Victory in sight, Clinton still grapples with negative views

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton bested Donald Trump in three debates. She leads in many preference polls of the most competitive states. Barring a significant shift in the next two weeks, she is in a strong position to become the first woman elected U.S. president.

But Clinton will end the campaign still struggling to change the minds of millions of voters who don’t think well of her, a glaring liability should the Democratic nominee move on to the White House.

While many see her as better prepared to be commander in chief than Trump, she is consistently viewed unfavorably by more than half of the country. Most voters also consider her dishonest.

Clinton’s advisers have spent months trying to erase that perception. They’ve set up small events where she had more intimate conversations with voters. They’ve tested a seemingly endless stream of messages aimed at assuring the public that the former secretary of state was in the race to do more than fulfill her own political ambitions.

As Clinton starts making her closing argument to voters, her team appears to have come to terms that the mission remains unfulfilled.

“Honest and trustworthy has become our most talked about metric because it’s not great,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director. “But we’ve never thought it’s the metric people make a decision on.”

If Clinton wins, that theory may be proven true.

Just 36 percent of voters believe Clinton is honest and trustworthy, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. That’s compared with about 60 percent who believe she has the qualifications and temperament to be commander in chief.

The public’s perception of Clinton has bounced up and down throughout her time in public life. Her favorability rating fell below 50 percent at times during her years as first lady, but rose to its high water mark then and while she was as secretary of state under President Barack Obama.

Democrats blame some of the current negative personal perceptions of Clinton on the hard-charging tactics she’s used to try to discredit Trump, though they believe her sustained assault on Trump’s character and temperament has been crucial.

Party operatives also say Trump’s personal attacks on Clinton have made it all but impossible for more positive messages to break through. He’s called her a “liar,” a “nasty woman” and pledged to put her in jail.

“When you’re under relentless assault from a reality TV star, it’s hard to come out of that with anybody feeling good about anyone,” said Bill Burton, a former Obama aide.

Still, Clinton’s advisers acknowledge that some of her troubles have been of her own making, including her penchant for privacy.

She’s spent nearly the entire campaign struggling to explain why she used a private email server in the basement of her home while she led the State Department. She hid a pneumonia diagnosis this fall from nearly all of her senior staff, then left the public unaware of her condition and whereabouts for 90 minutes after the illness caused her to rush out of a public event in New York.

“She is a politician that does not seek to be the center of attention and is inherently more private than most politicians, certainly presidential candidates,” Palmieri said. “That doesn’t always serve you great in a campaign for president.”

Clinton frequently shoots down questions about the public’s negative perceptions by saying she’s viewed more positively when she’s doing a job rather than running for one. There’s some evidence to back that up.

When she ran for re-election to the Senate from New York in 2006, she won with 67 percent of the vote, a big jump from the 55 percent share from her first race in 2000. Her approval rating when she left the State Department, where her job kept her out of day-to-day politics, sat at an enviable 65 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

But if Clinton is elected president, she won’t have the luxury she had as secretary of state to stay away from the political fray — with Republicans in Washington in the opposition, and possibly Trump, too.

The businessman keeps flirting with the idea he could contest the election results if he loses. There are also persistent rumors that, if he is loses, he might try to harness the enthusiasm of his millions of supporters into some type of media venture.

“The notion that Trump is going to go quietly into the night and wish her Godspeed is highly unlikely,” said David Axelrod, another former Obama adviser. “She’s going to have to contend with that and whatever it is he chooses to make his vehicle.”

Clinton has begun acknowledging the challenge that could await her in the White House, if she wins, centering her closing argument to voters on a call for unity after a bitter campaign.

“My name may be on the ballot, but the question really is who are we as a country, what are our values, what kind of a future do we want to create together,” she said Friday at a rally in Ohio.

Some Democrats see the transition — the two month-plus stretch between the Nov. 8 election and the Jan. 20 inauguration — as a crucial opportunity for her to signal, if she wins, that a Clinton White House would be different from a Clinton campaign.

In a nod to bipartisanship, she could nominate a Republican for her Cabinet. Clinton could start moving on some of her more broadly popular policy proposals as a way of boosting her appeal, assuming no crisis demands immediate action.

Still, Axelrod said changing the public’s view of Clinton will be a “long-term project.”

“There’s no silver bullet to turn around years of wear and tear on her image,” he said./rga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Costly, competitive US Senate campaign nears end

WASHINGTON—Republicans strained to capture control of the Senate while Democrats struggled to limit their congressional losses on a final day of campaigning for elections that could change the balance of power midway through an unpopular President Barack Obama’s second term.

Democrats weighed down by Obama’s low approval ratings kept their distance from him and looked to a costly turn-out-the-vote operation in the most competitive Senate races to save their seats and their majority in Tuesday’s election.

The Democrats have worked furiously to reach out to minority and poor voters who tend to sit out elections when the presidency is not at stake.

“Despite all the cynicism America is making progress,” Obama said as he implored Democrats in Connecticut to vote. “Don’t stay home. Don’t let somebody else choose your future for you.”

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans working to fire up their own core voters had a unified message, casting the election as a referendum on Obama.

Republicans need six seats to win control of the Senate, the biggest prize in the election. There was little suspense in the House races, with not even Democrats predicting they would be able to take control away from the Republicans. Instead, the Democrats concentrated on protecting their incumbents and keeping the Republicans from padding their majority too much.

With a handful of close races expected to decide control of the Senate, astronomical spending and cease-less attack ads have dominated campaigning — with a few ideas offered on how best to govern the nation. Serious discussions about deficit spending, climate change, immigration, and other knotty issues rarely emerged.

Partisan fighting and legislative inaction have already characterized Washington in recent years, peaking in 2013 with budget fights that shut down the government and raised the specter of a default on the federal debt.

With a Democrat in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, a big question is whether the legislative paralysis would deepen or whether political reality will push both sides to compromise at least on modest goals.

Republicans may be emboldened to intensify conflicts with an unpopular president in the last years of his term, but they risk Obama’s veto if they push too hard for lower taxes, fewer regulations and other conservative priorities. Trade agreements that Obama supports, and changes to the immigration system that many Republicans favor, could offer chances for agreements.

Uncertainties in several tight races meant there was a strong possibility that neither party would be able to claim a Senate majority by the morning after Election Day.

Republicans were all but assured of winning Democratic-held seats in West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota, and Democrats held out little hope of a victory in Arkansas.

Polls suggested that races for Democratic-held seats in Iowa, Colorado and Alaska have tilted the Republicans’ way, too — although Democrats said their get-out-the-vote operation made any predictions unreliable.

Democratic incumbents faced competitive races in New Hampshire and in North Carolina where Democrats said they had an edge — and Republicans disagreed.

Strategists in both parties said Louisiana and Georgia were both likely headed for runoffs . The wildest wild card of all was in Kansas, where polls said 78-year-old Republican Sen. Pat Roberts was in a close race with independent Greg Orman.

Obama was back at the White House after making his final campaign appearances over the weekend. He raised tens of millions of dollars over two years for Democratic candidates, but in the races’ final days most members of his party opted not to appear in public with him because of his poor approval ratings.

“There are two people on the ballot tomorrow: me and Scott Brown,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire as she made the rounds of six campaign stops on the race’s final full day.

North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan was one Democrat in a marquee race quietly accepting a bit of last-minute help from the president. She has spent much of the year distancing herself from Obama, but her campaign sponsored a radio ad featuring Obama calling her a tireless leader “who shares our priorities.” It was unclear where Hagan’s campaign was airing the ads, but other candidates have used similar ads to boost turnout among African-American voters still loyal to the president.

Also on the ballot were gubernatorial elections in 36 states.

Among the most closely watched is Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker is in neck-and-neck race with Democratic challenger Mary Burke. Walker, a favorite of conservative Republicans, is often mentioned as a potential candidate in 2016, but his White House chances would almost certainly evaporate if he lost Tuesday.

In another hard-fought race, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott is facing a tough challenge from Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor-turned-Democrat.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Indonesia Nazi-theme campaign video causes outrage

JAKARTA — A Nazi-themed music video supporting a candidate in next month’s Indonesian presidential election is causing outrage at home and abroad.

The video, “Indonesia Bangkit,” or “Awakening Indonesia,” is based on Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” It shows musician Ahmad Dhani wearing a fascist-style uniform and holding an Indonesian Garuda bird emblem that resembles the Nazis’ imperial eagle.

According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the military costume is similar to the uniform worn by SS commander Heinrich Himmler.

The video was uploaded on YouTube as a campaign song for Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who has been accused of abducting pro-democracy activists in 1998 and instigating deadly riots.

Brian May, Queen’s lead guitarist, has waded into the controversy, saying “of course this is completely unauthorized by us.”

Asvi Warman Adam, a noted historian from the Indonesian Science Institute, said the video defiles Indonesia’s state symbol, the Garuda bird.

“It is clear that Indonesia’s Constitution opposes all kinds of fascism as done by Nazis in the past,” he said.

Joshua Oppenheimer, the Oscar-nominated director of the documentary “The Act of Killing,” about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people across Indonesia in 1965-66 in the name of fighting communism, said the video “is not a clever foreign policy move for Prabowo, unless he really wants to alienate all of Europe — and the rest of the human community.”

He added, however, that given Prabowo’s background, “perhaps he doesn’t care.”

In an interview with American journalist Allan Nairn in 2001, Prabowo said Indonesia needed an “authoritarian regime” and indicated he was willing to be called a “fascist dictator.”

The July 9 election pits Prabowo against Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo.

Supporters of each candidate created campaign songs for them. Prabowo posted the video on his Facebook page and thanked Dhani and other artists for their support.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Romney wins 5 states, including Ohio; Santorum takes 3; Gingrich nabs Georgia

Columbus, Ohio (CNN) -- Mitt Romney won five Super Tuesday states including the big prize of Ohio, while Rick Santorum took three states and Newt Gingrich grabbed a vital triumph in Georgia, CNN projected.

Results from one more contest -- the Alaska caucuses -- were still being counted.

The five victories made it a good night for Romney, padding his front-running delegate total in the Republican presidential campaign, but he failed to get the convincing showing needed to demonstrate his ability to generate support among diehard conservatives.

Super Tuesday results

In particular, Romney was unable to attract strong support from tea party conservatives and evangelical conservatives -- voters who are important in a Republican primary but not as significant in a general election.

"He still has a problem with the base," said Ari Fleischer, a CNN contributor who was press secretary for President George W. Bush. "That base problem may make him attractive to independents if he gets to a general" election, but can work against Romney in the primary season.


Opinion: Why can't Romney win big?

In Ohio, Romney took a late lead of more than 12,000 votes over Santorum with 96% of unofficial results counted, and it was clear Santorum would be unable to overcome the difference.


Even if Santorum had managed to win the Ohio vote, he wouldn't get a majority of the delegates because his campaign failed to properly register them in some districts.

Santorum's victories in the Tennessee and Oklahoma primaries, and North Dakota caucuses, demonstrated his continuing strength among conservative voters, while Gingrich's win in the state that sent him to Congress allowed him to keep his campaign going.


source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/06/politics/super-tuesday/index.html?hpt=hp_t1