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By Frances Itani $24.00
By Robert Wright $17.15
$22
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Hollywood bigwig Ari Emanuel knows a thing or two about superdelegates. His brother, Congressman Rahm Emanuel, is one. But, as Ari writes on the Huffington Post, “as much as I love and respect him, I don’t trust him and his fellow superdelegates to decide for me and the American people who should be the Democratic nominee—and, therefore, most likely the next president of the United States.”
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The inevitable parodies of Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can” video have begun—this one isn’t so much about Obama or Hillary Clinton as it is about Republican front-runner John McCain, whose infamous hundred-year (or more) plan for America’s presence in Iraq is deservedly and humorously lambasted here.
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 flickr.com
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Sen. Hillary Clinton is focusing on the high points of the last week—her Super Tuesday successes in weighty states like New York and California, for example—and looking to potential wins in Texas and other elections to hold her position in the race for the Democratic nomination in coming weeks.
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Maine caucus-goers and Grammy voters gave Barack Obama two more wins on Sunday, rounding out a weekend of victories in four states with the Grammy trophy for best spoken word album for his recording of “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.” Here’s the kicker: Obama beat out former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter for the Grammy.
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With a win in the Maine caucuses, Barack Obama has scored four lopsided victories in a row and the map favors him for weeks to come. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, responded to her troubles by replacing her campaign manager. Clinton now has to hold back Obama’s momentum long enough to win the big states weeks from now, a strategy that did not help Rudy Guiliani.
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 AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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Amid speculation that a long road might be in store for Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the tide turned in Obama’s favor Saturday with Nebraska and Washington state caucus victories and a big win in the Louisiana primary.
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Jon Stewart bids farewell to Mitt Romney, erstwhile presidential candidate and “man-shaped polymer casing for a spiritual vacuum” (ouch!), and calls into question Romney’s anti-terrorist rationale for bowing out of the ‘08 race.
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By David Sirota — For all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America’s preferred candidate is winning the poorer “us” versus the wealthier “them.”
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By Joe Conason — The revival of John McCain’s presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party’s nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices.
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The podcast is back after an extended holiday break. In this installment, Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer and Managing Editor Peter Scheer chat with Los Angeles radio institution Michael Jackson about Super Tuesday and what it all means for the race ahead. The Michael Jackson show can be heard in Los Angeles on AM 1260, in San Diego on AM 540 or online at 1260.am.
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 citizenship.typepad.com
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There’s an ugly possibility out there: The Democratic race could be so close it would be decided by the 796 super delegates (governors, members of Congress and the like) and not the people who voted and caucused. Party Chairman Howard Dean says he will do everything possible to avoid such a turn of events and Democratic strategists mostly agree that it would be a disaster for the party, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the super delegate notion to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday.
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 AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
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By Bill Boyarsky — After Super Tuesday, Democrats are worrying that a long Clinton-Obama contest might irreparably damage the party’s prospects in November. But, as longtime political reporter and former Los Angeles Times City Editor Bill Boyarsky points out, the bigger threat is a McCain-Huckabee ticket.
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 journalism.wlu.edu
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The Senate turned into a bit of a schoolyard Wednesday as the Democratic presidential rivals gathered with their cliques, assembling to vote on the economic stimulus package. It was all in good spirits, though, as Sens. Obama, Kennedy, Feinstein, Clinton and others joked. As Sen. Claire McCaskill explained: “I think they were having fun at Ted’s expense. ... But everyone is good-natured about it.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Super Tuesday primaries were a test of strength that demonstrated weaknesses in both parties and pointed to problems each could confront in the fall.
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By Ellen Goodman — Super Tuesday, Super Duper Tuesday, Plus-Size Tuesday, Vastly Engorged and Rotund Tuesday turned into a serious case of political bulimia. Never before have so many gorged on such huge portions of political expectations only to find themselves purged the next morning.
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By Marie Cocco — Kitchen-table worries trumped even the charisma of Camelot. This theme has sounded again and again since the Democratic primary contests began, yet neither the national media nor, apparently, the Obama campaign can hear it.
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 gabbybabble.com
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Al Gore voted in Tennessee’s primary, but he’s not saying for whom. According to a spokeswoman, “As private citizens, neither of the Gores are releasing who they voted for.” There’s been much speculation over whether Bill Clinton’s former vice president, in light of his known animus toward Hillary, would endorse a candidate, but we suspect that Gore enjoys life above the fray a bit too much to bother.
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 jossip.com
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Somehow Barack Obama has managed a political hat trick. He appears to have won the most delegates on Super Tuesday, he certainly has the most money (Clinton loaned herself $5 million while Obama is on track to set more records), and yet somehow he’s also winning the expectations game.
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 AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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Super Tuesday’s aftermath is certainly providing a good crash course in American electoral politics as the results are sorted out. The latest surprising twist involves Barack Obama’s camp claiming a slight lead over Hillary Clinton in the total number of delegates racked up. Officially, the final count has not been determined yet.
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Following Hillary Clinton’s surprise win in New Hampshire, some mainstream media outlets speculated that the “Bradley effect,” which posits that some white voters will avoid telling pollsters they voted against an African-American candidate, could explain Barack Obama’s election results in that state. Here, the Real News takes a closer look at that race-based rationale.
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Perhaps because neither Obama, Clinton nor McCain won a crushing victory, the top candidates’ post-Super Tuesday speeches repeated earlier themes, though with renewed focus on each other. McCain’s breathy tribute to himself would be the exception.
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 AP photo / Chris Carlson
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As the dust settles from Tuesday’s “national primary,” we know two things: John McCain is the Republican front-runner and the Democrats still have a race on their hands. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama swapped states all night. Obama won more states overall, but Hillary took home the big prizes of California and New York. Updated
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 AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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By Robert Scheer — Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009.
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 AP photo /J ohn Bazemore
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Record numbers of African-Americans came out to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in Georgia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday, giving Obama a big win at the kickoff of a long evening of waiting for other states’ results.
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 smh.com.au
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When Oprah Winfrey heard that a woman at a precinct next door wasn’t allowed to vote, she pledged to stay with the frustrated voter until she got to cast her ballot: “She [Winfrey] just kind of stood there and then as soon as I got to vote she left and she said, ‘I’ll call you later to make sure that you voted.’ And probably about an hour later I was sitting at my desk and she called my cell phone.”
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 AP photo / Elise Amendola
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Perhaps regardless of Tuesday’s election results, Sen. Hillary Clinton is looking toward the next debate opportunity—this time sponsored by Fox News—on Feb. 11. Barack Obama, however, hasn’t agreed yet to appear on the conservative channel.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Democrats are divided this year not by the issues but by a feeling and a theory. This helps explain why the preferences of voters in the Democratic presidential primaries so far have gyrated so wildly.
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By Eugene Robinson — When you Google the phrase “unconstitutional third term,” you get references to a rogue’s gallery of strongman leaders—Vladimir Putin, Alberto Fujimori, Olusegun Obasanjo, Islam Karimov, Hugo Chavez—who in recent years at least have flirted with the idea of holding on to power beyond statutory limits. Now the name Bill Clinton pops up, too.
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Hey there, independent voters—would a (prerecorded) phone call from sultry starlet Scarlett Johansson persuade you to head to the polls on Tuesday and cast a vote for her fave candidate, Barack Obama? Johansson certainly hopes so, so don’t ignore those numbers you don’t recognize on your caller ID—it could be robo-ScarJo!
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It’s endorsement mania in these final hours before Super Tuesday, and here’s Hillary Clinton taking news of Ann Coulter’s offhanded endorsement in stride, shooting a quick joke back at the “Inside Edition” reporter who apparently hoped to freak her out by cornering her with his Coulter question and his cameraman’s assertive use of his zoom function.
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There’s a reason campaigns are more expensive than ever: commercials. Although they try, the candidates can’t be in every Super Tuesday state at the same time, and the most effective way of reaching millions of people in one state is the same for politicians as it is for Tylenol. Even Barack Obama, who has bet big on his grass-roots organization, spent around $4 million on ads in the last week of January.
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Super Tuesday, when 22 states and American Samoa could decide the Democratic nominee, is one day away and no one knows what is going to happen. A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton dead even nationally. Clinton led by as many as 15 points a month ago. But it’s the biggest prize of the contest, California, where only a week ago Clinton led by 17 points, that has everyone guessing.
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Pop star and producer will.i.am and director Jesse Dylan (son of Bob) put together this independent, star-filled tribute to Barack Obama’s New Hampshire concession speech. Whether it’s inspirational or just cheesy is up to you, but we’ve got nothing bad to say about Herbie Hancock on the piano.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report follows the Middle Eastern media as they report on the U.S. presidential campaign with rapt attention. After all, this is the future head of the world’s only superpower (one that has taken a keen interest in the neighborhood) we’re talking about here.
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 Original: AP photo / M. Spencer Green
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Barack Obama had cause for celebration Friday. Though he still trails Hillary Clinton in most big states, he picked up two endorsements that will undoubtedly have an impact. MoveOn says it is already mobilizing its 3.2 million members—more than half of whom live in super Tuesday states—on behalf of Obama. The Los Angeles Times was flattering of Clinton, but, as the editorial board put it: “Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long—a sense of aspiration.”
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 AP photo / Elise Amendola
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This weekend, Sen. Barack Obama is unleashing a secret weapon in the final push to win Tuesday’s California primary: Oprah Winfrey. Team Obama partly attributes his successes in Iowa and South Carolina to her influence, which he’s hoping will help convince California women to choose him over Hillary Clinton.
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With mere days left before Super Tuesday and down to just two candidates, Thursday’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles gave voters a crucial eleventh-hour look at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who kept things friendly enough while staking out their differences on several key issues—health care, the economy and, most importantly, the Iraq war.
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By Eugene Robinson — Now that the presidential field has been winnowed to four—barring a miraculous return by one of the contestants recently voted off the island—the new national pastime is gaming the electability factor.
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By Ellen Goodman — The Kennedy clan, like many families across the country, is divided. It’s a struggle between the appeal of experience and idealism, and will ultimately decide the Democratic race.
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By Joe Conason — The most likely motive for Bill Clinton’s reckless political performance in recent weeks, ironically and sadly, is to redress the terrible humiliations he inflicted on his wife in years past.
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 AP photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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The idea of any news organization associated with conservative Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch backing a liberal Democrat (egad!) such as Barack Obama may seem strange, but upon closer inspection the New York Post’s endorsement for the Democratic nomination reads less like a bid for Obama than an effort to avoid four more years of “Team Clinton” in the White House.
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Sen. Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for president spurred Marcia Pappas, head of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, to accuse Kennedy of betraying women.
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Latino voters have become a major force in American politics, especially in the Democratic primary. Although these Spanish-language ads from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are similar in theme to the two presidential candidates’ other TV spots, the music adds a little sabor.
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 observer.com
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Pledging to soldier on in his quest to fight poverty, Democratic candidate John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday. Edwards has not yet endorsed either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. His two former rivals both praised him Wednesday as he made his exit.
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 thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
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Because he lacks a legacy—at least the good kind—no one expected much from President Bush’s final State of the Union address, which is probably why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama managed to steal the spotlight. The Internet is buzzing over Monday’s sideshow.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Only a week ago, a soaring Hillary Clinton was on a trajectory to close out the nomination. Now her campaign is struggling to refocus on what had drawn voters to her.
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By Eugene Robinson — Playing the race card against Barack Obama didn’t work out quite the way Bill Clinton had hoped. Neither did a reported last-minute personal appeal to keep Ted Kennedy, venerable guardian of the Camelot flame, from joining the Obama crusade. The question now is whether the Clintons understand how the country they seek to lead—and, regrettably, I do mean “they”—has changed.
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 Flickr / Joe Crimmings
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By Bill Boyarsky — Although racial politics apparently still has a place in the national discourse, there are times when an emphasis on unity is necessary. According to Boyarsky, Barack Obama’s win in South Carolina last weekend reflects his appeal among voters across a broad demographic range and among the diverse volunteer squad rallying support for him in California.
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You’ve heard the news, now watch the speech: Sen. Ted Kennedy was careful to pay tribute to “friends” Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, but Monday’s pep rally at American University in Washington, D.C., was all about Barack Obama, whom Kennedy calls “the candidate who inspires me” and the one most able to “renew our belief that our country’s best days are still to come.”
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