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Obama Wins Over Hearts And Minds in Europe:
BERLIN - Barack Obama's presidential candidacy is winning over hearts and minds in Europe, where his race, youth and promise of change are raising hopes for an America the world can like again.
Influential German weekly magazine Der Spiegel put a picture of the Illinois Senator on its cover in February under the headline "The Messiah Factor - Barack Obama and the Yearning for a new America".
"Germans are in love with Obama," said Volker Perthes, head of the Berlin-based SWP foreign policy think tank. "His election would show America is capable of renewing itself, of self-correcting after the Bush years." |
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Obama and Clinton Ready For Long Battle:
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday faced a long fight for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, with Obama promising to get tougher on his rival and Clinton hinting the two could team up in November against Republican John McCain.
Clinton dodged another possible knockout blow from Obama on Tuesday, coming back from a series of losses to win the big states of Ohio and Texas and revitalize her campaign. The New York senator said the wins showed she had the type of broad support needed against McCain.
Obama promised to more aggressively confront Clinton. His campaign renewed demands that Clinton release tax returns filed with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, since they left the White House. Clinton aides said she would release the returns "on or around April 15."
Obama, an Illinois senator, pointed to his substantial lead in pledged delegates who will select the nominee at the party's convention in August, and said he was on the way to the nomination.
The Democrats and Trade:
Mrs. Clinton is distancing herself from and even dismissing her husband's trade legacy, which includes enacting the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). She is now calling for a "time out" from any new trade pacts. Mr. Obama, unburdened by a record to defend, blames Nafta for shipping jobs abroad and "forc[ing] parents to compete with teenagers for minimum wage jobs at Wal-Mart." He wants to renegotiate Nafta.
Trade is not the threat Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama allege. It is a central reason why American workers are among the world's most productive and prosperous. An economy open to trade is also an economy free enough to thrive in a changing world.
It is also true that U.S. manufacturing has been shedding jobs since the late 1970s, with workers increasingly moving into services. But we have seen this process before. In 1900, it took about 40% of the American workforce toiling on the farm to feed the country. Today, thanks to farm mechanization, agricultural chemistry and other innovations, a mere 2.5% of the workforce feeds the nation and exports about third of U.S. farm production. |
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On the Web, Obama Is the Clear Winner:
Long before Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) began his impressive winning streak in the Democratic primaries, he was trouncing his opponents in their online efforts. Clinton's wins on Mar. 4 in Ohio and Texas may have staved off for now Obama's march to the candidacy. But he still has more than triple the number of supporters on social networks MySpace (NWS) and Facebook, according to techPresident, a nonpartisan blog that covers the 2008 candidates' Web presence. His YouTube (GOOG) videos, with more than 24 million plays a day in March, grab nearly three times more daily views than Clinton's own.
Obama's fundraising is outpacing Clinton's efforts, thanks largely to online donations. In January Obama raised $36 million, with about 80% coming from online. Clinton raised $35 million in the same period, but didn't break out the online component. Obama has multiple teams involved in his online effort including a technology team that handles infrastructure and another that manages his new-media efforts, such as the design of his Web site and the tools provided to its users. Also, he has a video team that shoots his speeches and interactions on the campaign trail and posts them to YouTube and Obama's blog, which is written by campaign members.
Obama's campaign decided early on that the Web needed to play an instrumental role in helping to organize large numbers of supporters, particularly as a counter to the influence the Clintons already had within the Democratic Party's inner circle, including with key delegates. "If we were going to do this and be successful it had to be from the bottom up," says Joe Rospars, director of new media for the Obama campaign. |
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Obama, Clinton Set Sights on Pennsylvania:
A day after the campaign-saving victories for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Ohio and Texas, strategists for both candidates signaled that the weeks before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary will feature a tough tone.
And, borrowing a page from the newly successful Clinton playbook, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's chief strategist told reporters that his campaign has been going too easy on the former first lady. His counsel was an echo of the weeks of claims from the Clinton camp that it was Mr. Obama who had benefitted from kid-gloves treatment by reporters.
Obama demanded that Mrs. Clinton release her income tax returns, something her campaign has said she planned to do sometime around the tax-filing deadline of April 15. Mr. Axelrod said there was no reason for delaying the release of past returns. "Sen. Clinton has been elusive on this from the start," he said. "There's absolutely no reason why she doesn't release her 2006 returns."
The Obama campaign first pressed Mrs. Clinton to release her tax information after she loaned her campaign $5 million before the Feb. 5 primary contests.
"There's no guarantee that they will be available before the Pennsylvania primary," Mr. Axelrod complained in a conference call with reporters. "She is a habitual non-discloser," he said, accusing the New York senator of failing to provide full information on topics including her White House records and financial contributors to her husband's presidential library.
The Associated Press put Mrs. Clinton's net gain at 12 delegates. Accounting for some movement among the superdelegates, the AP's overall count gave Mr. Obama a delegate total of 1,567, compared with 1,462 for Mrs. Clinton. It will take 2,025 votes to win the nomination, assuming that Michigan and Florida remain as bystanders for the Democrats' Denver national convention in August. The two states were stripped of their delegates because they scheduled their primaries in violation of Democratic National Committee rules. |
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Turnout, Technology and Nature Marred Balloting in Ohio:
For election officials, the votes in Ohio and Texas were contentious and drawn-out reminders to expect the unexpected in a year of enormous enthusiasm. As a result, many polling places ran out of Democratic paper ballots. That led to several hundred voters in Sandusky County being turned away, claims that voters were also disenfranchised in Cleveland, and last-minute litigation to keep certain polls open late.
A problem caused by heavy turnout, disrupted the occasionally raucous Democratic caucuses in Texas on Tuesday night. At several sites, crowds were too large for the meeting halls where the caucuses were supposed to be held, driving many potential voters away and leading to several intense confrontations.
In Lake Dallas, just north of Dallas, Donna Gibbs, a chairwoman for one of the area’s voting precincts, said that caucus-goers from nine precincts were supposed to vote in a municipal building there but that almost a thousand people arrived. As a result, many precincts were forced to convene in the building’s parking lot, where people waited for more than two hours in chilly weather for regular primary voting to end and the caucus to begin.
“People were polite at first,” Ms. Gibbs said of the various caucuses. “But after two and a half hours of waiting, they were not.” She said that in one precinct, the crowd gave an election clerk such a hard time that a police officer had to come over to calm everyone down.
Doug Chapin, the director of Electionline.org, a Pew Center Web site that tracks election issues, said that poll worker training would become crucial as November approaches, given that turnout will likely be far higher than in previous years. “Any time you change voting technology — from electronic to paper or the other way — the move brings a whole host of new concerns, and thus workers need to be trained to handle them,” Mr. Chapin said.
One of the surprises Tuesday in Ohio was the number of registered Republicans who crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary, which election officials said was particularly obvious in usually heavy Republican precincts. But Edward B. Foley, director of the election law project at Ohio State University, said those crossover voters might not have been handled in accordance with state law.
Ms. Brunner, the secretary of state, said there were no confirmed reports of voters leaving the polls in Cuyahoga County because of a lack of paper ballots, though a judge ordered several polls to stay open late.
Dayton Mayor Pledges 'Super' Vote to Barack Obama:
Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Rhine McLin, a Democratic "super delegate" who attracted national attention because of the heavy courting she and other party leaders have been getting from the presidential contenders, said Wednesday that she will cast her vote at this summer's national convention for Sen. Barack Obama.
"It appears that Dayton and Montgomery County went with Obama," McLin said on CNN. "So by Dayton and Montgomery County going with Obama, that's who I'm going to pledge my (vote) to. McLin is a super delegate because she is also vice chairwoman of the state Democratic Party in Ohio. She did not return calls Wednesday for comment.
John McCain: The Ultimate Survivor:
John McCain secured the Republican presidential nomination as the ultimate survivor -- winning it eight years after his first failed attempt and decades after cheating death in the Vietnam War. The 71-year-old McCain would be the oldest American ever elected to a first presidential term if he is able to defeat the Democrats' choice in the November election.
Polls initially put him in a strong position to compete against either Democrat Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. That would seem at least in part a credit to a strategy aimed at attracting independent and moderate voters. McCain has often been at odds with President George W. Bush, particularly on his insistence that Americans not engage in torture against those arrested in the U.S.-led war against Islamic extremism.
His positions on the war and in favor of a plan to give millions of illegal immigrants a pathway to U.S. citizenship nearly killed off his campaign last summer. His comeback was aided by a friendly relationship with the news media fostered by lengthy sessions aboard his "Straight Talk Express" bus. Reporters found out tidbits like McCain is deeply superstitious and carries a lucky penny in his pocket. |
Jack Nicholson Uses Movie Clips to Boost Clinton:
Movie star Jack Nicholson has assembled some of his more famous film roles in an Internet video endorsing U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that has been viewed more than 1 million times. The video uses clips of the three-time Oscar winner in movies like "Chinatown" and "The Shining" to praise Clinton's health-care plan and ability to lead the country at a time of war.
"There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning," Nicholson says in a clip from the 1992 military drama "A Few Good Men." The video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times since it was released, according to YouTube statistics.
Bush Backs McCain And Will Stump For Him If Asked To:
President Bush endorsed Sen. John McCain on Wednesday as winner of the Republican presidential nomination and said he will campaign for the Republican ticket as much as McCain wants. Reflecting his low standing in polls - only about 30 percent of those surveyed approve of his job performance - Bush and his aides made liberal use of an old political joke: offering Bush's support, or, if McCain preferred, his opposition. "Either way, I want him to win," the president said.
"I appreciate his endorsement," McCain told reporters, indicating he does not intend to distance himself -- at least not too much. "I intend to have as much possible campaigning events together as is in keeping with the president's heavy schedule."
After the two had lunch in the president's private dining room, Bush focused on McCain's return from the near-death of his campaign last year and said the senator had demonstrated the sort of "strength of character and perseverance" demanded of a president.
Hoping to spoil the GOP party, Democrats wasted no time in tagging McCain's candidacy as a continuation of the Bush presidency.
"John McCain just doesn't get it," said Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman. "All he offers is four more years of the failed Bush economy, an endless war in Iraq and shameless hypocrisy on ethics reform. The fact is, the American people want change, not another out-of-touch Bush Republican, and Democrats welcome the opportunity to draw this contrast for voters."
McCain will give a series of policy speeches this summer on the economy, the environment and health care. The series will be wrapped up with a speech on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, Hazelbaker said.
Clinton Success Alters Delegate Race’s Dynamic:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victories in the primaries on Tuesday barely dented Senator Barack Obama’s lead in delegates, but they seemed to slow the Democratic Party establishment’s move in his direction while giving her campaign time to try to turn the race in her favor.
Both campaigns maneuvered for advantage on Wednesday after Mrs. Clinton’s strong showing, and they prepared for the next big showdown, in Pennsylvania, where the political demographics and issues are similar to those in Ohio. For Mr. Obama, it is a matter of delegate math as he argues that superdelegates should support whoever has won the most elected delegates after the primary season ends in June. For Mrs. Clinton, it is trying to build momentum — and making a case that she is more electable — to persuade superdelegates to support her.
But for now at least, aides to both campaigns said, Mrs. Clinton appeared to have frozen the race in place, and slowed the flow of superdelegates into Mr. Obama’s camp. Mr. Obama’s aides had hoped that a poor showing by her on Tuesday would result in a quick move of superdelegates to him.
“Everybody is sort of taking a deep breath right now,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and an Obama supporter.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who left the Democratic presidential race after losing in Iowa, said he was not worried about the consequences of the primary fight.
“I think people are getting a little too excited about it,” Mr. Biden said. |
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