Subject: Hillary For President News Briefing for Monday, April 14, 2008
From: "Bulletin News Network" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: 14 Apr 2008 06:32:55 -0400

HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT NEWS BRIEFING (Executive Version)
Full version is attached and available online at http://www.bulletinnews.com/clinton

TO: CLINTON CAMPAIGN

DATE: MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2008 6:30 AM EDT

TODAY'S TABLE OF CONTENTS

SEN. CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN:

+ Fallout Continues From Obama Gaffe On "Bitter" Small Town Voters.

+ Clinton, Obama Discuss Faith At Pennsylvania Forum.

+ Clinton's Approach To Philadelphia Debate Examined.

+ Nutter's Backing Of Clinton Examined.

+ Clintons Said To Believe Obama Nomination Would Be Disaster.

+ Novak Says Penn Continues To Bedevil Clinton.

+ Obama Said To Risk Overselling His International Experience.

+ Two Key Pro-Life Democrats Back Obama In Pennsylvania, Indiana.

Sen. Clinton's Campaign:

FALLOUT CONTINUES FROM OBAMA GAFFE ON "BITTER" SMALL TOWN VOTERS. Barack Obama's remarks to a San Francisco fundraiser last week, in which he said small town Pennsylvania voters were "bitter" and clung to guns and religion, continued to reverberate on the campaign trail over the weekend. Hillary Clinton, in many appearances, continued to use the gaffe to portray Obama as an elitist who would fare poorly in the general election, while the Obama camp charged Clinton – who received an "F" rating from the National Rifle Association herself – was overreaching. The controversy also overshadowed the candidates' faith and compassion forum at Messiah College on Sunday.

USA Today (4/14, 5A, Brook, 2.28M) reports Clinton "and her supporters on Sunday charged that Barack Obama's comments about working-class Americans being bitter showed him to be elitist and vulnerable to the kind of Republican attacks that have sunk Democratic candidates in the past." Obama's camp, "meanwhile, sought to tamp down an issue that dogged him all weekend." In remarks to reporters while in Scranton, Clinton "called Obama 'a good man,' but said his comments were 'elitist and divisive.'"

ABC World News (4/13, lead story, 3:35, Wright, 8.78M) reported, "Here in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton is seeking to redefine Obama as a champion of the politics of bitterness." Clinton: "I think his comments were elitist and divisive. And the Democratic Party has been, unfortunately, viewed by many people over the last decades as being elitist and out of touch." Sen. Barack Obama: "People have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government." Wright: "Obama has since sought to clarify that remark. But he has given his rivals an opening." Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist: "Senator Obama has given both Senator Clinton, as well as Senator McCain the greatest gift of all. That is to use his words against him."

NBC Nightly News (4/13, lead story, 3:10, Holt, 9.87M) reported, "Barack Obama's recent depiction of small town voters as bitter and clinging to guns and religion is reverberating loudly on the campaign trail tonight. And while Obama admits those words were not well chosen, the Hillary Clinton campaign has made it the centerpiece of a new round of attacks." NBC (Allen) added, "Clinton is determined to portray Obama as an elitist, out of touch with Middle America and unable to win in November. Bill Clinton picked up the theme today." Bill Clinton, former President of the United States: "I was shaking hands and taking a few pictures backstage. This fellow looked at me and he said I just want you to know that the people you're about to see are not bitter. They're proud."

Clinton Says Obama Comment Harms General Election Prospects. The Politico (4/14, Kuhn) reports Obama's "controversial remarks about 'bitter' small-town Pennsylvanians who 'cling' to religion and other cultural stances out of economic despair - comments immediately characterized by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and McCain as condescending - have suddenly reintroduced an unwelcome issue, undermining the progress made by concerted Democratic Party outreach to religious voters and reinvigorating criticism that the effort to woo religious voters is more rhetoric than substance."

The AP (4/14, Hefling) reports Hillary Clinton "tried to portray herself as an ally of the middle class on Sunday by keeping alive Barack Obama's comments about bitter voters in small towns while taking her campaign door to door in her late father's boyhood hometown." Clinton said, "Senator Obama has not owned up to what he said and taken accountability for it. What people are looking for is an explanation. What does he really believe? How does he see people here in this neighborhood, throughout Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, other places in our country?"

In Pennsylvania, Bill Clinton Comments On "Bitter" Controversy, Touts Wife. The AP (4/14, Armas) reports that in Jim Thorpe, PA, yesterday, ex-President Bill Clinton weighed in on the controversy surrounding Obama's remarks, saying during an appearance at Jim Thorpe Area High School, "Right before I came out at my last event, a man came up to me and he said, 'Mr. President, I want you to know something about the working people of Pennsylvania. We're not bitter about anything. We're proud. But we do want a better deal for the people of our country and for our children.' And that's what Hillary wants to give you."

Obama Says Clinton Insincere On Gun Rights, Working Class. The AP (4/14, Fouhy, Hefling) reports Obama "lashed out Sunday at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, mocking her vocal support for gun rights and saying her record in the Senate and as first lady belied her stated commitment to working class voters and their concerns." Speaking at a union hall in Steelton, Pennsylvania, Obama said, "She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her." The AP adds Obama "reiterated his regret for his choice of words at the fundraiser but suggested they had been twisted and mischaracterized. He said he'd expected blowback from GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain, but had been 'a little disappointed' to be criticized by Clinton." Obama said, "She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She's talking like she's Annie Oakley."

The Chicago Tribune (4/14, Dorning, 607K) reports Obama, "stepping up his defense" yesterday, saying in Steelton, "She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the 2nd Amendment. She's talking like she is Annie Oakley."

Cheney Challenges Clinton To Shooting Contest. The AP (4/14) reports that Vice President Dick Cheney "has challenged Hillary Clinton to a shooting match to test whether her professed love of guns is real or not. A day after" Clinton "discussed her fond memories of shooting with her father, Cheney threw down the gauntlet. 'To be frank, Hillary Clinton's stories about her adventures with guns don't exactly pass the smell test,' Cheney told Tim Russert on ABC's 'Meet the Press' yesterday. 'If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there's an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.'" However, "shortly after Cheney's challenge, Clinton said she had 'misspoke' about her gun exploits as a child. 'I fired a gun once, but I didn't like it, and I didn't recoil,' she said."

Clintons Said To Have Made Similar Comments. The New York Sun (4/14, Berman) reports, "As the Clinton campaign pressed the case against Mr. Obama, reports surfaced of similar comments made by both Clintons to explain voter concerns about issues like religion, guns, and immigration. In an article on Time.com in November, for example, Mrs. Clinton was quoted as saying: 'During the 1990s, I cannot remember being asked about immigration. Why? Because the economy was working. And average Americans didn't have to go around looking for others to blame.'"

CLINTON, OBAMA DISCUSS FAITH AT PENNSYLVANIA FORUM. The AP (4/14, Hefling) reports Hillary Clinton "said Sunday that the potential for life begins at conception as she and presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama answered questions about faith and religion in both their personal lives and the public discourse." In a Pennsylvania forum "devoted to an issue rare on the campaign trail, the two White House hopefuls talked about the presence of God in their lives and how often they read the Bible as well as divisive issues such as abortion, abstinence and human rights within the context of faith." The two candidates "appeared separately at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa., and briefly met as Clinton left the stage and Obama took her place. The moment of pleasantries and handshakes belied days of angry accusations between the two over Obama's comments about bitter voters in small towns." Asked whether "life begins at conception, Obama said he didn't know the answer." Obama said, "This is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on."

The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal (4/14, Pidgeon) reports, "Both senators addressed the question of when life begins. Neither answered definitively. Clinton said the 'potential for life' begins at conception, but added that making abortion illegal would be government intrusion in the personal lives of Americans. She said she was basing her answer on what she's seen in countries like Romania and China. ... Obama bluntly said he did not know when life began. 'Is it when a cell separates?' Obama said. 'Is it when the soul stirs? So I don't presume to know the answer to that question. What I know, as I've said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we're having these debates.'"

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (4/14, Mauriello, 229K) reports that Obama "was asked to clarify an early campaign-season comment about contraception. Girls who make the mistake of having sex too early should not be 'punished with a baby.' 'All I meant is that we want to prevent teen pregnancies. What we don't want to do is be blind to the possibility that kids will screw up,' he said. ... Both candidates said they would like to make abortion a rarity, but were clear that they did not think it should be outlawed. 'Individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be difficult to sustain in our kind of open society,' Mrs. Clinton said. 'Abortion should remain legal, but it needs to be safe and rare.'"

CLINTON'S APPROACH TO PHILADELPHIA DEBATE EXAMINED. The New York Times (4/14, Harwood, 1.18M) reports that for the Democratic debate on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton "must make a decision: mount a feisty new assault on Senator Barack Obama, or present a more congenial face to the public." Clinton has "adopted both approaches at different points in the campaign, and she could justify using either when she faces off with Mr. Obama in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, six days before the Pennsylvania primary. Even her aides made clear this weekend that they did not yet know which path she would choose." Since the two "last debated, in Cleveland on Feb. 26, she has made little discernable progress toward her goal of scoring a come-from-behind victory in the nominating contest." As a result, Clinton "finds herself like a basketball team trailing at game's end and having to watch precious seconds tick off the clock. That leaves some Democratic observers predicting a serene and civil performance on her part, rather than the combative approach advocated by her chief strategist, Mark Penn, before he was ousted from that post a week ago."

NUTTER'S BACKING OF CLINTON EXAMINED. The New York Times (4/14, Vitello, 1.18M) examines the backing of Hillary Clinton by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D), who is black, noting that Obama is "wildly popular" in Philadelphia, "especially in the poor black neighborhoods and the upper-income white neighborhoods that gave Mr. Nutter his greatest margins of victory." The Times adds, "On issues he cared most about - combating crime, creating jobs, repairing the infrastructure of aging cities like Philadelphia - Mr. Nutter said he liked Mrs. Clinton's answers best." Nutter also dismisses as "silly" speculation that he doesn't back Obama because Obama endorsed his rival in the mayoral primary.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (4/14, Gelbart, 402K) reports, "Nutter predicted that Obama would win the race for president - in February 2007 - at a mayoral forum at Central High School. The Huffington Post, a political blog, posed the question to Nutter recently. Here is an excerpt: 'It wasn't so much a prediction,' he recalled. 'We were at a high school-sponsored candidates forum and we were asked who do you think will be the Democratic nominee or who will be the next president. I said I thought Sen. Obama. Now, at that point, I was at fifth place. Since I was a long shot and it appeared to me that he was a long shot, I was trying to get some solidarity with the long shots.' Had his political crystal ball changed? 'Absolutely,' Nutter replied, saying he thought Clinton would now win. 'Obviously, I had no way of knowing that we would be where we are here today. . . [back then] I was trying to give little hope to my own candidacy.'"

CLINTONS SAID TO BELIEVE OBAMA NOMINATION WOULD BE DISASTER. The Politico (4/13, Harris, Vandehei) reported that Hillary Clinton won't drop out because both she and former President Clinton "devoutly believe that Obama's likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don't see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won't tell the story. But Hillary Clinton won't tell it, either." While the media is portraying the Clinton campaign to be in "kitchen-sink mode," the Politico says "the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship. Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico)." The Politico adds, "There's nothing to say that the Clintonites are right about Obama's presumed vulnerabilities. But one argument seems indisputably true: Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges." Noting the reaction to the Clinton campaigns attempts to point out some of these vulnerabilities, the Politico adds, "The reaction underscored the essential prissiness of the Democratic contest so far. One can be sure the general election will not be such a delicate affair."

NOVAK SAYS PENN CONTINUES TO BEDEVIL CLINTON. In his column in the Washington Post (4/14, A15, 723K), Bob Novak examines the current role of Mark Penn in the Clinton campaign, writing that while Geoff Garin is now mainly in charge, Penn is still highly influential. Novak says that Democrats "who are interested in preventing the nomination struggle from destroying the party" were relieved to see Garin in charge of strategy, because Novak says that Penn would likely launch a "Kamikaze" attack on Obama, "with little chance of success." However, Novak notes the Clinton campaign still owes Penn's firm at least $2.5 million, and perhaps as much as $10 million, which "helps explain why Penn is still around even though organized labor demanded his scalp last summer and he is blamed inside the campaign for failing to perceive the public's demand for 'change.'" Novak concludes, "Over the past week, I talked to 10 superdelegates (including two U.S. senators) who are committed to Clinton. Each claimed that he would stick with her, but none could see how she could be nominated. In such a frame of mind, they would prefer a Geoff Garin-style soft landing to conclude the campaign. With Mark Penn still around, they could get a far more dramatic endgame."

OBAMA SAID TO RISK OVERSELLING HIS INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE. Newsweek (4/14, Wolffe, Hirsh, 3.12M) notes Sen. Barack Obama now "says the weeks he spent traveling through Pakistan in 1981 shaped the views that he still holds today. ... Obama's taken a lot of hits over his alleged foreign-policy inexperience," but "last week Obama signaled that he'd had enough of these attacks. Not only did he not lack experience, Obama cockily told a fund-raising crowd in San Francisco, but 'foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.'" However, according to Newsweek, "This supposedly unique sense of empathy...opens Obama up to charges of naiveté. ... Even some Dems who'd favor him in any contest against McCain also worry that Obama is overplaying his experience. 'I don't know whether he's drinking his own Kool-Aid,' says a former senior member of the Clinton administration who is not backing either Democratic candidate but would talk only on condition of anonymity because of his private-sector job. 'I'm all for talking to the Cubans, or to the Iranians. I'm just not sure he's the guy to do it. The biggest administrative job he ever had was collecting articles for the Harvard Law Review.'"

TWO KEY PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATS BACK OBAMA IN PENNSYLVANIA, INDIANA. The Washington Post (4/14, A1, Murray, 723K) reports that as "strong and consistent abortion foes, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. and former congressman Timothy J. Roemer are anomalies in a Democratic Party that has overwhelmingly advocated abortion rights. Yet both are backing Sen. Barack Obama, whom one conservative blogger dubbed 'the most pro-abortion candidate ever.'" Casey and Roemer "have chosen to ignore Obama's legislative record, and are promoting the Democratic presidential candidate to their antiabortion allies as someone who could achieve a new consensus on the issue." The endorsements "send a powerful signal in two critical battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, which will hold its primary on April 22, and Indiana, which will vote on May 6. Both states have sizable segments of socially conservative Democrats who reject the party's orthodoxy on an issue they have long viewed as troubling and complex." Casey's endorsement is "particularly important because Obama's ability to reach these voters is even more in question in light of the controversy provoked by his description of small-town Pennsylvania voters as driven by bitterness over their economic situation and looking for ways 'to explain their frustrations.'"

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