Dude, You're Getting a Delegate: If Bill Richardson became "Judas" and Fox News became "fair" and Richard Mellon Scaife became a "deathbed conversion"... what will Senator Clinton's campaign call Joe Andrew? Let's start with the most influential politician you probably had never heard of. In our fifth story on the Countdown: not just a Super-Delegate switched from Clinton to Barack Obama on the premise that he is the better candidate, and the divisions have served only to aide John McCain... But a man, appointed National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee nine years ago... by President Clinton. In fact the name-calling has begun. Mr. Andrew, of Indiana, who joins us in a moment... Immediately found his right to say he was from Indiana, challenged by Senator Clinton's Communications Director, and her foremost supporter in the Hoosier State, Senator Evan Bayh. No, I'm not kidding.
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Running on Empty: In a campaign whose race for the super-delegates is reportedly, secretly, over...In a campaign -- the subtext of which -- has been complaint and even metaphorical martyrdom...They are words that would have sent supporters of Senator Clinton into a paroxysm of rage. That the nation needed a president quote "that has testicular fortitude." Our fifth story on the Countdown: that there is no rage and that there are no death threats tonight, explicable thusly: the gonadial reference was made by a labor leader, as he endorsed Senator Clinton, intending it as a compliment to her fortitude.
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In The Line of Firings: If that was, as we postulated here yesterday, a second chance at a first impression... It was a second first impression where the adjectives and the analogies were delivered in car-load lots. Our fifth story on the Countdown: after Reverend Jeremiah Wright's nationally televised train-wreck yesterday... Obama, in his own words today... Said he was: outraged, saddened, angry, shocked, surprised, and disappointed... At the: inexcusable, divisive, destructive, ridiculous, outrageous, and appalling... Caricature, spectacle, exploitation, performance, and rants.
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Wright Hook: The idealized version of that event we all learned about in a social studies class, redolent of chalk dust, was about the issues, was about the character of the aspirants, was about the struggle to divine who would best serve the nation. It was not about the candidates' girlfriends, their marrying-into-money, the things they had said 30 years before, nor their spiritual guides. And the last one of those perfect American presidential elections was... in 1792. When George Washington ran unopposed and only six of the states even had popular votes. Our fifth story on the Countdown: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is back, not by the hand of Clinton nor the hand of McCain, but by the hand of... Jeremiah Wright. And tonight, Senator Obama has a fateful and, perhaps, decisive decision, to make about him.
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The Clyburn Interview: It has been Senator Clinton's strategy to make Senator Obama seem unelectable in the general election... Yet what if her plan were not just to create an illusion of unelectability... but to actually guarantee that he cannot win in November... all so that she might run again in four years? In our fifth story on the Countdown: internet speculation is one thing. Public suspicion... voiced to and now by a prominent Democratic politician and uncommitted Super Delegate... is something else all together. Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, the House Democratic Whip, telling Reuters, quote: "There are African Americans who have reached the decision that the Clintons know that she can't win this. But they're hell-bound to make it impossible for Obama to win" in November... a sentiment he repeated in another interview with the New York Times. Presently Congressman Clyburn, tells us more...
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Clock the Vote: For Democrats more interested in the election than in the nomination... The distant sound of the bugle, echoing from the horizon. The cavalry is coming! Led by... Harry Reid. Our fifth story on the Countdown: asked by a reporter if he would be forced to weigh-in with undecided superdelegates... The Senate Majority Leader today replying: "I might have to." What is more... the Democratic Leader of the Senate adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chairman Howard Dean... might be willing to join him. And their contemplated bold action? A letter-writing campaign.
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