opposed to recently a traditional opponent. In the end, the Clintons’ standard tactics — big-scale fundraising, high-powered political connections, old-fashioned grit and determination — got no balance for Obama and a candidacy uniquely suited to the moment.
Campaigning in the closing primaries, Clinton said, “I’ve actually enjoyed the system of making able to go out and see currently world anew.”
But how she saw was a earth the present wanted one new.
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The fate of nearly 2.3 million Democratic presidential primary votes belongs to 30 party activists.
The activists sit on the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which was to meet Saturday to decide what role Michigan and Florida should play at the national convention in August.
Both states were banned from sending delegates to the meeting because they held primaries in January, too early for party rules. They were attempting to have greater influence on the presidential nominating process long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire.
Now Democrats want to figure a way to include the two states in the convention because they will be important battlegrounds in the general election.
Just how many delegates to give each state and how to distribute them between the candidates was the vexing decision before the rules committee. Clinton supporters planned a protest to demand full seating of the 368 delegates from the two states — an unlikely outcome with committee members interested in punishing the two states to discourage future line jumpers.
By 8 a.m. Saturday some 200 people had gathered on a sidewalk outside the hotel where the committee was to meet. They waved homemade signs, blew party signs, and chanted “Every vote!” Hotel security staff kept watch over the crowd, shepherding people off the hotel grounds at times.
Beverly Battelle Weeks, 56, a Clinton delegate who got up well before dawn to drive up from Richmond, Va., carried a black umbrella on which she had pasted letters spelling out “Count All Votes.”
“The right thing to do is to seat all the delegates. Anything less is not democratic,” she said.
Hillary Rodham Clinton won both the Florida and Michigan contests after all the candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. At the time, she said the vote didn’t matter, but now she is trailing Barack Obama and wants to see her victories result in more delegates at the convention.
“It’s important to send the right signals to them and the people living in those states that we Democrats value those states, value those voters and want them as full partners in a general election in assembling 270 electoral votes,” said Clinton strategist Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee.
Obama could afford to allow Clinton a few delegates — going into the meeting, he was just 42 away from the nomination out of more than 2,000 required. Clinton was more than 200 delegates behind.
The committee appeared to be leaning toward a compromise that would allow each state to restore half of its delegate count. That probably would add fewer than 30 more delegates to the total that Obama needs, with three more contests to go — Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday.
Members of the committee discussed their options over a lengthy dinner with DNC Chairman Howard Dean that began Friday night and lasted until 2 a.m. Saturday. People who attended said no deals were reached, although there was a widespread sentiment that they should try to come up with some resolution that would put the issue behind them.
Obama campaign officials, eager to move on, said they were willing to give Clinton the edge in delegates, but they were not willing to accept the Clinton camp’s hard-line stance that all the delegates should be fully seated in accordance to the January elections.
“We have both fought hard throughout the country, both of us, for delegates and the fact that we’re willing to essentially cede her delegates we do not think is an insignificant gesture on our part,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. “But we’re willing to do this in the interest of trying to bring this to a close so we can focus on the general election.”
Source:news.yahoo
The day subsequent to the Florida recount was brought to an abrupt end in 2000 by the Supreme Court, Connecticut Senator and former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman was returning at managed in the Senate. “It was especially necessary to me to turn up perfect going back to work, I am sure it was my nature, but I figure it was a lot of people’s nature,” Lieberman said, standing clearly off the Senate ground survive week as his Republican colleague Bob Bennett occurred to pass by.
“He’s one who assembled the tweak in nearly 30 seconds. There’re a small amount of who had a miniscule amount bit additionally need originating back,” argued Bennett, a Republican who represents Utah. Looking archly at Hillary Clinton, merely steps away, he added: “There’re select even walking roughly fancy President in exile.”
Clinton’s brief departure out of the campaign trail up to Capitol Hill go on week was a jarring reminder of how awaits her if, as a large amount of expect, she fails to win the Democratic nomination. As she weighs her end up with to the Senate, Clinton is in the uncomfortable position of making the focus of continuing to additionally scrutiny and speculation as opposed to when she entered the chamber in 2001. Still rather junior in terms of party seniority and amongst no committee chairmanship electricity base in sight, Clinton have to tweak to a deliberative person at which 17 of her colleagues openly supported her rival – and continue to others ought to feel she has divided the party by dragging out the race.
Many suffer speculated this Clinton, as a type of consolation prize on the further part of Pennsylvania Avenue, are able to instigate a happy Majority Leader. But persons working at the speculating merely do not can appreciate the way the Senate works. Not simply is majority leader particularly a tedious, behind-the-scenes managerial position, but the most recent holder of that position, Harry Reid of Nevada, is a lot other popular in his party as opposed to outsiders realize, and his main deputies, Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer, own the own ambitions. Senators seek a leader properties can use at any hour provided objections – in a greater number of phrases properties covet a referee, not a superstar. “The Senate needs to strive on an hourly basis, a lot of labor-intensive work, and it is a considerable shift when you have continued talking at a a few altitude to turn up going back and get faced in the nuts and bolts of the Senate literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that is how [being Majority Leader] involves,” claimed Senator Chris Dodd, who himself just now paid back from what i read in the presidential field and is one of the 17 who enacted Barack Obama.
Dodd and Senator Joe Biden, a new former Democratic presidential hopeful, both took solace in this respective committees upon such a returns. Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, was right away swamped by the subprime loan crisis. “I haven’t had a second to reside on” the Presidential race, Dodd joked. Likewise, Biden, who heads up the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has kept on busy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hosting General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker the previous period for hearings. “You might not pay me, short of no things may I fancy to be majority leader,” Biden believed surrounded by a chuckle.
The vast majority of presidential wannabes who provide to the Senate end up desire Dodd and Biden, deciding on a legislative, instead as opposed to leadership, direction – satisfied in on presiding through your own fiefdom as leg work of a committee, or sponsoring a pivotal piece of legislation, quite as opposed to logging favors and whipping unruly workers to sequence for votes. “The leadership track is one the present is as good as so all-consuming it is fairly hard to devote the respect to a larger number of committees this otherwise become a big portion of any senator’s life,” stated Tom Daschle, a former Democratic Senate majority leader and an Obama supporter.
Celebrity politicians hold often had a hard era triumphant Senate popularity contests. West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, for example, wrested Ted Kennedy’s No. 2 slot on him in 1971 in side due to the fact that of Kennedy’s fame. “Byrd shocked me by defeating Kennedy,” declared Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “Why? Other Democratic senators saw Kennedy as a countrywide suppose who ought to use the Senate put up as a platform for his own ambitions, additonally Byrd was viewed as a Senate-based persona who may spend his long period of time and energies being senators’ livlihoods directed well. Nothing’s changed. Senators fancy a leader who may represent the own interests first.”
Byrd had these kinds of solid credentials in the Senate this six decades subsequently he beat party celebrity Hubert Humphrey, former vice president underneath Lyndon Johnson and 1968 Democratic presidential nominee, to become Senate Minority Leader in 1977. Byrd did so once running for President himself the year before, but he ran merely in his housing state, and acknowledged at the little bit overly he was a larger amount of interested in most massive the Senate as opposed to the country. Aside from what i read in Byrd, the longest serving senator in office, no !no! former Democratic candidate in newly drafted history has won a leadership role in the Senate. “I do not see Senator Clinton picking a position in the formal Democratic Party leadership in the Senate, but rather paying off her committee positions and public stature to play an monumental legislative and political role,” assumed Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Reid and Durbin’s positions are guaranteed and Clinton’s comparative assistance do not connect good to such a jobs.”
Kennedy, who unsuccessfully challenged Jimmy Carter for President in 1980, channeled his energies to program upon his come up with to the Senate, looking the numerous prodigious lawmaker of the outside of half-century. “There’s a transition, obviously, moving from what i read in a candidate for the presidency going back to the Senate, but I loved the Senate before I ran,” Kennedy said. Like Kennedy, Clinton has had the advantage and curse of a above average public profile ever since entering the Senate as a former First Lady in 2001. Returning to the Senate now following owning won millions of votes and mentioned over a hundred dollars of millions of dollars, Clinton are able to shoot treatment to a legislative agenda, these kinds of as quality of life care, the current few senators can match. “A leadership role to convert quality of life service in America ought to be a likely for her,” claimed Stephen Schneck, a political science professor at Catholic University in Washington. “Given her skills and company on well being care, it is easy to concur the present she’d be able to construct a solid coalition of validation on the Hill for the present and within the duration of the Washington policy locations – much perhaps bringing in certain Republicans.”
First, though, Clinton has selected fence mending to do through her colleagues. And, ultimately, she may figure out it is not quality it, Sabato said. “Clinton may be energetic in the Senate,” he said. “She came tantalizingly finishing to making the a good number of powerful past customer in the world. Being one of 100 in a person who is part the Congress is a horrible substitute. Losing presidential applicants suffer a hard period readjusting, as John Kerry can attest.” Though as Clinton is proving in presently Presidential race, she is perhaps to stick right about the Senate a lot longer as opposed to the majority of everybody assume
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS, Associated Press Writer
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico – Barack Obama told veterans Saturday that he can’t understand why Republican John McCain opposes legislation that would provide college scholarships to people who have served in the U.S. military.
“Now, let me be clear: No one can dispute John McCain’s love for this country or his concern for veterans. But here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why John McCain would side with George Bush and oppose our plan to make college more affordable for our veterans,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “George Bush and John McCain may think our plan is too generous. I could not disagree more.”
Obama’s criticism renews a clash that turned personal after the Senate approved the scholarship bill Thursday.
During the Senate debate, the Illinois senator questioned why McCain a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war would oppose the measure.
McCain responded with a sharp statement saying that he wouldn’t listen to any lectures on veterans’ affairs from Obama, “who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform.”
Obama, speaking to reporters aboard his plane Saturday, countered that the idea that he can’t speak on veterans’ issues because he didn’t serve in the military “makes no sense whatsoever.”
“I didn’t serve, as many people my age, because the Vietnam war was over by the time I was of draft age and we went to an all-volunteer Army. But obviously I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are being treated with honor and respect,” he added.
The Arizona senator opposes the scholarship measure, as does the Pentagon, because it applies to people who serve just three years. He fears that would encourage people to leave the military after only one enlistment even as the U.S. fights two wars and is trying to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
Instead, McCain and Republican colleagues proposed a bill to increase benefits in conjunction with a veteran’s length of service. Senate Democrats blocked that measure.
“While Barack Obama engages in the same tired partisan politics that has failed our veterans time and again, John McCain has offered legislation that will expand needed education benefits for veterans while promoting retention in our armed forces,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Saturday.
Only three primaries are left in the battle for the Democratic nomination, and Puerto Rico is holding one of them. Puerto Ricans can vote in party primaries but not in the fall general election.
Clinton spoke at an evening rally in Aguadilla, where she reminded the crowd of her ties to Puerto Rico as a first lady and then as senator from New York, which has approximately 1 million Puerto Rican residents.
“My commitment to Puerto Rico did not start last month or last year,” she said. “I will always be your voice as president.”
Through her speech, Clinton drew applause by insisting Puerto Ricans should get the same tax breaks, health care and economic opportunity afforded mainland U.S. citizens.
“You deserve a president who will give Puerto Rico’s issues as much attention as the president gives to any state,” she said.
Both candidates are hoping to increase their share of the 55 delegates who will be chosen June 1.
After Obama’s speech, he led a caminata a short political parade through the streets of Old San Juan. With an oceanfront park on one side and colorful colonial buildings on the other, Obama shook hands with cheering fans as scores of supporters marched behind.
Occasionally, he clapped or wiggled his hips to the Latin beat of his campaign song.
About 100 pro-independence advocates noisily protested a couple of blocks away. “Presidential primary is colonial trickery!” they chanted, criticizing both Obama and Clinton for not pledging to resolve Puerto Rico’s status remain a territory, become a state or declare independence.
But Obama was careful not to get caught up in the controversy, repeatedly saying that Puerto Ricans should be given a chance to decide their status for themselves.
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Associated Press Writers Andrew O. Selsky and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.
Source:news.yahoo
WASHINGTON – A campaign aide says Hillary Rodham Clinton lent herself $6.4 million in the past month.
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Politically wounded and financially strapped, Clinton plunged back into the presidential campaign Wednesday even as Barack Obama declared that Tuesday’s primary results left him with a “clear path to victory.”
Obama beat Clinton soundly in North Carolina and fell just short in an Indiana cliffhanger, a rebound for the Illinois senator that presented Clinton with fast-dwindling chances to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination.
The loan more than doubles Clinton’s personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year.
Clinton has been struggling financially behind the record fundraising of her Democratic rival, Barack Obama.
Obama has routinely outspent her in primary after primary. Clinton’s campaign reported raising $10 million online after her victory April 22 in Pennsylvania. But Obama has shown little difficulty tapping his vast network of donors. He spent more than $7 million on advertising head of Tuesday’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana to her nearly $4 million.
But even as Obama planned to take the day off from the campaign trail Wednesday, Clinton showed no public signs of easing her pace. The campaign added a noon Wednesday appearance in Shepherdstown, W. Va., to her schedule. On Thursday, she planned to campaign in West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon.
Clinton backers appeared on early morning television programs to stress that she was still in the race and to urge party leaders and elected officials known as superdelegates not to flee to Obama.
“This candidacy and this campaign continues on,” Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said Wednesday on CNN.
Obama was 184.5 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination, his campaign finally steadying after missteps fiercely exploited by the never-say-die Clinton.
His campaign dropped broad hints it was time for the 270 remaining unaligned superdelegates to get off the fence and settle the nomination.
In a counter to Wolfson, Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said: “The delegate math gets exceptionally harder for Senator Clinton every day”
In a memorandum to superdelegates, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe reminded them of the delegate math necessary to secure the nomination. He said Clinton would need to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates to win — an extremely unlikely scenario, made harder by her poor performance Tuesday.
“With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days,” Plouffe wrote. “While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or millions of supporters, volunteers and donors.”
It was in the superdelegate arena — even more than in the scattered primaries left — that the Democratic hyperdrama was bound to play out.
Clinton vowed to compete tenaciously for West Virginia next week and Kentucky and Oregon after that, and to press “full speed on to the White House.”
But she risked running on fumes without an infusion of cash, and made a direct fundraising pitch from the stage in Indianapolis. “I need your help to continue our journey,” she said.
And she pledged anew that she would support the Democratic nominee “no matter what happens,” a vow also made by her competitor.
But her campaign schedule belied any immediate reconciliation. West Virginia holds its primary on Tuesday. Kentucky and Oregon hold their contests a week a later. Puerto Rico is scheduled for June 1 followed promptly by Montana and South Dakota on June 3.
Her campaign is making the case that those contests are crucial to her and will press Democratic party officials to resolve disputed contests in Michigan and Florida, which she won but whose results the party voided because the primaries were held ahead of the schedule set by Democratic Party rules.
Obama, addressing supporters in North Carolina Tuesday night, pivoted away from his contest with Clinton and made a general election appeal that singled out his biography and his call for a new brand of politics. Still, his message also had a partisan pitch.
“This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats … because we all agree that at this defining moment in history — a moment when we’re facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril — we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term,” he said.
McCain, the certain Republican nominee, has been running a general election campaign for weeks. He has reached out to independent voters and sought to secure his conservative base, as he did Tuesday with a speech on his vision of the judiciary. He was scheduled to deliver a speech Wednesday on curbing the international exploitation of children.
The Obama-Clinton contest has been polarizing, protracted and often bitter, hardening divisions in the party, according to exit polls from the two states.
A solid majority of each candidate’s supporters said they would not be satisfied if the other candidate wins the nomination.
Fully one-third of Clinton’s supporters in Indiana and North Carolina went beyond mere dissatisfaction to say they would vote for McCain instead of Obama if that’s the choice in the fall.
Obama scored a convincing victory of about 14 points in North Carolina, where he’d been favored. Clinton squeezed out a narrow margin in Indiana after a long night of counting.
Racial divisions were stark.
In both states, Clinton won six in 10 white votes while Obama got nine in 10 black votes, exit polls indicated.
It was a slightly better performance than usual by Clinton among whites, while Obama’s backing from blacks was one of his highest winning percentages yet with that group.
Clinton fell short of the Indiana blowout and the North Carolina upset that might have jarred superdelegates into her camp in a big way.
They have continued trickling toward Obama despite the fallout over his former pastor’s racially divisive remarks and Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania two weeks ago.
The impact of a long-running controversy over the Illinois senator’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was difficult to measure.
In North Carolina, six in 10 voters who said Wright’s remarks affected their votes sided with Clinton. A somewhat larger percentage of voters who said the pastor’s remarks did not matter supported Obama.
Obama and Clinton both planned to campaign in the next primary states starting Thursday, after a day in Washington. Obama headed to Chicago after his Raleigh speech before coming to the capital.
___
Associated Press writers Tom Raum in Raleigh, N.C., and Liz Sidoti in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
SOurce:news.yahoo
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
MUNSTER, Ind. – Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a vote Friday in the Democratic-controlled Congress on a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, a plan that Barack Obama dismissed as a political stunt that would cost thousands of construction jobs.
“It’s a Shell game. Literally,” Obama said to laughter from his campaign audience, adding it would mean little for hard-pressed consumers.
The Democratic presidential rivals highlighted their differences in ads and speeches across North Carolina and Indiana, two states with primaries Tuesday.
Polls point toward a particularly close finish in Indiana, which is next door to Obama’s home state of Illinois.
Surveys show him with a dwindling advantage in North Carolina, and Clinton decided to spend all of Friday and Saturday in the state before returning to Indiana for a final push.
The two primaries have 187 national convention delegates at stake.
Obama, the front-runner, leads in the overall delegate competition, 1,736.05-1603.5. Clinton won a decisive victory last week in Pennsylvania and is counting on a strong run through the late primaries to persuade convention superdelegates to help her overtake her rival. She picked up the support Friday of Democratic National Committee member Jaime A. Gonzalez Jr., a Texas superdelegate.
Jolted by Thursday’s defection of Joe Andrew, a former national party chairman, Clinton responded with a letter from seven other former party heads and the family of an eighth.
“Her base of support includes women, Hispanics, seniors, Catholics, middle and low-income Americans, and rural, suburban and urban voters. That’s a formidable coalition tailor-made for victory in a November general election,” they wrote.
They added that if the election were held today, Clinton would defeat Republican Sen. John McCain and win the White House. “Obama would lose to the presumptive GOP nominee,” they wrote.
Polls are equivocal on that point. Moreover, they have been particularly volatile in recent weeks as campaign criticism takes its toll on the two Democrats and Obama grapples with controversy stemming from the rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Despite a fierce, occasionally personal campaign, to a surprising degree the former first lady and Obama have generally agreed on most policy issues.
That made the proposed suspension in the gasoline tax an exception.
And while there is little support among the Democratic congressional leadership for the plan, it was a disagreement that both presidential contenders appeared content to perpetuate.
“All I hear about is gas prices. Gas and diesel, everywhere,” Clinton said in Kinston, N.C. “Some people say we don’t need to get a gas tax holiday at all, it’s a gimmick … I want the Congress to stand up and vote. Are they for the oil companies, or are they for you?”
Later, in Hendersonville, she added, “I know where I stand and I know where my opponents stand. … Senator Obama doesn’t want us to take down the gas tax this summer and Senator McCain wants us to, but he doesn’t want to pay for it.”
Clinton has proposed making up the lost revenue by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
Obama’s rhetoric grew sharper, as well.
“She even borrowed one of Bush’s favorite phrases,” he said dismissively of the New York senator. “She said every member of Congress should have to tell us whether they are with us or against us.”
He said the average consumer would save a “quarter and a nickel” a day, and only $28 in three months.
McCain also favors the gasoline tax holiday, and Obama said sarcastically that showed Clinton “has his vote,” and that the two are reading from the same political playbook.
McCain told a town-hall audience in Denver: “I want to give the American consumer a little bit of relief just for the summer. Maybe they’ll be able to buy an additional textbook for their children when they go back to school this fall.”
Clinton launched a television ad several days ago critical of Obama on the issue.
“The economy’s in trouble. When the housing crisis broke, Hillary Clinton called for action: a freeze on foreclosures. Barack Obama said, no. Now, gas prices are skyrocketing, and she’s ready to act again. … Barack Obama says no, again.”
A new Obama response ad airing in Indiana in the campaign’s final days calls Clinton’s gas tax holiday proposal “an election year-gimmick, saving Hoosiers just pennies a day.”
Within the congressional leadership, Clinton’s position has found relatively little support, and no votes are currently anticipated in either the House or Senate.
“First of all, there is no reason to believe that any moratorium on the gas tax will be passed on to the consumer,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday.
“… This has not been the history of a lower gas tax being passed on to the consumer. Second of all, it would defeat everything that we have been trying to do to lower the cost of oil.”
In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said recently that rank-and-file Democrats are divided on the issue. A spokesman said during the day there will be no gasoline tax holiday in legislation Democrats intend to unveil next week.
The dispute centered on a pair of taxes, 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents on a gallon of diesel. The money raised goes into a fund that pays for construction of highways and bridges.
In Indiana, Obama said a summertime gasoline tax holiday would cost 6,000 construction jobs. The campaign circulated material showing the estimate came from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, a trade group. The group said the impact on North Carolina would be 7,000 jobs lost.
___
Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy in North Carolina contributed to this report.
SOurce:news.yahoo
Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up another powerful superdelegate Tuesday, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Barack Obama won Missouri back on Feb. 5, but Mrs. Clinton carried Mr. Skelton’s district. Overall, Mrs. Clinton leads in superdelegates 268 to 242. Among members of Congress she has a narrow lead, 90 to 88.
Does the Skelton endorsement offer any indication which way other uncommitted congressional superdelegates are going to go? The Politico reports Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Obama supporter, hinted that many of her colleagues are privately lining up for Mr. Obama.
While more than 80 Democrats in the House and Senate have yet to state their preferences in the race for the Democratic nomination, sources said Tuesday that most of them have already made up their minds and have told the campaigns where they stand.
“The majority of superdelegates I’ve talked to are committed, but it is a matter of timing,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “They’re just preferring to make their decision public after the primaries are over. … They would like someone else to act for them before they talk about it in the cold light of day.”
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer disagreed: “Considering the rough patch Senator Obama is going through, it’s understandable that Sen. McCaskill would want to change the subject, but her observations don’t jibe with what automatic delegates are actually saying.”
Mr. Obama picked up two superdelegates of his own on Tuesday, Rep. Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Richard Machacek, a party leader from Iowa. But instead of celebrating those endorsements, Mr. Obama spent most of Tuesday focused on his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Senator Obama “broke forcefully” from Reverend Wright at a news conference addressing the pastor’s recent contentious TV appearances, write Jeff Zeleny and Adam Nagourney of The New York Times.
In tones sharply different from those Mr. Obama used on Monday, when he blamed the news media and his rivals for focusing on Mr. Wright, and far harsher than those he used in his speech on race in Philadelphia last month, Mr. Obama tried to cut all his ties to — and to discredit — Mr. Wright, the man who presided at Mr. Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters.
“His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Mr. Obama said, his voice welling with anger. “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.”
The Wall Street Journal says Mr. Obama “chose to go beyond last month’s speech on racial healing to repudiate the minister for ‘the insensitivity and the outrageousness’ of his latest comments. The lawmaker called them ‘a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth.’ ”
Senator Obama hopes that press conference will assuage any doubts voters in upcoming states might have about his authenticity, writes Karen Tumulty of Time.
The most important audience Obama was trying to reach in that news conference was not the voters in the upcoming Democratic primary states of Indiana and North Carolina. He was speaking most directly to 300 or so remaining undecided Democratic superdelegates, the party regulars who are likely to determine the eventual nominee — and who have become increasingly concerned in recent days that the Democratic frontrunner lacks the fire and the fight he will need to prevail in November. As one Democratic strategist put it: “You could sense, if not a turning of the tide over the past couple of days, that people were getting back on the fence.”
John McCain rolled out a health care plan that would allow for some federal money to be spent on covering patients who have been denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions. He made his remarks Tuesday at a stop in Tampa, Fla., Michael Cooper and Kevin Sack of The Times report.
Mr. McCain’s health care plan would shift the emphasis from insurance provided by employers to insurance bought by individuals, to foster competition and drive down prices. To do so he is calling for eliminating the tax breaks that currently encourage employers to provide health insurance for their workers, and replacing them with $5,000 tax credits for families to buy their own insurance.
His proposal to move away from employer-based coverage was similar to one that President Bush pushed for last year, to little effect. And his call for expanding coverage through market-based competition is in stark contrast to the Democrats’ proposals to move toward universal health care coverage, with government subsidies to help lower-income people afford their premiums.
Whether or not Mrs. Clinton gets her party’s nomination, she told The Indianapolis Star on Tuesday that it would be wrong for any Democrat to vote for John McCain in the general election because of any lingering ill-will toward the Democratic nominee. (USA Today says today that Democratic voters are becoming increasingly sour on their inter-party opponent.)
“Anyone, anyone, who voted for either of us should be absolutely committed to voting for the other” in the general election, Clinton said during an hourlong meeting with The Indianapolis Star Editorial Board. “I’m going to shout that from the mountaintops and the valleys and everywhere I can, no matter what the outcome of the nominating process is.”
During that meeting, Senator Clinton also urged Senator Obama to debate her in Indiana. “It’s not too late, if you’re watching,” she said, looking into a camera that was streaming the meeting on the Web.
In Indiana, writes Timothy Aeppel of The Wall Street Journal, the bulk of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches are about economic issues like globalization and job loss, which “plays to the insecurities of blue-collar voters — a successful strategy in other states.”
Carl Hulse of The Times describes the unease some House Republicans feel about Mr. McCain representing the party at the top of the 2008 ticket.
Mr. McCain, the go-his-own-way Arizona lawmaker, has had an up-and-down relationship with Republican colleagues for years, particularly those in the House. He feuded openly with the former Republican leaders, whom he often treated with disdain and suspicion — a sentiment they often returned.
That checkered past has stirred mixed emotions among House Republicans, who embrace the candidate McCain as a potential savior whose maverick reputation could rescue them in an off-year for the party brand.
Mr. McCain’s in a tricky spot when it comes to the farm bill, which is up for renewal. The Hill says Senator McCain is staying out of the debate and may vote against it this year.
If McCain opposes the final bill, Democrats are eager to use his position to characterize the senator as out of touch with rural states hurt by the economic downturn and in line with a president who called the bill “bloated” at a news conference on Tuesday.
But if McCain supports it, he is certain to anger some of the fiscal conservatives he has won over by vowing to eliminate congressional earmarks and pledging his support for President Bush’s tax policies.
Campaign trail roundup:
* In Indiana, Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Deluxe Sheet Metal employees in South Bend, holds town hall meetings in Portage and Lafayette, and holds a rally in Kokomo. Bill Clinton holds events in Apex, Sanford, Lillington, Dunn, Hope Mills, Lumberton and Whiteville, N.C.
* John McCain holds a town hall meeting in Allentown, Pa.
* Barack Obama sits down for a discussion with Indiana working families and tours and meets with employees at the C.N.W. factory in Indianapolis. Later, he attends a rally in Bloomington, Ind. Michelle Obama holds an event with Caroline Kennedy in Boonville, Ind.
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No sane man, who is an Obama supporter, would do what Jeremiah Wright has done in the last week. Many pundits are saying he’s an ego maniac, he’s been swept up, he’s trying to pay for his new house, blah, blah. After thinking about it, I disagree. This was deliberate, planned and timed to inflict maximum damage to Obama. Think about it. What could Wright do to get maximum attention? Answer: speak at the National Press Club, with a large group of supporters present, and with Nation of Islam security on stage with you. Make inflammatory statements, dredging up every outrageous thing you’ve ever said, and inflating them even more. Be cocky, arrogant, and rude. Make sure that the Nation of Islam guy is in the background of every shot. Scare people to death.
Wright’s not crazy. He supports Hillary. It is well known that Wright knows the Clintons. He went to the White House during the Clinton administration. I now believe that he is a Hillary supporter and either did this on his own or was goaded into acting by a supporter. I don’t know if he’s in communication with the Clinton campaign itself, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
This was intentional to hurt Obama, and it sure is working.
SOurce:chron
When I read yesterday’s account of the debate over what to do about rising gasoline prices, I really was astounded by the pandering–though I sometimes wonder why one would be astounded in this era where getting elected is far more important than taking a principled position. On this issue, the scorecard is clear: Sens. Clinton and McCain failed miserably and Sen. Obama took the right stand.
Let’s start with the obvious: people are feeling a lot of economic pain, though I would argue that that pain has been there for a very long time, years before the collective political wisdom declared the country in a “recession”. They have nowhere to turn to get easy cash now that their housing-value ATM’s are gone, hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs or on the verge of losing their jobs, health care is still a disaster, pensions are evaporating, the cost of food is going up and…the list is long and unpleasant.
And, then, there are fuel costs. I’ve been working a bit with the truckers who, as you may have read, are organizing, in a truly grassroots campaign, protests against the rising fuel costs. They have a broader view of the problem, focusing on the obscene profits being made by the oil companies. You can understand their plight and, at the same time, not succumb to meaningless and, ultimately harmful proposals–and, certainly, you would hope for such leadership from people who are competing for the highest office in the land.
So, come Sens. Clinton and McCain to this issue and what do they propose?
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season.
Sen. Obama was correct when he said:
Mr. Obama derided the McCain-Clinton idea of a federal tax holiday as a “short-term, quick-fix” proposal that would do more harm than good, and said the money, which is earmarked for the federal highway trust fund, is badly needed to maintain the nation’s roads and bridges.
This is pandering at its worse. First, though I’m all for Sen. Clinton‘s proposal to levy a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, there is zero reason to suspend the gas tax. Eliminating the gas tax for the summer might save consumers $40-$50, on average. That is a ridiculous sum–and reminds me of the pain the whole nation suffered (massive unnecessary deficits and a widening of the gap between rich and poor) from the great share of the Bush tax cuts enjoyed by most people (an average of $300). It makes people think you are doing something when, in fact, all you are doing is scoring some political points and actually making the problem worse.
Second, the gas tax actually is an important thing that funds the fixing of roads, bridges and the rest of the infrastructure that makes the economy function. You need not travel more than a few miles in any city to understand how badly those funds are needed. Once you start suspending the gas tax for one reason, it becomes a target for any politician looking to score a few points against “government spending”.
Third, and maybe the most important point, the predicament so many Americans find themselves in when they go to the pump to fill up their cars is a legacy of our political and economic system and our long history of refusing to face up to reality: that we guzzle cheap gas relative to the rest of the world, drive idiotic cars, encourage suburban sprawl that is an oil company executive’s wet dream and exist in a political system that rewards oil and coal while killing alternative energy.
I am no Tom Friedman fan and find his views on globalization to be predictable coming from a real elitist (as opposed to someone who is unfairly painted as an elitist for political reasons). I say this mostly to underscore how right he is in today’s column:
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
And…
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.
There is an opportunity here for a teachable moment. Sen. Obama will win the nomination (it’s just a matter of time, as much as a lot of people are wringing their hands over the lead-up to the eventuality of the day so count me as one who is bored by the media-induced drama). He could set the tone for a future Administration by simply stating, as I think he has tried in the past:
In the heat of this battle, I could troll for a few more votes by offering people a promise that has no meaning, but I won’t. It may cost me votes in the upcoming primaries but what is more important is the future of the country and the planet. Telling you that I could save you a few bucks in your bill at the gasoline pump might make you feel good–but we won’t solve the crisis that forces you to pay more at the pump by getting rid of a tiny amount we all pay to make sure that we have the basic services our society needs–roads, bridges etc…The economic pain you feel today is a result of a system that is controlled by [list of foes here]. If you elect me president, we are going to take on [list the obvious foes here] and make sure that your economic future is not controlled by [list Exxon etc. here]. It will also mean we will have to make some significant changes in the way we think about creating energy and using it. But, taking the power way from [Exxon etc.] will mean that we, the people, can determine that the price we pay at the pump does not come at the expense of our families and our planet.
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