Clinton

There is obviously a lot of energy/environmental news today. I don't have time to write up every candidate right now like I did with McCain, mostly because I am working on building out a new feature on the candidates and the issues. More on that later this week.

For now, here is a brief overview of the weekends news, when it comes to the candidates and the environment.

Let's start off with the Republicans for once.

Fred Thompson, not to be confused with Tommy Thompson who has already declared, met with over 50 Republican House members about a potential run yesterday. He impressed the crowd and it is looking increasingly likely that he will run and fill the role of very conservative candidate.

This video of Romney at campaign events this week is worth a watch over at the WaPo. He mixes in comments about the tragedy at VT and taxes.

Joe Trippi announced that he joined John Edwards campaign today. He is working out of the headquarters as a senior advisor. Analysis here.

The schedule at the CDP for the presidential contenders speeches is changing. Clinton has now switched to Saturday afternoon.

Cute story on a kid who got to shake Obama's hand at the big Oakland rally, plus coverage of the MoveOn.org townhall on Iraq in the Sacramento News & Review.

The editor of the Prospect ponders the Democratic primary calendar, and puts forward an argument for a brokered convention. Unlikely for sure, but possible given the wide open field.

Both the plan and the Clinton. No, Hillary was not talking about health care in California, unfortunately. It was Bill who spoke at a health care symposium and endorsed Arnold's health care proposal. KCBS:

Former President Bill Clinton voiced enthusiastic support for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s healthcare reform plan and said he will do everything he can to help it pass. [snip]

"As an individual, the most important thing you can do right now, living in California, in my opinion, is to do everything you possibly can to pass the reforms that the legislature and Schwarzenegger are working on, even if it's not perfect," said Clinton.

He added that if California passes the plan, the rest of the nation will have to sit up and take notice. It could even jumpstart a national campaign for universal health coverage, he said.

I actually agree with Clinton, if California passed the Schwazenegger plan, it would be national news. He has pushed forward significant changes, though many are flawed. It would change the national discussion on universal health care, just like AB 32 did to global warming.

There was some movement on health care legislation in California in the last to days, of course it was not on the Arnold plan. That would be impossible, seeing as though no legislator has actually introduced it in bill form. Instead it was Sen. Sheila Kuhls SB840 and Assm. Dave Jones' AB1554 making their way through the legislative process.

Yesterday, Jones' proposed regulation of health insurance rates passed through its first committee test. Hundreds of people packed the hallways in support of Kuehl's single-payer bill. Speaking of crowds, there were some big ones in support of Its OUR Health Care yesterday. Randy has some great coverage and pictures.

Conventional wisdom about the presidential primaries has completely changed in the last three months. All of the DC insiders thought that Clinton and McCain would clean up in the money and march all the way to the nomination for their parties. Nothing could be further from the truth. The DC punditocracy are changing their rankings and pondering a wide open race.

The Hotline rankings for the Democrats are out and there is no leader. They have Obama and Clinton tied, with Edwards just a hair behind.

There is no Democratic front-runner. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all have a plausible claim on the nomination.

The usual metrics are all jumbled. Clinton leads the money race, leads in New Hampshire, and tops the national polls. Obama leads in South Carolina, in media love, and in enthusiasm. Edwards has the tightest message, the best organization in Iowa, and the lead in Iowa.

The Washington Post focuses on the money race, which is only one of the factors that Hotline takes into account.

I am outside at my neighborhood cafe, hopped up on ice tea with free refills and wireless. It is that time again. Enjoy the linky goodness.

We are getting a second wave of coverage on campaign contributions today. California was Obama's biggest donor state. Clinton pulled in more here overall $5.1M to Obama's $4.2.

Speaking of donations and locations...the NYT has been having fun with datamashups. They have combined a pretty map with candidate donations. You can see where in the country they are raising the most money from. Its fun to play around with and has a zip code lookup.

Bill Clinton charmed Carla Marinucci at a recent fundraising event in SF.

Tommy Thompson sure put his foot in his mouth today, saying that Jews have a 'tradition' of 'earning money'. Think Progress has the video, Atrios the snark.

A CNN national poll shows the race tightening up in both parties. Clinton and Guilani have lost ground since last month's poll. Speaking of national polls, Chris Bowers thinks they are inflating Clinton's lead.

McCain is having a little trouble with his pronouns and taxes. Hotline has the goods.

The Obama needs substance meme is spreading. I have been contributing to that admittedly, though others have the same issue.

The LADN has a decent profile of Richardson this weekend, titled Richardson walks tightrope as top Latino candidate".

There is a point to all of my harping about the lack of health care proposals from most of the presidential contenders. Significant health care reform and universal health care is a winning issue. The public was ready for it during the Clinton Administration and nothing has changed since them, if anything support has gone up. Krugman pulls it all together in a fantastic column today.

But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions. [snip]

Health care is another example of the base being more in touch with what the country wants than the politicians. Except for John Edwards, who has explicitly called for a universal health insurance system financed with a rollback of high-income tax cuts, most leading Democratic politicians, still intimidated by the failure of the Clinton health care plan, have been cautious and cagey about presenting plans to cover the uninsured.

>> read more

It was a relatively quiet day today on the presidential front. The biggest story was on foreign policy, more specifically the Iraq war.

The big winner (at least on the blogs) from the MoveOn Iraq Townhall was Richardson, who came out strongly for pulling all troops out of Iraq. Edwards stepped up and mostly agreed with that stance today. Bowers explains the difference between Richardson, Edwards and Clinton.

Obama and McCain are going back and forth on the Iraq War. McCain tried to attach himself to one of Obama's statements and he was having none of that.

Edwards is going on a rural tour next week, but not coming to Cali.

Clinton is getting kudos for her defense of the Rutgers basketball team, with a message on her website and email to her list.

On a related note, I recently signed up for emails from Clinton, Obama and Richardson using the forms on their website header (I was already on Edwards and Dodd's list). Not one sent me a welcome message and a request to take some sort of action or collect more information. Come on now people, you should know better. The first 24 hours is your best chance to really form a relationship with your new subscribers. They really should have an auto email system for the newbies. The only email I have gotten from them was Clinton's on Rutgers. Nothing from Obama or Richardson yet.

I enjoy putting these together and hopefully our fabulous readers find them useful. Here are the highlights from the press and blogs that I have found today.

• MoveOn is hosting its Virtual Town Hall meeting tonight on Iraq tonight. Over 6,000 questions were submitted by members and tere were over half a million votes to determine which ones should be asked. You can find a party here. After 8pm PST there will be a highlight posted here.

• The LAT has a good profile of Richardson today. The best line by far is a quote from the Gov. "I'm perfectly content to be the only candidate in the second tier." I dunno what Dodd, Biden etc would have to say about that.
• Speaking of Richardson, the American delegation to North Korea had a breakthrough in negotiations today.
• The Fix has a roundup off all of the contenders' comments on Imus.
• MissLaura talks crowd size over at Daily Kos. The Democrats are packing houses, Republicans, not so much.
• Maviglio argues that since Giuliani and Clinton will easily win New York, that it increases the importance of California.
• The NCTimes previews the CDP Convention, where all of the leading Democratic contenders will be speaking. I will be there reporting directly from the conference.
• This Politico story republished by CBS is worth a read. They cover the tweaking by the candidates, in the wake of the fundraising reporting.

Time for a tour of the most interesting news articles on the Presidential race today.

• LAT says Clinton and McCain have lost their front-runner status. They of course base most of their analysis on the fundraising totals, which is only one measure of success at this stage of the game. The article really is a vehicle to talk about how engaged and active the Democratic activists are this early in the game.
• Every major newspaper needs at least one article on how the candidates are using social networking sites to engage the youngins. The SDUT takes its turn.
• Bloomberg cover's Edwards' wooing of labor. Edwards put a lot of time and effort into attracting the support of unions since his 2004 primary loss. We will see how much it pays off for him as endorsements are made later on.
• New York has officially joined California on Feb 5th. This obviously helps both Clinton and Giuliani, though New Yorkers definately have a different perspective on Rudy than the rest of the country.

  I think journalists need to decide on its nickname. Is it Super-Duper Tuesday or Tsunami Tuesday? I like the latter personally.

• Guess where Richardson spent his Easter? If you said North Korea you would be correct. He is there with an American delegation negotiating the return of the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War.
• Edwards likes California's ReadyReturn so much that he wants to see it become a national program. He is calling for the IRS to use data it already collects to complete 50 million tax returns for people.
• Obama will be on Letterman tonight. Oh and Hill is sending Bill for some CaliCash next weekend.

That seems to be most voters' attitude towards the rest of the Bush presidency and at least a partial explanation for the early interest in the 2008 election. Primary fever has hit California now that we have on of the earliest dates in 2008.

Working Californians is going to do some work around the February 5th primary here in California and I will get to do some blogging. Our focus naturally will be on quality of life issues. Before we get to that and as I get up to speed, this thread will bring you the best of what I have found around the internets today. Enjoy!

• The Field Poll is out with their numbers. Chris Cizzilia of the WaPo has an excellent breakdown of the numbers, including the internals.
• The WaPo has a severely underappreciated video series. Today's on the Edward's first campaign appearances since the cancer announcement is fantastic.
• The news of the day is Obama's incredibly strong fundraising quarter. The story is almost as much about the dollar total as the huge number of donors to the campaign. 100,000 donors is simply unheard of at this stage in the game.
• Field released its Republican numbers. No really big surprises there. Giuliani has a strong lead over his rivals.

  Field also ran head to head matches between the Democrats and Republicans. Obama, Clinton and Edwards all would beat Giuliani in the general election. They would all beat McCain too, but their lead is smaller. California is still a blue state. See Frank Russo for more.

• kos adds up the first quarter fundraising in both parties. Democrats lead $78M to $51M.