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Politics : The Next President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (332)	2/1/2007 12:39:29 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3215

From the NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story... Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007 8:09 a.m. EST Sen. Joe Biden: 'No Exploratory Committee, I'm Running' Reprint Information Dictator Chavez's 'Maximum Revolution' Thousands Fleeing Hugo Chavez's Venezuela Europeans Wary of U.S. Attack on Iran Pataki Not Ready for 2008 Commitment Fla. Gov. Crist: Abandon Touch-Screen Voting Democratic Sen. Joe Biden has been saying for months he's running for president. He makes it official on Wednesday. The Delaware senator will file the paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and release a videotaped campaign message to voters on his Web site, joebiden.com. He also is planning another trip to New Hampshire early next week. "After nine months of doing this, there is no exploratory committee - I'm running," Biden told The Associated Press. A 34-year Senate veteran known for his foreign policy expertise and somewhat windy oratory, Biden acknowledged his campaign would generate little of the buzz surrounding the celebrity candidates New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Even he was moved by his colleagues' trailblazing candidacies, Biden said. "There's good reason to be excited," he said. "You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing." Story Continues Below newsmax.com

To: calgal who wrote (332)	2/1/2007 10:39:43 AM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 3215

'Clean' Obama remark stalls Senator's presidential bid" February 2, 2007 COULD this be remembered as the first presidential campaign to start and all but end in a day? Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, who announced his candidacy with the hope he could ride his foreign policy expertise into contention for the Democratic nomination, instead spent the day struggling to explain his description of Senator Barack Obama, who is running for president, as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy". The remark, published on Wednesday in The New York Observer, left Senator Biden's campaign struggling to survive its first hours and injected race more directly into the presidential contest. The day ended, appropriately enough for the way politics is practised now, with Senator Biden explaining himself to Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. In a decidedly non-presidential afternoon conference call with reporters that had been intended to announce his candidacy, Senator Biden, speaking over loud echoes and a blaring television set, said that he had been "quoted accurately". He volunteered that he had called Senator Obama to express regret that his remarks had been taken "out of context" and that Senator Obama had assured him he had nothing to explain. "Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that the Democratic or Republican party has produced at least since I've been around," Senator Biden said. "Call Senator Obama. He knew what I meant by it. The idea was very straightforward and simple. This guy is something brand new that nobody has seen before." Asked about Senator Biden's comments, Senator Obama said: "I didn't take it personally and I don't think he intended to offend. But the way he constructed the statement was probably a little unfortunate." But later, with Senator Biden coming under fire from some black leaders, Senator Obama issued a statement that approached a condemnation. "I didn't take Senator Biden's comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate," he said. theage.com.au

To: calgal who wrote (332)	2/2/2007 2:25:48 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 3215

Democratic presidential hopefuls tackle Iraq Obama gets celebrity reception; Clinton vows to end Iraq war A parade of presidential contenders trooped before 400 members of the Democratic National Committee and hundreds of Democratic activists at the DNC winter meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. Friday. Perhaps the most telling line of the day was that uttered by Senator Hillary Clinton of New York who declared, “Many people wish we could do more” than merely debate and vote on next week’s Senate Iraq resolution. 'Silence is betrayal' on Bush troop plan Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who won the award for best audience participation, got the crowd to stand up when he urged them to stand up for poor people and for families without health insurance. And Edwards used the refrain, “Silence is betrayal,” declaring that members of Congress could not “stand by quietly” as Bush dispatched more troops to Iraq. Yet as the Senate resolution indicates, Clinton and other senators are not being silent: they are talking quite a lot about Iraq. But so far there seem to be insufficient votes to actually do something by cutting off funding for the deployment. Edwards speculated that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney “don’t think we have the backbone” to oppose them on the war. Clinton's promise, Obama's lament One DNC member, Maryland Democratic Party chairman Terry Lierman, praised Clinton’s promise that if the Iraq war had not ended by the time she took office as president in 2009, she would end it. “That was a really good definitive statement,” he said. But Lierman also said, “A non-binding resolution is a failure of leadership.” Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was mobbed by a horde of camera-clicking admirers after he finished his speech and exited into the lobby. Obama spent much of his speech lamenting that politics had become “a blood sport” and a “diversion” and that it was infected by “cynicism.” He told the audience that politics should not be about “who digs up more skeletons on whom.” He did not explain why he was raising the topic of skullduggery, whose “skeletons” might just be waiting to be found, or whether any revelations would affect any of the contenders. He reminded the audience that he opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But he said all Democratic contenders had a responsibility to “put forward in clear unambiguous certain terms exactly how they plan to get out of Iraq.” He did not detail that plan in his speech but has offered a bill to require Bush to complete withdrawal by early 2008. Dodd and the non-binding Iraq resolution Like Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, who was the day’s first speaker, Clinton and Obama did not commit himself to voting against Bush’s request for $100 billion in additional money for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither Dodd, Clinton, nor Obama discussed the potential consequences of U.S. forces leaving Iraq, such as ethnic cleansing or genocide on the scale of Darfur, or dismemberment of Iraq by neighboring countries such as Turkey or Iran. But Clinton did make a point of telling the crowd that “we can stop the genocide in Darfur.” Clinton also ripped into U.S. dependence on foreign lenders. She singled out the Chinese, recalling that one of her constituents had complained to her of jobs being lost to overseas competitors and asking “Why can’t we get tough with China?” “Because of the debt,” Clinton said. “How do you get tough with your banker?” Dodd took a shot at his senatorial rivals describing the non-binding Iraq resolution as “meaningless” Dodd touted his measure which would cap the number of troops in Iraq and require Bush to seek a new congressional resolution to keep the troops there. Democratic anti-war mandate? Some Democrats have interpreted their party’s victory in last November’s balloting as a call by voters to end the U.S. deployment in Iraq. And yet the party’s leaders in Congress have moved with extreme caution in trying to force Bush to pull the troops out. As he was or years ago, rep Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who also add the DNC meeting Friday, is the most clear-cut and uncompromising opponent of the Iraq war, telling the crowd that “right the Democratic congress has the ability and the power to end the war” by rejecting any new funding of it. Kucinich was also the only contender at Friday’s event to raise in his speech the topic of a potential military conflict with Iran. Although it is a year before the first test of voter support in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the presidential hopefuls aimed to impress the DNC members, each of whom is a “super-delegate” with a vote at the national convention which will pick the party’s 2008 presidential candidate. The super-delegates -- a category that includes DNC members and elected officials such as Democratic governors – account for nearly 40 percent of the total number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. msnbc.msn.com