[P44]

[André]

Quem vota em Obama?
Luís Delgado

A seis dias de duas novas primárias, nos estados de Washington e Wisconsin, Obama conseguiu o feito histórico de liderar a campanha presidencial democrata, embora com uma escassa vantagem sobre Hillary. Como é que Obama chegou aqui?

Para além do seu carisma pessoal e político, e de uma mensagem aliciante – mudança e renovação – Barak Obama conta ainda com uma juventude disposta a ter uma palavra nas próximas eleições (caso raro nos EUA) e uma classe média e altamente educada que vê nele a saída do impasse nacional. A isto acrescente-se dois outros factores: a elevada taxa de rejeição de Hillary – os americanos não parecem disponíveis para mais uma dose de Clinton - e a dinâmica eleitoral, ou o momento, que advém das últimas vitórias de Obama.

Percebendo que as primárias do dia 19 não lhe serão favoráveis, Hillary adoptou a estratégia de Giuliani – mau agoiro – concentrando-se no Texas e no Ohio. É o tudo ou nada, mas essa aposta pode ser perigosa. A onda Obama está a mexer a nível nacional, e nada está seguro para a dupla Bill e Hillary. Nunca, nem nos piores pesadelos, Hillary pensou que estaria hoje longe de uma nomeação democrata, e que um jovem negro, ainda relativamente inexperiente, pudesse contestar o que ela pensava ser uma eleição tranquila e de direito natural e sucessório.

Diário Digital

[Jaromil]

Uma conferência organizada pela FCSH, e pelo Departamento de Estudos Políticos e Cultura e Literaturas Moderna, para compreender melhor as eleições nos EUA.
Cada vez mais com uma dimensão global, esta é sem duvida a eleição do homem mais poderoso no panorama internacional, a escolha do presidente dos EUA influência o estado do mundo.
Por isso não faltes a esta iniciativa, dia 14 Fevereiro às 18h no Auditório 001 (Torre B)
http://necpri.blogspot.com/

[P44]

Quem vota em Obama?
Luís Delgado

A seis dias de duas novas primárias, nos estados de Washington e Wisconsin, Obama conseguiu o feito histórico de liderar a campanha presidencial democrata, embora com uma escassa vantagem sobre Hillary. Como é que Obama chegou aqui?

Para além do seu carisma pessoal e político, e de uma mensagem aliciante – mudança e renovação – Barak Obama conta ainda com uma juventude disposta a ter uma palavra nas próximas eleições (caso raro nos EUA) e uma classe média e altamente educada que vê nele a saída do impasse nacional. A isto acrescente-se dois outros factores: a elevada taxa de rejeição de Hillary – os americanos não parecem disponíveis para mais uma dose de Clinton - e a dinâmica eleitoral, ou o momento, que advém das últimas vitórias de Obama.

Percebendo que as primárias do dia 19 não lhe serão favoráveis, Hillary adoptou a estratégia de Giuliani – mau agoiro – concentrando-se no Texas e no Ohio. É o tudo ou nada, mas essa aposta pode ser perigosa. A onda Obama está a mexer a nível nacional, e nada está seguro para a dupla Bill e Hillary. Nunca, nem nos piores pesadelos, Hillary pensou que estaria hoje longe de uma nomeação democrata, e que um jovem negro, ainda relativamente inexperiente, pudesse contestar o que ela pensava ser uma eleição tranquila e de direito natural e sucessório.

Diário Digital

não sei como é que esse sr luis delgado ainda consegue escrever, ele uqe é/era mais bushista que o bush :lol:  

[tsumetomo]

Obama Gains, But Delegate Counters Still Disagree

When I last checked in with the disparate Democratic delegate counts, every major news organization had Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowly leading Sen. Barack Obama, except for NBC News. Now that Mr. Obama has won eight consecutive state contests, the candidates have swapped positions in the delegate counts. As of Wednesday afternoon, everyone but the New York Times showed Mr. Obama in the lead. Yet the numbers remain far apart, as the chart below shows.



The Associated Press, which supplies data to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and others, shows Mr. Obama ahead by just 25 delegates; CBS News gives him a margin of 66, and NBC News says he’s leading by 109. Meanwhile, the Times shows Ms. Clinton staked to an 83-delegate lead, despite Mr. Obama’s relative gain of 52 delegates in the past week’s votes.

One decision made by the Times, and another by NBC, explain why their delegate margins are so far apart.

Unlike its competitors, the Times isn’t counting nonbinding votes in caucus races, such as in Iowa; Mr. Obama has excelled in these races. The Times has not yet awarded delegates for earlier caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota, Idaho, Colorado and Alaska; nor has it assigned delegates from the caucuses in Washington and Maine held in the past week. By NBC’s tally, Mr. Obama won more delegates than Ms. Clinton in all eight of these states, adding a total of 67 delegates to its margin.

Meanwhile, NBC News is the only outlet not yet counting superdelegates, some of whom have publicly or privately expressed a preference for a candidate but who don’t have to make up their mind until the national convention. The New York Times is counting them, and has the widest margin for Ms. Clinton of any superdelegate counter: 204-99. A Times spokeswoman told me no one was available today to discuss its count. If I hear back from the Times I’ll update this post.

Absent any official party numbers, these disagreements are likely to continue, and to complicate the question of who is leading this remarkably close race.

http://feeds.wsjonline.com/~r/wsj/numbersguy/feed/~3/234561557/

[P44]

Estou mm a ver que serão os "Super-Delegados" a decidir... e esses "parecem" pender mais para o lado da Hillary do que do Obama

[ricardonunes]

Estou mm a ver que serão os "Super-Delegados" a decidir... e esses "parecem" pender mais para o lado da Hillary do que do Obama

Quem tiver a carteira mais $$$$$$$$$$$, ganha

[tsumetomo]

Estou mm a ver que serão os "Super-Delegados" a decidir...

Tem a sua razão de ser... os super delegados são as chefias do partido. Se os eleitores não tem preferencia entre um candidato e outro, dão implicitamente legitimidade ao partido para fazer essa escolha.

[P44]

Estou mm a ver que serão os "Super-Delegados" a decidir...

Tem a sua razão de ser... os super delegados são as chefias do partido. Se os eleitores não tem preferencia entre um candidato e outro, dão implicitamente legitimidade ao partido para fazer essa escolha.

pois, isso também é verdade

Eu continuo a apostar numa Dupla de AMBOS  

Clinton, Obama: Why Not Both?

Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2008 By MICHAEL DUFFY

Here's a quick rundown of the many advantages the Democrats enjoy at this stage of the 2008 campaign. Voter turnout in most states is running well ahead of that for the GOP. Democratic fund-raising continues to break all records—even those set previously by Republicans. The Democrats' issues cupboard is fuller than it has been in a decade and a half. And voters have narrowed the field to two wildly popular candidates, either of whom would make history if nominated, much less elected.

Given the embarrassment of riches, it was only a matter of time before Democratic voters looked at the choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and asked the question, Why not both?

That idea had been on some voters' minds even before the dream was made flesh two weeks ago in Los Angeles, where, at the end of the Kodak Theatre debate, Obama and Clinton smiled, embraced each other for more than the usual nanosecond and then seemed to whisper something knowing in each other's ear. After weeks of hand-to-hand combat and rumors of tiffs that may or may not have been real, the Hug rightly or wrongly got even more people thinking about the power of two. Even if their act was dutiful, evanescent and faked for the cameras, party regulars seemed to eat it up. It was all there: the visionary and the technician, the candidate who could inspire the masses and the candidate who could get under the sink and fix the plumbing.

For Clinton, pairing with Obama would repair some of the damage with African Americans brought on by her campaign and, at least in theory, push her husband to the sidelines. Obama, in turn, would get a mechanic to match his magic, someone who could turn his poetry into governing prose.

A new TIME poll reveals that 62% of Democrats want Clinton to put Obama on the ticket; 51% want Obama to return the favor if he is the nominee. The party's right brain and left brain, dancing together at last, right?



Unlikely Partners—for Now
Well, not exactly. It's far too early to know if Obama and Clinton could work together, though there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. While the Clinton camp saw an opportunity in the general longing of the audience—Clinton fund raiser Terry McAuliffe said on the morning of Super Tuesday that Obama has generated so much excitement, he would have to be considered for the party's vice-presidential nomination—the Obama people saw a trap. If Obama and his aides lent any credence now to the dangled notion of a partnership, they know that some of his voters might peel off, thinking a vote for Clinton was, in effect, a twofer. And that could drive down Obama's turnout. "We're not running for Vice President," said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs.

No, and as long as Obama has a real shot at the top spot, there's no need to entertain the Veep talk. As a top Obama aide said, "That's not where this campaign's head is at." Instead, the Obama camp had been expecting the Veep proffer for weeks, just as it had expected the Clinton campaign to play the race card after New Hampshire. Obama headquarters was fully aware that the Clintons had badly overplayed their hand in the days leading up to South Carolina—so badly that Bill or Hillary would have to make some peace offering to Obama's supporters, if not to Obama himself, to heal the breach. But forgiveness, while long a staple of the Clinton narrative, isn't something the Obama team is ready to embrace. An Obama adviser put it this way: "One could argue that the Senator should not even agree to discuss an offer of the vice presidency until Senator Clinton agrees to bar her husband from the West Wing for the duration of the first term. And then once she agrees to that, he should turn it down."

More to the point, is the job of Vice President to a Clinton worth having? Al Gore learned that being No. 2 to Bill was really more like being No. 3 after you factored in Hillary, who had an office in the West Wing and a larger suite of rooms down the hall from the Veep in the Old Executive Office Building. Gore watched his priorities often take a backseat to hers in the first term—and his future run aground as they fought successfully to avoid impeachment and conviction. While she joked with David Letterman on his show that there is no doubt "who wears the pantsuits" in her house, there is little doubt that the Clintons intend to work as a team if Hillary is elected. "I'll be there, talking her through everything," Bill said in Napa Valley, Calif., last month, "like she did with me." One unaligned party wise man said, "Obama may look at the Clintons, at both of them—at that whole thing they have—and say, 'Jeez, that's just way too [messed] up to be a part of. That's just no place I want to be.'"

If Obama becomes the nominee, the arguments against teaming with the Clintons might be even stronger.Obama's defining issue in the race is not health care or the economy or even the war, where he is most distinct from his rival. It's about being new and different and not from the past; in short, about not being a Clinton. For months he has attacked Clinton for taking money from lobbyists, for flimflamming voters on her war votes and for playing race and gender cards when she fell behind. To reverse all that and join forces with the Clintons would be seen as a huge betrayal of his most galvanizing argument—as well as his character—by many of his followers. The numbers back this up. In Time's poll, 58% of Clinton backers favor bringing Obama onto the ticket; nearly the same percentage (56%) of Obama supporters favor choosing someone else.

The Shadow of History
It would be wrong to suggest that the pro-Obama sentiment is universal inside the Clinton camp. It isn't difficult to find those allied with Clinton who believe that Obama would make an underwhelming vice-presidential nominee. Clinton, they say, will want an attack dog both on the trail and as Vice President—a role Obama is ill suited for and uncomfortable assuming. Plus, the states he could deliver she could win on her own.

But what really worries Clinton loyalists is that Obama lacks their, well, loyalty. Running her campaign are a host of aides who have worked for the Clintons before, been fired or been kicked aside and yet keep coming back, decade after decade, to help. That's how the Clintons define loyalty. That pattern may explain why there are those in Clintonland who think Obama has wronged her over the course of the campaign simply because he took her on.

Against all the mutual animus and anger, however, stands a lot of history. And history suggests a deal later is possible, if not likely, whatever the insiders may think now. More often than not, winners in both parties reach out to losers—or at least contemplate an overture—when the time comes to put a broken party back together. John Kennedy tapped Lyndon Johnson in 1960, though the two men were like oil and water. Ronald Reagan named George H.W. Bush in 1980, though they never became very close. Walter Mondale gave a man he resented, Gary Hart, a good look in 1984, before choosing Geraldine Ferraro. And John Kerry recruited his former rival John Edwards in 2004, though the hard feelings on both sides never went away. Whoever wins these primaries may have no choice but to offer it to the also-ran.

So perhaps it is wisest now to think of the Democratic primary campaign not as one race but two: the one for the delegates and the other for reconciliation. We will probably know who wins the delegate race before school is out. But it might be late summer before the parleys and the peacemaking that lead to a partnership get under way. A lot can happen in six months. The party's fortunes could dim; the hard feelings could soften. And by August, who knows? There is no telling what a Democratic nominee will need in a running mate—and vice versa. —With reporting by Jay Newton-Small/Washington

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... -2,00.html

[P44]

TIME Poll: Clinton More Beatable than Obama
Thursday, Feb. 07, 2008 By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON

Though the real election is nine months away, Sen. Barack Obama would fare slightly better than Sen. Hillary Clinton in a head to head match-up with Sen. John McCain if the general election were held today, a new TIME poll reveals.

Obama captured 48% of the vote in the theoretical match-up against McCain's 41%, the TIME poll reported, while Clinton and McCain would deadlock at 46% of the vote each. Put another way, McCain looks at the moment to have a narrowly better chance of beating the New York Senator than he does the relative newcomer from Illinois.

The difference, says Mark Schulman, CEO of Abt SRBI, which conducted the poll for TIME, is that "independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator." Independents, added Schulman, "are a key battleground."

For much of the year, Democrats have enjoyed a wide margin over any Republican rival in theoretical match-ups. Those margins have begun to shrink in recent weeks.

According to the new poll, Democratic voters favor Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination by a margin of 48% to 42%.

Seventy percent of the voters polled by TIME said Bill Clinton's recent performance on the campaign trail had "no influence" on whether they were more or less likely to vote for his wife. Nineteen percent of voters said Clinton's recent comments made them less likely to vote for her; nine percent of voters said it made them more likely to vote for her.

The poll also sampled all voters' views of several possible vice presidential choices — and their various impacts on a potential race. According to the survey results, 62% of likely voters want Hillary Clinton to name Obama as her running mate. By contrast, only 51% of the same voters want Obama to return the favor. The same voters, by a margin of 55% to 11%, believed that Obama would help rather than hurt Clinton's chances were he to become her running mate. If Obama tapped Clinton as his running mate, that margin shifted, with 38% saying it would help his chances and 31% saying it would hurt.

The survey of nearly 1,000 likely registered voters was conducted February 1 through February 4, before Super Tuesday and the departure from the Republican race of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

[tsumetomo]

Romney Releases His Delegates, Backs McCain


BOSTON, Feb. 14 -- Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made a Valentine's Day endorsement of Sen. John McCain on Thursday, ending a bitter, year-long rivalry and handing over almost enough delegates to guarantee McCain the Republican presidential nomination.

Romney released the 280 delegates he had won from their pledge to support him and urged them to back McCain (Ariz.). He called McCain a "true American hero" and said the party needs to unify behind him.

"Even when the contest was close and our disagreements were debated, the caliber of the man was apparent," Romney said at a news conference at his campaign headquarters. "Right now, the Democrats are fighting; let us come together and make progress while they are fighting."

That the two politicians eventually came together was not entirely surprising. Romney is already looking to lay the groundwork for a future presidential run, and embracing the party's probable 2008 nominee could help that effort.

McCain made a similar move in 2000, when he endorsed George W. Bush after a divisive primary fight. For McCain, Romney's endorsement could help mend fences with conservatives in his party, many of whom had rallied to Romney and view the senator warily.

Romney's effusive praise for McCain was nonetheless jarring in light of his repeated criticisms, some as recently as two weeks ago, when both were in the final days of heated competitions for Florida and nearly two dozen Super Tuesday states.

The pair had clashed for more than a year as Rom

ney spent millions from his personal fortune on television ads, many of which portrayed McCain negatively. The waning days of the campaign were especially nasty, with Romney accusing McCain of being dishonest and McCain attacking Romney as an inveterate flip-flopper.

Romney called McCain "wrong" and "dishonest" and demanded that he apologize for saying the former governor wanted to withdraw troops from Iraq. He called McCain "virtually indistinguishable" from Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and mocked McCain for being bereft of knowledge about the economy.

On Thursday, though, he focused on McCain's national security credentials, calling him "a man capable of leading our country in its toughest hour."

McCain's praise of Romney in return was equally striking. His campaign once called Romney's "desperate and flailing," and McCain's chief aide, Mark Salter, wrote of Romney late last year that "he does what any small-varmint-gun-totin,' civil-rights-marching, NRA-endorsed fantasy candidate would do: he questions someone else's credibility."

But Thursday, McCain said Romney ran "a hard, intensive, fine, honorable campaign" that eventually helped the senator "become a better candidate." He added: "I respect him enormously."

McCain has accumulated 843 delegates, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has gathered 242 in his ongoing long-shot campaign. One of them must get to 1,191 delegates in order to become the nominee when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minneapolis.

Romney's request is not binding; his delegates are free to vote for whomever they choose at the convention. But in practice, party officials said almost all of the delegates will probably follow Romney's wishes. Some states require their delegates to cast ballots for the candidate who won them on the first ballot.

If all 280 of Romney's delegates support McCain, the senator would have 1,123 delegates, just shy of the total needed. McCain will have to wait until at least March 4, when Texas, Ohio and other states vote, before he can collect the number needed to guarantee the nomination.

Huckabee, campaigning in Wisconsin ahead of Tuesday's vote there, has vowed to compete until McCain acquires 1,191 delegates. He has dismissed speculation that a paid speech he will give to a youth leadership group in the Cayman Islands on Saturday is a sign he is slowing down his campaign, and aides said he had no plans to drop out.

"We're staying in, no question," Bob Wickers, a top Huckabee adviser, said Thursday.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis put out a memo detailing how it is "mathematically impossible" for Huckabee to win, an assessment the former governor didn't dispute. But campaigning in Providence, R.I., before Romney's endorsement, McCain would not push out his rival.

"I respect Governor Huckabee," McCain said. "I respect his right to continue in his campaign."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021403485.html?hpid=topnews

[André]

Barack Obama tenta obter apoio de John Edwards

O senador democrata Barack Obama reuniu-se este domingo com John Edwards, que se retirou da corrida pela Presidência no final de Janeiro, numa tentativa de obter o apoio à sua candidatura contra Hillary Clinton.

 De acordo com a cadeia de televisão CNN, o encontro ocorreu na casa de Edwards em Chapel Hill (Carolina do Norte), mas ainda não se sabe se o ex-senador dará seu apoio a Obama.

Bill Burton, um dos porta-vozes de Obama, confirmou à CNN o encontro: «O senador Obama visitou esta manhã John e Elizabeth Edwards em sua casa de Chapel Hill para falar sobre o estado da campanha e as questões enfrentadas pelas famílias americanas», disse.

O apoio do ex-senador é um dos mais esperados na corrida pela candidatura presidencial democrata e poderia dar um empurrão na campanha do candidato.

Obama disputa a corrida com a senadora por Nova York Hillary Clinton. Os dois concentraram a sua campanha este fim-de-semana nas primárias de terça-feira em Wisconsin e Havai.

Barak Obama fez campanha no Wisconsin durante a maior parte da semana, mas teve de cancelar uma acção prevista para domingo devido ao mau tempo.

Já Hillary passou grande parte da semana em Ohio e Texas, que votam a 4 de Março. A senadora chegou no sábado a Wisconsin, onde realizou várias acções de campanha durante o fim-de-semana.

Os candidatos disputam terça-feira 92 delegados em Wisconsin e 20 no Havai.

Howard Wolfson, porta-voz da campanha de Clinton, afirmou domingo que a campanha está «basicamente empatada» e ainda falta eleger muitos delegados em alguns Estados.

«Vamos fazer o possível para ganhar em Wisconsin» , disse Wolfson à rede de televisão CBS, acrescentando que a senadora se sente muito optimista quanto à vitória no Ohio e no Texas.

Lusa / SOL

[tsumetomo]

Obama Extends Streak With Ninth Victory Over Clinton





Senator Barack Obama won a decisive victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday night, cutting into Mrs. Clinton’s long-held support among women, union members and middle-aged voters.

With the two rivals now battling state by state over margins of victory and allotment of delegates, surveys of voters leaving the polls showed that Mr. Obama made inroads with those three groups and continued to win support from white men and younger voters in a performance that yielded grim tidings for Mrs. Clinton as she looked ahead to the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain declared victory shortly after the polls closed, with a pointed reference to Mr. Obama in deriding “eloquent but empty calls for change.”

Clinton advisers, acknowledging that they must change the course of the campaign by defining Mr. Obama in negative terms for voters, said they intended to try to draw sharper contrasts by highlighting what Mrs. Clinton believes are his biggest weaknesses: his readiness to be commander in chief, and his support for a health care plan that would not initially seek to cover all Americans.

Yet Mr. Obama’s advisers plan to continue making the case that after nine consecutive victories, many by large margins, Democratic and many independent voters are speaking clearly that Mr. Obama is their choice, and that the party should begin coalescing around him.

Mr. Obama declared victory in Texas, saying, “Houston, I think we’ve achieved liftoff here.”

He continued: “The change we seek is still months and miles away and we need the good people of Texas to help us get there. We’re here because we believe that change is possible and that we have never needed it more than we do right now!”

In Ohio, Mrs. Clinton appeared to refer to Mr. Obama in her remarks. The election, she said, “is about picking a president who relies not just on words, but on work, on hard work to get America back to work.”

“We can’t just have speeches, we’ve got to have solutions, and we need those solutions for America,” she said. “Because while words matter, the best words in the world aren’t enough, unless you match them with action.” Mrs. Clinton added, “I will restore our leadership and moral authority in the world without delays, without on the job training, from day one.”

Mr. McCain, appearing before supporters in Ohio to claim the Republican nomination, immediately launched into what seemed to be an aggressive broadside against Mr. Obama, dismissing “the peals of change that ignore the lessons of history and lack confidence in the intelligence and ideals of free people.”

“I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change,” Mr. McCain said.

He also emphasized a tough stance on national security, warning that the nation remained under threat from terrorists that he described as “moral monsters” who are “led by an apocalyptic zeal that celebrates murder.”

The importance of the Wisconsin primary extended far beyond Mr. Obama’s chalking up another victory and a few dozen delegates: the real result was in how he won and how she lost.

Clinton advisers say she must win the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas by strong margins to be a formidable rival to Mr. Obama for their party’s nomination — as well as, in the short term, for fund-raising, given that she is raising less than Mr. Obama but spending heavily on advertising and political operations in Ohio and Texas.

In forging ahead to the next round of contests, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they were determined to win strongly among women and union members in Ohio and Texas, and cited a number of factors that they were counting on: Mrs. Clinton’s performance in televised debates in each state this month; her increasingly populist message focused on workers and blue-collar women; her campaign’s negative assaults on Mr. Obama’s authenticity; and her continuing portrayal of him as inexperienced.

Union members make up a key voting bloc in Ohio, and Mrs. Clinton flew Tuesday night to Youngstown — where she held a rally at a factory last week — to deliver a speech that criticized Mr. Obama as untested and lacking in plans to help financially struggling Americans. Her advisers said she would carry this theme to March 4.

“This is the choice we face: One of us is ready to be commander in chief in a dangerous world,” Mrs. Clinton said in prepared remarks for the Youngstown. “One of us has a plan to provide health care for every single American — no one left out.”

“Finally, one of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past — and one of us is ready to do it again,” Mrs. Clinton said in the remarks, which she also planned to expand upon in a speech at Hunter College in New York City on Wednesday morning.

Mr. McCain’s proclamation of victory over his last major challenger, Mike Huckabee, comes as the senator is closing in on his goal of getting the 1,191 delegates needed to seal his party’s nomination.

But surveys of voters gave evidence of misgivings about his candidacy: more than 4 in 10 voters said that Mr. McCain was not conservative enough; conservative voters split their votes evenly between the two men. And Mr. Huckabee won a majority of the vote of the one-third of evangelical voters who participated in the Republican primary.

Mr. Obama has now won the last nine primaries and caucuses, including Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington State, and battled Mrs. Clinton to a virtual draw in the 22-state nominating contests on Feb. 5. Going into the Tuesday primaries, he had 1,078 delegates to Mrs. Clinton’s 1,081, according to a count by The New York Times. He was also raising more than $1 million a day, according to people familiar with his fund-raising, while Mrs. Clinton was raising close to $1 million; in January, she took in about one-third of the $36 million that Mr. Obama raised.

The other state voting on Tuesday, Hawaii, is where Mr. Obama was born, and he was hoping for a strong showing. Neither he nor Mrs. Clinton traveled to Hawaii to campaign, but both of them conducted news interviews in the hours leading up to the caucuses, which were set to conclude at 12:30 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday. Mrs. Clinton also dispatched her daughter, Chelsea, to campaign there.

but officials said results might not be available until Wednesday morning. fill in results, if any, from A.P.

Wisconsin had 74 pledged delegates in play, while Hawaii had 20 pledged delegates.

Although Wisconsin borders Mr. Obama’s home state, Illinois, the primary presented a challenge because of the large share of blue-collar workers, a group that he has struggled to win over. Yet the results represented a turnaround for Mr. Obama: About one-third of voters in the Democratic primary came from union households, and they split their votes evenly between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, according to a statewide exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool.

By contrast, in the Feb. 5 primaries in New Jersey and California — two states Mrs. Clinton won — the percentage of Democratic voters from union households was also about one-third of those surveyed by Edison/Mitofsky, but they supported Mrs. Clinton more strongly than in Wisconsin.

About 6 in 10 white men voted for Mr. Obama, while white women split evenly between him and Mrs. Clinton, the polls showed. Mrs. Clinton turned in another strong performance with voters over the age of 60, meanwhile.

A majority of Democratic primarygoers said that the quality in a candidate that mattered the most in their vote was the ability to bring about change, and three-quarters of those voters supported Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton won almost all of the 22 percent of voters who said having the right experience was the most important quality.

Six in 10 Democratic primary voters under the age of 65 supported Mr. Obama. The results amount to stronger support for Mr. Obama than he enjoyed among similar groups in all of the states that held Democratic primaries on Feb. 5.

As has been the case in other Democratic primaries this year, the economy was cited as the most important issue facing the country, and almost all of the voters surveyed rated the economy as not so good or poor. More than 4 in 10 voters said the economy was the key issue in the nation, and a majority of them supported Mr. Obama.

Both candidates have been increasingly sounding populist notes recently to reflect the economic concerns of voters. In her remarks in Youngstown on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton allied herself with Americans struggling with low pay and no health care on the “night shift” — a phrase that is also the title of a new advertisement that began running in Ohio on Tuesday night. The ad ends with an image of Mrs. Clinton doing paperwork, illuminated by a lamp, as a narrator says, “She understands — she’s worked the night shift, too.”

While Mrs. Clinton drew some of her largest crowds to date in Texas, her decision to spend time away from Wisconsin troubled some of her supporters, who believed she had erred in not campaigning enough in Maine, Nebraska and other states that she recently lost.

Mr. Obama’s audiences, meanwhile, were filled with a varied tapestry of supporters — young and old, black and white — many of whom said they had been carefully following the presidential race.

Mary Liedtke, a defense lawyer in Eau Claire, said she had been a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. But in the final weeks of the Iowa caucus campaign, she said she began paying closer attention to Mr. Obama and became inspired by his supporters.

“What really pushed me over was seeing all the young people being so excited,” Ms. Liedtke said in an interview after seeing Mr. Obama last weekend in her town. “Some elderly women I’ve heard say, ‘I want to see a woman president before I die,’ and I know that’s why some of them are supporting Hillary.

“But you know what? That’s a selfish reason to vote for a president just because you want to see a woman before you die,” she added. “What about the kids coming up? I feel we should vote for the young people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19cnd-campaign.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[tsumetomo]

Obama wins Hawaii in a landslide


U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who was born and raised in Hawai'i, won the state's Democratic presidential caucus in a landslide yesterday. Obama had 28,347 votes, or 76%, to U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton's 8,835 votes, or 24%, with 100% of the precincts reporting.
Those are the vote tallies contained in what the party is calling "the preliminary final" results. A recount is scheduled for March 1 before the final results are released.

Hawai'i Democrats turned out in record numbers at the party's caucuses to help settle the nomination fight between Obama and Clinton of New York.

Obama ran television and radio advertisements in the Islands and talked about his local roots to help distinguish himself from Clinton, who sent her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, to campaign for her in the state.

The caucuses drew a surge of new Democrats, including many who registered to vote and joined the party just last night.

The party had printed 17,000 ballots and volunteers at many caucus sites ran out of ballots and blue party membership cards and had to improvise with notebook paper.

The caucuses have typically drawn fewer than 5,000 people in the past but got more than times that figure last night.

"I trust that the people of Hawai'i understand that this is a very unique year," said Florence Kong Kee, the party's political director.

Brian Schatz, a local Obama volunteer and former state representative for Makiki, said it appeared that last night's turnout may have exceeded the local Obama campaign's estimate of 15,000 to 18,000 people.

"It's a gift this election season to have such excellent choices on the Democratic side," said Schatz, a likely candidate for state party chairman in May. "We think the more people who come in to caucus is better for the Obama campaign."

State House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell, D-24th (Manoa), a Clinton volunteer, described the turnout as "unbelievable."

"Unbelievable, in terms of turnout, in terms of energy — I think it's historic," he said. "I think people thought they were part of something special tonight."

'I've Never Seen This'

Annelle Amaral, the party's O'ahu County chair, said party leaders thought there would be substantially higher turnout this time compared to past years but there was no way to know exactly how many people would show up.

"How could we be ready?" Amaral said. "How could anyone have anticipated this kind of attendance. It's phenomenal. I've never seen this."

Obama won the Wisconsin primary yesterday, his ninth in a row since Super Tuesday, and had hoped to take the Islands to give him momentum going into Ohio and Texas on March 4. The Clinton campaign has targeted Ohio and Texas as essential for her to rebound and capture the nomination.

Obama, who was born here and graduated from Punahou School, appeared to be attracting many of the new Democrats last night, while Clinton was stronger with traditional Democrats.

Hawai'i's caucuses — in which 20 of the state's 29 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August were at stake — took on greater national importance after Obama and Clinton remained close after Super Tuesday.

At Kapolei Middle School, Carolyn Golojuch, chairwoman of the District 40 caucus site, said she was prepared for a larger-than-normal crowd.

Many of the potential voters did not even know if they were registered Democrats, Golojuch said.

"I'm not sweating this," she said. "They say this will be 10 times bigger than anything we've ever had before. But you know what? Last time we only had 20 people."

Shortly after 6 p.m. — an hour before the caucus began — at least 80 people were already lined up and the crowd swelled as the 7 p.m. vote approached.

Isabel Freund, of Makakilo, participated in her first caucus last night and was prepared to cast her vote for Clinton at Kapolei. "We have two very good candidates and I'm just very interested in participating," Freund said. "We definitely need a change."

At Kawananakoa Middle School, many of the voters in line held signs or wore pins supporting Obama.

Plenty of new voters

Kellie Peterson, 28, a first-time caucus goer, said its important for Hawai'i to show support for a native son.

"We need to overwhelmingly win it for Obama," she said.

At Kawananakoa, site coordinator Patrick Stanley said he was "cutting as many corners" as he could to speed up the process.

"We have a lot of new voters," he said.

Deloris Guttman, of Downtown, was trying the caucus for the first time. "I think Hawai'i is going to count this year," she said. "Before, we didn't matter."

Voters were also selecting delegates to the state convention in May.

Presidential candidates who receive at least 15% of the vote in the preference poll will be eligible for a share of 20 of the state's 29 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Last night's caucuses will determine how those 20 delegates will be awarded.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-02-20-obama-hawaii_N.htm

[tsumetomo]

E começam os escandalos...

For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.

“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”

Mr. Cheshire added, “That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator,” Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.

During his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. McCain has played down his attacks on the corrupting power of money in politics, aware that the stricter regulations he championed are unpopular in his party. When the Senate overhauled lobbying and ethics rules last year, Mr. McCain stayed in the background.

With his nomination this year all but certain, though, he is reminding voters again of his record of reform. His campaign has already begun comparing his credentials with those of Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic contender who has made lobbying and ethics rules a centerpiece of his own pitch to voters.

“I would very much like to think that I have never been a man whose favor can be bought,” Mr. McCain wrote about his Keating experience in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “From my earliest youth, I would have considered such a reputation to be the most shameful ignominy imaginable. Yet that is exactly how millions of Americans viewed me for a time, a time that I will forever consider one of the worst experiences of my life.”

A drive to expunge the stain on his reputation in time turned into a zeal to cleanse Washington as well. The episode taught him that “questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics,” he wrote, “and because they incite public distrust they need to be addressed no less directly than we would address evidence of expressly illegal corruption.”

A Formative Scandal

Mr. McCain started his career like many other aspiring politicians, eagerly courting the wealthy and powerful. A Vietnam war hero and Senate liaison for the Navy, he arrived in Arizona in 1980 after his second marriage, to Cindy Hensley, the heiress to a beer fortune there. He quickly started looking for a Congressional district where he could run.

Mr. Keating, a Phoenix financier and real estate developer, became an early sponsor and, soon, a friend. He was a man of great confidence and daring, Mr. McCain recalled in his memoir. “People like that appeal to me,” he continued. “I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities.”

During Mr. McCain’s four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules (he later said it was an oversight and paid for the trips). They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.

Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.

For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating’s request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure the nomination of a Keating associate to a banking regulatory board.

By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.

When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 — one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion — the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were censured in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded only for “poor judgment” and was re-elected the next year.

Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.”

Mr. McCain has since described the episode as a unique humiliation. “If I do not repress the memory, its recollection still provokes a vague but real feeling that I had lost something very important,” he wrote in his memoir. “I still wince thinking about it.”

A New Chosen Cause

After the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1994, Mr. McCain decided to try to put some of the lessons he had learned into law. He started by attacking earmarks, the pet projects that individual lawmakers could insert anonymously into the fine print of giant spending bills, a recipe for corruption. But he quickly moved on to other targets, most notably political fund-raising.

Mr. McCain earned the lasting animosity of many conservatives, who argue that his push for fund-raising restrictions trampled free speech, and of many of his Senate colleagues, who bristled that he was preaching to them so soon after his own repentance. In debates, his party’s leaders challenged him to name a single senator he considered corrupt (he refused).

“We used to joke that each of us was the only one eating alone in our caucus,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who became Mr. McCain’s partner on campaign finance efforts.

Mr. McCain appeared motivated less by the usual ideas about good governance than by a more visceral disapproval of the gifts, meals and money that influence seekers shower on lawmakers, Mr. Feingold said. “It had to do with his sense of honor,” he said. “He saw this stuff as cheating.”

Mr. McCain made loosening the grip of special interests the central cause of his 2000 presidential campaign, inviting scrutiny of his own ethics. His Republican rival, George W. Bush, accused him of “double talk” for soliciting campaign contributions from companies with interests that came before the powerful Senate commerce committee, of which Mr. McCain was chairman. Mr. Bush’s allies called Mr. McCain “sanctimonious.”

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading “ McCain voted against my bill.” Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called “cowardly.”

By 2002, he had succeeded in passing the McCain-Feingold Act, which transformed American politics by banning “soft money,” the unlimited donations from corporations, unions and the rich that were funneled through the two political parties to get around previous laws.

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement.

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.

Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.

“Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter,” said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns.

Concerns in a Campaign

Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.

The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”

That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.

“Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”

Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.

It is not clear what effect the warnings had; the associates said their concerns receded in the heat of the campaign.

Ms. Iseman acknowledged meeting with Mr. Weaver, but disputed his account.

“I never discussed with him alleged things I had ‘told people,’ that had made their way ‘back to’ him,” she wrote in an e-mail message. She said she never received special treatment from Mr. McCain’s office.

Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic and that he never showed favoritism to Ms. Iseman or her clients. “I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that,” he said. He made the statements in a call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, to complain about the paper’s inquiries.

The senator declined repeated interview requests, beginning in December. He also would not comment about the assertions that he had been confronted about Ms. Iseman, Mr. Black said Wednesday.

Mr. Davis and Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s top strategists in both of his presidential campaigns, disputed accounts from the former associates and aides and said they did not discuss Ms. Iseman with the senator or colleagues.

“I never had any good reason to think that the relationship was anything other than professional, a friendly professional relationship,” Mr. Salter said in an interview.

He and Mr. Davis also said Mr. McCain had frequently denied requests from Ms. Iseman and the companies she represented. In 2006, Mr. McCain sought to break up cable subscription packages, which some of her clients opposed. And his proposals for satellite distribution of local television programs fell short of her clients’ hopes.

The McCain aides said the senator sided with Ms. Iseman’s clients only when their positions hewed to his principles

A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.

In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.

Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.

Mr. McCain’s aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain’s advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.

Recalling the Paxson episode in his memoir, Mr. McCain said he was merely trying to push along a slow-moving bureaucracy, but added that he was not surprised by the criticism given his history.

“Any hint that I might have acted to reward a supporter,” he wrote, “would be taken as an egregious act of hypocrisy.”

Statement by McCain

Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21mccain.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin