Oh-eight (D): Clinton Inc. v. 'present'

Posted: Thursday, December 20, 2007 9:13 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: Democrats

CLINTON: The LA Times also looks at how Clinton is trying to define Obama. "Clinton doesn't tell Iowa voters that in his younger days, her chief rival for the Democratic nomination behaved badly. She never lays out incidents from Sen. Barack Obama's past that could be exploited in a general election contest; doing so might be considered an unseemly personal attack. But with the Iowa caucuses just two weeks away, she is sidling up to that fine line -- and, in some cases, her campaign surrogates are fleshing out what the candidate leaves unsaid."

Interestingly, Bob Kerrey sent a letter to Obama apologizing for over-bringing up the Muslim stuff. “Kerrey told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he sent the letter on his own and had not spoken to Clinton or her campaign about the comments he made Sunday in Iowa. ‘What I found myself getting into in Iowa - and it was my own fault - it was the wrong moment to do it and it was insulting,’ Kerrey told the AP. ‘I meant no disrespect at all.’ Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the senator accepted Kerrey's apology, sent to the campaign in the mail and via e-mail.

Is there any New York Times byline the campaign fears more than Don Van Natta?  Well, there's one today (although it probably goes down easier since the paper also front-pages the Obama "present" story today). "The New York Times has compiled the first comprehensive list of 97 donors who gave or pledged a total of $69 million for the Clinton presidential library in the final years of the Clinton administration. The examination found that while some $1 million contributors were longtime Clinton friends, others were seeking policy changes from the administration. Two pledged $1 million each while they or their companies were under investigation by the Justice Department.”

“Other donations came from supporters who had been ensnared in campaign finance scandals surrounding Mr. Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. In raising record sums for her campaign, Mrs. Clinton has tapped many of the foundation’s donors. At least two dozen have become  ‘Hillraisers,’ each bundling $100,000 or more for her presidential bid. The early library donors, combined with their families and political action committees, have contributed at least $784,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate and presidential coffers."

More: “As the scope of the foundation expanded from the Clinton library into issues like treating AIDS in the developing world and addressing global poverty and climate change, and Mrs. Clinton moved closer to announcing her candidacy, the pace of giving quickened. Last year, contributions reached $135 million, a 70 percent increase over the previous year. Two-thirds came from just 11 donors."

Clinton makes a pre-Christmas push in New Hampshire with a "Working for Change, Working for You" tour.

Don’t cry for me… “Clinton twice wiped her eye at a campaign event in Elkader after getting an emotional introduction by Joe Ward, a constituent. She helped get his insurance company to cover a costly bone-marrow transplant for his son,” the New York Post writes. “No way,” though was the response from Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s spokesman on whether or not Clinton cried.

Here's one of those campaign promises that would have gotten Al Gore in trouble in 2000. “Clinton predicted that when she mentions in her inaugural address, ‘particularly the oil-producing countries, “We’re not going to be taken for a ride any longer. We’re going to stand up and say enough,” ... when I say that, those countries will know because they follow our elections, they follow what we do in our politics as closely as we do, they’ll know that I always try to do what I say.’” Clinton predicted those words would cause the price of oil to suddenly drop, to $60 or $70 a barrel.

In the upcoming New York Times magazine, Matt Bai writes about how Clinton's campaign is a referendum of sorts on Bill Clinton's presidency. "Aside from a few partisans on each end of the spectrum, there aren’t neatly delineated camps on this question, with Clinton lovers on one side and critics on the other. Rather, a lot of Democrats seem genuinely conflicted, on practically an existential level, when it comes to Clinton. They almost uniformly admire the former president; 82 percent of Democrats polled by Fox News in November had a favorable opinion of Clinton, and, in a New York Times poll released earlier this month, 44 percent of Democratic voters said they were more inclined to support Hillary’s candidacy because of him. And yet, they regard with suspicion, if not outright resentment, the centrist forces he helped unleash on the party. They might love Bill Clinton, but they loathe Clintonism. And it is this conflict that has, in recent weeks, become a subtle but important theme of the 2008 campaign.”

EDWARDS: The New York Post reports, “A round of biased ‘push-polling’ that rips Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama - but touts John Edwards - has reportedly hit Iowa Democratic caucus-goers just two weeks before the voting starts there.”

OBAMA: The candidate will be holding a New Hampshire event today with independent voters, hoping to remind folks of his current strength with indies in both national and state polls.

The New York Times examines Obama's voting record in the Illinois state senate, and finds that he voted "present" on a lot of issues, including some very sensitive ones. Obviously, this is an opportunity for the Clinton camp to paint Obama as indecisive and afraid of taking on tough issues, but as the article notes, the voting record is quite nuanced. 

The Times: "Although a present vote is not unusual in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s use of it is being raised as he tries to distinguish himself as a leader who will take on the tough issues, even if it means telling people the ‘hard truths’ they do not want to hear. Obama’s aides and some allies dispute the characterization that a present vote is tantamount to ducking an issue. They said Mr. Obama cast 4,000 votes in the Illinois Senate and used the present vote to protest bills that he believed had been drafted unconstitutionally or as part of a broader legislative strategy."

An examination of Illinois records shows at least 36 times when Mr. Obama was either the only state senator to vote present or was part of a group of six or fewer to vote that way. In more than 50 votes, he seemed to be acting in concert with other Democrats as part of a strategy… In Illinois, political experts say voting present is a relatively common way for lawmakers to express disapproval of a measure. It can at times help avoid running the risks of voting no, they add."

The big example the NYT uses to show Obama using a "present" vote to duck an issue was on a juvenile justice bill. "The vote on the juvenile-justice bill appears to be a case when Mr. Obama, who represented a racially mixed district on the South Side of Chicago, faced pressure. It also occurred about six months before he announced an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against a popular black congressman, Bobby L. Rush."

The Hill finds that at least three Obama aides "were registered lobbyists for dozens of corporations, including Wal-Mart, British Petroleum and Lockheed Martin, while they received payments from his campaign, according to public documents… While many lobbyists are planning to travel to Iowa and New Hampshire after Christmas to stump for their favored candidates, others have taken more committed roles. At least 40 current and former lobbyists have received payments from top-tier presidential campaigns, according to public records that show K Street’s infiltration in the race and offer hints about who may wield influence in the next administration."

New Hampshire’s Portsmouth Herald endorses Obama.

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