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.

The Field of Competition in 08 Elections

When it comes right down to it there are a lot of choices in the up and coming election but there are only a handful of smart ones. The republican side has it's 1 or 2 potential candidates and the Democrats have their 2. The question is who is going to come out the victor and who will be spoiled?

The problem for everyone other than Obama is that they are all telling us how bad the world is and how much danger we face and how only they are qualified to protect us. This is a kind of K-Mart version of Bush’s entire administration and Hillary sells it with as much fervor as does Rudy G.

Whomever the Republicans nominate is doomed, not just by the tsunami that Obama is surfing so well but by association with Mr. Bush. John McCain, who embraced the president after having his reputation trashed by him, has the scent of a warmonger on his lapels when he suggests he would have approved the Iraq invasion even without WMD. McCain, who would be the oldest president to ever take the oath of office, can hardly represent the generational tide that will flood the voting booths.

While we may be uncertain of exactly what he is, we do know precisely what he is not and that is one of the other candidates. We know them all in varying degrees. Hillary Clinton’s ambition has been on overt display since her days in Arkansas and the move to New York for the senate run was as calculated as her adopting a southern accent when speaking to African-American voters. We suspect we know what she will be like because we have already seen the male version of her administration.

Mitt Romney looks and sounds like every Republican in the modern era. He has money, product-laden hair, good suits, and the ability to change his positions on issues to attract people he had previously alienated. Unfortunately, the evangelical Christian wing of his party privately and publicly disdains Romney’s Mormon religion and they aren’t about to send out their vanguard of spiritual warriors to get him elected.

There’s Rudy, of course, but his “noun, verb, 911″ tactic was miscalculated and instead of elevating his bona fides it has only served to remind us of that which we do not want to confront. His grasp of facts and the truth has not exactly been tenacious, either. Fred Thompson, it turns out, is a better actor on television than on the campaign trail and ambivalence is not powerfully inspiring to the electorate.

What’s left? Mike Huckabee is having his moment but it is not likely to be sustaining. He is far too much the goober from Arkansas, who once stood and stared seriously into a camera and congratulated Canada on saving its national igloo. He seems to have used his influence in Little Rock as a kind of ATM machine for his family and has made the kind of mistakes as a governor that will make him easy to disassemble in the general election. The evangelicals are attracted to Huckabee but the party apparatchiks are not. He’s in trouble.

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?

Hillary Clinton Rolls Through Nevada on a Razor's Edge

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has won Nevada's Democratic caucuses, giving her two early contest wins over her rivals for her party's presidential nomination.

"I guess this is how the West was won," Clinton told cheering supporters in Las Vegas. The victory was her second straight, coming after an upset win in the New Hampshire primary.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama ran a strong second, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards finishing a distant third.

Voters told NPR that the economy was the most important issues on their minds, including job stability and the high number of foreclosures in the state.


More than 120,000 Democrats — nearly one-third of all of Nevada's registered Democrats and 10 times the number of Nevadans who participated in 2004 — showed up at 520 precincts around the state. This marks the first year Nevada has held an early presidential contest.

Exit polls conducted by the Associated Press and TV networks show that Clinton received the support of female voters, Latinos and senior citizens— winning despite the fact that two major union endorsements went to rivals Obama and Edwards.

Nearly half of Nevada Democrats surveyed in exit polls said they were looking for someone who can make changes. Clinton overwhelmed Obama among the quarter of Nevada Democrats looking for a candidate with the right experience.

Nevadans gathered Saturday in high schools, casinos and cowboy bars for the state's first early presidential caucuses.

As caucus-goers waited to register, candidates worked the long lines, shaking hands and taking photos with supporters. Former President Bill Clinton brought along daughter Chelsea to hand out buttons and fliers to union workers and urge them to support his wife. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama had already received the endorsement of the culinary workers' union, which has roughly 60,000 members.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards left Nevada Friday to focus on other primary contests, after a week of feverish campaigning in the Silver State. Although he came in third in the caucuses, he secured the support of United Brotherhood of Carpenters, as well as the United Steelworkers.

Nine hotels and casinos had been designated as Democratic caucus sites, in a move aimed at making it easier for casino workers to participate. The state Democratic Party let the culinary workers' union, which has endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, choose the sites. The decision was challenged in court by the state teachers' union, which argued that the sites unfairly favor Obama. Ultimately, the court decided the sites were acceptable.

In the days leading up the Nevada caucuses, a Reno Gazette-Journal poll showed Clinton, Edwards and Obama in a statistical dead heat: Obama with 32 percent, Clinton with 30 percent and Edwards with 27 percent.

But Clinton spent little time savoring her victory in Nevada.

The candidates scattered Saturday afternoon to other campaign spots to prepare for upcoming primaries. Next on the calendar is the South Carolina Democratic primary on Jan. 26.

From NPR staff reports and the Associated Press.

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.