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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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Linda Eddy)
Friday, June 27, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
OBAMA-BUCKS:
Obamas give Clinton $4,600 towards debt
Senator
Barack Obama said on Thursday that he had written a personal check of
$2,300 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a good-will gesture intended
to nudge his top donors to help ease Mrs. Clinton’s campaign debt and
help the two Democrats move beyond their rivalry to focus on the fall
contest.
... “I wrote my check to the Hillary for President Committee,” said Mr. Obama, who was greeted with booming applause. His wife, Michelle, also contributed $2,300.
“I recognize that this room shares the same passion that a roomful of my supporters would show,” Mr. Obama added. “I do not expect that passion to be transferred. Senator Clinton is unique, and your relationships with her are unique. Senator Clinton and I at our core agree deeply that this country needs to change.”
see also:
Pool report from Clinton-Obama event at the Mayflower
Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms.
The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities, Chicago and San Francisco among them. Federal gun restrictions, however, were expected to remain largely intact.
Obama reaction: straddle
Barack Obama, straddling both sides of the issue, said merely that the court did not find an unfettered right to bear arms and that the ruling "will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country." But another Chicagoan, Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, called the ruling "very frightening" and predicted more violence and higher taxes to pay for extra police if his city's gun restrictions are lost.
McCain reaction: landmark victory
John McCain welcomed the ruling as "a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom."
GOP aims at Obama after gun ruling
The Republican National Committee and John McCain's campaign seized on the ruling and used it to frame Democrat Barack Obama as a radical liberal on the issue of gun rights, in the first step toward a media and advertising push in more rural battleground states that “highlights that Barack Obama is the most anti gun candidate in American presidential history,” according to RNC spokesman Danny Diaz.
“This issue is a big fat wedge in target states,” said Matt McDonald,
a senior adviser to McCain, citing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and
West Virginia. “Obviously it is an issue where he is at odds with
working-class voters.”
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain... today's headlines with excerpts
McCain tries to balance energy issues, votes
The presidential candidate reiterated his call for building 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 — and a total of 100 at some point beyond that — during a speech at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Despite the waste they might generate, McCain said they are part of a comprehensive strategy he has taken to calling the "Lexington Project," for the Revolutionary War site.
McCain didn't repeat his recent suggestion that the waste site at Yucca Mountain may be rendered unnecessary if the world can agree on a location for a foreign repository. That comment in Texas drew cries of disbelief from critics who accused him of pandering after long supporting Yucca...
John McCain isn't taking much of a Big Apple bite
While Barack Obama's campaign is busy gearing up to offer at least the pretense of competing in all 50 states, here's a sure sign that John McCain is being a bit more selective -- his New York headquarters is located in New Jersey.
Russell Berman of the New York Sun reported that on Wednesday the McCain camp opened what it "billed as a 'New Jersey/New York regional campaign headquarters' in Woodbridge, N.J., a 30- to 40-minute drive from New York City."
Barack Obama... today's headlines with excerpts
Obama: change agent goes conventional
Barack
Obama has crafted an image as an unconventional
candidate, a change agent and a post-partisan politician
who represents a dramatic break from the status quo. But
since securing the Democratic presidential nomination,
when confronted with a series of thorny issues the
Illinois senator has pursued a conspicuously
conventional path, one that falls far short of his
soaring rhetoric.
Faced with tough choices on fronts ranging from public financing and town hall meetings to warrantless surveillance and the Second Amendment, Obama passed up opportunities to take bold stands and make striking departures from customary politics. Instead, he has followed a familiar tack, straddling controversial issues and choosing politically advantageous routes that will ensure his campaign a cash edge and minimize damaging blowback on several highly sensitive issues.
Obama's 50-state strategy
As Plouffe describes it, the much-discussed "50 State Strategy" is pretty close to being just that. While he admitted that only a few staffers will be placed in some states -- one of them likely being Utah, one of the most conservative states in the country -- Plouffe said that in some states unlikely to vote for Obama, such as Texas, there are "tens of thousands of people who want to help" in some way, like working at phone banks. "The reality is we've got a lot of volunteers in these states," Plouffe said, "and we want a productive way to use them."
AFL-CIO endorses Obama
After months of holding back, the AFL-CIO endorsed Barack Obama today, saying it would put more than $50 million and hundreds of thousands of volunteers to work helping elect the Illinois senator after he defeated the primary candidate whom the coalition's biggest two unions had endorsed, Hillary Clinton.
AFL President John Sweeney said in an interview that the coalition was highly confident that its efforts on Obama's behalf would prove more successful than its work on behalf of Al Gore and John Kerry, elections that left the labor movement facing an administration hostile to most labor demands.
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