Times of London reports that the race is very close and time is running short:
Nearly half the country is up for grabs in one of the most evenly matched encounters of its kind. The crowds drawn by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to their rallies are so huge and the atmosphere so electric that it feels as if America is witnessing the final round of the battle for the White House rather than the preliminary skirmish to decide who will carry forward their party’s banner.
Accusations were flying thick and fast this weekend as the latest polls showed Obama rapidly gaining ground. Gallup’s daily national tracking poll put him just three points behind Clinton yesterday, compared with 11 points behind last Sunday.
The New York Times says Clinton's latest speech uses a Robert F. Kennedy reference, drops issues to resume "hits" on McCain and Obama.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton debuted an almost entirely new stump speech at a raucous rally with 5,000 people in Los Angeles on Saturday morning, meanwhile, replacing her old, policy-heavy remarks with a new overarching message – “the America I see” – and new hits on two of her opponents, Mr. Obama and the Republican front-runner, Senator John McCain of Arizona
Speaking in the broad thematic strokes that more voters (and reporters) expect from Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton invoked Robert F. Kennedy by name as she said she was running to strengthen the United States for “the next generation” of Americans. ...
On the Democratic side, the battle has gotten pretty fierce, drawing big crowds on both sides, though Obama's crowds are "enormous".
... The Aztecs’ stadium was not as full as it looked for Clinton. Half the hall was closed off by a black curtain. On the one side were 5,000 cheering supporters - 80% of whom were women, and 100% of whom were Democrats. The good news for Clinton is that her admirers are the rock-solid party loyalists most likely to vote on Tuesday.
The other, empty side could be said to represent the missing independents, disaffected Republicans and young first-time voters Obama is drawing to his 10,000-strong rallies - twice the size of hers - furthering his claim to be the best-placed candidate to take on John McCain, the Republican favourite, in a general election.
At one of his enormous rallies he declared that “I believe in the marketplace, I believe in capitalism” - words it is hard to imagine Clinton saying, no matter how centrist her politics.
As Democrats prepare to vote for their standard-bearer on Tuesday, they must decide whether to stick by Clinton, who has won their respect and affection but remains one of the most polarising figures in American politics, or “roll the dice”, as Bill Clinton put it, by choosing Obama, the candidate with the most promise, who has yet to prove that he can deliver.
Apparently, America owes Hillary Clinton the presidency. Bottom line: Clinton campaign strategists are furious at Obama for his "presumptuous" challenge of Hillary Clinton, according to the London Times.
Clinton’s advisers can barely conceal their rage and bewilderment at Obama’s presumptuous challenge. They are seething at the way he has framed the race as a contest between the future and the past. “We do not believe that Senator Obama is ready to practice the politics of hope he talks about,” said Mark Penn, her chief strategist, through clenched teeth, after Obama suggested Clinton was a divisive figure. “He’s bringing out his greatest hits of negative attacks.”
Wall Street is backing the Democrats.
For Frank Rich, writing his Sunday column in the New York Times, Barack Obama runs the same risks, has the same weaknesses as John F. Kennedy. The two campaigns are a lot alike. Many of the same questions asked about JFK during his campaign are now being asked about Obama, while Clinton has a certain solidity and knowability.
Here, though, is what worries us about Clinton.
You’d never know from Mrs. Clinton’s criticisms of subprime lenders that one of the most notorious, Countrywide, was a client as recently as October of Burson-Marsteller, the public relations giant where her chief strategist, Mark Penn, is the sitting chief executive. Other high-leveloperatives in her campaign belong to Dewey Square Group, an outfit that just last year provided lobbying services for Countrywide.
Clinton enthusiasts haven't yet caught onto the disgust many feel for the Clinton baggage -- baggage which carries the clunky old party machinery constructed by the DLC, Bill Clinton's personal ambitions and self-justifications, and strategies designed by hacks like Mark Penn. For those who are fed up with that baggage, there's the preferable if somewhat less knowable -- the more courageous and inspirational -- Senator Obama.
... Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is not hesitant to take on John McCain. He has twice triggered the McCain temper, in spats over ethics reform in 2006 and Mr. McCain’s Baghdad market photo-op last year. In Thursday’s debate, Mr. Obama led an attack on Mr. McCain twice before Mrs. Clinton followed with a wan echo. When Bill Clinton promised that his wife and Mr. McCain’s friendship would ensure a “civilized” campaign, he may have been revealing more than he intended about the perils for Democrats in that matchup.
As Tuesday’s vote looms, all that’s certain is that today’s pollsters and pundits have so far gotten almost everything wrong. Mr. McCain’s campaign had been declared dead. Mrs. Clinton has gone from invincible to near-death to near-invincible again. Mr. Obama was at first not black enough to sweep black votes and then too black to get a sizable white vote in South Carolina.
Richard Goodwin knew in 1960 that all it took was “a single significant failure” by Kennedy or “an act of political daring” by his opponents for his man to lose — especially in the general election, where he faced the vastly more experienced Nixon, the designated heir of a popular president. That’s as good a snapshot as any of where we are right now, while we wait for the voters to decide if they will take what Mrs. Clinton correctly describes as a “leap of faith” and follow another upstart on to a new frontier.
The parallels between Obama and John F. Kennedy are interesting but not the whole story. The bottom line is a certain awakening, a real excitement, and a candidate who seems to be making a lot of Americans from left to right look at the future with enthusiasm and energy.
McCain is an absolute abysmal imbosol!! He’s a RHINO republican and tried to shove amnesty down our throat 2 times with "HIS OWN BILL". HE IS FOR TAXING USA companies only to solve a so called GLOBAL warming problem. Well what about the rest of the WORLD? You people drink the kol-aid of the press and are completely UNINFORMED.
ROMNEY is this COUNTRYS BEST HOPE.
You want to know something else, STUPIDY BREADS ITSELF. You will believe anything someone tells you if you are uninformed and that is what the liberal media is counting on.
DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK!
John McCain should be renamed as JUAN McCain. Have you noticed who his heading up his HISPANIC outreach group for this race. If not, Google "McCain and Dr. Juan Hernandez.
I WILL NOT, SHALL NOT AND CAN NOT VOTE FOR JUAN McCain, I would rather the Republican Party dissolve, period!
Posted by: Richard | February 03, 2008 at 05:30 PM