Oh-eight (D): Biden is up, up, and away
Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 9:13 AM by Domenico MontanaroDemocrats , Ads
BIDEN: Per NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann, Biden becomes the last of the six Democratic campaigns playing in Iowa to go up on TV in the state.
In the ad , Biden speaks directly into the camera and says, "Being president isn't the same thing as running for president. When this campaign is over, political slogans like 'Experience' and 'Change' will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.” He then touts the bipartisan approval in the Senate of his Iraq plan and that he spoke with the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf before Bush did after Musharraf declared emergency rule earlier this year. “You don’t have to guess what I’ll do as president,” Biden says to close the ad. “Just look at what I’ve done.”
CLINTON: The New York Times on the latest NYT/CBS poll: “For all the problems Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be having holding off her rivals in Iowa and New Hampshire, she remains strong nationally, the poll found. Even after what her aides acknowledge have been two of the roughest months of her candidacy, she is viewed by Democrats as a far more electable presidential nominee than either Senator Barack Obama or John Edwards. Not only do substantially more Democratic voters judge her to be ready for the presidency than believe Mr. Obama is prepared for the job, the poll found, but more Democrats also see Mrs. Clinton rather than Mr. Obama as someone who can unite the country.”
Also: “The poll confirmed that former President Bill Clinton was an effective campaign weapon for his wife. Forty-four percent of Democratic voters say Mr. Clinton’s involvement will make them more likely to support her…The poll found that just 1 percent said they might be swayed by the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who has been campaigning for Mr. Obama in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire the last three days, drawing huge crowds and allowing his campaign to identify new supporters."
Speaking of Bill, he addressed a crowd at the YMCA in Newton, IA following his appearance yesterday in Ames, NBC’s Christina Jamison reports. In addition to driving home the "change agent" line, he embellished a bit, saying she is "a proven agent of positive change." He also reiterated his swipe at Obama, saying: "It isn't enough to have the right vision or the right programs. You have to make them real."
Clinton addressed concerns of revisiting some of the problems of the 1990s. "We don't want to re-fight the battles of the ‘90s, but we sure would like to have some of the victories of the 90s."
Unlike at the Ames stop, Clinton took a few questions from the audience. One was from a former teacher who lived in New Jersey but moved to Iowa to retire. He asked Clinton which decisions he and Hillary disagreed on when he was in the White House. Clinton responded with the timing of health-care reform and his failure to send troops when the Rwandan genocide happened. "I believe if I had moved in then, we might have saved as many as a third of those lives. And I think she clearly would have done that... I know she always thought that was something we should have done." He went on to say, "We have agreed on most things over the long run. But we have on occasion disagreed. And I would say in the years we've been together, more often than not, when we've disagreed I think time has proven her right."
The Boston Globe also writes about Bill’s answer on Rwanda.
The Los Angeles Times covers Bill Clinton and notes how he's trying to soften the image of his wife. "Many voters see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as coldly ambitious, a perception that could ultimately doom her presidential campaign. So on Monday her husband made a swing through Iowa in hopes of convincing voters that she is a sympathetic figure who gave up money and power for love and marriage. President Clinton told a crowd here that she took a chance on him when his political prospects looked dim, marrying him in 1975 when he had already lost a congressional race and was making little as a law professor at the University of Arkansas."
The New York Times posts an email from a Clinton campaign official who appears to have been fishing for info about Obama's days as a community organizer. Adds reporter Jeff Zeleny: "If there was any question whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign was concerned about the rise of Senator Barack Obama, here is a fresh example: A deputy campaign manager for Mrs. Clinton sent an e-mail yesterday, trying to find out about Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer in Chicago."
The Boston Globe’s Peter Canellos writes that Clinton “now she finds herself in a duel for the Democratic nomination with the younger, more dynamic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who exudes a Bill Clinton-like sensitivity to average people.” For Hillary to win, “it probably requires a more direct, humble appeal to voters. She needs to show just how badly she wants to be president, how eager she is to serve.”
DODD: Dodd begins airing a
new TV ad in Iowa today (on broadcast and cable). “I'm not a former First Lady or a celebrity. But I am the only Democrat running who's a veteran,” Dodd says in it. “And I was in the Peace Corps. I am the candidate who authored the Family and Medical Leave Act. I am the candidate who negotiated the end to wars. These aren't campaign slogans, it's what I've done over a lifetime of service.”
The ad concludes, “I'm Chris Dodd and I approve this message because I'm the candidate who can win next November and I am ready to be president.”
EDWARDS: The
Des Moines Register notices, “Earlier in the campaign, Edwards jabbed Democratic rival Hillary Clinton at every turn. But he's toned down the rhetoric in recent weeks, and he said he will keep it that way from now on. ‘My intention is between now and the caucuses to focus on why I want to be president, and the positive parts of that," he told reporters riding his campaign bus through the snowy countryside.’” He did, however, say that if he’s asked a direct question about distinguishing between himself and Obama and Clinton at a debate, that he would do so.
His campaign, meanwhile, is up with a new ad in South Carolina. "It is time for our party, the Democratic Party, to show a little backbone, to have a little guts -- to stand up for working men and women. If we are not their voice they will never have a voice," the former North Carolina senator says in a 60-second spot titled "Heroes."
The Washington Post looks at Edwards' days growing up as the "son of a millworker."
OBAMA: The
Politico gets its hands on a 1996 questionnaire Obama filled out when he was running for state Senate, and it includes his liberal positions on capital punishment, abortion, and gun control. “The questionnaire, which was provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign, raises questions of whether Obama can be painted as too liberal and whether he is insufficiently consistent. Obama, who makes an issue of his opponents’ consistency in the presidential race, has tempered many of those 1996 views during his quick rise to the pinnacle of American politics. He now takes less dogmatic positions many of those hot-button issues — in the view of some Democrats, he abandoned the stands as he rose through the ranks.”
The Union Leader’s DiStaso reports that New Hampshire Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D) will endorse Obama.Globe’s Pindell adds, “Besides the fact she went against her own campaign chair Billy Shaheen, who backs Hillary Clinton, the news is also bad for John Edwards, who both shares her populist and anti-war message and who desperately needs some kind of positive news out of the Granite State.”
