IOWA
PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Thursday, June 26, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Gallup
poll: McCain, Obama tied nationally
The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update on the presidential election finds John McCain and Barack Obama exactly tied at 45% among registered voters nationwide.
Nader: Obama trying to "talk white," appeal to "white guilt"
Independent
presidential candidate Ralph Nader says the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, is trying to
"talk white" by downplaying poverty issues.
... "I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos," Nader says. "Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards."
Asked if he thinks Obama is trying to "talk white," Nader said, "of course..."
Obama's response : "It is what it is":
"First
of all, what’s clear is that Ralph Nader hasn’t been paying attention
to my speeches," Sen. Barack Obama "because all the issues that he
talked about, whether it’s predatory lending or the housing
foreclosure crisis or what have you are issues that the traveling
press can tell you I’ve devoted multiple speeches, town hall meetings
to throughout this campaign."
Obama continued: "Ralph Nader’s trying to get attention. He’s become a perennial political candidate. I think it’s a shame, because if you look at his legacy in terms of consumer protections, it’s an extraordinary one but at this point he’s somebody who’s trying to get attention and whose campaign hasn’t gotten any traction and so what better way to get some traction than to make an inflammatory statement like the one that he made. It is what it is."
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain... today's headlines with excerpts
Politico: John McCain doesn't work weekends
...
after workweeks full of fundraisers, town hall meetings and
interviews, McCain has been, in campaign parlance, “down” on nearly
every Saturday or Sunday for 20 weeks, largely sequestered away from
the news media.
... That isn't to say McCain is kicking back and relaxing every weekend.
He’s hosted reporters and donors on separate occasions at his Arizona cabin, done a guest turn on Saturday Night Live and visited troops in both Iraq and at Walter Reed hospital.
Yet aside from an April rally on the steps of the courthouse in Prescott, Arizona, McCain has done little to capture media attention on weekends for nearly five months.
... McCain officials note that he’ll campaign on weekends for much of the summer and point to a speech he’s giving Saturday in Washington to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and a fundraiser in Kentucky later that day.
McCain aides seek undecideds, non-partisans for town hall meetings
McCain aides said they want voters to ask McCain the type of questions that inspire the kind of give-and-take in which he is most effective, said Sarah Simmons, the campaign's director of strategy.
McCain pledges oil independence for U.S.
John McCain pledged Wednesday that if elected president, he would put the nation on a path toward independence from foreign oil by 2025.
... Promising to break what he described as a stalemate on energy security issues in Washington, he also repeated many of the other energy initiatives he has outlined in recent days: offering consumers a $5,000 tax credit for buying zero-emission cars, instituting a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions and directing $2 billion a year until 2024 to developing clean-coal technology.
McCain pushes back on LATimes/Bloomberg poll
...the short argument is that the survey's party id sample was flawed.
"If the L.A. Times survey is recalculated to a more normalized range for party identification, McCain would be down in the mid-single digits, which is what we are seeing in most other polls," write Bill McInturff, Liz Harrington and David Kanevsky.
Cindy McCain: Diana is my inspiration
The
woman who wants to be the next Republican First Lady pledged today to
expand her humanitarian work if she makes it into the White House,
taking inspiration from the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
Speaking ahead of a political fundraiser in London tonight, Cindy McCain said that she felt "very honored" to serve on the board of the Halo Trust, the Anglo-American anti-landmine charity endorsed by Diana and which organized her controversial walk through an Angolan minefield in 1997, the year of her death.
Speaking to The Times, Mrs. McCain said of Diana: "She was (a) great inspiration to me and to the British people as well. She was a remarkable person and had a loving heart.”
Barack Obama... today's headlines with excerpts
Clinton, Obama begin Democratic unity dance
Sen.
Hillary Clinton urged her former supporters to back Sen.
Barack Obama and touted Democratic unity in a
closed-door meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill
Wednesday.
... "I am 100 percent committed to doing everything I possibly can to make sure that Sen. Obama is sworn in as the next president of the United States next January here in this Capitol," Clinton told reporters on Capitol Hill.
It's the first of several orchestrated events this week designed to show Democrats that the two are reconciling. Clinton will also attend an Obama fundraiser at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington Thursday and campaign with Obama for the first time in the small town of Unity, N.H., Friday.
Obama reaches out to Bill Clinton
"I want him involved," Obama said. "He is a brilliant politician. He was a outstanding president. So I want his help not only in campaigning, but also in governing, and I’m confident I will get that help."
Netroots feel jilted by Obama's FISA stand
When former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, the progressive Netroots took their affections to Barack Obama, defending him against attack from Hillary Rodham Clinton and others.
But with his support of a government surveillance bill that offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies — a bill that he vowed last year to filibuster — the honeymoon has ended...
Obama opposes Supreme Court rape decision
A longtime critic of the death penalty, Sen. Barack Obama said he opposed the Supreme Court's decision today that child rapists may not be executed in cases where they do not kill their victims.
... In today's 5 to 4 decision, with the more liberal members forming the majority, the court struck down a 1995 Louisiana law that allowed the death penalty to be used against anyone who rapes a child under the age of 12. The decision overturned the death penalty for Patrick Kennedy, a 43-year-old who was convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter in 1998.
Rendell explains why Clinton needs Obama to help with debt
Recalling two elections he lost in his career, Rendell says, "Gosh, when people saw me coming they crossed over to the other side of the street. It isn't so easy to raise the money when you've lost."
But, Rendell said, "if you're the winner, if you're the nominee, people are very much inclined to help Hillary Clinton, or whoever your opponent was, because you're asking, because the winner has a tremendous amount of leverage."
see also:
Obama won't email about Clinton debt
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