Filed under: Hope
Filed under: Current Events
The primaries
Never say die
Mar 6th 2008 | AUSTIN, TEXAS AND COLUMBUS, OHIO
From The Economist print edition
The voters in Texas and Ohio have upended the Democratic race yet again
THERE were two big winners in this week’s Democratic primaries: Hillary Clinton, who returned from the political graveyard, and John McCain, who, having secured the Republican nomination, can now enjoy the spectacle of the two Democratic candidates at each other’s throats for at least another six weeks.
On the morning of March 4th Mrs Clinton faced the end of her presidential dreams. No less a person than her husband had stated that she might have to think of pulling out of the race if she lost in Texas and Ohio. Two of the party’s most influential grandees, Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, and Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, said much the same thing. Her campaign has had financial problems, is riven by infighting and was overclouded by gloom.Mrs Clinton’s three victories on Tuesday night—in Rhode Island, Ohio and Texas—changed all this. They ended Barack Obama’s winning streak of 11 consecutive primaries and caucuses (12 if you count Vermont, which he won early on Tuesday evening). They applied a jolt of energy to the Clinton machine. And they forced a Democratic establishment, which was beginning to view Mr Obama as inevitable, to give Mrs Clinton another chance.
Mrs Clinton pulled off this resurrection by reassembling her core constituency of working-class whites, women, older voters and Latinos. Mr Obama had been steadily eating into these groups during his long winning spell. There was also lots of speculation that the Texas Latinos—who are younger—might behave differently from their Clintonian Californian cousins.
But the exit polls show that Mrs Clinton reforged her bond with these groups. She won women in both Ohio and Texas by 16 and nine points respectively. She won white men in Ohio by 19 points. She won Texas Latinos, who turned out in record numbers, by two to one. Her biggest margins came from people who have not been to university (ie working-class voters). She won these voters by 17 points in Texas and an astonishing 32 points in Ohio.
Mrs Clinton was clearly helped by her decision to mount a bare-knuckle assault on Mr Obama in the days before the election. She hammered him as not being prepared to be commander-in-chief (an advertisement showed a phone ringing in the White House at 3am and a poised Mrs Clinton answering it). She skewered him for talking out of both sides of his mouth on NAFTA (an Obama adviser seemingly assured the Canadians that he was not really threatening to tear up the trade deal).
She was also helped by a fit of guilt in the press corps. The Clinton campaign has been complaining for weeks that the press have treated Mr Obama with kid gloves. But what arguably gave the journalists the kick they needed was a skit on “Saturday Night Live” which skewered journalists for pandering to Mr Obama. The press pack turned on Mr Obama dramatically in the couple of days before the election—peppering him with questions about his position on NAFTA and his ties with Tony Rezko, a Chicago businessman. Mr Obama responded with less than his normal aplomb, to put it mildly.
These twin assaults clearly had an impact. Mrs Clinton won decisively among people who made up their minds in the last moment (a fifth of Texans and of Ohioans). But Mrs Clinton’s success in throwing the kitchen sink at Obama was abetted by worries about the kitchen table. The rapidly deteriorating economy is spreading gloom and anxiety across the land, playing to Mrs Clinton’s strengths as a tried-and-tested manager and taking the wind out of Mr Obama’s vague talk of “change” and “hope”. Half the voters in Texas and three-fifths in Ohio regarded the economy as the most important issue.
Mrs Clinton’s assaults on Mr Obama were not very pretty—particularly her Nixonian assurance that her rival is not a Muslim “as far as I know”. But Mrs Clinton was also helped by her extraordinary indomitability in the face of adversity. The former first lady managed to march on despite chaos in her campaign and growing calls for her to withdraw from the race. The best line in her victory speech, in Columbus, Ohio, came when she used this indomitability to strike a chord with hard-pressed Americans: “For everyone here in Ohio and across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one’s for you.”
The fighter still faces daunting odds. Mr Obama began March 4th with a lead of around 160 delegates. For all the headlines about her victories in Ohio and Texas, the Democratic Party’s system of allocating votes proportionally means that she has done almost nothing to close her delegate gap. Mrs Clinton gained only about a net nine delegates from her ten-point win in Ohio. And thanks to Texas’s bizarre “two-step” voting system, which allows primary voters to vote again in a Democratic caucus, she ended up securing only one or two more delegates than he did. Mr Obama won in the caucus, in which only about 100,000 people voted, versus 2.8m in the primary.
By some calculations she still needs to win more than 60% of the popular vote in the remaining contests to have a chance of catching up with Mr Obama—a near impossibility (she only won 54% in Ohio). Mr Obama is likely to resume his winning streak in the forthcoming contests in Wyoming on March 8th and is certain to do so in Mississippi on March 11th.
Texas and Ohio will not change the fact that Mrs Clinton has messed up what should have been an easy march to the nomination, allowing herself to be outcampaigned, outsmarted and outspent by a newcomer. In every race she enters she sees huge leads in the opinion polls shrink dramatically as Mr Obama works his rhetorical and organisational magic.
Mr Obama also has plenty of kitchen sinks of his own to throw at his rival. Is Mrs Clinton really the right person to be raising questions about financial shenanigans? Two of Mrs Clinton’s closest associates from her years in Arkansas, Jim McDougal, her property partner, and Webb Hubbell, her law-firm partner, were later convicted of felonies.
And besides, exactly what experience does she actually have of answering telephones at three in the morning? Mrs Clinton did not even have security clearance in the White House, and her most important vote in recent years, to authorise the Iraq war, is one that she admits she regrets. When a journalist from Slate magazine asked her closest advisers, on a conference call, to name an international incident in which their candidate has been tested, he was met with a long, embarrassed silence.
But the dynamic in the race has clearly changed yet again. Mrs Clinton can use the peculiar result in Texas—the fact that the caucuses produced such a different vote from the broader primary—to question the significance of Mr Obama’s performance in other caucuses, all of which he has won. She can also keep pointing out, as she did this week, that no recent candidate has won the White House without winning Ohio, the truest bellwether state. If Mrs Clinton cannot catch up with Mr Obama in pledged delegates, Mr Obama also has no chance of reaching the 2,025 delegates that would secure him the nomination. Both must rely on superdelegates.
Mrs Clinton is also in pole position to win the next big primary, in Pennsylvania on April 22nd. Pennsylvania is in many ways more like Ohio than Ohio itself, a rust-belt state rich in working-class voters and senior citizens, and a must-win state for the Democrats in the general election. Mrs Clinton also has the support of the state’s governor, Mr Rendell, who is determined to perform as well for her as Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio, did for her this week.
The result will be a punch-up not just in Pennsylvania but in the Democratic Party as a whole as Democrats squabble over everything from party rules (should the delegates from Florida and Michigan be seated or not?) to the relative importance of small and large states. There is an ancient Greek myth, retold in Aeschylus’s play “Seven against Thebes”, about two sons of Oedipus who fought so bitterly over who should inherit their father’s kingdom that they ended up slaughtering each other. This could be the Democrats’ Theban moment.
Filed under: Current Events
Harper threatens to sue Dion, key Liberals
Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press
March 3, 2008 at 4:49 PM EST
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is suing key Liberals for libel over allegations made about his involvement in a Conservative Party attempt to woo independent MP Chuck Cadman, above, in 2005. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson)Videos
Cadman interview (June 12, 2005)The Globe’s Dan Cook interviewed Independent MP Chuck Cadman live on CKNW (Audio: CKNW/Corus Radio)
Cadman author speaksTom Zytaruk, author of Like A Rock, discusses his book and its controversial claims on Canada AMRelated Articles
Internet Links
- Read: Harper’s libel notice, courtesy CTV (pdf)
- Radwanski: When the going gets tough…
- CTV.ca audio: Listen to author’s interview with Stephen Harper
“Is the Prime Minister willing to change his story? Is he willing to tell the truth?” Mr. Dion demanded.
Mr. Harper responded by accusing the Liberals of using “more and more extreme accusations” to distract from their own internal problems – “going to the point last week … of publishing on their website a series of false and unfounded allegations of criminal misconduct on my part,” the Prime Minister said.
“The truth is that this will prove to be, in court, the biggest mistake the leader of the Liberal Party has ever made.”
A Liberal Party statement issued Monday accused the Conservatives of using libel chill to stifle the debate that has gripped Parliament Hill since last week.
“What we are witnessing is yet another example of the Prime Minister silencing his critics and shutting down debate by threat and intimidation … Rather than using the courts to intimidate critics, the Prime Minister should simply provide credible answers to straightforward questions.”
Mr. Cadman’s wife, Dona Cadman – who is also a Conservative candidate – and her daughter and son-in-law say the dying MP told them that two men representing the Conservatives approached him in the days before the vote and offered a million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for his support in bringing down the Liberals.
DONA CADMAN BACKS HARPER
Ms. Cadman also released a statement Monday saying she asked Mr. Harper a few years ago if he had been aware of the insurance policy offer, and he flatly denied it. She attributed the offer to the “overzealous indiscretion of a couple of individuals whose identity Chuck never revealed to me.”
Mr. Harper “looked me straight in the eyes and told me he had no knowledge of an insurance policy offer,” Ms. Cadman said in the statement.
“I knew he was telling me the truth; I could see it in his eyes. He said, yes he’d had some discussions with two individuals about asking Chuck to rejoin the party, but he’d told them they were wasting their time trying to convince Chuck.”
Ms. Cadman said in the statement she wouldn’t be running for the Conservatives if she didn’t trust the Prime Minister.
“Chuck liked, respected and trusted Stephen Harper. I like, respect and trust Stephen Harper,” she said.
‘DEVASTATINGLY DEFAMATORY’
The articles that are the subject of the lawsuit threat are headlined “Harper knew of Conservative bribery” and “Harper must come clean about allegations of Conservative Bribery.”
The articles allege that Mr. Harper, when he was opposition leader, was aware that the party officials were trying to bribe Mr. Cadman in exchange for his vote – and ask whether Mr. Harper was aware that such attempts to influence an MP were criminal, according to the notice of libel.
“These statements are false and devastatingly defamatory,” says Mr. Harper’s libel notice. “These malicious and reckless statements impugn the reputation of the Prime Minister and meant, and were understood to mean inter alia, that the Prime Minister knew of a bribe of a Member of Parliament and was an accomplice to that bribe.”
The libel notice says the articles suggest that Mr. Harper is “dishonest, unethical, immoral and lack integrity.” The documents also say the articles suggest that Mr. Harper “knowingly breached the Criminal Code of Canada.”
Opposition MPs said Monday it was unprecedented for a Canadian prime minister to sue the leader of the Opposition for libel over a matter before the House of Commons.
The quotes contained in the article were originally uttered in the Commons, where statements are not legally actionable. The Tories, faced Monday with question after question about the Cadman affair, challenged opposition MPs to repeat them outside the chamber.
LIFE INSURANCE?
Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow and Mr. Harper’s communications director, Sandra Buckler, did not reply to questions e-mailed to them by Canadian Press Monday asking whether any Tories made the alleged life-insurance offer without Mr. Harper’s knowledge.
It’s unclear how the Conservatives might have obtained life insurance for Mr. Cadman, who died of cancer two months after the vote. Insurance experts say it’s almost impossible to obtain a $1-million policy for a terminally ill person.
Swirling at the centre of the political maelstrom is a tape released last week suggesting Harper not only knew an “offer” was allegedly made to Cadman, but also gave it his blessing.
During the interview with author Tom Zytaruk, recorded in September 2005, Mr. Harper confirms Conservative officials made a financial appeal to Mr. Cadman.
“The offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election,” Mr. Harper is heard saying on the scratchy recording.
Mr. Harper has yet to explain what he meant by “financial considerations.”
Mr. Sparrow said Monday that two of Mr. Harper’s close confidants, Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan, met with Mr. Cadman on May 19, 2005 — the day of the historic confidence vote in which the fate of Paul Martin’s Liberal government rested squarely on the Independent MP’s shoulders.
They offered a repayable loan for Mr. Cadman’s local riding association to cover campaign expenses if he rejoined the Tories, Mr. Sparrow said.
But Mr. Cadman ultimately sided with the Liberals in the confidence vote, and kept then-prime minister Paul Martin in office for a few more months.
Mr. Sparrow wouldn’t say how much of a loan Mr. Finley and Mr. Flanagan offered. Elections Canada said the maximum riding spending limit for election expenses in Surrey North during the last campaign was $73,788.30.
APOLOGY DEMANDED
Mr. Harper’s lawyers are demanding the immediate retraction of the Liberal articles and their removal from the party’s website as well as an apology from Mr. Dion in Parliament. They want Mr. Dion to “acknowledge that the Prime Minister has acted ethically, morally, and legally.”
They also want any electronic or paper data that the Liberals may have collected that relate to the case.
None of Mr. Harper’s allegations has been proven. The offending articles were still posted on the Liberal Party website at midafternoon Monday.
“The defamatory statements are egregious. The articles are not a fair and accurate report of the proceedings in the House of Commons and are not privileged,” concludes the libel notice.
Further, “they were made maliciously and with a reckless disregard for the truth.”
Representatives of Mr. Dion and the Liberal party were not immediately available to comment of the case.
The Cadman affair dominated the Commons Question Period last week and is expected to do so again this week.
Filed under: Current Events
TOM RAUM
Associated Press
March 4, 2008 at 12:07 PM EST
Both expressed confidence in their chances, but their campaign teams also acknowledged that split decisions and close votes could prolong the battle for at least another month — or more.
“I feel really good about today,” Ms. Clinton told reporters after a visit to a polling place at a Houston elementary school in a largely Hispanic neighbourhood Tuesday. “Let’s wait and see what the voters have actually decided — I think it’s going to turn out well.”
Ms. Clinton planned to stop at another polling place in Dallas before heading to Ohio for more campaign events. She will await results in Columbus before returning to Washington Tuesday night.
Enlarge ImageDemocratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton speaks in Austin, Tex., on Monday. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
Videos
Clinton’s ‘restroom’ break
Journalists travelling with Clinton campaign filed from a makeshift media room in a Texas washroom
Related Articles
Mr. Obama began the day at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where he shook hands with people at a Future Farmers of America exhibit, posed for pictures and climbed onto a tractor.
“I hope we do well, but we’re working hard,” he told reporters before heading to San Antonio, where he planned to await returns.
Polls show tight races in both Texas and Ohio. The Obama campaign saw Texas as their best opportunity, while the Clinton campaign saw Ohio as theirs. Texas offers 228 delegates, Ohio 164.
Voters also went to the polls Tuesday in Rhode Island, which offers 21 delegates, and Vermont, 15.
In Ohio, voting sites were busy despite heavy rain across the state.
Eric Gingerich, 36, a junior high social studies teacher, normally votes Republican, but voted Tuesday for Mr. Obama at an elementary school in Hilliard, Ohio, near Columbus.
“I like how he can bring the two parties together and the country together,” he said.
Republican scandals in Ohio have made him more open to Democrats, but Mr. Gingerich said Ms. Clinton is too polarizing.
“If anybody is going to pull me over to the Democrats it’s Barack, not Hillary,” he said.
The economy was on the mind of Gretchen Genung, 61, a state employee who voted for Clinton in Cincinnati.
“We know where the economy is right now, we know where it’s going and we need somebody in there like Hillary who has the experience,” Ms. Genung said.
In Providence, R.I., Sharon Carpentier, 46, said she voted for Ms. Clinton because she wants to see a female president in her lifetime and because she admires her perseverance through the public airing of her personal problems.
“If she can withstand that kind of heat, she can withstand a lot of things,” she said.
Brian Chapman, a 34-year-old bicycle frame builder, also voted in Providence — but for Mr. Obama, whom he compared to John F. Kennedy.
“He’s evoking the feeling for me of positivity, he’s making me actually proud to be an American and proud to be living in this country instead of being ashamed as I am right now under the current political leadership,” Mr. Chapman said.
Mr. Obama was dogged in the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary by allegations that he had overstated his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement to win votes in Ohio, and his ties to Chicago businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko on the day that jury selection began in the political corruption trial of the real estate developer and fast-food magnate.
“Tony Rezko was a friend and supporter of mine for many years. These charges are completely unrelated to me, and nobody disputes that,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference Monday in San Antonio.
Ms. Clinton has sounded a populist economic theme leading up to Tuesday’s primaries as she courted voters who have suffered with the decline of manufacturing in the industrial Midwest and Ohio. Then, in military-friendly Texas, Clinton broadened her theme to include veterans’ issues and to trumpet her backing from a string of top military officers.
Ms. Clinton has also worked to underscore her core campaign theme that she’s the more experienced on the issue. She held a one-hour town hall meeting where she strode the stage surrounded by a friendly audience and took questions selected from the thousands that were submitted on issues ranging from health care to education to veterans issues. Her campaign purchased time on a sports-oriented cable network to broadcast the event around the state, and the event was streamed on the campaign’s Web site.
Lucy Salazar, who voted at the Houston elementary school Ms. Clinton visited Tuesday, predicted the former first lady would do well in Texas, noting she has paid particular attention to the state’s Hispanic community.
“We’ve not had a president come to the neighbourhood like this ever before,” Ms. Salazar said.
Despite an exchange of jabs between the two candidates over NAFTA and who would be better able to respond to a national security crisis, Clinton called the Democratic race “one of the most civil and positive primary campaigns I can remember.”
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called Tuesday “the last big window of opportunity” for Ms. Clinton, noting that “enormous leads” she enjoyed as recently as two weeks ago had dwindled or evaporated.
Still, he said Mr. Obama was mindful that “this could go on for some time. We’re prepared for whatever situation occurs.”
Republican presidential contenders John McCain and Mike Huckabee also campaigned in Texas, though voter interest centred on the closer Democratic race.
“I understand the interest in very close races,” Mr. McCain said of the close Democratic contest. “As you know, there was a lot more interest earlier in our Republican primaries.”
Mr. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, began the day by rallying about 200 supporters crammed into a Mexican restaurant and bakery in San Antonio. He planned to hold a town hall-style event in Houston and watch election returns later in Dallas.
The Arizona senator criticized the Democrats for their desire to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. “Senator Obama and Senator Clinton want to get out of Iraq as fast as we can,” he said as the crowd booed. “They say they want to set a date for withdrawal. I tell you, if they did that, my friends, we would be back.”
A man shouted: “Let’s win the war!”
“Exactly,” replied Mr. McCain.
Filed under: Current Events
Alberta Tories win overwhelming majority
Globe and Mail Update
March 4, 2008 at 4:41 AM EST
Before the 28-day election campaign kicked off last month, Mr. Klein predicted the right-wing party would win its 11th consecutive majority, but likely lose seats because of an uneasy electorate.
“Welcome to Alberta’s century. Friends, today Albertans have spoken,” Mr. Stelmach told a packed room of cheering supporters in Edmonton. “We knew we have a big battle on our hands and the candidates came through.” When the Premier entered the room, his wife Marie by his side, Christina Aguliera’s pop song Ain’t No Other Man was blaring in the background.
A protester dressed as a polar bear shakes its fist at Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s campaign bus as it leaves a campaign stop in Edmonton Sunday. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)
Related Articles
Internet Links
“Ladies and gentleman, it’s not really how long you govern, it’s how well you govern,” he said to cheers of “Ed! Ed! Ed”.
Mr. Stelmach was handily re-elected in his own riding east of Edmonton. He has held his Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville seat since 1993, and won about 75 per cent of the popular vote last night.
Liberals were never able to exploit widespread sentiment in the province that it was time for a new government. An expected electoral breakthrough in Calgary, a long-time Tory stronghold, didn’t materialize for the Liberals, putting the future of party Leader Kevin Taft in serious doubt.
“All of us should hold our heads high for fighting for democracy because no matter what, trying to change the world for the better is always worth the effort,” Mr. Taft told crestfallen supporters in Edmonton.
He vowed to stay on as leader and not give the Tories “a free ride.”
In the early going, there were several tight races, although the Tories went on to win many of them.
However, even before the polls closed, the Liberals were complaining about irregularities at voting stations around the province.
Kieran Leblanc, executive director of the Liberals, said their campaign headquarters received phone calls from several upset scrutineers. Some told them people left stations without voting because the polls were disorganized and the line-ups too long.
The Tories, who have governed debt-free Alberta since 1971, also gained back seats in Edmonton. In the past, the oil-rich province’s capital city has been derisively dubbed Redmonton for its habit of electing left-leaning politicians.
Despite the desire for change and heavy advertising from special-interest groups urging voters to elect a new government, the electorate appeared swayed by Mr. Stelmach’s promise of “change that works for Albertans.”
When the writ was dropped last month, there were 60 Tories, 16 Liberals, four New Democrats and one Wildrose Alliance MLA. An Independent and a vacant seat rounded out the 83-seat legislature.
The Leader of the Wildrose Alliance, Paul Hinman, was in a tight race for his seat; the NDP had two seats and the Liberals nine.
“I don’t even know where to begin. It’s pretty shocking,” said Harold Jansen, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge.
This was supposed to be the best opportunity for Mr. Taft’s party to surge, he said, but the vote fragmented badly among the opposition parties, leaving the Liberals to do some soul-searching.
“If you couldn’t win under these circumstances when are you ever going to win?” he said.
Mr. Stelmach needed a big win Monday night to silence critics, both inside and outside of the Tory Party, who complain he is a weak leader who lacks the vision to govern the country’s economic powerhouse.
Mr. Stelmach has bitterly rejected claims he has no plan for Alberta’s exploding growth and wealth, but frustration with stressed infrastructure, the high cost of living and the environmental impact of oil sands development has been growing.
On the doorsteps and in polls, voters said they wanted change. But none of these issues seemed serious enough and voters didn’t seem angry enough to actually throw out the Tories.
With some polls suggesting one in four voters were undecided in a province where protest votes are lodged by staying home, observers weren’t expecting turnout to be high and perhaps worse than 2004 when just 44.7 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots.
It was the worst turnout in Alberta’s history and the lowest of any provincial election in the country since 1970.
Although elections in Alberta are rarely nail-biters, with such a large number of uncommitted voters so late in the campaign, the Tories were worried their support could suffer massive erosion.
There was even talk that last night could have been 1993 all over again when Mr. Klein, then a new, untested leader, fought hard to keep power and managed to grab 51 seats to the Liberals 32. That was the closest the Liberals have come to forming a government since 1921.
Mr. Stelmach won the hotly contested leadership race to succeed Mr. Klein by getting key support from rural and Edmonton Tories. Early on, his heavy rural focus as rookie premier cost him support in Calgary, another worry among Tories last night.
Many political observers predicted his leadership would be in deep trouble if the party lost too many seats, especially in the big cities where the Liberals were hoping to gain ground.
While Mr. Taft ran a principled campaign under the slogan “It’s time,” he never managed to excite voters, leaving some observers to question his future as leader of the debt-ridden party.
Since Alberta joined Confederation in 1905, only four parties have formed governments. When political change comes, it’s wholesale and the winner is a party that had never governed the province before.
The Wildrose Alliance Party, a fledging right-wing party that sprang up in January, didn’t make much-needed gains into rural Alberta, the Tories’ bedrock of support.
While voter unease was voiced during the campaign in the countryside over a range of issues from the revamped royalty program to the lack of environmental protection rules, the Tories easily maintained their hold on the region.
The victory extends the Tory dynasty beyond 37 years, but a recent poll of Albertans by the Strategic Counsel suggests the party will have to address serious concerns about how the province is governed.
Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal College in Calgary, is concerned a large Tory majority could further isolate the province from the rest of the country on issues such as the environment.
Alberta has the fastest growth in greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for one-third of the country’s total emissions. Yet Mr. Stelmach has pledged to let emissions rise until 2020 and then cut them by 14 per cent from 2005 levels by 2050, a policy criticized both in Alberta and across the country.
With a file from The Canadian Press
