Presidential Primaries

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (such sweet thunder @ Apr 1 2008, 12:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>That's a really interesting story, isn't it? Politico does a good job of reporting on tough topics -- teaching while they go.

I think the only question that could provide Obama trouble down the line is the answer on handguns. Attacking him for the statement on capital punishment only brings up the fact that in 1996 some ridiculous amount of death-row inmates were exonerated. It was a good time, due to the structural defects in Illinois at the time, to be against the system

I don't really think his answer on parental consent is different. The answer is still no, just with more explanation. Gun control is a little different, though he still supports allowing the DC ban, so it's not really anything that is that different from his current platform in substance -- of course, structure is much different.

I think, if anything, what the forms show are the growth in Obama's ability to frame his issues . . . which is interesting in and of itself.</div>

I'm reading Politico a lot these days.

Two conservative-leaning writers who are brilliant are Dick Morris and Bob Novak. Regardless of their leanings, Morris is one of the greats at polling and analyzing polls and political news in general, and Novak is wired to sources in both parties like nobody else. Morris worked for Clinton as his personal pollster and actually ran polls for him about how to come out on the Lewinsky stuff.

Guns don't kill people, people using guns kill people. They'll use whatever they have handy - you won't be solving anything by getting rid of them except for keeping people who are honest/honorable gun fans from owning them. My take is the 2nd amendment is clear: "Congress shall pass no law." Period.

Regarding the death penalty, I have two points. To this day, nobody that we know of has been executed who was innocent. The constitution considers that someone might be innocent, and the death penalty is still valid: "No person shall be deprived of LIFE, Liberty, or Property without due process." There's nobody on Death Row who's not been given due process.

OK, another rant about the Death Penalty... "Liberals" are OK with killing unborn children, but not OK with killing murderers. I don't get it. Conservatives are no better - they're OK with killing murderers but not killing unborn children. At least my stance is consistent - I'm for both legal abortion and the death penalty.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MikeDC @ Apr 1 2008, 01:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

...

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.</div>

This isn't a point to Obama specifically, but this is the sort of area where it always amazes me that people are so willing to suspend disbelief.

To actually believe Obama never "saw or approved" of what his campaign (for the State House, surely on a much smaller scale) put out in his name is stupid. And if he actually didn't have any clue, then he should be taken to task for not having a clue.

Likewise with the nonsense Clinton was trying to put out about how she "misspoke" about landing under fire. She didn't misspeak, she lied and got caught.
</div>

Yeah, this is my take on it, too. There's two factors at play in this new scandal:
1) Is Obama more progressive about social issues than he makes himself out to be? This questionnaire brings up that question.
2) Veracity. He claims to have never seen it, yet he signed it and wrote notes on it. Suspension of disbelief is required to think he's not playing a little loose with the truth because the truth hurts his chances in this case.

Lawyers, Liars. Liars, Lawyers. Harvard educated lawyers may be the worst kind I know the MBAs are buttholes.

 

D'oh

There's Christopher Hitchens, too. Another fellow with great political insight:



http://www.slate.com/id/2187780/pagenum/all/#page_start

The Tall Tale of Tuzla

Hillary Clinton's Bosnian misadventure should disqualify her from the presidency, but the airport landing is the least of it.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 31, 2008, at 11:26 AM ET

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

I remember disembarking at the Sarajevo airport in the summer of 1992 after an agonizing flight on a U.N. relief plane that had had to "corkscrew" its downward approach in order to avoid Serbian flak and ground fire. As I hunched over to scuttle the distance to the terminal, a mortar shell fell as close to me as I ever want any mortar shell to fall. The vicious noise it made is with me still. And so is the shock I felt at seeing a civilized and multicultural European city bombarded round the clock by an ethno-religious militia under the command of fascistic barbarians. I didn't like the Clinton candidacy even then, but I have to report that many Bosnians were enthused by Bill Clinton's pledge, during that ghastly summer, to abandon the hypocritical and sordid neutrality of the George H.W. Bush/James Baker regime and to come to the defense of the victims of ethnic cleansing.

I am recalling these two things for a reason. First, and even though I admit that I did once later misidentify a building in Sarajevo from a set of photographs, I can tell you for an absolute certainty that it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or B) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States.

Yet this is only to underline the YouTube version of events and the farcical or stupid or Howard Wolfson (take your pick) aspects of the story. But here is the historical rather than personal aspect, which is what you should keep your eye on. Note the date of Sen. Clinton's visit to Tuzla. She went there in March 1996. By that time, the critical and tragic phase of the Bosnia war was effectively over, as was the greater part of her husband's first term. What had happened in the interim? In particular, what had happened to the 1992 promise, four years earlier, that genocide in Bosnia would be opposed by a Clinton administration?

In the event, President Bill Clinton had not found it convenient to keep this promise. Let me quote from Sally Bedell Smith's admirable book on the happy couple, For Love of Politics:

<blockquote>Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.
</blockquote>
I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."

It's hardly necessary for me to point out that the United States did not receive national health care in return for its acquiescence in the murder of tens of thousands of European civilians. But perhaps that is the least of it. Were I to be asked if Sen. Clinton has ever lost any sleep over those heaps of casualties, I have the distinct feeling that I could guess the answer. She has no tears for anyone but herself. In the end, and over her strenuous objections, the United States and its allies did rescue our honor and did put an end to Slobodan Milosevic and his state-supported terrorism. Yet instead of preserving a polite reticence about this, or at least an appropriate reserve, Sen. Clinton now has the obscene urge to claim the raped and slaughtered people of Bosnia as if their misery and death were somehow to be credited to her account! Words begin to fail one at this point. Is there no such thing as shame? Is there no decency at last? Let the memory of the truth, and the exposure of the lie, at least make us resolve that no Clinton ever sees the inside of the White House again.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MikeDC @ Apr 1 2008, 03:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>This isn't a point to Obama specifically, but this is the sort of area where it always amazes me that people are so willing to suspend disbelief.

To actually believe Obama never "saw or approved" of what his campaign (for the State House, surely on a much smaller scale) put out in his name is stupid. And if he actually didn't have any clue, then he should be taken to task for not having a clue.

Likewise with the nonsense Clinton was trying to put out about how she "misspoke" about landing under fire. She didn't misspeak, she lied and got caught.</div>

I have become not perhaps more forgiving but more understanding about the former point about signing off on documents. I am a very junior lawyer at an investment company and I have our COO and CFO, and SVPs sign off on crap everyday. They don't have the time to read the documents I send them. They read the memo (which never is more than a short paragraph), scan a couple pages to see if the documents pass the smell test, and then give it their okay. They're surprisingly good at this and have picked out documents and issues in the past that need to be caught before execution. But, undoubtedly stuff gets through. I mean, I'm just a junior lawyer.

One of the types of documents I submit are Request For Proposals, which often run over a hundred pages and contain open-ended answers on corporate policy that look much like the questionnaires Obama is being criticized on. This is one of the strengths of the Politico story I thought -- expressing how even with an Obama signature these types of forms are usually left to aides. That's not saying that Obama's statements are true, but they're well within the realm of possibility -- and perhaps one of the reasons that this story isn't getting more coverage. (I wish it would; less to worry about directly before the general.)

I don't know what the hell is up with the Clinton story. The idea of sitting on the bullet proof vests from Platoon?

Dabullz, as to your first point about Obama being liberal: I don't think that's ever been in question. He represents the opposite of triangulation. Instead of adopting a handful of conservative values, to escape fire, he frames progressive values in a way in which Republican-leaners can associate. I think that's the most interesting part of the Politico story, actually: the question about parental-consent is transferred from being a partisan pro-life comment, into the desire to ensure sure that young women are able to consult with their pastors before making the selection. This is consistent across Obama's platform. Pro-environment, but using the traditionally conservative cap-and-trade method instead of pure liberal regulation. Pro-universal health care, but emphasizing personal freedom from a governmental mandate. Pro-withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but emphasizing a re commitment to Afghanistan and continued increase in size of the standing army.

Will it play out in the general? I have my doubts, but it is interesting nonetheless.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MikeDC @ Apr 1 2008, 07:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Oh, I believe all of that is true... I've experienced the same sort of stuff. But my lack of understanding isn't so much for the situation, but the lame "I didn't read the paperwork" excuse.

How ridiculous would it be for one of your bosses to say that? And how far would that excuse get him?

Yet, somehow we've got lower standards for the president.</div>

Wouldn't look to pretty, but those things happen. I'd probably get the more serious slap on the wrist -- and then the insurance would kick in and everyone would be happy. . . but you're right, we should expect more from a President, especially after the hear no evil-see no evil crap that has so often characterized the office -- during the last 8 years, and the two hundred before that.

But if I was an apologist (and I am sooo becoming one), I would say, look: this paperwork was from an Obama campaign for state representative. Not exactly the big time. His campaign brain-trust probably consisted of Frank from across the street, and Julia who taught his kids ballet, and whomever else was willing to go out canvassing every other weekend. It's not like Obama had high powered operatives filling out this more mundane paperwork. And that was all fine and good . . . for the twenty years until he decided to run for President.

Oh, more importantly, what type of "research" were you doing to find the link to the GOP site?

 

Anyone catch Jesse Ventura on the Larry King show last night?

He said he wouldn't vote for Obama, Clinton, or McCain, tho he had some nice things to say about all three.

What he said about Obama was that he's basically a tool of the democratic party; regardless of what he proposes to do, the party will effectively dictate to him what to do. I found that to be a realistic expectation.

He ragged on Bush and Cheney for being chickenhawks, and McCain for saying we might be in Iraq for 100 years (which is misrepresenting what he actually said). He said "going to war is an easy decision: if you'd send your own children there to fight, you know it's a good decision." A good interviewer might have pointed out that McCain has TWO sons in Iraq.

King asked Ventura if he'd run for president, and he said "no, because it's too hard, I don't have ballot access in all 50 states - get me that and I would run." He also said he'd vote for anyone but a republican or democrat, likely Libertarian (huzzah!). Again, a good interviewer would have mentioned that the Libertarian Party DOES have ballot access in all 50 states, and they'd welcome him to run for the nomination of their party.

King had a panel on along with Ventura. Assorted talking heads who support the various candidates, etc. When Ventura pointed out there's not much difference between the two parties, the Democrat talking head took exception and tried to claim there is a big difference. Ventura neatly put that guy in his place by pointing out that Democrats DID support the war in Iraq, did vote for it, did give W a blank check, did get elected with a mandate to end it, and there's no end in sight.

When asked if Obama would end it, he laughed at the notion - and I think he was spot on. It's one thing to rail against the War for political gain (which is all the Democrats have done to that end, root for failure to make Bush look bad), and another to end it when YOU are responsible for the consequences of surrendering. Note that Great Britain was to withdraw their troops, mandate for the new PM there, a campaign promise; they just announced they're extending their troops' time in Iraq and aren't withdrawing after all. Reality bites.

Finally, Ventura was spot on, again, when he pointed out that if a Democrat is elected, the only real change you can expect is for your taxes to go up. "Republicans and Democrats spend the same, Republicans put it on the nation's credit card while Democrats tax the shit out of everyone." (rough quote).

I'll leave you with a great quote from Carl Sagan's "Contact:"

"Never forget the first rule of government procurement. Why build one of anything when you can build two at twice the price?"

 

http://www.thejerkstore.com/

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Okay, my long April Fools nightmare is over...

No more GOP re-direct.

</div>

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/us/polit...agewanted=print

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>April 2, 2008
Democrats?€™ Turmoil Tests Party?€™s Low-Key Leader
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON ?€” The turmoil in the Democratic presidential race has presented a sharp test of Howard Dean?€™s low-profile approach to leading the Democratic National Committee, bringing calls from many Democrats for him to take a more aggressive role in defusing the threat of a protracted and divisive nominating fight.

After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party?€™s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other.

Yet three years after he won election as the party chairman by running largely as an outsider, it is not clear that Mr. Dean has the political skills or the stature with the two campaigns to bring the nominating battle to a relatively quick and unifying conclusion.

Indeed, 24 hours after he made his remarks, Mrs. Clinton said she intended to keep fighting for the nomination through the summer, if necessary. It was an unmistakable rebuke to Mr. Dean, who has never had good relations with the Clintons.

In an interview, Mr. Dean said he was taking steps to pave the way to a smooth convention in Denver this summer, suggesting that he had had private conversations with both campaigns.

Mr. Dean and his aides said they were assembling resources ?€” voter lists, political organizations and polling on vulnerabilities of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Beyond that, Mr. Dean and other Democrats argued that with the party so divided ?€” and in the midst of a fight between two outsized political figures ?€” there were limits to what he could, or should, do.

?€œI?€™m making calls all the time to people,?€? he said. ?€œI?€™ve spoken to a great number of leaders who are not aligned. The operative thing here is let the voters get to have their say before the Washington politicians have their say.?€?

Still, senior officials in both campaigns said they had heard rarely from Mr. Dean on matters like the tone of the contest and how it might be concluded and what to do about the Michigan and Florida delegates, the subject of a bitter and potentially debilitating debate between the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

The chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, Karen Thurman, said she could not recall the last time Mr. Dean had called her to try work out the dispute. She and other Florida Democrats are to meet with Mr. Dean on Wednesday to try to persuade him to agree to a compromise.

Some Democratic Party leaders, while offering sympathy for Mr. Dean?€™s plight, said it was urgent that he take a more assertive role to restore peace. Several suggested that Mr. Dean ?€” who has sought to build a legacy by expanding party operations to all 50 states ?€” risked having his tenure as party leader remembered for a traumatizing loss in a year where most Democrats think victory should be easy.

?€œI think he should be talking to governors and Al Gore and John Kerry,?€? said Donald Fowler, a former party chairman who supports Mrs. Clinton. ?€œI think he should be convening almost daily conversations with people ?€” including the campaigns ?€” trying to reach a solution.?€?

?€œIf I were a chair, I would be a little more public in what I was doing and suggesting,?€? Mr. Fowler said. ?€œThe D.N.C. chair rarely has an opportunity to do stuff, but this is one of those occasions.?€?

Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee drew attention last month when he proposed a solution: Have the elected Democratic officials and party leaders known as superdelegates convene after the voting is done on June 3 to resolve the fight. Mr. Bredesen said he had acted in part because he saw no evidence that Mr. Dean or other leaders were trying to resolve the situation.

?€œWhat I try to do is when I see a problem to step up,?€? Mr. Bredesen said. ?€œI think the party needs to take a hand in this thing.?€? ?€˜

Mr. Dean, a reserved former governor of Vermont, goes home most weekends and spends most of his weekdays on the road. In Washington, he stays at a hotel. His approach and style offer a sharp contrast to a string of big-shoulder, high-profile party chairmen ?€”Terry McAuliffe or the late Ron H. Brown ?€” who rose through the party ranks and were fixtures at the parties, fund-raisers and restaurants that make up this city?€™s political culture and where much of the political conversation takes place.

He in many ways ran for chairman as a candidate defying the Democratic establishment, and his first years were marked by a very public feud with Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, over Mr. Dean?€™s trademark proposal to use Democratic National Committee money to build organizations in all 50 states. He does not have particularly close relationships with many of the people who are central to the Clinton and Obama campaigns or Washington Democratic players.

?€œI have never heard from him,?€? said Charles T. Manatt, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. ?€œBut he is a totally different style from someone like me who came in through the party process. Dean doesn?€™t live in town so he hasn?€™t connected with a lot of people in town.?€?

Whatever difficulties Mr. Dean may be having, he remains extremely popular with state leaders across the country, in no small part because of the money he has invested in building the state organizations.

He has asserted that the expenditures are vital to allowing the party to make inroads in Republican territory, but his approach has been mocked by Mr. Emanuel, who, like some other Democrats, has pressed the party to direct money toward high-priority races now rather than toward a hope of gains in the future.

Some Democrats said Mr. Dean was wise to stand back in the presidential race, saying that nothing could be done until tensions between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were resolved.

?€œI honestly think it?€™s laying too much at his door, laying too much on his plate,?€? said Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the national party and a prominent supporter and friend of Mr. Dean. ?€œHe truly only has limited impact on this despite people?€™s sense that a party chair can wave a magic wand and make it happen. I know other people will disagree with that.?€?

?€œAs a former chair, I have to acknowledge that I don?€™t think any former chair has in my memory gone through a period of time that is as complex as this,?€? Mr. Grossman said. ?€œHoward has been scrupulously nonpartisan in terms of all his activities in dealing with this campaign.?€?

Mr. Dean?€™s allies argued that his call for the fight to be settled by July 1 or so ?€” after the last primaries in early June ?€” was providing a rallying point for other party leaders. ?€œI would hope there would be a resolution of the contest before July,?€? Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who will preside over the convention, said Tuesday.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters that he believed that the superdelegates, who could determine the nomination, should make their preferences known by July, embracing at least the concept proposed by Mr. Dean.

But frustration with Mr. Dean?€™s hands-off approach was reflected across Democratic ranks. Peter S. Lowy, a prominent Los Angeles contributor who has held regular fund-raisers for Democratic campaign committees, sent Mr. Dean a letter complaining about his leadership of the party during this period.

?€œAs long-term supporters of the party, we have been singularly dismayed with your performance during the current Democratic presidential primary season,?€? Mr. Lowy wrote.

Paul G. Kirk, a former party chairman and supporter of Mr. Dean, said that he thought it was possible for exchanges between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama to hurt the eventual nominee, and that Mr. Dean could do something to avoid that.

?€œSome of the stuff going on today could be problematic, something that the nominee is going to wish hadn?€™t happened,?€? Mr. Kirk said. ?€œThere are things that a party chairman can do. He could be quietly trying to bring people to the table and say we?€™ve got to knock off this noise levels and get things back on a positive tack.?€?

In the interview, Mr. Dean suggested that he was doing something like that, although he would not elaborate.

?€œI do think that?€™s part of my role ?€” and I have been doing that,?€? he said. ?€œBut I don?€™t start doing it publicly. It?€™s much more effective not to share a private conversation.?€?

Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington, and Jeff Zeleny from North Carolina</div>

Low keyed, my ass.

 

LOL at this site:

http://uglydemocrats.com/

 

Or horrible polling.

I've never heard of these guys.

Let's see what Rasmussen says: Clinton 47%, Obama 42%.

He's clearly eating into her big lead.

 

The big news is he got a big union endorsement in PA.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080402/D8VQ1O900.html

Obama Trims Clinton's Lead in Pa.

By DEVLIN BARRETT and BETH FOUHY

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Sen. Barack Obama was endorsed Wednesday by a labor union and two Democratic superdelegates, as a poll showed he has cut Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania almost in half since mid-February as he strives to deny her a resounding victory in the state's presidential primary.

The Illinois senator peeled off an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has endorsed Clinton. The Philadelphia-based local of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees has about 16,000 members.

Its president, Henry Nicholas, announced the endorsement while introducing Obama at a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Nicholas, who also is president of the 150,000-member national union and an AFSCME international vice president, said he took the step "because justice told me it was the right position to take."

Meanwhile, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal and former Montana Sen. John Melcher endorsed Obama. As superdelegates to the national convention, they are among the Democratic Party leaders who will decide the nomination because, although Obama leads Clinton in delegates, neither candidate can win solely with pledged delegates they've won through primaries and caucuses. Obama handily won Wyoming's March 8 caucus; Montana holds a Democratic primary June 3.

Since last Friday, Obama has cut Clinton's lead among superdelegates by four; she has 250 to his 220.

Asked on MSNBC's "Hardball" about the possibility he could finish the primary season with a lead among delegates but still not get the nomination, Obama said it was too early to worry about that.

"Most of the superdelegates who have not yet decided, I think will recognize that we've earned this nomination. That's not guaranteed and I don't take anything for granted," Obama said. "I'll let the poobahs of the party make a decision as to how they want to deal with it."

As Obama and Clinton campaigned in Pennsylvania, where the primary is April 22, a new poll showed him cutting into her lead by drawing more support from men and young voters. Clinton's 16-percentage-point lead in mid-February slid to 12 points in mid-March and now to nine points, according to the Quinnipiac University telephone poll, which ended March 31.

(AP) Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., campaigns at Mercyhurst...
Full Image
Clinton is well ahead of Obama among Pennsylvania's white voters, 59 percent to 34 percent, while he gets nearly three of four black votes. She is well ahead among women, while the two are even with men.

With both candidates wooing union members, displaced workers and anxious families, they quarreled again over which of them would oppose or modify trade deals such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. Some labor leaders blame NAFTA for sending U.S. jobs overseas, a claim that many economists dispute.

As many as 830,000 union voters are expected to have a strong say in how more than 4.1 million Democrats, a record registration for Pennsylvania, allocate the state's 158 delegates to the Democratic national convention.

Obama told the AFL-CIO gathering that he will oppose pacts that threaten U.S. jobs.

"What I refuse to accept is that we have to sign trade deals like the South Korea Agreement that are bad for American workers," Obama said.

Speaking to the same unions a day earlier, Clinton said as first lady she had forcefully battled the agreement President Clinton labored hard to win.

"I did speak out and oppose NAFTA," she said. "I raised a big yellow flag and said, 'I don't think this will work.'"

Teamsters president James P. Hoffa, who is backing Obama, disputed her claim.

"No one who was around in the time of NAFTA remembers her doing that," Hoffa told The Associated Press during a telephone interview. "Let's face it, she's tied to NAFTA no matter what she says."

At an economic summit in Pittsburgh organized by her presidential campaign, Clinton said she would eliminate tax breaks for companies that move jobs to other countries and use the savings to persuade them to keep jobs in the U.S.

Clinton's plan would offer new tax benefits for research and job development. It would also create "innovation and research clusters" across the country and provide $500 million annually in investments to encourage the creation of high-wage jobs in clean energy.

Clinton called it her "insourcing agenda."

"We hear so much about outsourcing," when jobs are lost to other countries, she said. "I want to put an end to it. We're going to change the tax code, we're going to change the giveaways to the special interests."

Clinton also broadcast a new TV ad in Pennsylvania explicitly challenging Republican John McCain's economic credentials.

Echoing an earlier ad aimed at Obama on national security, it begins with images of sleeping children while a narrator says a phone is ringing in the White House at 3 a.m. but this time the crisis is economic. As the phone rings on and on, the sleeping children are replaced by adults grimly reviewing bills during daylight hours. The narrator faults McCain's response to rising home foreclosures and teetering markets and says he'd just let the phone keep ringing. The ad ends with an image of Clinton answering a phone.

 

But Clinton's working the superdelegates behind the scenes. Tell me democrats aren't about stealing elections.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/20...date-clint.html

Candidate Clinton to Richardson: 'Barack Obama Can't Win'

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Reports: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and former President Bill Clinton are making very direct arguments to Democratic superdelegates, starkly insisting Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., cannot win a general election against presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Sources with direct knowledge of the conversation between Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., prior to the Governor's endorsement of Obama say she told him flatly, "He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win."

Richardson, who served in President Clinton's cabinet, disagreed.

At a rally in Oregon, standing next to Obama, Richardson insisted, "My great affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver." But he added, "It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting among ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall."

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle detailed another explosive exchange in which the former president angrily objected to Richardson's endorsement.

"Five times to my face [Richardson] said that he would never do that," Clinton said, according to the Chronicle -- before, the newspaper reports, he "went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out."

Another, neutral superdelegate who was in the room for that meeting called the Chronicle's take "a bit exaggerated." But there is no question the Clintons are passionately arguing their case against Obama in what is fast becoming an intense race not just for the votes of the public but of the Democratic elite known as superdelegates.