John McCain’s attacks on Barack Obama on national security issues seem to be working: Polls show McCain has cut the Democrat’s lead in half.

According to CNN’s average of several recent national surveys, Obama’s lead is now a slim 3 points over the Arizona senator, 46-43 percent — half of his advantage in a CNN poll of polls one week ago, and down from a high of 8 points in mid-July.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll out Tuesday evening was the latest national survey to indicate Obama’s lead is dwindling, putting the Illinois senator ahead of McCain by only 2 points, well within the poll’s margin of error. The CNN poll of polls also includes new surveys from Quinnipiac and Gallup.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia gave McCain an anvil to hammer away at Obama’s inexperience, CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider said.”The McCain campaign believes that some of Hillary Clinton’s tactics, especially questioning whether Obama is ready to lead, can be a real winner,” Schneider said.

Addressing both his opponent’s charges of weakness and vacillation, and public doubts about his credibility on military matters, Senator Barack Obama on Tuesday told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that he offered not just tough talk but smart answers to national security questions.

Mr. Obama appeared before the V.F.W. a day after his presumed Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, criticized him for advocating a policy of defeat in Iraq and suggested Mr. Obama put personal ambition before the interests of the country.

Stuck in no man’s land, no longer able to stand before adoring crowds of African-Americans who would welcome him as the “nation’s first black president” with thunderous applause and all kinds of pats on the back, he clearly is having issues dealing with the new world order.

Almost two months after Sen. Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president is still brooding about his wife’s loss. And his chief source of anguish? That supporters of Barack Obama accused him of injecting race into the campaign

.Never mind that the Obama camp — loaded with white male advisers — was so afraid to bring up race that it wasn’t funny.

In the wake of the evangelical Saddleback presidential faith forum and just as the veepstakes heat up for the Republican campaign, 2008 presidential candidate ex-Arkansas governor and Baptist minister with a grin Mike Huckabee turned up for his tenth trip to the Holy Land. The timely invitation came from the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, a rightwing New York foundation that urges Jews to settle in the Muslim quarter of the Old City in “undivided Jerusalem.” Huckabee’s visit here lasted 48 hours, 25 percent longer than Barack Obama’s whirlwind trip last month. Huckabee used the extra time to visit Jewish settlements near the controversial security barrier.

Fresh faced at a power breakfast, despite having had only his usual four hours sleep in a suite at the King David hotel, Huckabee chose to ignore the local English language paper, which had hailed the politician as “Huckabee the Maccabee.” This is an Israeli compliment, as the Maccabees were an ancient Jewish national liberation movement that founded a kingdom that held fast for a century, from 164 - 63 BC.

(Via Newsvine.)

The reaction — or lack of it — by Indiana and North Carolina voters to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments emphasizes how deeply entrenched the racial lines of support are for the two Democratic presidential rivals.

It doesn’t seem likely that the renewed focus on Wright has helped Barack Obama, and it is all but certain that he’ll hear more about it from Republicans should he win his party’s nomination. But for now, there’s little evidence it hurt him much in this week’s Democratic contests.

After all the attention to Wright and Obama’s disavowal of his former pastor, exit polls in the two states found that:

_Six in 10 white voters in both states supported Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is waging an increasingly long-shot struggle to become the party nominee. That’s close to the average 57 percent of whites who had backed the New York senator in Democratic primaries since Super Tuesday, which was Feb. 5. It’s also slightly below the 63 percent of whites who voted for her in Pennsylvania and 69 percent in Mississippi, the most recent contests before Tuesday’s voting.

— Whites lacking college degrees favored Clinton over Obama by 31 percentage points in Indiana and 45 points in North Carolina. Since Super Tuesday, she has triumphed over Obama among this group by an average 30 points, including 41 points in Pennsylvania and 55 points in Mississippi.

_White men leaned toward Clinton on Tuesday, as she got 59 percent in Indiana and 55 percent in North Carolina. Clinton got 57 percent of their votes in Pennsylvania and 67 percent in Mississippi.

_About nine in 10 blacks in Indiana and North Carolina voted for Obama, slightly stronger than his usual showing with them. It mattered little whether they said the Wright situation influenced them or not.

Pollsters said there was not enough data to draw conclusions about whether the attention on Wright drove people away from Obama, the Illinois senator, or drew some toward him because of how he denounced the pastor.

“With the singular exception of Wisconsin, we’ve seen these two demographic coalitions facing each other and enduring across every contest,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, referring to the groups of voters who backed each candidate.

Other than liberal Vermont, Wisconsin is the only state where Obama has won more than half of whites who have not graduated college.

It’s true that in both Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday, nearly half of white voters said Wright influenced their pick of a candidate. And of that group in each state, just over eight in 10 voted for Clinton — clearly more than the six in 10 whites who backed her overall.

Even so, those numbers did not seem to change how whites overall voted.

Wright’s more incendiary remarks from past sermons became an Internet sensation in March and there was a renewed flurry of attention to Wright late last month. That’s when he made a speaking tour and reiterated comments that the federal government may have developed the AIDS virus to infect blacks and that the U.S. invited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Obama denounced the remarks last week.

Yet exit polls gave little indication that late-deciding white voters moved decisively toward Clinton.

In Indiana, about a quarter of whites who picked their candidate within the past month said Wright was a very important factor. Of that group, 87 percent voted for Clinton.

Yet the same proportion of whites in the state who chose their candidate more than a month ago said Wright was very influential, and 86 percent of them voted for Clinton — essentially no difference.

The same was true in North Carolina, where 25 percent of whites who said Wright was very important in their decision picked their candidate within the past month. Ninety-two percent of them voted for Clinton.

That was little different from the 30 percent of whites there who chose their candidate more than a month ago and also said Wright affected them a great deal. Of that group, 91 percent voted for Clinton.

The figures are from exit polling by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The Associated Press and television networks conducted in 35 precincts in each state.

The data was based on 1,881 people who voted in Indiana’s Democratic contest and 2,316 in North Carolina, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for both states.

(Via The New York Times- msnbc.com.)

After 16 years, the Clinton era may be coming to an end, presenting Democrats with a historic but potentially wrenching transition and a challenge to Senator Barack Obama as he seeks to reconcile a deeply divided party.

Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been at the heart of the Democratic Party since Mr. Clinton steered it back to the White House in 1992, with a campaign that combined a moderate appeal with the hard-edged political tactics that had once been the province of Republicans. Mrs. Clinton seemed poised last year to lead Democrats into the general election campaign if not beyond.

And while the relationship between the party establishment and the Clintons has always been uneasy at best, an entire generation of Democrats has known no other figures as dominant as the two of them.

Full story here.

(Via Salon.)

From watching the coverage of the 2008 race, you’d think that the Democratic Party has never been down this road before — divided along racial lines, mired in a bitter personal battle, seemingly incapable of repairing the divisions in time to defeat the Republicans.

If you believe this, then you probably didn’t experience the 1994 U.S. Senate race in Virginia. For three years leading up to that race, the incumbent, Sen. Chuck Robb, and Gov. Doug Wilder, both Democrats, were embroiled in a bitter dispute. Robb staffers faced federal prosecution for having procured an illegal tape of a Wilder cellphone conversation and then later playing the tape for Washington Post reporters.

In late 1993, Wilder, the first African-American ever to be elected governor of a U.S. state, flirted with challenging Robb in the Democratic Senate primary. He backed away — then changed his mind and entered the race as an independent in 1994. Six weeks before Election Day, Robb was trailing Republican nominee Oliver North by double digits. In a brutal election year for Democrats, the seat looked lost.

Few believed that Wilder could ever be persuaded to give up his campaign, and then endorse and vigorously campaign for his longtime rival. But that’s just what happened — the Democratic Party pulled together, long-standing scores were settled, debts paid, and legacies preserved. Today, some believe that Hillary Clinton will never drop out before Denver, and others ponder what she might want in return for a rapid, graceful exit. In 1994, Robb and Wilder proved that how a campaign ends is often more important than how it is waged — and both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can learn from the way these rivals built a lasting peace. And it all began with that most underrated of campaign rituals– the post-campaign negotiation.

I had a front-row seat to this greatest of all Democratic crack-ups as Wilder’s press secretary. The candidate trailing badly in the polls on Labor Day weekend, our campaign decided that we had only two options left: keep running the same campaign, or sink Sen. Robb.

We wanted to win. We decided to treat the month of September like a “voteless primary”; less charitable pundits might say it was an intra-party divide and conquer. We ignored Ollie North and focused our fire on Robb alone — attacking him from the left in hopes of passing him in the polls and then driving Democrats toward Wilder in the final month as the best Democratic hope of holding the seat.

In the first week of September, Wilder caught a break in a debate when Robb made an astounding gaffe — promising to take food out of the mouths of widows and orphans if that would help balance the federal budget. What followed was a solid week of good press for Wilder as he became the new champion of Virginia’s poor huddled masses. And then, a new round of polls came out, and the news was universally bad. A Mason-Dixon poll showing Wilder slipping to fourth place, far behind North, and even behind independent Marshall Coleman, was our Indiana. It was obvious that Wilder’s campaign was over.

Full story here.

(Via guardian.co.uk.)

Hillary Clinton’s campaign today indicated that she intended to fight on even as her hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination dwindled.

Clinton failed to close the gap on Barack Obama in two key primaries last night, winning Indiana by a slim margin - 51% to 49% - but seeing that outweighed by her rival’s 56% to 42% landslide in North Carolina.

Indiana provided an exhilarating finish, with the outcome in doubt almost until the last vote was counted, six hours after polling closed.

Obama had prematurely conceded defeat and Clinton made a victory speech, but her margin continued to shrink as the votes kept coming in.

Clinton had needed to win both North Carolina and Indiana, the last two big states left in the contest, to stand a chance of reining in Obama.

But in a speech in Indianapolis last night, she gave no indication that she was ready to concede, saying: “It is full speed to the White House.”

Clinton’s schedule for today includes a rally in West Virginia, where voters head to the polls next week, and a fundraising event in Washington.

Tomorrow, events are planned in Oregon and South Dakota, which vote on May 20 and June 3.

But with only six primaries left, Obama is within touching distance of securing the Democratic nomination to face the Republican, John McCain, in November’s general election.

Last night, Obama secured a bigger share of the delegates - who will choose the nominee - to add to his already commanding lead.

With 99% of the vote counted in Indiana, Clinton had 638,274 (51%) and Obama 615,862 (49%).

Full story here.

(Via Newsweek Politics.)

Barack Obama not only nearly clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday night. He also answered a big question about the fall campaign. The glass jaw that Hillary Clinton and John McCain thought they saw turned out to be an illusion. In the jingle of the old Timex watch ads, he took a licking and kept on ticking.

Oh what a difference a week makes. April 28 was only last week but it feels like six months ago. That was the day Obama got hit by a one-two punch. First, his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, dominated the airwaves with his offensive rant. The same day brought news that Hillary had decided to join McCain in calling for a summer gas tax holiday, sure to be popular with voters angry about high costs at the pump.

For the first time since February, Clinton seemed to have a real shot at the nomination. Still reeling from his big loss in Pennsylvania, Obama was battered by charges of elitism and disconnected from a big chunk of the Democratic Party. From bad bowling to “bitter” to arugula-eater to disciple of an America-hater, he seemed to be floundering.

May 6 looked ominous. With African-Americans making up only nine percent of Indiana Democratic voters, Obama was in deep trouble there, behind in the polls and slipping. North Carolina was also headed in the wrong direction, with some surveys showing only a five-point Obama lead. In most earlier primaries, including those he won, Obama slipped further on the last weekend. Even his closest aides thought Indiana and North Carolina would be no different.

Last week, not a soul in politics would have predicted that Obama would win North Carolina by 14 points and virtually tie in Indiana. But through a combination of luck and smarts, the campaign ended on the theme that Obama ran on: Old politics vs. new politics.

By conventional standards, Clinton was in the groove, focusing on bread-and-butter issues and pummeling Obama for being out-of-touch with angry motorists. Many pundits reported that “the working girl” was “on fire” and on the move.

Full story here.

(Via Salon News.)

Hillary Clinton is one day and two important primaries closer to oblivion. Her hairbreadth victory here in Indiana coupled with her double-digit defeat in North Carolina on the last big night of the 2008 primary season provided a dreams-deferred, delegate-deficit downturn in her already dispiriting fortunes. Not only is Hillary clinging to the hands of a clock in an old-time Harold Lloyd silent movie, but the clock face has begun to wobble.

Barack Obama — who survived and even prospered after Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads created the worst week of his political career — felt self-confident enough in his victory speech from Raleigh, N.C., to offer an all-is-forgiven unity message directed at the supporters of his “formidable opponent” who harbor “bruised feelings.” But the most important message of the evening was not embedded in Obama’s words, but buried in the interstices of the exit polls. It was not that Obama did particularly well among lower-income white voters, but that he did well enough to prevent Clinton from mounting a renewed can’t-win-in-November argument.

In North Carolina, Obama swept every economic subgroup, along with 93 percent of the black vote and a healthy 36 percent of the white vote. The verdict from Indiana was more ambiguous, but Obama, often portrayed as an upstairs-downstairs candidate whose coalition seemed based on investment bankers and the inner city, won at least 43 percent support in every income category. (A cautionary note about the invaluable but imperfect exit polls: They are crude instruments that have an addictive power because on Election Night they are essentially the only game in town.)

Full story here.