More oh-eight (D): Under pressure?
Posted: Thursday, December 13, 2007 9:06 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats
CLINTON: On Nightly News last night, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on Clinton and her experience argument. “Her chief argument against Barack Obama has been that she has the experience to get things done. What was her experience as first lady? The record is mixed. She had huge influence -- but was widely blamed for a health care proposal so secretive (and complex) it died at birth.” More: “Supporters say she's learned since that setback. And, the campaign claims, she played a major role in her husband's foreign policy.” Watch it here.
So is the Clinton camp in such disarray that state operatives are now freelancing? That's one way one can interpret the decision by Clinton New Hampshire co-chair Billy Shaheen to talk up Obama's drug past. “The remarks represented the most direct criticism by a top official in the Clinton campaign. A Clinton spokesman, Phil Singer, said, ‘These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.’ Mr. Singer would not say whether the campaign distanced itself from the remarks or if Mr. Shaheen would be reprimanded.”
“In a statement later, Mr. Shaheen said, ‘I deeply regret the comments I made today, and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way.’”
Newsday's “campaign angst” story focuses on the campaign's message man, Mark Penn. “With Clinton barely holding her own against Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa, dissatisfaction is growing with Penn, who some say has mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent. ‘There are two people who have come up with this strategy -- one Hillary Clinton and one Mark Penn,’ said a top Clinton ally, speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened.’”
Under the headline, “Hypocrisy 101,” the New York Post writes of the Clinton campaign, “After hitting Barack Obama's campaign hard for his bid to get thousands of out-of-state college kids at Iowa colleges to vote for him, Hillary Rodham Clinton's team launched its own effort to urge students to take part in the caucus on Jan. 3.”
The Wall Street Journal reports Bill Clinton will likely "curb ties" with Ron Burkle if his wife gets the Dem nod. "The financial value of Mr. Clinton's Yucaipa relationship hasn't been disclosed. Yucaipa has invested in a range of businesses. But some of the business ventures involving Messrs. Burkle and Clinton have already generated controversy. Early this year one of the Yucaipa domestic funds where Mr. Clinton was senior adviser became embroiled in a battle to win control of a bankrupt auto-hauling company. Critics contended Mr. Clinton's union connections helped Mr. Burkle win big concessions from the Teamster's union, which represented many of the workers at the company."
Young and the Restless star Victoria Rowell will be back on the stump for Clinton, this time today in South Carolina.
Per the Los Angeles Times, “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is anticipating that she will not have to wait long to become the Democratic presidential nominee, privately telling campaign donors in California that the race ‘is all going to be over by Feb. 5.’” More: “‘You've got to realize that people in California will start voting absentee about the time Iowa and New Hampshire happen,’ the senator from New York said at a closed-door fundraising reception Tuesday evening. ‘In fact, more people will have voted absentee by the middle of January than will have voted in New Hampshire, Iowa and a lot of other places combined.’”
EDWARDS: Yesterday, actor Tim Robbins joined Edwards on the Iowa trail.
USA Today's Lawrence checks in on Edwards' Iowa campaign and finds he has a lot of support for veteran caucus goers. Does this mean the campaign is rooting for a Jan. 3 ice storm?
OBAMA: The Boston Globe front-pages Obama’s rise in New Hampshire and Clinton’s tactics: “With less than a month to go until the New Hampshire primary, two new polls yesterday showed that Hillary Clinton's once-daunting lead has evaporated, putting her into a dead heat with Barack Obama.”
Per NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan, Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum (D) endorsed Obama, citing his opposition to the Iraq war and call for change in Washington, and so did former South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Joe Erwin. Irwin cited Obama's message of change and the team on the ground in South Carolina as the reasons why he jumped on board. And in Iowa four county chairs jumped on board the campaign as well. Erwin said that "race mattered in South Carolina," but pushed back against the notion that Obama's support was primarily African American. He said that while the majority of the crowd who attended the rally with Oprah and Obama was African American that there were white voters as well and that Obama did have a cross over appeal. Black voters in South Carolina make up 49% of the Democratic Party electorate.
Time magazine looks at Obama's efforts to reach out to the small number of minorities in Iowa. "While Obama pursues his comprehensive caucus strategy, his chief rivals, who benefit from the vast majority of union endorsements, have taken a more targeted approach. Edwards, the only Democrat who has been to all 99 of Iowa's counties, is focusing on turning out rural caucus-goers, said Dan Leistikow, Edwards' Iowa spokesman. Clinton is focusing her efforts on women, a natural constituency for the former First Lady that is ripe for the picking. In 2004, just 66,690 of 340,241 female registered Democrats in Iowa caucused, or just 20%, compared to the 281,049, or 83%, who voted in the general election."
The Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes has been in Iowa following Obama. "The most striking thing about Obama on the campaign trail is how little time he spends discussing national security issues. He acknowledges, characteristically, that we are at war, but then does little to explain how he proposes to win. We will withdraw from Iraq in 16 months, he promises, and fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan. What if al Qaeda remains in Iraq? Aside from a ‘strike force’ ready to take them out, we are left to wonder.”
“Mostly, Obama thinks America will be stronger when she is more respected, and she will be more respected when she is more engaged. (He does not explain the simultaneous growth of al Qaeda and multilateralism in the 1990s.) To that end, he boasts that he plans to talk to our enemies, including Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although Hillary Clinton criticized his position as ‘naive,’ when he first articulated it in a debate, crowds here in Iowa give him sustained applause every time he mentions it.”
RICHARDSON: “Richardson's campaign announced yesterday that Luis Tiant, the portly pitcher with the whirling-dervish delivery, will be the guest of honor at an event in Manchester on Sunday evening.”
Richardson implored Iowans yesterday, "I know I can change this country, and I know I can win. Iowans like to shock people. You like underdogs."
