You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 18, 2008.
(Via guardian.co.uk.)
There was a heightened sense of anticipation outside the British embassy in Washington yesterday morning. The streets round about were closed off by the police, helicopters hovered overhead and onlookers lined the streets.
They were joined by embassy staff, out with their cameras in hopes of a snap as the motorcade flashed past. But it was not their prime minister they were waiting for but the Pope, leaving the papal residence further up the road.
It has been the story of Gordon Brown’s visit. He has had to compete for attention in the US media in a week dominated by the first visit of a Pope to the White House in almost 30 years.
The difference in coverage was at its starkest today. The US networks provided live coverage all day of the Pope’s departure from Washington for a visit to the United Nations in New York while Brown’s departure from the capital for Boston, where he delivered a speech about reshaping the UN and other major international institutions, went unrecorded.
Brown will arrive back in the UK tomorrow as little known in the US as he was before the trip. The influential website, the Drudge Report, carried a picture of Brown at the White House yesterday against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and Union Flag and asked: “Who’s that man?”
In contrast with prime ministerial visits by the likes of Tony Blair or Lady Thatcher, both well-known in the US, Brown’s media coverage was about on par with that generated by predecessors such as John Major: minimal.
At his press conference with George Bush in the White House yesterday, there were, unusually, empty seats and, among the US television crews, only the Fox News correspondent bothered to do a live report.
The Newshour with Jim Lehrer had been planning a special on Brown but dropped the idea after listening to the press conference.
The Washington Post carried a banner headline about the Pope on the front but nothing about Brown. Inside, the sketch-writer Dana Milbank attended the press conference, noting the empty seats and the shrunken status of the two men: “You know times are tough when the American president and the British prime minister start talking about the good ol’ days of the Blitz.”
Full story here.
Tags: britain, gordon brown
(Via CBS News.)
In the four years after his first White House bid, John Edwards stayed in the spotlight. In the four months since he abandoned his second bid, he’s all but disappeared.
A quick interview with Jay Leno. A couple of low-key speeches. A few North Carolina basketball games with his wife and children. That’s about it. If Edwards has made up his mind between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, not only is he keeping quiet about it, he’s not even putting himself in a position where he might be asked.
The silence from Chapel Hill hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I’d like a signal. I’d like to know what he thinks,” said Gary Pearce, a Democratic consultant who advised Edwards during his successful run for Senate in 1998. “He was on stage with these two people, and he knows more about them than anyone in the world. Who is in a better position to say, ‘Let me tell you about these people?”‘
Edwards is even acting coy in private. Rep. Mel Watt, one of North Carolina’s superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention and the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, wanted to consult with Edwards before making a decision about his own endorsement. Watt said he called a few times to speak with Edwards, but never heard back.
Watt ended up passing along a message through Edwards’ wife Elizabeth after making up his mind to back Obama.
“I presume if he had a concern, he’d call,” Watt said.
Obama and Clinton have traveled to lobby Edwards, flying to North Carolina for visits at his Chapel Hill home that both candidates tried to keep secret. Neither has managed to win over the 2004 vice presidential nominee, and it’s not clear either will until the nomination has been settled.
“I don’t anticipate that he’ll make an endorsement,” said John Moylan, a close friend to Edwards and longtime adviser. “I think that he will support the Democratic nominee - that there is a need for party leaders who can act in a unifying position. And he’s one of the people who can do that.”
At this point, it’s possible Edwards’ endorsement wouldn’t have any bearing on the May 6 North Carolina primary. He was unable to win North Carolina for 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, and polls showed Edwards lagging in North Carolina before he dropped out this year. Current surveys show Obama with a wide lead in the state, and he is expected to get a boost from the huge number of new registrations among black voters.
Before leaving the race, Edwards won a promise from both of the Democratic hopefuls to continue to press for policies that would alleviate poverty, and they both responded. Two weeks after Edwards exited, Obama gave a major speech on how he would address economic disparities. Earlier this month, Clinton said she would create a Cabinet-level position dedicated to poverty.
Full story here.
Tags: edwards
(Via Think Progress.)
Last night on Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity boasted of his success in influencing ABC News Chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos to ask Barack Obama a question about the Weather Underground in a recent debate.
After being lobbied by Hannity, Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his connections to William Ayers, a former member of the radical anti-Vietnam organization Weather Underground. “Now of course, the liberal blogs are losing their minds in part because I suggested the question to George Stephanopoulos Tuesday afternoon on my radio show,” Hannity proudly declared last night.
Tags: abc news, debates, george stephanopoulos, obama, sean hannity
(Via The Huffington Post.)
The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
Tags: iraq
(Via Politico.com.)
When I spoke briefly with George Stephanopoulos yesterday afternoon, I had also reached out to Charlie Gibson, who did not return an e-mail (or comment in any publication throughout the day).
But on “World News,” Gibson mentioned public criticism of Wednesday’s ABC’s Democratic debate.
Charlie Gibson: Next we turn to presidential politics, a day after last night’s contentious Democratic debate. Both candidates were back campaigning today. Both showed last night they could take a political punch. But many of the blows today were being aimed at the debate itself and the questions asked.
Gibson later said that the “debate over the debate has been heated” and that it “continues at our website ABCNEWS.com.”
Tags: abc news, charles gibson, debates, george stephanopolous, pennsylvania
(Via The Huffington Post.)
Throughout their contentious debate on Wednesday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton tried again and again to put Senator Barack Obama on the defensive in a pointed attempt, her advisers say, to raise doubts about his electability among a small but powerful audience: the uncommitted superdelegates who will most likely determine the nomination.
Yet despite giving it her best shot in what might have been their final debate, interviews on Thursday with a cross-section of these superdelegates — members of Congress, elected officials and party leaders — showed that none had been persuaded much by her attacks on Mr. Obama’s strength as a potential Democratic nominee, his recent gaffes and his relationships with his former pastor and with a onetime member of the Weather Underground.
Tags: clinton, obama, superdelegates
(Via ABC News.)
Barack Obama has knocked down one of the three tent poles of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, surging ahead of her as the candidate Democrats see as most likely to win in November. He’s challenging her on leadership as well, leaving only experience as a clear Clinton advantage in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.
On the eve of their debate before the Pennsylvania primary next week, Democrats by a 2-1 margin, 62-31 percent, now see Obama as better able to win in November — a dramatic turn from February, when Clinton held a scant 5-point edge on this measure, and more so from last fall, when she crushed her opponents on electability.
Full story here.
Tags: clinton, electability, obama, polling
(Via New York Magazine.)
If the Democratic presidential race were a poker game, by now you’d have to suspect that Barack Obama’s campaign is dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rarely a day goes by when it doesn’t slap another ace down on the table. The aces in this (possibly strained) metaphor are endorsements, and it often seems as if the Obama operation has an inexhaustible supply at its disposal. In the past week alone, it has announced the support of congressmen from North Carolina and Indiana; the Utah state party chair; the Oklahoma state party’s chief fundraiser; 25 South Dakota state legislators; the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers; and, not least, The Boss. Some of these endorsers are super-delegates, and thus of no small consequence to the outcome of the race. Others are simply window-dressing, deployed to create a sense of ineluctable momentum in Obama’s direction. But none have the particular resonance of the endorsement that’s coming — unbeknownst to the campaign — a little later today.
Full story here.
(Via MyDD.)
What both Obama and Clinton have been doing for the Democratic Party this nomination battle has been historical and will have long-term benefits. They are defining the new Democratic majority. Obama is bringing in masses of the millennial youth. He’ll need to show leadership over the coming years to keep them with us. Read that book I’ve been talking about, Millennial Makeover, to realize how this becomes a powerful political force. Clinton, I told all my Texas friends, would be the long hoped for candidate that rallies the Latino voters, as she’s done throughout the country, to vote Democratic in higher numbers than ever before. Consider the amount of people-powered donors that Obama has now. He literally has the power to send a million dollars to any Democratic candidate through his supporter list. Consider the gender gap that Clinton has created with women voting in higher numbers than men, and how powerful that will be for Democrats.
Full story here.
Tags: endorsements, reich
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