New York Debate

On the brink of a 10-state election that could doom his candidacy, John Edwards shed his nice-guy approach in a debate Sunday and accused John Kerry of spouting “the same old Washington talk” on critical issues like trade and deficit spending.

Edwards dismissed suggestions that he is quietly vying to be Kerry’s running mate. “Oh, no! Far from it,” he said, then took on Kerry in tougher-than-ever terms.

The New York City debate - sponsored by CBS and the New York Times - took place today, less than 48 hours before the ten-state Super Tuesday primaries.

Both Kerry and Edwards took swipes at President Bush in regards to the turmoil in Haiti:

“This president always makes decisions late after things have happened that could have been different had the president made a different decision earlier,” Kerry said. “I never would have allowed it to get out of control the way it did.”

“He’s ignored Haiti the same way he’s ignored most of the countries in this hemisphere,” Edwards said of Bush. “We should have been engaged over a long period of time, in a serious way, at least through diplomacy, not to allow this to get to a crisis situation where it now is.”

The two candidates also sparred over free trade.

Edwards reiterated his promise to stay in the race no matter what happens on Tuesday:

Asked in the debate if he would remain in the race if he lost all ten races on Tuesday, Edwards replied, “Yes, ma’am, I’m going to be the nominee.”

Oh, yes. Kucinich was there as well, still plugging away. He once again called for U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq.

God even made an appearance in today’s debate. Figuratively speaking.

In a time of terror, the candidates were asked whether Bush was right to say God is on America’s side.

“We pray that God is on our side, and we pray hard,” Kerry said. “And God has been on our side for most of our existence.”

Edwards said President Lincoln was once asked to join in a prayer about God being on America’s side, and quoted the former president as replying, “I won’t join you in that prayer, but I’ll join you in a prayer that we’re on God’s side.”

Kerry's Discussion With The Daily News

The Daily News reports about a “wide-ranging discussion” between the Daily News Editorial Board and John Kerry.

According to the Daily News:

Kerry (D-Mass.) said he would have sent troops to Haiti even without international support to quell the revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

“President Kerry would never have allowed that to get where it is,” Kerry said, though he added he’s not “a big Aristide fan.”

But he insisted the White House “has empowered the insurgents, and they’ve done it quite purposely out of their dislike … for Aristide.”

A Kerry administration would have given the rebels a 48-hour ultimatum to come up with a peaceful agreement - “otherwise, we’re coming in,” he said.

“I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I’d do it unilaterally,” he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.

Kerry also suggested Bush sat on December’s deal to have Khadafy renounce weapons programs to get a political boost. “Khadafy’s been trying to get back into the mainstream for several years now,” Kerry said. “There’s evidence that we could have had that deal some time ago.”

As proof, he said he’d heard “from friends in the British government that the deal was in a slow lock,” although he declined to give specifics to back it up.

The Daily News also reported that Kerry seemed to flip-flop on his opinion of Israel’s controversial security fence, insisting that a past comment questioning the fence was “a not very artfully drawn paragraph” that reflected “the rush of the campaign.” He insisted he “completely supports” the fence and only questioned where it’s built.

Gillespie v. McAullife

If you’ve had you coffee this morning, you might want to check out this showdown. It ought to be quite entertaining.

Kerry Gets N.Y. Endorsement from Cuomo

The endorsement of Mario Cuomo,the former Governer of New York, is a big deal for Kerry.

With liberals often dominating Democratic primaries in New York and elsewhere, the Cuomo endorsement was considered a major plum for the Kerry campaign.

Cuomo’s son Andrew - served as President Clinton’s housing secretary - also endorsed Kerry.

Edwards Courting the Deaniacs

Sen. John Edwards will hold a conference call Saturday with organizers from the Howard Dean campaign in 12 states to discuss “ways we can work with their grassroots organization,” campaign spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen said Friday.

…

Thursday, Dean’s organization in Minnesota recommended that its activists back Edwards, after meeting separately with Edwards, Kerry and Kucinich. A senior Edwards aide said his campaign also is trying to win the endorsement of Dean organizations in Georgia, New York and Ohio.

Update: It looks like the flock is heading over to Edwards’s camp already:

a group of former Howard Dean supporters gathered Saturday in front of a statue of George Washington in Manhattan’s Union Square Park to throw their support behind Edwards.

“Howard Dean gave us hope. Now, John Edwards can help us fulfill our dream of taking this country back,” said Alex Munoz, a moderate Republican who had helped lead the Dean effort in New York. “John Edwards has demonstrated a unique ability to appeal to independent voters. We are here to join forces and defeat George Bush.”

Kerry Touts his Anti-Terror Plan

In a campaign speech given at UCLA yesterday, John Kerry outlined his plan to fight terrorism.

The full text of the speech is below. Highlights include:

• Protecting chemical and nuclear facilities
• Increasing security at ports and airports
• Restoring federal funding for 100,000 police officers
• Adding 100,000 firefighters across the country
• Stronger intelligence-gatherin
• Law enforcement and international alliances

“I am convinced that we can prove to the American people that we know how to make them safer and more secure with a stronger, more comprehensive and more effective strategy for winning the war on terror than the Bush administration has ever envisioned”

“We cannot win the war on terror through military power alone.”

As Prepared for Delivery

It’s an honor to be here today at the Burkle Center – named in honor of a good friend and one of America’s outstanding business leaders.

Day in and day out, George W. Bush reminds us that he is a war President and that he wants to make national security the central issue of this election. I am ready to have this debate. I welcome it.

I am convinced that we can prove to the American people that we know how to make them safer and more secure – with a stronger, more comprehensive, and more effective strategy for winning the War on Terror than the Bush Administration has ever envisioned.

As we speak, night has settled on the mountains of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. If Osama bin Laden is sleeping, it is the restless slumber of someone who knows his days are numbered. I don’t know if the latest reports – saying that he is surrounded – are true or not. We’ve heard this news before.

We had him in our grasp more than two years ago at Tora Bora but George Bush held U.S. forces back and instead, called on Afghan warlords with no loyalty to our cause to finish the job. We all hope the outcome will be different this time and we all know America cannot rest until Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.

And when that day comes, it will be a great step forward but we will still have far more to do. It will be a victory in the War on Terror, but it will not be the end of the War on Terror.

This war isn’t just a manhunt – a checklist of names from a deck of cards. In it, we do not face just one man or one terrorist group. We face a global jihadist movement of many groups, from different sources, with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe.

As CIA Director George Tenet recently testified: “They are not all creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks.”

At the core of this conflict is a fundamental struggle of ideas. Of democracy and tolerance against those who would use any means and attack any target to impose their narrow views.

The War on Terror is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash of civilization against chaos; of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.

Like all Americans, I responded to President Bush’s reassuring words in the days after September 11th. But since then, his actions have fallen short.

I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the War on Terror; I believe he’s done too little.

Where he’s acted, his doctrine of unilateral preemption has driven away our allies and cost us the support of other nations. Iraq is in disarray, with American troops still bogged down in a deadly guerrilla war with no exit in sight. In Afghanistan, the area outside Kabul is sliding back into the hands of a resurgent Taliban and emboldened warlords.

In other areas, the Administration has done nothing or been too little and too late. The Mideast Peace process disdained for 14 months by the Bush Administration is paralyzed. North Korea and Iran continue their quest for nuclear weapons – weapons which one day could land in the hands of terrorists. And as Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld has admitted, the Administration is still searching for an effective plan to drain the swamps of terrorist recruitment. The President’s budget for the National Endowment for Democracy’s efforts around the world, including the entire Islamic world, is less than three percent of what this Administration gives Halliburton – hardly a way to win the contest of ideas.

Finally, by virtually every measure, we still have a homeland security strategy that falls far short of the vulnerabilities we have and the threats we face.

George Bush has no comprehensive strategy for victory in the War on Terror – only an ad hoc strategy to keep our enemies at bay. If I am Commander-in-Chief, I would wage that war by putting in place a strategy to win it.

We cannot win the War on Terror through military power alone. If I am President, I will be prepared to use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests.

But the fight requires us to use every tool at our disposal. Not only a strong military – but renewed alliances, vigorous law enforcement, reliable intelligence, and unremitting effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds.

To do all this, and to do our best, demands that we work with other countries instead of walking alone. For today the agents of terrorism work and lurk in the shadows of 60 nations on every continent. In this entangled world, we need to build real and enduring alliances.

Allies give us more hands in the struggle, but no President would ever let them tie our hands and prevent us from doing what must be done. As President, I will not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake. But I will not push away those who can and should share the burden.

Working with other countries in the War on Terror is something we do for our sake – not theirs. We can’t wipe out terrorist cells in places like Sweden, Canada, Spain, the Philippines, or Italy just by dropping in Green Berets.

It was local law enforcement working with our intelligence services which caught Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramsi Bin al Shibh in Pakistan and the murderer known as Hambali in Thailand. Joining with local police forces didn’t mean serving these terrorists with legal papers; it meant throwing them behind bars. None of the progress we have made would have been possible without cooperation – and much more would be possible if we had a President who didn’t alienate long-time friends and fuel anti-American anger around the world.

We need a comprehensive approach for prevailing against terror – an approach that recognizes the many facets of this mortal challenge and relies on all the tools at our disposal to do it.

First, if I am President I will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders. George Bush inherited the strongest military in the world – and he has weakened it. What George Bush and his armchair hawks have never understood is that our military is about more than moving pins on a map or buying expensive new weapons systems.

America’s greatest military strength has always been the courageous, talented men and women whose love of country and devotion to service lead them to attempt and achieve the impossible everyday.

But today, far too often troops are going into harm’s way without the weapons and equipment they depend on to do their jobs safely. National Guard helicopters are flying missions in dangerous territory without the best available ground-fire protection systems. Un-armored Humvees are falling victim to road-side bombs and small-arms fire.

And families across America have had to collect funds from their neighbors to buy body armor for their loved ones in uniform because George Bush failed to provide it

The next President must ensure that our forces are structured for maximum effectiveness and provided with all that they need to succeed in their missions. We must better prepare our forces for post-conflict operations and the task of building stability by adding more engineers, military police, psychological warfare personnel, and civil affairs teams.

And to replenish our overextended military, as President, I will add 40,000 active-duty Army troops, a temporary increase likely to last the remainder of the decade.

Second, if I am President I will strengthen the capacity of intelligence and law enforcement at home and forge stronger international coalitions to provide better information and the best chance to target and capture terrorists even before they act.

But the challenge for us is not to cooperate abroad; it is to coordinate here at home. Whether it was September 11th or Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, we have endured unprecedented intelligence failures. We must do what George Bush has refused to do – reform our intelligence system by making the next Director of the CIA a true Director of National Intelligence with real control of intelligence personnel and budgets. We must train more analysts in languages like Arabic. And we must break down the old barriers between national intelligence and local law enforcement.

In the months leading up to September 11th, two of the hijackers were arrested for drunk driving – and another was stopped for speeding and then let go, although he was already the subject of an arrest warrant in a neighboring county and was on a federal terrorist watch list. We need to simplify and streamline the multiple national terrorist watch lists and make sure the right information is available to the right people on the frontlines of preventing the next attack.

But we can’t take any of those steps effectively if we are stuck with an Administration that continues to stonewall those who are trying to get to the bottom of our September 11th intelligence failures. Two days ago, the Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert refused the request of the bipartisan 9-11 commission for just a little more time just to complete their mission. This after the Commission has had to deal with an Administration that opposed its very creation and has stonewalled its efforts.

He didn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call Denny Hastert to ram through his Medicare drug company benefit or to replace a real Patients Bill of Rights with an HMO Bill of Goods. This President told a Republican fundraiser that it was in the “nation’s interest” that Denny Hastert remain Speaker of the House. I believe it’s in America’s interest to know the truth about 9-11. Mr. President, stop stonewalling the commission and stop hiding behind excuses. Pick up the phone, call your friend Denny Hastert and tell him to let the commission finish its job so we can make America safer.

Third, we must cut off the flow of terrorist funds. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the Bush Administration has adopted a kid-glove approach to the supply and laundering of terrorist money. If I am President, we will impose tough financial sanctions against nations or banks that engage in money laundering or fail to act against it. We will launch a “name and shame” campaign against those that are financing terror. And if they do not respond, they will be shut out of the U.S. financial system.

Fourth, because finding and defeating terrorist groups is a long-term effort, we must act immediately to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. I propose to appoint a high-level Presidential envoy empowered to bring other nations together to secure and stop the spread of these weapons. We must develop common standards to make sure dangerous materials and armaments are tracked, accounted for, and secured. Today, parts of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal are easy prey for those offering cash to scientists and security forces who too often are under-employed and under-paid. If I am President, I will expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy the loose nuclear materials of the former Soviet Union and to ensure that all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and materials are out of the reach of terrorists and off the black market.

Next, whatever we thought of the Bush Administration’s decisions and mistakes – especially in Iraq – we now have a solemn obligation to complete the mission, in that country and in Afghanistan. Iraq is now a major magnet and center for terror. Our forces in Iraq are paying the price everyday.

And our safety at home may someday soon be endangered as Iraq becomes a training ground for the next generation of terrorists.

It is time to return to the United Nations and return America to the community of nations to share both authority and responsibility in Iraq, and take the target off the back of our troops. This also requires a genuine Iraqi security force. The Bush Administration simply signs up recruits and gives them rudimentary training. In a Kerry Administration, we will create and train an Iraqi security force equal to the task of safeguarding itself and the people it is supposed to protect.

We must offer the UN the lead role in assisting Iraq with the development of new political institutions. And we must stay in Iraq until the job is finished.

In Afghanistan, we have some NATO involvement, but the training of the Afghan Army is insufficient to disarm the warlord militias or to bring the billion dollar drug trade under control. This Administration has all but turned away from Afghanistan. Two years ago, President Bush promised a Marshall Plan to rebuild that country. His latest budget scorns that commitment.

We must – and if I am President, I will – apply the wisdom Franklin Roosevelt shared with the American people in a fireside chat in 1942, “it is useless to win battles if the cause for which we fight these battles is lost. It is useless to win a war unless it stays won.” This Administration has not met that challenge; a Kerry Administration will.

But nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas. In failed states from South Asia to the Middle East to Central Africa, the combined weight of harsh political repression, economic stagnation, lack of education, and rapid population growth presents the potential for explosive violence and the enlistment of entire new legions of terrorists. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, almost sixty percent of the population is under the age of 30, unemployed and unemployable, in a breeding ground for present and future hostility. And according to a Pew Center poll, fifty percent or more of Indonesians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Palestinians have confidence in bin Laden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs”

We need a major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas. We have seen what happens when Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda. And we must support human rights groups, independent media and labor unions dedicated to building a democratic culture from the grass-roots up. Democracy won’t come overnight, but America should speed that day by sustaining the forces of democracy against repressive regimes and by rewarding governments which take genuine steps towards change.

We cannot be deterred by letting America be held hostage by energy from the Middle East. If I am President, we will embark on a historic effort to create alternative fuels and the vehicles of the future – to make this country energy independent of Mideast oil within ten years. So our sons and daughters will never have to fight and die for it.

Finally, if we are going to be serious about the War on Terror, we need to be much more serious about homeland security. Today, fire departments only have enough radios for half their firefighters and almost two-thirds of firehouses are short-staffed. We should not be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in New York City. We need to put 100,000 more firefighters on duty and we need to restore the 100,000 police on our streets which I fought for and won in 1994 but which the Bush Administration has cut in budget after budget.

We need to provide public health labs with the basic expertise they need but now lack to respond to chemical or biological attack. We need new safeguards for our chemical and nuclear facilities.

And our ports – like the Port of Los Angeles – need new technology to screen the 95 percent of containers that now enter this country without any inspection at all. And we should accelerate the action plans agreed to in US-Canada and US-Mexico “smart border” accords while implementing new security measures for cross border bridges. President Bush says we can’t afford to fund homeland security. I say we can’t afford not to.

The safety of our people, the security of our country, the memory of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors and heroes we lost on September 11th call on us to win this war we did not seek.

And our children’s future demands that we also do everything in our power to prevent the creation of tomorrow’s terrorists today. Maybe there’s no going back to the days before baggage checks and orange alerts. Maybe they’re with us forever. But I don’t believe they have to be. I grew up at a time of bomb shelters and air raid drills. But America had leaders of vision and courage in both parties. And today, the Cold War is memory, not reality.

I believe we can bring a real victory in the War on Terror. I believe we must, not only for ourselves but for all who look to America as “the last best hope of earth.” I believe we can meet that ideal – and that’s why I’m running for President.

On The Trail And Talking Points.

Enron overtaken as Bush’s top financial supporter by MBNA

with its employees giving more than $603,000 to Mr. Bush.

Executives at Enron continued to give to Mr. Bush in small amounts, despite the company’s bankruptcy filing. The president received $3,000 in 2003 from four people who listed Enron as their employer, according to the center. Enron’s collapse amid an accounting scandal gave rise to corporate accountability measures and helped pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation in 2002. The company was a sore spot for Mr. Bush, who was friends with the company’s chief executive, Kenneth L. Lay.

Democrats, including the presidential candidates, have not been shy about trying to connect the company to the president - criticism that is likely to continue. An aide at the Bush campaign declined to comment on the company’s change on Mr. Bush’s rankings.

Edwards repetitive?

Mr. Edwards’s prospects of winning California appear bleak; his campaign clearly recognizes this and scratched a day of campaigning that had been set for Friday in the state. And the speech, for its all striking themes and rhetoric, did not appear to draw an abundant amount of attention, a reflection of the level of interest in this contest and the perception that the better days of Mr. Edwards’s campaign might be behind him.
But no matter. Perhaps some of the 1,000 or so students who heard this Washington politician make a decidedly unusual appeal will remember one day what they heard, and will take the message to heart. And who knows; one day, if not this year, or even this election, they might take the messenger to heart as well.

Kerry and Edwards Duel

In California, Mr. Edwards offered a broad anti-poverty plan that he said could help create five million new jobs, partly by offering access to venture capital and tax incentives to create work in poor communities. “People say that we can never lift Americans out of poverty, and I say we will,” said Mr. Edwards. “We will so long as each one of us tries.”

Mr. Kerry, in Ohio, emphasized a plan introduced in the Senate that would require companies to give workers 90 days notice if they intend to move operations offshore. They would also have to provide the rationale for the shift, the location they are going and the number of workers affected. “Companies will no longer be able to surprise their workers with a pink slip instead of a paycheck,” he said. Mr. Edwards backs that plan as well.

The policy proposals appeared to have a double aim. Not only are they intended to win votes in areas that have experienced job loss, but they allow the candidates to counter President Bush’s criticism earlier this week that his opponents are only carping, not offering alternative plans.

Both men are also taking a page from former President Bill Clinton’s playbook in emphasizing the economic front. It worked for him against a Bush in the White House. Whether it can work for the Democratic nominee this time will depend on the state of the economy and how well this President Bush does at showing how his plans are contributing to economic growth.

NYT Times on the Trail

More Kerry - Edwards

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) clashed over the death penalty, trade and special interests in a lively debate here Thursday, with Edwards questioning Kerry’s ability to carry crucial swing states against President Bush and Kerry touting his experience as a key ingredient for victory this fall.
The gay-marriage issue arose on a day when celebrity Rosie O’Donnell was married in San Francisco.

“What’s happening here is this president is talking about first amending the United States Constitution for a problem that does not exist,” Edwards said. “The law today does not require one state to recognize the marriage of another state.” ……………

Kerry was asked about his opposition to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, one of 14 senators to do so. He was reminded that he had opposed it in part because he believed it was unconstitutional and was asked whether Bush is correct in saying the only way to ensure that other states do not have to recognize gay marriages approved elsewhere is through a constitutional amendment. Kerry seemed to back away from his previous position.

“I think, under the ‘full faith and credit’ laws, that I was incorrect in that statement,” Kerry said. “I think, in fact, that no state has to recognize something that is against their public policy. And for 200 years, we have left marriage up to the states. There is no showing whatsoever today that any state in the country, including my own — which is now dealing with its own constitutional amendment — is incapable of dealing with what they would like to do.”

WaPo

More on Gay Marriage

From a political standpoint, calling for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was probably a “win-win” for the White House. Polls show most Americans support banning same-sex marriage, even while many of them support allowing some form of civil unions.
The White House’s calculation is that — given support in the polls for banning same-sex marriage — the president won’t face a backlash from moderate voters. And those who are most likely to be angered aren’t going to vote for him anyway.
On the other hand, the president appeases a base that has grown frustrated with his reluctance to insert himself into the culture wars that dominated the early 1980s

WaPo

Transcript of Debate

The full transcritp follows below.

If you watched the debate and have any thoughts about it, feel free to share those thoughts in the comments.

Also, head over to BrendanLoy.com for Brendan’s photo and audio posts from USC last night, including some great pictures and commentary about the giant puppets.

CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL

Democratic Presidential Debate

Aired February 26, 2004 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody, from this beautiful university, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, before a wonderful crowd of folks. There are four Democratic candidates, myself and two questioners from the Los Angeles Times. This is a combined presentation of CNN and the Los Angeles Times. It’ll run 90 minutes.
As you can tell by the setting, this is going to be very informal. There are no strict rules of debate, no opening speeches, no closing comments. We’ll question them. They can question each other. And we hope that you benefit from this by learning better who’s going to lead this country in the next four years.

With us tonight is Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, the Reverend Al Sharpton and Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

With me to question the candidates are Janet Clayton, the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Times national political correspondent, Ron Brownstein.

I’ll start the go-round. We can jump in at any time. And we’ll start with Senator Edwards.

The other day, you said that you can inspire this nation. Do you mean then Senator Kerry cannot?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No. What I mean is that somebody who comes from the same place that most Americans come from, I grew up the son of a mill worker, in a family like most families in this country. I’ve seen the problems that people face every day in their lives…

KING: And now you’re saying Senator Kerry doesn’t see that?

EDWARDS: I’m saying he comes from a different background. I mean, he’s a good man. He’s a good candidate. He’d make a good president. And I’d be the first to say that. But we come from different places, and we present different choices.

And throughout the course of this campaign, I have talked about issues that are in here: poverty, race, civil rights, things that I care about deeply, things I think go to the core of what the Democratic Party’s about.

KING: So you didn’t mean to imply that you and the others can’t? EDWARDS: No, I know that I can, is what I’m saying.

KING: It’s just that you can?

Did you take any offense to that?

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: None whatsoever. I think John has a run a terrific campaign. He and I are friends, and I don’t take offense at that.

And I respect completely where John comes from and the story of his life. It’s an American story. But there are many other American stories, Larry. I’ve had experiences that John hasn’t had and others here haven’t had. And we all bring to the table our life.

I believe that my 35 years of experience fighting against powerful forces in this country that don’t want to do things for the very people John is talking about, and leading and fighting in international affairs, national security, military affairs, is critical to what this country needs today in terms of leadership.

KING: You’re saying you’re just different?

KERRY: Well, of course we’re different. But I think what’s important is, all my life, all my life, from the time that I fought in a war alongside many of the people who had a very different life experience from me — I mean, the kids I fought with were kids out of the barrios of Los Angeles, and the kids from South Central of Los Angeles, and from the south side of Chicago and South Boston and a lot of other places, because they couldn’t get out of the draft. They didn’t know how to make those phone calls. They didn’t have the ability to have a choice.

And when I came back from Vietnam, I spent a lot of my years fighting for those people to be able to get ahead. And I’ve spent all my life doing that, and I intend to do that as president of the United States.

RON BROWNSTEIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES Senator Edwards, can I jump in?

Are you saying that biography is the central difference in the choice that you represent versus Senator Kerry? Or is there a broader difference in the direction you would offer the party as the nominee and the country as the president?

EDWARDS: There’s a fundamental question here, Ron, that has to be decided by voters in this country — Democratic primary voters — which is, first, do we need real change in America and real change in Washington, D.C.? If people believe we do, I do.

Then the second question is: Do you believe that change is more likely to be brought about by someone who has spent 20 years in Washington, or by someone who’s more of outsider to this process — somebody who comes from the same place that most Americans come from?

That is a fundamental choice.

If I can go back for a brief second to…

KING: Well, I want to clue the other two, too.

EDWARDS: Absolutely. Well, I don’t want to interrupt. Let…

KING: Reverend Sharpton, why are you in this race?

REV. AL SHARPTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, let me say this. First of all, I do not think that it is fair to say that there are two Americas. There are many Americas. Our only problem in America is not just class. Many of us have problems that have succumbed to class barriers but still have the race barriers, or the barriers of language if you are Latino, or the barriers of sexual discrimination if you are, one, a woman or gay and lesbian.

So I think it’s very simplistic to just say that it’s two Americas, one for the wealthy, one for the poor.

Earl Graves, who supports my campaign, very wealthy man, but still faces discrimination. Gays and lesbians, they may make a lot of money, they still face discrimination. Latinos that have problems because of language discrimination. So I don’t think that it’s as simple as class.

I also think if we’re talking about experience — I was talking with Bishop Brookings (ph) who is here with me tonight. I don’t see how anyone that supports civil rights could support the Patriot Act.

You talk about a difference of direction, Senator Edwards, the Patriot Act…

(APPLAUSE)

The Patriot Act that you supported is J. Edgar Hoover’s dream. It’s John Ashcroft’s dream. We have police misconduct problems in California, Ohio, Georgia, New York, right now.

KING: The question…

SHARPTON: And your legislation helps police get more power.

So I think that we’ve got to really be honest if we’re talking about change. Change how, and for who? That’s why I am in this race.

(APPLAUSE)

BROWNSTEIN: Reverend Sharpton, earlier in this race, you’ve also said, in response to something from Senator Edwards, that where you come from doesn’t really guarantee where you’ll end up. There are plenty of wealthy people who are good, and there are plenty of less affluent people who haven’t been as good.

Now you’re saying the two Americas doesn’t add up either.

SHARPTON: No, no, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that at all.

BROWNSTEIN: Is it two Americas — you say the two Americas is not the total picture.

When you add up both of these things, what are you saying about Senator Edwards…

SHARPTON: No, no, no, I say that…

BROWNSTEIN: … and his message? Are you saying that there is something inauthentic about what he is saying?

SHARPTON: I defended — no, I defended Senator Edwards, saying, when he was attacked for raising class, I think that it is good that he does that. But I don’t think we should stop at class.

If we’re going to talk about the differences of background in America, he is right to say there is a difference in America. But we can’t limit it to just class. We’ve also got to deal with race, we’ve got to deal with gender, we’ve got to deal with sexuality.

KING: Are you…

SHARPTON: And we’ve got to deal with discrimination based on language. That’s what I’m saying.

KING: But this was only the first question.

(LAUGHTER)

SHARPTON: But he’s got two answers to one. I’m trying to get mine. I believe in affirmative action.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

KING: I’m following you around, Al.

(LAUGHTER)

Congressman Kucinich, why are you here?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m here to provide the people of this country with a real choice in this election. Some of the differences that are here are stylistic. I’m offering some substantive change in this country.

KING: But logically, it appears like you’re up against it. Why stay in?

KUCINICH: Well, because I’m the voice for getting out of Iraq, for universal single-payer health care, for getting out of NAFTA and the WTO…

(APPLAUSE) … for having our children go to college tuition-free, for saving Social Security from privatization.

KING: But you can have that voice as a congressman. You can have that voice as…

KUCINICH: And I have that voice as a congressman. In this race, though, there are real differences of opinion, Larry. And this is what this debate is about today.

I led the effort in the House of Representatives in challenging the Bush administration’s march toward war. Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards both voted for that war.

I led the effort against the Patriot Act. Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards both voted for it.

I mean, there are differences.

KING: You’re here to make statements then?

KUCINICH: Oh, no, no. I’m here to be the next president of the United States…

KING: But, logically, that doesn’t appear to be happening.

KUCINICH: But you know what? That’s a conclusion that the people watching tonight will be able to make, not the media.

KING: All right. I want to…

(APPLAUSE)

Janet may have a question, then I want to open up another area and start it with Ron.

JANET CLAYTON, LOS ANGELES TIMES Yes. Senator Kerry, I wanted to ask you, this country’s deeply divided, and some of the things we’ve been talking about tonight already indicate that.

If you win, Republicans are going to be expected to work to undermine you. And if you lose, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to further tarnish President Bush so that a Democrat can win in 2008.

I wanted to ask you, is this all that Americans have to look forward to: perpetually polarized administrations, loved by half of the country and loathed by the other half?

KERRY: Well, Janet, let me say to you that I don’t think John or any of us here are offering a polarizing campaign. What I’m proud of is that in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in Missouri, all the states that followed, I’ve offered a positive vision of what we ought to be doing in America.

CLAYTON: Right, but that’s not what I was asking. KING: Her question was, the country is polarized.

CLAYTON: The country is polarized.

KERRY: Well, the country is polarized because we have a president who is polarizing. I mean, look at what he did the other day with a constitutional amendment. He’s trying to divide America. He’s trying to divide America…

(APPLAUSE)

You know, this is a president who always tries to create a cultural war and seek the lowest common denominator of American politics, because he can’t come to America and talk about jobs.

He can’t talk to America about health care; he doesn’t have a plan. He can’t talk to America about the environment, our legacy to our children, because he’s going backwards. He can’t talk to America about keeping a promise of No Child Left Behind, because he’s leaving millions of children behind every day.

He can’t even keep his promise about the deficit. It’s the largest in history. He is digging into Social Security. He has squandered the good will toward America after September 11th.

And so, Americans don’t yet have a choice. I mean, we’re vying for the nomination.

KING: But that’s what you’re running…

KERRY: Once we have a nominee, this country will have an opportunity to hear a positive vision of how we can offer hope to Americans, optimism about the possibilities of the future, not divide America but bring it together to find real solutions. And that’s what I’m offering: real solutions.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: You mentioned the constitutional amendment. Rosie O’Donnell today got married in San Francisco. I think Ron Brownstein has a question in that regard.

BROWNSTEIN: Let me ask you, Senator. I want to sort of burrow in a little bit and understand your views of exactly what the role of Washington is, Senator Kerry.

You say you oppose gay marriage. You also oppose the constitutional amendment to ban — federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Do you think Georgia and Ohio, or any other state, should have to recognize a gay marriage performed in California or Massachusetts? And if not, why did you vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, designed to prevent that, in 1996?

KERRY: I said very clearly — I could not have been more clear on the floor of the United States Senate. My speech starts out expressing my personal opinion, that I do not believe — you know, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

But notwithstanding that belief, there was no issue in front of the country when that was put before the United States Senate.

And I went to the floor of the Senate and said — even though I was up for reelection, “I will not take part in gay bashing on the floor of the United States Senate. I will not allow the Senate to be used…

(APPLAUSE)

… for that kind of rhetoric.”

BROWNSTEIN: But you also said in that statement…

KERRY: But let me just finish.

BROWNSTEIN: You also said in that statement that you believe the Defense of Marriage Act was fundamentally unconstitutional. And if the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, isn’t President Bush right, that the only way to guarantee that no state has to recognize a gay marriage performed in any other state is a federal constitutional amendment?

KERRY: In fact, I think the interpretation — I think, under the full faith and credit laws, that I was incorrect in that statement. I think, in fact, that no state has to recognize something that is against their public policy.

And for 200 years, we have left marriage up to the states. There is no showing whatsoever today that any state in the country, including my own — which is now dealing with its own constitutional amendment — is incapable of dealing with what they would like to do.

And I believe George Bush is doing this — he’s even reversed his own position. He’s reversed Dick Cheney’s position. He is doing this because he’s in trouble. He’s trying to reach out to his base. He’s playing politics with the Constitution of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

BROWNSTEIN: But let me just nail down one thing very quickly.

So are you saying that, now that gay marriage is on the table in a place like California or Massachusetts, that you would support the Defense of Marriage Act?

KERRY: No, because…

BROWNSTEIN: That it’s not…

KERRY: … the Defense of Marriage Act is the law of the land today.

KING: And you would support it today?

BROWNSTEIN: And you would leave it…

KERRY: … no votes to take it back. And I think it’s more important right now to pass the employment nondiscrimination act, hate crimes legislation, and begin to move us forward so we have on the books those laws that will allow us to protect people in this country.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Janet, you have a question for Senator Edwards.

CLAYTON: Senator Edwards, you also oppose gay marriage?

EDWARDS: I do. I do. But can I…

CLAYTON: So why would you have opposed Rosie O’Donnell getting married today? Why does that make a difference? Why is that a threat?

EDWARDS: Here is my belief. I believe that this is an issue that ought to be decided in the states. I think the federal government should honor whatever decision is made by the states.

I want to say a word in answer to the question you asked very directly. I would not support the Defense of Marriage Act today, if there were a vote today, which is the question you just asked Senator Kerry. I’m not sure what he said about that. But I would not vote for it.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: You would not vote for it?

EDWARDS: I would not. I would not for a very simple reason. There’s a part of it — there’s a part of it that I agree with, and there’s a part of it I disagree with.

The Defense of Marriage Act specifically said that the federal government is not required to recognize gay marriage even if a state chooses to do so. I disagree with that.

I think states should be allowed to make that decision. And the federal government shouldn’t do it.

And can I say just one other word about…

BROWNSTEIN: The part that you agree with is what?

EDWARDS: Well, the part I agree with is the states should not be required to recognize marriages from other states. That’s already in the law, by the way, without DOMA.

Can I just say one other thing, because the other people have talked about this? On the constitutional question, it is really important for us to step back from this. Senator Kerry just talked about the political use of the Constitution. What’s happening here is this president is talking about first amending the United States Constitution for a problem that does not exist. The law today does not require one state to recognize the marriage of another state.

That’s number one. And that’s been the law for many, many years.

Number two, we have amended the United States Constitution to end slavery, to give women the right to vote. This is clearly nothing but politics. It’s a problem that does not exist today. And we need to stand up very strongly on that.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Al?

SHARPTON: I think is not an issue any more of just marriage. This is an issue of human rights. And I think it is dangerous to give states the right to deal with human rights questions. That’s how we ended up with slavery and segregation going forward a long time.

(APPLAUSE)

I, under no circumstances, believe we ought to give states rights to gay and lesbians’ human rights. Whatever my personal feelings may be about gay and lesbian marriages, unless you are prepared to say gays and lesbians are not human beings, they should have the same constitutional right of any other human being. And I think that that should be…

(APPLAUSE)

BROWNSTEIN: How would you effectuate that? How would you do that?

SHARPTON: I would say that they have the constitutional right to do whatever any…

(CROSSTALK)

KING: So you would have another amendment?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: You would have a constitutional amendment?

SHARPTON: No, I wouldn’t — first of all, I think we’ve got to deal with a lot of constitutional amendments. If Bush wants to deal with it, let’s get to ERA. Let’s deal with a lot.

You know, it’s funny they want to leapfrog over a lot of movements for constitutional amendments and do this.

This is where I agree with Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards. Bush is trying to go from race baiting with quotas in 2000 to gay baiting in 2004. And all of us ought to be united that he does not scapegoat the gay and lesbian community like he did minorities four years ago.

KING: Dennis. Dennis Kucinich…

(APPLAUSE)

SHARPTON: The issue in 2004…

KING: Al?

SHARPTON: The issue in 2004 is not if gays marry. The issue is not who you go to bed with. The issue is whether either of you have a job when you get up in the morning.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Isn’t marriage inherently a man and a woman, inherently?

KUCINICH: No. And I think that…

KING: Not inherently a man and a woman?

KUCINICH: I think that’s what we’re talking about here. There’s a question of civil marriage, and there’s a question of marriage as performed by the church. We’re talking about civil law here.

And Janet raised a question earlier about polarity. What we have here is an example of what happens when you have a president who looks at the world with polarized thinking, of us versus them.

The same kind of thinking that led to a war in Iraq, an unnecessary war, is leading to an unnecessary cultural war here, because it should be widely assumed by all Americans that equal protection of the law ought to made available, regardless of race, color, creed or sexual orientation.

KING: Is the determination here which of the four of you would make the best president, rather than running tonight against President Bush? Aren’t you running against each other?

KERRY: Larry, can I come back to a point?

KING: Because aren’t you running…

KERRY: This discussion we’ve just had is exactly where the Republicans want us to spend our time.

I just came from Ohio, from Youngstown and from Cleveland, where I met the steelworkers who are out of work. They don’t have health care. They don’t have jobs.

This president has gone from a promise of creating 4 million jobs to about 3 million jobs net lost. That’s a 7 million swing. I mean, there’s one basic rule: When you’re digging yourself a hole, stop digging. (APPLAUSE)

This guy wants to make his tax cuts permanent now.

I think the real — no, the real issue in front of this country — this is not the biggest issue in front of the country, that we were just talking about. The biggest issue…

KING: It’s the biggest story today.

KERRY: It’s not even the biggest story. The biggest story today, Larry, are 43 million Americans who have no health care. The biggest story today is the people…

(APPLAUSE)

The biggest story are the workers that I met with out in front of Vons supermarket, the UFCW workers who have been out there walking for five months. A husband and a wife who haven’t worked in five months because they can’t get health care.

And you’ve got companies like Wal-Mart that are stripping underneath them, that hire part-time people, that have actually advertised to come and work, so they won’t do their health care.

(APPLAUSE)

That’s what this race is about.

BROWNSTEIN: The economic issues are very real…

KING: We’re going to get to them.

BROWNSTEIN: … in a great deal of depth. But I want to ask Senator Edwards a question.

Do you think that answer is sufficient for a general election, especially in your part of the country? Can you tell people in the South that values issues are secondary and that we should be talking about health care and the economy, education? Or do you have to convince them that, whether the issue is the death penalty or gay marriage or whatever, that you do share their values?

EDWARDS: Of course you’ve got to do both. You don’t get to tell people what to think in any part of the country. You don’t get to say to voters, “This is what you can consider and this is what you should not consider.” They’re going to consider everything.

Now, it is absolutely true that the economy is a huge issue. I think jobs is actually the most important component of that. Health care is a huge issue. What’s happening overseas and our image around the world is a huge issue. No doubt about any of that.

But people are going to consider these other things. And for us to assume that that’s not true is just a fantasy. It’s not true. We need a candidate at the top of this ticket who can connect with voters everywhere in America. And if we don’t have that, we’re going to be in trouble.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, let me ask you directly, given the views that Senator Kerry has expressed over the years and the votes he’s cast on issues like the death penalty, the Defense of Marriage Act, his argument that he would have, in effect, a litmus test for Supreme Court justices, they would have to be pro-choice, given that record, do you think he can meet your test and connect with voters in the South and in the border states in the general election?

EDWARDS: I think that’s his test to meet, that’s his…

KING: Well, do you think he can?

BROWNSTEIN: Do you think he can?

EDWARDS: I think it depends on what’s happening in the country at the moment. What I know is that I can.

I mean, if you step back from this for just a minute. I mean, in order for us to win this election, number one, we’re going to have to have a candidate who can appeal outside the Democratic Party. We have to motivate our party and our party base. And all of us believe in the core Democratic values, everybody sitting at this table. But the question becomes: What do we do to attract independent voters? Because we have to get these people.

KING: And you’re saying you could do that better?

EDWARDS: I know I can do it. If you look at the primaries that have been conducted so far, I mean, I’ve got a significant lead…

KING: But he’s won most of them.

EDWARDS: Yes, but if you look at the independent…

(LAUGHTER)

He has. He has. That’s a fair statement. But remember, it’s Democrats who are voting in these primaries largely, but there are also independents voting in these primaries. And the independents have been voting for me.

Some of them vote for Senator Kerry, but I have a lead among these people between the two of us. And the other…

KERRY: Can I speak to that?

EDWARDS: You need to let me finish first. But the point I’m trying to make here is I have actually won one. This is not something we have to guess about. I’ve won in a part of the country that’s a very difficult place for a Democrat to win.

I won against the Jesse Helms political machine in North Carolina. I mean, it’s a powerful, powerful presence. Actually I saw a poll today that shows in North Carolina, my state, admittedly, I’m leading President Bush, Senator Kerry’s behind me.

But we have to be able to compete in all these parts of the country. If you step back from this for just a minute and you think about the states where we have to be able to be successful, places like Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Ohio, which Senator Kerry just made reference to, New Hampshire, which will probably be a swing state this fall, when I go through those states one-by-one, all states that we need to win and we need to do well with, I would concede that Senator Kerry may have an advantage in New Hampshire.

I would not believe he has an advantage over me any place else. I think I have the advantage in these other places.

KING: I want to…

KERRY: Can I to speak to that?

BROWNSTEIN: Please.

KERRY: Because there’s nothing, nothing in the returns in 18 out of 20 primaries and caucuses so far that documents what John Edwards has just said. I won Independents and Republicans in Iowa.

KING: You mean he’s not telling the truth?

KERRY: There’s nothing that documents what he just said. I’m just telling you that I won Independents, and many Republicans crossed over and registered as Democrats for the first time to say, “I’m voting for you in this race.”

BROWNSTEIN: It is also true, though, that your vote share among Independents…

KERRY: Let me just finish.

BROWNSTEIN: … was lower than among Democrats in virtually every state there’s been an exist poll.

KERRY: Let me just finish.

I won in Tennessee, and I won in Virginia.

And the test of this — I’ve heard John Edwards himself say this. John has said many times, “We got to stop stereotyping the people in the South.” The people in the South believe the same things as people in the rest of the country.

Now, I believe that’s true.

EDWARDS: It is true.

KERRY: And I also know that I have been — when I went to the United States Senate in 1985, I was one of the first people to fight for deficit reduction. They care about balancing the budget in the South.

I’ve been a prosecutor. I’ve sent people to jail for the rest of their life. They care about law and order in the South.

I’m a gun owner and a hunter, though I’ve never contemplated going hunting with an AK-47. And I believe I can speak to that culture.

I’m a veteran. I’ve served in a war. They care about that.

And I believe when it comes to jobs, health care, education, protection the environment, breathing clean air, drinking clean water, the people of the South care about the same things. And we can win in the South.

KING: We’re going to get to that area. One quick question before we do, though…

(APPLAUSE)

… before Janet asks a question.

You are against capital punishment, except in the case of terrorism.

KERRY: Correct.

KING: I’ve done a lot of shows recently dealing with the death of little children. A person who kills a 5-year-old should live?

KERRY: Larry, my instinct is to want to strangle that person with my own hands. I understand the instincts, I really do. I prosecuted people. I know what the feeling of the families is and everybody else.

But we have 111 people who have been now released from death row — death row, let alone the rest of the prison system — because of DNA evidence that showed they didn’t commit the crime of which they were convicted.

After spending — I myself worked to get a person out of jail who had been there for 15 years for a murder that person did not commit.

Now, our system has made mistakes, and it’s been applied in a way that I think is wrong.

Secondly, I don’t believe that, in the end, you advance the, sort of, level of your justice and the system of your civility as a nation — and many other nations in the world, most of the other nations in the world, have adopted that idea, that the state should not engage in killing.

(APPLAUSE)

Because they have very bad memories of what happens when the state engages in killing. (APPLAUSE)

KING: Before Janet asks a question, Senator Edwards, I know you agree with capital punishment.

EDWARDS: Yes.

KING: What about this case of — that means the United States nearly executed over 100 people who didn’t do it.

EDWARDS: Right. Very serious issue, and it means we need to take lots of serious steps to deal with it, which means using DNA testing, which John just spoke about.

It means making all of the most modern technologies available.

It means making the court system work, not just for those who can hire the best lawyers money can buy, but for folks who have to have indigent counsel. I mean, I’ve seen what happens in court rooms. I know how important it is to have a lawyer representing an indigent defendant who…

KING: Why do you favor…

EDWARDS: … knows what they’re doing.

KING: … why do you favor capital?

EDWARDS: Because I think there are some crimes — those men who dragged James Byrd behind that truck in Texas, they deserve the death penalty. And I think there…

(APPLAUSE)

… are some crimes that deserve the ultimate punishment.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Janet?

CLAYTON: I actually had a question for Reverend Sharpton and Congressman Kucinich.

(APPLAUSE)

Both of these two guys here have raised millions of dollars in special interests — from special-interest people. How, then, would you say they’re able to counter Ralph Nader’s argument that both parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are beholden to what he calls “corporate paymasters”?

SHARPTON: Let me say this before I answer that…

(APPLAUSE)

… because a lot of my career is on the criminal justice system. Senator Edwards, are you saying, since you agree that there’s a lot of problems in the death penalty — and no one has mentioned the racial disparity about those on death row — that therefore, you would suspend your support of capital punishment until we dealt with those problems?

EDWARDS: No, I would not.

SHARPTON: So you would proceed even with the flaws?

EDWARDS: I think those changes need to be made in the system. We need to make those changes. I’ve been fighting for those changes in the United States Senate. But that does not…

SHARPTON: But you would let them continue?

EDWARDS: But that does not mean — and I think states can — for example, North Carolina can evaluate whether its own system is working. I think they vary from state-to-state. The state of Illinois did that and came to a conclusion that their system was not working. I think we should support that if they make that determination.

SHARPTON: That sounds like states’ rights again. I don’t agree with that.

EDWARDS: No, it is not.

SHARPTON: But anyway, I think that in terms of Ralph Nader, the best way to answer Ralph Nader is how we’ve done tonight. We’re all on stage. Many of us have said what Nader said in 2000, some of it had validity. But all of that is being said now in the primaries. There’s nothing that I know of that Nader is saying that Kucinich and I are not saying in the primaries. So what does he need to say it in November for if it’s being debated now?

(APPLAUSE)

And we’ll deal with it in the convention. And we’ll come out of the convention — and we’ll come out of the convention with a nominee.

That’s why I give credit to Senator Kerry, that the debates are not limited, everyone is being heard.

We are saying many of the things he said he wanted said. He should have endorsed one of us. Let’s come out with a winner and beat George Bush and not have…

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Congressman Kucinich, would you address Janet’s question? Then we’ll have a question from Ron.

KUCINICH: I think the American people tonight will be well- served if we can describe, for example, why we all aren’t for a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system. I think the American people will be well-served if we can describe why, for example, Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are not for canceling NAFTA and the WTO, as I would do, because that is how you save the manufacturing jobs.

And I think they’d be well-served if they would be able to see the connection, as I will just explain, between the cost of the war in Iraq and cuts in health care, education, job creation, veterans’ benefits, housing programs.

See, this debate ought to be about substantive differences which we do have.

(APPLAUSE)

And I have the greatest respect for Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry, but we have substantive differences along these lines that I think it would help to explicate here tonight.

KING: All of you are pledged to support the winner of this four?

SHARPTON: And work for him. I will travel…

KING: You will work?

SHARPTON: I will travel all over this country to make Al Sharpton president.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

KING: And stay in the best hotels.

SHARPTON: Even better hotels.

KING: Do you have a preference among Kerry and Edwards?

SHARPTON: No. Let me say something, I’d have disagreements with both. I disagree with Kerry’s vote on Iraq. I disagree with Edwards on the Patriot Act.

But I think, on their worst day, they are better than George Bush. I think they have integrity. I think they have vision. And I think they can be talked to.

I think that we’re dealing with a president that wants to gay- bash. What about the other 10 Commandments? Let’s make a constitutional amendment against president’s that lie. Let’s deal with the whole thing.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Congressman Kucinich, do you have a preference? Do you have a preference of these two? Do you have a…

KUCINICH: I’d be proud to have any of these gentlemen up here as my running-mate. And I’d also like to say…

(LAUGHTER)

I would also like to say that I think that the way we win, Larry, is to be able to appeal to people’s practical aspirations for health care for all, for jobs for all, for education for all, for retirement security and for peace. And that’s what we need to be talking about tonight.

KING: Ron?

BROWNSTEIN: Let me turn to another…

KERRY: Do you mind? Because I think the question was asked about the influence of money in the Democratic Party about John and myself, and I’d really like to make a statement about that.

I teamed up with Paul Wellstone, and we fought and created the most far-reaching campaign finance reform law in the history of this country called Clean Money, Clean Elections. It would have gotten the money out of politics.

When I first arrived in the Senate, I ran the first PAC-free — political-action-committee-free — Senate race in the nation.

I am the only United States senator who’s been elected four times currently serving who has never accepted political action committee money in any of my races for the United States Senate. No checks from those interests.

The only people who’ve contributed me are, yes, some people who lobby. The total amount in lifetime amounts to about 1 percent of all the money that I’ve ever raised.

But what’s important is I’ve stood up for the important fights over the course of time, and so has John Edwards. We both stand up and fight — he fought for the patients’ bill of rights. I fought against the clean water, clean air destruction by Gingrich. I led the fight to stop the drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge against big oil companies.

BROWNSTEIN: You’ve raised questions, though, Senator Edwards, about whether Senator Kerry is as separated from the Washington system as he presents it.

There was a report in The Washington Post today that, in addition to the question about lobbying contributions, he’s also raised money from interests that are involved in setting up off-shore companies and off-shore tax havens.

Do you view Senator Kerry as part of the solution or part of the problem in the way Washington works? EDWARDS: I think we have to change what’s happening there. And Washington lobbyists who — which you just asked about — Senator Kerry made this point about himself. I’ve never taken money from a special interest PAC, myself. But I also don’t take any money, not a dime, from Washington lobbyists.

And I think we have to go further than that. I think we ought to ban the contribution of Washington lobbyists. Those people shouldn’t be able to make contributions to the very people that they’re lobbying.

We’ve got people who are going through this revolving door from the government into these high-priced lobbying firms, going back into the government.

We ought to shine a bright light on what these lobbyists…

BROWNSTEIN: And…

EDWARDS: If I can just finish this — what these lobbyists — because these people are stealing the democracy of the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

They are there every single day…

BROWNSTEIN: But in the choice facing voters…

EDWARDS: The choice is…

BROWNSTEIN: Is there a difference in your commitment to this cause and what you see from Senator Kerry, based on both what he’s said and what he’s done?

KING: Fair question.

EDWARDS: Yes. The answer is there are two differences. I commend Senator Kerry for the work he’s done on public financing of political campaigns, which I know he believes in deeply. So do I. That’s the ultimate solution for this.

But there are two differences. One is, if we’re going to change the way Washington operates, my belief is we need somebody who comes from outside that system. That’s number one.

Number two, I also think we need to change the influence of Washington lobbyists. And that is a distinction. It’s an important distinction, because I think these Washington lobbyists have entirely too much influence on what happens every day.

The best example is this recent prescription drug Medicare reform bill, you know, where everything that could’ve been done to bring down the cost of prescription drugs for the American people, the drug companies and their lobbyists were against, so it all came out.

It’s wrong. We need to cut off these people’s influence, and stop the…

BROWNSTEIN: He is saying many of the same things. Are you saying that he is less committed, based on what you have seen?

EDWARDS: I’m simply saying there is a difference between the two of us. No more than that. I don’t take Washington lobbyist money. I think we ought to ban their contributions. I don’t think the should…

KING: But, I mean, do you criticize him for doing it?

KERRY: If I can just point something out. And I don’t think there fundamentally is a difference. I mean, John has raised almost 50 percent of his money from one group of people in the United States of America. Now I don’t suggest ever…

KING: Is that the trial lawyers?

KERRY: That’s correct. And I don’t ever suggest that he is beholden to them. I think he’s — because I know he stood up on the patients’ bill of rights. And he is prepared, as I am. And I don’t think there is a difference. I know he’s looking for some differences because you need them. But there’s not really a difference in this race between us in our commitment to get the lobbying out.

And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to issue an executive order that prohibits anyone from going from lobbying — from government directly into lobbying for a period of five years. And we’re going to make every meeting of a lobbyist and a public official a matter…

KING: Dennis?

KERRY: … of public record subject to the scrutiny of the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: And Dennis wants to say something.

Would that be the first executive order you’d issue?

KERRY: One of the first.

KING: What would be the first executive order?

KERRY: Reverse the Mexico City policy on the gag rule so that we take a responsible position globally on family planning.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Dennis?

KUCINICH: My first executive order will be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO…

KING: Cancel it?

(APPLAUSE)

KUCINICH: … and return to bilateral trade conditioned on workers’ rights, human rights and environmental quality principles.

Now, to people watching this discussion who do not have any health insurance at all — and, you know, there’s a direct connection between the lack of health insurance in this country and the control which the insurance industry has over Washington — and the control that it has over our Democratic Party, too.

Larry, in 2000 — Larry? In 2000, I brought…

(APPLAUSE)

KING: I’m paying attention to you, Dennis. Dennis, I can hear and look over there at the same time.

KUCINICH: I didn’t want you to miss this because this is something that…

KING: It’s an old Jewish trait. We can do two things at once.

(LAUGHTER)

KUCINICH: This is something…

SHARPTON: Let’s not get ethnic, Larry. Let’s not get ethnic.

(LAUGHTER)

KUCINICH: This is something I know…

KING: Let’s not get ethnic?

SHARPTON: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

See how we’re uniting. Even I’m saying, let’s not get ethnic, Larry.

KING: Sorry, Dennis.

KUCINICH: I think the American…

(LAUGHTER)

Well, I’m glad to point out something that all those people who don’t have health insurance and all those people who have seen their premiums go up 50 percent in the last three years already understand. And that is that Washington right now is controlled by the insurance interests and by the pharmaceutical companies. And our party, our Democratic Party four years ago, John and John, I went to our…

(LAUGHTER)

… Democratic platform committee with a proposal for universal single-payer health care. And it was quickly shot down because it offended some of the contributors to our party.

I just want to state something: We must be ready to take up this challenge of bringing health care to all the American people. And that’s what I’m asking everyone here to make a commitment to. Single payer…

KING: We’re going to turn now to Iraq, and Janet…

(CROSSTALK)

SHARPTON: Larry, just before you turn to Iraq, I think that answers your question why we’re in the race.

It’s not just who is going to head the ticket. But we will have delegates at the convention to shape the platform and hold whoever wins of the four accountable. That’s why we are picking up delegates.

KING: All right. That’s fair.

SHARPTON: This is not a coronation, this is a convention.

KING: Janet, let’s…

SHARPTON: Who is going to represent us?

KING: Let’s turn to Iraq. Janet?

CLAYTON: Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry, you both try to portray yourself as different types of people in Washington. But you both voted for the Iraq resolution, which basically gave the president power to use any means that he deemed necessary and appropriate, including military force, to respond to the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein.

How can you criticize the president on his Iraq policy when both of you handed him a blank check to do whatever he wanted?

(APPLAUSE)

EDWARDS: Who do you want to start?

KING: Either one. Go ahead, Senator.

EDWARDS: Well, first of all, I did what I did after giving an awful lot of thought and study to it. I was worried about it. All of us were. I took this responsibility very seriously.

I also said, at the time that the resolution was voted on, that it was critical that, when we reached this stage, that this not be done by America done, that it not be an American occupation, that it not be an American operation. That it needs to be…

KING: And it wasn’t.

EDWARDS: But it is. It is now. This is not internationalized. I mean, we have some help from the British, but for the most part, it’s America doing it alone, which I believe is an enormous mistake. It’s the reason we’re having one of the…

CLAYTON: Well, then, why didn’t you not vote for it? Why didn’t you insist on caveats? It was a blank check. Why?

EDWARDS: But those — but those — what we did is we voted on a resolution.

(LAUGHTER)

The answer is, what we did is we voted on a resolution. It is for the president of the United States to determine how to conduct the war. That’s his responsibility.

KING: So you trusted…

EDWARDS: No, I didn’t trust him.

(LAUGHTER)

What this comes down to is this president has failed in his responsibility. It’s a completely legitimate criticism. Neither of us would’ve conducted this operation the way he conducted it.

First of all, we would’ve done the groundwork to reach out to our friends and allies around the world before we even went to a military intervention.

CLAYTON: So are you saying you were suckered?

EDWARDS: Wait, let me finish this, please.

And we also made clear, and I made clear, that in order for this to be successful, at this point, we should have NATO involved in providing security. We should have the United Nations involved in overseeing the transitional government in Iraq. We need to get on a real timetable for the Iraqis to govern themselves and to provide for their own security.

These are not things that I’m saying today for the first time. These are things that I said at the time.

And this president has failed in his responsibilities. It’s that simple.

KING: Do you regret your vote? Do you regret your vote?

EDWARDS: I did what I believed was right at the time.

KING: Do you regret it?

EDWARDS: I believe I did what was right. KING: Do you regret it?

(LAUGHTER)

EDWARDS: We don’t get to go back, Larry. Five hundred…

KING: Well, you can regret something.

EDWARDS: Wait a minute. Five hundred — over 500 men and women have lost their lives in this cause.

All of us did what we thought was the responsible thing to do at the time — wrong or right. We’re not perfect. You know, I did what I believed was the responsible thing to do at the time. And if we did what we were supposed to be doing right now and what we said should be done right now, we would be — this policy would actually be successful.

KING: Senator Kerry and then Dennis and…

KERRY: Let me return a favor from the last debate to John. You asked a yes-or-no answer: “Do you regret your vote?”

The answer is: No. I do not regret my vote. I regret that we have a president of the United States who misled America and broke every promise he made to the United States Congress.

(APPLAUSE)

And here is a — and I have a slightly different take from John on this. Let me make it very clear: We did not give the president any authority that the president of the United States didn’t have. Did we ratify what he was doing? Yes.

But Clinton went to Haiti without the Congress. Clinton went to Kosovo without the Congress. And the fact is, the president was determined to go, evidently. But we changed the dynamics by getting him to agree to go to the United Nations and to make a set of promises to the nation.

Promise number one: He would build a true global international coalition. Number two: he would honor the U.N. inspection process. And number three — and this is most important — it’s important to me and to any of us who served in war: He said he would go to war as a last resort.

He broke every single one of those promises. And in the end…

KING: Would you leave now? Would you leave…

KERRY: No, Larry…

KING: You don’t agree with Dennis.

KERRY: No, I would not leave now. I think that you can’t leave now. The impact of leaving now on the war on terror, on the Middle East, would be disastrous.

But what underscores how bad this administration is…

(LAUGHTER)

What underscores this administration’s failure of leadership in foreign policy across the board — North Korea, AIDS, global warming, Russia, the Middle East and, of course, in Iraq — the failure is that Europe has an enormous interest in not having a failed Iraq on its doorstep.

KING: We’ve got to take a break.

KERRY: Well, I want to finish. The Arab community has an enormous interest in not having a failed Iraq as its neighbor. And notwithstanding the legitimacy of that interest, this administration has failed utterly to bring the international community to the table.

KUCINICH: Could I just follow…

KERRY: I will bring that…

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Dennis and Al have to get a word in. But let’s do this, let’s take a break and we’ll come right back with more on Iraq. We can’t put that away.

(APPLAUSE)

You’re watching the Democratic debate on close to the eve of Super Tuesday co-sponsored by CNN and the Los Angeles Times.

We’ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to this special debate co-sponsored by CNN and the Los Angeles Times, coming to you from the University of Southern California with Ron Brownstein and Janet Clayton.

And we have statements from Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton about Iraq, and then we’re going to move to domestic issues.

Dennis?

KUCINICH: Larry, as the Democrat who led the effort in the House of Representatives challenging the Bush administration’s march toward war in Iraq, I’m very concerned about Senator Kerry’s answer, because to say that there are no regrets in light of the fact that we know now that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, with al Qaeda’s role in 9/11, with the anthrax attack on our country, that Iraq had neither the intention nor the capability of attacking this country, did not have weapons of mass destruction, it puts us in a position where we’re endorsing the continuation of a war.

And I’m very concerned that our party…

KERRY: Dennis, I didn’t say I had no regrets. I said I had a regret about the actions of the president.

KUCINICH: Well, I can say that if you don’t have an exit plan, if you don’t have…

KERRY: I do.

KUCINICH: … if you don’t have a way to get the U.N. in and get our troops home — there are Army reservists and there are National Guardsmen and women who are waiting to hear if they’re going to be brought home.

KERRY: Sure.

KUCINICH: Or are we looking at a draft? Because you’ve said you want to send 40,000 more troops there.

KERRY: No, I haven’t said that.

KUCINICH: Senator…

KERRY: I have never said that.

KUCINICH: You never said you wanted to bring 40,000 more troops ever?

KERRY: No, I said what we need, because our troops are over- extended in the United States, and we’ve turned the Guard and the Reserve into almost active duty, we’re hurting families all across the nation who are paid less in the military than they were in the private sector.

And our military is so overextended that what I said is, on a temporary basis, we need two additional divisions in the overall standing Army of the United States, because when we rotate the divisions back this spring, we will only have two divisions active that are able to be deployed.

KUCINICH: See, I’ve seen nothing that suggests that you would bring our troops home. If you’re saying it now…

(CROSSTALK)

KUCINICH: If you’re saying it now that you’ll bring our troops home, then that’s real progress in this debate.

KING: Al?

SHARPTON: I think that’s why it’s important that we have delegates at the convention to hold whoever the nominee is accountable on issues like Iraq, on issues like the Patriot Act. This is not just about coronating a winner, it’s about a direction of the party.

Hundreds of thousands of us were marching against this war while they voted for it.

(APPLAUSE)

And I think that to vote against that and not to have us represented at the convention is wrong.

Right now we have foreign policy questions. I’m going to Haiti. People are not even discussing Haiti. We don’t have delegates at the convention.

(APPLAUSE)

A lot of the concerns of many Americans won’t even be discussed if we don’t have delegates.

When I came in tonight, Ron, the first thing I asked on the way in is, “How do I get out?” I wouldn’t have voted for Bush to go in if I didn’t know his exit plan out. That doesn’t make sense to me.

(APPLAUSE)

BROWNSTEIN: You’ve brought up Haiti. Before we turn to domestic issues, let’s talk about this quickly. If you were president today, what would you be doing, Senator Edwards, about the crisis in Haiti?

KING: Adding that the Caribbean nations today announced that +a multi-national force should go in.

EDWARDS: Yes. That’s correct, by the way, that’s exactly what should happen.

What I would do is, ultimately we have to have a political solution for this problem. And what I would do as president of the United States is pick two or three respected world leaders, like President Clinton did back in the ’90s with Jimmy Carter and Sam Nunn, and, I believe, Colin Powell, if I’m not mistaken.

KING: Right, those three.

EDWARDS: Send them to the region. Work on a political solution. You know, the framework, I think that probably makes the most sense is some…

KING: It might be too late.

EDWARDS: Maybe. Maybe. But if we can stabilize the situation first, work on a political solution, and I think the framework of that political solution is some shared authority, and then setting a real timetable for a democratic election. I think that’s the frame that needs to be in place.

But can I say one other thing about this? We should not be in this place. We are in this place because this is so typical of this president’s disengagement in this entire hemisphere. In fact, he’s done it all over the world. But this is a perfect example. What he’s done in Mexico, what he’s done in Haiti. The reason we’re in this place is because this president has not been involved, not been engaged. He’s had complete…

KING: Are you saying he could have prevented this?

EDWARDS: I’m saying, if we had stayed involved, we would have seen this coming a lot sooner, and we could have gotten…

KING: Janet?

EDWARDS: … could have gotten involved and engaged…

KING: All right. Senator Kerry and then Janet. I know that Al’s going there Wednesday.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: I know. Senator Kerry and then you.

KERRY: Actually, I disagree with John a little bit, in that the president…

(LAUGHTER)

… the president himself, wasn’t engaged, but his administration has been. And his administration has been engaged in a very manipulative and wrongful way.

EDWARDS: Are you saying they were engaged but wrong engaged?

(LAUGHTER)

KERRY: Here’s what I’m telling you. Here’s what I’m telling you. This administration set up an equation. They have a theological and a ideological hatred for Aristide. They always have.

And they approach this so that the insurgents were given — empowered by this administration, because they said to the insurgents, “If you…

(APPLAUSE)

“… Until you reach an agreement with Aristide and the government about sharing power, we’re not going to provide aid and assistance.”

So we empowered them to simply veto any agreement, which is what they’re still doing with respect to a power-sharing in another government.

What this president ought to have done is to have given them an ultimatum: Either we’re going to restore the democracy, have the full democracy in the region — notwithstanding that I think Aristide has some problems, and I do. And I think there have been serious problems in his police, the way they’ve managed things. But our engagement should have been to try to restore the democracy, to bring those people together. That’s what president…

KING: All right. Janet has a question.

CLAYTON: But as a practical…

KERRY: … and that’s what we should be doing now.

(APPLAUSE)

CLAYTON: But as a practical matter, if thousands of starving Haitians get in a boat tonight — 500 have already been turned away — if thousands of starving Haitians come to the coast of Florida, would you embrace them, as the U.S. embraces fleeing Cubans? Or would you turn them away?

SHARPTON: See, I think that’s a critical question. I have visited the Krome Detention Center. Mr. Bush says we give political asylum to people coming from Cuba, but he says we would not do it from Haiti.

Now we saw an exact opposite when we saw Haitians flee. And I’ve seen Haitians. I’ve been to Krome Detention Center in Miami twice. I am going to Haiti in a few days.

I think that the real issue is why this country continues to block resources there that could have built the infrastructure, provided jobs; why we blocked a $500 million approved loan from the World Bank. I think that we’ve got a responsibility.

I’m disappointed in some things President Aristide has done. I said that to him on the phone. I’ve said that to the opposition leaders.

But I do not think we can undermine a democracy. And we can’t have different strokes for different folks at the border in Miami.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Janet’s question, though, is would you take them in?

Senator, would you take them in?

EDWARDS: Those who were fleeing for political asylum, yes.

KING: You would take them in.

EDWARDS: Those who were fleeing for political asylum, yes.

KING: Would you take them in?

KERRY: I think you’d have to for temporary reason. But you have to immediately move to get an international force in there to restore order.

KING: All right, let’s go to the…

BROWNSTEIN: Let’s move to domestic issues, in particular health care.

KING: That’s right.

BROWNSTEIN: About one in five Californians lack health insurance, one of the highest ratios in the country. In the last few weeks, Senator Kerry, Senator Edwards has been saying your health care plan is too expensive, it’s unaffordable, it’s unrealistic.

Does his plan cover enough people? Is it ambitious enough?

KERRY: No.

BROWNSTEIN: Go on.

(LAUGHTER)

Don’t let me stop you.

SHARPTON: But that was a yes or no, John, that time.

(LAUGHTER)

EDWARDS: Yes, but what time is it now?

(LAUGHTER)

KING: We’ve got a little while.

KERRY: Let me just say that I think John has an interesting approach, and parts of it could be parts of a larger approach.

But here’s what I would do. I want to give the middle class in America a tax break, and I want to make companies more competitive.

So my program is more ambitious, because what I do is I roll back George Bush’s tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, and I take part of that money and I create a federal fund that takes all the catastrophic cases in America out of the private system, which means, effectively, every individual in every business in America will be capped at $50,000 of risk.

That will provide each American who has health care today with a $1,000 minimum reduction in their premium. That’s cash in the pocket. That’s a tax break. And it’ll make American companies more competitive.

BROWNSTEIN: Senator Edwards, that is one of the major differences between your plan. Is that idea affordable? Do you think the federal government can take on the obligation of paying out three- quarters of the cost of all catastrophic health care claims? EDWARDS: Well, I think the issue becomes this: Whether you believe health care is an isolated problem — it’s a very serious problem for the American people — or whether you think it’s part of a bigger frame that it needs to fit in.

I, myself, believe that there are two major problems in the economy in America today. One is 35 million Americans who live in poverty. When we lift Americans out of poverty, which I believe is a moral responsibility — and I’ve laid out new ideas about how we deal with that problem — we actually strengthen the economy because we put them in the middle class, which is the engine of this economy.

We also have a struggling middle class, an extraordinarily struggling middle class. Over the last 20 years, we’ve had a sea change. Twenty years ago, most of our families were saving money, they had financial security, it’s all changed. Now they’re saving nothing. In fact, they’re going into debt.

And that means if one thing goes wrong — if they have a health care problem, which is what we’re discussing now, if they have a financial problem or a layoff — they go right off the cliff.

My view is that health care is a very important component of this problem. But it’s not the only component. You know, it’s why I mandate health care for all kids and cover the most vulnerable adults and take on health care costs in a very serious way.

But we also have to find ways to not only lift these families out of poverty who are living in poverty, but in addition to that, help families save. Match what they are able to save, dollar-for-dollar. Help people to invest. Help the millions of families who want to buy a home, for example, by giving them a credit that allows them to make the down payment…

BROWNSTEIN: Senator Kerry, you’re both starting with the same revenue stream, because you basically want to repeal the same elements of the tax cut by and large.

KERRY: Right.

BROWNSTEIN: Why do you make the choice that you make to shift more toward health care? Is he wrong in basically covering about 5 million fewer people by the estimates than you are, and shifting that money toward helping the middle class accumulate assets?

KERRY: Well, I also shift money towards the middle class, and I do it by closing the egregious loopholes that reward companies for taking jobs overseas. I mean, you mentioned earlier the people who have contributed to me were those companies that go overseas. They’re in for a big surprise. I’m shutting those loopholes. We’re going to end the notion that the American taxpayer is going to actually subsidize somebody to take jobs overseas.

(APPLAUSE)

There are about $40 billion worth of benefits, and there are about $150 billion of overall noneconomic (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

We have a tax code today that’s gone form 14 pages to 17,000 pages. And most Americans don’t have one of those pages.

What I’m going to do is shut those loopholes. And we’re going to invest in education, health care, job creation, raising people out of poverty.

KING: Janet has a question. But Dennis wants to make one response, and then Janet. Dennis, then Janet.

KUCINICH: I agree with my friend John Edwards about we need to do something about poverty. And that’s why I’d like you to join me in this proposal to have a universal single-payer, not-for-profit health care system, because that would lift tens of millions of Americans out of poverty. And, Larry…

KING: By the way, Harry Truman proposed that in 1948.

KUCINICH: Well, and you know what? John Conyers and I introduced the bill in this Congress. And that would provide all coverage for everyone, all medically necessary procedures, plus vision care, dental care, mental health care…

KING: In other words, socialism?

KUCINICH: … long-term care.

(APPLAUSE)

Wait a minute. You know what? What we have now, Larry, what we have now, what we have now, Larry, is predatory capitalism which makes of the American people a cash crop for the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: Well, said.

KUCINICH: And so I’m talking about a change. And I’d like them to join me.

CLAYTON: I want to talk in a broader way back to the economy and outsourcing, this idea of taking U.S. jobs overseas because they can be done more cheaply there.

Now, Senator Kerry, you supported free trade. Isn’t the loss of good paying jobs to those who can do it faster and cheaper an unavoidable consequence of open international markets that you support?

And as a follow to that, how do you square your support, and I think this would be true of most of you, how do you square your support for affordable clothes and food and all of the things that you can kind of find at the Wal-Marts, cheap goods done overseas, with the fact that you also support unions who fight for higher wages, better working conditions and make consumer goods more expensive? It seems to me you’re having it both ways here.

KERRY: No, not at all. I don’t know you wanted to ask first.

CLAYTON: You first and…

KERRY: The answer is not at all. And, yes, some of those jobs are going to go overseas and I have been very honest with workers about it. I mean, I stood in a UAW hall in Dayton the other day and a fellow asked me — the shop steward said, “Can you promise me you’re going to stop all the jobs from being outsourced?” I said, “No, I can’t promise that.”

What I can promise you is, first of all, there is a differential between the different kinds of jobs. Some jobs we can’t compete with. I understand that. But most jobs we can.

[Moveable Type lets you publish only so much in one

Live from USC

Command Post contributor Brendan Loy is at USC, covering tonight’s debate.

He’s been making audio and photo posts all day over at his blog. We’ll be re-posting some of them here, but in the meantime go over to BrendanLoy.com for a a plethora of protesters, supporters and a presidential vegetables. Yes, vegetables.

You can also catch some live debate blogging here.

Dems Debate Tonight

The last four Democratic hopefuls will meet tonight for a debate, just days ahead of Super Tuesday.

John Kerry and John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton will square off in L.A. at 9pm (EST).

Stay tuned to The Command Post for quotes and updates during the debate.

Kerry Gets NYT Endorsement

In a move that suprises almost no one, The New York Times has endorsed Sen. John Kerry in Tuesday’s New York primary.

For those who don’t have a NYT login, the entire editorial is reprinted below.

The search for a Democratic presidential nominee has been defined by an Anyone-but-Bush sentiment, an obsession with choosing the man who will run the best campaign. But in the end, the party needs to pick the person who is most qualified to be president. That’s why this page endorses Senator John Kerry in Tuesday’s primary.

Senator John Edwards, Mr. Kerry’s only serious competitor, has been terrific on the campaign trail. He has a great speech and enormous discipline, and he makes a direct and genuinely emotional connection with people of all backgrounds. It’s easy to envision him as the nominee four or eight years down the line, or on the ticket for vice president this fall. But Mr. Edwards has spent only a few years in public life. When he departs from his stump speech and discusses domestic issues or — particularly — foreign affairs, his lack of experience shows.

It’s true that Mr. Edwards has as much or more experience than George Bush did when he entered the White House in 2001. But that was a different era. Now Americans understand better that they live in perilous times, and they aren’t likely to feel comfortable switching leaders this fall if the challenger seems to require a lot of on-the-job training. Mr. Bush himself was not well served by the thinness of his résumé when Sept. 11 occurred.

Mr. Kerry, one of the Senate’s experts in foreign affairs, exudes maturity and depth. He can discuss virtually any issue of security or international affairs with authority. What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy. While he still has trouble turning out snappy sound bites, we don’t detect any difficulty in laying down a clear bottom line. His campaigning skills are perhaps not as strong as his intellectual ones, but they are pretty good and getting better. Early in the race he alienated some audiences with brittle, patronizing lectures. But he has improved tremendously over the last few months. His answers are focused and to the point, and his speeches far more compelling.

If Mr. Kerry wins the nomination, the Bush administration will undoubtedly attempt to paint Mr. Kerry as a typical Massachusetts liberal, but his thinking defies such easy categorization. His positions come from mainstream American thought, centrism of the old school. He has always worried over budget deficits. His record on the environment is extremely strong. He is a gun owner and hunter who supports effective gun control laws, a combat veteran who, having seen a great deal of death, opposes capital punishment. A sense of balance comes through when he is talking. Unfortunately, so far in this campaign Mr. Kerry has shown little interest in being daring, expressing a thought that is unexpected or quirky on even minor issues. We wish we could see a little of the political courage of the Vietnam hero who came back to lead the fight against the war.

While Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards have both demonstrated the physical and mental endurance that now seems a requisite for presidential candidates, Mr. Kerry has been the real comeback star this year. His early campaign was disastrous, and his slip from favorite to also-ran was so dramatic as to be embarrassing. But he pulled his organization together and handily won the early primaries. This was not the first time in his political career — or his life — that he has shown the toughness to keep going when things turn sour. That’s a quality critical to a presidential nominee — and to a president.

The primary contest has now come down to two competing arguments. Mr. Kerry’s supporters say Mr. Edwards suffers from a gravitas gap. Mr. Edwards’s partisans say Mr. Kerry is on the wrong end of a charm chasm. The senator from Massachusetts seems to us to have warmed up a good deal since the campaign began. He can take the edge off his patrician aura, at least in part, by retelling the story of his Vietnam exploits and bringing back loyal blue-collar friends from the service to attest to his virtues as a leader.

Almost everyone who has been watching the Democratic campaign would love to merge Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards into one composite super-candidate, with Mr. Kerry’s depth and Mr. Edwards’s personal touch with the voters. In the television era, likability is extremely important. But this is a serious business, and Mr. Kerry, the more experienced and knowledgeable candidate, gets our endorsement.

Charting the Early Polls

We’ll be adding to/updating this chart as Super Tuesday approaches.

Quinnipiac polls; data gathered from various sources

Super Tuesday: What's at Stake

Ten States and 1,151 delegates. The breakdown:

The most important of those states? According to this article from CSM, it’s Ohio:

As Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards race through Super Tuesday states from California to New York, they are paying special attention to one battleground in particular: Ohio.

Senator Kerry has already visited twice - making Ohio his first Super Tuesday stop and returning to launch a “jobs tour.” Senator Edwards toured the state last weekend and has singled it out, along with New York and Georgia, as top targets. Both candidates are spending precious advertising dollars here, and flooding the state with surrogates.

The numbers: UT, ID, HI

Kerry wins easily…

Utah:
Kerry 55% (estimated delegates: 5)
Edwards 30% (estimate delegates: 3)
Kucinich 7%
Dean 3%
Uncommitted 1%

Idaho:
Kerry 54% (estimated delegates: 12)
Edwards 22% (estimated delegates: 6)
Dean 11%
Kucinich 6%
Sharpton 0%

Hawaii:
Kerry 46% (estimated delegates: 12)
Kucinich 30% (estimated delegates: 8)
Edwards 13%
Dean 9%
Sharpton 0%

Wow! Delegates for Kucinich! Those are the first pledged delegates he’s won this entire primary season.

Supposedly Dean had a very strong organization in Hawaii; I wonder if a lot of his supporters deserted to Kucinich’s camp, since Dean was out of the race?

Delegate scorecard, including unpledged superdelegates who have declared their allegiance, according to CNN:
Kerry 727
Edwards 212
Dean 182
Clark 57
Sharpton 16
Kucinich 10
(Needed to nominate: 2,162)

Kerry Takes All Three "Forgotten Tuesday" States

The primaries in Hawaii, Idaho and Utah have been all but forgotten as the candidates prepare for Super Tuesday next week. While you weren’t watching, Kerry took all three of those states last night.

In Utah, Kerry finished in front of Edwards, asin Idaho. But in Hawaii, Dennis Kucinich finished second, 17 percentage points ahead of Edwards.

Kerry has won 19 of the 21 primaries/caucuses so far.

Kerry Projected Winner In Utah

With 75% of precincts reporting, CNN projects Kerry wins in Utah:

Kerry 54%
Edwards 30%

Kerry Projected Winner In Idaho

With 51% of precincts reporting, CNN projects Kerry wins in Idaho:

Kerry 68%
Edwards 21%

Kerry on Bush and Haiti

Senator John Kerry blamed the Bush administration today for helping foster the political instability in Haiti that has given rise to the armed insurgency that now controls nearly half of the country and threatens to overthrow the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

“I think the administration has missed a lot of opportunities, in fact, has exacerbated the situation over the last two years with its cutoff of humanitarian assistance and its attitude towards the Aristide administration,” Mr. Kerry said. “So they sort of created the environment within which the insurgency could grow and take root, and now they’re trying to manage it, I think.”

Senator Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, made his comments during a wide-ranging discussion today with editors and reporters of The New York Times in advance of next Tuesday’s New York presidential primary.

He said that if he were president, he would be pressing Haitian rebels to back off their goal of toppling Mr. Aristide, perhaps by threatening the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

“I think you’ve got to be real and threatening,” he said. His message to the rebels, he said, would be: “You’re not going to take over, you’re not kicking him out, this democracy is going to be sustained, we’re willing to put in a new government, new prime minister, we’re willing to work with you, but you’re not going to succeed in your goal of exiling” Mr. Aristide. “And unless that’s clear, you can’t necessarily stop it in its tracks.”

Read the rest.

Edwards Runs Ads in New York

The Eye on Edwards is reporting that John Edwards is now running ads in upstate New York but not in the city. They also have links to view the ads.

Transcript of The Bush Speech

FOXNews has a full transcript of the campaign speech Bush delivered last night to the Republican Governors … you may read it here. This quote, early in the speech, captures the flavor:

The other party’s nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group, with diverse opinions: For tax cuts, and against them. For NAFTA, and against NAFTA.

For the Patriot Act, and against the Patriot Act. In favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.

(Laughter and applause.)

The other party is still not finished selecting its nominee. Yet this much is already certain: Come November, the voters are going to have a very clear choice. It’s a choice between keeping the tax relief that is moving the economy forward, or putting the burden of higher taxes back on the American people. It is a choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence, or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger. The American people will decide between two visions of government: a government that encourages ownership and opportunity and responsibility, or a government that takes your money and makes your choices.

I will set these alternatives squarely before the American people in a spirited campaign. I look forward to the contest.

Forgotten Tuesday Preview

Tomorrow three more states, Hawaii, Idaho and Utah, will cast votes in the race for the Democratic nomination. These states seem to have been forgotten by everyone except Kucinich.

Hawaii
According to CNN, 20 delegates are up for grabs in Hawaii’s Democratic caucuses.

Hawaii’s Democratic caucuses are open to all registered voters who are willing to declare themselves Democrats.

Idaho
According to CNN, 18 delegates are up for grabs in Idaho’s Democratic caucuses.

Utah
According to CNN, 23 delegates are up for grabs in Utah’s Democratic primary.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utah State Democratic Party is funding the primary, which is open to all Utah residents who are U.S. citizens and who will be 18 years old by the 2004 general election. Voters must publicly declare themselves to be participating as Democrats and that they will not participate in the presidential nominating process of any other party.

The New York Times reports that Kerry is expected to win all three of these contests. The Times article tries to explain the lack of interest in Tuesday’s contests:

The neglect is due in part to the number of delegates at stake: only 61 (23 in Utah, 20 in Hawaii and 18 in Idaho), which look like a speed bump on the road to Pikes Peak compared with the 1,151 at stake on Super Tuesday, one week later.

It is also due in part to the fact that none of these three is a so-called swing state, likely to become a general-election battleground. Utah and Idaho have not voted Democratic in a presidential election since Lyndon B. Johnson’s victory in 1964, and Utah gave George W. Bush his largest majority in 2000. Hawaii has been just as reliably Democratic over the last three decades, with the exception of Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984.

In addition, party leaders believe that Feb. 24 all but vanished from the campaign calendar because of a recent perception that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had the nomination nearly sewn up.

Gerrymandering

The New York Times has jumped on the gerrymandering bandwagon.

“Totalitarian nations hold elections, but what sets democracies apart is offering real choices in elections. In recent years, contests for the House of Representatives and state legislatures have looked more and more like the Iraqi election in 2002, when Saddam Hussein claimed 100 percent of the vote for his re-election.

In that same year in the United States, 80 of the 435 House races did not even include candidates from both major parties. Congressional races whose outcomes were in real doubt were a rarity: nearly 90 percent had a margin of victory of 10 percentage points or more. It is much the same at the state level, only worse. In New York, more than 98 percent of the state legislators who run for re-election win, usually overwhelmingly. Anyone who knows anything about New York’s state government knows that’s not because the populace is thrilled with the job they’re doing.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I have:

…talk about domestic politics, and an unintended consequence of the information revolution – paralyzed legislative bodies, unable to come to grips with the real issues facing the various states and the nation and exempt from punishment by the electorate. That’s right, unless you are meaningfully accused of murder (Gary Condit), incumbency is essentially considered a property right these days.

There are a number of reasons, and I’ll focus here on one…reapportionment …[more]”

Dean Disses Nader

Full text of Dean’s statement about Ralph Nader. In a nutshell, Hey Ralph, you’re a good guy but you suck for doing this:

When I announced last week that I am no longer actively pursuing the presidency, I urged my supporters not to be tempted by any independent or third party candidate. I said I would support the nominee of the Democratic Party, because the bottom line is that we must defeat George W. Bush in November, whatever it takes.

This year, our campaign has made the case that, in order to defeat George W. Bush, the Democratic Party must stand up strong for its principles, not paper over its differences with the most radical Administration in our lifetime. In order to win, the Democratic Party must aggressively expose the ways in which George W. Bush’s policies benefit the privileged and the most extreme ideologues.

I will do everything I can to ensure that the 2004 Democratic nominee runs as a true progressive, as a champion of working Americans and their hopes for a better future. I urge my supporters, and all other Americans committed to progressive values and honest government, to stick with us, and stick with the Democratic Party, so our cause can prevail in 2004.

Ralph Nader has made many great contributions to America over 40 years. But if George W. Bush is re-elected, the health, safety, consumer, environmental, and open government provisions Ralph Nader has fought for will be undermined. George Bush’s right-wing appointees will still be serving as judges fifty years from now, and our Constitution will be shredded. It will be government by, of, and for, the corporations - exactly what Ralph Nader has struggled against.

Those who truly want America’s leaders to stand up to the corporate special interests and build a better country for working people should recognize that, in 2004, a vote for Ralph Nader is, plain and simple, a vote to re-elect George W. Bush. I hope that Ralph Nader will withdraw his candidacy in the best interests of the country we hope to become.

Many of my supporters urged me to run as an independent, but I judged it the wrong thing to do. There is still time for Ralph Nader to stand with those in the Democratic Party who are building a progressive coalition to defeat George W. Bush. But time is running out. We can win only if we are united.

Bush Ready to Jump in

With Super Tuesday just around the corner, President Bush is ready to start his campaign machine rolling.

…[T]onight, Bush “will preview his campaign themes during a speech to a $1,000-a-person fundraising reception of the Republican Governors Association.”

“It will be unmistakable,” a top adviser tells John F. Dickerson of Time Magazine. “We’re hitting the accelerator.”

Writes Dickerson: “Though the President doesn’t plan to mention his competition by name, aides say, he will start drawing clear distinctions between what his advisers call ‘two visions of government.’ His message: If you want to keep taxes down and win the war on terror, pick me; if not, pick a Democrat.”

The Bush campaign will start running ads on March 4th.

Bush Campaign Asks Kerry To Elevate The Negative Tone Of His Campaign

The Associated Press reports that Marc Racicot, Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign chairman, asked Kerry “to elevate the remarkably negative tone” of his campaign and the Democratic party over the past year.

President Bush’s presidential campaign also told Kerry that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign “does not condone” any effort to impugn Kerry’s patriotism but that senator’s voting record on national security and defense issues is a valid target of political scrutiny:

In his reply letter Sunday, Racicot said, “Our campaign does not condone any effort to impugn your patriotism. Your letter claims that supporters of our campaign questioned your service and patriotism. In fact, that simply wasn’t the case.”

“Our campaign is not questioning your patriotism or military service, but your votes and statements on issues now facing our country,” said Racicot, former governor of Montana. “Senator Chambliss addressed your Senate record of voting against the weapons systems that are winning the war on terror.”

Kerry was upset by Senator Saxby Chambliss predicting trouble for Kerry in Georgia’s primary because of a “32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems:”

“Saxby Chambliss, on the part of the president and his henchmen, decided today to question my commitment to the defense of our nation,” Kerry said while campaigning in Georgia, one of 10 states choosing electoral delegates on March 2.

In another article, the Associated Press reports that in a letter to Bush on Saturday, Kerry wrote:

“As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our nation’s history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So, it has been hard to believe that you would choose to reopen these wounds for your personal political gain.”

Theworldvotes.org

“Theworldvotes.org gives people all around the world a voice in the forthcoming U.S. Presidential Election.”

ralphdontrun.net

The media, uh web, is the message: ralphdontrun.net

John Edwards and the Internet

Ed Cone had a chance to meet with Aaron Myers, director of Internet operations for the Edwards campaign and Chris Winn, the campaign’s Internet community coordinator.

The medium is not the message in the John Edwards presidential campaign.

…

Nick Baldick, Edwards’ campaign manager, says the Net is integral to the campaign, in terms of fundraising ($450,000 in the day ending Thursday morning, with an average contribution of $79.82), communication, and organization. ““There is not a department in this campaign that does not rely on the blog, the web page or email,” he says. “They helped push out our message directly to supporters when the media was not paying attention…We’re learning now what a great organizing tool in can be.” Myers is a senior staffer, reporting directly to Baldick.

But there is no sense here of a revolution, or a movement in which the Internet takes on a mystique of its own. The rhetoric of transformation I heard at Dean headquarters, of power pushed to the edges to create a new type of campaign, is lacking. The candidate, not the online tools, generates the buzz.

Read the whole thing. Well worth your time.

Nader Enters The Race

As the folks on our Breaking News Alerts email list already know, Ralph Nader is entering the race for President as an Independent. This from MSNBC:

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday he will run again for the presidency, declaring that Washington has become “corporate occupied territory” and arguing there is too little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Latest Toast-O-Meter is Up

As we head into Forgotten Tuesday, here’s the latest Toast-O-Meter which analyzes the race for the White House.

Recess Appointments

The issue of judicial appointments is going to be a key issue in the upcoming elections, and the recess appointment yesterday of now former Alabama AG William Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals kicks the debate up a notch.

For a background on the politics, origins and legality of the process, go here.

Delegate Counts

I have the current break-down of the Delegate Counts for the Democratic Nomination available here.

The bottom line: without a radical turn-around, Edwards is basically doomed (especially since polls in CA and NY show Kerry with a huge lead).

The Nader File

We know many of you are relatively new to this page, and that you might not know that we’ve been covering the 2004 election since last summer. In that time, we’ve posted a number of items about Mr. Nader and the possibility of his making another run, the first of which appeared on July 5th, 2003. To see all our Nader posts, click here.

FYI, this is from the July 5th post:

Ralph Nader, still blamed by many Democrats for draining critical votes from Al Gore in the 2000 race for the presidency, says he is seriously considering running in 2004.

His decision has the potential to vex Democrats who worry that he would divert some of their supporters and delight Republicans who think the same thing.

Nader says he has moved closer to a repeat run as the Green Party nominee after concluding that Democrats have no one who can defeat President Bush.

The more things change, the more the Green party seems wedded to splitting the “No More Years” vote …

Fox News: Nader to Jump in Presidential Race

Fox News is reporting:

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who ran for president in 2000 as a Green Party candidate, will enter the 2004 race for the White House as an independent candidate, advisers told Fox News on Friday.

A formal announcement by Nader is expected this weekend.

Kerry Leads in NY and Calif.

A new poll shows John Kerry well in the lead in Super Tuesday states New York and California, with John Edwards a distant second.

The New York poll, by Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion, found Kerry leading 66 percent to 14 percent among likely voters. Al Sharpton and Rep. Dennis Kucinich were in single digits.

A Public Policy Institute of California survey released Friday found Kerry had 55 percent support among Democrats in that state, and Edwards just 10 percent. The poll was conducted before Edwards finished second in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary and Howard Dean dropped out of the race. Dean garnered 11 percent in the poll.

Both states account for 606 delegates (2,162 are required for the Democratic nomination).

Nader Decision Expected Sunday

Ralph Nader will announce his decision regarding the election on Meet the Press.

… turning to presidential politics, will the race for the White House get another candidate? Consumer advocate and 2000 Green Party Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader will join us exclusively to announce his decision on whether or not to run for the presidency in 2004.

Mr. Nader was dubbed a “spoiler” in the 2000 elections for siphoning votes away from Al Gore, and helping Bush win the White House. Does he have any regrets? And is he ready to make another run? We will find out this Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Sharpton off the Ballot in Louisiana

The Rev. Al Sharpton’s name will not appear on the Democratic presidential preference primary ballot when Louisiana voters go to the polls March 9, a state judge ruled Thursday.

Sharpton’s candidacy papers were incomplete, state District Judge Curtis Calloway ruled, because they failed to have a complete address, a phone number, and did not specify how Sharpton wanted his name on the ballot.

In addition, Calloway ruled that Sharpton did not follow state law when he submitted a bank check instead of a certified or cashier’s check.

Sharpton’s attorney, George Gates IV of Washington, D.C., also filed the wrong kind of legal challenge to get Calloway to halt the election, the judge ruled.

Does it even matter at this point?

Bob Graham, VP?

“I want a Democrat to be elected president. If I can be in whatever way a contributor to that, I’ll do it,” said the four-term senator, who announced in November he would not run for re-election in Congress.

“And that includes vice president?” one reporter asked.

“Yes,” Graham replied

His main qualification?

The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a strong critic of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

Who's the Big Winner? Iowa

The state of Iowa is by far the biggest winner so far. The caucuses were becoming more and more irrelevant in recent years, but now they appear to have set the tone for the whole race. From the DesMoines Register

Howard Dean’s departure from the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign Wednesday leaves standing the two candidates who emerged the strongest from the Iowa caucuses.

Voters in 16 other states have agreed with the decision Iowans made a month ago, when John Kerry and John Edwards finished solidly first and second in the caucuses. That accord reinforces Iowa’s decision and helps its chances of retaining its leadoff nominating position, Iowa Democrats and political observers agree.

“It reaffirms what Iowans know, and reaffirms for the rest of the country that we are a good place to start the process,” Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Read my commentary here.

Edwards Slaps Kerry With a White Glove

[Sorry for the Simpons reference in the title, but the headline on Drudge made it sound like a duel was imminent]

Edwards wants to debate Kerry in Georgia

Looking to fellow Southerners to help keep his presidential campaign afloat, John Edwards challenged front-runner John Kerry Thursday to debate him in Georgia, saying the stakes are too important for Georgia voters not to hear their views.

…

A debate with Kerry in Georgia would highlight the Democrats’ differences over trade and other issues, [Edwards] said.

AFL-CIO Endorses Kerry

“The time has come to unite behind one man, one leader, one candidate,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, calling Kerry a friend of the working man.

The union has 13 million members.

Will the Deaniacs become Greeniacs?

Power Line Blog thinks so. He pulls some quotes from the Dean blog that give good reason to believe the loyal Dean followers will be voting third party come November.

The State of the Union

Remember the infamous red and blue map from 2000? Someone had the bright idea of using it as a baseline and applying current polling results to it. According to his explanation, he is slightly biasing things against Bush (deliberately) in his methodology by assuming Nader will not run in 2004 and by using the best Democratic poll for each state (e.g., he may use a Kerry vs. Bush poll in Massachusetts and a Bush vs. Edwards poll in South Carolina). This has given a very interesting result.

According to his research, if the election were held today, Bush would narrowly win. Many pundits, myself included, have thought we might see a landslide victory by Bush in November. This is the first objective forecast that I’ve seen that shows we are still a divided nation. As I’ve explained, it does stack things slightly against Bush, but I think his approach is quite reasonable. It will be interesting to see how his map changes as we get closer to November.

A tip of the helm to my favorite movie reviewer

Poll Position: Who to Believe?

USA Today/Gallup Poll:

Kerry 55%
Bush 43%

UConn poll:

Dead heat.

Rasmussen Reports:

Bush 48%
Kerry 43%

Zogby has the most logical results:

Bush leads in red states, Kerry in blue.

Dean Statement from "Blog for America"

The official word from Dr. Dean:

A Beginning not an End
Today my candidacy may come to an end—but our campaign for change is not over.

I want to thank each and every person who has supported this campaign. Over the last year, you have reached out to neighbors, friends, family and colleagues—building one American at a time the greatest grassroots campaign presidential politics has ever seen. I will never forget the work and the heart that you put into our campaign.

In the coming weeks, we will be launching a new initiative to continue the campaign you helped begin. Please continue to come to www.deanforamerica.com for updates and news as our new initiative develops. There is much work still to be done, and today is not an end—it is just the beginning.

This Party and this country needs change, and you have already begun that process. I want you to think about how far we have come. The truth is: change is tough. There is enormous institutional pressure in our country against change. There is enormous institutional pressure in Washington against change, in the Democratic Party against change. Yet, you have already started to change the Party and together we have transformed this race. Along the way, we’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of new Americans in the political process, as witnessed by this year’s record participation in the primaries and caucuses.

The fight that we began can and must continue. Although my candidacy for president may end today, the most important goal remains defeating George W. Bush in November, and I hope that you will join me in doing everything we can to support the Democrats this fall. From the earliest days of our campaign, I have said that the power to change Washington rests not in my hands, but in yours. Always remember, you have the power to take our country back.

Gov. Howard Dean M.D.

Posted by Howard Dean at 11:52 AM

Dean Out: The Reports

Fox News: Dean Ends Campaign but Vows to Keep Fighting

CNN: Dean suspends presidential campaign

Washington Post: Dean Ends Campaign for Presidency (Former Vermont Governor to Continue Political Advocacy)

NYTimes.com: Dean Says His Run for the White House Is Over

MSNBC: Dean Talks to Edwards

MSNBC.com is reporting that, according to anonymous sources, Howard Dean has been in talks with John Edwards as late as yesterday. No official word on whether or not this could lead to an endorsement.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said that Dean had a lengthy conversation on Tuesday night with John Edwards, the lone remaining credible challenger to front-runner John Kerry. Dean did not reach an agreement to endorse Edwards, who has been actively seeking Dean’s backing, they said.

Dean, former governor of Vermont, has said Edwards would be a stronger candidate against President Bush than Kerry, whom he has denounced as beholden to special interests.

Dean Officially Done

Howard Dean no longer “actively seeking” the Democratic presidential candidacy. He says he will support whoever the Democratic nominee for president will be. C-SPAN continues live coverage online.

More soon…

Sources: Dean Will Withdraw

Sources from inside the Dean campaign say he will withdraw his name from the ballot soon and will launch a new “campaign for change” within the Democratic party.

The sources also say that Dean will not be endorsing either Kerry or Edwards.

Bush 48% Kerry 43%

Kerry lost six full points to Bush in 24 hours.

Today’s reading is the largest lead for either candidate since John Kerry became the Democrat’s front-runner. For most of February, the two candidates have been essentially even. Three days ago, Kerry assumed a modest lead that now appears to be statistical noise.

Dean Will Stop Campaigning But Stay in Race

According to the LA Times:

Howard Dean returned home to Burlington, Vermont, early on Wednesday carrying a decision to quit his presidential campaign but remain in the race for the nomination, the Los Angeles Times reported in Wednesday’s editions.
“Though Dean is not going to formally drop out of the race, he is going to stop campaigning,” a Dean aide told the newspaper.

“The move would allow his supporters to continue to vote for him in the upcoming primaries and have a say at the Democratic National Convention in July,” The Times reported.

Edwards Camp Takes Dig At Kerry

In a light dig at his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. John Edwards’ campaign sent out an email to his New York supporters - after his near-upset of Sen. John Kerry in Wisconsin - with the heading, “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

In another note to supporters, Edwards himself marveled at his campaign’s showing in Wisconsin, saying, “In just a few days, we cut Kerry’s lead by 30 points!!”

Edwards is kicking off the New York leg of his campaign today at 11 a.m. ET on the steps of New York City Hall. On Thursday, he’s scheduled to give what his campaign is billing as a “major” address at Columbia University.

Final Wisconsin Results

FOXNews reports with 100% of the precincts reporting:

Kerry 40%
Edwards 34%
Dean 18%
Kucinich 3%
Sharpton 2%
Clark 2%

According to CNN Dean still leads Edwards in estimated delegates:

Kerry 608
Dean 201
Edwards 190
Kucinich 2
Sharpton 16
Clark 57

Edwards Speech Simulblog

Leads with “objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear.”

Other speech text … well, I can’t say, because Kerry just came on. Do you think it’s a tactical move by Kerry to give his speech at the same time as Edwards? Being the victor, the networks have to carry Kerry, and it denies Edwards free air time.

Just wondering. It’s certainly what I’d do …

Edwards: "Thank you, Wisconsin!"

“Today, the voters of Wisconsin sent a clear message. The message was this: Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear.” —John Edwards

“The people of Wisconsin spoke loudly and clearly: they want a debate, they want this campaign to continue, they want someone who will stand up for them…”

Dean Speech Simulblog

The usual stuff:

• “You make me so happy I could just scream.”

• We’ve changed a lot in the Democratic party in the last year … that line of reasoning.

• “Finally, Democrats in Washington have learned they can stand up to the most conservative president in our lifetime.”

• “We are not done!”

• “We have a long way to go …”

• He calls for “real” campaign finance reform to “get the special interests out of Washington.”

• Calls for health care reform.

And so it goes …

CNN calls it for Kerry! (even though he's behind!)

CNN is declaring Kerry the winner even though he’s 600 votes behind with 24% reporting!

Must be based on where these results are coming from, comparing them to exit polls, etc.

MMSNBC Projects Kerry As The Winner

That’s the projection …

Dean to endorse Edwards? --Drudge

Okay, granted this is very preliminary, and granted it’s Drudge. But I’ve been a lonely voice in the wilderness for several weeks saying Edwards should seek Dean’s endorsement (even if it it requires offering him the VP slot), and now Drudge is reporting: “DEAN DISTANT THIRD, STAFFERS SUGGEST POSSIBLE EDWARDS ENDORSEMENT…” I can’t help but wonder: could it really happpen?

Fox implies Dean is going to drop out on Thursday.

For What It's Worth ...

… the election coverage on this page is of enough interest to folks in Australia that I just completed a radio interview with ABC Radio News in Canberra. And yes, I gave a shout-out to CP contributor Alan E. Brain.

Edwards "lead" slipping away?

Edwards led by 3% with 4 percent of the precincts reporting, but now, with 7% in, it’s Edwards 38%, Kerry 37% (17,896 to 17,707) according to CNN.

More detailed and frequently updated result simul-blogging on BrendanLoy.com.

5% In

Edwards 38%
Kerry 37%
Dean 19%

This one’s going to be a nail biter.

Factors

47% of voters who made their decision within the past 24 hours voted for Kerry tonight. One has to wonder how much of an impact the stories about Kerry have had on tonight’s results.

Another interesting fact: 11% of the voters were Republicans.

Now that it’s becoming a two man race, you have to wonder where all the votes for Dean, Sharpton and Kucinich would go if they were to drop out. Just a thought.

Edwards by 1%, with 1% in

Edwards 40%, Kerry 39%, Dean 16% with 1 percent of the precincts reporting. —CNN

UPDATE: Now it’s 40-37 Edwards with 3 percent in. Hmm… at what points does this become significant?

The "A" word, and rich vs. poor

Brit Hume and Susan Estrich just broached the adultery issue on Fox News. “It made a lot of people nervous… it made a lot of Democrats nervous… and I don’t think it had to do with Wisconsin tonight… but it made people nervous.” —Estrich

Fox exit poll guy: “Edwards appeals to limousine liberals who want to feel good about supporting the poor” … but Kerry did better among actual lower-income people.

FOX: Kerry by 5% in exits

FOX News “best current estimate” based on exit polls: Kerry 39%, Edwards 34%, Dean 18%

CNN: Can't pick a winner yet; Dean a distant third

Wolf Blitzer: “Based on our exit polls… John Edwards is showing a stronger than expected race in this contest in John Kerry … As a result, we are in no position right now, we don’t have enough information to project a winner. … We can project that Howard Dean…will emerge as a distant third.”

Early Results from Wisconsin

The polls are just closing, but numbers are coming in. The latest report has Kerry with 39% and Edwards with 34%.

Don’t look for this race to be called as quickly as the others. Edwards has managed to keep this one close.

Wisconsin Exit Polls: Why They Voted

AP exit poll:

TOP ISSUES: The most important issues for voters in Wisconsin were the economy and jobs, chosen by almost four in 10 in exit polls conducted for The Associated Press. Health care was next, chosen by just over two in 10, followed by the war in Iraq, chosen by just under two in 10.

TOP QUALITIES: The most important qualities were a candidate’s willingness to stand up for what he believes, chosen by almost three in 10 voters, followed by the ability to defeat President Bush in November and a candidate caring about people like them, each chosen by about a fifth of voters. Almost that many chose a candidate who has a positive message.

PARTY IDENTIFICATION: About six in 10 of the primary voters were Democrats, almost three in 10 were independents and just over one in 10 were Republicans. It was the highest share of Republican voters in any of the open Democratic primaries so far this year.

TIME OF DECISION: Almost six in 10 voters decided in the last week, including about two in 10 who decided in the last three days and almost that many who decided Tuesday.

REASON FOR VOTE: Six in 10 said they voted for a candidate because they agreed with him on the issues. About three in 10 said they made their choice because they thought that candidate could defeat Bush.

TRADE: Three-fourths of voters said trade with other countries takes jobs from the United States.

[The exit poll was conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International ]

Edwards a strong second: early exit polls

Sayeth Drudge:

“LATE AFTERNOON EXIT POLLS SHOW JOHN EDWARDS PULLING A STRONG SHOWING AGAINST JOHN KERRY, TOP MEDIA AND CAMPAIGN SOURCES TELL DRUDGE… KERRY 42%, EDWARDS 31%, DEAN 15%… DEVELOPING…”

Sayeth Wonkette:

John Kerry 41
John Edwards 33
Howard Dean 17

Interesting!!

Kerry Picks Up Union Endorsement

John Kerry has received the endorsement of the Alliance for Economic Justice, which had previously endorsed Rep. Dick Gephardt prior to dropping out. Gephardt was present at the endorsement announcement.

Make or Break Day in Wisconsin

The polls have opened in today’s Wisconsin primary and John Kerry goes into the day with a command lead in the polls, more than doubling the percentage of his nearest rival, Howard Dean.

The results of today could whittle down the field of candidates tomorrow. Dean has stated - and retracted the statement - that if he loses Wisconsin, he will drop out. Sources close to Dean say that no one knows for sure what will happen and even the Vermont governor himself doesn’t know what he will do if he loses this primary.

Stay tuned to The Command Post for exit polls, early numbers and final results.

January Presidential Media Analysis

Today Media Tenor sent us their January Summary of Political Coverage in U.S. Media. In producing the report, Media Tenor, an international media analysis institute, analyzed 13,429 “statements by or about political protagonists” in the Wall Street Journal, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and Time Magazine.

The report is full of interesting data points. Media Tenor’s headlines (their language):

• In January, U.S. media exchanges their favorite, Howard Dean, for John Kerry, and Kerry profits from the television hype

• Criticism of President Bush increases in January – and consequently his approval rating in the polls decreases

• In covering the Democratic candidates, policy related issues play only a minor role, particularly on U.S. television news

I also thought these graphics were interesting, and they’re examples of what you can find in the full report (click to enlarge the charts):

Read the report here (it’s a PDF file), and visit Media Tenor here.

It's Official: Grossman Jumps Dean's Sinking Ship

Howard Dean’s national campaign chairman, Steve Grossman, has left the former Vermont governor’s camp.

Grossman jumped ship after saying in an interview that he would join the Kerry team if his boss didn’t win on Tuesday.

“I will make it clear that I will do anything and everything I can to help him [Kerry] become the next president, and I will do anything and everything I can to build bridges with the Dean organization,” Grossman told The New York Times in an interview published Monday.

“Steve, don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” Dean campaign spokesman Jay Carson retorted.

At a campaign stop in La Cross, Wis., Monday, Dean confirmed that Grossman is gone from his campaign. Dean wouldn’t say when the campaign manager left, but did say he hasn’t talked to him since the New York Times article came out Monday morning.

Guess he couldn’t wait until Tuesday.

Wisconsin: Numbers and News

1. Zogby poll numbers for Wisconsin 2/16:

Kerry 47
Dean 23
Edwards 20
Kucinich 2
Sharpton 1

1. The number one concern among Wisconsin primary voters: Jobs.

1. Dean is losing his American Indian support.

1. Wisconsin expects its highest primary turnout since 1980.

1. The three big labor unions of Wisconsin are sitting this primary out.

Dean's Campaign Chairman To Back Kerry

The New York Times reports:

The chairman of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign said on Sunday that he would leave and shift his support to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts if Dr. Dean lost the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, an outcome he sees as all but inevitable.

“If Howard Dean does not win the Wisconsin primary, I will reach out to John Kerry unless he reaches out to me first,” said the chairman, Steven Grossman, who was chairman of Mr. Kerry’s 1996 Senate race. “I will make it clear that I will do anything and everything I can to help him become the next president, and I will do anything and everything I can to build bridges with the Dean organization.”

Dean is facing growing pressure from aides and outside backers to quit the race.

Dean maintains he will continue the campaign:

“We’re not dropping out after Tuesday, period,” Dr. Dean said in a television interview with the Fox affiliate here Sunday.

According to the Times:

After the news of Grossman’s decision to leave the campaign became public Sunday night, Dr. Dean, through his spokesman, Jay Carson, said Mr. Grossman had “meant a lot to this campaign.”

“We’ll miss him and we wish him well,” Dr. Dean said through his spokesman.

Cross-posted from California Yankee

Kerry Maintains Wisconsin Lead In New Poll

The latest Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll shows Kerry maintaining huge lead in Wisconsin:

Kerry 47%
Dean 23%
Edwards 20%
Kucinich 2%
Sharpton 1%

According to Zogby:

Dean is polling very well among young people around Madison. It is hard to see Dean going on from here however, he is polling well enough to get delegates and it’s interesting to see that Edwards and Dean together suggest a substantial non-Kerry vote. What would happen if Kerry were to face just one opponent?

Kerry has the highest favorable ratings and is given by far and away, the best shot at defeating President Bush. Again, it’s all about electability.

The poll was conducted Friday, February 13th through Sunday, February 15. The margin of error is +/- 4.1

Transcript of Tonight's Debate

[Transcript from Wisconsin Debate website]

For commentary on the debate, Sean Hackbarth blogged the whole thing live.

The debate was moderated by Mike Gousha. Panelists were Gousha; Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; Gloria Borger, co-host of CNBC’s “Capital Report” and columnist for U.S. News and World Report, and Lester Holt, MSNBC anchor.

Senator Kerry, we’ll begin with you tonight.

GOUSHA: The White House released the president’s full military records late Friday night, and a fellow guard officer from Alabama has now stepped forward to say he distinctly recalls the president reporting for duty in Alabama. Does that end the issue of whether the president fully served out his National Guard requirements?

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That’s not something that I’m qualified to comment on. I have not looked at the records, I haven’t seen the records, I’m not reading the records. It’s not for me to make that judgment. I think that all of us today are very proud of those who serve in the National Guard.

I would say that this president regrettably has perhaps not learned some of the lessons of that period of time during which we had a very difficult war, the longest in American history and one of the most contentious.

And one of those key lessons is in how you take a nation to war. I think this president rushed to war. I don’t believe he had a plan for winning the peace. I don’t think he kept his promises to America.

And most importantly, I think he’s cut the VA budget and not kept faith with veterans across this country. And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country. I will do that.

GOUSHA: Let me ask a follow up, Senator Kerry. The chairman of your party has charged that the president was AWOL, yet he was honorably discharged. Do you disavow that statement? Do you think your party and certain members of your party should drop this as an issue?

KERRY: I have suggested to some people who are my advocates who’ve gone that line of attack, it’s not one that I plan to do, it’s not one I have. I don’t plan to do that and I’ve asked them not to.

But the president has to speak for his own military record. And those of you in the news media, obviously, have asked questions about it and that’s where I’ll let it sit.

GOUSHA: Senator Kerry, thanks very much.

The next question goes to Craig Gilbert.

Craig?

CRAIG GILBERT, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL: Senator Edwards, Democrats are questioning the president about his service in the Guard and they are saying he misled the country about Iraq. Is President Bush’s honesty an issue in this campaign?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, it is, absolutely it is. Because the — this president has said one of the most critical things, not only for a candidate for president, for the president of the United States is his integrity, whether he can be trusted.

We are in the middle, as you know, of investigating — starting an investigation, an independent investigation about why there is a disconnect between what the American people were told by the president and others and what’s actually been found in Iraq.

Now, I think integrity, character are critical issues in any presidential campaign.

And certainly the integrity and character of the president of the United States is at issue — no question.

GILBERT: What about military service — President Bush in the Guard, Senator Kerry in the Navy, the rest of you didn’t serve in the military — does whether a candidate have military experience or not, is that relevant to this campaign for president?

EDWARDS: Of course it’s relevant. I mean, we should honor the service of those who have served in the military. That includes John Kerry; it includes President Bush; it includes others.

We’ve also got to recognize, of course, that we’ve had great leaders, including at times of war, who didn’t have military service: Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, some of the great presidents of the United States. But they had the other characteristics of leadership: strength, conviction, character, willingness to lead and an ability to lead and convince the American people where they needed to go.

I think, honestly, those are the most critical components. But I, along with all of the American people, certainly honor the service of those who have served in the military.

GOUSHA: Gloria Borger, next question.

GLORIA BORGER, CAPITAL REPORT: This is for Governor Dean. I’m going to turn now to the question of money and its role in politics.

You have said on “Meet the Press” that John Kerry, and this is a quote here, “Gets his money the same way George Bush does.” You’ve also said that they are part of the same corrupt political culture.

The Bush-Cheney campaign now has an anti-John Kerry ad on its Web site about John Kerry and special interests. It is entitled “Unprincipled.”

Are you and the Bush campaign sounding the same theme about John Kerry?

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think George Bush has some nerve attacking anybody about special interests. Not only has he funded his campaign through special interests, but George Bush is systematically looting the American treasury and giving it to his friends — the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs and the insurance companies.

The Medicare bill, prescription benefits for seniors supposedly to help seniors gives the majority of the money to drug companies — over $100 billion — gives significant amounts of money to the HMOs and insurance companies — $85 billion. That is our money and he’s giving it away.

The same thing with the energy bill. We see $16 billion of our money going into the oil and gas business.

The farm bill — we see two-thirds of that going to American corporate farms. I don’t think George Bush has any right to attack anybody on this stage about special interest money, and certainly the Republican Party doesn’t.

BORGER: But let me follow up if I might. You are saying these things about Senator John Kerry. You say that he is part of a corrupt political culture and you said it’s the same one that George Bush is a part of.

DEAN: The way our campaign differs from folks from Washington is 89 percent of our money comes from small donors. We do need more campaign finance reform in this country.

The way I hope to win the Wisconsin primary is by pointing out that Wisconsin voters have elected people like Bob LaFollete and Bill Proxmire and Russ Feingold, who stood up against special interests in the Capitol. I think we have a major problem in both parties with special interest money making it impossible to do the things that we have to do such as health insurance for all Americans.

Wisconsin has a long history of voting for people like me and I hope they’ll do it on Tuesday.

BORGER: Senator Kerry, I’ll give you a chance to talk about the special interest money that you’ve raised, and why you are the best person to make the case on special interests against George Bush.

KERRY: Well, I’m the best person to make the case against George Bush because for 35 years I’ve had an uninterrupted record of taking on powerful special interests in American politics, beginning with when I led thousands of veterans and stood up against Richard Nixon and his war in Vietnam.

I led the fight against Ronald Reagan and his illegal, unconstitutional war in Central America. I blew the whistle on Oliver North and his private aid network. I took on Noriega, and drugs, and the CIA. I stood up against Gingrich and his efforts to attack the Clear Air, Clean Water Act. I led the fight that stopped the drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

I am the only United States senator who has been elected four times voluntarily refusing to ever take in any one of my races one dime of Political Action Committee, special interest money. The only money I’ve accepted is money from individual Americans, and 1 percent of it, approximately, in my entire lifetime has come from anybody who’s ever lobbied for anything.

Russ Feingold will tell you how I’ve stood with him and John McCain and others for campaign finance reform. Paul Wellstone and I wrote the most far-reaching campaign finance reform law in the country called the clean money, clean elections law.

And when I’m president, we will put back on the table the effort to get the money out of American politics and restore the voices of average Americans to the agenda of our country.

GOUSHA: Next question is Lester Holt.

HOLT: And my question is to Representative Kucinich. Good evening, sir.

Ed Gillespie, chairman of the RNC, says “Democrats are going to run the dirtiest campaign in history.” John Kerry’s Web site responds that “the Bush White House is going to run a gutter campaign.” We’ve still got nine months to go here, gentlemen. Is anything political or personal off-limits in your view?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m just hoping that Mr. Gillespie is not seeing the world in his own image. I’m hopeful that he has a desire to communicate to the American people what his party wants to do, to get people back to work, to get all the people in this country the health care they need, to enable our children to go to the public education schools that have the best education, and to enable us to bring our men and women back from Iraq.

I mean, if that’s what this debate ends up being about, the American people will be well-served.

I want to say further that if the debate ends up being about the president’s service record, you know, we should be worried about the National Guardsmen and Guardswomen who are in Iraq right now, who shouldn’t be there.

We should be worried about bringing them home, not worrying about what the president did or didn’t do 30 years ago. We have to be concerned about what he’s doing now. He sent those men and women there on a lie, and we have to bring them home.

LESTER HOLT, MSNBC: And Senator Kerry, if I could just follow up on this same line of questioning, has this campaign, in your view, already gotten too personal against you? Has it crossed any lines, inappropriate lines?

KERRY: Well, that’s for the American people to judge. Let me just say that I’m prepared to stand up to any attack that they come at me with. I’ve been in public life since I was about 27 years old.

KERRY: I have been in very visible, tough races in the course of my life. I am ready for what they throw at me.

But I will say this to the American people: They are resorting to that already because they don’t want to talk about jobs because they can’t.

They don’t want to talk about health care for all Americans because they don’t have a plan for health care for all Americans.

They don’t want to talk about the broken promise to children across this country as they are leaving millions of children behind every single day in our nation having broken the promise of No Child Left Behind.

They don’t want to talk about the environment because they are going backwards on clean air and backwards on clean water.

And they don’t even want to talk about the legitimate issues of international security, North Korea, the nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, global warming, AIDS on a global basis, all of which are the real sum of our leadership in the world.

Those are the issues that I will talk about. I will talk about and give America a real debate about our future. And if all they do is resort to the personal, I think the American people will see through it very, very quickly.

GOUSHA: Senator Kerry, thank you.

The next question is for Reverend Sharpton.

Reverend, thanks very much for being with us tonight. The president said he is going to meet with members of the 9/11 commission. If you were a member of the commission and not a candidate for office, what is the first question you would ask the president?

REV. AL SHARPTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would ask him, “Where is bin Laden?”

(APPLAUSE)

And I would ask him why we went to Iraq and did not put all of our energies behind finding bin Laden. And I am not just saying that as a quip.

I live in New York. I was there the day the World Trade Center was attacked. A young men who is 11 years old, was at the time, stayed with my family and eight weeks dreaming every night his mother would come home. She worked there and died that day.

That night of September 11th, George Bush went on national television and promised America that we would go and get bin Laden. We are now two and a half years later. We don’t have him. We’ve gone and spent billions of dollars in Iraq in a distraction that had nothing to do with September 11th.

And if I was in the meeting with him in the commission, I would ask him, Where is bin Laden? Why did you promise us something you couldn’t deliver on? And since you couldn’t deliver, you ought not be re-elected because we need a president that will protect Americans from real threats rather than imagined threats, or rather than people, who may be bad people, but were not the people that attacked us on September 11th.

GOUSHA: I want to move on and talk about the economy and jobs because we did a poll here, our TV station and the Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel, and the number one issue clearly among Wisconsin voters was the economy, it was the uncertainty about jobs.

Let’s spend a few moments on that. And I want to say a couple of things before we get to the first question. This state has seen the loss of 90,000 manufacturing jobs since 1999. Just last week, Tower Automotive, a company that does business here in Milwaukee, announced that it was going to be shipping 500 jobs from Milwaukee to Mexico.

Given that backdrop, I’d like to have Craig Gilbert ask the next question.

Craig?

GILBERT: Senator Kerry, a lot of people here blame trade policy for those job losses. And you voted for all of these — a lot of these trade deals, NAFTA with Mexico and permanent trade relations with China.

Given all of the jobs that have fled to China and Mexico, would you vote the same way today?

KERRY: Let me make it very clear that in those trade agreements, we passed side-bar provisions, side agreements in NAFTA on labor and environment, central agreements in the China trade agreement on surge — if there’s a surge of imports, or if there’s a dumping that takes place, we have things that we can do.

This administration refuses to do them, number one.

Number two, there’s been a dramatic shift in the world and what has happened to jobs over the course of the last few years. Perhaps three or four years ago, I began talking about how it is critical that in any trade agreement, we now need to negotiate labor and trade, labor and environment standards.

I will order a 120-day review of all of our trade agreements. We’re going to see what’s working, what isn’t. I will not sign a trade agreement like the Central American Free Trade Agreement or the Free Trade of Americas Act that does not now embrace enforceable labor and environment standards. And we need to be creating more jobs here in the United States of America.

I have a $50 billion package that I’ll make available for manufacturing incentives and for relief for the states in order to help create the jobs we need in America, as well as a $4,000 tuition tax credit for kids to be able to go to college.

We’re going to refocus on science and technology on the United States. We’re going to do the stem cell research and all of the other kinds of commitments to science that will advance the creation of jobs here at home.

This president thinks it’s enough just to raise the stock market; I don’t.

I think a president needs to put America back to work, and that’s what I intend to do.

GILBERT: But no regrets about those votes?

KERRY: I regret the way that they haven’t been enforced, sure. I think…

GILBERT: Senator Edwards, let me just turn to you first. I mean, you said the other day that there are obvious differences between you and Senator Kerry on this issue.

What are they?

EDWARDS: This is one. This is — the one you just asked about is an obvious example.

You know, Senator Kerry is entitled, as is Governor Dean, to support free trade, as they always have. The problem is there what we see happening, and it’s NAFTA, which I opposed, plus a whole series of other trade agreements, have been devastating here in Wisconsin. Nobody has to tell me what the effect is of some of these bad trade agreements.

I have seen it myself. My father worked in a mill. I saw what happened when the mill in my home town closed. I saw the looks on the faces of the men and women who had worked there, many of them for decades, and had nowhere to go.

You mentioned Tower Automotive just a minute ago. I went to Tower Automotive, met with some of the employees who were about to be laid off. That vacant look, “What do I do now? I’ve worked hard and been responsible for decades to raise my family, done what I was supposed to. What do I do now?” It all looked very familiar to me.

And the voters of Wisconsin deserve to know this is something I will take very personally. I will stand up and fight every way I know how to protect these jobs, including the jobs that are being lost at Tower Automotive because I have lived with this my entire life and I take it very personally.

BORGER: Governor Dean, do you have something to say about what John Kerry just said — I mean, Senator Edwards?

DEAN: No, but I have something to say about what John Edwards just said.

BORGER: John Edwards, right.

DEAN: I think the free trade agreements were justified, but the problem is we’ve only solved half the problem. We’ve globalized the rights of big corporations to do business anywhere in the world. We did not globalize human rights, labor rights and environmental rights, and we need to do that.

Now, with all due respect, I’m the only person up here who’s ever balanced a budget, who’s ever had the kind of agreements that we create jobs.

Here’s what we need to do: One, we’ve got to balance the budget. People do not invest in countries that don’t balance their budgets. Two, we’ve got to do something to help small businesses and self- employed people. Small businesses and self-employed people create 70 percent of all the new jobs in America. We do virtually nothing for them. They need help with capital. They need help with health insurance. They need help with less paperwork.

If you want jobs in America, instead of giving $3 trillion tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country, what we ought to be doing is investing in mass transit, in schools, in renewable energy, and things that create jobs now and build infrastructure so we can have more jobs later on.

BORGER: Well, Governor, let me ask you another related question. Last week, Democrats were out there criticizing the president’s economic adviser who said that outsourcing was actually good for America because it keeps prices down in this country. So would you be willing to make Americans pay higher prices for goods in order to stop sending those jobs overseas?

DEAN: Yes, I’ve repeatedly said that. The bad news is if we do what I want to with our trade agreement, you’re going to pay higher prices at Wal-Mart because their stuff is all made in China and labor costs are going to go up in China. The benefit is, though, that you’re going to keep good, high-paying jobs in the United States of America and that’s what this debate is all about.

BORGER: Well, Congressman Kucinich, what do you say to people here in Wisconsin who want to keep paying lower prices at Wal-Mart and don’t want to lose jobs?

KUCINICH: I want the people of Wisconsin to know that my first act in office as president of the United States will be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO and return to bilateral trade conditioned on workers’ rights, human rights and environmental quality principles. That what we have here is an argument not nation-to- nation, but a series of intra-corporate transfers that are occurring where corporations are seeking cheap wages. Everyone knows this, and I’m the only one up here so far who’s been willing to say that I’ll cancel NAFTA and the WTO.

That’s specific action that will regain real power for the American workers and for workers everywhere and to give the American people the ability to buy American-made goods.

I mean, let’s face it. It’s either we buy America or it’s bye bye America. And I’m insisting that we have to provide a manufacturing base in this country so that people can have American- made goods to buy. They’ll buy it if we make it here.

GOUSHA: Next question is for Reverend Sharpton.

HOLT: Reverend Sharpton, we’ve heard about canceling NAFTA. We’ve heard about the need to protect jobs. Are those jobs that have been lost gone forever, or as president could you bring at least some, if not all, of them back?

SHARPTON: I think you can.

But let me say this: Not only would I cancel NAFTA, I‘ve participated in those movements that opposed NAFTA in the beginning when Democrats were passing it and we raised the issue then that human rights was not part of what was being globalized.

So not only would I rescind NAFTA and the WTO, we were against it and had rallied against it in the beginning.

And the argument used that if you protect American workers it’s protectionism, but if you protect American corporations it’s patriotism — I think it’s patriotism to protect American workers.

And I think that it is some kind of jaded proposition to say, “Should Americans want to pay more to not get products at a K-Mart from cheap labor, or even in some cases, slave labor abroad?”

That’s, to me, as a descendent of slaves, like saying, “Well, let’s not end slavery because the product will be where we can afford it better.” It is immoral; it is against our interests; it is outright indecent to work people around the world at those wages to justify K-Mart prices.

(APPLAUSE)

HOLT: But back to my original question: Can you bring those jobs back, and can you be specific as how you would bring them back beyond canceling NAFTA?

SHARPTON: I think we bring the jobs back, one, by canceling NAFTA; two, by creating manufacturing jobs; three — which would save those corporations where they can begin hiring people back — three, by creating jobs.

I’ve proposed throughout this campaign a $250 billion- a-year infrastructure redevelopment plan: Rebuild highways, roadways, bridges, tunnels in the name of homeland security. Rebuild the ports.

I think if you create jobs, if you cut off these trade agreements and you bring these manufacturing companies back, you can bring some of those workers back. But I think you cannot do it without an unequivocal end to these free trade agreements that have exported American jobs and that have put laborers around the world at below human rights standards.

GOUSHA: Thank you.

Senator Edwards, before we go to a break, just let me ask that same question of you. Do we not, at some point, have to be honest with some of the workers who you met with…

EDWARDS: Oh, absolutely.

GOUSHA: … and tell them that some of these jobs, many of these jobs are not coming back?

EDWARDS: That’s absolutely true. I mean, we need to be completely honest with them. The truth is, some of these jobs are gone. We are not going to get them back.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change what we’re doing. It doesn’t mean the trade policy we are using now is working. These environmental and labor standards in the text of the agreement, not in a side agreement, in the text of the agreement that can be enforced, really matter. That’ll have an enormous impact on the flow that we are seeing now.

Changing our tax policy — the very idea that we give tax breaks to American companies who are leaving and going overseas and taking jobs with them is absolutely crazy when we are losing millions of jobs. What we should do instead is give tax breaks to American companies that, in fact, are keeping jobs right here in America.

And I will say, I think jobs is the single most important issue for voters here in Wisconsin. I have heard it every single place that I have gone. And they are looking for a president and a presidential candidate who they know will get up every day and go to work at the White House and fight for their jobs.

GOUSHA: Thank you very much, Senator.

Probably the second most important issue in this state may be health care. And when we come back, we will talk about health care with the Democratic presidential candidates.

We’ll be right back.

(APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(APPLAUSE)

GOUSHA: And welcome back, everyone. We’ve been talking about the economy, trade practices. And since we’re from Wisconsin, we have to spend a little time on taxes, because Wisconsin is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 states in the country for the highest tax states.

Governor Dean, you want to repeal all of President Bush’s tax cuts. How do you think that’s going to win you votes in Wisconsin?

DEAN: Well, because the middle-class people never got a tax cut. If you make a million dollars a year, you got $112,000 back from the president. Sixty percent of us got $304.

And my question to Wisconsinites is, did your property taxes go up more than $304 because the president cut higher education money?

How about your health care premiums? Did they go up more than $304 because the president cut half-a-million children off health care, and a million adults? Somebody had to pay that health care, so hospitals pass it to your insurance company and then right on to you.

How about your college tuition? Did that go way up because the president cut all that money out of the budget?

The middle-class people didn’t get a tax cut in this country. There was no middle-class tax cut. And I believe that the majority of the people in this country would gladly pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president if only we could have the economy that we had when Bill Clinton was president.

GOUSHA: So you’re saying to repeal the Bush tax cuts is not a tax increase on the middle class?

DEAN: That’s exactly right. Since the middle-class people never got a real tax cut — they got increased college tuition, increased health care costs and increased property taxes — if you repeal the Bush tax cut, you would be able to balance the budget in this country and have jobs again, and have enough money left over to have every man, woman and child in America have health insurance, and fully fund special education, which would lower your property taxes even further.

GOUSHA: Let’s go to Craig Gilbert.

GILBERT: A lot of health care needs out there, seekers, prescription drugs, the uninsured kids, we’ve got a big budget deficit.

So let’s talk a little bit about priorities, Congressman Kucinich. What would you do first? What health care need would you take care of first as president?

KUCINICH: As a member of Congress, I’ve introduced legislation, H.R. 676, to create a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system. Do you know that Americans are already paying for a universal standard of care? We’re not getting it — $1.6 trillion in this country goes for health spending.

Of that $1.6 trillion, $400 billion a year goes for the activities of the for-profit sector — corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, lobbying, the cost of paperwork — 15 to 30 percent.

I want to put all that money in the for-profit sector into health care so that everyone in America is covered for all medically necessary procedures, plus dental care, vision care, mental health care, long-term care, a fully-paid prescription drug benefit.

The American people can have that if they have a president who is ready to show the leadership toward that, and I am, and I will be.

Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

GILBERT: Senator Kerry, what do you take care of first? You can’t do it all. Do you take care of the uninsured? Do you get prescription drugs right? What do you do first?

KERRY: Actually, you can do a health care plan for America, and that’s exactly what I’ve proposed.

Next to creating jobs, this is the single most important priority in the country.

Just this morning I was on West Clyburn Street at Ms. Katy’s (ph) and I met a fellow who runs a business. He’s got 500 employees. He told me that his health care costs — what he pays in for his employees — has gone up 46 percent last year.

There is not an American I’ve met who doesn’t talk about the increase in premiums, co-pays, deductibles, loss of benefits.

I was very lucky last year. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I’m cured and cancer-free today because I had the best health care in the world.

Why? Two reasons: One I could afford it, and two, I’m a United States senator. And guess what? Thanks to everybody in Wisconsin and all across this country, senators and congressmen give themselves very good health care.

As president, I will roll back George Bush’s tax cut for wealthy Americans, close — not raise the taxes on the middle class. I don’t want to get rid of the child tax credit. That’s a tax increase. I don’t want to get rid of the 10 percent bracket. That’s a tax increase. I don’t want to reinstate the marriage penalty. That’s a tax increase.

But I will roll back the tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, close the loopholes for companies like Tyco that buy a $27,000 mail box in Bermuda and take $400 million off the tax rolls of America and stick everybody else with the bill.

We’re going to have health care that will provide health care for 97 percent of all Americans within three years. It’s affordable. I’ll let the same health care plan that’s available to congressmen and senators be available to every American. We’ll cover every child.

And I will lower the cost of health care for that businessman and all people like him and others across this country by taking all of the catastrophic cases out of the system, paying for it with George Bush’s tax cut. And we’ll lower the premiums for everyone in America.

GOUSHA: Gloria?

BORGER: Senator Edwards, as president, would you encourage Governor Doyle of Wisconsin to go and cut deals with Canada for cheaper prescription drugs?

EDWARDS: Oh, yes, ma’am, I would. Yes, ma’am, I would, absolutely.

We need to do everything we can to bring down the cost of prescription drugs using the power of the government to negotiate a better price, making sure we bring drugs into this country from Canada, doing something about drug company ads, which is something that I’ve been fighting for.

One thing, though, I want us to be very careful about, you know, I listen to candidates talk about health care. They say, “Oh, we’re going to cover 97 percent. Everybody is going to be covered. All the kids are going to be covered. We’re going to give you all these tax cuts for the middle class, and oh, by the way, we’re also going to balance the budget in the next four years.”

It’s just not the truth. People need to know the truth about what we can afford and what we can’t afford. They have been listening to this talk over and over and over for years. It’s part of the reason they are so cynical about politics.

We need to set priorities, say what we can afford to do, which I believe I have done, both on tax cuts and on health care and on education, and then tell the American people the truth about what we can do to balance the budget, what’s achievable and what’s not achievable.

BORGER: Senator Edwards, what can we not afford?

EDWARDS: Well, we can afford to start down the road to universal health care, which I think is important. Dramatic steps, cover all kids, cover our most vulnerable adults, take on the insurance companies and drug companies to bring down costs.

We can afford to help working middle-class families be able to save, be able to create some security — financial security for themselves.

And the other thing we can afford, which I believe is one of the great moral issues that our country has today and you never hear anybody talk about, which is take serious steps to lift the 35 million Americans who live in poverty every day out of poverty.

It is such a moral issue for our country. We are not talking about. We need to lead on it. We need to show that we as a nation have a commitment to those who are struggling and suffering and living in poverty every day.

GOUSHA: Lester Holt?

HOLT: Question to Senator Kerry and on the issue of education and regarding the No Child Left Behind Act. You voted for it. Now you are outspoken against it. Similar pattern on the Patriot Act and war.

Since the candidates seem to agree credibility is an issue, how should voters reconcile those inconsistencies, or what the chairman of the RNC called hypocrisies?

KERRY: Well, they are not inconsistent at all. The goals of the No Child Left Behind Act are worthy goals. We want to raise accountability in our schools. We want to raise standards. We want teachers to be highly certified.

But what we don’t want is to have it implemented the way it is being implemented by George Bush. He’s making it punitive. He’s disrespecting teachers. And he’s walked away from his own promise to fully fund No Child Left Behind.

I will change it. I will change No Child Left Behind so that it is not punitive, so that we don’t have a one size fits all testing standard and turn schools into testing factories. We’re going to implement it properly.

Secondly, on the Patriot Act. The problem with the Patriot Act are two words: John Ashcroft. If we had an attorney general of the United States who respected the Constitution, there’s no reason in the world that you can’t do the things necessary.

I will change the Patriot Act. And we have the good common sense, may I add, to put in the Patriot Act a sunset clause so it dies automatically at the end of this year and we’ll change it.

But let me just say about the budget also, I have promised to not balance the budget in four years. I don’t think anybody’s going to do that. If they’re telling you that, they can’t.

I have promised to cut the deficit in half in four years, which is precisely what George Bush — what Bill Clinton did. And the same people who helped Bill Clinton put together that plan, the very same people in the White House, the Treasury Department, the OMB, are the same people who are working with me right now to put my plan together. The numbers are real. It’s a promise that can be kept.

And if Americans liked the eight years of Bill Clinton’s economy, they’re going to love the first four years of John Kerry’s.

GOUSHA: Thank you.

Anybody else up there think he can balance the budget in less than four years? I’m curious.

Congressman Kucinich?

KUCINICH: Well, first of all, let’s look at what’s happening.

Over $1 trillion in tax cuts, most of it going to the wealthy, a war in Iraq that’s trending toward $200 billion, a $400 billion a year Pentagon budget. What this administration is saying is, “Let them eat war.”

And what I intend to say is this, the priorities of the country will be to do something about our trade deficit, to save our jobs — that’s why I have to cancel NAFTA and WTO, restart the American economy.

Reverend Sharpton and I agree on a massive public works program because the idea is you have to keep creating wealth. And you create more wealth by putting people back to work. We need to have a major energy initiative.

We can create 3 million new jobs just in changing America’s economy to solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, green hydrogen. I mean, we have to start looking, how can we create new wealth in this country? At the same time, stop the waste.

A tax cut to the wealthy is waste. A war is waste. Expanded Pentagon budget is waste. I’m talking about a new direction for America. That’s how you straighten out our budget.

GOUSHA: Reverend Sharpton, I’ll give you a couple seconds and then I want to ask a question. Go ahead.

SHARPTON: OK, I think that the other thing that you must raise when you’re discussing cutting the deficit — and I agree with Senator Kerry. No one can do it in four years. But it’s also what is your priorities while you are doing deficit spending?

If my family and I are in debt, it’s one thing for me in debt to invest in my two daughters’ college education. It’s another thing in debt for me to go to Las Vegas and roll the dice and have a gambling weekend. What this administration is doing is not only bringing us deeper in debt, they are irresponsibly spending money while we’re in debt.

And I think that we need to have the right priorities in terms of job development, in terms of health care, and in terms of public education, and in urban planning.

One of the things we’re not talking about is the overcrowding of cities, how we deal with housing. I hope, since we’re headed to Super Tuesday, we debate an urban agenda, an urban plan, that this administration has ignored.

And Governor Dean says he’s the only one up here who’s balanced the budget, I’m the only one in here that all my life had to deal with deficit spending. I was born in a deficit.

(LAUGHTER)

GOUSHA: Let me talk about your urban agenda. I want to go back to education for a moment. All of you, as my understanding, are opposed to school vouchers, but they’re very much a reality in the city of Milwaukee. There are more than 13,000 children right now who attend — they’re from low-income families — they attend private schools, in some cases religious schools, at taxpayers’ expense.

I’m wondering, Reverend Sharpton, what you would say to a parent who asks, “Why can’t I have the same opportunity that this family with money has to send our kid to a private school?”

SHARPTON: The only thing wrong with that question is that the parent who has a child who didn’t get a voucher can ask the same question, “Why can’t I have the same opportunity with someone with money and with a voucher?”

Government’s job is not to select some students, it’s to help give quality education to all students. And I don’t care how we cut it. Vouchers is selective.

And it is the job of government to try to bring quality education indiscriminately to all American young people. And it works for you if you happen to get a voucher. It doesn’t work if you’re one of the children, or if your children’s one of the children that didn’t get a voucher.

SHARPTON: Who determines the selection? How do we try to make up for that child not getting the same resources, not the same shot? I think that it is a reaction to a problem, but it is not the solution.

The solution is we must increase funds. We must have standards in public education. We must increase teachers’ pay. We must have college debt forgiveness for young people trying to be teachers.

We should not have a selective program for students, which ultimately pits students against students rather than government deal with its obligation to support all young people toward a quality education.

GOUSHA: Thank you.

Since we’re here on the Marquette University campus, we thought we’d hear from a couple of students tonight. They submitted some questions. They’d like to ask a couple questions of the candidates and we’re going to do that right now.

Would you please introduce yourself and tell us the question you have for the candidates?

QUESTION: Hello. My name is Elizabeth Conradson (ph) and I am a second-year law student here at Marquette. We’ve heard all of you speak often about elementary and secondary education. However, my question pertains to higher education.

With tuition costs dramatically rising for public universities, as president how would you ensure accessibility to higher education for lower- and middle-income students?

GOUSHA: I am going to try and have a couple of candidates respond to this. Governor Dean, why don’t you begin.

DEAN: First of all, let me just very briefly respond to a question that I didn’t get that I wanted to get which was on health care.

KUCINICH: I’d be glad to respond to her question.

DEAN: That’s fine, I am going to respond to her question too, Dennis.

But I — you know, since I am the only doctor up here and the only former governor, I just want to make the point, since we went through the health care section of the debate and I didn’t get a chance to do this: 99 percent of all our kids under 18 have health insurance in my state, all our low-income working people and a third of our seniors.

I have done what all the folks up here are talking about doing.

GOUSHA: Is Vermont a microcosm of the United States?

DEAN: Vermont — yes, because we are using exactly the same programs that exist in Wisconsin, in South Carolina and every other state in the country.

We can do this. I am determined to do this. And part of this election is about results, not just rhetoric.

Now, to answer the question about higher education.

There are a lot of people up here with good higher education plans. I’ll be very brief and tell you mine. We want to start working with eighth grade kids and let them know there’ll be money, $10,000 a year for every four — for each of the four years that they spend either in college or in post-high school technical training.

That money will be in the form of grant and loans. When you — depending on your income. When your loans come due after you graduate, you will never pay more than 10 percent of your income for 10 years and after that the loan will be forgiven. If you go into public service such as public defense, nursing, teaching, fire fighting, police, you will never pay more than 7 percent of your income to repay those loans. You’ll pay for a period of 10 years, after that your loan will be forgiven.

GOUSHA: Governor Dean, thanks.

Let’s have one other response on that. Senator Kerry, let me go down to you and ask you to respond to the student’s question.

KERRY: Well, let me sort of back up what Governor Dean has just said.

Every one of us up here has an approach that is vastly better than George Bush’s because George Bush has no approach. He’s cut the Pell grants. He has no plan for how you really make college affordable, and all of us here do.

Now, my plan is to provide a $4,000 tuition tax credit per pupil annually, number one. Number two, we will raise the Pell grants, Stafford loans, Perkins back up to the level they were and above to reflect inflation.

But we don’t just want kids coming out of higher education, graduate school particularly — which you need nowadays — saddled with debt. So, I like Howard, would like to see a pay-down program if you go into things that we need people in — teaching in urban communities that have no tax base, in rural communities that are troubled.

I also have a national service plan. We need to restore the concept of service to our nation, community building. And I’m going to ask anybody who graduates from high school who wants to work two years in their own community, and living at home — no expense to the government — two years of service working with kids at risk, tutoring, helping seniors who are shut-in, anything the community decides — we’re not going to tell them from Washington — we will pay in return for their full four-year in-state college public education.

And it will be affordable by a combination of rolling back George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and closing the loopholes that reward companies for taking jobs overseas.

GOUSHA: Senator Kerry, thanks very much.

We have to take another break. When we come back, we’ll talk about the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism.

(APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(APPLAUSE)

GOUSHA: And welcome again to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Marquette University campus. We continue the Wisconsin presidential debate tonight.

We want to spend some time on the war in Iraq. Let’s do that with the first question going to Craig Gilbert.

Craig?

GILBERT: Governor Dean, you said in a recent debate about U.S. casualties in Iraq that those soldiers were sent there by the votes, in this case, of Senator Lieberman, Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry. Do you believe that because of the way they voted to authorize force in Iraq that they share some degree of responsibility for the war and its costs and casualties?

DEAN: Sure. I think any of us who support — I supported the first Gulf War. I supported the war in Afghanistan and the interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia. I think if you support a war, whether the chief executive obviously makes the decision, but anybody who votes to support that or, in my case, supported it verbally since I wasn’t in Congress, I think we do all bear responsibility for the votes that we cast, and that includes sending people to war.

I think the most difficult job of any president of the United States is the decision to send people to war, because you know that you are almost certain to lose somebody, to deprive families of somebody they love.

And even if you don’t lose somebody, just the incredible hardship of sending National Guard and Reserves people over there, who I happen to think have no business being over there for 12 month periods at a time — even the hardship of doing that deprives those folks and their spouses of the kind of living they were making before they went.

So I think anybody who votes to send somebody to war, or in my case, supports — not in this case, I vigorously opposed the Iraq war, and I differ from Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry in that area. But I think any of us who support sending troops have a responsibility for what happens to those troops.

GILBERT: Let me turn to you, Senator Kerry, because you said your vote wasn’t a vote for what the president ultimately did. But you did vote to give him the authority, so do you feel any degree, any degree of responsibility for the war and its costs and casualties?

KERRY: This is one of the reasons why I am so intent on beating George Bush and why I believe I will beat George Bush, because one of the lessons that I learned — when I was an instrument of American foreign policy, I was that cutting-edge instrument. I carried that M- 16.

I know what it’s like to try to choose between friend and foe in a foreign country when you’re carrying out the policy of your nation.

And I know what it’s like when you lose the consent and the legitimacy of that war. And that is why I said specifically on the floor of the Senate that what I was voting for was the process the president promised.

There was a right way to do this and there was a wrong way to do it. And the president chose the wrong way because he turned his back on his own pledge to build a legitimate international coalition, to exhaust the remedies of the United Nations in the inspections and to go to war as a matter of last resort.

Last resort means something to me. Obviously, it doesn’t mean something to this president. I think it means something to the American people.

And the great burden of the commander in chief is to be able to look into the eyes of any parent or loved one and say to them, “I did everything in my power to prevent the loss of your son and daughter, but we had to do what we had to do because of the imminency of the threat and the nature of our security.”

I don’t think the president passes that test.

GILBERT: But what about you? I mean, let me repeat the question. Do you have any degree of responsibility having voted to give him the authority to go to war?

KERRY: The president had the authority to do what he was going to do without the vote of the United States Congress. President Clinton went to Kosovo without the Congress. President Clinton went to Haiti without the Congress.

That’s why we have a War Powers Act. What we did was vote with one voice of the United States Congress for a process. And remember, until the Congress asserted itself, this president wasn’t intending to go to the United Nations. In fact, it was Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft and others and the Congress who got him to agree to a specific process. The process was to build a legitimate international coalition, go through the inspections process and go to war as a last resort.

He didn’t do it. My regret is not the vote. It was appropriate to stand up to Saddam Hussein. There was a right way to do it, a wrong way to do it.

My regret is this president chose the wrong way, rushed to war, is now spending billions of American taxpayers’ dollars that we didn’t need to spend this way had he built a legitimate coalition, and has put our troops at greater risk.

GILBERT: You cast the same vote, Senator Edwards, is that the way you see it?

EDWARDS: That’s the longest answer I ever heard to a yes or no question. The answer to your question is of course.

We all accept responsibility for what we did. I did what I believed was right. I took it very, very seriously.

I also said at the same time that it was critical when we got to this stage that America not be doing this alone. The president is doing it alone. And the result is what we see happening to our young men and women right now. We need to take a dramatic course. We will take a dramatic course.

And by the way, Senator Kerry just said he will beat George Bush; not so fast, John Kerry. We’re going to have an election here in Wisconsin this Tuesday. And we’ve got a whole group of primaries coming up. And I, for one, intend to fight with everything I’ve got for every one of those votes.

And back to your question. What we will do, when I’m president of the United States, is we will change this course. We will bring in the rest of the world; we will internationalize this effort. We will bring NATO in to provide security.

For example, we could put NATO today in charge of the Saudi Arabian border, the Iranian border, allow us to concentrate on the Sunni Triangle, where so much of the violence has been occurring.

We do need to change course. And ultimately, we have to get on a real timetable for the Iraqis to govern themselves and provide for their own security.

GOUSHA: Gloria?

BORGER: This is to Congressman Kucinich.

President Bush last week said that yes, he had expected to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that he was using the same intelligence that had been provided to President Clinton, also the same intelligence that had been used by the heads of other nations.

Do you believe that the president knowingly lied to the American people? And if so, why would he do that?

KUCINICH: I think that this administration knew full well that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, with al Qaeda’s role in 9/11, with the anthrax attack on this country, that Iraq had neither the capability nor the intention of attacking the United States, that Iraq was not trying to get uranium from Niger and that, in fact, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

This is the singular issue upon which this election will turn. And I, as the only one up here who voted against the war and voted against the Patriot Act, as the ranking Democrat on a subcommittee that has jurisdiction over national security, an investigative subcommittee, I never saw any evidence that suggested that there was a reason for this country to go to war against Iraq.

It was wrong to go to in; it’s wrong to stay in; it is time that we start talking about bringing our troops home, bringing those guardsmen, guardswomen, those reservists back home. Stop this war; get out of Iraq.

BORGER: So I take it the answer is yes that the president knowingly lied to the American people?

KUCINICH: The president lied to the American people.

BORGER: And why would he do that?

KUCINICH: Well, you know what, I can’t speak for the president. But I can speak as the next president of the United States…

(LAUGHTER)

.. to say that I intend to bring those troops home by going to the U.N. and giving up control of the oil, letting the U.N. handle that on an interim basis on behalf of the Iraqi people, letting the U.N. handle the contracts.

KUCINICH: The United States must renounce privatization. We have to ask the U.N. for help in developing a constitution and new elections in Iraq. We must pay for what we destroyed, pay for a U.N. peacekeeping mission, and provide reparations for innocent civilian non-combatants who lost their lives.

This is the plan to get out of Iraq. We can get out of Iraq, and I’ll lead the way.

GOUSHA: Lester?

HOLT: I’d actually like to let Reverend Sharpton follow up on that very question. Do you think that the president knowingly lied, and if so, why?

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, I think that if he did know he was lying and was lying, that’s even worse.

(LAUGHTER)

Clearly, he lied. Now if he is an unconscious liar, and doesn’t realize when he’s lying, then we’re really in trouble.

(LAUGHTER)

Because, absolutely, it was a lie. They said they knew the weapons were there. He had members of the administration say they knew where the weapons were. So we’re not just talking about something passing here. We’re talking about 500 lives. We’re talking about billions of dollars.

So I hope he knew he was lying, because if he didn’t, and just went in some kind of crazy, psychological breakdown, then we are really in trouble.

Clearly, you know, I’m a minister. Why do people lie? Because they’re liars. He lied in Florida; he’s lied several times. I believe he lied in Iraq.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

HOLT: And Reverend, you’ll recognize, obviously, calling someone a liar is a very serious charge. So it does lead to that question…

SHARPTON: I think he lied.

HOLT: So it does lead to the question: Why would he lie?

SHARPTON: Why do people lie? I mean, if in my judgment…

HOLT: I mean, knowing he would be in the position that you’re putting him in now, why would he…

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, Lester, let us look at the facts. The facts are that what they presented to the United Nations, what they presented to the world was not so. You can only assume that they had to know if they said that they knew where the weapons were, that they knew they didn’t know where they were.

And now to come back and tell us that Saddam Hussein is a cruel, despicable person, which we all agree, but we believed him when he told us he had them. Can you imagine me telling you that I believe somebody that you should never believe, and I brought 500 people to their deaths believing in a man that was as despicable as Hussein, and this is who we’re going to have over the troops’ lives in this country?

I think that this is absolutely outrageous. Why he lied? I think we should give him the rest of his retirement to figure that out and explain to us.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

GOUSHA: We’re going to have to take another break. We’ll continue with this debate in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(APPLAUSE)

GOUSHA: We have been talking about the war in Iraq and the aftermath of that. And also we want to spend some time on the threat of terrorism in this country.

This question goes to Governor Dean.

Governor, in a recent Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel poll, the people who we surveyed ranked their fears of terrorism dead last in what concerns them today. Doesn’t that mean the president has done his job pretty well?

DEAN: I don’t think so. I certainly don’t think so. The president gave away $3 trillion of our tax dollars to his pals who are financing his re-election, but he didn’t have enough money to inspect the cargo containers that come into this country every single day. Last September, ABC News smuggled uranium from Jakarta, Indonesia to Los Angeles and we didn’t find it.

He had $3 trillion of his tax dollars to give away — our tax dollars to give away to his friends, but he didn’t have enough money to buy the enriched uranium stocks, which we’re entitled to buy, left over from the former Soviet Union. Under the cooperative threat reduction, we’re supposed to be buying that so it doesn’t get into the hands of terrorists.

I think this president has done an exceptionally weak job in defending this nation against terrorism. And the poll in Wisconsin may say that the fear of terror isn’t so great, but I can tell you in New York it is very great indeed.

GOUSHA: If Osama bin Laden were captured today, would we be safer?

DEAN: If Osama bin Laden were captured?

GOUSHA: Yes.

DEAN: I think that’s important. I have said and I will say again that I don’t believe we’re any safer because Saddam has been captured. I think Saddam is a terrible person. I am glad we have him. But in the next two weeks, we lost another 30 Americans and had American airliners escorted into American air space with F-16s.

I do believe if we were able to capture Osama bin Laden, we would be safer. Al Qaeda is a very dangerous organization. It’s the organization that the president should have been spending his time on, instead of sending 135,000 troops and $160 billion to Iraq.

If we capture Osama, which is where our energy should be going, we have begun the process of dismantling al Qaeda. And I think that’s important.

GOUSHA: Governor, thank you.

Craig Gilbert?

GILBERT: Senator Kerry, President Bush a week ago on “Meet the Press” described himself as a war president. He said he’s got war on his mind as he considers these policies and decisions he has to make. If you were elected, would you see yourself as a war president?

KERRY: I’d see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an environmental president. And add them all together, you can’t be safe at home today unless you are also safe abroad. So I would see myself as a very different kind of global leader than George Bush. Let me be precise.

He has ignored North Korea for almost two years. I would never have cut off the negotiations of bilateral discussion with North Korea. I think he’s made the world less safe because of it.

He has ignored AIDS on a global basis until finally, this year, for political reasons, they’re starting to move. They still haven’t adopted the bill that we wrote three years which could’ve done something.

He’s ignored the cooperative threat reduction that Howard just referred to. We didn’t buy up the nuclear material we could have to make the world safer.

He walked away from the global warming treaty. He abandoned the work of 160 nations that worked for 10 years to try to make the world safer.

He didn’t continue the efforts in the Middle East with an envoy who stayed there and helped to push that process forward.

I think there is an enormous agenda for us in fighting an effective war on terror. And part of it is by building a stronger intelligence organization, law enforcement, but most importantly, the war on terror is not going to be completely won until we have the greatest level of cooperation we’ve ever had globally.

The worst thing this president does is his lack of cooperation with other countries.

So I will lead in a different way, and I will not just sit there and talk about the war. I’ll talk about all of the issues and provide solutions for America.

GOUSHA: Congressman Kucinich?

KUCINICH: As president, I will see myself as a peace president. And I think we have to change this metaphor of war in our society. We have to quit talking about addressing problems “a war on this, a war on that.” We already see this last war was not necessary.

I think we’re in a new era in the world where we can see the world as one, the world as interconnected and interdependent. The world’s waiting for a United States president who’s ready to create a sustainable structure for peace, and as president, I will do that.

I’ll work to eliminate all nuclear weapons and confirm the Non- Proliferation Treaty. I’ll sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the small-arms treaty, the land mine treaty.

America will join the International Criminal Court. I’ll sign the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty.

And furthermore, in getting rid of the Patriot Act, I’ll call upon Americans to bring forth the essential courage which we have in our hearts.

My presidency will be about the end of fear and the beginning of hope, about a new hope in America for a nation that can work with the nations of the world so that we can achieve security here at home.

(APPLAUSE)

GOUSHA: Gloria?

BORGER: This is a question I’m going to pose to Governor Dean and then to Senator Edwards. How do you believe that history will ultimately judge the war in Iraq?

DEAN: I think we don’t know the answer to that question yet. I think we — the first question is, does the means justify the end, or the ends justify the means? And I think it does not.

I do not think we were told the truth about why we went to war in Iraq, and I think that’s a huge problem.

Secondly, we don’t know what the outcome is. I did not support the war in Iraq because I didn’t think the president made a convincing case. And, of course, as time has gone along, it turns out he made no case whatsoever.

We now have 135,000 troops over there. We cannot pull out. While there was no al Qaeda in Iraq when we went, there almost certainly is now.

So the test is going to be first to see if we really can construct a democracy in Iraq, and second, to see if Iraq becomes a danger to the United States. For example, if we were to pull out our troops immediately — which nobody here suggested — but if we were to do that, al Qaeda were to develop a cell in Iraq as it did in Afghanistan, the president would have created a greater danger to America than we had under Saddam Hussein.

We simply don’t know how history will judge the war in Iraq, but we do know that we’re going to pay with a lot of lives and a lot of American money to find out.

BORGER: Senator Edwards, too early to say?

EDWARDS: I think it’s impossible to know. It depends entirely on what course of action we take. If I’m president and we do the things that need to be done to internationalize the effort, get on a real time table for the Iraqis governing themselves and providing their own security, there is at least the potential for a foothold for democracy — I think at a minimum, the presence of a pluralistic government that will move us in that direction.

But if I can go back just a minute to a question that you raised just a minute ago on the poll and the fact that the war on terrorism was dead last on the list of issues on the poll — and the president calling himself the war president. Why in the world would we let George Bush define the terrain of this debate?

What we know is the American people are enormously dissatisfied with the loss of millions of jobs, the fact that he has no health care plan of any kind. They’ve seen the damage being done by No Child Left Behind.

They know there are hundreds of thousands of young people who want to go to college and can’t go.

We should not allow him to define the terrain of this debate. We should define the terrain of this debate, and not just what’s wrong with what he’s done, but what will we do when we lead.

You know, we talk about No Child Left Behind and we talk about his tax cuts. What is it that we — what is our bigger, broader vision for America? That’s what I want to talk about: my positive, optimistic vision about what we can do for America when we have leadership, not just getting rid of George Bush.

He’s an enormous obstacle to progress. But that’s what he is, he’s an obstacle.

The end here, the end here is to really change this country, which we can do when we’re in the White House.

GOUSHA: Senator Edwards, thanks.

Let’s hear from another student from Marquette University.

Your name and your question, please?

QUESTION: My name is Quincy Cotten (ph), and I’m a senior here at Marquette.

You all say you value diversity. Could you please give us a specific example of your past work that demonstrated that commitment and how that will be reflected in your presidency?

GOUSHA: Senator Kerry, start with you.

KERRY: Well, it’s — first of all, Quincy, thank you for the question.

It has been reflected in every aspect of my life ranging from when I served in the military to when I served as the chief prosecutor in one of the largest district attorneys offices in America and I hired and reached out and exercised affirmative action to make sure that prosecutors were hired who reflected all of the minority base of our country.

I have supported affirmative action throughout my career in the United States Senate.

But let me give you the best — one of the examples I’m proudest of. I went to Harlem in 1992 or so at the request of a friend. I visited a building where 15 kids were working, all of them out of gangs, out of street — drop outs, at-risk programs, court diversion programs. And these kids were learning how to rebuild that building. They were getting a skill and getting their high school equivalency at the same time for a one-year program.

I was so impressed by it, I went back to Washington, I wrote it into the law. Today it’s in 43 states in our nation, in 173 cities. There are 25,000 graduates. They are full citizens, not inmates of a jail, not drug addicts. They have families; they’re paying taxes.

And there is a need to make certain that every child in America gets that kind of opportunity, and I will do that.

GOUSHA: Reverend Sharpton, you’ve talked a lot about this issue.

SHARPTON: Well, I’ve spent my whole life fighting this cause for diversity. I started at 13 years old as a youth director of SCLC Operation Bread Basket in New York, an organization Martin Luther King founded.

And to this day, that has been a focus in my life.

But I’ve also demonstrated it in my own career. I have people that are nonblack at key levels both in my campaign and in our organization, because you can’t preach one thing and live another.

I’ve also, against the wishes of fellow clergymen, stood up for the rights of gays and lesbians, which I consider also a question of morality and nondiscrimination.

I’ve also gone to jail fighting for the rights of Latinos.

So I don’t just support affirmative action, I help lead the fight. I don’t just support diversity, I’ve helped lead the fight.

I think that there are great civil rights issues of today. One is D.C. I don’t know how we’re in Iraq fighting for the right to vote for the people in the capital of Iraq, Baghdad, and the people of the District of Columbia still don’t have a federal right to vote in this country.

SHARPTON: And I think unless we make civil rights something that is normal and expected and unchallenged, we have to continue to fight.

The civil rights movement didn’t end in the ’60s. A lot of people want to put it in the past. We still have challenges and we must meet those challenges today, which is why I intend to go all the way to this convention with delegates to make sure this party does not sell out its commitment to civil rights and diversity.

GOUSHA: We’re going to talk about the cultural divide in America. We’ll continue on the Wisconsin presidential debate in just a moment.

(APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL

New Kerry Ad

The Kerry campaign launched a counter-ad against Bush today, titled “More Than Anyone.” The ad (according to a Kerry press release)

outlines the huge contributions Bush has taken from big oil and gas companies, big banks and investment firms and even Enron, and reveals the favors he gave these powerful special interests in return.

You may watch the ad here.

Final Numbers From Nevada

From the Nevada State Democratic Party website:

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS (99% Precincts Reporting)

Statewide
Kerry, John: 63%
Dean, Howard: 17%
Edwards, John: 10%
Kucinich, Dennis: 7%
Sharpton, Al: 1%
Uncommitted: 3%
Other: Less than 1%

Official Results of the Nevada Democratic Presidential Caucus will be certified the week of Feb. 16th.

Dean on Fox: I won't quit

Chris Wallace questioned Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday. Among the tidbits:
Dean said he did not get a lot of support from the Democratic Party machine.

He blamed the Washington media for bad coverage because he didn’t “bow down and kiss their ring.”

He vowed to fight on beyond Wisconsin, and said “no one has told me that” when asked about staffers who were going to leave the campaign Wednesday.

“Washington is sclerotic right now, both parties are wallowing in their special interests … Washington needs a good kick in the butt, and that’s what we’re going to give them.”

At one point, Wallace got into a bit of an exchange with Dean over who was to blame for the mistakes in Dean’s campaign.

Time: "How Well Did He Serve?"

Time Magazine has published a two-web-page profile on Bush’s Reserve service, titled How Well Did He Serve, which offers a relatively solid overview and is worth the read.

Final Numbers From D.C.

100% reporting:

Kerry: 47%
Sharpton: 20
Dean: 17

Early Results from Nevada

With more than half the precinct reporting, Kerry has racked up 70% of the votes in Nevada.

Kerry Wins Both Nevada And Washington D.C.

The Associated Press via the Christian Science Monitor reports Kerry the winner in both the Nevada and Washington D.C. caucuses.

No numbers yet:

Kerry, the only candidate to campaign in Nevada, easily outdistanced Howard Dean in second place, for a Valentine’s Day win that unexpectedly drew thousands of people to the party’s meetings and surprised officials who saw far less enthusiasm four years ago.

Kerry more than doubled his nearest opponent, Al Sharpton, in the D.C. race.

Voter Confusion in D.C.

WTOPNews.com reports about confusion among some voters and the possibility of fraud in today’s Washington D.C. caucuses. The current caucuses are the second primary held in the nation’s capital, the first did not account.

… [O]ne voter tells WTOP the Ward 3 polling precinct was lax in checking IDs. After he voted, the man said he went back through the line and was able to pick up a second ballot to take home with him. Bolden tells the Associated Press he’s skeptical of the claim, but he’ll look into it.

Other voters complain they’re having to vote more than once for their party’s nominee. The city held a non-binding primary last month to call attention to the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress.

It's the Cheese-Toast-O-Meter of Love

This week’s handicapping and news-linkage of the Demcratic nomination contest canbe found here.

Kerry Spurs Ambitious Fundraising

John Kerry is beginning his campaign to raise enough money to keep up with President Bush’s more than $100 million campaign war chest.

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) is setting in motion one of the most ambitious fundraising plans in Democratic Party history, fearful that without tens of millions of dollars’ worth of television advertising this spring, his candidacy will be overpowered by the $100 million-plus bank account of President Bush.

Expecting to lock up the Democratic nomination shortly, Kerry plans to spend much of next month traveling coast-to-coast, aggressively wooing the donors who sat on the sidelines in 2003 or who bankrolled Democratic rivals Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, aides said. The courtship is well underway — at least a dozen major fundraisers from other camps say they have agreed to work for Kerry — and the campaign collected $6.5 million in the 23 days after his Iowa victory.

Avoiding federal funding, Kerry is still limited to only $2000 donations from individuals, making it more difficult.

Official DC Democratic Caucuses Held Today

Washington Post reports on the D.C. Democratic Caucuses, which are being held today. The previous “primary” was non-binding and was simply a protest.

Unlike the nonbinding “beauty pageant” contest in January, in which Dean tallied 43 percent to Sharpton’s 34 percent, today’s results will determine how many delegates from the city each candidate will have at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July.

“The real political marbles are at stake [Saturday],” D.C. Democratic Party Chairman A. Scott Bolden said. “It’s a wide-open race, more today than on January 13.”

Polls close at 4 PM.

Dean Campaign Shows Signs Of Ending

Boston.com reports, that Dean’s campaign is showing signs that it is about to end.

His calendar for next week is not booked beyond Wednesday, when he plans to return home to Burlington, Vt.

His staff, some of whom are already planning to leave his headquarters for good on Wednesday, has not sought a new contract with the main air charter company that has been flying him around the country, aides say.

Dean himself said yesterday he does not know whether he will continue campaigning in a manner resembling the appearances that have filled his calendar for the past two years.

[. . .]

Turning serious, he told a group of reporters who joined him on a dairy farm tour: “I’m going to go back to Burlington and kind of regroup and figure out how to tackle 10 of the biggest states in the country at the same time.”

Yet moments later, when asked if he would remain an official candidate heading into the March 2 “Super Tuesday” voting in those 10 states, Dean said, “I don’t know the answer to that question yet.”

In response to a similar question, he replied, “We haven’t had any discussions about that. We’re not going to for a while. A lot of it depends on whether we win Wisconsin or not.”

According to Boston.com, a sense of pessimism has begun to permeate the campaign. Staffers are talking openly about vacation plans and the pros and cons of working on other campaigns.

Kerry Has Huge Lead In Wisconsin Poll

The latest American Research Group Wisconsin poll shows Kerry with a 37% lead over his Democratic rivals:

Kerry 53%
Edwards 16%
Dean 11%
Kucinich 2%
Sharpton 2%
Undecided 16%
Clark NI

Kerry also leads in favorability, with 65% of likely Democratic primary voters saying they have a favorable opinion of Kerry. Kerry’s favorable rating is up from 53% on February 6.

The poll was conducted February 11 and 12. The results are based 600 completed telephone interviews among a statewide random sample of registered voters in Wisconsin saying they will definitely vote in the Democratic presidential preference primary on February 17, 2004. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4%.

ABC Poll: Kerry Beats Bush By 9 Points

See all the numbers here, at PollingReport’s WH2004 polling page. The bottom line for this question, If the 2004 presidential election were being held today, would you vote for George W. Bush, the Republican, or for John Kerry, the Democrat?:

• Kerry 52%
• Bush 43%

10 Largest Q4 Bush Donors

Bush raised $47 million in the fourth quarter of 2003, and Buying of the President has a breakdown of the 10 biggest “bundled” donors for the quarter:

• Pricewaterhouse Coopers ($122,750)
• MBNA Corp. ($93,750)
• Deloitte & Touche LLP ($73,525)
• Southern Co. ($67,147)
• Goldman Sachs Group ($65,750)
• Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. ($58,904)
• United Services Automobile Association Group ($57,775)
• Rooney Holdings/Rooney Brothers ($56,000)
• UBS AG Inc. ($54,850)

AFL-CIO To Endorse Kerry

So reports the AP / Miami Herald, here, although nothing is certain in this world:

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney scheduled a meeting of the federation’s general board for next Thursday “to officially endorse” Kerry, according to the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

AFL-CIO spokeswoman Lane Windham confirmed that Sweeney will recommend the move. “But we’re a democratic organization and it is ultimately up to the general board to decide who they will endorse,” said spokeswoman Lane Windham.

Don’t expect the general board to run counter to Sweeney.

So Begins the Vice-Presidential Mating Dance

I hoped to never read “John Edwards,” “John Kerry,” “Bill Richardson” and “mating” in the same story … but sometimes in life things just don’t go your way. The New York Times considers Dem Veep candidates here. One item of note: You may not have seen the last of Dick Gephardt just yet …

Bush to meet 9/11 Panel

(cross posted at The Temporal Globe)

WASHINGTON - The White House said Friday that President Bush had agreed to meet privately with members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to answer their questions but declined to give public testimony.

The commission chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, had pressed the White House for a public discussion of intelligence he received prior to the attacks.

The White House said it did not feel public testimony would be needed.

“While the (commission) chair and vice chair have suggested the possibility of a public session at a later time, we believe the president can provide all the requested information in the private meeting, and there is no need for any additional testimony,” the White House said in a statement.

NYT

CBS Pulls Medicare Ad Pending Review

This is interesting, and I actually saw this ad in Chicago earlier this week. It was notable to me only for its terrible acting. The report comes via RockyMountTelegram:

CBS has stopped running the Bush administration’s publicly funded ad for the new Medicare prescription drug law, pending a review of its content by congressional investigators.

The 30-second ad, titled “Same Medicare. More Benefits,” has prompted strong criticism from Democratic lawmakers and a range of interest groups who say it is a barely disguised commercial for President Bush’s re-election campaign.

Democrats asked the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, to examine whether the administration should be using taxpayer money to air the commercial. And several lawmakers have been lobbying network executives to get them to yank the ad, pending the GAO review.

Kerry Says He's Ready for GOP Onslaught

And an onslaught it will be. All the more reason for Kerry to begin setting expectations for the attacks (as he’s doing here). This via ABC News:

John Kerry, attacked by President Bush’s campaign as a pretend foe of the special interests, said Friday he is “ready to fight back” in the battle for the White House. Former candidate Wesley Clark offered to help the front-runner oust the Republican incumbent.

“These guys will want to try to do everything to change the subject,” the Democratic presidential front-runner said in an interview on the Don Imus radio program.

“But the subject is 3 million jobs lost in the last few years, it’s health care that’s completely unaffordable and unreachable for tens of millions of Americans, it’s kids who are not getting a decent education all across America.”

UK Sun Story: Kerry "chased" 24-year-old Alex Polier for his campaign

This is a duplicate of a post from the nikita demosthenes website.

From today’s UK Sun:

- - - - - - -

PRESIDENTIAL hopeful John Kerry was branded a “sleazeball” last night by the parents of a young woman he allegedly tried to woo.

Alex Polier, 24, was named as the woman at the centre of a scandal that threatens to damage Democrat Kerry’s bid for the White House.

Her mother Donna claims Kerry, 60 — dubbed the new JFK — once chased Alex to be on his campaign team and was “after her”.

There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father Terry, 56, said: “I think he’s a sleazeball. I did kind of wonder if my daughter didn’t get that kind of feeling herself.

- - - - - - -

Journalist Alex was in Kenya last night refusing to comment.

- - - - - - -

Via the Drudge Report.

Bush Orders All Of His Vietnam-Era Records Released

Via Channel3000:

Countering attacks on his service in the Air National Guard, President George W. Bush on Friday ordered the release of all of his Vietnam-era military records.

Hundreds of pages of documents detailed Bush’s service in the Guard in Texas and his temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign there in the early 1970s.

Democrats have questioned whether Bush ever showed up for duty in Alabama. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe has said Bush was “AWOL” — absent without leave — and called him “a deserter.” McAuliffe said commanders in Alabama have no recollection of the president serving there.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the president wanted everything made public.

Dirty Politics

(CNN) — Despite calls to move away from negative attacks in the 2004 presidential campaign season, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and campaign officials for Democratic hopeful John Kerry traded barbs, each accusing the other of dirty politics.

Gillespie accused Democrats on Thursday night of “using some of the most vitriolic rhetoric in the history of presidential politics,” then called his Democratic counterpart the “John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination.”

His speech in Reno, Nevada, focused on Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination.

“We highlight policies, and note Senator Kerry’s long Senate record. They accuse the president of desertion — a military crime punishable by death — as the Clark campaign did, or accuse the president of being AWOL, which is a felony, punishable by imprisonment, as DNC chair Terry McAuliffe has done,” Gillespie said. “Terry McAuliffe has become the John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination.”

Questions about Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard recently intensified after McAuliffe said Bush was absent without leave from his Guard service from May 1972 to May 1973 when he was transferred from Texas to Alabama so he could work on a Senate political campaign.

The White House has fought back, releasing payroll records it says prove Bush fulfilled his requirements and was honorably discharged. Most recently, the White House released a document showing that Bush received a dental exam at the Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery, Alabama on January 6, 1973.

“It’s only February and they have made clear they intend to run the dirtiest campaign in modern presidential politics. This is because they don’t want a debate on the issues, and they don’t want to run on Senator Kerry’s record,” Gillespie said.

In response to Gillespie’s speech, James Bilbray and Terry Care, co-chairs of Kerry’s Nevada campaign, issued a statement calling Gillespie the president’s “favorite attack dog” who was spreading “false, nasty personal charges.”

They urged Bush to “call off his right-wing slime machine.”

“This is the dirtiest, most ruthlessly political White House since Richard Nixon, and they’re desperate to hide the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression,” the statement said.

Kerry Gets Clark, Officially

Clark appeared with Kerry in Wisconsin, the scene of the next major Democratic contest, hailing him as “the next president of the United States.”

Clark, a retired Army general, paid tribute to Kerry’s military service in the Vietnam War and said he would do everything he could to help the senator from Massachusetts win the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House.

“I want to say, sir, request permission to come aboard; the Army’s here,” a smiling Clark told Kerry, a decorated former Navy officer.

CNN

Before Wisconsin...

There’s D.C. and Nevada, tomorrow.

Although Democratic Party chief Terry McAuliffe says Nevada is a key state, there has been virtually no campaigning there. The only candidate making an appearance is John Kerry, who will attend a rally tonight.

Kerry is said to be favoried in both caucuses, but there have been no polls from either location.

Nevada has 24 pledged delegates at stake, D.C. has 16.

Kerry On Imus: A First Take

Wonkette listened and has a brief summary (link via the esteemed Dr. Reynolds).

“There’s nothing to report, thre’s nothing to talk about, I’m not going to talk about it,” adding, “The answer is no.”

Clark To Officially Endorse Kerry Today In WI

… and he will do so in Madison (via The Milwaukee Channel).

Bush Hits Kerry With "Email Attack Video"

Or so say the New York Post in this story: PREZ E-BLITZ TAKES 1ST BYTE OUT OF KERRY.

President Bush’s campaign last night fired its opening shot against Democratic front-runner John Kerry — an e-mail attack video that paints him as an “unprincipled” toady to special interests.

The video — sent to 6 million Bush fans and posted on Bush’s campaign Web site — shows Kerry’s name being typed into an Internet search engine and goes to what looks like Kerry’s own campaign Web site.

Kerry is heard thundering against “special interests,” but then the video shows links to news reports of how Kerry raised $640,000 in campaign cash from lobbyists, more than any other U.S. senator.

“Oooh, for what?” asks the female narrator and the video switches to an Associated Press story on Kerry supporting nominations of donors plus criticism from watchdog groups.

Team Bush has been quietly organizing on the Internet and plans to use it as a major campaign tool — its 6 million e-mail addresses are 10 times what supposed ‘Net master Howard Dean has.

Ladies and gents, spam, courtesy the GOP.

Kerry Faces Big Test In Internet Storm About Mystery Woman

The “official” take is now hitting the wires. And no wonder it’s raining in here … we’re in the middle of an “Internet storm.” This from the Telegraph:

The campaign of Senator John Kerry, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, faced its first media storm last night after a Right-wing website alleged that he had asked a woman to leave the country for personal reasons.

Mr Kerry’s campaign did not respond to the allegation on the Drudge Report, a news tipster, most famous for disclosing that Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. When contacted, the Kerry campaign had no immediate comment.

But Democratic sources blamed the allegation on Republican “dirty tricks”. They said it marked the long-expected start of a campaign from the Right to smear the frontrunner and damage his chances of fighting a strong campaign against President George W Bush.

Sharpton and Kucinich Sticking It Out

AP, via MSNBC.com, reports:

As better-financed and more popular candidates drop out of the Democratic presidential race one after the other, two constants remain: Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton.

Both are winless after more than a dozen state contests, holding in single digits in the polls, with no expectation of doing better down the road. But each professes a unique sense of purpose and vows to stay in until the end.

For Kucinich, it’s to shine a light on his opposition to the Iraq war and his plan to bring U.S. troops home.

“It is at the convention where I will win the nomination, based on the emergence of Iraq as the defining issue,” the Ohio congressman predicted last week.

Sharpton, the only black candidate remaining, wants to help tailor the party platform to reflect minority concerns.

Clark Plans To Endorse Kerry

The Associated Press reports, Clark plans to endorse Kerry.

Kerry Fights Off Media Probe of Recent Alleged Infidelity

This is a duplicate of a post on the nikita demosthenes website.

This is a breaking news item from the Drudge Report:

- - - - - - -

A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

- - - - - - -

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: “Kerry will implode over an intern issue.” [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision not to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

- - - - - - -

Kerry Fights A Two-Front War

This WaPo article offers an interesting analysis of the two-front battle Kerry now fights: keeping his primary winning streak going on one hand, while opening an offensive against the Bush campaign on the other. Link via ED.

The Big Tent Of Love

Here the CSM opines on how this primary season has the Democratic Party on pace for a record in reaching a fast and friendly unity.

With Sen. John Kerry now appearing all but invincible in his quest for the Democratic nomination, this primary battle is shaping up as one of the quickest - and least divisive - in modern history.

What does this mean? Well, from my perspective, a less entertaining next two months, and a more prolonged and frustrating next seven months. But does it make the Democratic candidate any more electable? Answer in the comments …

Edwards Woos Worried Workers in Wisconsin

Edwards is pounding the stump in Wisconsin, focusing on matters of economy and the working middle class in particular. Link via ED / Reuters.

Dean Criticizes Kerry Over Campaign Attack Ads

Via ED / Reuters:

Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean accused his rival John Kerry on Wednesday of backing the kind of “politically corrupt fund-raising” that the former Vermont governor said had paid for attack ads against him.

Photo of John Kerry with Jane Fonda at Anti-War Protest

This is a duplicate of the original post from the nikita demosthenes website.

This photo - apparently showing John Kerry at a 1970 anti-war protest with Jane Fonda in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania - has been posted by NewsMax:

Jane Fonda and John Kerry at an anti-war rally in Valley Forge, Pa.

NewsMax provides this background information on the photo:

- - - - - - -

A photo seemingly showing Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry protesting the Vietnam War with anti-American actress “Hanoi Jane” Fonda - the photo Dems fear most - exists, and has been obtained by NewsMax.com.

On Labor Day weekend 1970, Kerry - then a rising star with Vietnam Veteran Against the War - teamed up with Fonda as the two headlined an ugly anti-war in rally in Valley Forge, Pa., railing against U.S. policy in Southeast Asia from the back of the same flatbed truck.

The photo shows “Hanoi Jane” listening raptly as speakers denounced American soldiers for committing “genocide” in Vietnam and accusing the U.S. of “international racism.”

Three rows behind ‘Hanoi Jane” sits a man who bears a striking resemblance to the Democratic presidential front-runner.

According to Corbis Images, which owns the image, the photo was taken at the same 1970 Valley Forge protest that turned Sen. Kerry into an anti-war star.

Douglas Brinkley’s biography “Tour of Duty” chronicles Kerry’s exploits at Valley Forge, where he reportedly followed Fonda onto the back of that pick-up truck to deliver his own diatribe against the war in Vietnam.

- - - - - - -

Bush and I were lieutenants

Letter to the Editor, Washington Times

George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris and Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). While we were not part of the same social circle outside the base, we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, and proudly wore the same squadron patch.
It is quite frustrating to hear the daily cacophony from the left and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, et al., about Lt. Bush escaping his military responsibilities by hiding in the Texas ANG. In the Air Guard during the Vietnam War, you were always subject to call-up, as many Air National Guardsmen are finding out today. If the 111th FIS and Lt. Bush did not go to Vietnam, blame President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, not lowly Lt. Bush. They deliberately avoided use of the Guard and Reserves for domestic political calculations, knowing that a draftee only stirred up the concerns of one family, while a call-up got a whole community’s attention.

The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate 111th FIS, Texas ANG, and the airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending the continental United States from Soviet nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop bombs and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program using ANG volunteer pilots in F-102s (called Palace Alert) was scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire about this program but was advised by an ANG supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not have the desired experience (500 hours) at the time and that the program was winding down and not accepting more volunteers.
If you check the 111th FIS records of 1970-72 and any other ANG squadron, you will find other pilots excused for career obligations and conflicts. The Bush excusal in 1972 was further facilitated by a change in the unit’s mission, from an operational fighter squadron to a training squadron with a new airplane, the F-101, which required that more pilots be available for full-time instructor duty rather than part-time traditional reservists with outside employment.
The winding down of the Vietnam War in 1971 provided a flood of exiting active-duty pilots for these instructor jobs, making part-timers like Lt. Bush and me somewhat superfluous. There was a huge glut of pilots in the Air Force in 1972, and with no cockpits available to put them in, many were shoved into nonflying desk jobs. Any pilot could have left the Air Force or the Air Guard with ease after 1972 before his commitment was up because there just wasn’t room for all of them anymore.
Sadly, few of today’s partisan pundits know anything about the environment of service in the Reserves in the 1970s. The image of a reservist at that time is of one who joined, went off for six months’ basic training, then came back and drilled weekly or monthly at home, with two weeks of “summer camp.” With the knowledge that Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara were not going to call out the Reserves, it did become a place of refuge for many wanting to avoid Vietnam.
There was one big exception to this abusive use of the Guard to avoid the draft, and that was for those who wanted to fly, as pilots or crew members. Because of the training required, signing up for this duty meant up to 2½ years of active duty for training alone, plus a high probability of mobilization. A fighter-pilot candidate selected by the Guard (such as Lt. Bush and me) would be spending the next two years on active duty going through basic training (six weeks), flight training (one year), survival training (two weeks) and combat crew training for his aircraft (six to nine months), followed by local checkout (up to three more months) before he was even deemed combat-ready. Because the draft was just two years, you sure weren’t getting out of duty being an Air Guard pilot. If the unit to which you were going back was an F-100, you were mobilized for Vietnam. Avoiding service? Yeah, tell that to those guys.
The Bush critics do not comprehend the dangers of fighter aviation at any time or place, in Vietnam or at home, when they say other such pilots were risking their lives or even dying while Lt. Bush was in Texas. Our Texas ANG unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt. Bush’s tenure, with fatalities. Just strapping on one of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one’s life.
Critics such as Mr. Kerry (who served in Vietnam, you know), Terry McAuliffe and Michael Moore (neither of whom served anywhere) say Lt. Bush abandoned his assignment as a jet fighter pilot without explanation or authorization and was AWOL from the Alabama Air Guard.
Well, as for abandoning his assignment, this is untrue. Lt. Bush was excused for a period to take employment in Florida for a congressman and later in Alabama for a Senate campaign.
Excusals for employment were common then and are now in the Air Guard, as pilots frequently are in career transitions, and most commanders (as I later was) are flexible in letting their charges take care of career affairs until they return or transfer to another unit near their new employment. Sometimes they will transfer temporarily to another unit to keep them on the active list until they can return home. The receiving unit often has little use for a transitory member, especially in a high-skills category like a pilot, because those slots usually are filled and, if not filled, would require extensive conversion training of up to six months, an unlikely option for a temporary hire.
As a commander, I would put such “visitors” in some minor administrative post until they went back home. There even were a few instances when I was unaware that they were on my roster because the paperwork often lagged. Today, I can’t even recall their names. If a Lt. Bush came into my unit to “pull drills” for a couple of months, I wouldn’t be too involved with him because I would have a lot more important things on my table keeping the unit combat ready.
Another frequent charge is that, as a member of the Texas ANG, Lt. Bush twice ignored or disobeyed lawful orders, first by refusing to report for a required physical in the year when drug testing first became part of the exam, and second by failing to report for duty at the disciplinary unit in Colorado to which he had been ordered. Well, here are the facts:
First, there is no instance of Lt. Bush disobeying lawful orders in reporting for a physical, as none would be given. Pilots are scheduled for their annual flight physicals in their birth month during that month’s weekend drill assembly — the only time the clinic is open. In the Reserves, it is not uncommon to miss this deadline by a month or so for a variety of reasons: The clinic is closed that month for special training; the individual is out of town on civilian business; etc.
If so, the pilot is grounded temporarily until he completes the physical. Also, the formal drug testing program was not instituted by the Air Force until the 1980s and is done randomly by lot, not as a special part of a flight physical, when one easily could abstain from drug use because of its date certain. Blood work is done, but to ensure a healthy pilot, not confront a drug user.
Second, there was no such thing as a “disciplinary unit in Colorado” to which Lt. Bush had been ordered. The Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver is a repository of the paperwork for those no longer assigned to a specific unit, such as retirees and transferees. Mine is there now, so I guess I’m “being disciplined.” These “disciplinary units” just don’t exist. Any discipline, if required, is handled within the local squadron, group or wing, administratively or judicially. Had there been such an infraction or court-martial action, there would be a record and a reflection in Lt. Bush’s performance review and personnel folder. None exists, as was confirmed in The Washington Post in 2000.
Finally, the Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a terrible slander on those who served in the Guard, then and now. My Guard career parallels Lt. Bush’s, except that I stayed on for 33 years. As a guardsman, I even got to serve in two campaigns. In the Cold War, the air defense of the United States was borne primarily by the Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of others. Six of those with whom I served in those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in crashes flying air-defense missions.
While most of America was sleeping and Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mexico. We were the pathfinders in showing that the Guard and Reserves could become reliable members of the first team in the total force, so proudly evidenced today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because back at the nadir of Guard fortunes in the early ’70s, a lot of volunteer guardsman showed they were ready and able to accept the responsibilities of soldier and citizen — then and now. Lt. Bush was a kid whose congressman father encouraged him to serve in the Air National Guard. We served proudly in the Guard. Would that Mr. Kerry encourage his children and the children of his colleague senators and congressmen to serve now in the Guard.
In the fighter-pilot world, we have a phrase we use when things are starting to get out of hand and it’s time to stop and reset before disaster strikes. We say, “Knock it off.” So, Mr. Kerry and your friends who want to slander the Guard: Knock it off.

COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired)
U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard
Herndon, Va.5

Live from Fairfax...

BrendanLoy.com Washington & Virginia Correspondent Dane Lindberg reports: “Kerry did a great job of energizing and controlling a crowd that was already full of energy. … Kerry has a terrific amount of energy and momentum heading into Super Tuesday, and you really felt that momentum and energy tonight.” He also notes the crowd was “less well-dressed” that at the Lieberman event he attended last week. Heh. Much more here.

Wesley Clark Offically Out

Wes Clark has officially dropped out of the race for President, citing the ‘momentum’ of John Kerry in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark , who finished third in both Tennessee and Virginia, will announce his withdrawal Wednesday afternoon in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas.

Via CNN

How accurate are the early exits?

[Cross-posted at BrendanLoy.com]

So how accurate are those early exit-poll numbers that The Corner has been reporting these last three Tuesdays?

Let’s take a look at the results (primaries only, not caucuses), comparing the initial numbers to the “final” CNN results. (I don’t have the energy to go looking for the real “final” numbers from all the state election agencies… CNN’s should be close enough for my purposes.)

New Hampshire:
Exit polls: Kerry 36, Dean 31, Edwards 12, Clark 12, Lieberman 7
Actual votes: Kerry 39, Dean 26, Clark 13, Edwards 9, Lieberman 9

Arizona:
Exit polls: Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13
Actual votes: Kerry 43, Clark 27, Dean 14

Missouri:
Exit polls: Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10
Actual votes: Kerry 51, Edwards 25, Dean 9

South Carolina:
Exit polls: Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10
Actual votes: Edwards 45, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10

Oklahoma:
Exit polls: Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28
Actual votes: Clark 30, Edwards 30, Kerry 27

Delaware:
Exit polls: Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11
Actual votes: Kerry 50, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11, Dean 10

Tennessee:
Exit polls: Kerry 46, Edwards 28, Clark 15, Dean 7
Actual votes (96% in): Kerry 41, Edwards 27, Clark 23, Dean 4

Virginia:
Exit polls: Kerry 48, Edwards 25, Clark 11, Dean 8
Actual votes (99% in): Kerry 52, Edwards 27, Clark 9, Dean 7

Overall, the early exits have provided a pretty darn accurate picture of what the actual results will look like. The only states with major discrepancies have been New Hampshire (the exits showed Kerry and Dean much closer than they were, 5 points apart instead of 13) and Tennessee (where Clark is doing 8 points better than the polls showed).

Otherwise, the candidate’s actual total has been within 3 percentage points of the predicted total in every case, except Dean in Delaware (4 points off) and Kerry in Virginia (4 points off, tentatively). In most cases, the exit polls have been even more accurate than that.

Bottom line, from this limited sample, it seems that if the early exit-poll data on predicted margins of victory should be looked as having a 6- or 7-point margin for error… though always with some caveats.

Interesting.

CNN: Clark Quits The Race

Via CNN TV … no link as of yet.

Edwards: it's a two-man race

John Edwards on Larry King Live: “It looks like we did what we needed to do tonight.” Now Wisconsin is critical… “A very good head-to-head race between Senator Kerry and myself. … Going into March, it looks like it’s narrowed itself down into a two-person race now, and we’re excited about our chances.”

“[Kerry]’s in front, and I’m the underdog, and I’m fighting. … This is going to go on for many weeks to come. We’ve got the resources and the money. … We’ve had somebody who was already the front-runner who clearly isn’t anymore, and it could easily happen again.”

More here.

Updated Results for Both States

VA: 95% reporting
Kerry 51%
Edwards 27%
Clark 9%
Other 13%

Tenn: 42% reporting
Kerry 41%
Edwards 26%
Clark 24%
Other 10%

Open Discussion: Is Primary Season Over Before it's Over?

Do the other candidates even stand a chance or do we have our nominee already? How soon will the other candidates drop out of the race?

Open thread - play nice as the comments will be monitored.

A Double for Kerry

Both CNN and Fox and predicting Kerry will be the Tennessee winner.

Edwards Takes Second in VA

50 % reporting:

Kerry 50%
Edwards 27
Clark 11
Dean 5

CNN, Fox Give VA to Kerry

Sen. John Kerry will win the Virginia Democratic primary, CNN projects
Fox News Projects: Kerry Wins Virginia

Only a front page breaking news line for now.

Flashback: Kerry on Meet The Press 8/31/03

Last August seems like ages ago in this Democratic primary. Now that John Kerry is the presumptive Democratic nominee, and now that inaccuracies in intelligence estimates about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are likely to be a major campaign issue, it’s worth revisiting what Kerry had to say to Tim Russert last August about the issue:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you voted for a resolution in October of 2002 authorizing the president to go to war in Iraq, but you’ve also been critical of his policy. . . . You went to New Hampshire in June, and Ron Fournier of the Associated Press was there and captured your comments, and let me share them with you and our viewers:

”‘He misled every one of us,’ Kerry said. ‘That’s one reason why I’m running.’ Kerry said Bush made his case for war based on at least two pieces of U.S. intelligence that now appear to be wrong, that Iraq sought nuclear material from Africa, and that Saddam’s regime had aerial weapons capable of attacking the United States with biological material. … ‘I will not let him off the hook throughout this campaign with respect to America’s credibility and credibility to me because, if he lied, he lied to me personally.’”

That doesn’t sound like someone who’s supporting the war in Iraq.

SEN. KERRY: Wrong. I supported the notion that we must as a country hold Saddam Hussein accountable for what he was doing. I supported it under President Clinton. In 1998, I suggested that President Clinton should go to the United Nations and raise the issue of Saddam Hussein’s non-compliance in the international arena. It would have been inconsistent for me, with President Bush, not to suggest that the security issue of 1998, after we knew we had been finding weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, after we knew we had been destroying them, after we knew he still had more and we left the country without inspectors for four years, it would have been irresponsible not to stand up and say, “We need to hold him accountable.”

But I warned all along, Tim . . . [i]t was right to have a threat of force because it’s only the threat of force that got Hans Blix and the inspectors back in the country. The difference is, I would have planned, I would have been patient, I would have worked with the United Nations. I would have exhausted the remedies which were available to us. . . I’m running because I’m angry at the mismanagement of how we worked with our colleagues in the world and how we, in fact, have conducted the war. . . .

MR. RUSSERT: No regret over your vote?

SEN. KERRY: My regret is that the president of the United States didn’t do what he said he would do. Look, he told us that he was going to-that we needed to do this because they had the capacity to deploy weapons in 45 minutes. Not true now. He told us that he would go as a matter of last resort. Not true. He told us that he was going to build a real international coalition. Not true. They told us that there were unmanned vehicles that were able to fly. They even showed photographs. Not true. We haven’t found them anyway.

MR. RUSSERT: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, Senator. . . . I went back and re-read your speech on the floor of the Senate October 9, and I want to share that with you and our viewers… because you repeated many of exactly the same claims and concerns that President Bush did.

SEN. KERRY: Correct.

MR. RUSSERT: Let’s watch.

(Videotape, October 9, 2002):

SEN. KERRY: Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing weaponizing of a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles, such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives which would bring them to the United States itself.

In addition, we know they are developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents.

According to the CIA’s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that they are seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop them.

In the wake of September 11, who among us can say with any certainty to anybody that the weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater, a nuclear weapon?

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Unmanned aerial vehicles…

SEN. KERRY: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: …a nuclear threat. Those are exactly the things that you suggested in New Hampshire President Bush had lied to you about.

SEN. KERRY: That’s precisely the point. That is exactly the point I’m making. We were given this information by our intelligence community. Now, either it was stretched politically in the many visits of Dick Cheney to the CIA and the way in which they created a client relationship, but the information we were given, built on top of the seven and a half years of what we knew he was doing, completely justified the notion that you had to respond to give the president the right to put inspectors in. . . .

MR. RUSSERT: But you had access to the intelligence. You had access to the national intelligence estimate…

SEN. KERRY: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: …which said the CIA had a low confidence in Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction or transferring the terrorists. And the State Department, which is included in the national intelligence estimate, said there was not a compelling case, that he reconstituted his nuclear program.

SEN. KERRY: I didn’t base it on the nuclear, but the most important and compelling rationale were the lack of inspections and the non-compliance of Saddam Hussein. Even Hans Blix at the United Nations said he is not in compliance.

MR. RUSSERT: Were you misled by the intelligence agencies? Were you duped?

SEN. KERRY: No, we weren’t-I don’t know whether we were lied to, I don’t know whether they had the most colossal intelligence failure in history, I don’t know if the politics of the White House drove them to exaggerate. The bottom line is that we voted on the basis of information that was given to us, that has since then been proven to be incorrect. The bottom line is also, Tim, the president had an obligation to put the United States in the strongest position possible. I warned the president in January, “Mr. President, do not rush to war. Take the time to build the coalition. Take the time to exhaust the remedies.” And when he made the decision, I said, “I would have preferred that we took further time to do further diplomacy.” I think we should have.

MR. RUSSERT: What Democrats are saying is that there’s a difference in tone from John Kerry, different emphasis. Back last fall, when the war was popular, he was for it. Now that Howard Dean is surging, he’s a little bit more ambivalent. This is what Ron Brownstein reported you saying in January, telling a questioner, “If you don’t believe Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn’t vote for me.” . . .

SEN. KERRY: I don’t wish I’d been a naysayer from the start. I did the right thing. My vote was a vote for the security of the United States of America based in the information we were given. Tim, for seven and a half years, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we found them. We destroyed them. We knew they were there. We also knew there were some there that we hadn’t finished destroying, at which point the inspections stopped. For four years you had no inspections. During that time, we are told by our intelligence community and by the president the following things are happening: he’s reconstituting, he’s building. We were even shown photographs: “Here’s what’s happening in this building, Senator.”

MR. RUSSERT: Where are they?

SEN. KERRY: That’s exactly correct. Now, we may find them in the next months. I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that it was right to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, absolutely correct. And anybody who doesn’t believe it wasn’t correct ought to go dig around in those graves or even make a judgment about what would happen if you left Saddam Hussein alone to do this.

John Kerry, in his own words (emphasis added). Draw your own conclusions.

Exit Polls in VA and TN

This exit poll was conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International.

WHO VOTED: Three-fourths of voters in the two states were 45 or older and more women than men voted in each state. About a third of the voters in Virginia were black and a fifth of the voters in Tennessee were black.

FINANCIAL SITUATION: Almost half of the voters in Tennessee said their financial situations are worse now than four years ago, while a third said that in Virginia.

POLITICAL PARTY: A fifth of voters in Tennessee and slightly more in Virginia described themselves as political independents. Seven in 10 Tennessee voters said they were Democrats and about three-fourths of Virginia voters said they were Democrats.

IDEOLOGY: More than six in 10 Tennessee voters described themselves as moderate or conservative, while six in 10 Virginia voters said they were moderate or conservative.

TIME OF DECISION: Half in Tennessee said they made their minds up in the last week, including about three in 10 who said they decided in the last three days. Almost as many, just under half of Virginia voters, said they made their minds up in the last week, including about a fourth of all voters who said they decided in the last three days.

ANGER AT BUSH: More than eight in 10 voters in both Tennessee and Virginia said they were either angry or dissatisfied with President Bush.

WAR IN IRAQ: Just over two-thirds of the voters in Tennessee and Virginia said they disapprove of the war in Iraq

TOP ISSUES: The big issues in Tennessee and Virginia were the economy and jobs, picked by almost four in 10 voters in Tennessee as the most important issue and a third in Virginia, followed in both states by health care and the war in Iraq.

CANDIDATE QUALITIES: The most important quality for Democratic primary voters in Tennessee and Virginia was having a candidate who can defeat Bush, picked by almost three in 10. Other important qualities for Tennessee and Virginia voters were having a candidate who stands up for what he believes and a candidate who cares about people like them.

8 in 10 Democrat voters are mad at Bush? Go figure.

Clark to drop out?

Daily Kos reports that “a Clark fundraiser in Houston tomorrow has been cancelled. Looks like he’ll be exiting the race soon.” Hat tip to Wonkette, who observes that “the Clark website has no events beyond tonight’s ‘Primary Party.’”

[Cross-posted here. Analysis here.]

"Spontaneous" Campaigning

The Associated Press, via MSNBC.com, files an article about President Bush’s new campaign strategy. One where “spontaneous” visits to stores and restaurants occur after a presidential speech, on the way to the airport. The trips are, of course, not really spontaneous and are in fact planned well ahead of time.

It appears to be part of President Bush’s campaign strategy of appealing to local media.

Bush Releases Payroll Records

CNN

The White House released payroll records Tuesday it said demonstrate that President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s, hoping to defuse lingering election-year questions about the president’s service.

“These documents make it very clear that the president of the United States fulfilled his duties,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “When you serve, you are paid for that service, and these documents outline the day he was paid.”

However, it wasn’t enough for most of the reporters present at the White House briefing, who apparenty want more proof.

You can view the documents here [Pdf file].

Todays Dish on the Candidates.

Howard Kurtz of WaPo gives a selective detailed history of Kerry’s career.

The chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, Randall A. Button, gives his thoughts on the two southern candidates.

And the latest from AP following the candidates.

Kurtz

“Between 1985 and 1990, Kerry’s first five years in the Senate from Massachusetts, he pocketed annual amounts slightly under the limits for speaking fees set by Congress. Unlike many colleagues, he donated a speaking fee to charity only once, according to annual financial disclosure reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

“One of the companies to pay Kerry $1,000 for a speech in 1987, Miami-based Metalbanc, was later indicted, along with two executives, on charges it helped the Cali drug cartel in Colombia launder money in the United States. The charges eventually were dropped because the firm was defunct.

“At the time of the 1987 speech to Metalbanc, Kerry was chairman of the Senate subcommittee that investigated drug trafficking and money laundering.

“Kerry, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he didn’t learn about the drug connection to the company or its executives, who also gave him political donations, until The Boston Globe informed him of it in 1996. He donated several thousand dollars to charities to make amends.”

Button

“They are both Southerners that have a message that resonates with Southerners,” Mr. Button said. If they lose, he said, “it’s gotten down to this: Let’s move ahead to our objective, and our objective is unseating George W. Bush.”

AP

In a fresh sign of growing strength, the Massachusetts senator also gained an endorsement from Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, one week ahead of that state’s primary.

Clark made the rounds in Nashville, delivering doughnuts to volunteers at polling places around the city. “I’m helping the people who are helping me change the country,” he said. “We can do it.”

Edwards paid a visit to a morning polling place in northern Virginia and made plans to fly to Wisconsin later in the day in a show of determination to remain in the race. His campaign manager, Nick Baldick, told reporters the campaign has enough money to compete through the end of the month.

Howard Dean made little effort in the day’s primary states, focusing his efforts on Wisconsin.

Early Exit Polls: Kerry Running Away With it

TN

Via The Corner:

TN

Kerry 46
Edwards 28
Clark 15
Dean 7

VA

Kerry 48
Edwards 25
Clark 1
Dean 8

D.C. Republican Caucus Held Today

The little-known Washington D.C. Republican Committee is holding their primary today. Little other information is available.

Kerry Will Likely Claim Virginia

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on John Kerry’s likely win in Virginia’s primary.

Recent polls have found Kerry with a substantial lead in Virginia over North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who in turn has distanced himself from the remaining candidates.

The likely result is that when Virginians go to the polls today, they will not have as much of an impact on the nomination as had been hoped when state Democratic Party officials sought an early primary.

With Kerry’s early string of primary and caucus victories, Virginia and neighboring Tennessee, which also votes today, are expected to knock down one of the last uncertainties about Kerry - his ability to win in a Southern state.

However, Sen. John Edwards, General Wesley Clark and Rep. Dennis Kucinich continue campaigning in the Commonwealth. Howard Dean is not campaigning in Virginia.

Bush to Release Pay Records

FOX

The White House, facing election-year questions about President Bush’s military service, is releasing pay records and other information intended to support his assertion that he fulfilled his duty as a member of the Air National Guard during the Vietnam war.

The material, to be released Tuesday, was to include pay records and annual retirement point summaries to show that Bush served.

“These records clearly document that the president fulfilled his duty,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

President Bush's Approval Rating Improves

CNN reports, that as President Bush defended his record last week, his approval rating improved. In a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Friday through Sunday, President Bush’s approval rating was 52%. In a poll taken a week earlier, Bush’s approval rating was 49 percent.

Kerry Focuses on Bush, Ignores Dem Rivals

John Kerry has decided to ignore his Democratic rivals, instead focusing all of his efforts on attacking President Bush and his policies.

John Kerry ignored rivals chasing him in the Democratic presidential race Monday and lambasted President Bush’s foreign policy, telling voters in Tuesday’s Southern primaries they are “choosing a leader of the free world.”
…
Speaking in front of a Roanoke firehouse, Kerry suggested that Bush has not provided the international leadership that the world expects from the United States.

“You are choosing tomorrow not just a president of the United States,” Kerry said. “You have the privilege of having an impact on the lives of people all over this planet because you are choosing a leader of the free world.”

Virginia, along with Tennessee, holds their primary tomorrow.

Now Dean Won't Quit If He Loses Wisconsin

The New York Times reports that Dean has reversed his position and now says he will stay in the race even if he doesn’t win Wisconsin on February 17, 2004.

Then - February 5, 2004:

The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin.

We must launch our new television advertisement on Monday in the major markets in Wisconsin. To do that, I need your help to raise $700,000 by Sunday. Please contribute $50 today so that we can reserve the air time…

We will get a boost this weekend in Washington, Michigan and Maine, but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2-and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race.

Now - February 9, 2004:

Asked today whether he would drop out if he lost next week, Dr. Dean said, “No.”

Dean Campaigns in "Must-Win" Wisconsin

Howard Dean is beginning his campaign drive in Wisconsin, which he has said he must win (otherwise he says he will drop out).

Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean kicked off a do-or-die campaign blitz across Wisconsin Monday, telling voters they have the power to “keep this debate alive” and nominate someone who can unseat President Bush.

“The way to beat George W. Bush is with a candidate who already has stood up to him … on issues that mattered — like health care, investing in our children, the national debt and the Iraq war,” said Dean, drawing sustained applause from hundreds of backers at a Madison hotel.

“Democrats who watched the popularity polls and cut bad deals with the White House are not the right people to stand up to George Bush this fall,” Dean said.

The former Vermont governor who once was considered the party’s front-runner made the comments in taking a swipe at the party’s new leader, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, another White House rival.

An Ongoing Look at the '04 Electoral Cycle

After some delay due to technical issues, this week’s Toast-O-Meter is now available.

Kerry and Edwards Take to Virginia

Washington Post reports on how John Kerry and John Edwards are trying to woo voters in Virginia.

Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner endorsed Sen. John F. Kerry for president yesterday, as Kerry and Sen. John Edwards campaigned among constituencies that could prove crucial tomorrow in the state’s first Democratic presidential primary since 1988.

The candidates made separate visits to African American churches in the Richmond area, where they appealed for the support of traditionally Democratic black voters. Edwards then traveled to Tennessee, which also