Oh-eight (D): Locked up in Little Rock
Posted: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 9:08 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats
BIDEN: The Delaware senator
detailed his health-care plan for veterans at a stop in New Hampshire yesterday.
Also in the state, he said, Biden
said, “Not in the lifetime of anyone in this room will there be a centralized democratic government in Iraq" and that current U.S. policy is “breaking the U.S. military.”
CLINTON: This is fascinating and could lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories. Hillary Clinton's records from her time in the White House are locked up in a building in Little Rock, according to the
Los Angeles Times, "obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady." More: "What records that have been made public offer tantalizing details about Hillary Clinton's White House years. One memo reveals details about the ‘war room’ for the healthcare plan. Aides wrote of the need for secrecy, but also presented Hillary Clinton with arguments she could make that the process of drawing up a healthcare plan was "the most open in the history of the federal government."
And: “At other presidential libraries -- which in some cases have had decades to process the material -- some first lady records are now open to the public. About 75,000 pages of Rosalynn Carter's records are publicly available, including scheduling and social office files. Both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush libraries also said that some records covering former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush were open."
The New York Times writes up Clinton’s first TV ad. “Mrs. Clinton may be running in the wide-open Democratic primary battle, but this commercial leaves the impression that she is running against President Bush — which she is, to a degree. As a leading Democratic candidate, rather than attacking or elevating her Democratic rivals at this stage, she is trying to score points off an unpopular incumbent president and outline her priorities in broad strokes.”
Clinton spent a day in the shoes of a nurse, as part of SEIU's challenge to presidential candidates to spend a day in one of their member's shoes. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on the day, and so does USA Today here: "The nurse's 12-hour shift at the hospital's Siena campus started as usual at 7 a.m. but at mid-afternoon Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived. The New York senator spent more than two hours shadowing Estrada in the fourth-floor medical/surgical ward before heading to Estrada's home for dinner with her and her three children."
Also in Nevada yesterday, Clinton spoke to rural Nevadans. Per NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum, Clinton earned both positive laughter and applause when she called for middle-class assistance through universal health care, new “green collar” jobs, affordable pre-K and college, and a government that takes care of all its people -- making Americans proud of America again. Regarding health care, Clinton discussed the Senate's efforts to renew and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program and compared it to Medicare for people 65 and over. "We are in a fight with George Bush right now about providing more health care for our children, something that I helped to start back when I was First Lady," Clinton said. "I happen to think that providing health care for children is a good investment. Because if you get your children off to a good healthy start, it actually saves money."
She continued, earning more applause, "So we passed a provision to extend health care to children, and George Bush has said he is going to veto it. Well, I think it's time we veto George Bush, and tell him, no, no, no."
 |
|
DODD: The
Des Moines Register covers Dodd’s Soap Box speech yesterday. He “pitched his plan to expand public service programs and lower college tuition costs.”
The
Hartford Courant, meanwhile, notes that Dodd registered less than 1% in a recent Iowa poll.
EDWARDS: The
Boston Globe reports on the beginning of Edwards’ seven-day swing through Iowa yesterday. The paper says he “is staking his campaign on winning Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus, even at the cost of stinting on the next big test in New Hampshire.”
The candidate is usually late for appearances, but apparently yesterday he was more than an hour late for a rally at his Iowa headquarters -- leaving supporters in sweltering heat. One Iowa supporter "said Edwards is her favorite candidate, but she said this was not the first time she’d seen him be seriously tardy. ‘I think it’s tacky,” she said. ‘It isn’t right. It isn’t considerate. It isn’t Iowa.’’
“When Edwards finally appeared, he apologized for the delay. He said it was caused by a minor ailment his wife suffered at their Des Moines hotel. ‘Elizabeth
ate something for breakfast this morning that didn’t agree with her,’ he said. He later told reporters that it had nothing to do with the fact that his wife is taking chemotherapy medicine for cancer.
OBAMA: Obama was
warned by a voter yesterday in New Hampshire not to get into public spats with his Dem foes, something that is probably making the Clinton folks smile since they believe his above-it-all image gets undone every time he or his campaign looks/acts like a stereotypical politician. "Maggie North of Claremont told Obama he risks becoming part of the usual political scene if he keeps being drawn into well-publicized disputes with rivals. He and chief rival Hillary Rodham Clinton have jabbed at each other over foreign policy, the war on terrorism and the use of nuclear weapons."
By the way, check out this statement Obama made about the troops; we bet the RNC will jump on this one: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there." However, civilian casualties in Afghanistan is an issue that Bush and Karzai discussed last week.
Check out this Nashua Telegraph headline: "Obama leaves some wanting a little more."
RICHARDSON: Is it odd to anyone else that Richardson chose to do an editorial board meeting with the
New York Daily News via phone? At the meeting, his disastrous appearance before the Human Rights Campaign forum was a big topic. “Richardson, who supports civil unions, was asked if he would veto a gay marriage bill because he believed in his heart that same-sex marriage is wrong. He replied, ‘I don't want to get into that. I thought you guys were going to ask me about other stuff. Don't you care about other stuff?’”
