Al Gore For President

The last straw is broken

Obama Takes Lead in Superdelegate Tally
Hillary Clinton Will Meet With Financial Backers Next Week
By JAKE TAPPER
May 9, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama moved into the lead today in the last category that Sen. Hillary Clinton had claimed to have an edge -- support among the Democratic Party's superdelegates.

The Illinois Democrat grabbed the superdelegate lead thanks to a switch by New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne and an endorsement from previously uncommitted Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

Those two votes gave Obama a 267-266 lead over Clinton. That is a huge shift since the days when Clinton boasted about a 60-plus vote lead among the party's pros back on Super Tuesday.

Clinton Fights On, Obama Focuses on McCain

While the New York Democrat is refusing to concede defeat and is hoping a victory in Tuesday's West Virginia primary will keep her dwindling hopes alive, Obama is starting to focus instead on his Republican opponent John McCain.

ABC News' senior political correspondent George Stephanopoulos reported on "Good Morning America" that Obama's team is considering using some of his campaign cash to fund ads against the Arizona senator.

His camp is also planning to announce a 50-state registration rally this weekend, a tactic geared to a November election rather than the remaining Democratic primaries.

The rest of the Democratic Party, however, is struggling with how to end Clinton's challenge and worries that a last-ditch effort by Clinton could be damaging to Obama.

They were particularly unnerved by Clinton's comments earlier this week that appeared to be racially insensitive or racially calculated when she said, "Sen. Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again."

"This is exactly the kind of talk that is going to make superdelegates nervous," Stephanopoulos said. "Most of the uncommitted superdelegates and party leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are willing to forgo pressuring her to get out of the race as long as the rhetoric stays in tact."

Panetta Calls for Clinton to Concede

Former top Clinton administration aide Leon Panetta told KGO TV in San Francisco, "It's pretty clear unless there's a bolt of lightning, Barack Obama is likely to win the Democratic nomination. She's put up a good fight and put up a good race, but I think there's a time now where she needs to concede and unify the party."
f Clinton decides to fight on, Panetta advised that she "should remain on issues, they shouldn't engage in personal attacks. … Whether the winner wins will depend an awful lot on how the loser loses."
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There are indications that Clinton is taking a hard look at her options. She has scheduled a meeting Wednesday -- the day after the West Virginia primary -- with her campaign's major financial backers at her Washington mansion.

Stephanopoulos said there was also "lots of very quiet waltzing behind the scenes with intermediaries representing Sens. Clinton and Obama" to engineer a "dream ticket" with Clinton as Obama's vice president.

"I should say there's an expectation that Sen. Obama is reluctant to go down this road for a host of reasons, but others are making the case this is the most powerful ticket for the Democratic Party," Stephanopoulos reported.

For many Democrats, however, Conan O'Brien had it right.

In discussing the states where the two candidates were favored, the comedian quipped, "Hillary is favored in the state of denial."

ABC News' Karen Travers contributed to this report.

Story behind the story: The Clinton myth

By: Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
March 21, 2008 05:11 PM EST

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party's most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote - which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle - and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton's campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.
Story Behind the Story

Why news gets covered the way it does

Politico's top editors draw on their experience at the nation's largest news organizations to pull back the curtain on coverage decisions and the media mindset.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics.

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

One reason is fear of embarrassment. In its zeal to avoid predictive reporting of the sort that embarrassed journalists in New Hampshire, the media - including Politico - have tended to avoid zeroing in on the tough math Clinton faces.

Avoiding predictions based on polls even before voters cast their ballots is wise policy. But that's not the same as drawing sober and well-grounded conclusions about the current state of a race after millions of voters have registered their preferences.

The antidote to last winter's flawed predictions is not to promote a misleading narrative based on the desired but unlikely story line of one candidate.

There are other forces also working to preserve the notion of a contest that is still up for grabs.

One important, if subliminal, reason is self-interest. Reporters and editors love a close race - it's more fun and it's good for business.

The media are also enamored of the almost mystical ability of the Clintons to work their way out of tight jams, as they have done for 16 years at the national level. That explains why some reporters are inclined to believe the Clinton campaign when it talks about how she's going to win on the third ballot at the Democratic National Convention in August.

That's certainly possible - and, to be clear, we'd love to see the race last that long - but it's folly to write about this as if it is likely.

It's also hard to overstate the role the talented Clinton camp plays in shaping the campaign narrative, first by subtly lowering the bar for the performance necessary to remain in the race, and then by keeping the focus on Obama's relationships with a political fixer and a controversial pastor in Illinois.

But even some of Clinton's own advisers now concede that she cannot win unless Obama is hit by a political meteor. Something that merely undermines him won't be enough. It would have to be some development that essentially disqualifies him.

Simple number-crunching has shown the long odds against Clinton for some time.

In the latest Associated Press delegate count, Obama leads with 1,406 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,249. Obama's lead is likely to grow, as it did with county conventions last weekend in Iowa, as later rounds of delegates are apportioned from caucuses he has already won.

The Democratic Party has 794 superdelegates, the party insiders who get to vote on the nomination in addition to the delegates chosen by voters. According to Politico's latest tally, Clinton has 250 and Obama has 212. That means 261 are uncommitted, and 71 have yet to be named.

An analysis by Politico's Avi Zenilman shows that Clinton's lead in superdelegates has shrunk by about 60 in the past month. And it found Clinton is roughly tied among House members, senators and governors - the party's most powerful elite.

Clinton had not announced a new superdelegate commitment since the March 4 primaries, until the drought was broken recently by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and West Virginia committeeman Pat Maroney.

Clintonistas continue to talk tough. Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign's deputy communications director, told reporters on a conference call Friday that the Obama campaign "is in hot water" and is "seeing the ground shift away from them."

Mark Penn, the campaign's chief strategist, maintained that it's still "a hard-fought race between two potential nominees" and that other factors could come into play at the convention besides the latest delegate tally - "the popular vote, who will have won more delegates from primaries [as opposed to caucuses], who will be the stronger candidate against McCain."

But let's assume a best-case scenario for Clinton, one where she wins every remaining contest with 60 percent of the vote (an unlikely outcome since she has hit that level in only three states so far - her home state of New York, Rhode Island and Arkansas).

Even then, she would still be behind Obama in delegates.

There are 566 pledged delegates up for grabs in upcoming contests. Those delegates come from Pennsylvania (158), Guam (4) North Carolina (115), Indiana (72), West Virginia (28), Kentucky (51), Oregon (52), Puerto Rico (55), Montana (16) and South Dakota (15).

If Clinton won 60 percent of those delegates, she would get 340 delegates to Obama's 226. Under that scenario - and without revotes in Michigan and Florida - Obama would still lead in delegates by 1,632 to 1,589.

The only remote possibility of a win in delegates would come if revotes were held in Florida and Michigan - which, again, would take a political miracle. If Clinton won 60 percent of the delegates in both states, she would win 188 delegates and Obama would win 125. Clinton would then lead among pledged delegates, 1,777 to 1,757.

The other elephant in the room for Clinton is that Obama is almost certain to win North Carolina, with its high percentage of African-American voters, and also is seen as extremely strong in Oregon.

Harold Ickes, an icon of the Democratic Party who is Clinton's chief delegate strategist, points out that every previous forecast about this race has been faulty.

Asked about the Obama campaign's contention that it's mathematically impossible for Clinton to win, Ickes replied: "They can't count. At the end of it, even by the Obama campaign's prediction, neither candidate will have enough delegates to be nominated."

This is true, as a matter of math. But even the Clinton campaign's own best-case scenario has her finishing behind Obama when all the nominating contests are over.

"She will be close to him but certainly not equal to him in pledged delegates," a Clinton adviser said. "When you add the superdelegates on top of it, I'll think she'll still be behind him somewhat in total delegates - but very, very close."

The total gap is likely to be 75 to 110, the adviser said.

That means Clinton would need either some of those pledged delegates to switch their support - which technically they can do, though it would be unlikely - or for the white-dominated group of superdelegates to join forces with her to topple Obama.

To foster doubt about Obama, Clinton supporters are using a whisper and pressure campaign to make an 11th-hour argument to party insiders that he would be a weak candidate in November despite his superior standing at the moment.

"All she has left is the electability argument," a Democratic official said. "It's all wrapped around: Is there something that makes him ultimately unelectable?"

But the audience for that argument, the superdelegates, will not easily overturn the will of the party's voters. And in fact,
live free or die trying!

Goodbye to the New Deal
By William Tucker
Published 4/28/2008 12:08:25 AM

I don't want to sound too optimistic, but it appears that, in a year when the Democrats were supposed to make their triumphant re-entry into Presidential politics, we may be witnessing the final demise of the New Deal.

The Pennsylvania primary was a clincher. Obama has two constituencies -- African Americans and college-educated liberals. They're both passionate bloc voters and will turn out in droves. But their numbers are limited. They'll give Obama Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Illinois, and maybe California and Oregon, but that will be about it.

Hillary's votes come from the Democrats' other constituency -- blue-collar workers, Catholics, and people without a college education. Catholics rejected Obama by 70 percent. That's scary. Catholics have been a core constituency for the Democrats since the days of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. If they drift over to the Republicans -- as they were doing under Ronald Reagan -- there's very little left in the Democrats' portfolio.

I've just been reading Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man, a revisionist history of the New Deal. It's a wonderful effort and makes it clear that, although the Roosevelt Coalition was the greatest single voting bloc in American history, it was also cobbled together from very disparate elements.

Most important, it was led, fore and aft, by East Coast intellectuals and university professors. The New Deal was hatched in academia and among left-wingers who had made pilgrimages to the Soviet Union. But they had the people on their side. The Republicans had messed things up hideously and there wasn't any reason not to try something new. Herbert Hoover caved to the Republican Midwest-and-manufacturing coalition to pass Smoot-Hawley and what could have been just a bad downturn became the Great Depression.

Even though they were united against the Republicans and Big Business, however, the Roosevelt Coalition was a hodgepodge of conflicting constituencies. There was the blue-collar working class, much bigger in those days, and the natural adversary of Big Business. There were Catholic immigrants, always wedded to urban Democratic machines. (Only four years before, Al Smith had become the first Catholic to be nominated for President.) Then there was the "Solid South." It was still fighting the Civil War. The most conservative region of the country, the South still voted Democratic to get back at Abraham Lincoln. African Americans, on the other hand, were Republicans at the time, but that didn't help much because Jim Crow laws kept them from voting.

THIS WEIRD COLLECTION held sway over American politics for fifty years, functioning like something put together by Rube Goldberg. A Southerner always had to be on the ticket. When Northern intellectuals got overconfident, they nominated someone like Adlai Stevenson, who had almost no appeal outside academia. Southern senators and congressmen remained in office forever and rose to controlling positions in both Houses. Thus when northern liberals wanted reforms, they always found them blocked by their own Southern committee chairmen. John Kennedy spent most of his presidency wrestling with this dilemma.

The breakthrough came in 1964, when the civil rights movement threw African Americans into the Democratic camp. Lyndon Johnson was the first and only Democrat to benefit from this grand coalition, winning by the biggest popular margin in history. But Barry Goldwater's seemingly quixotic campaign got Southern conservatives thinking maybe they had more in common than they realized with rural people in the Midwest and Far West.

Ronald Reagan picked them off in the 1980s, but the tectonic shift didn't come until 1994 when Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and other Southern congressmen who had switched sides led the South into the Republican ranks. "The Civil War is finally over," said Newt after the election and he was right as usual. Instead of living with the anomalous legacy of the Civil War, the country has now divided neatly into liberal and conservative -- which generally means urban versus rural. That is why American politics over the past 15 years has become so evenly divided and so uniquely contentious.

Liberal analysts are always celebrating the supposed fissures in the Republican coalition-- the inherent dissimilarity between business executives and religious social conservatives. I personally think that hideous movie, There Will Be Blood, was made just to try to exploit this division. The Huckabee-McCain contest was also supposed to embody this dilemma. But Republicans are team players -- they know how to lose gracefully and close ranks. Huckabee just announced he will be campaigning for McCain this fall. It was a perfect Republican gesture.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the contest this year isn't just about politics and issues -- it's about identity. That won't be easy to mend. The big problem is the role for African Americans. No Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson has won the white vote. African Americans -- usually voting 90 percent Democratic -- have become the party's core constituency. The Clintons knew this in their bones. That's why the constantly kowtowed to Jesse Jackson and every other black leader -- and why they feel so bitterly betrayed now.

YET IT WAS ONLY GOING to be so long before blacks tired of carrying water for the Democrats and asked, "What about one of ours?'' The Obama phenomenon was inevitable. At some point there had to emerge a bright, articulate appealing African American who would step forward and say, "Now it's our turn to run."

The problem with Obama isn't that he's African American. It's that he's a pure product of academia -- Columbia, Harvard Law School, Hyde Park. He's never been outside that circle, never bowled (imagine that!), and didn't even realize he had insulted tens of millions of small-town Americans with his guns-and-religion remarks. You have to feel sorry for this guy. He didn't mean anything nasty. He was just repeating the scuttlebutt he's heard ever since he entered college -- small-town Americans don't know their own minds, religion is a crutch, guns a sign of underlying pathology. (My favorite in this genre has always been Katie Couric's remark on the morning of John Kerry's defeat, when she turned to her co-host and said, "Who are these voters?" She still doesn't know -- and neither does Obama.)

And that's why the Democrats may be carving another historical milestone but without returning to power. Hillary has spotted Obama's weakness and is rousing blue-collar voters against him. But McCain will win them easily with the same arguments. From a coalition that once included about 75 percent of America, the Democrats have now whittled down to two constituencies -- African Americans and liberal intellectuals. That's enough to win Cambridge and San Francisco but not much else. When 2008 is over, the Democrats will have made history. They will have nominated the first African American for President, just as they nominated the first Catholic in 1928, and the first woman for vice president in 1984. But as in both of those years, they'll also have to go back and start trying to rebuild their increasingly narrow base.

William Tucker, a frequent contributor to The American Spectator, is a writer in Nyack, New York.

Transcript: Nutter, Daschle on 'FOX News Sunday'

Sunday , April 13, 2008

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WASHINGTON —
The following is a partial transcript of the April 13, 2008, edition of "FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace":

"FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST CHRIS WALLACE: Here to discuss it is former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, national co-chair of the Obama campaign, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Clinton supporter from joins us from his city.

Well, gentlemen, let's start with the latest controversy over comments that Barack Obama made last Sunday at a California fundraiser, where he talked about small towns in Pennsylvania that have lost jobs and that he says Washington has failed. Here they are.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-ILL.: It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter — they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WALLACE: Mayor Nutter, Barack Obama now says that he regrets not the remarks, but the way that he phrased them. How damaging is this whole controversy in Pennsylvania?

PHILADELPHIA MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER: Well, it's hard to completely assess the damage. Of course, that will be left to the voters. But certainly, it seems damaging to the campaign.

I'm certainly saddened to hear those kinds of comments. I've lived in Philadelphia and, of course, Pennsylvania for almost 51 years. They don't represent the thoughts of people throughout this great commonwealth.

And I don't understand why Senator Obama would make such comments. I'm sure he can explain them for himself.

WALLACE: But, Mayor, specifically what do you find objectionable?

NUTTER: Well, they don't represent the views of small-town America or certainly even folks here in Philadelphia or in our nearby suburbs.

People are optimistic about the future. They have a lot to look forward to. They're energized about this campaign. They're looking for and want to support a candidate who supports their issues and concerns.

I've talked about this urban agenda and urban conversation. So it just demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what small-town America is about.

WALLACE: Senator Daschle, Hillary Clinton, not surprisingly, went after Obama big time this weekend already. She said that these comments were elitist and out of touch. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.: The people of faith whom I know don't cling to religion because they're bitter. In fact, they embrace their faith because it gives them so much in return.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Obama says that he regrets the phrases he used, that his words were ill-chosen.

But let's talk about the deeper meaning there. Does he believe that people in small towns and depressed areas turn to guns or turn to religion out of frustration?

FORMER SEN. TOM DASCHLE, D-S.D.: Well, Chris, first of all, you've got to remember that this is a man who was raised by a single mother, who chose — who volunteered to work in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago, who spent his whole life working with the disenfranchised.

This is a man who understands when you go into an emergency room and you see people lined up in the hallways, there's something wrong, who understands that we've got 80 percent unemployment on reservations, who understands that 81 percent of the American people think we're on the wrong track.

So there may be some optimistic people out there like Mayor Nutter suggests, but I will tell you the vast majority of the people in this country want to see change. They think that Washington is out of sync with their lives, who want to see...

WALLACE: I understand the economic frustration, but what about this comment that people turn to guns and to religion out of frustration? I mean, don't people turn to guns and religion because they mean something to them?

DASCHLE: Well, what he was saying is that there are those who use guns and religion, use faith and guns, as a divisive issue.

And when you're angry, when you feel disenfranchised, you're more susceptible to those kinds of divisive politics, that those who thrive on that divisive nature of these emotional issues really are the ones that he was faulting here, not the people that hear this.

But there is a great deal of anger out there, a great deal of sentiment that we've got to see change in this country, and that unless Washington breaks with its past and accepts the fact that this sentiment is really deep-seated, it's palpable, we're not going to see the change we need in this country.

WALLACE: Mayor Nutter, does that explain it to you?

NUTTER: No. And as a matter of fact, I've not heard any of that kind of conversation during the course of this campaign here in Pennsylvania. I mean, that's not what people are talking about.

People are talking about, whether in small-town Pennsylvania or some of the larger cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — we're talking about real issues and real concerns.

They're concerned about public safety. They worry about their education of their children. They want to see who has ideas about jobs and economic development to bring our economy back and turn our big cities and small towns around, going in a positive direction.

So I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know what would possess Senator Obama to say this, because you won't see it, you don't hear it, in the course of dialogue of real people in these cities.

I know he took a six-day bus tour, but clearly he does not understand what's going on here in Pennsylvania and expressing the concerns of real people on the ground.

WALLACE: Senator Daschle, Obama already had a problem reaching out to white working-class Democrats, the so-called Reagan Democrats. Aren't these comments going to make it even harder?

DASCHLE: Just the opposite, Chris. I really think Mayor Nutter ought to go to his own emergency room. He ought to go to the unemployment lines today in Philadelphia where people are standing in line without the hope of a good job.

They ought to worry about the jobs being displaced and being sent overseas. You know, obviously, people are — want to be hopeful, and that's really the message of the Obama campaign, why the Obama campaign has such traction, because he talks about hope.

But you know, if things are so rosy, why change? Let's just have a third Bush administration. That's really what...

WALLACE: Mayor Nutter, I want to bring something else...

NUTTER: Chris, with every respect...

WALLACE: Mayor Nutter?

NUTTER: Yes, sir. Go ahead.

WALLACE: Mayor Nutter, may I please ask — bring something else into this? Because one of the issues I think you would agree that a lot of workers in Pennsylvania and across the country are worried about is trade.

Now, Senator Clinton says that she's against the trade deal with Colombia, but her chief strategist, Mark Penn, was actually working for the deal, helping Colombia, when he was still working with the campaign, which he still is, at the same time that he was advising Clinton.

We now find out that former President Clinton got paid $800,000 by a Colombia group to support and promote the free trade deal. So Senator Clinton doesn't exactly have clean hands on these issues either, does she?

NUTTER: Well, first, I would say Senator Clinton is an independent person. She'll exercise independent judgment. Mr. Penn — I think that issue has been dealt with.

Senator Clinton stands on her own as an independent person, and so her position on these issues is very clear. She's talked about fair trade, that NAFTA needs to be renegotiated. And so her position I think goes without question.

But I would go back again and say, with every respect to Senator Daschle, I've been to a few emergency rooms. I've walked the streets of Philadelphia. And just because people are having problems doesn't mean, as Senator Obama has articulated, that they're turning to their religion or to guns as a means of expressing something.

There's a rich history of sportsmanship and legal gun use all across Pennsylvania. People support their religion because of deep faith. And so there is a complete disconnect here, with every respect to Senator Daschle, who I've admired for a long time.

WALLACE: They clearly feel that they have got the hammer in their hands on this one. You can hear it from Senator Clinton. You can hear it from Mayor Nutter. I mean, this is a problem for the Obama campaign.

DASCHLE: Well, Chris, of course, you can distort what Senator Obama said, and that's really what we're hearing again this morning. That isn't what Senator Obama said.

What Senator Obama said is that faith and guns are very important. He has talked about that for the entire campaign. He has spoken specifically to his own faith and how important it is to him. He understands that.

But what he's saying is that there are those who use these issues as very, very divisive issues to try to disenfranchise further the people that are susceptible to that.

I can see why Mayor Nutter would change the subject on Colombia. People don't like to be misled. They don't like it when they're not told the truth. I mean, the fact is that Hillary Clinton has a questionable record with regard to Colombia.

Her own top adviser, Mark Penn, was fired recently for advocating for Colombia. So you've got her adviser advocating for Colombia, Hillary Clinton saying that she supports the effort not to pass the Colombian free trade agreement.

I think the people of Pennsylvania, the people of the country, really deserve a better explanation than the one we've gotten.

WALLACE: All right. We've got a little bit more than a minute left, and let me get you both to do a little forecasting.

Mayor Nutter, the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls — and let's put it up on the screen. The most recent average shows that the race had, at least before this latest controversy, tightened.

Obama was closing the gap with Clinton, who once led by double digits, and now, according to the most recent polls, which predate this controversy, she now leads by seven points.

Your sense: Is the race tightening? Does Clinton have a safe lead? What do you think this is going to do, this latest controversy, to the primary in Pennsylvania?

NUTTER: Well, people will continue to assess that during the course of the week. You always expect these races, especially in Pennsylvania, to tighten.

But the reason Senator Clinton is doing very well in Pennsylvania is, one, because she understands the state; two, she was here the other day talking about issues of substance that people really care about — public safety, and urban economic issues. She understands it.

And as I've said on T.V., she gets it. She knows what really is going on all across the state.

WALLACE: Mayor, let me bring in Senator Daschle for one — basically, to get him to respond to that.

If Obama loses Pennsylvania after losing Ohio, and if again he shows weakness among white working-class Democrats, especially after this latest controversy, isn't that serious trouble?

DASCHLE: Chris, he's won the popular vote. He's won by far the vast majority of the states all across this country. Look. Pennsylvania is Hillary Clinton's second state. She's lived there for virtually her whole life in and out.

So we've always known this is a very, very heavy lift.

WALLACE: Pennsylvania is her second — I thought Arkansas was her second state.

DASCHLE: Well, she's had a lot of second states. She's claiming it as her second state these days.

NUTTER: I can see why Senator Daschle might want to use that as the excuse.

WALLACE: All right. In any case, we're going to have to leave it there.

Mayor Nutter, Senator Daschle, thank you so much, both of you, for talking with us today.

NUTTER: Thank you.

DASCHLE: Thank you, Chris.

live free or die trying!

I was listening to the repug talk show called The Armstrong & Getty Show, & they reported that John McCain is asking his supporters to lighten up on Hillary; he thinks that she is easier to beat.

You should know that you have a loser when the opposition is trying to help your loser win so they can defeat the pugnacious Clintons & her deceptive clones.

I know that you are hoping & praying for a miracle but it has already happened... she is losing.

live free or die trying!