TheState.com: Choosing a President

Clyburn: Obama now ahead on superdelegates

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:52 EDT

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn said sources in the "Obama camp" have told him that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama from Illinois has taken over the lead among unpledged Democratic delegates, the so-called "superdelegates."

During a conference call with reporters Clyburn said Obama has converted a number of superdelegates previously pledged to U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton from New York, and that Obama took the lead in superdelegates this morning.

Clyburn could not remember where the information had come from.

Many news agencies' latest survey of the roughly 700 superdelegates showed Clinton holding the lead by just a few delegates. The Associated Press had the superdelegate count Friday morning as Clinton with 271.5 superdelegates and Obama 266 superdelegates.

"We saw some movement yesterday," Clyburn said, noting at least three delegates who switched this week. "There were some switches yesterday."

Determined Clinton presses on

Thu, 08 May 2008 22:58 EDT

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Her voice raspy, her tone determined, Hillary Rodham Clinton urged her supporters Thursday to ignore the political pundits who have declared that she’s done for.

The former first lady raced into a campaign day that would take her from West Virginia to the West Coast, declaring she would move forward with her presidential effort and insisting anew that she, not rival Barack Obama, would be the stronger Democratic candidate to face Republican John McCain in November.

At a rally under the dome of the West Virginia Capitol, Clinton dismissed calls for her to drop out as “deja vu all over again.” She said she had faced similar pressure before going on to win in New Hampshire, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

“A lot of you have stuck with me; you’ve been through all the ups and downs in this campaign, the biggest victories and toughest moments,” Clinton told her supporters. “I think it is because you understand that you’ve got to have a president who gets up every day and fights for you, who never gives up on you.”

One still-loyal supporter was Evelyn Smith, 78, among hundreds who jammed into the Capitol and waited nearly two hours to hear Clinton speak.

Should Clinton end her bid for nomination?

Wed, 07 May 2008 22:26 EDT

Barack Obama’s South Carolina supporters are feeling good about his victory in North Carolina Tuesday night.

Those supporters are bracing themselves for a continued battle against U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., even as they hope she does not make good on her pledge to stay in the race.

“The handwriting’s on the wall,” said Anton Gunn, an anti-poverty activist who worked for the Obama campaign in South Carolina. “She can’t overtake Barack.”

Many of those who helped Obama score a big win in South Carolina in January traveled to the Tar Heel state in recent weeks to help Obama. Most political observers agree his win there and the close loss to Clinton in Indiana re-asserted his front-runner status for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“It was a good night,” Gunn said, adding that Clinton’s future intentions could be gleaned from how she conducts herself.

Analysis: Clinton era may be ending

Wed, 07 May 2008 22:19 EDT

After 16 years, the Clinton era may be coming to an end, presenting Democrats with a historic but potentially wrenching transition and a challenge to Sen. Barack Obama as he seeks to reconcile a deeply divided party.

Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been at the heart of the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton steered it back to the White House in 1992, with a campaign that combined a moderate appeal with hard-edged political tactics. Hillary Clinton seemed poised last year to lead Democrats into the general election campaign if not beyond.

And while the relationship between the party establishment and the Clintons has always been uneasy, an entire generation of Democrats has known no other dominant figures.

Clinton said Wednesday she would remain in the race despite her double-digit loss in North Carolina and winning only narrowly in Indiana. Also Wednesday, aides disclosed Clinton had lent her campaign $6.4 million since mid-April, on top of a separate $5 million loan in February.

But across the party, Democrats — including some of her own supporters — were confronting an increasing likelihood that the Clintons would be swept aside as the party prepares for a new era with a leader, in Obama, who comes from a different generation and promises a very different style of politics.

Most superdelegates still playing waiting game

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:49 EDT

WASHINGTON — The fight for nearly 270 uncommitted Democratic Party superdelegates shifted into higher gear Wednesday, but few were ready to pledge allegiance to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Still, the pressure was on for the party leaders, activists and lawmakers who could decide the Democratic nomination to make up their minds and end the long and increasingly taxing race.

Party leaders talked privately to unpledged members of Congress, urging them to announce decisions before the final primaries on June 3.

“If this goes beyond that,” said Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a party vice chairman, “it could lead to the perception that the superdelegates are wagging this dog.”

Obama got new support Wednesday from three superdelegates: N.C. party chairman Jerry Meek, state Democratic National Committee member Jeanette Council and California DNC member Inola Henry.

Obama ascendant after trading primary wins with Clinton

Wed, 07 May 2008 07:24 EDT

On the rebound, Barack Obama left Hillary Rodham Clinton with fast-dwindling chances to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination after beating her in North Carolina and falling just short in an Indiana cliffhanger.

Obama was on track to climb within 200 delegates of attaining the prize, his campaign finally steadying after missteps fiercely exploited by the never-say-die Clinton.

His campaign dropped broad hints it was time for the 270 remaining unaligned party figures known as superdelegates to get off the fence and settle the nomination.

It was in that arena - even more than in the scattered primaries left - that the Democratic hyperdrama was bound to play out.

"You know, there are those who were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election," Obama told a roaring crowd in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday night, referring to Clinton's hope that an upset there would recast the race in her favor.

McClatchy Newspaper Endorsements

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:54 EDT

McClatchy Newspapers is comprised of 31 daily newspapers nationwide. Several of them have endorsed presidential candidates, some have not and some are waiting until their primary rolls around.

Here are the endorsements available:

Anchorage Daily News: no endorsements yet

1988 race offers lesson

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:23 EDT

WASHINGTON — Sometimes, as Sen. Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin.

But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.

The memory of that campaign — reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s Vietnam War record in the 2004 election — haunts Democrats of a certain generation.

The 1988 campaign was, in many ways, the crucible that helped create Bill Clinton’s centrist philosophy and his fierce commitment to attack and counterattack, which drove the politics of the 1990s.

Obama has promised a different politics, one that rises above the fray and the distractions of wedge issues. As Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon, recently put it, “The entire Obama campaign is predicated on the belief that it is no longer 1988.”

Obama edges Clinton by 7 votes in Guam

Sat, 03 May 2008 21:23 EDT

HAGATNA, Guam — Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes in the Guam Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday. The count of more than 4,500 ballots took all night.

Neither candidate campaigned in the U.S. island territory in person, but both did long-distance media interviews and bought campaign ads for the caucuses.

Results of the count completed this morning show delegates pledged to Obama with 2,264 votes to 2,257 for Clinton’s slate. That means they will split the pledged delegate votes. Obama’s slate won in 14 of 21 districts.

Eight pledged delegates will attend the convention, each with one-half vote.

U.S. citizens on the island, however, have no vote in the November election.

Briefs | Obama has different view on gas tax

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:48 EDT

INDIANAPOLIS — Democrat Barack Obama said Friday a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax could cost 6,000 jobs in Indiana.

“This is a plan that would save you pennies a day for the summer months,” Obama said at a news conference. “That is unless gas prices are raised to fill in the gap.”

Obama also accused his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain of “reading from the same political playbook” when they endorsed the proposal.

The proposed federal gas tax holiday is a rarity in the battle for the Democratic nomination — a clear-cut policy difference between Obama and Clinton.

• Pa. produces 2 more Clinton delegates

For candidates, Indiana a road less traveled

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:48 EDT

KOKOMO, Ind. — The last time Karen Rhodes saw a presidential candidate come through town, it was “give ’em hell” Harry Truman at the back of his train on a 1948 whistle-stop tour.

So it was a thrill for her when Hillary Clinton rolled in this week to do a little of the same. Rhodes and hundreds of neighbors lined up outside the high school gym, crowding into the home of the Kokomo Wildkats and cheering perhaps as much for their own moment in the political sun as for the candidate on the stage.

Indiana is one of two states to vote Tuesday — along with North Carolina — and that’s drawing the spotlight to a state that hasn’t played a role in a Democratic presidential primary since 1968 and has been in play in a general election maybe only once since Truman rolled through.

All of which makes it unfamiliar political territory to candidates and a bit of a mystery to the rest of the country.

“We’re not really the same as Ohio or Illinois,” said Margaret Ferguson, a political scientist at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. “We’re a very conservative state.”

Obama still tops N.C. polls, but Clinton closing gap

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:59 EDT

APEX, N.C. — North Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary is tightening, with Sen. Barack Obama’s struggles in distancing himself from his controversial former pastor apparently eroding his once-formidable lead here.

The Tar Heel state was once seen as Obama’s to lose. But three public opinion polls conducted in recent days suggest that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has been closing the gap.

The Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling has found that Obama’s onetime lead of 25 points has decreased to 12. A SurveyUSA poll found Obama’s 9-point lead down to 5 points, while Rasmussen’s poll has Obama’s lead dropping from 23 to 14 points.

Most of Obama’s loss of support has been among white voters. Pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling attributes the drop to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, as well as campaign visits by both Hillary and Bill Clinton in recent days.

The surveys were taken before North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley endorsed Clinton on Tuesday, and before Obama repudiated Wright the same day in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Democratic divide gets wider

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:22 EDT

WASHINGTON — Loyal Democrat Richard Somer says if Hillary Rodham Clinton gets his party’s presidential nomination, he just might sit it out this Election Day.

A Barack Obama supporter, Somer says he has been repulsed by her use of “slimy insinuations” in the campaign. He especially disliked her attacking the Illinois senator for his relationship with William Ayers, a former Weather Underground radical with provocative views.

“She’s better than that,” said Somer, 72, a retired professor from Clinton, N.Y. He said he expects the Democrats to carry New York anyway, so he might not vote “as a protest to Mrs. Clinton.”

Somer is not the only Democrat whose views of his party’s rival candidate have soured.

Party members increasingly dislike the contender they are not supporting in the bruising nomination fight, an Associated Press-Yahoo News survey and exit polls of voters show. That is raising questions about how faithful some will be by the November general election.

On the campaign trail: 3 big S.C. questions ...

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:23 EDT

About the presidential campaigns

WILL EDWARDS ENDORSE?

As the May 6 North Carolina primary approaches, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters are listening to hear what, if anything, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards has to say about the Democratic presidential race.

Edwards, the S.C. native who represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate and ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, could provide more distance for Obama, who leads in North Carolina, or help a trailing Clinton close the gap there with an endorsement.

Former S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges, however, said he’s not certain Edwards will get involved in the primary.

Democrats’ battle boosts McCain

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:12 EDT

WASHINGTON — Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will spend the next six weeks campaigning in states that are irrelevant to their November strategies, a break for Republican John McCain as he focuses on battlegrounds for the fall.

The time Obama and Clinton will devote to these states is another price of their protracted primary battle, which already has consumed millions of campaign dollars and hurt their images as they batter each other.

Democratic leaders who set the election calendar assumed their nominee would have been decided by early February. The survivor could have spent the spring shoring up the party’s base and concentrating on the GOP opponent in the roughly 14 competitive states that will decide the next president.

That person certainly would not have spent April and May campaigning in Indiana, Kentucky, Montana and South Dakota. North Carolina probably would have been sidestepped, too.

Those states went solidly Republican in recent presidential elections, and Democratic strategists don’t list them among the ones they need to win in November. Yet Obama and Clinton will spend weeks and lots of money in those states as they try to end a nominating process that both say will last until June 3 or later.

Together again: Huckabee campaigns with McCain

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:12 EDT

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Republican presidential candidate John McCain and former rival Mike Huckabee teamed up on the campaign trail for the first time on Friday, with Huckabee joking that they were so civil when they were opponents they don’t have to “unsay” any bad things.

McCain said that early in the GOP campaign, the two had a lot of time to get to know each other when they both were dismissed as the longest of long shots.

Chatting with reporters on the Straight Talk Express campaign bus, McCain recalled when they were relegated to the most distant ends of the podium in the early Republican debates, drawing few questions from the moderators.

“Governor Huckabee and I had lots of time to chat with each other,” McCain said with a laugh. “We became friends on the campaign trail.”

They were joined on the bus by their wives, Cindy McCain and Janet Huckabee.

Briefs: McCain discusses hurricane damage

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:51 EDT

NEW ORLEANS — John McCain toured still-damaged areas of New Orleans and declared that if Hurricane Katrina had happened on his watch, he would have landed his plane immediately at the nearest Air Force base.

The Republican presidential candidate is campaigning this week in what he calls forgotten areas of the country. He told New Orleans residents Thursday that their situation will not be forgotten and such a botched disaster response will never happen again.

Though critical of Bush, McCain said Congress must share some of the blame, too.

• Voter registration up in North Carolina

RALEIGH, N.C. — The longer-than-expected race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination will thrust the state into the national spotlight when it has its say on May 6.

Obama’s pastor cites ‘devious agenda’

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:46 EDT

ON THE AIR

PBS’ “Bill Moyers Journal” is on at 9 p.m. on WRLK, channel 35, cable channel 11 in the Columbia area.

CHICAGO — In a rare interview, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. said media organizations that circulated controversial sound bites of his sermons on the Internet wanted to paint him as “un-American” or “some sort of fanatic” in order to bring down Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

“I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ,” Wright told TV journalist Bill Moyers in the first interview he has granted since comments critical of U.S. policies surfaced on television and the Internet.

“‘And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint?’ That’s what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church.”

Briefs | Cash at the end of the Pennsylvania tunnel

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:59 EDT

WASHINGTON — Turns out Hillary Rodham Clinton’s victory Tuesday came with a cash prize.

In the hours after winning Pennsylvania’s Democratic presidential primary, Clinton’s campaign said she raised $3.5 million.

By midday Wednesday, the campaign estimated the total haul at $10 million raised online in the 24 hours since Pennsylvania’s polls closed, and claimed it was her best fundraising day ever.

Clinton, whose campaign fights on against a flush-with-money Barack Obama, can use the money.

On Sunday, the campaign revealed that at the end of March it had just over $9 million in the bank and $10 million in debt. Obama had more than $40 million cash on hand at the start of April.

Voters weigh change vs. tradition

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:39 EDT

NANTICOKE, Pa. — Walk up and down Main Street in this north-central city of about 10,000 and it’s easy to pick out who’s for Hillary Clinton and who’s for Barack Obama in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary.

The under-40s want this economically distressed town to change, and fast, and they see Obama as an important catalyst.

The over-40s fear the younger candidate and tend to favor the former first lady. Nanticoke’s last coal mine closed in 1973, and the population has plunged from 27,000 in the 1930s, but the older folks still like their city.

“There’s this sense that the past was better,” said Randall Miller, a history professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, a feeling present in many similar cities across the state.

Pennsylvania is so big and diverse that it’s hard to characterize.