David M. Reisner
360° Digital Producer

Sen. Barack Obama fires back after President Bush likened talking with Hamas to negotiating with Hitler.

Hey bloggers,

Yesterday we told you about comments President Bush made in a speech to Israel’s parliament. The president compared calls to talk with unnamed terrorist groups a ‘foolish delusion.’ (read more here)

Well today, Obama fired back.

Sen. Barack Obama slammed President Bush for launching “exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.”

Speaking at a campaign stop in Watertown, South Dakota, Obama also lambasted Sen. John McCain for “embracing” the president’s “attacks on Democrats,” and “suggesting that I wasn’t fit to protect this nation that I love.”

“So much for civility,” Obama said, noting that McCain had talked about the need for civility in politics earlier Thursday.

He went on:
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Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

In a speech in Ohio on Thursday John McCain laid out his vision for his putative presidency. Perhaps the most striking part was the claim that by the end of his four year-term in 2013 the global war on terrorism would be effectively over—Osama bin Laden and his key lieutenants would be behind bars or dead; al Qaeda would no longer have a safe haven on the Afghan-Pakistan border; the Taliban would be largely out of business; al Qaeda in Iraq defeated; the Iraq War “won,” and no major terrorist attack would have taken place in the United States.

It’s undeniably an attractive vision of the future, but how plausible are those claims? Given the fact that bin Laden remains at large today more than six years after 9/11 it is wishful thinking that he will be caught in the next five years. There hasn’t been a solid lead on bin Laden’s whereabouts since the battle of Tora Bora in December of 2001 when radio intercepts definitively placed him in the mountain redoubt in eastern Afghanistan.

But since then the al Qaeda leader hasn’t talked on a cell or satellite phone so there is no signals intelligence on his whereabouts, and it is quite unlikely anyone in his immediate circle will drop a dime on him for a large cash reward as there have been no takers for the millions of dollars of bounty on his head that the United States has advertised since 1999.

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David Gergen
360° Contributor

Her landslide victory gives Hillary Clinton a large measure of vindication for staying in the race. Clearly, many Democrats want to continue the race until the primaries and caucuses conclude, and she is giving voice to their legitimate concerns about the economy. The party will be much better positioned in the fall if it fully hears the anxieties of voters about their lives and can respond not only with a sense of hope but with a set of ideas and policies that will put America’s house in order. The continued Clinton campaign is giving the public a chance to be more fully heard.

Yet it is also clear that unless the wheels come totally off the Obama campaign — and there is no sign of that, just the opposite — he will soon have the nomination in his grasp. That raises two questions for Mrs. Clinton:

Will she go gracefully?
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Barclay Palmer
360° Senior Producer

Ok, West Virginia was a nice side show on our way to the big tent, and we’ll have a few more of those. But let’s look ahead for a moment to the human cannonball act: Is this the year Dems rocket back into the White House, fueled by discontent over gas prices, the economy and the war? Or will they have a candidate so battered by the lion taming act that a Republican packagable as moderate and will capture Reagan Democrats and the political center, and win the brass ring for the Republicans yet again?

Mississippi might offer a better clue to this riddle than West Virginia. Democrat Travis Childers won the race in Mississippi’s first congressional district, held by Republicans have held since 1994. This is the second time in two weeks that a Democrat has defeated a Republican in an open Congressional seat in the south. On May 3rd, Democrat Don Cazayoux won a special election in Louisiana.

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Leslie Sanchez
GOP Strategist and 360 Contributor 

My friend Donna Brazile is upset with me.

On Tuesday night, I explained that Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspiration will ultimately rise or fall on the deal making that will occur among the Democratic Party elite in smokeless back rooms at the Denver convention.

When I spoke this truth on CNN, Donna looked at me like those were fighting words. She pointed out that she is a “superdelegate.

”Well, Donna, I respect you greatly and I know you’re not an elitist, but it’s not you I am talking about. Nevertheless, you are defending a system that gives the insiders—rather than the people—final say over who will be your Party’s nominee.

In Denver, Hillary has several options open to her. She can twist the arms of “superdelegates.” She can force a floor fight over the seating of the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, both of which are in her pocket.

The folks who pull the levers of the machinery that makes all this work are, by and large, in debt to one or both Clintons for something.

For Hillary Clinton it’s not about the wishes and aspirations, hopes and dreams of millions of Democratic voters across the country. It’s about the deal she can cut with the Democratic Party elite (meaning elected officials and party bosses) to get her the nomination.

There are some—like my friend Donna—who don’t play that game. But most of the superdelegates are professional politicians.  And as longtime FDR aide Louis Howe once said, “You can’t adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.”

www.lesliesanchez.com

Amy Holmes
CNN Political Analyst

Editor’s note: The following is written in response to an essay posted earlier on this blog by Lanny Davis, a Hillary Clinton supporter and fundraiser, addressing charges that the Clinton’s played “the race card” against Barack Obama. Click here to read that blog.

Lanny,

Welcome to the conservative side of the street, where the media and Democratic operatives routinely accuse Republicans and conservatives of playing the race card to demonize and discredit them.

In your own post on your party’s internecine racial warfare, you gratuitously refer to the “Republican hate machine.”  Never mind that Republicans were happily absent from the various Clinton controversies you cite.  In an effort to find an enemy to blame for the current state of racial politics in the Democratic party, instead of looking inwards and examining the roots, so to speak, of liberal racial grievance politics, you blame the media — being very careful not to blame Obama.  That would certainly be a mess.

I’ll let Democrats sort out who played the race card first: the media, the Obama campaign, or the Clintons.  But I have no doubt that if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, all three will unite to return to politics as usual, questioning the racial bona fides of anyone who fails to support the candidacy of the first black presidential nominee.  The politics of hope go only so far.

Roland S. Martin
360 Contributor
www.rolandsmartin.comLet’s get this out now before the spin doctors for Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go at it: if all goes according to plan on Tuesday, both candidates will be able to claim victory.

It has been fascinating to see as both campaigns have tried to twist and turn everything, from endorsements to who is leading in the popular vote to the importance of delegates and who can best beat Sen. John McCain in November.

Forget white voters, rural voters, midwestern voters, southern voters, black voters, women voters and men voters, the only thing that really matters on Tuesday are the delegates.

In Indiana, 72 are at stake. In North Carolina, it’s 115.
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John King
CNN Chief National Correspondent

Politics is a business of numbers, and the numbers still favor Barack Obama. But they are changing in ways that give Hillary Clinton some hope, and have dramatically changed how Republicans look at the presidential election.

In a world of so many polls and so many findings within those polls, a few stand out:

-Six in 10 Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s former pastor. (This from the latest CNN Opinion Research Corporation survey.)

-Nearly four in 10 Americans (38 percent) have an unfavorable opinion of Senator Obama in the latest CNN polling – up 10 points from the beginning of the year.

-Half of Americans think a McCain presidency would bring policies different from the Bush Administration’s.

-And this from a new Pew Research Center national survey: Senator Clinton’s lead among whites who did not attend college has increased from 10 points in March to 40 points now.

In his analysis of the new Pew data, research director Andrew Kohut writes, “Fewer Democrats ascribe positive qualities to Obama than did so a month ago, with white working-class Democrats, in particular, expressing more skeptical views of the Illinois senator. Since late February, his unfavorable rating has risen six points among all Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. At the same time, Clinton’s unfavorable rating among Democratic voters also has increased by seven points.”

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Former President Bill Clinton campaigns for his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, at a private residence in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on Tuesday.

Gary Tuchman
AC 360°  Correspondent

Check out this itinerary:

Apex, Sanford, Lillington, Dunn, Hope Mills, Lumberton, and Whiteville, North Carolina.

Morgantown and Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Whiting, Schererville, Crown Point and Michigan City, Indiana.

Thirteen different cities and three states, all in less than 36 hours for the spouse of a presidential candidate.

Of course, that spouse — Bill Clinton — is known for his energetic campaigning regiments, but this is still quite extreme.

We’ve spent the last two days with the 42nd president as he works to make his wife the 44th. And, what’s notable is how carefully he is working to stay away from controversy.

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Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday denounced comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ed Rollins
GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman

Who is Barack Obama? What does he really believe?

These are the unanswered questions about a man who could be the 44th president.

That is why there is such a curiosity about him and why the public and media is looking closely at his wife, and his minister and, before this is over, every other element of his life.

Here is what we do know. He is extremely articulate and extremely ambitious. You can throw bright into the mix, too. But what he really is, is inexperienced. No one in recent times has jumped to the front of the Presidential express quicker or with a thinner resume.

He served a few years in the part-time Illinois state Senate and worked part-time as a junior associate lawyer drafting wills and real estate documents.

Prior to law school, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, whatever that means. He ran voter registration drives and through knowledge he learned from that experience, he got elected in 1996 to a State Senate seat.

Conveniently, Obama ran virtually unopposed after he legally challenged the qualifying petitions of the incumbent and his other three primary opponents and got them thrown off the ballot. Winning the Democrat primary meant victory because Republicans offered only token opposition in the most overwhelming Democrat district in the state.

Before he had served out his term, Obama ran for Congress and got crushed by incumbent Bobby Rush in a primary. He also chose not to vote on many controversial measures in the legislature.

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