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."

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.

Hillary in 08: Does Michigan Like Clinton in 08?

Clinton's two main rivals -- Barack Obama and John Edwards -- removed their names from the ballot, and the national party stripped Michigan of its delegates because it held the primary before Feb. 5, a violation of party rules.
Hillary Clinton scored a largely empty victory in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary, taking slightly more than half the votes, while her main ballot opponent -- Uncommitted -- received about 40%.
Clinton led Uncommitted 55%-40% with 97% of the vote counted Tuesday night. About 600,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.
The National Election Pool poll, conducted by Edison/Mitofsky of New Jersey, surveyed 997 Democratic voters at 40 polling places in Michigan. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
"Anything over 50%, we're ecstatic," Blanchard said. "A win is a win is a win, given what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire."
Christina Montague, state coordinator of Michiganders for Obama, was happy with the result, and said it proved Obama's strength in Michigan.
"We didn't want to be totally disenfranchised," she said. "I think we've done a fabulous job. We really worked hard."
Relatively few independent and Republican voters chose to vote in the Democratic primary, the poll found.