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    Obama Closes the Gap on Hillary as Countdown Begins to One-on-One Debate
    By Tim Reid
    The Times UK

    Thursday 31 January 2008

    Barack Obama has closed to within six points of Hillary Clinton in the latest national poll of Democratic voters, hours before their one-on-one debate in California tonight.

    As recently as ten days ago, Mrs Clinton led Mr Obama by 20 points in Gallup's national survey, but the Illinois senator has dramatically cut the gap. His surge follows the endorsement on Monday of Senator Edward Kennedy, the late John F Kennedy's brother, and after a backlash among many senior Democrats over aggressive tactics used by Bill Clinton during the South Carolina primary.

    National polls usually have little bearing on contests in individual, early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. But the new survey is an important indicator of the political environment as 22 states prepare to go the polls on Super Tuesday next week.

    After accusations that the Clintons used racial tactics in South Carolina to scare white voters away from Mr Obama, Bill Clinton appears to have been reigned in by his wife. In appearances on her behalf in the past 48 hours, he has barely mentioned Mr Obama, instead remaining positive and focusing on his wife's policies.

    Mrs Clinton last night apologised for any offence her husband had caused in South Carolina, telling ABC News: "I think whatever he said which was certainly never intended to cause any kind of offence to anyone. If it did give offences then I take responsibility and I'm sorry about that."

    Asked if she could control her husband, she said: "Oh, of course." In a separate interview she did not deny that she had asked the former president to tone down his campaign rhetoric, and insisted that this was very much her presidential campaign.

    Mr Obama, in contrast, has stepped up his criticism of Mrs Clinton, who is now trying to take the moral high ground in their nomination battle at a time when both are desperate to woo supporters of John Edwards, who dropped out of the race yesterday.

    In a speech in Denver yesterday, before a huge crowd of more than 10,000, Mr Obama said a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a step back to the past, turning her husband's campaign theme from his 1996 election - building a bridge to the 21st century - against her. "I know it is tempting, after another presidency by a man named George Bush, to simply turn back the clock, and to build a bridge back to the 20th century," Mr Obama said.

    Turning to Mrs Clinton's accusation that she is ready to lead America on Day One, and that he is not, Mr Obama said: "It's not enough to say you'll be ready from Day One; you have to be right from Day One." It was a reference to his pre-invasion opposition to the Iraq war, and Mrs Clinton's vote authorising the war.

    Mrs Clinton, who is now focusing her message on the economy, jobs and health care - the bread-and-butter issues of most concern to Mr Edwards's supporters - responded. "That certainly sounds audacious, but not hopeful," she said, a play on the title of Mr Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. She added: "It's not hopeful and it's not what we should be talking about in this campaign. I would certainly ... hope we could get back to talking about the issues, drawing the contrasts that are based in fact that have a connection to the American people."

    Mrs Clinton holds several advantages heading into Super Tuesday. She has significant leads in the biggest, delegate-rich states of New York, California, New Jersey and Missouri. Yet because of the way Democrats award delegates - through proportional representation - it is mathematically impossible for either candidate to emerge victorious after February 5.

    Mr Obama is hoping to do well in his home state of Illinois and in smaller states such as Georgia, Alabama, Kansas, Colorado and North Dakota. He is also trying to limit his opponent's advantage in New York and California.

    In his speech, he depicted Mrs Clinton as a calculating, poll-tested, divisive figure who will only inspire greater partisan divisions in America.

    Mrs Clinton vowed to take the high road. "I'm going to continue to talk to people about what we need to do in our country to try to lift people up, to keep focused on the future, to be very specific about what I want to do as president, because I want to be held accountable," she said.

    With Mr Edwards out, the debate in Los Angeles tonight will be Mrs Clinton's and Mr Obama's first head-to-head encounter, and their last joint encounter before Super Tuesday. It also demonstrates that, for the first time, the Democratic Party will not be picking a white male as its presidential nominee.

 

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    Governor Schwarzenegger to Endorse McCain
    By Liz Sidoti and Michael R. Blood
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 31 January 2008

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will endorse John McCain on Thursday, giving a boost to the Republican presidential front-runner six days before California's high-prize primary.

    The two will appear at a news conference after touring a Los Angeles-based solar energy company and the governor will make his endorsement official, his senior aides confirmed.

    Schwarzenegger's endorsement of McCain is yet another setback for Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who saw Florida slip from his grasp Tuesday after McCain rolled up the support of that state's two top elected Republicans, Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez.

    His strategy in tatters, Romney plans to offer himself as the conservative alternative to McCain as he pushes ahead in hopes of winning enough delegates to topple the Arizona senator when 21 states vote in the Republican contest on Tuesday.

    Schwarzenegger's move comes as McCain plows toward the nomination, the only Republican candidate to have won three hotly contested primaries - New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida - since voting began earlier this month.

    "Governor Schwarzenegger is an exceptional governor and we are honored that he has decided to endorse Senator McCain, and look forward to the event tomorrow," said Steve Schmidt, a senior McCain adviser who managed Schwarzenegger's 2006 campaign.

    Schwarzenegger sat in the audience here Wednesday as McCain and Romney shared a debate stage with rivals Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

    McCain, the four-term senator, is running strongly ahead of all three rivals in California, which offers a whopping 170 delegates to the Republican nominating convention. Candidates secure three delegates for each of the state's 53 congressional districts they win in the primary, in which only Republicans can vote.

    The ultimate effect of Schwarzenegger's endorsement is unclear. The celebrity governor and former actor is universally known in the state, and his political network certainly will be helpful to McCain, who has virtually no organized effort in California after his candidacy nearly collapsed last summer. The actor-turned-governor also is a prolific fundraiser.

    But Schwarzenegger has a strained relationship with some conservatives in his own party and McCain, himself, is fighting to convince GOP rank-and-file that he's committed to conservative values. Schwarzenegger's nod could exacerbate concerns about McCain among the party establishment.

    Schwarzenegger also is taking heat from state Republicans who argue he's been too willing to bend to the wishes of the Democratic-controlled Legislature. At the same time, California faces a $14.5 billion budget deficit over the next year-and-half, and the governor has rankled the state's powerful education lobby with his proposal to cut spending by 10 percent from state agencies to deal with the financial crisis.

    McCain and Schwarzenegger have been friends for years, and the two share a bond over their work on global warming issues as well as their similar independent streaks. Aides say Schwarzenegger long has respected McCain's push to eliminate wasteful spending in Washington, protect the environment and fix a broken immigration system.

    The governor offered high praise of McCain throughout the campaign, calling him a "great senator" and "very good friend," and the two appeared together at the Port of Los Angeles last year. "We share common philosophy and goals for this country," McCain said at the time.

    But Schwarzenegger always has stopped short of endorsing McCain, given that another friend, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also was in the race.

    Earlier this month, Schwarzenegger told reporters he would not make an endorsement in the GOP primary, saying then: "It doesn't help me, and it doesn't help the state of California." But senior advisers say Giuliani's departure from the race Wednesday changed the dynamics of the decision for Schwarzenegger, and he decided to go ahead with the endorsement as it was clear that Giuliani's candidacy was over.

 

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    Clinton Remained Silent as Wal-Mart Fought Unions
    By Brian Ross, Maddy Sauer and Rhonda Schwartz
    ABC News

    Thursday 31 January 2008

    In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

    Clinton has been endorsed for president by more than a dozen unions, according to her campaign Web site, which omits any reference to her role at Wal-Mart in its detailed biography of her.

    Wal-Mart's anti-union efforts were headed by one of Clinton's fellow board members, John Tate, a Wal-Mart executive vice president who also served on the board with Clinton for four of her six years.

    Tate was fond of repeating, as he did at a managers meeting in 2004 after his retirement, what he said was his favorite phrase, "Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living."

    Wal-Mart says Tate's comments "were his own and do not reflect Wal-Mart's views."

    But Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and other company officials often recounted how they relied on Tate to lead the company's successful anti-union efforts.

    An ABC News analysis of the videotapes of at least four stockholder meetings where Clinton appeared shows she never once rose to defend the role of American labor unions.

    The tapes, broadcast this morning on "Good Morning America," were provided to ABC News from the archives of Flagler Productions, a Lenexa, Kan., company hired by Wal-Mart to record its meetings and events.

    A former board member told ABCNews.com that he had no recollection of Clinton defending unions during more than 20 board meetings held in private.

    The tapes show Clinton in the role of a loyal company woman. "I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else," she said at a June 1990 stockholders meeting.

    Clinton would not agree to be interviewed on the subject but now says she no longer shares Wal-Mart's values and believes unions "have been essential to our nation's success.".

    The videotapes do show that Clinton used her role to push for more environmentally friendly policies and better treatment of women.

    "We've got a very strong-willed young woman on our board now; her name is Hillary," said Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton at a 1987 stockholders meeting in describing Clinton's role in pushing for more women to be hired in management positions.

    Critics say Clinton's efforts produced few tangible results, and Wal-Mart is now defending itself in a lawsuit brought by 16 current and former female employees.

    "I don't doubt the sincerity of her efforts, but we don't see much evidence that conditions for women at Wal-Mart changed much during the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Joe Sellers, one of the lawyers suing Wal-Mart on behalf of the women.

    Wal-Mart declined to comment to ABC News about the lawsuit, but the company has said previously that it is confident it did not discriminate against female employees.

    Sen. Clinton has recently sought to distance herself from Wal-Mart.

    In a campaign speech last year in New Hampshire, Sen. Clinton said, "Now I know that Wal-Mart's policies do not reflect the best way of doing business and the values that I think are important in America."

    Her Senate campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from a Wal-Mart Political Action Committee, although ABCNews.com discovered another $20,000 in contributions from Wal-Mart executives and lobbyists.

    Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson said, "There is no basis to return" the money.

    According to the New York Times, Sen. Clinton "maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives through the Democratic Party and the tightly knit Arkansas business community." The May 20, 2007 article also reported that her husband, former President Clinton, "speaks frequently to Wal-Mart's current chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr." and held a private dinner at the Clinton's New York home in July 2006 for him.

    President Clinton defended his wife's role on the Wal-Mart board last week after the issue was raised by Sen. Barack Obama in a CNN debate.

    His wife did not try to change the company's minds about unions, the former Arkansas governor said.

    "We lived in a state that had a very weak labor movement, where I always had the endorsement of the labor movement because I did what I could do to make it stronger. She knew there was no way she could change that, not with it headquartered in Arkansas, and she agreed to serve," President Clinton said.

    In a written statement, Clinton spokesperson Wolfson said, "As President, she will fight alongside labor to promote the economic growth of America's middle class." He said Clinton strongly believes Wal-Mart workers should be able to unionize and bargain collectively.

    He did not directly respond when asked why she did not quit the board over the conpany's anti-union efforts. "Wal-Mart was Arkansas's largest employer when Sam Walton asked Sen. Clinton to join the board," he said. "As the first woman to join Wal-Mart's board, she worked hard to make it a better corporate citizen."

    In its statement, Wal-Mart described Sen. Clinton as "a valuable contributor" who "pushed us to be a better company."