WASHINGTON - Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are often described by many in the party as the dream team to recapture the White House in 2008 regardless who is atop the ticket. 

Clinton, whose presidential bid has been faltering in recent weeks, had previously hinted that she was open to the idea.  And now as Obama closes in on winning the party’s presidential nomination, he has not closed the door on Clinton as his vice presidential running mate.

If Clinton fails to mount a come-from-behind win, will her supporters be satisfied with the No. 2 spot and will Obama’s backers fear that she could hurt his chances of capturing the White House or possibly upstage him?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader John Boehner on Wednesday shrugged off a warning that his fellow Republicans are facing peril in the fall elections unless they change course, a prediction made by a former Republican House speaker. 
 
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned on Tuesday that Republicans must immediately “chart a bold course of real change” otherwise they will “suffer decisive losses this November.”
   
That apparently didn’t sit too well with Boehner as he faces an uphill battle to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives since more than two dozen fellow House Republicans are leaving this fall or running for another office. And last weekend, they lost a Republican seat in Louisiana in a special election.
 
“Listen a lot of people have a lot of ideas and advice for me and our leadership team about what it is that we should do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting with President George W. Bush at the White House.
 
“I tell our colleagues every week, if you stand up and do the right things for the right reasons, the right things will happen,” Boehner said. “And frankly, we have been standing up for the right things that the American people want us to.”
 
The Ohio Republican argued that their efforts to cut taxes and expand exploration for oil and gas in the United States served as evidence that they were on the right path for the November elections. 
 
“There’s a whole array of issues that I think where we’re representing the interests of the American people,” Boehner said.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Boehner after a meeting with Bush at the White House)

WASHINGTON - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s former pastor, pinned the blame on the media for the controversy over his fiery sermons, saying they misinterpreted his remarks and the ensuing criticism was an attack on the black church.
 
Obama has tried to distance himself from Wright, criticizing him for remarks that have included charges that the Sept. 11 attacks were an act of retaliation for U.S. policy and that the government may have created the AIDS virus to kill black people.
 
On Monday, Wright argued during a National Press Club speech that reporters did not listen to his entire sermons so they did not understand the context of his remarks and that people who question his patriotism are off the mark.
 
“I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me.  They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites and that which is looped over and over again on certain channels,” he said. “I served six years in the military.  Does that make me patriotic?”

“How many years did Cheney serve?” he said, referring to Vice President Dick Cheney’s deferrals from the military draft. For his full remarks, click here. 
 
Does Wright’s remarks clear the air, does it help or hurt Obama, or has the issue run its course? 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Wright speaks to the National Press Club).

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 - 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.)

WASHINGTON - As Democrats go to the polls on Tuesday to pick between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as their presidential nominee, the Bush administration said on Monday they will be keeping a close eye on the voting.
 
Citing previous allegations that the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, had violated voting rights laws, the Bush administration’s Justice Department announced it would monitor the primary contest.

A year ago, the city settled with the government over the allegations, agreeing to provide additional Spanish-speaking poll officials, to give additional training for election workers, and to ensure better access for disabled voters, among other things.
 
“Philadelphia has an obligation to provide all election information, ballots and voting assistance information in Spanish pursuant to Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act,” the department said. “The monitors will gather information concerning compliance with this requirement and other federal voting rights statutes.”
 
The Justice Department said it had almost 1,600 monitors watching 119 elections in 24 states during the 2006 election year.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Bradley Bower (Obama at a rally outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia)

WASHINGTON - Britain’s Financial Times newspaper, which has bigger paid circulation in the United States than its home country, weighed into the bitter Democratic nominating contest– offering its endorsement to Sen. Barack Obama.

The backing of the financial newspaper in Monday’s edition comes just a day before voters in Pennsylvania go to the polls, a state that could offer some salvation for his opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has been clinging to a narrow lead in the state but trails in the delegate count. 

The FT points to Obama’s well-run campaign and cross-party appeal for putting him over the top of his rival. It also cites Clinton’s unpopularity and questions her campaign strategy, arguing it has been re-tooled several times.

A small excerpt (more here):

After Tuesday’s vote, the Democrats should move quickly to affirm Mr Obama’s nomination. That is not just because his lead in elected delegates is already unassailable and the contest should be brought to a swift conclusion. It is also because he is, in fact, the better candidate.

The contenders’ differences on policy look small and in reality are even smaller. Their disagreement on healthcare mandates, for instance, frequently emphasised by Mrs Clinton, is of little practical significance. A mandate to obtain insurance, as proposed by Mrs Clinton, does not achieve universal coverage unless enforced with punitive sanctions, which she does not advocate.

Some question the value of endorsements, does this bit of overseas analysis add anything to the mix?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer (Obama waves to supporters at a rally outside Philadelphia.)

To great effect during the Texas primary, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton ran a television ad arguing that she was best able to handle a late night national security crisis if elected to the White House. Now she’s gone back to that well again.

The focus this time is the see-sawing economy and imploding housing market, leading Clinton to question whether presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain can handle that call at 3 a.m.

Clinton, who trails rival Barack Obama in the overall Democratic delegate race, leads in polls in Pennsylvania, the next state to hold its primary. The two senators are neck-and-neck in Indiana, which follows in early May.

Can this new ad focused on McCain help her close the gap again on Obama?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

WASHINGTON - Conservative Republicans have eyed their party’s presidential nominee John McCain with more than a little skepticism; some have outright said they won’t vote for him.
 
But senior Republican leaders and even President George W. Bush have gone to great lengths to bolster the Arizona senator’s credentials as a conservative despite his past support for embryonic stem-cell research and his refusal to back a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.
    
“Time heals all wounds, they’ll be coming home, give them a little time,” House of Representatives Republican Minority Leader John Boehner told reporters at the White House hours after McCain was there picking up the current president’s backing.
 
Another Republican put it more bluntly to describe how conservatives will fall into line and support McCain in the November election.
 
“The greatest hostility that I’ve sensed among conservatives is towards the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency or a Barack Obama presidency,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Conservatives that I know, and I know a lot of them, are excited about the possibility of winning.”
 
However, McConnell then went on to praise McCain’s wide support among independents — and those are not typically conservatives.  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Bush and McCain after lunch at the White House)

WASHINGTON - Republicans have historically had a tough time winning the votes of African Americans — and will have to do a lot of work to win them over this election year, outgoing President George W. Bush says.

“The Republican candidate is going to have to, one, show heart, two, explain why policies will make a difference in the lives of the African-American citizen,” Bush said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks. “We’ve got a lot of hard work to do.”

He acknowledged that rival Democrats have been successful at winning the black vote — noting that he got “whomped pretty significantly” in his campaigns — and chastised his party for not doing enough to compete for it.

“My attitude is that at the very minimum there ought to be competition at least for votes, people shouldn’t take your vote for granted,” Bush said. “But in order for there to be competition, the party’s got to have what I used to call compassionate conservative agenda.”

He pointed to his faith-based initiatives as one way to reach black communities, highlighting the work by churches.

But whether the expected Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, will have better luck remains to be seen — especially if his Democratic opponent is Sen. Barack Obama, who is black. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Bush with The Temptations on Feb. 12 at a White House celebration of Black History month.)