Iowa Debate: Obama Clear Winner

In The News

Obama: He Can Turn Out Black Voters Washington Post black voter turnout would swell by at least 30 percent if he wins the presidential nomination, giving Democrats victory in Southern states that have been voting Republican for decades. ....... "I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30 percent around the country, minimum," Obama said. "Young people's percentage of the vote goes up 25-30 percent. So we're in a position to put states in play that haven't been in play since LBJ." ...... "I would include McCain, but John's having trouble right now, so that's not that big of a feat," Obama said of the Republican senator from Arizona, drawing laughter at the packed house party ....... "If we just got African-Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state," Obama said. He said Georgia would also turn Democratic and South Carolina would be in play. ..... "Let me tell you, if I beat the Clintons, folks aren't going to ask whether I'm tough enough," Obama said to laughter from the crowd. ...... there will be attempts to dirty me up

Siddiqui re-elected Bihar RJD president Times of India
Global markets rally as credit crunch eases International Herald Tribune
Karl Rove Directed Government Funds For Political Gain Liberty Papers
Obama and Clinton in close vote The Age Iowans tended to make up their minds late. .... her jibe that he was naive to say he would meet Fidel Castro in his first year in office.
Rove Probably Isn't Afraid Of Barack Obama Atlantic Online
Obama the realist ... or reckless Asia Times Online
Clinton, Obama fend off criticisms in debate CNN
Rove Keeps the Heat on Hillary Clinton Washington Post
Can anyone stop the Clinton bandwagon? INQ7.net Powered by polished debate showings, gaping opinion poll leads, and a pitch-perfect political machine, Hillary Clinton seems to be barnstorming towards the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. ..... Clinton's near blemish-free campaign ..... "If she continues to campaign without making a major mistake, it's hard to see how anybody beats her," said Cary Covington, professor of political science at the University of Iowa. ...... "It is a lot like a chess match, and she has the superior board position." ...... At the equivalent stage of the 2004 race, Senator Joseph Lieberman led national Democratic polls and Howard Dean was top in key states. ...... last week, Clinton led Obama by 36 percent to 21 percent among Democratic voters. .... Clinton's political machine meanwhile functions like a shadow White House, locking horns with the Bush administration on top issues, with master campaigner, former president Bill Clinton just off stage. ........ "She has always been good, she has the best advisor in the business, it is a very smart team and they know what they are doing ...... Obama, hoping for a tsunami of change in 2008, branded Clinton "Bush-Cheney lite" on foreign policy and a voice of the past. ...... plays to huge campaign trail crowds and outraises her in the multi-million dollar fundraising stakes. ....... Karl Rove meanwhile told the Wall Street Journal that Clinton was a "tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate." ..... "If he hits his stride, he could conceivably pull past her," said Geer. "I would not want to bet my house on her being the nominee, quite yet." ..... "Sitting around and waiting for her to screw up is not the wisest strategy," said Panagopoulos.
Can Hillary Clinton capture men's vote? Minneapolis Star Tribune
Clinton will need male approval TheNewsTribune.com

Traffic still slow on I-5 Seattle Post Intelligencer
Clinton backers see Warner -- not Obama -- as best VP choice Chicago Sun-Times
Obama seeks to quiet questions about experience Boston Globe
Clinton, Obama Take Heat in Debate Wall Street Journal
Rove Keeps Up Heat On Clinton Guardian Unlimited
Rove On His Legacy And The GOP's Future CBS News "There's some Democrats who never accepted him as president after 2000," Rove told Bob Schieffer. "And there's some Democrats who said, 'You know, the bright path for their party was to obstruct him no matter what.'" ..... "You cannot be a candidate like President Bush was in 2004 and get 60 million votes for president, more than any other candidate for president in history," he said. "I know the opposition talks about playing to the base, and I want them to keep thinking that's the right strategy. But you win elections like this president won in 2000 and 2002 and 2004 by broadening the coalition, by getting more people to register and to vote and by persuading people who might have been inclined to the other side to come across for you." ...... "She enters the primary season with the highest negatives of any front-runner since the history of polling began," he said. "She has more people who have an unfavorable impression of her than have a favorable impression. And not just in one poll, but in multiple polls." ....... if Republicans want to win, the nominee must have a "positive, forward-looking, optimistic agenda for the future of the country."

TRANSCRIPT: The Democratic Debate ABC News At 27 percent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. New York Senator Hillary Clinton is at 26 percent, as is former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, also at 26 percent. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is at 11 percent. ..... I've set big goals for my presidency. I want to have universal health care and move toward energy independence and do what we need to do in education and reform our government, and, of course, end the war in Iraq. .... It takes a lot of planning to move an agenda forward, particularly with our adversaries. I think the next president will face some of the most difficult international dangerous threats and challenges that any president has faced in a very long time. ........ you should not telegraph ..... the only person that separates us from a jihadist government in Pakistan with nuclear weapons is President Musharraf ..... Words mean something in campaigns. ..... You're not going to have time in January of '09 to get ready for this job. ....... he's a wonderful guy .... Pakistan is the most dangerous, potentially the most dangerous country in the world. A significant minority of jihadists with nuclear weapons. ........ we have no Pakistan policy; we have a Musharraf policy. That's a bad policy. The policy should be based upon a long-term relationship with Pakistan and stability. ........ We should be encouraging free elections. There is an overwhelming majority of moderates in that country. ...... I've met them already, most of them. ..... Is Senator Obama ready? .... Senator Obama represents change and he's an enormously fresh voice in the political process. ....... Well, you know, to prepare for this debate, I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair ......... I think that strong countries and strong presidents meet and talk with our adversaries. We shouldn't be afraid to do so. We've tried the other way. It didn't work. I think that, if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and we've exhausted all other options, we should take him out before he plans to kill another 3,000 Americans. I think that's common sense. ...... we should describe for the American people both in presidential debates, as well as president, what our foreign policy is and what we're going to do. We shouldn't have strategic ambiguity with the American people when it comes to describing how we're going to deal with the most serious national security issues that we face. ....... aggressive diplomacy -- preparation, yes, but aggressive diplomacy, the personal diplomacy of the next president -- to transform how the world sees us .......... this administration which has been reckless and provocative ...... we shouldn't use hypotheticals. You know, words do matter. ...... It is not hypothetical that Al Qaida has established base camps in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. ....... No military expert would advise that we use nuclear weapons to deal with them ...... we have gamesmanship and we manufacture issues and controversies instead of talking about the serious problem that we have, a problem that this administration has made worse and that our invasion of Iraq has made worse, but a problem that the next president is going to have to deal with ......... it's not shocking that people who have been in Washington a long time criticize him when he comes along and expresses his view. ...... what America should do and what I would do as president, is to actually lead an international effort over time to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet. ........ under the last 25 years, this nation has continued to expand its nuclear capability. .... We destroyed their democracy. ..... We should have a treaty on fissionable material, loose nuclear weapons -- that's even more dangerous today than nuclear weapons. ........ the big challenges we face, whether it's health care or a bold energy strategy or schools that aren't producing young people that can compete on the global stage, those are problems that pre-date the Bush administration. ........ a winning strategy is not crafted by a political calculus that divides the country into red states and blue states. ..... building a new majority ...... I had 18 wonderful years in Arkansas. ...... upstate New York, where many of the people who voted for me had never voted for a Democrat before. ...... the idea that you're going to escape the Republican attack machine and not have high negatives by the time they're through with you, I think, is just missing what's been going on in American politics for the last 20 years. ........ we have got to move toward public financing, get the money out of American politics ....... The reason we don't have universal health care in America today is because of the insurance industry, the drug companies and their lobbyists. ........ The Iowa AF of L-CIO, two days ago endorsed H.R. 676, a not-for-profit health care system, a bill that I'm the coauthor of. ...... every other health care plan represented by everyone else here on stage keeps the private insurers in charge. ....... More voters wrote in questions for us on the issue of Iraq than any other single issue. ........ There is no military solution. Everybody agrees with that. ...... I disagree with him. And I disagree with Joe Biden. And I disagree with Hillary. ....... -- I know you're trying to create a fight up here, I understand that, but ...... the Republican candidates, who the best I can tell are George Bush on steroids. ....... that there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen, George. It will not happen in the lifetime of anyone here. ....... You have to get them out of each other's face, just like we did in the Balkans ....... I think we also can all agree that it's going to be messy, that there are no good options. ..... the thing I wish had happened was that all the people on this stage had asked these questions before they authorized us getting in. ...... Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war. ........ Joe's point about partition might be the right one. ...... George Bush drove the bus into the ditch, and there are only so many ways you can pull that bus out of the ditch. ........ We can talk about George Bush driving a bus into a ditch, but let's not forget there was a Democratic Senate in charge that OK'ed the war. And those senators who are up on this stage helped to authorize that war and they have to take responsibility for that. ....... if I had not been a praying person before I got to the White House, after having been there for just a few days I would've become one. ....... I am very dependent on my faith, and prayer is a big part of that. ....... through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control. ....... We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan. ......... the large companies take over more farms. ..... extend the broadband access to our rural communities. ...... our Congress subsidizes these big megafarms and hurts family farmers oftentimes in the process. ....... Globalization is here, and I don't think Americans are afraid to compete. And we have the goods and the services and the skills and the innovation to compete anywhere in the world. ..... our path to peace, to not-for-profit health care, to education for all .... obviously President Bush had no intention of doing what he said he was going to do ...... I would never have diverted our attention to Iraq, and I never would have pursued this war. ....... maybe one of the worst votes cast in the Congress, maybe in the last 20 years, was last fall, on the Military Commissions Act, in which we allowed the abandonment of habeas corpus, returning to torture, and abandoning the Geneva Convention. .............. I've had a lot of discussions with teachers all throughout Iowa. And they feel betrayed and frustrated by No Child Left Behind. And Chris is right: We shouldn't reauthorize it without changing it fundamentally. ....... I've advocated universal pre-kindergarten. ...... you can walk in a classroom today and it looks very much like the classroom I walked into, you know, 50 years ago. ........ I have proposed a minimum wage for our teachers, $40,000 per year. ..... we are 29th in the world in math and science. We need to have 100,000 new math and science teachers ....... We're 46th in literacy in the world -- in the world. Thirty percent of our children do not graduate from high school. ....... you can't do it when you want to expand, as he wants to expand, 100,000 more troops. Who are we going to nuke, who are we going to fight next? ....... Teachers, across the board, have to be paid more. My sister's a teacher, and I know how hard they work and what they go through. ..... I've sponsored a universal pre-kindergarten bill that will be paid for by a 15 percent cut in that bloated, wasteful Pentagon budget, which will yield $75 billion a year that we will put right into education. ........... Learning theorists know this. Child psychologists understand this. Piaget talked all about this. Let's give our children the chance to grow, but let's put the money there. And I know where to get it. ...... the same salary they start their engineers ...... "Don't tell me what you value; show me your budget." ....... the credit crunch and the crisis in the mortgage markets. ...... people facing foreclosures. .... It has seized up. You can't get a mortgage in America today. ...... This is the Katrina of the mortgage-lending industry. ...... What we need is more transparency between those that are making this business happen. ..... The mortgage industry, they've become -- a lot of them -- a bunch of loan sharks. ....... more transparency, particularly with regard to hedge funds and private equity funds. They are the ones that are causing this thing to go under. And there's no transparency, no accountability. We don't know how deep this problem is. ........... It's almost as deep in terms of dollars, not liability, as the savings and loan crisis. ...... The Fed is actually looking at bailing out the creditors. And what we're looking at is a continuation of the problem and a postponement of the day of reckoning. ...... these hedge funds will try to get a bail-out while millions of Americans lose their homes. Save the American homeowners. ...... when my family was living in a car in the inner city ..... A decisive moment in my life was the transition from high school to college, because I had gone through a difficult time, not knowing my father, and was, at times, an angry young man. ....... the values my mother had instilled in me, those were reawakened in college. ...... the civil rights movement. ... realized that it does make a difference if you're engaged ..... realizing that human governance is extremely complex and that representative government is broken. ....... And he'd never been able to go to college. And he was trying to learn from public television so he could get a better job in the mill. ...... when I was growing up I didn't think I would run for president ..... my mother, who never got a chance to go to college, who had a very difficult childhood, but who gave me a belief that I could do whatever I set my mind

Obama vs. Clinton: Questions of experience Chicago Tribune
Was Obama naive, will Clinton be Bush-Cheney lite? Ha'aretz
Clinton may be a target of Rove's reverse psychologyLos Angeles Times Her healthcare record was "spotty and poor," he declared. Her candidacy was "fatally flawed," he said. And no one with her negative poll numbers, he stated, "has ever won the presidency." ...... The decision to focus on the New York senator to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem -- the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z. ........ In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush's opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. ...... But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry. ...... Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. ...... "Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters' minds. .... Whomever we attacked was going to be helped ..... the campaign "refused" to even respond to Edwards' attacks on Bush, not wanting to make him seem like a threat. ..... Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee? ..... Rove's visibility suggested he had no intention of fading from the game in 2008. ...... "I haven't known Karl to do many things accidentally or spontaneously ...... many Democrats in 1979 relished the thought of taking on Ronald Reagan the following year. ...... Clinton appeared to welcome the attacks from Rove, widely disliked among Democrats, and her campaign traded blows with the White House last week.
Live-Blogging the Democratic Debate New York Times When his family was living in a car, he decided he would be someone ..... The transition from high school to college. He was at times an angry young man. ...... When he saw his father, who worked in a mill, watching public television to try to get an education. ...... “I could not be standing here without the women’s movement .... his “one-point plan” to “fix” No Child Left Behind by scrapping it. .... Clinton says she “regrets” having given Mr. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, but still doesn’t use the word “mistake.” There is no applause from the crowd. ...... 34,000 family farms in New York ..... Obama called for a cap on farm subsidies, not a popular position in Iowa. .... His own plan: Call in the Joint Chiefs and “give them the mission” to begin an orderly phased withdrawal. ..... “Is Mrs. Clinton part of the failed politics in Washington?” ....... “We need someone who can break out of the political patterns we’ve been in in the last 20 years. I would not be running if I did not believe that I would be the best person to do this.” ........ “I find it interesting he’s so obsessed with me.” .... She calls for public financing of elections. ..... “Is Barack Obama ready to be president, experienced enough to be president?” ... “Well, George, I was going to say good morning…and, as soon as I wake up, I’ll answer your question.” .... “I do not think that a president should give away the bargaining chip of a personal meeting with any leader, unless you know what you’re going to get out of that.” ...... Bill Richardson, who praised Mr. Obama, saying he represents change, and praised Mrs. Clinton saying she represents experience. He paused and added: “Change and experience: With me, you get both.” ..... Obama topped it all, after all this criticism of his lack of experience joking that, “To prepare for this debate, I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair.” He went onto say there are substantive differences between himself and Mrs. Clinton. “Strong countries should meet with adversaries ...... Obama’s inability to catch Mrs. Clinton in the polls.
Rove restates views on Clinton negatives MSNBC
Obama Defends Himself Against Rivals Forbes
Clinton backlash? And lobbying MSNBC