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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Thursday, August 7, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Bill Clinton to speak at Democratic convention
Bill
Clinton will speak August 27, the night of the vice
presidential nominee's speech, in Denver, Colorado, the
sources said.
Clinton and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama spoke Thursday, sources said.
With the convention less than three weeks away, Sen. Hillary Clinton is making it clear that she wants the voices of her supporters heard, as well.
But the big question is, what kind of voice will they have?
... She and former rival Obama issued a joint statement Wednesday night saying they are "working together to make sure the fall campaign and the convention are a success."
"At the Democratic convention, we will ensure that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected and our party will be fully unified heading into the November election," the statement said.
In
a message on her blog, Clinton told supporters that "no decisions have
been made yet" in regard to the role her backers will have.
Cloud of disunity over Dem convention?
A cloud of disunity hangs over preparations for the Democratic party's national convention later this month as Barack Obama's vanquished primary opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton has not ruled out having her name put in nomination for a roll call vote — a potentially major distraction leading into the final campaign stretch against Republican John McCain...
Dems worried about Obama's response
to McCain attacks
McCai
n
has said that his rival would lose a war in order to win
a campaign, accused him of going to a gym rather than
visiting wounded troops, and, while aides asserted that
he had "played the race card," hinted that Obama has a
messiah complex and portrayed him as a celebrity
comparable to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. That final
line of assault continued with a new McCain ad, again
mocking Obama as "the biggest celebrity in the world."
Such attacks have raised worries among Democratic strategists -- haunted by John F. Kerry's 2004 run and Al Gore's razor-thin loss in 2000 -- that Obama has not responded in kind with a parallel assault on McCain's character. Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be widespread..
McCain takes over lead on YouTube hits -
no longer Obama's
turf
Mr. McCain has pumped out a series of brutal yet entertaining attack ads and Web videos mocking the press and Mr. Obama, and the combination of wit and insult has pushed his YouTube channel to the sixth most watched on the site this week. Mr. McCain has beat Mr. Obama's channel for seven straight days and 11 of the past 14 days, in a signal he intends to compete for the YouTube vote.
That is a giant reversal. Mr. Obama had been quadrupling Mr. McCain's YouTube views and beat him every day since February, according to TubeMogul, which tracks online video viewing.
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain... today's headlines with excerpts
McCain camp to return about $50,000 in donations
John
McCain's campaign says it is returning tens of thousands of dollars in
contributions solicited by a foreign citizen.
The move follows the disclosure that the money was being raised by a Jordanian man who is a business partner of prominent Florida Republican Harry Sargeant III.
The McCain campaign says some of the people solicited by Mustafa Abu Naba'a had no intention of supporting McCain for president.
Campaign spokesman Brian Rogers says "that just didn't sound right to us" so the money is being returned.
McCain says Obama wants to forfeit war in Iraq
John McCain, who has contended that Barack Obama is willing to lose in Iraq to win the election, on Thursday said his rival would forfeit the war as part of an agenda that also promotes big government and high taxes.
... "Government is too big, he wants to grow it. Taxes are to high, he wants to raise them," McCain said. "Congress spends too much and he proposes more. We need more energy and he's against producing it. We're finally winning in Iraq, and he wants to forfeit."
McCain blames Congress for energy crisis
Republican
presidential candidate John McCain said today that the nation's energy
crisis is a direct result of congressional failure and called on
Congress, now in a five-week summer recess, to get back to work.
"This burden is being imposed on us because of our inaction," he said at a town hall meeting here.
Rove: What John McCain should do next
"... Mr. Obama has the easier path to victory: reassure a restive electorate that he's up to the job. Mr. McCain must both educate voters to his opponent's weaknesses and persuade them that he has a vision for the coming four years. This will require a disciplined, focused effort. Mr. McCain has gotten this far fighting an unscripted guerrilla campaign. But it won't get him all the way to the White House."
Exxon [hearts] Obama
McCain
has received three times more money from the oil industry in general
-- $1.3 million for McCain compared to approximately $394,000 for
Obama. But that said, Obama has received more campaign cash than
McCain has from the employees of some of the biggest oil companies --
Exxon, Chevron and BP.
This might seem to complicate Obama's continual use of Exxon-Mobil on the stump...
Obama says reports of Party friction are media creation
Barack Obama said Thursday that the controversy over how whether Hillary Clinton’s delegates would be able to vote for her at the Democratic convention in Denver was a media creation — and that he hopes his upcoming vacation helps cure any “Obama fatigue” among voters.
... Asked whether he would be content if Clinton’s name were placed into nomination at the convention, he responded “I didn't say that. I said they are working it out, guys.”
Obama adviser blames McCain ad for poll dip
A senior adviser to Barack Obama has blamed recent attack advertisements comparing the Democratic presidential hopeful to celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton for a dip in Mr Obama’s polls with voters.
Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the Mr Obama’s Republican rival John McCain was seeing a “short-term blip” as a result of the advertising, including one that used the image of Charlton Heston as Moses to mock the supposedly messianic Mr Obama as being “The One”.
Democratic jitters as Obama heads for Hawaii
With
polls showing him neck-and-neck with John McCain at a stage at which
many Democrats expected he would be in the clear lead, they worry
about the kind of stray image that helped to defeat John Kerry in
2004.
In a piece of footage endlessly recycled to mock his supposed elitism and even foreignness, Mr Kerry was caught on camera windsurfing off Massachusetts. Since Mr Obama is taking his holiday at a private beach house in Hawaii, surrounded by the secret service, campaign officials worry less about his exposure to the paparazzi. Besides, they say, most Americans will be tuned into the Olympics.
Obama's view on abortion may divide Catholics
Republicans are gearing up campaigns to depict Mr. Obama as a radical on the question of abortion, because as a state senator in Illinois he opposed a ban on the killing of fetuses born alive.
Mr. Obama has said he had opposed the bill because it was poorly drafted and would have threatened the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established abortion as a constitutional right. He said he would have voted for a similar bill that passed the United States Senate because it did not have the same constitutional flaw as the Illinois bill. Mr. Obama has opposed the federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortions for similar legal and constitutional reasons.
That explanation did not wash with many abortion foes and most Republicans.
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