Clinton caught in Lie about Sniper in Bosnia and Political Cartoon of the Day

Todays political cartoon is a reminder of what Barack and Hillary's strategy should be in pursuing the Whitehouse. This cartoon emphasis the important aspect of the current political climate for the Democrats. Quit attacking each other and continue reminding the public of what the real problem is, not what our pastors say or who ducked out sniper fire or not. Although that is another pretty funny story in itself. Hillary is just getting old and it is affecting her memory.

Dilating on her extensive experience of foreign affairs, the New York senator told a campaign event last week that she vividly remembered how, with the Balkans still a cauldron of war, she had flown into an airfield under sniper fire. She had had to dash, head-down from the aircraft, she told the spellbound audience, to the safety of waiting cars, and the planned traditional arrival ceremony had been hastily canceled in the mêlée.

It sounded thrilling - like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. The problem was, it probably did come out of a Tom Clancy novel. It was pure fiction.

A good memory is needed once we have lied,” observed Pierre Corneille, the 17th-century French tragedian. He was right. The complexities involved in keeping an untruth plausible and consistent are so tortuous that to be really good at lying demands exceptional recall of what was said when and where.

But Corneille was writing before the age of YouTube. Nowadays, no amount of familiarity with memory's labyrinth will save you when there is downloadable disproof at the click of a mouse button. So Hillary Clinton discovered this week, when she was caught out in a prize fib about a trip she made to Bosnia when she was First Lady 12 years ago.

CBS unearthed some news video of the arrival ceremony and it was promptly disseminated on YouTube. There was Mrs Clinton, serene and smiling, strolling with her entourage from the plane, head held high, and in no evident danger from snipers, terrorists, or even the odd slightly miffed Serb. Seconds later she was being greeted in what looked very much like a traditional arrival ceremony on the tarmac where a small girl embraced her and the two chatted warmly for a while. I've been in more physical danger coming out of the car park at Heathrow.

Confronted with the incontrovertible evidence Mrs Clinton acknowledged this week that she “misspoke”. Misspeak is an Orwellian term deployed by politicians to describe what has happened when they have been caught in a barefaced lie.

The Clintons have a well-formed habit of misspeaking. Bill Clinton, of course, was always doing it. But his wife has also over the years mastered the art of misspeaking in what Mark Twain once described as an “experienced, industrious, ambitious and often quite picturesque” way.

She has misspoken on any number of occasions when the straight truth might have been very damaging: over her involvement in the various scandals of the early Clinton years. But alongside these instrumental whoppers, there have been some befuddlingly pointless little tiddlers too.

When she ran for New York senator she claimed to have been a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees even though no one could recall her ever having expressed the slightest interest in or knowledge of the baseball team.

For no obvious reason she once claimed her parents named her after Sir Edmund Hillary, even though she was born more than five years before the mountaineer's ascent of Everest, when he was known by almost no one outside New Zealand.

In fact the facility with which the Clintons misspeak is so pronounced that it is quite possible they have genuinely forgotten how to tell the plain truth. There was no real need for Mrs Clinton to make the claim about landing in sniper fire. But the compulsion to embroider, to dissemble and to dissimulate is now so entrenched in the synapses of the Clinton brain that it came to her as naturally as the truth would to a slow-witted innocent.

Someone once noted that the thing about the Clintons is that they will choose a big lie when a small lie will do, and choose a small lie when the truth will do. Most of the time they get away with it. But occasionally, an inconvenient truth, like a blue dress with DNA on it, or some forgotten news footage, shows up and damns them.

With this latest deceit stripped away, there is not much left to Mrs Clinton's disintegrating campaign for the Democratic nomination. It capped a bad week for her, a week that might have signalled the end of her hopes.

With a deft speech that was somewhat lacking in complete honesty itself, Barack Obama last week seemed to have acquitted himself quite well, for now, of the charge of being an associate of a ranting, anti-American black preacher. More important, the collapse last week of efforts to schedule a new vote in Florida and Michigan, two states whose earlier primary votes have been disqualified, was deadly to Mrs Clinton. It is now virtually impossible for her to finish ahead of Mr Obama in the delegate count when the primary season ends in early June.

That really ought to be that. After that final primary in Puerto Rico on June 1, Mr Obama will have won more states, more delegates and more popular votes than Mrs Clinton. How in those circumstances can Mrs Clinton claim a moral case for staying in the race?

Her answer is to persuade the party's super-delegates - top party leaders and elected officials who will have the casting votes - that she is more electable than Mr Obama, and that they would be doing the party a favour if they chose her over the wishes of the tens of millions of people who have voted in the primaries.

They are unlikely to be taken in. They are more likely to view it as another example of Senator Clinton's misspeaking. forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie
The Bosnia misspeak, unnecessary as it was, revealed much, however. It helped to expose a much bigger untruth Mrs Clinton has been peddling throughout the Democratic primary campaign - that her time in the White House means she has the necessary foreign policy experience to be president. forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie

First Ladies don't acquire real foreign policy experience. We know that Mrs Clinton did not, as she claimed, play a large role in the Northern Ireland peace process, that she was not, as she claimed, a key voice in counsels on the Balkans, and that she did not even have security clearance in the White House for the most sensitive of conversations about national security.

So the problem with the ripping yarn about the Bosnia snipers is that it offers hard evidentiary disproof of improbable claims about her role during the White House years.

forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia forgot bosnia lie sniper lie sniper lie sniper lie political cartoon is something we need to laugh at, because a political cartoon is funny as hell. Who doesn't like a political cartoon because political cartoon s are what makes things easier for us to deal with politically. The political cartoon is also a nice reminder of current events and a political cartoon makes certain topics relavent to people who would normally not pay attention

Ferraro Says comment wasn't racist and Political Cartoon of the Day

Maybe this political cartoon is a little old but I think that this cartoon shows the inherent abrasive nature that the Clinton campaign seems to be pulling off. Yes it was Ferraro who made the comments but as of yet she has not been asked to resign. This political cartoon is just a little representative of the current demeanor that the Clinton Campaign is giving off to the public. Regarding Ferraro directly, well, just take a gander at the following:

"My comments have been taken so out of context and been spun by the Obama campaign as racist," she said on ABC's "This Morning America." "That, you know is doing precisely what they don't want done -- it's going to [divide] the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."

Geraldine Ferraro, a onetime Democratic vice presidential nominee and current Clinton fundraiser, continued to insist today that she is being unfairly criticized for comments on Barack Obama that implied the Illinois senator has done well in the presidential race because he is black.

Ferraro, the first woman to be on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate in either party, ignited a controversy when she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance that: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Ferraro, a former congresswoman from New York, said she was "hurt, absolutely hurt by how they have taken this thing and spun it to sort of imply in any way, in any way, I am a racist." But she said she was "absolutely not" sorry she had said Obama was benefiting from his status as the first African American perceived as having the chance to win the presidency.

"I was talking about historic candidacies," she said. "In 1984, if my name were Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice president."

But Obama, interviewed on NBC's "Today," said Ferraro's comments are absurd on their face.

"If you were to get a handbook on what's the path to the presidency, I don't think that the handbook would start by saying, 'Be an African American named Barack Obama.' I don't think that would be generally considered an advantage, and it certainly wasn't when I was running for the United States Senate or the presidency."

Saying that he respects Ferraro as "a trailblazer," Obama accused her of participating in "the kind of slice-and-dice politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way, we can't solve problems."

On Tuesday, Clinton distanced herself from the remarks, but said intemperate remarks are a problem on both sides. Obama expressed distaste.

In a brief Associated Press interview Tuesday while she campaigned in Harrisburg, Pa., Clinton said she did not agree with Ferraro. She added, "It's regrettable that any of our supporters -- on both sides, because we both have this experience -- say things that kind of veer off into the personal."

Obama, in an interview with the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., said, "I don't think Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign they shouldn't have a place in Sen. Senator Clinton's either."

But Ferraro, who ran on on Walter F. Mondale's losing ticket in 1984, dug in her heels.

"I'm sorry that people thought it was racist," Ferraro told Fox News on Tuesday. She said she was not acting as a Clinton representative, but was promoting a speech she had been paid to make, and resented the implication that she vets what she says with anyone.

"She can't rein me in," said Ferraro, referring to Clinton.

Later, in a statement that was e-mailed to reporters, Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, echoed Clinton. Her statement began with an Obama quote made in January while he was speaking to NBC's Tim Russert: "I think that, as Hillary said, our supporters, our staff, get overzealous."

"We agreed then," wrote Williams. "We agree today. Supporters from both campaigns will get overzealous."

Last week, one of Obama's unpaid foreign policy advisors, Harvard professor Samantha Power, resigned from his campaign after calling Clinton a "monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper. She apologized and blamed fatigue.

Ferraro, for her part, told Fox News that "if it makes David [Axelrod] happy, I would get off the [Clinton] finance committee."

But, she added, referring to Axelrod, "He shouldn't really antagonize people like me." If Obama is nominated, Axelrod "is going to come to me and ask me to raise money for Barack Obama, and I will do it for him, too, if he stops doing this kind of horrendous attack."

Alluding to Power in a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said: "Ferraro should be denounced and censured by the campaign. Samantha resigned because it was not consistent with the kind of campaign we want to run. We want a candidate and president who will live by their words."

Clinton with Obama as Running Mate and Politcal Cartoon of the Day

A little Finance Humor with today's Political Cartoon as we come to the home stretch of the Clinton v. Obama Battle. Now for real news.

Campaigning in Mississippi over the weekend, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama could form "an almost unstoppable force."

After winning the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island last week, Senator Clinton suggested that she and Obama might end up on the same ticket, with her at the top of it.

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been talking up the idea that Barack Obama, whom they have called too inexperienced to be president, would make a strong running mate on a ticket headed by the New York senator.

Obama won the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, and the latest polls show him leading in tomorrow's primary in Mississippi. He is ahead of Clinton in pledged delegates, but neither candidate is expected to obtain the 2,025 needed for the nomination in the remaining state contests.

As of last night, Obama had 1,578 delegates and Clinton had 1,468. Democratic leaders worry about the damage that could be done if neither Clinton nor Obama has a clear lead by the August nominating convention.

In hailing Obama as a possible vice president, the Clintons are reaching out to him and, perhaps more important, to his backers, whose support she would need to defeat John McCain in the November election.

"The Clintons are in a difficult position," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa, who has tracked the presidential race.

"If she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she would need Obama's supporters. But she needs to be careful. If this talk of him on the ticket is seen as a cynical maneuver, it could backfire and hurt her," Goldford said.

The Clintons have charged that the charismatic senator from Illinois lacks the experience to handle an international crisis as president. But since Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries, she and her husband have repeatedly touted Obama as a possible running mate.

When asked about the possibility last week, Obama said he was focused on winning the nomination.

"I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket," he said.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who has endorsed Obama, derided the Clintons' suggestion.

"The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?" Kerry said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president," Kerry said.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota also mocked the idea.

"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who has sought to rally support for Clinton in his state's April 22 primary, backed the idea of Clinton and Obama teaming up.

Pennsylvania, the biggest remaining state in the race for the nomination, should be a safe win for Clinton, but analysts say there are pockets of vulnerability for Obama to exploit - and plenty of time to do it.

"If the election were held today it would probably be Senator Clinton by 10 points, but seven weeks in this crazy race, anything can happen," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

A win in Pennsylvania could be crucial to Clinton's hopes of gaining support from "superdelegates" - elected officials and party insiders who can vote at the convention as they choose.

Mark Nevins, communications director for Clinton's campaign in Pennsylvania, said the state was "a proving ground."

"You can't really expect to win the general election if you can't win Pennsylvania," he said.

"Pennsylvania has more Catholics, more union members, more older voters, and fewer African-Americans," said Terry Madonna, politics professor at Franklin & Marshall College. "This is pretty much a Clinton state. It's hers to lose."

The demographics are similar to those of Ohio, which Clinton won by 54 percent to 44 percent. Madonna said Clinton also can play the "hometown" card because her father was born in Scranton.

Clinton will focus on healthcare and the economy to target the large population of seniors and union members, which is higher than the national average, Nevins said.

Richards of Quinnipiac said Obama must do three things to have a chance of winning: boost turnout among black voters, which is historically low in primaries; motivate students at the state's numerous universities and colleges; and win over affluent voters in the Philadelphia suburbs where Clinton is vulnerable.

Sean Smith, a spokesman for Obama, contends that the demographics claimed as friendly by the Clinton campaign had helped Obama win Wisconsin and could do so again.

"We did extremely well in Wisconsin with the same types of voters," he said, pointing to older voters who were "absolutely open" to Obama's message of hope and change and "bringing the country together to solve our problems."

News on Obama & Clinton in Wyoming and Today's Political Cartoon

Well Todays Political Cartoon is dealing with the current market trends and the concept of our Spending habits. I mean this cartoon doesn't even touch the fact that we are going to borrow the money for our next set of tax rebates from China. Hmmmm...Does that even make sense? Well This cartoon is at least funny. Now onto the real news.

With 96 percent of the precincts reporting, Obama had 59 percent to Clinton's 40 percent.

Democrats in Wyoming get little respect. The sparsely populated red state is home to just 218,000 thousand voters, most of them Republicans, like Wyoming's own Dick Cheney.

But this year, Clinton and Obama eagerly glad-handed voters across the state because even Wyoming -- with its 12 delegates -- counts.

Barack Obama won the Democratic caucuses today in Wyoming, a state the party's presidential candidates often overlook, but that in this nail-biter of a race saw heavy campaigning by both Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The excitement about the Democratic race was evident at the Teton County Caucus, held in Jackson. Originally scheduled for the Virginian motel, the caucus had to be moved to the larger Snow King Resort to accommodate the crowds that turned out.

In previous years, no more than 200 Democrats had ever turned out in Teton County, but this year Democratic State Committee chairwoman Lesley Peterson estimated the overflow crowd at 1000 or more by early evening.

The high turnout among Wyoming Democrats is more evidence of how tight the race is between Clinton and Obama nationwide.

A Newsweek poll released Friday found the rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in a statistical dead heat, with 45 percent of registered Democrats and Democratic leanings favoring Obama, and 44 percent favoring Clinton.

That marks the latest pendulum swing in a race that last year saw Clinton as the all-but-inevitable Democratic candidate, to Obama's decisive lead during a sweep of February primary states. The poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.

The Newsweek poll also shows neither candidate has an edge when it comes to voters' number-one concern: The foundering economy, with 43 percent favoring Obama, 42 percent preferring Clinton.

The poll does show that seven in 10 Democrats want that dream team: Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama.

Today, former president Bill Clinton for the first time sent a clear signal that the Clinton campaign has given serious consideration to that dream ticket too, combining Obama's urban appeal and Clinton's rural appeal.

"You look at the map of Texas and the map in Ohio, and the map in Missouri," Clinton said during a campaign stop on his wife's behalf in Mississippi, "You look at most of these places -- he would win the urban areas and the upscale voters, and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put those two things together, you'd have an almost unstoppable force."

Obama said Friday he's not interested in holding the No. 2 slot on a Democratic dream team.

"You won't see me as a vice presidential candidate," Obama said in a radio interview.

Despite talk of a dream team, the bitter tone of the campaign for the White House is likely to get worse, with Clinton on the offensive and Obama walking a fine line, talking tough while trying to remain above the mudslinging.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King gave a taste of what could lie ahead.

In an interview with KICD radio in Spencer, Iowa, the congressman virtually called him a terrorist ally.

"If he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al Qaeda, the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets," King said. "They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name."

If he does win the nomination, Obama will have to respond to Republicans, and to his conservative critics who pointedly refer to him using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama looking for the Knockout Punch and Political Cartoon of the Day

On the math side, it is a certainty that Sen. Barack Obama's lead in pledged delegates, at least 151, according to the Associated Press, after 11 straight victories last month, most of them by wide margins, is so wide that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot catch up with anything less than blowout victories in the 60-40 percent range in both states.


On the eve of the Democrats' second Super Tuesday, polling is so close in both Texas and Ohio that the Clinton and Obama campaigns are preparing their own spin on what will matter when the nation wakes up Wednesday morning: Will it be math or momentum?

On the momentum side, however, if Clinton wins both states, even narrowly, she could blunt Obama's momentum and generate some of her own. Headlines will declare a Clinton victory in two giant states, lifting some of the pressure on her from party leaders to exit the race.

Obama's best chance for a knockout blow is Texas, where polls have given him a slight edge.

"Obama, to stop her, really has to win one of the two big states. Then the delegate math does take over," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns.

But if Clinton wins both, she is likely to stay in the race.

"Even if the math works in Obama's favor, if he loses two big states, I don't think that's how you win the nomination," Devine said. "You don't win the nomination by losing. You have to win the nomination by winning, or at least splitting ... I think it's going to be incumbent on Obama to win one of those big states if he wants the race to end tomorrow."

Seeming to concede that Clinton could win the popular vote in both states, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the race hinges instead on "the cold hard reality of the math."

There are 370 pledged delegates, the kind chosen by voters, at stake Tuesday in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. Even if Clinton ekes out victories in all four, she cannot begin to close the delegate gap because delegates are awarded based on vote shares. A close outcome will distribute the delegates nearly evenly in each state.

"If we can come out of Tuesday night's contests with a pledged delegate lead still healthy in our favor, and we're able to maintain or even build on it, I think that's going to be a major event in the nomination fight," Plouffe said. A close Clinton victory is "simply not good enough," he said, and will require "more creative math and tortured explanations" to conceive a path to the nomination.

For the Clinton campaign, Tuesday's votes are all about momentum: ending Obama's string of huge victories, generating a long-overdue win and allowing her to fight on to the Pennsylvania primary seven weeks away, hoping that Obama implodes in the meantime.

That breather would give Clinton time to press the hard-hitting attacks that seek to generate "buyer's remorse" among Obama supporters by undermining Obama's credibility on national security, trade and his relationship with Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko, whose racketeering trial has begun.

"We expect that by Wednesday morning, the momentum of Sen. Obama will be significantly blunted and new questions will be raised about whether he is the right nominee for our party," said top Clinton strategist Mark Penn.

"If we wake up Wednesday and Sen. Clinton wins Ohio and Texas, we have a whole new ballgame here," said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Clinton has watched her double-digit leads in both states vanish over the last two weeks, but her campaign said internal polling shows votes breaking her way. She would add two more big-state victories to her ledger, along with California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Ohio is critical in general elections, narrowly swinging for President Bush 2004. A Clinton win might persuade some super delegates - the elected and party officials who make up 20 percent of the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination - to stop jumping from Clinton's ship and allow her to continue the race.

By the same token, Clinton will be out of the race if she loses both Ohio and Texas and will find it all but impossible to continue if she loses one. The candidates are likely to split the two smaller states, as Clinton is ahead in Rhode Island and Obama in Vermont.

Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who once worked for California Gov. Gray Davis, said he voted for Clinton and feels bad for her but that Obama's advantage even now is overwhelming.

"The fact is, Barack Obama has been winning (earlier) states, not barely, but 2 to 1, 3 to 1," said South. "If she turns around and wins a close victory in Texas and Ohio, that doesn't change the momentum of the race" or flip Clinton's delegate count, in which South said she is "getting killed" by proportional delegate allocation.

"Look, I'm a world class spinner myself," South said. "I've had to spin myself in and out of all kinds of campaign situations over my 36 years in this business, but there comes a point where you can't spin away the facts."

Even if Clinton wins Texas and Ohio, however, she faces a tough calendar strikingly similar to the one she confronted after tying Obama on Super Tuesday Feb 5.

This time the wait for another big primary is even longer: seven weeks, not four, until Pennsylvania, with its 158 delegates and blue-collar base, where Clinton holds a large but declining lead. In between is a Wyoming caucus Saturday, exactly the kind of red-state, rally-style contest where Obama has a proven advantage. A week after tomorrow comes Mississippi, whose large African American population looks to be in Obama's pocket.

Though after Tuesday, there are still 611 delegates up for grabs in the remaining contests that end in June in Puerto Rico, many Democrats are eager for the rivalry to end so they can begin focusing on likely Republican nominee John McCain. Others worry that the sharply escalating negative attacks provide fodder for Republicans, who for now can sit back and let Democrats attack each other.

Some top superdelegates have begun to call for the race to end. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday that whoever is ahead in pledged delegates after Tuesday should be the nominee. Neither candidate can win the Democratic nomination on pledged delegates alone, thanks to the proportional allocation of delegates.

"Some superdelegates might see (wins by Clinton today) as persuasive enough to take the pressure off of her to drop out," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin. "They might then say, 'Go ahead and go through Pennsylvania, we won't gang up on you and attempt to get you to quit,' as was happening over the last week."

Clinton's negative attacks, and Obama's aggressive responses, have escalated in the last few days, but experts say they do not feel they have crossed the line to be damaging to either candidate.

"These are charges that certainly would come out in a general election against either of these two candidates," South said. "And they better damn well be prepared to deal with them in the fall. One of the ways you do that is by having to fend off these kinds of charges during the primary election campaign."

John Gilliom, a political scientist at Ohio University, said the candidates are still in a healthy process of "checking for glass jaws." Voters "want to know what Sen. Obama's answers are on the various questions she's been asking," he said. "They're going to be asked in a lot tougher way later on."

If anything, they may be toughening Obama, who has enjoyed positive press coverage and comparatively little scrutiny.

What Happened to Clinton Campaign and Political Cartoon of the Day

The cartoon of the day is just a quick little photo of Hillary Clinton in a rare moment releasing some stress. Lately I have been picking on her a little bit and maybe this cartoon will be the last for a little while? I try to be fair but I have noticed the trend and will try to remedy it. Now on to the real stuff

Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members.

Those tensions partly explain why Clinton today stands where, just a few months ago, few expected she'd be: struggling to catch up to Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. If she loses either of the crucial contests Tuesday in Texas and Ohio, Clinton may face calls from senior party officials to end her campaign.

As they mapped out a campaign schedule for Bill Clinton, top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton kept his time short in South Carolina. They were probably going to lose the state, they figured, and they wanted their most powerful surrogate to move on to Georgia, Alabama and other Southern states.

But the former president shelved the plan, according to campaign aides. Day after day he stayed in South Carolina, getting into angry confrontations with the press and others. In the end, Hillary Clinton lost the Jan. 26 vote there by a 2-to-1 margin and saw her standing with African Americans nationwide become strained.

Some polls show her leading in Ohio but tied in Texas; the race in both states is considered close.

Already, some in Clinton's senior staff are pointing fingers over what went wrong, with some of the blame aimed at Clinton herself. As the race unfolded, neither Clinton nor anyone else resolved the internal power struggles that played out with destructive effect and continue to this day.

Chief strategist Mark and pollster Penn clashed with senior advisor Harold Ickes, former deputy campaign manager Mike Henry and others. Field organizers battled with Clinton's headquarters in northern Virginia. Campaign themes were rolled out and discarded, reflecting tensions among a staff bitterly divided over what Clinton's basic message should be.

The dispute over Bill Clinton's schedule shows how easily plans can unravel. Some campaign staffers didn't expect to win South Carolina overall, but "our strategy was to go after specific districts in South Carolina" to add to the delegate total while freeing Bill Clinton to spend time in other Southern states, said a Clinton campaign aide.

But Bill Clinton said " 'I need to be in South Carolina,' " the aide said. "It was a one-man mission out there."

Obama, who leads Clinton in delegates, would pose problems for any candidate. But aides to Clinton said the dysfunction within her campaign team made its task that much tougher.

Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to John Edwards' now-dropped Democratic campaign, said: "At some point the candidate has to step in and bust heads and say 'Enough!'

"If there's fighting internally, the candidate has to step up and make it clear what direction she wants to go and stop this stuff dead in its tracks. Otherwise there's going to be a struggle for power and control right until the end. It's crippling."

Last month, after a series of defeats, Hillary Clinton chose a new campaign manager, replacing Patti Solis Doyle. But she left in place many senior people, including Penn and Ickes, who have been involved in incessant turf wars.

As the campaign faces a make-or-break moment, some high-level officials are trying to play down their role in the campaign. Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."

By September, Iowa staff were sending out warnings about Obama's strength. "We are being outnumbered on the ground on a daily basis by his campaign, and it is beginning to show results," said a memo to top campaign officials on Sept. 26, about three months before the state's caucuses.

One running debate within Clinton's campaign was whether her defeats -- she has lost 11 straight contests -- were due to organizational lapses or a faulty message.

Some aides say organizational problems were the most significant, as Obama outworked Clinton in many states and sent in organizers earlier.

Obama beating Hillary, McCain Leads In Texas & Cartoon of the Day

In the Political Cartoon of the day we stray a little from the current events at hand and just let the Political Cartoon Itself make up for the lack of relevancy. Nothing better than a little nude Cartoon Bush to get a little laugh out of you. Now to some relevant issues.

In Houston on Thursday, McCain said he can pull conservative voters to his side for the general election because he offers clear policy differences with Clinton and Obama.

For instance, he remarked, "we are succeeding in Iraq, something that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton won't acknowledge."

As the Arizona senator acknowledged, he is still working on winning his party's nomination and the backing of many conservatives, who disagree with his push for earned citizenship opportunities for illegal immigrants, endorsement of campaign finance reforms and other issues.

Huckabee told a Waco audience he is the only true conservative in the race, and the only major candidate of either party "without a Washington address." Though trailing McCain badly in the national convention delegate count, Huckabee said he is not about to give up.

"You can beat me but you can't make me quit," Huckabee said with a defiant smile.

Clinton had held a lead in the race that evaporated in the past several weeks.

One area where she apparently bounced back in the past month was in fundraising. Obama shocked her in January by raising $36 million to her $14 million. Clinton aides told The Associated Press on Thursday that Clinton raised $35 million in February. Obama's campaign said he had raised more than $50 million in February, but did not release the amount.

"It was incredibly gratifying to see people come forth with this vote of confidence in me," Clinton told reporters in Hanging Rock, Ohio. "Obviously this is a tremendous benefit to my campaign."

The money could give Clinton the ability to soldier on even if Texas is a setback for her in the fight for delegates to the national nominating convention.

Clinton was in Houston on Thursday night for an energy summit.

Momentum is clearly on Obama's side, though. A Texas Democratic superdelegate — state Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston — Thursday switched her support from Clinton to Obama.

Pollster John Zogby said the statistics that really show the momentum for Obama is the timing of when people made up their mind on how to vote. He said Clinton leads "substantially" among those who made up their minds more than a month ago, but Obama leads almost "two-to-one" among those who made up their minds recently.

Earlier in the day, Obama held a town hall meeting in Austin to talk about the economy, which he said is on the brink of a recession.

"This was not an inevitable part of the business cycle," Obama said. "It was a failure of leadership in Washington — a Washington where George Bush hands out billions of tax cuts to the wealthiest few for eight long years, and John McCain promises to make those same tax cuts permanent."

Obama also criticized McCain's statements about staying in Iraq for 100 years, saying that would cost trillions of dollars. Obama favors a total pullout from Iraq within a year after taking office.

McCain responded in Houston by saying his comments about Iraq have been taken out of context. He said he was talking about a military presence to guarantee stability, not an ongoing war.

"No American argues against our military presence in Korea or Japan or Germany or Kuwait or other places, or Turkey, because America is not receiving casualties," McCain said. "I think, generally speaking, we have a more secure world thanks to American presence, particularly in Asia, by the way, as we see the rising influence of China."

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama appears to be consolidating a lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton among most constituent groups in Texas except Hispanics, according to a new tracking poll.

The survey found Obama leading 48.2 percent to 41.7 percent over Clinton statewide. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday for the Houston Chronicle, Reuters and C-SPAN by Zogby International, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

On the Republican side, U.S. Sen. John McCain appears headed to victory in Texas over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas congressman Ron Paul of Lake Jackson. McCain led with 53.4 percent support to Huckabee's 26.8 percent and Paul's 10.7 percent in a survey that had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. McCain led among all groups, including self-identified conservatives.

The tracking poll, which will be conducted daily until next Tuesday's election, found Obama leading with both men and women. He and Clinton were essentially tied among Anglos, but he held 84.9 percent support among blacks and she had the support of 54.9 percent of the Hispanics surveyed.

That Hispanic backing helped give Clinton a lead in South Texas of 66.7 percent. She also led in West Texas, which would include heavily Hispanic El Paso.

Obama led in every other region and was supported by about 60 percent of those surveyed in Houston and Dallas — which have more nominating delegates at stake than all of the region from San Antonio to Brownsville to El Paso.

Next Tuesday's primaries in Texas and Ohio are crucial for Clinton to keep her campaign alive in the face of Obama's surge in the past three weeks. The tracking poll in Ohio showed a close race, with Clinton leading 44.1 percent to 41.5 percent over Obama. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Fact Verifications and Political Cartoon of the Day

The Political Cartoon of the day deals with not with the spin the politicians give an issue but with the spin that takes place in their heads. I think this Political Cartoon does a good job at showing us the root of much of the problem.

Thanks to past equivocations, the Democratic presidential candidates have left themselves open to the criticisms and misrepresentations they are now turning against each other as they scramble to dissociate themselves from a trade agreement they once praised — with qualifications.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are paying a price for artful dodges on trade over the years.

The root of their ambivalence is their shared belief in "free and fair trade," which, on the surface, almost anyone can subscribe to.

The problem is that "fair" trade means restrictions on "free" trade, a gloss-over that allows politicians to have it both ways when saying where they stand on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and similar deals.

In picking apart the other's this-but-that position, they are seizing on the "this," and ignoring the "that," in the interest of winning voters in the primary next week in Ohio, where the trade deal is blamed for lost jobs.

The dustup spilled into the streets Tuesday when dozens of protesters who oppose free trade gathered outside Clinton's office in New York City. Several apparently shackled themselves to a front door of the building before police came.

THE SPIN:

Clinton on her position: NAFTA was "negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and it was passed during my husband's presidency. But I was always uncomfortable about certain aspects of it, and I have always made that clear."

Clinton mailer on Obama's position: "Ohio needs to know the truth about Obama's position on Protecting American Workers and NAFTA."

THE FACTS:

Her implication that NAFTA was simply a spillover from the first President Bush and passively made law under President Clinton ignores the fierce lobbying Bill Clinton engaged in to get the deal ratified by Congress. Hillary Clinton helped him in that effort.

President Clinton used his faith in free trade as a core issue to distinguish himself from Democratic orthodoxy and establish a "third way" between politics of the left and right.

Hillary Clinton counted NAFTA among her husband's leading accomplishments, despite her publicly expressed misgivings about parts of it.

In 1996, when the pact was three years old, she said the trade deal with Mexico and Canada was giving U.S. workers a chance to compete. "That's what a free and fair trade agreement like NAFTA is all about," she said. "I think NAFTA is proving its worth."

In a speech to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 2002, she said this of her husband's record:

"The economic recovery plan stands first and foremost as a testament to both good ideas and political courage. National service. The Brady bill. Family leave. NAFTA. Investment in science and technology. New markets....

"All of these came out of some very fundamental ideas about what would work. The results speak for themselves."

The Clinton mailer accurately quoted news stories from 2004 describing Obama's call for more NAFTA-like agreements and his belief that the deal has brought benefits to his state. But the mailer was strikingly selective, leaving out qualifications he emphasized at the time, and were closely linked in the news stories.

In one such example, he said: "The problem in a lot of our trade agreements is that the administration tends to negotiate on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."

THE SPIN:

Obama on his position: "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have."

Obama on her position: "She was saying great things about NAFTA until she started running for president."

Obama campaign mailer in Ohio: "Hillary Clinton believed NAFTA was a 'boon' to our economy," and "Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA."

THE FACTS:

Obama has been consistently ambivalent.

In his 2004 Senate campaign, he said the U.S. should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for U.S. workers.

"We need free trade but also fair trade," he said, taking the dodge.

Obama is correct that Clinton has praised NAFTA in various ways, but he leaves out the qualifications she's expressed along the way.

And she did not say NAFTA was a "boon," as the mailer states on its ominous cover, depicting a locked factory gate. "Boon" was a newspaper's characterization of her position, which is reprinted inside the mailer.

Clinton Ahead in Critical Moments says Ohio Poll & Political Cartoon of the Day

In the Political Cartoon of the day we show the New and Modern Hillary Clinton ready for the Midwestern Struggle. Her new attire brought to you by Midwestern Cartoon Chic from an unknown designer in Ohio. Polls show that this new Clinton Model is working well in the Midwest, Voters seem to love the Political Cartoon Hillary more than Confrontational, Health Care Hillary. Super Delegate or not, she needs to pull a big win to even stand a chance at receiving the nomination.

Clinton drew the support of 47 percent of those surveyed in the new poll, Obama 39 percent. Yet there is a wild card in the results of this new survey: 9 percent of the likely Democratic voters surveyed said they intend to vote for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who has withdrawn from the race, and 4 percent were undecided.

Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York holds an eight-percentage-point advantage over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois among likely Democratic voters in Ohio, according to the results of a new Ohio Poll this morning which arrive as welcome news for Clinton’s hopes of regaining her footing in the contest for the party’s presidential nomination.

The spread between Clinton and Obama also stands at the edges of the poll's potential 4.3 percentage-point margin of error.

In addition, while the Ohio Poll has no benchmark by which to compare Clinton's position today with her stance in recent weeks, a new Univerfsity Poll shows Clinton has lost some of the advantage she had over Obama in Ohio just two weeks ago.

Clinton has a 51-40 percentage point advantage over Obama among Ohio Democratic voters in the Quinnipiac poll released today. This compares with her 55-34 point advantage in survey run by Quinnipiac earlier this month and reported on Feb. 14. The newest Feb. 18-23 survey of 1,853 Ohio registered voters carries a possible margin of error of 2.3 percent.

The results of these Ohio polls arrive on the eve of a televised debate between Clinton and Obama in one of the states which Clinton counts on to breathe new life into her presidential campaign. Following a string of primary and caucus victories for Obama, Clinton is counting on voters in Ohio and Texas on March 4 to reaffirm her claim as a contender for the nomination. The two face each other in debate Tuesday night.

The Ohio polls suggest that Clinton might want to play the debate presidentially -- firm, but without the appearance of worry about any threat in her highly successful rival. Obama is likely to reprise his own appearance in Texas last week, playing to the same level of confidence.

The intensity of Clinton’s campaign-trail challenges to Obama in recent days is a measure of the stakes in Ohio and Texas on March 4, with Clinton counting on victories there to regain her balance in a contest for the pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. Obama has gained a lead in that contest.

The precariousness of the primary contest in bellwether Ohio next week is born out in today’s Ohio Poll, a product of the University of Cincinnati’s polling institute. The survey was conducted from Feb. 21 through Sunday. The possible margin of error among Democrats surveyed is 4.3 percent, and among Republicans surveyed 5.5 percent.

The Ohio debate also raises the question of which Clinton will show up:

The smiling, conciliatory Clinton who debated Obama in Texas last week in a largely civil encounter in which both refrained from bitter campaign-trail rhetoric.

Or the explosive Clinton who declared, “Shame on you, Barack Obama,’’ on the road in recent days, complaining about campaign mailings which the Obama camp has sent to voters – and the derisive Clinton who mocks the platitudes of the Obama campaign as playing to some sort of “celestial-choir’’ vision of miraculous results with empty rhetoric.

Republican Sen. John McCain holds a comfortable lead among Republican voters. The Arizona senator, on track to become his party’s presidential nominee, claimed the support of 55 percent of the likely voters in Ohio’s Republican primary next week, with former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arizona claiming 20 percent.

“A variety of issues are influencing Republican primary voter decisions about the 2008 presidential race,’’ the Ohio Poll repots, “including: the economy/jobs (30 percent, homeland security/national defense (16 percent), the war in Iraq/Iraq policy (9 percent), health care/health insurance (8 percent), abortion (7 percent) and taxes (6 percent.)’’

The economy weighs heavily on the minds of Democratic voters in Ohio, the survey shows, with 41 percent saying the economy and jobs will weigh heavily in their vote, 25 percent citing health care and insurance and 25 percent the war in Iraq.

Obama Campaign Mailers on Clinton Healthcare Position "Wrong" & Polical Cartoon of the Day

Todays Political Cartoon is regarding Obama's accusations of Hillary Clintons Position on Health Care Issues. The Cartoon is not new and neither is the claim but it has recently been brought back up to the lime light with a new mailer sent out by Barack Obama's Campaign.

Clinton's rhetorical blast, the most bellicose of her campaign, came 10 days before Ohio and Texas primaries that could doom her candidacy if she fails to stop her 11-contest losing streak.

An angry Hillary Rodham Clinton scolded Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama today for campaign mailings that she described as false and shameful attacks on her record.

The health care and NAFTA mailers were shipped to voters in Ohio "several days ago if not weeks ago," he said after holding a roundtable discussion in Columbus on health care issues. "So I'm puzzled by the sudden change in tone.

Waving two Obama mailings at a press conference, Clinton raised her voice and accused the Illinois senator of distorting her positions on health care and foreign trade.

"Enough with the speeches and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove's playbook," she said, alluding to President Bush's former chief political advisor. "This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged."

Obama waved off the sharp criticism in a hastily arranged news conference at Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

"We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign, except when we were down 20 points," he said "That was true in Iowa. It was true in South Carolina. It was true in Wisconsin. And it is true now. "I think they need to take a look at what they've been doing."

One of the mailings says that Clinton's health care plan would force Americans to buy coverage even if they could not afford it.

The other says that Clinton "was not with Ohio when our jobs were on the line," describing her as a champion of the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Though Obama defended the two mailers that caused Clinton's vehement condemnation, he also questioned the timing of her outburst, which came at the end of a week in which she lost three more contests.

The senator from New York accused Obama of spending "millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods."

"That is not the new politics that the speeches are about," said Clinton, who has tried to define Obama as a talented speaker with a thin resume. "It is not hopeful. It is destructive, particularly for a Democrat."

Clinton made her comments to reporters on the floor of a Cincinnati community college gymnasium as a morning rally of about 1,000 supporters dispersed.

She said Obama's health care mailing echoed talking points of the health care industry and its Republican allies.

"Just because Sen. Obama chose not to present a universal health care plan does not give him the right to attack me because I did" present one, she said.

Obama's attack, she continued, would give "aid and comfort" to health care companies and the Republican Party.

"So shame on you, Barack Obama," she said. "It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let's have a debate about your tactics."

Obama told reporters today that the health care mailer simply makes the same point that Clinton herself does -- that the main difference between the two candidates' health care plans is that the New York senator requires people to buy insurance, while his does not.

Clinton and Obama are scheduled to debate on Tuesday night in Cleveland.

On NAFTA, Clinton said she had criticized the pact for years and had a four-point plan to fix it. At a rally later in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, she called on Obama to stop sending the mailings to voters.

"That is no way to run a campaign here in Ohio about the importance of the election," she told the crowd.

Clinton also released four new television ads today. One of them features her closing remarks in a Texas debate last Thursday. It shows her comments on a San Antonio hospital visit. She recalled seeing people who had lost limbs.

"You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country," she says. "And I resolved, at a very young age, that I'd been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That's what gets me up in the morning, that's what motivates me in this campaign."

Obama back on the other hand, regarding the mailers, pointed out a little misleading side note regarding Hillary's tone in the current moment. "Unless these were just brought to her attention, it makes me think that there's something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning," Obama said, calling the mailers completely accurate.

Hillary Accepts no defeat & Cartoon of the Day

First for the Cartoon of the Day:
This Election Cartoon is just a nice representation of where Hillary stands in the current race. The Political Cartoon is a great depiction of her "grasping for straws" strategy that currently is inching her forward in this election.

Reeling from her Democratic rival's 11 straight wins in nominating contests, Senator Clinton rejected the perception that her performance Thursday in a high-stakes debate in Austin, Texas, had a valedictory tone.

"This is going to be a spirited election between now and March 4," Clinton told supporters at a rally in Dallas, Texas.

Hillary Clinton Friday denied she was contemplating defeat for her White House bid, after her wistful tribute to Barack Obama in a debate was seen by some observers as an admission of looming failure.

"I am thrilled at the depth and breadth of support I have across the state," she said, knowing that Texas, along with Ohio, makes up a pair of must-win contests for her.

But in the debate the night before, the generous tribute she paid to her rival was seen by some commentators as an admission that her quest to be the first woman president could fall short.

"You know, no matter what happens in this contest -- and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored," she said, and reached out to shake his hand.

While Clinton was making the case that her campaign was not on its last legs, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain was back in Indiana, attempting to shrug off news reports that connected him to corporate lobbyists and one, in the New York Times, that suggested he had had an improper relationship with a female lobbyist.

Besides the pressure of a lagging campaign, the death of a police motorcyclist who crashed while escorting Clinton in Dallas Friday cast a pall of sadness over her team.

"I just learned of the death of a Dallas police officer in a devastating accident that occurred as these motorcycle officers were leading our cars to this site," Clinton said.

"We are just heartsick over this loss of life and I have asked that my condolences be conveyed to the family."

Meanwhile Clinton's camp sought to turn her melancholy remarks in the debate to her favor.

"What we saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States," her spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a statement.

"Her strength, her life experience, her compassion. She's tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice."

Senator Obama, who leads Clinton 1368 to 1271 in the race to win enough delegates to capture the Democratic nomination, made several appearances in Texas Friday, one of two large states to hold primaries on March 4 expected to either rescue or end Clinton's White House hopes.

Now favored to win the Democratic nomination, Obama -- who seeks to become the country's first African-American president -- spent part of the time jousting with McCain over US foreign policy.

McCain attempted to skewer Obama over his offer in Thursday's debate to speak to leaders of US foes without preconditions, focusing on Cuba after the resignation of Fidel Castro.

"So Raul Castro gets an audience with an American president, and all the prestige such a meeting confers, without having to release political prisoners, allow free media, political parties, and labor unions, or schedule internationally monitored free elections," McCain said.

"Senator Obama says he would meet Cuba's dictator without any such steps in the hope that talk will make things better for Cuba's oppressed people."

Obama hit back in his own statement: "John McCain would give us four more years of the same Bush-McCain policies that have failed US interests and the Cuban people for the last 50 years.

"My policy will be based on the principle of liberty for the Cuban people, and I will seek that goal through strong and direct presidential diplomacy."

Delegates, SuperDelegates & Cartoon of the Day

Todays Political Cartoon is about the SuperDelegates of This years elections. How much of an impact will they play and how pissed could the public be? In a time where nominees are trying to get as much as possible could it come down to who has the SuperDelegate Swagger? What about the regular Delegate, are they just the tossed out packaging used to convince us that our vote does matter?

Obama had 1,303 before all of delegates from Wisconsin and Hawaii were factored in, according to The Associated Press, while Clinton had 1,233.

The figures included some superdelegates — politicians and party officials who aren’t awarded in the primaries and can vote any way they want at the convention.

Clinton’s fear, as the race goes on, is that a continuing surge for Obama will convince more and more superdelegates to move from her side of the fence, leaving her campaign in tatters.

Obama's latest victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii placed intense pressure on Clinton to triumph in Ohio and Texas early next month to salvage her campaign after a bitter, historic battle rolling heavily in Obama’s favour.

In capturing Hawaii, Obama, vying to become the first black U.S. president, captured 20 convention delegates needed to become the party nominee.

However, Wisconsin was the bigger prize, offering 74 delegates and — with its large number of blue collar voters — a preview of what could happen in industrialized states like Ohio on March 4.

Obama was attracting lower-income and unionized voters that usually side with Clinton, and splitting the support of white women who have flocked to her in the past.

Recent polls suggested Clinton was still leading Obama in Ohio but her long-held advantage in Texas had nearly vanished. Pennsylvania votes in April.

“Both Senator Obama and I would make history,” Clinton told a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, where she didn’t mention her loss in Wisconsin. “But only one of us is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans. Only one of us has spent 35 years being a doer, a fighter and a champion for those who need a voice.”

For the Republicans, presumptive nominee John McCain added to his own delegate count while trying to shake remaining rival Mike Huckabee.

He won the Republican primaries in Wisconsin and Washington state. A

t a rally in Columbus, Ohio, he zeroed in on Obama as his likely opponent in November’s general election, criticizing his inexperience in foreign affairs and saying his soaring oratory lacks substance.

“I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change,” he said. “I will wage a campaign of determination, passion and the right ideas.”

Obama hit back in his own speech, saying McCain “represents the policy of yesterday and we want to be the party of tomorrow.”

Polls in advance of Wisconsin had suggested a closer Democratic race, and it should have been a competitive state for Clinton given that voters are mostly white, with lower incomes and don’t have college degrees.

Seven in 10 voters said U.S. trade with other countries costs jobs.

Clinton’s camp released a plan late Tuesday promising to “dramatically strengthen” the trade deal’s labour and environmental provisions, boost enforcement mechanisms and change rules allowing foreign companies to challenge American laws at tribunals outside the U.S. court system.

The Democratic race has become increasingly testy, with the Clinton camp accusing Obama on the weekend of plagarizing part of a speech from his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Patrick has dismissed the charges as bogus since he has helped the campaign with speechwriting. Obama noted that Clinton has borrowed some of his phrases in her public appearances.

Clinton argues that she’s the only one who can stand up to the Republican attack machine.

Both Obama and Clinton have been emphasizing plans to help struggling families. And they’ve been taking shots at the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Obama has slammed the deal as one reason the country is facing economic turmoil and issued a rebuke to Clinton, whose husband pushed hard for the NAFTA over the objections of many Democrats.

His campaign has already distributed mass mailings critical of Clinton on the issue in Ohio.

Attacks on Obama in 08 By Clinton get more Frequent

First we will get the political cartoon of the day. This cartoon is a great laugh during the current trend of the nominational races.

In the Republican race, John McCain, the presumptive nominee, was looking for convincing wins over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in primaries in Wisconsin and Washington state to show that the party is rallying behind his candidacy. The Arizona senator picked up former President George H. W. Bush's support on Monday, a critical blessing by a pillar of the Republican establishment.

Democrats in Wisconsin and Hawaii were voting Tuesday in a presidential campaign that has gotten increasingly negative with charges of broken promises, plagiarism and petty partisanship. Hillary Rodham Clinton was looking to rebound after eight straight losses to Barack Obama who was looking to increase his lead in the race for nominating delegates.

Recent polls show tight race in Wisconsin, even as Clinton's advisers have publicly downplayed their expectations, giving her a chance to halt Obama's streak of eight straight wins since they battled to a split decision in 22 contests on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday.

At stake in Tuesday's primary are 74 of Wisconsin 92 convention delegates, while Obama's native Hawaii, which also holds its caucuses on Tuesday, offers 20.

Obama recently took over the lead in the chase for nomination delegates 1,281-1,218. It takes 2,025 delegates to secure the presidential nomination at the party's convention this summer in Denver.

Clinton, who a few weeks ago was the front-runner, hopes a strong showing in Wisconsin will give her a boost going into the bigger state contests in Texas and Ohio on March 4 that could decide the fate of her bid to be the first female U.S. president. Obama is trying to become the country's first black president.

The following poll was conducted Feb. 14-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In Texas, a must-win state for the New York senator, a poll released Monday showed a tight race, with Clinton at 50 percent, and Obama at 48 percent. About a quarter of state Democrats said they could still change their minds, according to the CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll. McCain was leading preacher-turned-politician Mike Huckabee in the Republican race, 55 percent to 32 percent.

On Monday, Clinton's top advisers tried to raise doubts about Obama's credibility, pointing out that the Illinois senator has hedged on a pledge to limit himself to public financing in the general election and accusing him of plagiarism for using lines first spoken by his friend Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, during a conference call with reporters, pointed to a speech Obama delivered at a Democratic Party dinner in Wisconsin Saturday that lifted lines from an address by Patrick.

"If your whole candidacy is about words, those words should be your own," Clinton herself told reporters during a late-evening campaign flight. "That's what I think."

The Associated Press reported in January that Obama had borrowed ideas and speech points from Patrick, often without attribution. But with Obama now leading in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton's campaign is using this example in an attempt to chip away at the premise of his candidacy.

The passage in question from Obama's speech addressed the power of oratory, and he used it to rebut Clinton's oft-repeated charge that she is the candidate of substance and he is the candidate of flash.

"Don't tell me words don't matter," Obama told the Wisconsin audience. "'I have a dream' — just words? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' — just words? 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' — just words? Just speeches?"

Patrick, who made history by becoming Massachusetts' first elected black governor, used similar language during his 2006 race to push back on similar charges from his Republican opponent.

Obama blasted the Clinton campaign's accusations, but acknowledged he should have given the Massachusetts governor credit.

Obama takes Maine Caucuses

Voter turnout in parts of Maine was reported to be strong on Sunday afternoon, despite a snowstorm. The Portland Press Herald reported on its Web site that there were long lines at the caucus in Portland, while a large crowd in Cape Elizabeth delayed the start of the caucus there by more than an hour.

Obama's victory in Maine follows those in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska on Saturday. Combined with his advantage in fund-raising, these victories should give him momentum going the primaries on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC.

Clinton's defeat in Maine came on the same day as her campaign manager stepped down. A Clinton spokesman said the departure of Patti Solis Doyle as campaign manager was not a shakeup, and Solis Doyle said in an e-mail statement that she would serve as a senior adviser to the campaign. She will be replaced by Maggie Williams, another senior adviser to the campaign.

Senator Barack Obama defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Maine caucuses on Sunday, giving him his fourth victory this weekend as he headed into three more state contests on Tuesday.

With 90 percent of Maine's precincts reporting, Obama received 58.7 percent of the vote, compared with 40.7 percent for Clinton.

While Obama had been expected to win the contests on Saturday, the margin of his victories were surprising, particularly in Nebraska and Washington, which offered the day's biggest trove of delegates. In both states, he captured 68 percent of the vote in caucuses, compared with Clinton's roughly 32 percent. In Louisiana, Obama won 57 percent, to Clinton's 36 percent.

"We won in Louisiana, we won in Nebraska, we won in Washington state," Obama said Saturday at the Virginia Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond, Virginia. "We won North, we won South, we won in between. And I believe that we can win in Virginia on Tuesday if you're ready to stand for change."

Obama and Clinton both campaigned in Virginia on Sunday.

While Obama's victories are significant, the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, so Clinton stands to walk away from the contests with a considerable number. The Associated Press estimated that Obama won 69 delegates in the three states on Saturday, while Clinton won 40 delegates. The AP also estimated that Obama won at least 13 more delegates in the Maine caucuses, while Clinton won at least eight more delegates.

Both campaigns have dug in for a long and fierce delegate fight.

Clinton's advisers had predicted she might not win any of the contests in February, and said she was looking ahead to March 4, when voters in Rhode Island and particularly Ohio and Texas will decide the next big bloc of delegates.

With the fight for the nomination extending beyond the 22 contests last Tuesday, voters in a fresh batch of states have suddenly found themselves in the thick of the most competitive primary in a generation. In past years they tended to cast their votes well after the nominee was effectively chosen.

On Saturday, with the contest so close, excitement ran high, as did turnout.

In Nebraska, The Omaha World-Herald reported that organizers at two caucus sites had been so overrun by crowds that they abandoned traditional caucusing and asked voters to drop makeshift scrap-paper ballots into a box instead. In Sarpy County, in suburban Omaha, traffic backed up on Highway 370 when thousands of voters showed up at a precinct where organizers had planned for hundreds.

In the Republican contests on Saturday, Mike Huckabee won the caucuses in Kansas and, by the barest of margins, the Louisiana primary, in a setback for Senator John McCain as he tries to rally the party around him as its nominee. But in Washington, the state party declared McCain the winner of its caucuses on Saturday night, after a close race with Huckabee.

McCain's opponents have tried to cast doubt on his appeal to conservative voters throughout the campaign. But on "Fox News Sunday," President George W. Bush said emphatically that McCain was a conservative, although the president noted that the Arizona senator "has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative, and I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

"I know his convictions," Bush said. "I know the principles that drive him and no doubt in my mind that he is a true conservative."

Clinton daughter gets "Pimped Out," Hillary threatens to boycott debate

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson excoriated MSNBC’s David Shuster for making the comment, which he called “beneath contempt” and disgusting.

“I, at this point, can’t envision a scenario where we would continue to engage in debates on that network given that comment,” he said.

Shuster said on air Thursday: “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”

Shuster has since been temporarily suspended and apologized on air twice Friday.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is threatening to boycott future debates on MSNBC after one of its correspondents suggested the campaign had “pimped out” Chelsea Clinton by having her place phone calls to Democratic Party superdelegates on her mother’s behalf.

“I used a phrase that was inappropriate. I apologize to the Clinton family, the Clinton campaign and all of you who are justifiably offended,” he said Friday evening on “Tucker.”

“As I said this morning on MSNBC, all Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton, and I am particularly sorry that my language diminished the regard and the respect she has earned from all of us, and the respect her parents have earned in how they raised her,” he said.

Outside of the apology, MSNBC said he would not be allowed on air.

“NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks,” MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said, adding the network was hopeful the debate would take place as planned.

But the debate is still up in the air. Clinton and Barack Obama were scheduled to participate in an MSNBC debate Feb. 26 in Ohio, one of just two debates Obama has consented to before March 4, when Ohio and other states hold primaries.

Wolfson said neither Chelsea nor Sen. Clinton had received a phone call offering a personal apology, even though Shuster told The Associated Press he’s tried to reach Clinton to do so.

“I’m not familiar with any apology,” Wolfson said, during a call where the campaign also announced raising more than $8 million online since Super Tuesday. “It’s the kind of thing that should never be said on a national news network.”

The Clinton campaign has pushed hard for as many debates as possible with Obama, but Wolfson said the Feb. 26 debate could be jeopardized.

Wolfson pointed to what he called a pattern of tasteless comments by MSNBC anchors about the Clinton campaign. Weeks ago, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews apologized to the former first lady after suggesting her political career had been made possible her husband’s philandering.

General Election Updates and Voter Confidence

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looked ahead last night for an extended battle for the presidential nomination after splitting wins in the biggest primary day in US history, while Republican John McCain cemented his front-runner status after a slew of big victories.

Clinton won in eight key Super Tuesday races, including the most valuable, California and New York. She also maintains a lead in the all-important tally of delegates.

But Obama is close behind with wins in at least 13 of the 22 states that held Democratic contests, and he has fresh momentum as the race moves into territory where he would seem to have an edge.

McCain's coast-to-coast "Super Tuesday" wins in crucial states put him on the verge of a stunning political comeback.

He still faces opposition from conservatives unhappy with his past stances on immigration, tax cuts and campaign finance reform. He planned a speech to a conference of conservative activists in Washington today.

"We will unite the party behind our conservative principles and move forward to the general election," he said in Phoenix.

The Arizona senator, whose campaign was all but dead last summer, won nine states, including California and New York, giving him a huge haul of the convention delegates who select the party's presidential nominee.

Since our democratic process suffered a fiasco in the 2000 presidential election, many states have spent millions to revamp their voting systems. The Help America Vote Act, which became law in 2002, set aside federal money for such reforms, enabling lever and punch-card machines to be replaced and poll workers to be better trained (well, more on that in a moment). Now about 40 percent of the votes in America are submitted through electronic voting machines.

So with record turnouts in all 23 states this week, and many states braving the transition to new technology — electronic or optical-scan machines — there were real concerns about what might happen to your ballot on its way to the box. New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Arkansas, Delaware and Tennessee were most closely watched for mishaps — mainly because they require neither any kind of paper receipt for your vote nor the random checks of voting machines conducted by other states. And on the flipside, concerns were raised in California — where Diebold and other electronic machines were decertified because of errors of potential tampering — by the quick conversion to paper ballots that left some counties counting votes by hand.

But most of the issues on Super Tuesday were isolated — if no less embarrassing for that fact. New Jersey can boast of a truly awkward moment, when Governor John Corzine had to wait an hour because the machines weren't working at his polling location and about a dozen voters turned away. In New York and Arizona, voters reported several instances of their names missing from the log at their regular polling locations. In addition, some New Yorkers reported that, in cases where voting machines malfunctioned, they were told to forfeit their vote rather than given an emergency paper ballot.

The longest waits were in Georgia, where poll workers checked IDs against computerized registration records for the first time, leaving some voters waiting for 90 minutes while booths stood empty (although that was still nothing compared to the infamous 12-hour lines that plagued 2004's general election in Ohio). Elsewhere, in Los Angeles, voting machines were not delivered to several voting locations, The Associated Press reported. But the far-and-away winner for sheer Three Stooges-style voting mayhem was Chicago, where 20 voters were told to fill out forms using "invisible ink," according to the Chicago Tribune. Truly. You can't make this up.

Kennedy Endorses Obama in 08

Obama beamed as first Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy, then Caroline Kennedy and finally the country's best known liberal took turns bestowing their praise. "Today isn't just about politics for me. It's personal," Obama told a boisterous crowd packed into the American University basketball arena a few miles across town from the White House.

It was also about politics, though, and a rapidly approaching set of primaries and caucuses across more than 20 states on Feb. 5, with more than 1,600 national convention delegates at stake.

Summoning memories of his brother the slain president, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy led two generations of the First Family of Democratic politics Monday in endorsing Barack Obama for the White House, declaring, "I feel change is in the air."

Obama is a man of rare "grit and grace," Kennedy said in remarks salted with scarcely veiled criticism of the Illinois senator's chief rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as her husband, the former president.

So strong is the Kennedy family's hold on some Democrats that as word spread on Sunday about the elder Kennedy's plans, Clinton announced that she had the backing of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, Townsend lost the gubernatorial election in Maryland five years ago.

In his remarks, Kennedy methodically sought to rebut many of the arguments leveled by Obama's critics.

Kennedy's endorsement was ardently sought by all three of the remaining Democratic presidential contenders, and he delivered it at a pivotal time in the race. A liberal lion in his fifth decade in the Senate, the Massachusetts senator is in a position to help Obama court voting groups who so far have tilted Clinton's way. These include Hispanics, rank-and-file union workers and lower-income, older voters.

Kennedy is expected to campaign actively for Obama beginning later this week, beginning in Arizona, New Mexico and California. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, will also make campaign appearances, officials said.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said strategists also hope Kennedy can help blunt Clinton's charges that Obama's health plan would not provide coverage for all. "I don't think anybody believes that Ted Kennedy would endorse a candidate who wasn't thoroughly committed to the goal of universal health care," he said.

Clinton betrayed no disappointment at her rival's gain.

"We're all proud of the people we have endorsing us," she said in a conference call with Arizona reporters. Addressing Kennedy's criticism of politicians who pit groups against one another, she said she was "strongly in favor of getting to where our politics can be about the real issues, trying to find common ground."

In his remarks, Kennedy methodically sought to rebut many of the arguments leveled by Obama's critics.

"I know he's ready to be president on day one," Kennedy said, taking on one of Bill Clinton's frequent talking points.

"From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth," he said, an apparent reference to the former president's statement that Obama's early anti-war stance was a "fairy tale."

"With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

"With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay," Kennedy said.

The Massachusetts senator had remained on the sideline of the presidential campaign for months, saying he was friends with Obama, Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, as well as several Senate colleagues who are no longer in the race.

Kennedy began by paying tribute to Sen. Clinton's advocacy for issues such as health care and women's rights. "Whoever is our nominee will have my enthusiastic support," he said.

But he quickly pivoted to a strong endorsement of Obama, who he said "has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character, matched to the extraordinary demands of this moment in history."

"I believe that a wave of change is moving across America," Kennedy said.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the senator's son, completed the family tableau onstage with Obama. The congressman said, "In times such as these, we need, as we had with my uncle, a leader who can inspire confidence and faith in our government. A sense that our government can be good again."

Lately, according to several associates, Kennedy became angered with what he viewed as racially divisive comments by Bill Clinton. Nearly two weeks ago, he played a personal role in arranging a brief truce between the Clintons and Obama on the issue.

Obama, 46, is nearly 30 years younger than Kennedy. "I was too young to remember John Kennedy, and I was just a child when Robert Kennedy ran for president," he said. "But in the stories I heard growing up, I saw how my grandparents and mother spoke about them, and about that period in our nation's life — as a time of great hope and achievement."

Kennedy usually refers only sparingly to his assassinated brothers, John and Robert, in his public remarks, and his endorsement of Obama was cast in terms that aides said were unusually personal.

"There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party," Kennedy said, referring to Harry S. Truman.

"And John Kennedy replied, 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership.'

"So it is with Barack Obama," he added.

Obama versus Clinton and Clinton in 08

The benefits of having Mr. Clinton challenge Mr. Obama in the 2008 election so forcefully, over Iraq and Mr. Obama’s record and statements, they say, are worth the trade-offs of potentially overshadowing Mrs. Clinton at times, undermining his reputation as a statesman and raising the question among voters about whether they are putting him in the White House as much as her.

Advisers to Senator Hillary Clinton in the 2008 elections say they have concluded that Bill Cinton's aggressive politicking against Senator Barack Obama is resonating with voters, and they intend to keep him on the campaign trail in a major role after the South Carolina primary.

After three weeks of nearly nonstop campaigning, set off by Mrs. Clinton’s third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Clinton has shown as much ability as his wife — or even more — to stir public and news media skepticism about Mr. Obama’s position on Iraq and his message of nonpartisan leadership, Clinton advisers say.

They also see benefits in Mr. Clinton’s drawing the ire of the Obama camp, predicting that there will be a voter backlash against Mr. Obama if the former president looks like a victim in the cut-and-thrust of the race.

“He’s the most popular Democrat in the country; he is the most successful president in recent memory, and attacks on him by Senator Obama and his surrogates will be rejected by voters,” said a Clinton spokesman.

Mr. Clinton is deliberately trying to play bad cop against Mr. Obama, campaign officials say, and is keenly aware that a flash of anger or annoyance will draw even more media and public attention to his arguments. He will continue campaigning full-time for Mrs. Clinton after South Carolina in states with primaries on Feb. 5 where he is especially popular, like Arkansas, California and New York, they say.

The Clintons have come full circle: They are truly two-for-the-price-of-one in this presidential race. Mr. Clinton used that phrase when he first ran in 1992, only to back off after voters raised eyebrows, but now the Clintons are all but openly running together as a power couple ready to take office in 2009. Mrs. Clinton views him as a full partner, her advisers say, relying on him over the last few weeks to salvage and steer her campaign.

Yet some Democrats and political analysts see downsides in Mr. Clinton’s outsize role. Given his stature, the former president is potentially sowing deep divisions within a party that until now has been remarkably enthusiastic and unified about the 2008 election. He dispensed this week with any pretense that he was above it all.

“Bill Clinton seems to not be in his traditional mode,” said Jack Bass, an authority on Southern politics at the College of Charleston, who has observed Mr. Clinton for more than 30 years. “I’ve just never seen these negative emotions in public before. I know he has a temper, but this confrontational attitude with journalists, and the anger itself, is surprising to me.”

Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, has stuck largely to the role of good cop this week, sounding more like a general election candidate as she attacked President Bush over the economy and mostly ignored Mr. Obama. In a speech on the economy on Thursday, she repeatedly attacked Mr. Bush but barely referred to her rival.

President Bush, she said, “has stayed at a comfortable cruising altitude, well above the realities of people’s lives, delegating responsibility to his advisers, hoping the buck would stop somewhere else.”

David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, said in an interview Thursday that the Clintons were “throwing everything into winning South Carolina,” though he added that he was disturbed by “inaccurate” attacks on Mr. Obama. Mr. Plouffe cited a Clinton radio advertisement in South Carolina that suggested Mr. Obama liked Republican Party ideas in the 1990s. (The commercial stopped running Thursday; officials said it had been meant only for a 24-hour run.)

“This is not just a spouse or an average surrogate,” Mr. Plouffe said. “He’s a former president, and I think that comes with a little higher responsibility about what he says and how he says it.”

Mr. Clinton’s political strategist in 1992, James Carville, said that the jousting between the two camps had hardly turned toxic, and that the stakes of this election were too high to have a milquetoast campaign.

“This is not Williams College students electing a commencement speaker. This is a huge deal,” Mr. Carville said. “Does the president risk going overboard? Sure. But Obama runs a risk of being wussified.”

Mr. Clinton, meanwhile, has treaded onto far more combustible ground, like race. He says that people in his audiences “never” raise race, but several have. At a forum Wednesday in Kingstree, for example, a black pastor declared, “Black America is voting for Mr. Obama because he is black.” Mr. Clinton said he hoped that, for the country’s sake, that would not be the case. He also said that he thought no one would be voting against Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton on the base of race or sex.

And yet earlier in the day, in Charleston, he suggested that his wife might lose the primary because of race. “They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender,” Mr. Clinton said, “and that’s why people tell me that Hillary doesn’t have a chance to win here.”

It was not clear if Mr. Clinton was lowering expectations for her in South Carolina, but the polls have done that. Most show her losing the black vote overwhelmingly to Mr. Obama; the question for Mrs. Clinton will be the degree to which white voters turn out and the degree to which they vote for John Edwards in these 2008 Elections.

Hillary in 08: Bill attracts attacks.

Mr. Bill Clinton has suddenly become the shining new target for the Obama Campaign in the 08 Democratic Primaries. With his outspoken personality he has made a few comments that have attracted the lime light and put the focus on his words instead of the beliefs of his wife. Could this prove to be beneficial for the Clinton Campaign or will voters hold responsible, Hillary Clinton, for the actions and words of her husband Bill?

The Guardian describes the scene well:

At Lizard's Thicket diner, by the side of a Columbia highway, he let his breakfast, a southern concoction of omelette and grits, grow cold.

He was enjoying taking questions from reporters too much to care about food. After weeks of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama being the top of the news agenda, he was the story today.

Standing with a cup of coffee addressing about 40 journalists crowded into the diner, he joked: "I like to stay out of the papers. I am not used to this. I am a little out of practise."

While aides pleaded for him to be allowed to eat and told reporters "no more questions", Bill Clinton could not resist taking another and another. He spoke about his role as Hillary's attack dog against Obama, about whether his presence was doing her more harm than good and about the increasing viciousness of exchanges between the Clinton and Obama camps.

Arguments were inevitable in politics, he said, adding: "This is a contact sport." Bill Clinton's shift from being Hillary's spouse, loyally standing behind her on stage and working daily town hall meetings, to top of the news agenda began yesterday morning.

The story accelerated after an ugly series of personal exchanges between the two leading Democratic candidates in a televised debate at the South Carolina holiday resort, Myrtle Beach.

Obama complained about Bill Clinton making statements that were "not factually accurate". The story grew overnight as Hillary Clinton confirmed she was leaving South Carolina - a virtual acceptance that she is not expected to win the state's Democratic primary - and would instead concentrate elsewhere.

She was leaving Bill in charge. He has won South Carolina before. Is this southern politician, one of the most formidable campaigners in modern history, capable of producing another surprise?

Sometimes labeled the first "black" president because of the rapport with African-Americans he established during his presidency, is he capable of defeating Obama - or at least narrowing his poll lead - in a state where about half the Democratic voters are African-American?

And there is another question. If he is going to be so dominant in the campaign, will he also interfere if Hillary wins the White House and he becomes, as he himself described it, the First Laddie?