Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton on Friday called on rival Barack Obama — who has been closing the gap with her in key early-voting states — to stop airing his television advertisement on health care because she says it contains false promises about providing universal coverage.
 
“Even Senator Obama himself has admitted that his plan would not cover everyone, calling the plan ‘virtually universal,’” Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said in a letter to Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. Clinton has proposed a plan that would require all Americans to get health insurance.
 
The Clinton camp cited an opinion piece by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that criticized Obama’s plan: “He shied away from doing what was necessary to make his claim true.” 
 
Obama spokesman Bill Burton shot back that the advertisement has been out for a month, “and the only thing that’s changed since then is the poll numbers.”
 
“The truth is, Barack Obama would offer health coverage to every single American who can’t afford it, and he’ll do it by bringing Republicans and Democrats together like he’s done before,” Burton said.

– Photo credit: Steve Marcus

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is gaining on rival Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, while Republican Mitt Romney’s lead in the early voting state is stable, according to a new poll by Suffolk University for Boston’s WHDH TV.

Likely voters in New Hampshire’s Jan. 8 Democratic primary, which includes independents, gave 34 percent support to Clinton, while 22 percent backed Obama and 15 percent picked former North Carolina senator John Edwards. Just 12 percent were undecided. Her current 12-point spread contrasts to June when Clinton led Obama by 18 points.

“If Obama could shave off another six points in the next few weeks, he’ll be well within the margin of error – and John Edwards still has a chance to make it a three-person race,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

On the Republican side, Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, attracted 34 percent support, compared with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 20 percent, Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 13 percent, Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s 8 percent, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 7 percent. Fourteen percent were undecided.

A separate poll this month by University of New Hampshire for WMUR and CNN showed Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, losing some ground but still holding a commanding lead in New Hampshire. That poll, released on Nov. 20, showed Clinton’s lead shrinking to 36 percent from 43 percent in September. Obama, an Illinois senator, was in second place with 22 percent , up from 20 percent.

– Photo credit: Steve Marcus

There may be one thing Democratic and Republican presidential candidates can agree on: they’ve been saved lots of potential embarassment by the television writers’ strike which has forced late night TV talk shows into re-runs. 

That has allowed the candidates to escape merciless teasing about their campaign gaffes from Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as noted in today’s Washington Post:

Look at all the juicy targets that have passed without extracurricular commentary these past three-plus weeks. What would “Indecision 2008″ have done with Hillary Clinton’s comment about being able to stand the heat of the campaign because she’s “real comfortable in the kitchen”? What would Leno make of Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa (and his endorsements from both Chuck Norris and former pro wrestler Ric “Nature Boy” Flair)? What fun could “SNL” have with the news that arch-social-conservative Pat Robertson has endorsed Republican Rudy Giuliani, a candidate who: (a) is thrice-married, (b) once engaged in an openly adulterous affair, (c) is pro-abortion and (d) supports gay and lesbian rights?

If an irony falls in the primary and there’s no late-night comic to tell a joke about it, did it really exist?

There’s really no substitute to fill the parody void. Although the occasional JibJab satire will go “viral” on the Internet, the Web has no equivalent to Leno and Letterman for consistent political satire.

Our question is:  how will Generation X, Y and Z be in the political know without Stewart’s “Daily Show”??

–Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Blake

The war, the economy and immigration: these were the three top issues that concerned a batch of mostly elderly Republican voters sitting around a donut shop in the Texas panhandle town of Amarillo.

When asked what they thought about abortion and gay marriage, one of them quipped that “It’s none of our concern, none of us are gay.”

But on a more serious note one of the group, retired educator Jim Holmes, said they “didn’t discuss such things” at their regular chats over coffee and donuts.

That sets them apart from evangelical Republicans but local party chairman John Tyson said only about 20 percent of the local branch of the GOP fell into that category.

These self-described Republican guys had more bread and butter concerns.

Jim was jittery about the subprime crisis and derivative trading; Tom McKay, who has a grandson serving in Iraq, was worried about the war but said he’d “like to see victory”; and they all seemed to have concerns about illegal immigration.

Several thought Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton would come for her guns if she was elected president — a prospect viewed dimly in this windswept cattle region where men like to hunt and drive big big-up trucks.

Chatting a few hours before Wednesday night’s debate, like most Republicans they had not really made up their minds yet.

“I’m leaning toward one candidate, but he’s not a front runner,” Jim said cryptically.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tough guy stances and record on crime in New York seemed a crowd pleaser; and one remarked that Mitt Romney — or “the Mormon” as he put it –  was he thought the only one in the Republican field still married to his first wife.

But politics aside, some of the guys seemed more interested in an upcoming bird shoot they were planning. Hence probably their concern about keeping their guns …

Photo credits: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini, Jessica Rinaldi

It’s not unusual after presidential debate full of fireworks and mud slinging, but political pundits were a bit divided over who won the Republican faceoff last night although some said surging Mike Huckabee did one heckuva job. 
 
NBC News’ First Read argued the former Arkansas governor sounded presidential from the beginning and stepped up his game. 
 
“He had his share of one-liners — the best being the one about Jesus would never have run for higher office — but he seemed to balance the funny with more presidential rhetoric,” it said. 
 
The widely watched Des Moines Register political columnist David Yepsen said Huckabee, John McCain and Fred Thompson were the three winners last night while front runners Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani didn’t have such great a evening.
 
“The Romney-Giuliani tiff with each other over sanctuary cities at the beginning of the evening diminished them both because it didn’t look very presidential,” Yepsen wrote.
 
Political watchers at CNN, which hosted the debate, were more divided: Gloria Borger said there was no clear winner while Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons said McCain did the best. Republican conservative Bill Bennett argued Romney outperformed them all. 

Tell us who you think did the best and why… 

A new poll on foreign policy comes up with some interesting new categories to label American voters — from “Fortress America” (17 percent) and “Reluctant Super Power” (16 percent) on the right to ”International Environmentalist” (12 percent) and “New Isolationist” (14 percent) on the left.

About a third of voters are in the middle, dubbed “Average Americans.” 

Republican pollster Bill McInturff said the biggest surprise were the new isolationists.

“Isolationism for me has always been a kind of Robert Taft (idea), that strain of the Republican party,” McInturff told a briefing of U.N. correspondents in New York. 

“The new isolationists are liberal, moderate-to-liberal, younger (Sen. John) Kerry voters who don’t want America doing much of anything around the world. That is so counter-intuitive to what I would have thought before I started the research,” he said.  

“The reason we call them new isolationists is it wasn’t just Iraq. They’re also really ticked off about trade agreements, and there’s other stuff across this data that makes them very, very surprising.”

“They really want a retreat about America’s role around the world, and it’s just not something we expected to find or see.”

The poll, conducted jointly with Democratic pollster Geoff Garin and commissioned by the U.N. Foundation, sampled 800 likely voters. Read the full Reuters story here.

The poll ranks voters’ top foreign policy issues, apart from Iraq, as follows:

Terrorism (38 percent)

America’s dependence on foreign oil (33 percent)

Improving America’s relationships with other countries (27 percent)

Tell us which one is most important to you.

Republican presidential up-and-comer Mike Huckabee won an important endorsement Wednesday that could help boost his standing among conservatives — the backing of Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell’s son, Jerry Jr.
 
Falwell, Jr. succeeded his father as president of Liberty University, a conservative center of higher learning, after the elder Falwell died earlier this year. The family built up a conservative empire they have used to battle abortion and homosexuality.
 
The son’s endorsement further splinters the conservative movement among Republican White House hopefuls.
 
Another major Christian evangelist, Pat Robertson, endorsed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani while Arizona Sen. John McCain received the backing of conservative Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who was popular with the Religious Right. Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, was endorsed by Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich.
 
Falwell’s father said earlier this year before he died that he did not plan to make any endorsement ahead of the 2008 primaries and that “I like every one of them.”
 
Still, Huckabee has been steadily moving up in polls in Iowa, a state where religious conservatives make up a lot of the Republican party.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young

John Edwards, whose presidential campaign has sought labor support to help propel him to the Democratic nomination, joined striking members of the Writers Guild of America-East at a celebrity-studded rally in New York on Tuesday.

“I’m proud to be here walking with these workers, these people who are creative, who play an important role in the production of a product that is generating revenue,” the former North Carolina senator said. “They deserve a fair chance to share in that revenue.

“If we want real economic security for working people in this country, we have to grow and strengthen the union movement,” said Edwards, who noted he had joined striking screenwriters on the West Coast prior to this East Coast event.

The dispute between the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America and the studios’ Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has centered around how much money film and TV writers should earn when their work is distributed via the Internet.

The first major strike against U.S. film and TV studios in nearly 20 years has crippled production of many television programs and movies. 

Also addressing the rally were actors Danny Glover and Tim Robbins, while listening in the crowd were actors Peter Dinklage and Joe Pantoliano, David Chase, creator of “The Sopranos”, and Patti Smith’s longtime guitar player and collaborator Lenny Kaye.

“I think it’s really great when a candidate comes down and expresses solidarity with workers,” said Kaye.

“Personally, I like Dennis Kucinich, but I can’t say that I’m in the mainstream,” he added.

Photo credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson

Who would have thought Republican presidential candidates would be fighting over New York City and Massachusetts, considered two of the more liberal bastions of the country.  

Both front runners Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, and Mitt Romney, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, have been pounding each other about their supposed “liberal” records in their respective locales.
 
Each day reporters’ e-mail inboxes are flooded with messages from the campaigns accusing the other candidate of being more like Democrats on abortion, health care, immigration and gay rights, citing their opponent’s past record. 
 
“There is one Republican candidate in the race with a track record of cutting taxes 23 times and that is Rudy Giuliani. No amount of political spin can help Mitt Romney re-write the history books. Mitt Romney failed to pass a single tax cut as governor and the Cato Institute gave him a ‘C’ for his handling of the economy as governor. Mitt Romney can repackage himself as many times as he wants but his failing fiscal record speaks for itself,” Katie Levinson, Giuliani’s communications director, said in her latest missive.
 
Not so fast, responded the Romney camp. His spokesman Kevin Madden offered a half-dozen citations from news articles, speeches and press releases from the Club for Growth touting the state’s performance as well as statistics on how Massachusetts’ economy fared under Romney.

“Gov. Romney’s has an extraordinary record of fiscal discipline, lower taxes and pro-growth economic policies.  Gov. Romney was applauded for cutting wasteful spending and insisting upon more efficiency in government. His record of balanced budgets and smart management is quite different from the fiscally irresponsible budget deficits that Mayor Giuliani left in New York City,” Madden said.

Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder

The vote in the key state of Iowa is more than a month away, but veteran Republican leader Newt Gingrich is ready to declare a winner in the Democratic presidential nomination race there: Barack Obama.
 
The former Speaker of the House — and once briefly a presidential aspirant — said in an interview on Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America that he thought the senator from Illinois could beat front-runner Hillary Clinton on Jan. 3 when voters in Iowa kick off the state-by-state nomination battles for both parties.
 
“My guess is that Sen. Obama’s going to win Iowa, and he’s going to win it by a substantial margin,” Gingrich said. “I have a hunch that the emotional energy that Sen. Obama’s building is more powerful than the emotional energy that Sen. Clinton is building.”
 
“It just seems to me right now, that in Iowa at least, that Sen. Obama’s built a real head of steam,” Gingrich said in the interview, nearly a year before the Nov. 4, 2008 general election.
 
His prediction came as some polls showed Clinton falling slightly behind Obama in Iowa.

– Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque