WASHINGTON - “Scurrilous” and “disingenuous” were among the words a top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives used on Thursday to describe Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactics in her bid to defeat Barack Obama for their party’s presidential nomination.

House Democratic Whip James Clyburn, of South Carolina and the highest ranking black in Congress, also said he has heard speculation that Clinton is staying in the race only to try to derail Obama and pave the way for her to make another White House run in 2012.

“I heard something, the first time yesterday (in South Carolina), and I heard it on the (House) floor today, which is telling me there are African Americans who have reached the decision that the Clintons know that she can’t win this. But they’re hell-bound to make it impossible for Obama to win” in November, Clyburn told Reuters in an interview.

Obama holds a sizable lead in delegates won in state-nominating contests which could be hard for her to overcome.

The purported theory is that an Obama defeat in November against Republican presidential candidate John McCain would let Clinton make another presidential bid in four years, Clyburn said.

Clyburn has not yet declared whether he supports Clinton or Obama. But in January, he raised his concerns about the heated exchanges between the two campaigns before the South Carolina primary.

On Thursday, Clyburn took Clinton and surrogates to task, complaining that they want the popular votes in Michigan and Florida counted, even though both states violated party rules for the early scheduling of their nominating contests.

“I think it’s so disingenuous … (adviser James) Carville and Sen. Clinton were all on TV. I’ve seen them two or three times this week, talking about counting Florida and Michigan.”

Obama did not campaign in those states because the Democratic Party said Florida and Michigan wouldn’t be included in the formal tally for the nomination. “Her name was the only one on the ticket in Michigan and still 42, 43 percent of the vote was against her,” Clyburn said.

Still, Clyburn said “I don’t think she ought to drop out.”

But he added, “There’s a difference between dropping out and raising all this extraneous scurrilous stuff about the guy (Obama). Just run your campaign … you don’t have to drop out to be respectful of other people.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clyburn with presidential candidates at a debate in January)

WASHINGTON - Most of the Bush clan have already thrown their support behind the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, with one new notable exception — President George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna.

The president rolled out the red carpet at the White House last month to endorse McCain’s candidacy after he clinched the delegates for the Republican nomination. The White House hosted a lunch and Rose Garden photo-op for the Arizona senator.

When interviewed on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Wednesday night to promote a children’s book she wrote with her mother Laura, Jenna left the door open to possibly backing another candidate.

Here’s the transcript:

KING: Do you have a favorite between the two, the two Democrats?

L. BUSH: My favorite is the Republican.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Yours, too, I would imagine.

J. BUSH: I don’t know.

KING: A-ha.

J. BUSH: But, I mean, you know…

KING: Are you open to…

J. BUSH: Yes, of course. I mean, who isn’t open to learning about the candidates? But, I mean, and I’m sure everybody is like that. But I really — I honestly have been too busy with books to really pay that much attention.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Ray Stubblebine (Laura and Jenna Bush wave to people standing in line for signed copies of their new children’s book.)

WASHINGTON - In a rare display of political harmony, Democrats and Republicans on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee came together on behalf of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.

On a 19-0 vote on Thursday, they approved a sense of the Senate resolution that declares McCain is indeed a “natural born” U.S. citizen and thus eligible under the Constitution to be president.

Questions have been raised because McCain was born outside of the United States — to Americans parents on a military base in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, then under U.S. control.

McCain, a Republican, insists he meets the “natural born” requirement. Many Democrats and Republicans agree. But the Senate panel approved the resolution and sent it to the full Senate for a vote as a statement and precautionary move.

A sense of the Senate resolution is not binding. But if there is a court challenge of McCain’s eligibility, it could help influence the decision.

“The Senate should adopt this resolution and put to rest any question of Sen. McCain’s status as a ‘natural born citizen’,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and a chief sponsor of the resolution.

Senate backers include Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are competing for the Democratic presidential nomination and the right to face McCain in the November election. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jose Gomez

CHICAGO - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he’s not running for president, but on Wednesday night he revved up to full campaigning mode when accepting an award from CME Group, the big futures exchanges.  

“We are desperately in need of leadership to deal with a much more competitive world,” said Bloomberg, stopping just short of announcing his candidacy for — anything.  
        
Riffing on the theme of “innovation as the essence of leadership” upon receiving CME’s Fred Arditti Innovation Award, Bloomberg electrified the well-heeled audience at the swanky Peninsula Hotel with a call for action on everything from climate change to education to immigration reform.  
    
“Choices made now will determine what kind of future our children will have. At a national level we’re working as hard as we can to stop innovation,” the Democrat-turned Republican-turned Independent said.  

Energy independence and efficiency led Bloomberg’s list of underfunded programs. “We spend one-third on that of what members of Congress spend on earmarks every year. It’s up to all of us to hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire,” Bloomberg said.  
    
Restrictions on H-1B work visas mean the United States risks losing out in a much more competitive world, Bloomberg said, adding that American capitalist success stories like Sun Microsystems, Yahoo and Google were all founded in part by immigrants.  
    
“Medicine is going overseas. Science is going overseas. We are exporting our intellectual capital, and we can’t keep doing it,” Bloomberg said “If we don’t find ways to get around that, then we really are in trouble.”  
    
Bloomberg, whose term as New York mayor ends on Dec 31, 2009, also hailed the concept of term limits — raising a few eyebrows within an audience that included Chicago’s “Mayor for Life” Richard M. Daley. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Bloomberg earlier this month with Republican presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday brushed aside Hillary Clinton’s attempts to portray him as someone who lacked toughness and could not stand the heat of the media glare.

Clinton, who depicts herself as a fighter in her campaign speeches, has pounced on the Illinois senator’s critique of a television debate last week in which he was put on the defensive about issues such as whether he wears a flagpin and the fiery rhetoric of his pastor. She accused him of not being able to handle media scrutiny.

But Obama said it was the New York senator and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who have been thin-skinned about press questions.

“Nobody has complained more about the press about questions at debates, about being mistreated than Senator Clinton has or President Clinton. And so we have been pretty tame in terms of taking our shots and just rolling with them,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6.

Clinton has tried to underline her message that she is the tougher candidate by running an ad featuring images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Republican National Committee has weighed in as well, suggesting Obama tries to dodge hard questions from the media.

“I know that people like to talk tough and use a lot of rhetoric about fighting and obliterating and all that stuff. You know that I have always believed that if you are tough, you don’t have to talk about it,” Obama said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama speaks at his Pennsylvania primary election night rally in Evansville.)

WASHINGTON - One interesting tidbit that came out of the exit polling from Pennsylvania Democratic voters is that a large majority believe the U.S. economy is already in recession — contrary what the current president said on Tuesday.
    
A whopping 88 percent of voters in Pennsylvania — a state trying to transition from steel and coal industries to high-tech and medical research — said the U.S. economy was in a recession, with 42 percent saying it was a serious recession and 47 percent said it was a moderate contraction, according to exit poll data on CNN’s Web site (page 5 of data).
 
On Tuesday, President George W. Bush cited the most recent economic data showing small growth in the fourth quarter of 2007. But he also acknowledged that the first quarter figures had not yet been released.
 
“We’re not in a recession.  We’re in a slowdown,” Bush said after meetings with leaders of Canada and Mexico. “We haven’t had first quarter growth statistics yet. But there’s no question we’re in a slowdown.”
 
Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both said the economy was in a recession as has Republican presumptive nominee Sen. John McCain.
 
But White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Wednesday such pronouncements were a little early in the game. 
    
“We don’t have data yet and it’s a little premature to declare it so definitively as a recession because the data isn’t in,” she told reporters.
 
The Commerce Department is due to release the GDP figures for the first quarter on April 30, which is also when the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate-setting committee will announce whether it is cutting rates again. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni (shoppers browse food aisles at discount retailer Wal-mart.)

Bill Clinton is making news again.

Campaigning for his wife Hillary in Pennsylvania, the former president accused the Obama campaign of “playing the race card” and later lashed out at a reporter who asked him about his comments.

Could this hurt Hillary’s prospects in the must-win Keystone state, which holds its nominating contest today?

Bill Clinton was so popular among African Americans during his time in the White House that he was sometimes known as “the first black president,” but much of that goodwill evaporated after the racially charged South Carolina primary in January.

Many blacks were angered when he compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson, seeing it as an attempt to marginalize a black candidate who has drawn white support. Bill said he meant no offense, and later accused the Obama campaign of trying to take advantage of the remarks.

Bill took a lower-profile role in his wife’s campaign for several weeks after his run-ins with reporters who asked him about the remarks received prominent news coverage.

But evidently he still feels he was misrepresented.

When asked on Monday if he had been mistaken to compare Obama to Jackson, the civil rights leader and 1988 presidential candidate, Clinton told Philadelphia’s WHYY radio:

“No, and I think they played the race card on me. … I frankly thought the way the Obama campaign reacted was disrespectful to Jesse Jackson.”

On Tuesday, Obama seemed perplexed by Clinton’s remarks.

“Was there a plan to get him to say that my campaign was like Jesse Jackson’s? I don’t know what he was referring to, unfortunately,” Obama said at a diner in Pittsburgh.

Hillary did not seem so eager to revisit the subject.

“It’s old news. It’s been around for several months now,” she said in a television interview.

Clinton tried to distance himself from the remarks in a testy exchange at the Jewish Community Center in Pittsburgh. Here’s a full transcript, provided by the NBC reporter involved:

NBC reporter Mike Memoli: “Sir what did you mean yesterday when you said that the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”

Clinton: “When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?”

Memoli: “On WHYY radio yesterday.”

Clinton: “No, no, no. That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day.”

Memoli: “Respectfully sir, though, you did say …”

Clinton: “Have a nice day.” [continues shaking hands with supporters]. “I said what I said, you can go and look at the interview. And if you’ll be real honest, you’ll also report what the question was and what the answer was.”

Memoli: “They asked you if you regretted your comparing Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama on the day after the South Carolina primary.”

Clinton: “And I pointed out that I did not do that, and that I complimented them both. And that Jesse Jackson took no offense. And I called him myself, I said: ‘Did you find that offensive?’ And he said no.”

photo credit: REUTERS/Bradley Bower (Clinton listens to Hillary Clinton address supporters at a Philadelphia rally on April 21)

WASHINGTON - Among those who serve with them in the U.S. Senate — an institution often referred to as “the world’s most deliberative body” — endorsements for White House rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are dead even.

Thirteen of their fellow Democratic senators back Obama, the first-term lawmaker from Illinois, while 13 support Clinton, the second-term lawmaker from New York.

Twenty-one other Democratic senators are uncommitted in the race for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

Obama’s Senate backers include: Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and John Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Clinton’s Senate backers include: Evan Bayh of Indiana, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Bill Nelson of Florida, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Charles Schumer of New York, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

The Senate split is reflective of a nationwide Gallup tracking poll of Democratic and Democratic leaning voters after last week’s debate. It found Obama at 47 percent and Clinton at 45 percent, within the margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Senators are among the 796 Democratic super delegates — members of Congress and other party leaders — who will have a vote at the Democratic presidential nominating convention in August. They will join delegates won by Obama and Clinton in state-nominating contests. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

MCKEESPORT, Pa. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama often tells the adoring audiences he draws to his large campaign rallies that he is “not a perfect man.”

But he usually steers clear of offering any specifics about his flaws.

At a town-hall style gathering outside of Pittsburgh on Monday, he was asked by a young supporter to give an example of both a “good quality” and a “bad quality” he has.

Obama eagerly delved into the first part of the question, saying he was honest and forthright. He offered a list of examples of that from his political career, citing a decision to give a speech in Detroit calling for strict fuel-economy standards and a separate speech on Wall Street calling for higher taxes for the wealthy.

But he was more hesitant about tackling the second part of the question.

“In terms of the bad qualities, what I’m going to have you do is talk to my wife after the town-hall meeting and she will tell you — she will have a pretty long list,” Obama said.

He did offer one example from his wife Michelle’s list.

“One of the things she complains about is, sometimes I put clothes up on the door instead of putting them on the hanger,” he said.

Obama is hardly the only politician who is reluctant to talk in detail about his flaws.

President George W. Bush has been tripped up by such questions. At a press conference in 2004, he was asked about his biggest mistake but struggled to come up with an answer.

“I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it,” Bush said as he complained that he had been put on the spot.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn (Obama with his wife Michelle at a rally in Pittsburgh)

SCRANTON, Pa. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama kicked off a day of campaigning in Pennsylvania by dropping by a Scranton diner for a breakfast of waffles, sausage and orange juice.
 
But the press corps went hungry — hungry for an answer that is.
 
The Illinois senator brushed aside a question from one reporter on his reaction to former President Jimmy Carter’s description of a positive meeting with leaders of the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas.
 
“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” Obama replied.
    
Reporters traveling with the Illinois senator, fighting with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton over Pennsylvania ahead of its vote on Tuesday, are venting frustration over a lack of access to the candidate lately. Obama has not held a press availability in 10 days, though he has given dozens of interviews to local press in Pennyslvania.
    
Republicans have pounced on Obama’s “waffle” comment, suggesting he is evading tough questions.
    
“Today, Obama continued to dodge questions from the media, responding that he just wanted to eat his waffle,” the Republican National Committee said in an email sent to reporters that included press accounts of the waffle incident at the Glider diner.
    
Both Obama and Clinton are far less accessible to the media than presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, known for holding lengthy question-and-answer sessions with reporters on his Straight Talk Express bus.
    
The sessions last so long that some reporters say they run out of questions.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer (Obama greets Pennsylvania supporter)