JEFFERSONVILLE, IN.  - Robert Kennedy Jr. — a Kennedy who is not backing Sen. Barack Obama — campaigned on Thursday for Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying he wanted to explain why other members of his family are wrong and he is right.

“I am here because I love this woman,” he told a crowd of Clinton supporters in southern Indiana, which holds its presidential nominating primary on Tuesday.

“There are some members of my family who have decided to do the wrong thing and support Barack Obama,” he said. “Let me tell you why they’re wrong and I’m right, because I know Hillary Clinton better than they know Barrack Obama.”

Kennedy’s uncle,  Sen. Ted Kennedy, and cousin Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, have thrown their support behind Obama.

But Robert Kennedy Jr., the son of Sen. Robert Kennedy who was assassinated while campaigning for the US presidency in 1968, has supported Clinton since she first started to run for U.S. Senate in 1999. She now holds the same U.S. Senate seat from New York his father did.

The younger Kennedy, an environmental activist and lawyer, said Clinton ran in New York after enduring ”one of the most savage beatings of any public figure during my lifetime,” recalling the Whitewater investigation that led to the impeachment of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The former first lady worked hard to win over Republican strongholds in upstate New York and will work hard to win votes nationwide, he said.

“I saw it happen in upstate New York,” he said. “People, this party has gotten a good look at Hillary Clinton, and they know all those negatives that have been grilled into them for ten years by the right-wing Republicans — that it’s not true, that this is a leader who is going to be one of the most extraordinary presidents in our history.”

As for his family, and the Democratic Party, he said, “We’re all going to be together after August.”

 Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.   

 - Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Kennedy and Clinton campaign in Jeffersonville, IN)

PHILADELPHIA — Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton stopped by a dance class at the Westside YMCA in West Philadelphia on Friday. Tell us what you think — can Hillary dance?

Earlier in the day, she presented a $4 billion anti-crime plan that she hopes will halve murder rates in big cities. She was accompanied by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a key ally in Clinton’s bid to win over black voters from her rival Barack Obama.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who has built his candidacy on the promise of a “new kind of politics,” has run up against the old kind of politics in Philadelphia.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama’s refusal to pay “street money” to volunteers in Pennsylvania’s largest city may cost him support in the state’s April 22 primary.

Local party leaders in Philadelphia expect candidates to deliver cash to help them get out the vote, the Times says. Teens who hand out leaflets typically get a $10 bill, while more experienced volunteers can get up to $100. The total for America’s sixth-largest city could come to $500,000.

“This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people,” ward leader and Obama supporter Carol Ann Campbell told the Times.

Obama often rails against the influence of money in politics, and his campaign has told Philadelphia officials they should expect no street money.

That could cost him support in an area where he will have to run up large margins to counteract rival Hillary Clinton’s strength elsewhere in the state, the Times said. Local officials expect the Clinton campaign will have no qualms about handing out street money, which is legal and has been a fixture in previous presidential campaigns.

Obama’s stance could also cause resentment among the city’s poor, black voters, who see the black candidate’s well-funded campaign spending lavishly on TV ads but freezing out field workers for whom a $50 bill would be a big payday.

“They view it that the white people are getting all the money for TV,” said state Rep. Dwight Evans, who is neutral in the race.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Frank Polich (Obama campaigns in Gary, Indiana on April 10)

Colin Powell was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s supporting the presidential bid of fellow Republican John McCain.

“I’m looking at all three candidates, I know them all very, very well, I consider myself a friend of each and every one of them, and I have not decided who I will vote for yet,” Powell said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Powell, like McCain, is a military veteran who publicly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War in 1991.

But while McCain wants a continued U.S. military presence there, Powell said the armed forces will simply be unable to maintain 140,000 troops in Iraq beyond next year.

Whoever is president next year, “they will face a military force, a United States military force, that cannot sustain, continue to sustain, 140,000 people deployed in Iraq,” Powell said. “They will have to continue to draw down at some pace.”

Powell said he was impressed with fellow African-American Barack Obama, despite the Democratic Illinois senator’s relative lack of experience.

“Sen. Obama, he didn’t have a lot of experience in running a presidential campaign, did he, but he seems to know how to organize a task and he seems to know how to apply resources to a problem at hand,” Powell said.

“So that gives you some indication that (despite) his inexperience in foreign affairs and domestic affairs, he may be somebody who can learn quickly.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won (Powell speaks at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul October 17, 2007)