"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mike Huckabee vowed on Saturday to stay in the Republican Party's nominating race for the presidential election in November, despite trailing far behind rival John McCain.
"Am I quitting? Let's get that settled right now. No, I'm not," Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and a Baptist preacher, told a conference of conservative activists.
WASHINGTON — Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton competed for Democratic convention delegates across three states on Saturday, locked in a landmark struggle for the party's presidential nomination.
A total of 158 delegates was at stake in the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington. Caucuses in the Virgin Islands offered three more.
Clinton began the day with a slender delegate lead in The Associated Press count. She had 1,045 delegates to 960 for Obama. A total of 2,025 is required to win the nomination at the party convention in Denver.
Republican contests in Louisiana, Kansas and Guam provided John McCain a chance to advance closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to make his nomination official.
The Arizona senator began the day with 707 delegates. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with 195, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with 14, were his only remaining rivals following Mitt Romney's withdrawal from the race.
The day's contests opened a new phase in the Democratic race between Clinton, attempting to become the first woman in the White House, and Obama, hoping to become the first black.
The Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in 22 states, which once looked likely to effectively settle the race, instead produced a near-equal delegate split.
That left Obama and Clinton facing the likelihood of a grind-it-out competition lasting into spring _ if not to the convention itself.
With the night's events, 29 of the 50 states have selected delegates.
Two more _ Michigan and Florida _ held renegade primaries and the Democratic National Committee has vowed not to seat any delegates chosen at either of them.
Maine, with 24 delegates, holds caucuses on Sunday. Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia and voting by Americans overseas are next, on Tuesday, with 175 combined.
Then follows a brief intermission, followed by a string of election nights, some crowded, some not.
The date of March 4 looms large, 370 delegates in primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Mississippi is alone in holding a primary one week later, with a relatively small 33 delegates at stake.
Puerto Rico anchors the Democratic calendar, with 55 delegates chosen in caucuses on June 7.
If Super Tuesday failed to settle the campaign, it produced a remarkable surge in fundraising.
Obama's aides announced he had raised more than $7 million on line in the two days that followed.
Clinton disclosed she had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month in an attempt to counter her rival's Super Tuesday television advertising. She raised more than $6 million in the two days after the busiest night in primary history.
The television ad wars continued unabated.
Obama has been airing commercials for more than a week in television markets serving every state that has a contest though Feb 19.
Clinton began airing ads midweek in Washington state, Maine and Nebraska, and added Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia on Friday.
Today, February 9th, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be going head-to-head for delegates in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state and the Virgin Islands. On Sunday the race moves to Maine. Of these five contests, four are caucuses (Louisiana is a primary).
On the Republican side John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul will compete in primaries in Kansas, Washington state and Louisiana.
Delegates at stake:
Dems:
A total of 158 delegates [are] at stake in the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington. Caucuses in the Virgin Islands offered three more.
GOP:
The Republicans have 74 convention delegates at stake.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has just reported that it has received 75,000 contributions since Super Tuesday.
Patti Solis Doyle of Hillary's Campaign has released the following statement to contributors:
"Now THAT is what I call two good days.
Not only did we celebrate huge victories for Hillary all over the country on Super Tuesday, but you matched our success with a breathtaking show of support.
You exceeded our $3 million goal in less than 24 hours. In fact, we've already hit FOUR MILLION DOLLARS! Incredible! And so far, more than 35,000 people -- 35,000! -- have made online contributions.
Your response has been so amazing that we are doubling our goal: $6 million in 72 hours.
I'm simply awed to see everyone stepping up for Hillary. And boy did you pick a good time to do it! We poured our heart, our soul, and -- you better believe -- tens of millions of dollars into February 5. Now it's time to build our resources back up for what we know will be a long and hard-fought contest."
Mr. Romney’s advisers acknowledged Thursday an array of tactical missteps and miscalculations. Perhaps most significantly, they conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney’s authenticity as they sought to position him as the most electable conservative in the race, a jarring contrast to his more moderate record as governor of Massachusetts. And during the January nominating contests, as his opponents attacked his shifting on issues, polls showed his favorability ratings plummeting.
Mr. Romney spent more than $35 million of his own money trying to get himself elected, but his campaign faced challenges from the start, some from obstacles beyond his control.
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain all but captured the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday after Mitt Romney withdrew from the race, saying the war in Iraq and the terrorist threat made it imperative that the party unite.
In a dramatic announcement before a convention of stunned and largely unhappy conservatives, Mr. Romney said that he wanted to fight on but that taking his campaign all the way to the Republican convention in September would delay a national campaign against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton or Senator Barack Obama, the two remaining Democratic contenders. Mr. Romney described both as weak on national security.
“They would retreat, declare defeat, and the consequences of that would be devastating,” Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, told a crowd that broke into chants of “Mitt, Mitt, Mitt.”
Staying in the race, he said, “would make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.”
Mr. Romney, who spent tens of millions of dollars of his fortune on the race, added, “Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding the surrender to terror.”
Mr. McCain stepped forward two hours later before the same gathering to try to make peace with a group deeply skeptical of him, if not outright hostile. In a moment that will long be remembered by Republicans, he was greeted with jeers as well as cheers.
By David Roberts (For The Nation) After a decisive Super Tuesday win, John McCain is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. (Why? I'm with Ross Douthat: it was luck.) It's time to start thinking about what a campaign against him is going to look like.
According to the Villagers, McCain is a maverick, and nowhere is that alleged quality more evident than in his pundit-titillating (punditillating?) position on climate change. He is the Republican apostate, a visionary who has reached across the aisle. Why, now that McCain is the Republican nominee, we're practically guaranteed to get bold action on climate no matter who wins! Right?
McCain will be running as a climate champion against a Democrat who claims the same mantle. There's two ways the political media could cover it:
Voters Don't Share Kennedys' Ardor for Obama
By Anne E. Kornblut and Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 6, 2008; A21
Sen. Barack Obama won the Kennedys, key members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and support from the charismatic African American governor of the state.
But in the end, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won Massachusetts. It was arguably the most surprising twist in the Super Tuesday returns on the Democratic side -- one that seemed to reflect her earlier upset in New Hampshire, and underscored the core of support from women that is becoming her firewall in the nominating contest.
For Clinton, winning in Massachusetts meant significant bragging rights. Obama had earned endorsements from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the larger-than-life senior senator, and Sen. John F. Kerry, the junior senator who was the party's last presidential nominee. Obama had organizational help from Deval L. Patrick, the governor, who is also a personal friend, and from allies from his days as a Harvard Law student.
But Clinton won comfortably in a race that was, in some ways, always hers to lose. It was, after all, Martha's Vineyard where the Clintons vacationed during the 1990s. Although the Clinton campaign declared Massachusetts the "upset of the night," Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, one of the most prominent elected officials who stayed with Clinton as others broke for Obama, said: "I'm not surprised at all."
"This is Clinton country up here," Menino said.
It "was about real people," Menino said, who saw in Clinton a fighter on their behalf.
By tilting toward Clinton largely on the strength of female support, Massachusetts was on the leading edge of a national trend in the Democratic race, as women continued to break for the N.Y. senator in some, though not all, races. Exit polls showed Clinton ahead among women in the Bay State with a double-digit lead, while Obama had a significant lead among men.
Michael Goldman, a Democratic political operative, said Clinton's advantage among women was decisive. "A lot of women simply came to her rescue," he said.
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination, historians may look to her primary win in California as key.
The reason, beyond the complexities of delegates, may come from the nation's most populous state's status as a trend-setter. A split in victories on "Super Tuesday" between New York Sen. Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the other 21 states voting made her California win all the more dramatic.
"California was very, very critical," said pollster Mervin Field, who has been following presidential elections for more than half a century. "The fact that he didn't win some people might construe as a watershed victory for Hillary Clinton, the fact that the Obama surge somehow got arrested in California."
Clinton, who could become the first woman U.S. president, worked to build on strong support for her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who embraced the state and befriended Hollywood and Silicon Valley leaders.
She won endorsements from top officials in the world's eighth largest economy, from its senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, to the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Women and Latinos gave Clinton major support as expected, according to exit polls.
Facing a record 22 states voting on the same primary day, Obama traveled elsewhere in the days leading up to Tuesday, even going to remote Idaho, where he won. Clinton held rallies across California and her husband campaigned here for days.
Obama deployed powerhouse friends, including Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. A Sunday Los Angeles rally with Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and Kennedy's niece, Maria Shriver, added high-profile female counterweight to Clinton.
Risking the ire of progressive activists, Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign announced that it has accepted a debate to air on Fox News on February 11, according to her chief strategist Mark Penn.
"There is an enormous interest in these debates an clamoring on the part of the Democratic Party for them," said Clinton's spokesperson Howard Wolfson. "We have not had a large number in which two people have participated. We've had multi-candidate debates... the fact is Senator Clinton has enjoyed the opportunity to debate and get her message out. Certainly as we move to the next exciting day of this nomination calendar, voters want the opportunity to see these two candidates compete against each other."
Though Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have frequently appeared on Fox News for interviews, Clinton may be debating alone. Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said that no plans existed as of now for his boss to participate in upcoming forums.
"As of right now, there are no debates on our schedule at all," Burton told the Huffington Post. "We'll figure out our schedule, including any debates, soon."
When the Democratic candidates declined to participate in a FOX-sponsored debate last April, their choice was readily greeted by Democratic bloggers and party activists, who did not wish to legitimize the station as a neutral political forum. Officials at Fox News were apoplectic.
"The candidates that can't face Fox, can't face Al Qaeda," said Roger Ailes, the Fox News CEO.
During a campaign conference call on Tuesday, Wolfson defended the campaign's decision to accept the Fox News debate, citing the reach the network had in the Chesapeake area (the debate will be held in Washington D.C.) and prior appearances by both Clinton and Obama on station.
"Given that Senator Obama had been on the network, we've been on the network, and that the offer is a good one for this debate in terms of this upcoming primary, it made sense to accept it," he said.
The announcement by the Clinton campaign comes as both candidates are acknowledging that the Democratic primary fight will likely continue well after the results of Tuesday's voting is known. Earlier in the day, Clinton aides let it be known that the Senator would participate in two other February debates, one on ABC, the other on CNN.
"In a one-one race it is important for voters to see the [candidates] side by side and see the differences as opposed to seeing them at rallies and big events," said Penn. "We feel very good about making sure that there is a side by side comparison."
Not that our opinion matters (any more than yours). Nor do we expect that we will influence your vote in any way, but….
Today is Super Tuesday and we feel it is our duty to publicly endorse Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic candidate that will be the next President of the United States.
As we have previously stated, Hillary wasn't our fist choice. We were initially swayed by the promise of change and the inspiring messages of Barack Obama.
But that's not enough!
After careful consideration and much research, we have come to the informed decision that Hillary is the right candidate for us.
We feel more confident with Hillary's abilities to lead and her proven track record of experience. But, more so than that, HER plans for universal healthcare, education reform and emphasis on equality for all are more aligned with what we want in the next President.
We watched the debates and Clinton just won us over.
Barack is great. But Hillary is the better leader, for us.
However, Obama MUST stay in the picture. This country needs him, just as we need Clinton.
It's been a great and heated campaign thus far, but we sincerely hope when it comes time for the Democratic convention that the Clinton/Obama dream ticket will be a reality!
Whether you agree with us or not, please go out and vote today.
Rock it!
[Image via WENN.]
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made an appearance on David Letterman's late-night TV show on the eve of Super Tuesday and took the opportunity to explain the influence her husband would have if she becomes the first woman president of the United States.
"In my White House, we will know who wears the pantsuits," the New York senator told the talk show host, who asked if former president Bill Clinton might return to the presidential mansion and "be going through stuff."
The Romney campaign is sending around an email highlighting one particular passage from Limbaugh's show today. Here it is:
"I think right now Romney probably -- as the campaign has coalesced and as the campaign has progressing on down the highway -- I think the one candidate of the three still out there on our side ... in saying who more closely embodies all three legs of this conservative stool, you'd have to say that it's Mitt Romney. There's actually no choice in the matter. It certainly isn't Senator McCain."
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
The Kennedy clan, America's largest political dynasty, is as sharply divided as the Democratic Party ahead of today's vote, with many members supporting Barack Obama while others campaign for Hillary Clinton.
Maria Shriver, niece of JFK, showed up at a rally in Los Angeles on Sunday after deciding at the last moment that she needed to make a stand for Barack Obama. The crowd went wild with enthusiasm at the sight of four of America's most formidable women – Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, Michelle Obama and Ms Shriver – on stage for Mr Obama.
"I thought, if Barack Obama was a state, he'd be California," Ms Shriver said and the crowd roared back as she ticked off his credentials: "Diverse. Open. Smart. Independent. Bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader." She was there because she wanted "an America that's about unity".
But the Kennedy clan are anything but united. "Within the family, for the first time you have different opinions," said Ms Shriver's husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California and a John McCain supporter. "I've been in the family 30 years, and I've never seen that.
Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy, supports Mr Obama, along with JFK's daughter Caroline and congressman Patrick Kennedy. Three of Robert Kennedy's children – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy Jnr and Kerry Kennedy – have come out for Mrs Clinton.
There are also splits in other prominent Democratic dynasties. Jesse Jackson and his son, Jesse Jnr, are backing the Obama campaign. But Mr Jackson's wife Jacqueline is a Clinton supporter.
Ms Shriver's failure to agree with her husband on politics surprised no one, given her family background. But despite phone calls from Mr Obama, she wavered until the last minute, eventually going straight to the rally from her daughter's showjumping event, with hair unbrushed and without make-up.
Like Paul Newman in Hud, I have a somewhat lenient approach to certain matters--sometimes I lean a little this way, sometimes I lean a little that. That's how I am in the Hillary-Obama contest. Muddle it over as I might, I'm still not sure who I'm going to vote for in the NY primary. Some days I lean toward Hillary, other days toward Obama; sometimes I'm for Obama in the morning, tilt toward Hillary around midday, and bend like a pussywillow back toward Obama after evening meditation. But one thing I refuse to be, even if I don't vote for her, is a Hillary-hater. I'm not even a Hillary-disliker. What's baffling about the negativity towards Hillary is how personal it is, and yet how nebulous, especially when it emanates from other women. Some of the most articulate women end up resorting to pidgin English sign language trying to explain why they don't like her, pulling vague reasons out of thin air. Even writers who've had a bit more time to think about it can't quite ratchet into focus, reverting to the high school hallway Heatherisms that are Maureen Dowd's signature move whenever the subject is Hillary.
In a must-read piece, Susan Faludi, reviewing the new anthology Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers (edited by Susan Morrison of The New Yorker) in the latest New York Observer, zooms in on this phenomenon, clearing away the standard-issue narcissism of the contemporary essayist ("Many of the writers in Thirty Ways are busy reviewing their own lives and taking their own temperatures, some with notable self-regard") to get at the pathology of educated women on the petty attack* against one of their own:
The very premise of Thirty Ways invites us to disparage Hillary Clinton as a political candidate and induct her instead into a reality show pageant. More often than not, the contributors take the bait, passing judgment on Clinton’s femininity ("unnatural” and "contrived"), looks ("passably attractive") and sensuality ("it is difficult for me to imagine her in an embrace, motherly or otherwise," Susanna Moore writes). Reading through these pages, I wished for a companion volume, Thirty Ways of Looking at Women Looking at Hillary, which answered this question: Why do so many of these women writers--who have shown themselves to be graceful essayists and well-reasoned analysts in other contexts--resort to unfactual and illogical thinking and, in many cases, downright 13-year-old cattiness when the topic is Hillary?
After I'd finished Thirty Ways, I picked up a New Yorker article by one of the contributors, Lauren Collins, about a Missouri teenager driven to suicide by the taunts of mean girls on MySpace. I felt as though I were still reading Thirty Ways: The essayists' reasons for their rancor at Hillary are as immaturely nonspecific as those of that poor girl's adolescent tormentors. "I have yet to meet a woman who likes Hillary Clinton," Ms. Roiphe sniffs. "We just don't like her," she says, channeling the women she has met. "We like her husband, but we don’t like her."Nyah, nyah!
If none of the women Katie Roiphe knows "likes" Hillary, maybe the problem isn't Hillary's "likeability" but an inane notion of niceness that's helped hold women back in so many other fields under the guise of not being feminine enough. Under the cosmetic surface of complaints and snarks about chilly smiles and steely gazes is a deeper discomfort with motherhood on the political stage that's only obliquely addressed in Thirty Ways as writer after writer gets tangled up in her own ingrown subjective verdicts. "In that regard, what's objectionable about Thirty Ways is not what’s contained between its covers, which is at times canny and thoughtful, even if at other times it's juvenile and mean," Faludi writes. "The very nature of the project is prejudicial. Underlying the summons to female writers to share their "feelings" about Hillary is a sly invitation--to demonstrate that when it comes to America’s consideration of a female candidate, the political is only personal." Hillary's job is to defeat the Republican nominee, not massage everyone's feelings, especially the feelings of writers who'd rather to hang out in the hallway with MoDo, preferring her cool menthol taste two to one over other brands.
Big turnout expected for primaries
Mass. election officials predict 1.3 million will vote tomorrow. Above, Hillary Clinton campaigned at Clark University in Worcester this morning. (Boston Globe)
An Obama mailer stretches the differences between the candidates on health care. Specifically:
By Julie Bosman
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had a teary-eyed moment on the campaign trail today during a nostalgic visit to Yale, where she graduated from law school nearly 35 years ago.
Mrs. Clinton had arrived for a roundtable to discuss children and health care at the Yale Child Study Center, where she had volunteered as a law student. She was introduced by Penn Rhodeen, a child researcher and her former boss at the Yale Child Study Center.
Standing next to the table where Mrs. Clinton sat, he told the story of how she had arrived at his door “dressed mostly in purple” in a sheepskin coat and bellbottoms. “So 1972,” he said, to laughter.
“Now we hope that you, the incomparable Hillary,” Mr. Rhodeen said, “will be president of the United States.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton, looking teary, raised her left hand to her cheek and brushed something away with her finger.
“I said I would not tear up,” she said. “Already we’re not on that path.”
The emotional moment echoed a similar one in New Hampshire last month, when Mrs. Clinton’s eyes welled with tears as she talked about the tensions of running for president.
Mrs. Clinton was wearing the rigors of the campaign trail on her sleeve, speaking in a soft, hoarse voice, and frequently interrupting
herself by coughing and sipping water.
She reminisced about her “nostalgic” law school days, when she arrived in New Haven “in an old beat-up car with a mattress roped to the top.”
And before delving into a discussion about health care, she talked about why she wanted to win the Democratic nomination. “It does matter who our leaders are and what they do,” she said. “I’m now running for president because I think we can do better than we have.”
New Haven should have been friendly territory for Mrs. Clinton. After all, Yale was where she graduated from law school, met Bill Clinton and, by all accounts, developed a devotion to public service.
But Senator Barack Obama has drawn a considerable share of support around New Haven. Not only is he intensely popular among college students, but last week he won the endorsement of the Yale Daily News, the student newspaper.
“It would seem natural for us to endorse Hillary Clinton for president,” the editors wrote, noting that Mrs. Clinton graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. But “to endorse her would be to endorse intelligence and preparedness, but also divisiveness and the politics of manipulation.”
And on Saturday morning, Rosa DeLauro, the Congresswoman who represents New Haven, announced that she was throwing her support to Mr. Obama.
ON almost every step of his march towards the Republican nomination, John McCain has relied on the support of his glamorous second wife Cindy. Yet she has not always been a political asset. A Republican victory in November would bring to the White House a formidable but flawed first lady.
McCain’s marriage has long attracted attention both for the 18-year age gap between husband and wife and for their adopted Asian daughter, who became the focus of one of the most vicious dirty tricks of the 2000 presidential campaign.
The couple have also overcome daunting health problems that included McCain’s bouts with skin cancer, a stroke suffered by Cindy in 2004, and her admission a decade earlier that she had become so addicted to painkillers that she was stealing them from a medical charity she ran.
Yet somehow the McCains have emerged as a potent and durable political partnership. Cindy McCain was at her husband’s side last week as he celebrated the Florida primary victory that has put him at the front of the Republican field.
A former Arizona rodeo beauty queen and daughter of a millionaire Phoenix businessman, Cindy McCain was 25 when she met her future husband at a cocktail party in Hawaii. John McCain was a 43-year-old naval liaison officer travelling with a congressional delegation, his sights already set on a political career.
He was also still married to his first wife Carol, although the couple had recently separated. Carol later attributed the breakdown of the marriage to “John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again”. McCain fell like a brick for Cindy, who was the heir to a brewery distribution business worth millions. For several years afterwards the McCains endured Washington gossip that he had dumped his first wife - who had been crippled in a car accident - in favour of a trophy bride to enhance his political ambitions.
It was in the late 1980s, after a series of miscarriages and giving birth to three children, that Cindy developed spinal problems and was prescribed painkillers after surgery. Her husband and family had no idea she was secretly taking pills stolen from a charity she had created called the American Voluntary Medical Team, which sent mobile surgical units to war zones. When federal agents began to investigate gaps in the charity’s records, Cindy telephoned her husband, a senator in Washington, and confessed.
She admitted at the time that the 1994 episode had “nearly destroyed both of us”. But she underwent treatment and attended meetings of Narcotics Anonymous as part of a deal with prosecutors who dropped charges.
A few years earlier she had visited Bangladesh with a different charity and decided on the spur of the moment to help a little girl with a cleft palate whom she met in Mother Teresa’s orphanage.
The McCains eventually adopted the girl, named her Bridget and raised her as their daughter. She is now 16, but during McCain’s ugly presidential primary fight against George W Bush in 2000, voters in South Carolina began receiving telephone calls suggesting the senator had fathered an illegitimate black child.
The authors of the smear have never been identified, but Bush was the beneficiary and went on to win the South Carolina primary and the Republican nomination. The McCains have never publicly blamed Bush and their relations have been outwardly cordial. But Cindy recently admitted that she keeps a “grudge list”.
Cindy McCain, now 53, claims she has no interest in policy making - “I am not the legislator in this family. He is” - and that she intends to keep busy running her charities and her family’s company. As first lady, it is clear that she would play a key role. Acknowledging that McCain had made many enemies in Republican ranks, she added: “The only person my husband can trust is me.”
by Martha Burk, Gloria Feldt, Cecelia Fire Thunder, Lulu Flores, Kim Gandy, Ellen Malcolm, Irene Natividad, Ellie Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones
As women who have spent our careers fighting to protect a woman's right to choose, we recognize that the next president will face serious challenges to safeguard the reproductive health of women. In our opinion, there is one candidate whose leadership on this issue is unparalleled: Hillary Clinton.
Hillary has been an uncompromising leader and loyal ally for each of us in our battles to ensure and protect a woman's right to choose in America and around the world. We know she will lead the fight for women's health and justice because we have worked with her on these issues for so many years.
· We know Hillary will appoint Supreme Court justices who honor a woman's right to privacy because she not only voted against John Roberts and Sam Alito but also spoke on the Senate floor about the threat they pose to privacy rights and Roe v. Wade in opposing their confirmations.
· We know Hillary will expand contraceptive options because she waged a successful three-year battle with Senator Patty Murray against the Bush administration to make Plan B emergency contraception available over the counter.
· We know Hillary will expand fair work-family policies because we worked with her to pass the original Family and Medical Leave Act and then to expand it to cover military families, to provide paid leave, and to improve childcare.
· We know Hillary will fight for access to family planning services for low-income women because she has fought to increase funding for contraception and family planning through Medicaid and Title X.
· We know Hillary will work to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies because as First Lady, Hillary helped found the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancies and as Senator she spearheaded the Prevention First Act.
· We know Hillary will be mindful of the challenges that our sisters face abroad and at home because in 1995 she bravely stood before a global audience at the 1995 Women's Conference in Beijing and declared that "women's rights are human rights."
We trust Hillary Clinton because every time we needed her by our side, she has been there.
Let us be clear -- the stakes are high in this election. We firmly believe that no one is better situated to confront the challenges awaiting the next president. As a pro-choice president, Hillary Clinton will make Supreme Court appointments and decisions ensuring women's reproductive rights in this country.
We believe that Hillary Clinton is the best choice for president of the United States.
Paul Krugman, NYTimes: "The principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. It's a division that can seem technical and obscure -- and I've read many assertions that only the most wonkish care about the fine print of their proposals.
But as I've tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates' approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I've been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage -- a key progressive goal -- and falling far short.
Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton's would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama's -- at only slightly higher cost."
But this week it was Giuliani who dropped out of the race and endorsed McCain, praising him as an "American hero."
The endorsement was a reflection of the authentic respect McCain and Giuliani have for each other. But that's not all the two candidates share. The endorsement deal was solidifed when both campaigns stayed at the Deerfield Hilton in Florida, following the Republican debate in Boca Raton on January 24. The two campaigns' staff mingled easily over drinks. Acknowledging that his candidate was not likely to survive a defeat in Florida, a Giuliani aide approached one of the McCain senior staffers. Come Wednesday, he said, "Just tell us what want us to do — we've got to stop him."
"Him," of course, is Mitt Romney, the candidate who seems to be uniting his Republican rivals almost as much as Hillary Clinton. "The degree to which campaigns' personal dislike for Mitt Romney has played a part in this campaign cannot be underestimated," says an adviser to one of those rival campaigns. While sharp words have been exchanged between practically every Republican candidate at one point or another on the campaign trail, the aversion to Romney seems to go beyond mere policy disagreements. It's also a suspicion of what they see is his hypocrisy and essential phoniness — what one former staffer for Fred Thompson called Romney's "wholesale reinvention."
The Romney campaign doesn't pretend the sour attitude toward its candidate doesn't exist. But chief counselor Ben Ginsberg insists— echoing one of the campaign's main themes — the attitude stems largely from the fact that Romney is "the outsider candidate. He's not from Washington and he's going to change Washington. He's not part of their club."
At times, this apparent rancor among the other candidates toward Romney has seemed like a schoolyard pact — for example, in the many snarky comments aimed at Romney during the Republican debate on Jan. 5, just before the New Hampshire primary. The campaigns have denied there's any political collusion going on; they insist all of them simply feel the same way about Romney.
To be sure, the candidates' staffs do seem to have bonded in their dislike of Romney. "It was very common for e-mails to be flying around between the Thompson, McCain and Giuliani campaigns," says the former Thompson staffer, "Saying, 'No matter what happens with us, we all need to make sure it's not him.'" The staffer says that campaigns would share opposition research on Romney and offer each other tips on how best to undermine him: "Like, 'Hey, I saw you hit Mitt on immigration — have you thought about going after him on this issue?" In some cases, the attitude even extends to the top of the campaigns. The night of the Iowa caucuses, after getting a congratulatory call from McCain, Huckabee told the candidate, according to aides: "Now it's your turn to kick his butt."
Before and after debates, rival campaign staffers note, Romney tends not to mingle with the other candidates — most of whom know each other professionally — preferring instead to keep close to his family and staff. And those same staffers delight in trading stories about Romney's odd behavior. The day before the Republican primary, Huckabee mocked Romney for ordering lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, then peeling off the fried coating and eating it with a knife and fork. Presented with a golf club, Huckabee said he wouldn't be very good at the game: "I'd be like Mitt Romney eating fried chicken."
But such jibes mask more substantive complaints that many of the candidates have about Romney. "What Romney has done," says a Huckabee adviser, "he's attacked people for positions he once held. That annoys people. And he uses his own money to do it, which rubs it in." He's gone after McCain on campaign finance reform (which he once supported), Huckabee on tax increases (Huckabee countered that Romney's raised "fees" amounted to the same thing), and nearly all the candidates on immigration.
The Republicans, of course, have no monopoly on bad feelings between candidates. In recent weeks, the bitter feuding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has made many voters wary and disappointed. Yet in recent years, Republicans have made a mantra out of Reagan's "11th Commandment": "Thou shall not criticize other Republicans." Unaligned pollster Whit Ayers notes, however, that the Clinton-Obama clashes have "tapped into racial fault lines," something missing from the anti-Mitt sentiment. "It doesn't tap into anything larger," says Ayers. "It's just personal."
ABOARD THE CLINTON PLANE OVER ARIZONA – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not explicitly say that Senator Barack Obama was a Democrat-in-Bush-clothing, but she sure left that impression during a news conference on Saturday evening that dwelled heavily on the Feb. 5 nominating contests.
Mrs. Clinton was asked if part of her argument against Mr. Obama was that he hadn’t been specific about his plans for the country. She replied that she herself had been “very specific” because she believed the next president had to be held accountable for delivering on his or her campaign promises.
And then:
“We cannot afford to elect someone, as we did with George Bush, and then be somewhat surprised by the decisions that are made and the directions that he leads the country,” Mrs. Clinton said. “The best way to avoid that is to have a candidate who will tell you what she will do, and then is held accountable for doing it once she’s in office. That’s the way I like to run my campaign, and that’s the kind of president I’ll be.”
I keyed off her remarks on Saturday morning – that her presidency would not be “a leap of faith” – and asked if she believed there was any risk for voters or America in an Obama presidency.
“Well, I have said on many previous occasions that I’m not asking voters to take a leap of faith – you know where I stand, you know my record, I’ve been vetted, I’ve been tested, probably more than anybody in the country who is in politics right now,” Mrs. Clinton said.
With that out of the way, I pressed my question again, but Mrs. Clinton was having none of it.
“I’m making the positive case for myself, and that is a really strong argument as to how best to win the general election and have a president to deliver on what the campaign is about,” she said. “And I think that’s important this time. We need a campaign that’s about the real issues facing the country; people expect to have their problems fixed. I think my campaign has offered that.”
Asked if she felt confident that she would on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton replied, “I feel confident that we are doing well in a lot of states.” She was no more forthcoming when asked if she would win more of the 22 state contests than Mr. Obama.
“I’ll leave prediction to pundits,” she said. “I just know we’re waging vigorous campaigns in most of the states that vote on Tuesday, and we’re getting good reports.”
One interesting comment: She noted that at a conversation with a small group of voters in Los Angeles Saturday morning, no one brought up the Iraq war with her.
“Voters don’t mention it to me anymore,” she said. “People have still the same level of concern and outrage about President Bush’s policy in Iraq, but there seems to be an awareness that we have to wait to have a Democrat in the White House.”
She also said she was the best Democrat to face off against Senator John McCain of Arizona, should he emerge as the Republican nominee, because her positions were sharper than Mr. Obama’s, she said, on universal health care and the economy.
Hitting Mr. Obama again for not having a plan that forced all Americans to buy, obtain, or have health insurance, she highlighted her position and then imagined a debate between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama said:
“I think my strong advocacy for universal health care puts me in a much better position to take on John McCain. You know, John McCain’s going to get up there and say, ‘I have a health plan, it’s going to cover a lot of people. How many is your plan going to leave out?’ ‘Well, I don’t know, more or less than your plan.’ That is a losing argument for Democrats. As you’ve heard me say, I’m not running for president to put Band-aids on problems, if it comes to universal health care, I think it would be a real mistake for Democrats to nominate someone who has already given up on universal health care.”
Mr. Obama has referred to his plan as universal health care and says it would end up covering everyone because he would sufficiently lower costs and broaden access that uninsured Americans could enroll in coverage plans.
She also unloaded against Mr. Obama over gun control; he said on Saturday that he supported the rights of gun owners, but the Clinton camp pointed to a 1996 questionnaire on which Mr. Obama said he opposed the manufacture and sale of handguns.
“My understanding is that really within the space of 4 or 5 years, he’s had several positions on a number of really challenging issues,” she said.
Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, replied by drawing on some of Mrs. Clinton’s other recent lines of attacks against Mr. Obama.
“Only in Washington could you be attacked for supporting Ronald Reagan’s policies one week and then for being too liberal next week,” Mr. Burton. “These are just the sort of divisive, petty politics that Senator Obama is trying to change.”
