Dems Still Stuck at Starting Gate

Campaign avoids state's Hillary-loving, white Democrats

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama has a novel strategy in Arkansas, a Southern state that likes Democrats: He's not there. The presumptive nominee has no Arkansas office and hasn't even visited in 2 years. Yet analysts aren't surprised, noting that conservative Democrats heavily favor Hillary Clinton and backed President Bush the past two elections. Arkansas also skews whiter than other Southern states, with only a 16% black population. More»

Weird doings with Hillary, Huck and a chucked shoe

(NEWSER) - Oh-eight was a banner year for politics, and half the time it was a really strange banner. Politico looks back on the weirdest moments in a topsy-turvy year.

• Mike Huckabee holds a news conference to announce he won’t run a negative ad, then plays the ad for everyone.
• Desperate for blue collar cred, Hillary Clinton awkwardly downs a whiskey shot in an Indiana bar.
• San Francisco tries to rename a sewage plant after George W. Bush.

McCain, Obama break with tradition and carry their negative campaigning into the election's final days

(NEWSER) - Both presidential candidates are bucking tradition and remaining on the offensive in the last days of the election—a time when campaigns usually back off and focus on positive messages, the Washington Post reports. Barack Obama is spinning Dick Cheney’s endorsement of John McCain as a troubling indication of a possible Bush redux, and McCain’s newest robocalls feature Hillary Clinton’s primary season attacks on Obama. More»

Convention will seek to define candidate and attack McCain

(NEWSER) - The Democratic convention opens tonight, not quite the coronation envisioned only a month ago as twitchy party grandees push Barack Obama to make his case forcefully to a still-skeptical electorate—using the spotlight to draw the strongest possible distinctions between himself and John McCain. "The stakes of this election will be made very clear," chief strategist David Axelrod promised the New York Times. More»

Among them: Obama is a bit like Bush, and he needs to strike back harder at Mac

(NEWSER) - Here are five things we learned in the wake of Barack Obama’s overseas trip, via John Heilemann in New York:

• Obama's got guts: The trip was “risky business, fraught with peril”—but we know now that he's willing to gamble if the potential payout is right.
• His team is great, but imperfect: The trip once again proved the organizational brilliance of his aides, but the non-visit of troops in Germany gave McCain ammo.