By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 21, 2008 – If the Democrats don’t get one presidential candidate soon, it won’t matter who gets the nomination because the Republican nominee will be handed a win in November by a Democratic Party in disarray.

With Sen. Hillary Clinton’s strategy of win at any cost and Sen. Barack Obama’s strategy of a nice guy seeking change, both have managed to marshal the Dems toward defeat in November.

I’m heading to Pennsylvania today to watch the final days of campaigning in the Keystone State that I’m sure will be contentious.   Obama still trails Clinton in the statewide polls; the percentage varies in polls from 6 percent to 10 percent. 

For Clinton to bump Obama from his frontrunner status, she’ll need to garner 60 percent of the vote in all the remaining contests. 

My take is that this long drawn-out primary is killing both candidates’ chances of defeating Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) in the fall. 

The two Democratic candidates have faced off in more than 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, 24 debates and according to The Associated Press, the Illinois senator currently leads by a margin of 1,645 to 1,504 among pledged delegates, including those super-delegates who have come forward and indicated whom they will support. 

So what are the rest of them waiting for?

Peter Fenn, a Democratic consultant, who isn’t working for either candidate, says Clinton would need “blowout numbers” to derail Obama’s road to the nomination.  

Isn’t there enough blood on the floor?  After Tuesday’s primary, the party leadership needs to step up the pressure and get some super decisions from those super-delegates, and decide if the party wants a  win in November.

Right now it’s looking rocky.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 18, 2008 –Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has touted a new world of politics, that would avoid going negative or and dissing your opponent, but the high road is a lonely one and Obama may have to go it alone.   

The debate on Wednesday has come under attack by viewers and some media critics, charging that the hosts unfairly targeted Obama and missed the issues folks really cared about until late in the debate. 

The networks Web site was bombarded with complaints, and television critics, including Tom Shales of The Washington Post, panned the moderators for dwelling “entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already had been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news.”

The Post, like most critics, questioned the amount of time spent rehashing non-issues, rather than addressing real concerns, such as the economy, jobs and the war in Iraq.

Obama even mentioned it while campaigning in North Carolina on Thursday, saying, “It took 45 minutes before we heard about health care; 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq; 45 minutes before we heard about jobs.”

But Obama also recognized this is just the beginning.  The current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination called the style and tenor of the debate as “gothcha” and said this was just a “preview” of the General Election campaign.

But will this “tenor” work against Obama?  It appears he may have educated his supporters and others to be weary of this style of politics, and folks are reacting to this debate because they disagreed with the treatment of the popular candidate.

While pundits and the Clinton camp attribute Obama’s complaints as sour grapes for a perceived loss, the American people may not agree.  Obama may have lost the 45-minutes battle  of “gothca” but won the war of “change” and solidified his call for a new style of politics. 

Obama’s yearlong message of planting the seeds of change may have sprouted its first bloom.  ABC’s hosts  were viewed as being bias, nasty and out of touch with what the folks tuning in wanted to hear about.   

“Great job, ABC,” wrote one agitated viewer, on ABC’s Web site.  “You managed to bury any signs of intelligent life under a mountain of pointless goo. What does any of last night’s debate have to do with the price of bread (or gas), Iraq, Bin Laden, judicial appointments, public education, the mortgage crisis . . . oh, never mind. Let’s all focus on lapel pins.”

On Thursday, George Stephanopoulos, a former adviser to former President Bill Clinton, said he and his co-anchor, Charlie Gibson, decided to focus on what he called “electability questions” in the first half of the debate. “I think the questions we asked were tough and fair and appropriate and relevant,” he said.

But it looks like not a lot of viewers agreed. 
 

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer
April 17, 2008 –While the Democratic candidates debated in Philly, there were signs in Washington that more super-delegates had ended their debate over which candidate to back. Two North Carolina lawmakers are giving Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) their key endorsement.

Rep. David Price, (D-N.C.) and Rep. Mel Watt, (D-N.C.), both super-delegates had been supporters of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, announced Wednesday they are now throwing their support behind the Illinois senator.

Could this be a sign?

“Like a lot of former Edwards’s supporters, I’m supporting Barack Obama because he will bring this country the kind of change I want to see,” Price said in a statement.

Last night at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, I noted Black lawmakers in both camps chatting about the race, but tones were hushed. Watt and California Rep. Maxine Waters (D) a Clinton supporter talked briefly, but with reporters within earshot, avoided any mention of his recent endorsement.

As more of Edwards supporters move toward the Obama camp it increases the speculation of who Edwards will likely endorse. The entire North Carolina congressional delegation had endorsed Edwards, with the recent switch of Price and Watt, only two lawmakers remain uncommitted. The states other Black lawmaker Rep. G.K. Butterfiled has already endorsed Obama.

Watt, who was skeptical of Obama entering the presidential race early on said, “I’d have to say I’m surprised — and pleasantly surprised — that Barack’s campaign has continued to build momentum.”

Obama also picked up the endorsement of the newest member of congress, Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.). Carson is the grandson of the late Rep. Julia Carson, who died from cancer earlier this year. Carson ran and won in the special election held in April, and is now campaigning for the primary election being held May 6. If he wins the primary he’ll face his Republican challenger on the ballot in November.

With these recent endorsements, Obama now has an estimated 231 super delegates to Clinton’s 260 according to Bloomberg News.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 16, 2008 – Tonight Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will face off in what could be their last face-to-face debate before the Dems select the party’s nominee.  But both candidates will come to the table tonight with good news from recent polls.

According to The Gallup Poll released on Tuesday, Obama is still leading in the national polls over the New York senator.  The other finding is there appears to be no indication that the recent comments made by the Illinois senator have impacted his lead.

During a fundraiser, Obama said working-class people in small towns [Pennsylvanians] were clinging to religion and guns out of bitterness about their economic plight.

The Gallup survey taken April 8-10, showed Obama leading Clinton by nine points among Democrats, 51 percent to Clinton, 52 percent.  After the controversy his lead increased to 11 points, but still within the margin of error. 

Clinton, on the other hand, is still leading Obama in Pennsylvania, according to three recent polls in the state, although the margin varies in each.   In a survey taken April 14 by Rasmussen Reports, Clinton leads Obama by 50 percent to 41 percent (with a 4 point margin of error); the American Research Group gives Clinton a 20 point lead, their survey was taken April 11 -13; and the Quinnipiac University survey taken around the same time showed Clinton leading 50 percent to 44 percent (with 2.1 margin of error).  

The Washington Post/ABC News poll agreed with The Gallup’s national survey finding  Democrats gave Obama a 10-point lead nationwide and when asked who they would like to see go up against McCain, Obama was given the nodd.

Clinton is pitching to uncommitted super delegates that she’s the more “electable candidate,” but the same Washington Post/ABC News poll found Obama beat his rival  two-to-one among Democrats when asked who was the “most electable.” 

The debate will come just hours after The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s endorsement of Obama.  The paper acknowledges both candidates are prepared, but charged campaign name calling was part of the “old style” politics that needed to be abandoned.

They wrote: “The litany of criticisms heaped on Sen. Obama by the Clinton camp, simultaneously doing the work of the Republicans, is as illustrative as anything of which one is which. These are the cynical responses of the old politics to the new.

Sen. Obama has captured much of the nation’s imagination for a reason. He offers real change, a vision of an America that can move past not only racial tensions but also the political partisanship that has so bedeviled it.”

The debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia will be broadcast live from 8 to 9:30 EDT on ABC. 

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 14, 2008 – Would you call someone “elitist” who was raised by his single mother and maternal grandparents, financed his education with student loans and earned less than a plumber, carpenter or machinist, despite having a law degree?
 
Well, that’s the label that multi-millionaire Sen. Hillary Clinton has slapped on her challenger, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), following his untimely comments on the campaign trail about the “bitter” feelings that many small-town Americans have because of the failings of government. Truth is, Clinton’s upbringing – former president of the Rockefeller Republican-oriented Wellesley College Young Republicans and a partner with the prestigious Rose Law Firm of Arkansas – is closer to that of an elitist than Obama’s. But after throwing back a shot of whiskey and chugging a beer, she’s attempting to convince Pennsylvania blue-collar voters that she’s their candidate.
 
Will working-class folks in the upcoming primary states fall for this? 
 
Obama’s misstep may be just the opening the Clinton camp needs to slow Obama’s roll.   Clinton understands that she needs controversies such as this to keep her bid for the nomination alive.  
 
Obama has acknowledged that his words, delivered to a group at a San Francisco fundraiser, were poorly chosen when he said that Americans in small towns cling to “guns, religion or antipathy or to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.” The comments were first reported and published by The Huffington Post.

During a rally in Indiana on Saturday, Obama acknowledged that he did not “say it as well as I should have.” He also stuck by the intent of his comments at Messiah College in Grahthan, Pa., which hosted the “Compassion Forum,” Sunday.  Obama said that what has left people bitter is the absence of “any confidence that the government is listening to them.”  That goes for small towns as well as in urban areas and other states, including his home state of Illinois, he said.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 11, 2008 – What am I missing here?  A British pop singer, Elton John, tells a cheering audience at a fund-raiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton that the only reason Clinton is trailing her opponent is because Americans hate women.

I think I’m put off by those comments.

John said he’s amazed at the “misogyny” of some Americans.  “Having said that, I never cease to be amazed at the misogynistic attitude of some people in this country – and I say to hell with them,” he said. “There is no-one more qualified to lead America.
“The reason I’m here tonight is to play music, but more importantly as someone who comes from abroad, is in America quite a lot of the time [and] is extremely interested in the political process, because it effects the whole world.”

So my question to John is: “To hell with who?”  Is he implying that those who are not supporting Clinton “hate” women.”

Get real, Sir John. 

No one can deny sexism exists in this country, but couldn’t the reason that Clinton is trailing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama be that he is running a better campaign? 

It’s difficult to give credence to gender bias when race in American politics has been so pervasive.  And that’s provable by looking at just a few telling statistics: In the history of the United States, there have been only three African Americans elected to the U.S. Senate, and there have been only two Black elected governors. And while only a fool would argue that sexism is not a real problem, it is also true that women outnumber Blacks in Congress by double digits.

I doubt that any honest, intelligent student of history would suggest that Whites – in states like Idaho, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming and Mississippi, to name a few – poured out in droves to pick Obama because they hate women. History would also suggest that it wasn’t because they love African Americans either.

Let me proffer another argument. Perhaps there is a growing number of Americans who have come to realization that, at the end of the day, it’s more about who they trust to end the political shenanigans that deny them opportunities and who they believe will guarantee a better life for them and their families.

And, just perhaps, they realize that it really doesn’t matter whether that deliverer is a woman or a Black man. Just as Obama has attracted voters who would have scoffed at the idea of choosing a Black man just a few years ago, so has Clinton drawn voters who in the recent past would never have chosen a woman.

If John’s point – that Americans are vicious women-haters – how did Clinton outlast a battalion of gifted male politicians in this nominating process?

So the mere fact that Clinton is a woman is hardly the reason she’s trailing Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination. 

Sir John should stick to what he does best: raising money. Clinton’s campaign said the event at the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan raised $2.5 million, so we know he’s good at it.

He’s also spun a serious hit or two. In fact, Clinton borrowed one of the singer’s songs as a theme for her campaign: “I’m still standing.”

She’s still standing because she’s smart, talented and a political tiger. Her gender has nothing to do with it.
  

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer 

Posted April 10, 2008 – Are you better off today than you were four years ago?  Well, two recent polls found that, for the first time in 50 years of asking the question, the majority of Americans believe they are stuck in a rut or falling behind. 

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, asked middle-class folks how things had been for them the last five years.  What it discovered is that one in four respondents believe they hadn’t moved forward, while about one in three believe they’ve actually taken steps backward.

Pew’s poll, released Wednesday, found that only 11 percent of the public sees the economy as “excellent” or “good,” down from February’s 17 percent and January’s 26 percent.

So who do the American people think can fix the problem and make them feel more economically secure?   Senator’s Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) both have a slight advantage over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain of Arizona.

As for the contest between the two Democrats, 49 percent of those surveyed prefer Obama over Clinton (39 percent), almost identical to the findings of a survey in April.  That’s good news for Obama, because it indicates that he has weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.  The poll found folks had a favorable response to how Obama handled the racially charged sermons of Wright, even among those who are Clinton and McCain supporters.

 As for likeability and electablity, Pew found that a large majority of White Democratic voters view Obama as “honest, inspiring, patriotic and down-to-earth.”  He beats Clinton in almost every personal attribute tested in the survey, except patriotism.

Roughly twice as many White Dems, 30 percent, said the word “phony” describes Clinton, compared with 16 percent who felt it describes Obama.  This gap, according to Pew, is the based on the larger perceptions of likeability; 43 percent of White Democratic voters say the phrase “hard-to-like” describes Clinton, while just 13 percent say it describes Obama.

Obama has lost some ground with Independent voters, who appear to be leaning toward McCain.  Another piece of good news for McCain in this poll is that he has picked up more support from within his party. 

Republicans in the survey seem ready to rally around their presidential pick.  Sixty-four percent say Republicans will unite behind the Arizona senator, compared with 58 percent of likely voters who answered the question in February.

The craziest findings in the poll, despite the flack with Wright, Obama’s former pastor, who headed Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is that one in 10 people still think Obama is a Muslim, and this is  across party lines.  Ten percent of Dems, 8 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Republicans surveyed identified Obama as a Muslim; a third said they didn’t know his religion.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer

Posted April 9, 2008 – One of Sen. Barack Obama’s Illinois delegates was asked to resign after likening two little Black children to monkeys.

Last weekend, Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Carpentersville, Ill., village trustee, noticed the kids playing in a tree next to her house. Come down, and “quit playing in the tree like monkeys,” she told them.

Ramirez-Sliwinski says she wasn’t being racist; she was only thinking of the children’s safety. But one of the youngster’s parents didn’t quite agree and called police to complain.   The Carpentersville police slapped her with a $75 ticket for “disorderly conduct,” which under town law means that a “person does something that alarms or disturbs another.”

The Obama campaign agreed that the incident was disturbing and asked her to relinquish her post as a delegate.  “Given the incident, she is stepping down as a delegate and will be replaced,” said campaign spokesman Bill Labolt.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer 

(Posted April 8, 2008) – With Sen. Barack Obama’s shadow gaining on her in Pennsylvania, Sen. Hillary Clinton has been scrambling over the past few days to fight off a barrage of bad press. At a time when she needs more than ever to connect with struggling workers, she was forced to divulge that she’s actually a multi-multi-millionaire. And to make bad matters worse, she was forced to demote her top campaign adviser for cuddling up with the Columbian government on a trade agreement that the unions say undermines American employees.

But the biggest problem for Clinton – and a brand-new poll substantiates the notion – is voter perception that she’s not always trustworthy. After two straight weeks of dodging sniper fire (from the press) regarding her Bosnia experience, she was welcoming an opportunity to change the channel away from questions about her penchant for embellishing the truth. Whether it was sleep deprivation, a mere slip of the tongue after 12 straight years of truth-telling or an outright lie, her tall tale about Bosnia was dragging the campaign down. 

But, as we learned Monday with a new embarrassing report, there will be no channel-changing this week.

Turns out that one of Clinton’s oft-repeated campaign anecdotes, a compelling, tear-jerking tale about an uninsured pregnant women who gave birth to a stillborn infant before later dying herself, wasn’t quite true.

Hospital officials got tired of all the bad publicity and asked the campaign to stop re-telling this story. Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System, told The New York Times, “We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story.”

The hospital acknowledged the woman, Trina Bachtel, did die at the O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio in August and that her baby was stillborn.  But that’s about all that matches Clinton’s version of the story.  According to the hospital administrators, Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital. She was not asked for $100 co-pay, as Clinton contends, and was never refused treatment. Moreover, they say, Bachtel had health insurance.

Hospital officials told the Times that the Clinton campaign never called to check the story out.  Mo Elleithee, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it.  If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”

Ironically,  just last Thursday, Anne E. Komblut, of The Washington Post, penned an article about Clinton’s ability to captivate her audience with moving stories about health and other issues. Clinton has “rejected sweeping oratory in favor of a dramatic speaking style all her own,” Komblut writes.

“In hushed tones, sometimes with palpable sadness in her voice, Clinton tells dark, difficult anecdotes picked up on the campaign trail,” she continues. “They often relate to health matters, culled from her conversations with voters, and are designed to illustrate a policy point. …Presidential candidates across the decades, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, have honed the art of picking out stories to bolster a policy position in particularly human terms. …[T]he approach seems to bring together her best skills, especially her ability to listen to voters she meets. In speeches that sometimes wear on and sometimes derail into deadening policy, sharing bleak stories can focus the audience’s attention. It also allows Clinton, who has only recently grown more comfortable talking about herself, to show that she understands how people live and how her policies would affect them.”

As Clinton is no doubt learning, once the media learns they’ve been duped, everything gets checked twice, looked at through a microscope.

It’s that additional scrutiny that allowed ABC News to catch Clinton in yet another fib.  The network says that Clinton told a crowd during the campaign stop that when Barack Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005, she already had been criticizing the war in Iraq – long before he stated his opposition. 

But Jack Tapper, of ABC News, said, “Clinton’s formulation ignores the fact that Obama, then a member of the Illinois Senate, spoke out against the war from the time it started in 2003, and Clinton had voted in 2002 to give President Bush authorization to go to war. “ 

Tapper said, the fact check went on to find records showing that Obama spoke out  against the war on Jan. 18, 2005 – eight days before Clinton made comments that her campaign pointed to as evidence that she spoke out against the war first, once Obama joined the Senate.

 Besides that, Clinton, in February of that year, visited Iraq and said she opposed setting deadlines for troop withdrawals. “At the same time, Obama was speaking at a town meeting in Illinois reiterating his opposition to the war,” Tapper said.

By Pamela Gentry, Senior Political Producer  

Posted April 7, 2008 – The man who created the “experience” theme for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) White House run and the “red phone” television ad that eked out wins for her in Texas and Ohio has resigned from the campaign effectively immediately.

Why?

It seems that Mark Penn, her chief political strategist, made a hasty departure on Sunday after it was disclosed that he had met with representatives of the Colombian government to work on and promote a trade agreement.  Not just any trade agreement, but one Clinton has said she opposes.

Penn resigned after The Wall Street Journal revealed that, in his role as chief executive of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, Penn was also working for the Colombian government to lobby Congress for a new U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement.

This isn’t good timing on a trade issue for the Clinton camp, whose poll numbers show she is popular with working-class folks in Pennsylvania.  Clinton has said publicly that she opposes any trade agreement that would cost more Americans jobs.

This type of revelation could cost Clinton the union support that has given her the margin in a state like Pennsylvania.  When the story broke over the weekend, several unions demanded Clinton dump Penn or risk losing their endorsements.

The fallout is already underway.  James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, told reporters, “How can we trust that a President Hillary Clinton would stand strong against this trade deal when her top adviser is being paid by Colombia to promote it?”

“This has caused us to question Clinton’s stated stances on everything from human rights and environmental issues to very basic labor issues,” he added.

This is the second stumble in for the Clinton camp on labor policy.  Just before the Ohio and Texas primaries Clinton worked on distancing herself from 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), championed by President Bill Clinton, despite fierce union opposition. 

On Saturday, Penn issued a statement saying that he’d made an “error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it.”

This error could cost Clinton big; the Dems need unions in the fall, and this could play right into the “electability” litmus test if a deciding factor for super-delegates is where she stands on this issue.