Bits and pieces from the campaign trail:
- The blowout victory Senator Hillary Clinton had in the West Virginia Democratic presidential primary was overshadowed (at least in the media) by the news that one of her former rivals, former North Carolina senator John Edwards, endorsed Senator Barack Obama a day later. The news was so big that ABC broke into its evening news broadcast to carry the announcement live--even though it had been leaked an hour before. The endorsement makes sense because Edwards' views are much closer to Obama's than Clinton's. This seems to indicate that Obama's on track to get the nomination, However . . .
- The Washington Post reports that some Obama campaign workers in Indiana encountered people who uttered sentiments along the lines of "I ain't gonna vote for no black president" and other unenlightened comments we won't print here. Maybe this is why Clinton still thinks she has a shot at the nomination.
- The Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found that Republican John McCain would have a hard time beating both Democrats in the state, in one of those "if the election were held today" polls. Obama would trounce McCain by 51 to 38 percent, with Clinton also besting the Arizona senator 49 to 40 percent. What the poll didn't ask is if McCain's numbers would improve with Governor Tim Pawlenty as his running mate.
- In a Columbus, Ohio speech, McCain peered into his crystal ball and predicted that by 2013--which, in a strange coincidence, happens to be at the end of his first presidential term, if he's elected--the Iraq war will have been won with a smaller military presence left over, and Osama bin Laden will be either dead or captured. Welcome to the prediction business, Senator. We've been known to be wrong sometimes.
- Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the longtime leading liberal Democrat who recently endorsed Barack Obama, is in a Boston hospital for what doctors are calling a seizure. (Since this is the Kennedy family we're talking about, this might not necessarily be true) All the presidential candidates expressed their best wishes for the senator. But where is the White House on this? It can't just be that Kennedy is from the wrong party, is it?
- On the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary as a nation, President George W. Bush told the Knesset (that's their version of Congress) that he considers those who would negotiate with terrorists and others the United States officially doesn't like as "appeasers". Though the White House denies it, Democrats believe the President just compared Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the pre-World War II British prime minister who gave away Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler, then declared "peace in our time". John McCain nods his head in agreement. To which Obama responded that he welcomes the debate about national security, and that the Republicans are engaging in "fearmongering". So Bush prefers the macho position of not speaking to the enemy? Well, look where it has gotten us.
- Finally, the President said in an interview with Politico,com that the one thing he sacrificed during the war with Iraq was his golf game. There are thousands of soldiers and their families who sacrificed a lot more than Bush did, and they aren't getting much in return. Come to think of it, neither is the rest of the country
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