OBAMA DAILY NEWS Sunday March-02-2008

Starting early Sunday 2 AM since some are already posting news! And so I can sleep in Sunday AM

WELCOME TO THE OBAMA DAILY NEWS THREAD

Sunday March-02-2008


Senator Barack Obama and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy greet an overflow
crowd before speaking at a rally at Rhode Island College in Providence, R.I.
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

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Hillary Clinton and her campaign is pushing for precinct captains for Texas' 8,000 Democratic polling places. They need to train folks to lead the caucus sessions that will determine more than 60 delegates after the primary voting is over.

In training materials being handed out by the Clinton campaign, it is clear that they want to control those caucus sessions.
The materials say in part,

"DO NOT allow the supporter of another candidate to serve in leadership roles."

It goes on to say, "If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serves as the Secretary,
in the interest of fairness.

"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions."

Here is the link to the original article

At a rally in Providence, R.I., Saturday afternoon, the Illinois senator continued to question Clinton's judgment on the war, as he pressed his change message. "Real change isn't voting for George Bush's war in Iraq and telling the American people you were actually voting for more diplomacy," Obama said. "The title of the bill was 'A resolution to authorize the use of the United States armed forces against Iraq.' That sounds like you were voting for authorizing the use of armed forces against Iraq."

Only a few weeks ago, Clinton held big leads in both Texas and Ohio. Obama's momentum after a string of victories sharply reduced those margins, but public opinion polls showed neither candidate with a decisive advantage in either state.

Obama victories in Texas and Ohio would put pressure on Clinton to end her candidacy and avoid a prolonged and potentially divisive intraparty battle that could weaken the Democrats in the general election. Clinton victories would give her campaign a major boost and keep the race going at least until Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, even though she will continue to trail Obama in the delegate tallies. A split decision also could produce calls for Clinton to end her campaign, given Obama's lead in delegates.

...Top strategists for the two candidates sought to set expectations in advance of Tuesday's voting. "We've still got four days here, but I think we're heading to two close outcomes," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a telephone interview. "That is not going to be a good enough outcome for them."

more at the link

Source: NYT

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Taking advantage of his financial edge, Senator Barack Obama is buying large amounts of advertising and building extensive get-out-the-vote operations in an effort to end Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy with twin defeats Tuesday in Ohio and Texas.

The intensity of Mr. Obama’s drive is especially apparent on television, where he has outspent Mrs. Clinton by nearly two to one in the two states. That is helping him eat deeply into double-digit leads she held in polls just weeks ago.

But after a month in which she raised $32 million — a remarkable amount, but still less than the $50 million or more brought in by Mr. Obama — Mrs. Clinton is fighting back.

Their expenditures, combined with a travel schedule that sent the two Democratic presidential candidates and their surrogates from border to border in Texas and Ohio, reflect the expectation that the voting this week may be climactic. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have suggested that she will bow out of the race if she falters in either state, after 11 straight losses.

Read more at the link

BEFORE they were sidetracked into a new war against The New York Times, the Rush Limbaugh posse had it right about John McCain. He is a double agent. Some Democrats do admire and like him. So does Jon Stewart, and so do many liberal editorial boards and card-carrying hacks in the mainstream American press. So, in fact, do many at The Times, including myself. As long as I don’t look too hard at the fine print.

You’ve got to love a guy who said a few years ago that he regretted likening Mr. Limbaugh to “a circus clown” because of all the complaints from circus clowns insulted by the comparison. “I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty,” Senator McCain told a rather startled Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

What’s more, Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay aren’t entirely wrong when they bluster that a vote for Mr. McCain amounts to a vote for Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Barack Obama). The Arizona senator’s otherwise conservative record is closer to the Democrats on immigration, campaign-finance reform, stem-cell research, global warming, oil drilling in Alaska, waterboarding, Gitmo and,
until a recent flip-flop, the Bush tax cuts. In The New Republic, Jonathan Chait concluded that Mr. McCain’s Senate votes made him “the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington” during the first Bush term.

The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain’s sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton’s message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama’s cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page.

more at the link

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Senator Barack Obama arrived about an hour late at Rhode Island College in Providence, first addressing an overflow crowd of several thousand who had waited for hours in the cold rain and mud but were turned away from the packed college gymnasium. He then spoke for nearly an hour to about 5,000 more people in the gym as he tried to woo a state where the Clinton campaign has been counting on a victory.

He was introduced by Representative Patrick Kennedy, one of only a few Democratic leaders in Rhode Island to endorse Mr. Obama instead of Mrs. Clinton. Despite waiting for hours – people started lining up outside the gym around 7:30 a.m., college officials said, and Mr. Obama spoke at 3 p.m. — the crowd was heady with anticipation. During his speech, in a room so hot and crowded that emergency officials hovered with stretchers — the crowd cheered raucously after almost every sentence.

Mr. Obama first urged his audience to bring others to the polls for Tuesday’s primary, acknowledging that the race in Rhode Island is tight. Virtually every poll here in recent weeks has given Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton a lead, though some have suggested it is narrow enough for Mr. Obama to catch up. He is hoping for high turnout, particularly by drawing thousands of new, young, unaffiliated voters who tend to favor him over Mrs. Clinton.

“Real change means saying what you mean and meaning what you say,” he said. “A real change, for example, is not calling NAFTA a victory and saying how good it was for the American people until you decide to run for president like Senator Clinton did. That’s not real change. I believe in trade, and I won’t stand here and here and tell you I won’t stop every job from disappearing because of globalization. But I will tell you, I will be thinking about workers and not just Wall Street when I think about trade legislation.”

He added, “Real change isn’t voting for George Bush’s war in Iraq and then telling the American people it was actually voting for more diplomacy.”

full article here

Channeling her inner Cheney, Hillary Clinton dropped a fear bomb, as Michelle Obama might call it, implying in a new ad that if her opponent is elected, your angelic, innocent, sleeping children could die in a terrorist attack.

Only she has the wise head to go nuclear, should that Strangelovian phone call from a power-mad Putin come into the White House at 3 a.m. Her ad shows how composed she would be at the dread moment when she picks up the phone. Her nuke look is feminine, in a tailored camel-colored jacket and gold necklace, yet serious, in Tina Fey black reading glasses.

It’s hard to discern the message of the ad. The scariest thing is not the persistently ringing phone but an Andrea Yates-looking mother who’s creeping up on the sleeping babes in the dark. The point can’t be that Hillary is superior to Obama in international crisis management, because she’s done no more of it than he has. She’s only done domestic crisis management, cleaning up after Frisky Bill.

...It’s rather Mommie Dearest for the first serious female contender to try to give the kiddies nightmares. How maternal is that? But since her nightmare is losing, she doesn’t mind scaring the pj’s off of little Jimmy and Johnny.

more at the link

by: Glenn Smith Sat Mar 01, 2008 at the Burnt Orange Report

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Clinton campaign training materials regarding Tuesday night's caucuses ominously advise supporters to take control of caucus sign-in sheets and vote tallies especially "if our supporters are outnumbered."

goes on to say, "If our supporters are outnumbered, ask the Temporary Chair if one of our supporters can serves as the Secretary, in the interest of fairness.
"The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions."
Now there can be only one purpose in trying to control the tally of votes under circumstances in which a campaign knows it's outnumbered, that it will lose an honest counting of the votes: to alter the true vote. To cheat. To steal. To suppress the votes of Texas caucus attendees and subvert the caucus process.

The phrase, "if our supporters are outnumbered," means, in simpler language, "If we lose the vote, take control of the vote tally and change the numbers."

Place this alongside the Clinton campaign threats to challenge the Texas caucuses and you get a full picture of what Clinton is up to: disrupt the caucuses at all costs. Steal votes, delay the reporting of honest vote totals, throw the process into chaos, do whatever it takes.

more here at the Burnt Orange Report

The Way We Live Now

The Emerging Minority By JAMES TRAUB Published: March 2, 2008



Barack Obama, who does not have too many problems nowadays, does have a Hispanic problem. In Nevada, the first state with a large Latino population to hold a primary, Hillary Rodham Clinton won 64 percent of the Hispanic vote and Obama only 26 percent. By the time of the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5, Obama had apparently picked up many of John Edwards’s Hispanic votes, but Clinton still held her own, 63 percent to Obama’s 35 percent. With her back now against the wall, Clinton is counting on Hispanics to carry her to victory in Texas this Tuesday and thus preserve her electoral viability

It comes as no surprise that black voters prefer Obama or that women prefer Clinton. But why have Hispanic voters chosen Clinton by about the same margin that women have? The two candidates have similar positions on immigration, poverty, English-language teaching and the like. Experts in Hispanic politics tend to ascribe her lead to the years she spent cultivating the Hispanic community, to her heavy advertising on Spanish-language media, to a deep reservoir of fondness for her husband and to Obama’s relative neglect of this constituency, at least until recently. At the same time, shouldn’t the politics of identity dictate that Hispanic voters would broadly prefer a black man to a white woman?

...
Barack Obama has made a clear political choice during the presidential campaign. Guided by his palpable yen for consensus as well as his own polyglot sense of identity, Obama has chosen to speak a transracial, indeed a nonracial, language — and endured a good deal of criticism from old-line black leaders for doing so. Nor has he made any attempt to woo Hispanics as part of a “black-brown” coalition. He has, by and large, addressed minority voters not as minorities but as Americans. And it may be no coincidence that Obama has not been hindered in the past by ethnic rivalry: in his 2004 Senate primary, Obama took 70 percent of the Hispanic vote — even though one of his opponents was Hispanic. And his standing among such voters this time around has steadily improved, perhaps as they have come to know more about him.

Paradoxically, it has been the Clinton camp that with an increasing feel of desperation has tried to make Obama into a black candidate, whether by comparing his political success with Jackson’s, as President Clinton has done, or by insinuating that Hispanics will balk at his candidacy. (“I want to say this very carefully,” Bendixen cautioned.) It’s the white candidate, that is, who has stirred the pot of identity politics. And perhaps it will take a black candidate to lay some of the shibboleths of identity politics to rest.

more at the link

...

McCain launches new campaign "Fear We Can Believe in"

"Fear We Can Believe in!"(Straight Talk Express : Ucs News) -- Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and the Democratic candidate Barack Obama are trading shots almost daily in what is sure to be a preview of the general election. In an effort to derail Obama's campaign rhetoric the McCain campaign announced a new slogan "Fear We Can Believe in"
According to McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis the "Fear We Can Believe in" slogan captures the strength of the Senators general election strategy. "The world is a scary nasty place, filled with scary nasty people. In this kind of world you need a tough grizzled person who is going to tell it to you straight. You don't want some hopeful young charismatic leader who is going to tell you its all going to be all right. Because it isn't. It isn't going to be all right and John McCain knows it."

During one of his famous all day rolling press conferences McCain stated. "This is the Straight Talk Express not the change and hope mobile." Later Sen. John McCain addressed an event at Rice University in Houston, Texas. "People lives are ruled by fear and my aim to rule the fear that rules peoples lives."

Republican strategists agree with the direction of McCain's campaign. According to McCain staffers "Hope can be punctured and deflated, the want for change can be dragged down by cynicism, but fear is built to last."

George Carlin Reads More Blogs Than You Do

Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | March 1, 2008

...Yes, I think the Obama story is an inspirational story, it's a wonderfully unique American story and it's exciting and fun to watch but even if he's elected and makes a lot of changes I still retain the right not to belong. I just like it out here.

And I understand that the flame of the idealist flickers underneath, and that's fine - I can't deny that - but I kind of like it the other way because it kind of gives me the freedom to point at everything.

Wow. Okay, so let me ask you this: You brought up the Obama thing, and you seemed to have done so sincerely and not with irony or being jaded. How do you view that as a phenomenon, even as one you don't want to belong to?

Well, it's an exciting story to watch. What's exciting is that it doesn't happen in this country very often. There were moments in the history of the American people - and by the way, one of the reasons I got off the train of the American experience is I think - I'll get back to Obama in a minute -
I think that human beings were given great gifts and had great potential and they squandered it all on goods, possession, power, territory and on a superstitious God that watches everything and controls. These things, I think, crippled the human animal to the extend that we never lived up to their potential. The same thing happened in this country. We were given great potential. We were given this great system of self-government, the best one that had been devised so far. And we've given it all up for gizmos, and goods, and toys and possessions, and - in this country - God, overlooking everything and spoiling everything.

So... there have been moments in this country when people have, leaders have emerged who were inspirational, and who could carry the people with them because — in order to effect change in their lives and experience as a group, they need to be led, and they need to believe in something and they need to believe in themselves, and they need to believe that they can change things. And they way that happens is through an inspirational leader. FDR was that, Franklin Roosevelt - he gave people something to believe in, and mainly it was themselves, that they could weather the storm, and he got them through the Depression and a fuckin' World War. So, these things happen and they're interesting to notice - I don't know how much overall meaning it has, I do respect what's going on as a true American phenomenon, this rising up of someone who - maybe, I don't know - has the quality to inspire people.

more at the link

Mass. governor speaks at event

...But Patrick said it was Obama’s promise to change Washington that set him apart from other candidates. “Nobody’s good ideas are going anywhere if we don’t change our politics,” he said. “That’s where Obama is unique.”

Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts, drew parallels between his rise to political power and that of the fellow Chicago native Obama. The pair’s friendship made headlines recently after Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Obama of borrowing from Patrick’s speeches without proper attribution.

Patrick ended his speech with a call for a grass-roots turn-out-the-vote effort, drawing a standing ovation.
“A lot of people are nervous about putting their hope on the line,” he said. “They’re nervous that he might not win. I am convinced that if we vote our aspirations, Barack Obama will win, and so will we.”

...Oakmont, Pa., resident Vince Flotta, 33, took a week off his job as a cook in an nursing home to come to Ohio and campaign for Obama. He spent Saturday campaigning door to door in Youngstown neighborhoods.

“He’s from a lower-middle class family like me,” Flotta said. “We need someone who understands the problems of the common man.”

full article at the link

Times Online March 2, 2008. As he jets across two key states whipping up the support that could finish off Hillary Clinton this week, the Democratic frontrunner is already mapping out a government of all the talents. Our writer joins him aboard Obama One

AS Barack Obama enters the final stages of the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is preparing to detach the core voters of John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, with the same ruthless determination with which he has peeled off Hillary Clinton’s supporters

...Obama believes he will be able to neutralise McCain by drawing on the expertise of independent Republicans such as Hagel and Lugar, who is regarded by Obama as a potential secretary of state.

Larry Korb, a defence official under President Ronald Reagan who is backing Obama, said: “By putting a Republican in the Pentagon and the State Department you send a signal to Congress and the American people that issues of national security are above politics.”

Korb recalled that President John F Kennedy appointed Robert McNamara, a Republican, as defence secretary in 1961. “Hagel is not only a Republican but a military veteran who would reassure the troops that there was somebody in the Pentagon who understood their hopes, concerns and fears,” he said...

more at the link

On September 6, 2006, the Senate voted on S.Amdt. 4882 to H.R. 5631. What was the purpose of this bill?

To protect civilian lives from unexploded cluster munitions.

This amendment would have banned the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas and refugee camps. Senator Obama voted to ban the use of cluster bombs. Senator Clinton voted to preserve the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas and refugee camps. One candidate did the right thing, the other did not. We have seen Senator Clinton vote the wrong way on bills before - Iraq, Kyl-Lieberman, the Bankruptcy Bill, etc. Each time she has responded with an excuse - she's given us her reasoning for her votes. In my opinion her excuses have been poor, her reasoning faulty. But what excuse could Senator Clinton possibly give us for voting to preserve the use of cluster bombs?

None.

Elise's diary :: ::

How do cluster bombs work? Handicap International has a step by step process you can see, but basically, A cluster bomb gets dropped from a plane. Each bomb carries hundreds of smaller bomblets that are released after a time - "at an altitude between 100m and 1000m." These smaller bomblets cover a wide area and will explode when they hit a target. Within each smaller bomblet are fragments, shrapnel, etc. These cause great damage and can travel quite a distance as a result of the initial explosion. According to "Fatal Footprint: The Global Human Impact of Cluster Munitions", Civilians constitute 98% of all recorded cluster submunitions casualties. Of that number, 1/3 of the victims are children.

Hillary Clinton voted to allow cluster bombs in civilian areas and refugee camps. That's not just a lack of judgment. That's a lack of fundamental humanitarian values.

more at the link

I sure got 2008 wrong in 2005. For starters, I decided I'd support Hillary Clinton because she seemed like a sure way to defeat any Republican. And I thought that the election would be about nostalgia for the "good old Clinton years." I thought all of this as George Bush's second term dragged on, just before Katrina served us another reminder of how seriously wrong things could get. And that's why I helped create a web site dedicated to electing Bill Clinton as "first lady." The site was meant to be a bit funny, and also a bit serious. But, in retrospect it was just wrong.

Thinking about how much more serious this election is than I imagined, and how much better a set of choices we've being given than I predicted, the thought of a Bill-for-First-Lady.com web site seems, to be perfectly frank, rather stupid. So here's how I got it so wrong...

more at the link

By Wilson Ring
Associated Press Writer / March 2, 2008

MONTPELIER, Vt.—A U.S. Representative from Illinois was in Vermont Saturday stumping for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama and motivating campaign volunteers for the push to Tuesday's primary election.

more stories like thisDemocratic U.S. Rep. Janice Schakowsky, from the Chicago suburb of Evanston, worked with Obama in the Illinois General Assembly before they both went on to serve in Washington.

"Barack Obama, even then I was able to see the kind of magic that he does bringing people together," said Schakowsky, who was first elected to Congress in 1998. "He took on, not the easy issues, in the General Assembly where he was serving as a Democrat in a Republican majority Senate: The tough issues like the death penalty racial profiling, like increasing, more money, for health care for children in Illinois."

...Vermont is one of four states holding a primary election on Tuesday. It's the first time in recent memory that the nomination has still be in question by the time of Vermont's Town Meeting Day vote.

more at the link

By Barack Obama:

MOST AMERICANS have simple dreams. A job that can support a family. Health care we can count on and afford. A retirement that is dignified and secure. Education and opportunity for our kids.

But today, the price of the American dream is going up.

All across the country, Americans are working harder for less. We’ve never paid more for health care or for college. It’s harder to save, and it’s harder to retire. There are things we need to do right now to give our economy a boost, but a short-term stimulus is not enough. We have to put the American dream on a firmer foundation.

That’s going to take a change in the way Washington works. It’s time to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and to put a tax cut in the pocket of middle class Americans. That’s why I’ve proposed a “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to $500 for American workers, and $1,000 for working families, as well as an additional tax credit for struggling homeowners. This will cut taxes for 150 million Americans, give our economy a boost, and put fairness back into our tax code.

We also need to protect a secure retirement by easing the burden on America’s seniors. That’s why I’ll eliminate income taxes for any senior making less than $50,000. And I’ll change our bankruptcy laws to protect workers’ pensions instead of protecting banks. Because I believe that if you work hard and pay into the system, you’ve earned the right to a secure retirement.

It’s also time to stop talking about the outrage of 47 million Americans without health care, and to start doing something about it. I expanded health care in Illinois by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. We took on the insurance industry, and provided health care to hundreds of thousands of families. And as president, I’ll cut a typical family’s premiums by up to $2,500, and make health care affordable and accessible for all Americans.

We also have to be clear that the American dream must never come at the expense of the American family. But even as politicians in Washington talk about family values, we haven’t had policies that value families. As the son of a single mother, I don’t accept an America that forces women to choose between their kids and their careers. That’s why I’ll expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover millions of additional Americans. We need to make sure you can take leave to care for elderly parents, and to join school activities with your kids.

We also need to expand paid leave. Today, 78 percent of workers covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act don’t take leave because it isn’t paid. And this has a far greater impact on families with less income and less savings. To make sure our system is fair, I will press states to adopt paid-leave systems, and set aside $1.5 billion to fund the start-up costs and help states offset the costs to employers. And I’ll require employers to provide all of their workers with seven paid sick days a year, because you shouldn’t be punished for being sick.

Finally, we have a responsibility to make sure that our young people can reach a little further and rise a little higher than we did. But too many Americans are weighted down by student loans. I know because Michelle and I just finished paying off our loans a few years ago. It’s time to put a college education within reach of every American. That’s why I’ll create a new and fully refundable annual tax credit worth $4,000 for tuition and fees. To receive this credit, we’ll require 100 hours of public service. Because it’s time to call upon our young people to serve our country; in return, we’ll invest in their future.

We’ve recently been reminded that when some folks hurt in our economy, all of us hurt. When things are going bad on Main Street, that catches up with Wall Street. And that’s how it should be. Because what binds us together, what makes us one American family, is that we have to stand up and fight for each other’s dreams. It’s time to reaffirm that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — through our politics, our policies and in our daily lives. It’s time to reclaim the American dream.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is staking her political future on a win in Texas -- but her top aides are desperately seeking a rationale to keep fighting even if she loses the Lone Star State.

As recently as mid-February, Clinton enjoyed double-digit leads in Texas and Ohio, with the campaign's brain trust predicting big wins in both states to break an 11-contest losing streak and eliminate Barack Obama's 112-delegate advantage.

That confidence has all but vanished, along with Clinton's big leads. In Ohio, she's still up by a few points; Obama now enjoys an edge of as many as 4 points in Texas, although there are signs Clinton's hard-edged TV ad portraying Obama as soft on defense may have given her a small bump.

For weeks, Clinton staffers have privately conceded that losing Texas could prove fatal. One aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently told Newsday that such a loss would send the campaign into a "death spiral" -- prompting a donor revolt and defections by exhausted staffers, culminating with superdelegates asking her to quit for the good of the party.

more at the link

In the Clintons' pursuit of power, there is no such thing as a strange bedfellow. One recently exposed inamorata was Norman Hsu, the mysterious businessman from Hong Kong who brought in $850,000 to Hillary Clinton's campaign before being unmasked as a fugitive. Her campaign dismissed Hsu as someone who'd slipped through the cracks of an otherwise unimpeachable system for vetting donors, and perhaps he was. The same cannot be said for the notorious financier Alan Quasha, whose involvement with Clinton is at least as substantial--and still under wraps.

Political junkies will recall Quasha as the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush's failing oil company in 1986, folding Bush into his company, Harken Energy, thus setting him on the path to a lucrative and high-profile position as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and the presidency. The persistently unprofitable Harken--many of whose board members, connected to powerful foreign interests and the intelligence community, nevertheless profited enormously--faced intense scrutiny in the early 1990s and again during Bush's first term.

Now Quasha is back--on the other side of the aisle. Operating below the radar, he entered Hillary Clinton's circle even before she declared her candidacy by quietly arranging for the hire of Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe at one of his companies. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's chairmanship of the Democratic Party and the time he officially joined Clinton's campaign, Quasha's firm set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him.

Just a few years earlier, McAuliffe had publicly criticized Bush for his financial dealings with Harken, disparaging the company's Enron-like accounting. Yet in 2005 McAuliffe accepted this cushy perch with Quasha's newly acquired investment firm, Carret Asset Management, and even brought along former Clinton White House business liaison Peter O'Keefe, who had been his senior aide at the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe remained with the company until he became national chair of Hillary's presidential bid, and O'Keefe never left. McAuliffe's connection to Quasha has, until now, never been noted.... more at the link

March 2, 2008

Share Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is poised to release her tax returns "on or around April 15th," Clinton's communications director Howard Wolfson said in an exclusive "This Week" debate Sunday morning with David Axelrod, senior campaign adviser to her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

When pressed by Axelrod as to why "Clinton continues to refuse to release her tax returns, as all the other candidates have," Wolfson asserted that "the tax returns are going to be released around tax time."

The two top strategists went on to spar over the release of Clinton's White House records. Axelrod charged that Clinton "refuses to release the documents from the Clinton Library related to her time in the White House, which is the fulcrum of her argument on experience."

Wolfson, however, asserted the issue was moot. "Clinton's schedule as first lady were given over to the president's representatives for review. That review has been completed. We've given the records back over to the archives. They are now back in the archives' hands. Our say in the process is over, and I assume that they will be releasing them very expeditiously," he said.

full article here

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Leading Democrats said an extended battle for their party's presidential nomination might hurt their chances of beating Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, in November's general election.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who hasn't endorsed a candidate, and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, who is backing Barack Obama, suggested Senator Hillary Clinton consider whether to continue her presidential campaign should she falter in the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

``Whoever has the most delegates after Tuesday, a clear lead, should be, in my judgment, the nominee,'' Richardson, who dropped out of the presidential race, said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program today. ``I think we've got to be ready for a very strong John McCain. Republicans are united right now. They don't have a divisive primary.''

Durbin, who like Obama represents Illinois in the U.S. Senate, said Clinton, a New York senator, should reevaluate her chances if she doesn't do well March 4.

...``I'm just worried that the tone of this campaign has gotten excessively negative, and it may hurt us in November,'' Richardson said. ``John McCain is not somebody that can be underestimated, because he is an independent who is going to cut into traditional Democratic constituencies.''

more at the link

The Texas Democratic Party charged that Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign "threatened" to challenge aspects of the state's two-step nominating process, just days before Tuesday balloting, which now appears unlikely to produce the blowout victory the New York senator needs to stay in the race.

Among other things, party activists said the Clinton campaign was trying to delay the release of the results from that evening's caucuses, where Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is thought to have an advantage. A delay in reporting those results would allow any Clinton victory in the popular-vote count earlier in the day to briefly dominate headlines and keep Sen. Clinton's presidential aspirations alive.

Sen. Clinton's spokesman, Phil Singer, insisted without elaborating that the campaign was "simply asking for the procedures to be put in writing." He said the campaign is taking "no legal action and there is no threat of legal action." ...But Chad Dunn, the state party's lawyer, and other party workers went out of their way to characterize the campaign's actions as "threats of litigation."

Sen. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, charged that Sen. Clinton's advisers "do not want the caucus results reported on Tuesday night. There is timely reporting and the Clinton campaign has deep anxiety about that."

more at the link

Could Bobby Bright be an Obama baby in November?

Bright, the mayor of Montgomery, Ala., announced last week that he will run for the state's open 2nd District House seat. While Bright's decision didn't draw much attention nationally, his candidacy could well serve as a litmus test for just how long Sen. Barack Obama's coattails might be if the Illinois Democrat winds up as the party's nominee.

Bright's decision to run as a Democrat -- he was courted by both parties -- seems to be counter to conventional wisdom because of the district's long Republican roots. A polling memo released by his campaign in conjunction with his announcement provides some insight into why Bright made the decision.

..."More than one-quarter (28%) of registrants in the 2nd District are African American," the memo said. "Winning 90 percent of the African-American vote on election day could add 3-5 points to Bright's current vote against Smith and Love."

Asked about what Obama's leading the ticket could mean to his candidacy, Bright said it would have "quite a bit" of influence in the district -- driving up black turnout to record or near-record levels. Like any good politician, Bright quickly pivoted to argue that, regardless of who leads the Democratic ticket, "the people of District 2 need quality representation" that he said he can offer.

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March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Florida Governor Charlie Crist said he'd support a repeat of the Democratic presidential primary so the state's delegates can be counted at the party's national convention.

...Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said he's open to the possibility. Primary elections are paid for by a state's taxpayers, so the offer from Crist, a Republican, is ``very helpful'' because money is an issue, Dean said.

``We're very willing to listen to the people of Florida,'' Dean said on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program today

...Clinton said Jan. 25 that delegates from Florida and Michigan should be seated at the Democratic National Convention in August.

...Dean said the dispute over seating delegates is the fault party leaders, not Florida voters.

``If they would like to fix that problem so that we can seat Florida without any problems, of course we would like to seat Florida,'' he said.

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A Harvard law professor who taught presidential candidate Barack Obama - and his wife, Michelle - spoke for nearly two hours yesterday about the man who first impressed him as a law student.

"I'm so excited about this candidacy that I just can't tell you. I'm just overfull with joy," Professor Charles Ogletree said to 35 mostly African-American professionals gathered at the faculty club in the Hilton Hotel Toledo on the University of Toledo Health Science Campus, the former Medical College of Ohio... Mr. Ogletree is scheduled to speak at three Toledo churches today before ending his day in Columbus.

Mr. Ogletree recalled Mr. Obama's credentials in law school, not least as the first African-American to be president of the Harvard Law Review.

Still, Mr. Ogletree said that had anyone asked him years ago, he would have expected Mrs. Obama to be the one in public life, having grown up the daughter of a union organizer in Chicago. "If you take a step back and take a look at his background, you wouldn't expect him to be where he is today," he said.

Yet, he said Mr. Obama has remembered his background by helping others. Mr. Ogletree cited Mr. Obama's rejection of an all-but-certain clerkship with a federal judge to become a community organizer in Chicago.

"That was unthinkable for anyone, certainly an African-American to avoid the trappings of success," he said.

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