Good Wednesday morning. The sprint is on with just a week of campaigning left before Indiana and North Carolina voters head to the polls. And judging by the way this week is going, the following could once again provide a new way to look at the Democratic contest. What they're watching in Washington:
-- The Senate meets today to continue consideration of the FAA reauthorization bill. The House will take up a bill to make technical corrections to major transportation legislation and a measure on special needs education. Both chambers will pause at midday for a joint address from Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. President Bush addresses the national Teachers of the Year, then joins the Super Bowl champion New York Giants on the South Lawn before fundraising for the GOP at a private residence in Fairfax, Virginia.
-- Back on the campaign trail, the race shifted in a major way yesterday when Barack Obama offered his strongest public statements to date on controversies surrounding his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama responded to Wright's recent media blitz, in which the retired pastor has traveled as much -- with stops in Dallas, Detroit, Washington and a major television news set -- as the presidential candidates, by doing his best to completely disassociate himself with Wright's comments, saying he had misjudged the man who made those statements. Wright has been in the news a lot lately, mostly of his own volition, but yesterday it was Obama who brought him up, and Obama who sought to dismiss Wright completely from the campaign trail.
-- There are pluses and minuses in Obama's very public efforts to turn the page on Jeremiah Wright, though on balance yesterday's press conference is something the campaign should have considered months ago. Obama is facing one of the roughest patches his campaign has so far seen, due in large part to his inability to overcome Wright as an issue. His poll numbers are slipping, he's reportedly not as sharp as usual on the stump, and the long campaign is getting to him. His decision to take on Wright forcefully may have been poll-driven -- at least someone is asking Wright-related questions in North Carolina, as Marc Ambinder reports -- but Obama needs something to come of this, his own version of the Sister Soulja moment. If nothing changes, Wright will continue to be an issue used against Obama for months to come.
-- Perhaps, as some have suggested, the incident is part of a larger theme that has emerged in this campaign. As Obama emerged as a contender, as much as a year ago, many African American leaders stuck with Obama rival Hillary Clinton, including such luminaries as Rep. John Lewis (who later switched to Obama after his district made their preference known), while Rep. James Clyburn stayed on the sidelines. Perhaps Obama's clash with Wright is more generational than anything else, reflecting the turning of a page in leadership in a community that has not seen a lot of turnover in recent decades. The comparisons between Obama and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who would have defeated long-time incumbent Sharpe James and beaten the Democratic machine had James not stepped down, are looking more apt by the day.
-- Obama has another problem that has gotten him in trouble in recent weeks. The candidate of hope and change isn't supposed to be running negative advertisements, and at a rally with 5,000 of his closest Tar Heel friends in Wilmington, North Carolina, Obama said he will head down a more positive path, as Bloomberg's Jensen and Leigh write. Obama took some grief for his approach to Clinton in Pennsylvania, and now that he's ahead in at least one state, he's able to stay away from hitting his rival. Clinton, meanwhile, is up with a new ad in Indiana, CNN reports, in which she lets Obama have it on freezing foreclosures and using a gas tax holiday to save consumers money. Obama's lofty image means he must be above reproach. Clinton's reputation, somewhat grittier, means she can play in the mud. In terms of doing what it takes to win, Clinton now has a lot more leeway.
-- Meanwhile, his efforts have finally paid off, at least a little bit, and John McCain is back in the news. In a major speech on health care in Tampa, Florida, McCain hewed to mostly Republican themes in offering his own solution to the health care crisis, as Business Week's Catherine Arnst writes, urging a market-driven answer in which consumers can shop around and are given tax breaks to help them afford care. That's music to the ears of free market conservatives, but it bothers those on the left, and one on the left in particular: Elizabeth Edwards, who has taken to pointing out of late that neither she, thanks to her cancer, nor McCain, thanks to his recurring bouts with melanoma, would be able to get insurance under McCain's plan, as fellow critic Jonathan Cohn writes in The New Republic. Health care policy can b difficult to distill into understandable sound bites, but McCain's first big policy proposal on the domestic front is already taking some pretty heavy shelling.
-- Clinton had a big day yesterday as well, picking up support from North Carolina Governor Mike Easley. Easley can follow one of two paths that governors who back Clinton have taken: Ted Strickland, Ohio's chief executive, was an asset among working-class Democrats, given his background as a member of Congress from a very blue collar district and his popularity among his state's Democratic base. Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's top dog, was more of an asset on television and as a crowd-gatherer. In truth, those who voted for Rendell in his 2002 gubernatorial primary against Bob Casey were most likely to vote for Obama, while Casey voters probably cast their ballots for Clinton, making Rendell more effective explaining his state than in actually gathering votes for Clinton. Easley, some believe, is more in the Rendell model, given that he's never had an extensive grass-roots political network. But, as strategist Harrison Hickman tells the Charlotte Observer, he may boost the confidence of a few wary super delegates.
-- Veep Talk Of The Day: Governors just can't stop making vice presidential news, and don't believe what they say, they actually love it. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal showed up on Jay Leno's couch last night, recounting his childhood as the son of immigrants and his state's head honcho by the age of 36. As the New York Times points out, how could Leno resist age jokes? Jindal is just barely over half McCain's age. In an interview with the Washington Times, though, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour took himself out of the running, calling himself too conservative to be McCain's number two (Is that really the message McCain's team wanted?). And, of course, Florida Governor Charlie Crist was with McCain when he gave his speech yesterday, though he, too, professes no interest in the second slot.
-- Today On The Trail: Obama will hold a discussion with working families in Indianapolis before touring a factory with employees. He heads to Bloomington for a rally in the afternoon. Clinton is in South Bend to meet with employees of a sheet metal plant before heading to a town hall meeting in Portage and rallies in Lafayette and Kokomo. John McCain is farther east, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he will host a town hall meeting and speak with the press.
