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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: After Wins, Obama Is Focus of McCain and Clinton February 20, 2008 After Wins, Obama Is Focus of McCain and Clinton By JOHN SULLIVAN The Democratic contenders are scheduled to appear at rallies on Wednesday in Texas, which has emerged as a critical race for the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. With Senator Barack Obama having won primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday by broad margins across nearly every voter group, Mrs. Clinton has now lost 10 contests in a row since splitting votes and delegates with him on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton’s aides have calculated that she must win the party’s next two major contests, in Texas and Ohio, on March 4. Senator John McCain, all but assured of the Republican nomination, is in Ohio on Wednesday. Mr. McCain has turned his attention to Mr. Obama, calling on him to pledge to abide by the limits of public financing for the campaign. Mrs. Clinton also focused on Mr. Obama as she went on the offensive early Wednesday in a speech at Hunter College in Manhattan, charging that her rival has substituted rhetoric for practical experience. “It is time to get real,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said. “To get real about how we actually win this election and get real about the challenges facing America. It’s time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.” It is a familiar theme, but Mrs. Clinton delivered it with fresh intensity after the crushing defeats in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton spent Wednesday morning in New York raising money before flying to Texas to campaign. Voters in Texas and Ohio, along with Rhode Island and Vermont, go to the polls in less than two weeks in contests that Democratic strategists say Mrs. Clinton must win if she is to have any hope of capturing the nomination. Mr. Obama began Wednesday in Dallas, where he was scheduled to hold an afternoon rally. His campaign schedule was trimmed to one public event, aides said, so he could prepare for a debate in Austin against Mrs. Clinton on Thursday evening. Speaking before a crowd of about 20,000 people in Houston on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama told his supporters that there was still a long way to go before the convention. “The change we seek is still months and miles away and we need the good people of Texas to help us get there,” he said. David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, said that Mr. Obama had amassed a 159-delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton, based on his campaign tally. Following a win in Wisconsin by 17 percentage points, Mr. Plouffe said Mrs. Clinton would need to win in Texas and Ohio by double-digits to gain an edge in the fight for delegates. “We have opened up a big and meaningful delegate lead,” Mr. Plouffe said, speaking in a conference call with reporters. “They are going to have to win landslides to reverse it.” Reflecting Mr. Obama’s lead on the Democratic side, Mr. McCain focused his criticism on him during a news conference in Columbus Wednesday morning. He pounded Mr. Obama yet again for his commitment in writing a year ago to accept public funds for the general election about $85 million for each candidate — if the Republican nominee did the same. In doing so, Mr. Obama would have to surrender a phenomenal advantage in fundraising and accept the limits of public financing. Mr. McCain, who was the only other presidential candidate to sign on to the pledge, was responding to a column by Mr. Obama in USA Today on Wednesday in which the candidate wrote that he remained open to public financing but that he was concerned about the spending of outside groups on behalf of candidates and that he wanted to reach a “meaningful agreement” with whoever is the Republican nominee. But he did not expect, he wrote, “that a workable, effective agreement will be reached overnight.” As conditions for such an agreement, Mr. Obama wrote that candidates “will have to commit to discouraging cheating by their supporters; to refusing fundraising help by outside groups; and to limiting their own parties to legal forms of involvement.” Mr. Obama has broken all political fundraising records in this election he has taken in more than $150 million so far, $36 million in January alone, and Mr. McCain’s advisers have privately questioned why he would disarm himself of that advantage and not spend the prodigious amounts he has raised on his own. Mr. McCain, who raised $12 million in January, appears to be preparing for that possibility, but in the meantime is attacking Mr. Obama as someone who could not keep his word should bear the responsibility for breaking the pledge. If Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton did not accept public financing in the general election, Mr. McCain said, “I obviously would have to re-evaluate.” Reporting was contributed by John M. Broder in New York, Elisabeth Bumiller in Columbus, Ohio, and Jeff Zeleny in Texas.
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McCain Accuses Obama of ‘Double Speak’ on Financing
'He will make Cheney look like Gandhi.'
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
LOL!! If McCain is the establishment GOP puppet selected, the Dems could run almost anyone and win.
I hope you're right about that.
'He will make Cheney look like Gandhi.' I hope I'm wrong about McCain being the selected GOPer.
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