OBAMA KEEPS HEAD OUT OF PRIMARY RACE, TURNS UP HEAT ON MCCAIN

by FOXNews.com

Barack Obama may still be stumping in primary states, but his campaign is shifting full gear into general election mode.

With an end to the Democratic primary race in sight, the Illinois senator spent his Saturday in Oregon making nice with party rival Hillary Clinton and vilifying John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee.

His campaign also announced that when Oregon holds its primary Tuesday — a contest Obama is favored to win — he will be elsewhere. Instead of celebrating in the Beaver State, he and his wife, Michelle, plan to hold a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, territory his aides described as “a critical general election state that Democrats must win in November.”

Obama’s coming campaign schedule and talking points over the past few days are casting an aura of inevitability over his campaign — the aura that once belonged to Clinton.

The Illinois senator continued his three-day fight with McCain and President Bush over 

[read complete article  here]

 

McCain’s housecleaning

 

 

 

 

 

by Carl Cameron

As McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, collects questionaires from campaign staffers about their past lobbying and political activity it’s important to remember what happened to the McCain campaign last year.
McCain’s bloated 2007 campaign imploded after spending huge amounts of money and nose-diving in the polls.
Davis, last June and July, cut most people loose and put a skeleton crew together of people willing and able to work for free. This meant he needed volunteers with separate incomes- some were lobbyists and political professionals with histories.
Campaigns routinely let people go when their outside pursuits conflict with the candidate’s desired image.
That is what the McCain camp is checking for now.
The revelation that two McCain aides had ties to the military Junta in Myanmar sparked this house cleaning; they are no longer with the campaign. A third aide, Craig Shirley, who’d been involved in an anti-Obama 527 has now also been moved on.
It was overdue, not so much for any one individual to go, but for the campaign to KNOW what they had been involved in.
There is still a haphazard feel to much of what the McCain campaign does.
While they have plans, tactics and a strategy, there are bugs in the system that often complicate the message.
Two weeks ago McCain was planning a theme of courting conservatives and intended to highlight judicial conservatism.
The week started with Cinco de Mayo, so he instead found himself starting a “conservative week” pitching comprehensive immigration reform, opposed by most conservatives as amnesty for illegal aliens.
This week was supposed to court independents and moderates with his anti-global warming agenda…he ends the week at the NRA convention talking gun rights, a conservative favorite.
The conflicting messages and events are a temporary glitch of the last 2 weeks which illustrates how some events and devlopments are reacted to by the McCain campaign rather than managed and massaged.
The staff housecleaning is not a big deal – beyond it’s timing.
It should have happened a long time ago.
The McCain campaign needs to tighten up fast.
Obama is gonna come out of his corner in top flight fighting condition with a battle tested and fleet-of-foot team.

Read more..

McCain shies away from religion talk

By JONATHAN MARTIN 

Traversing the country this week on a tour of places that have shaped his life and informed his values, John McCain spoke in strikingly personal language to introduce himself to the American public. 

But missing so far is any significant mention of religious faith. 

In an Oprah Winfrey era in which soul-baring and expressions of faith are the norm for public figures, the presumptive Republican nominee, open and candid about much else, retains a shroud of privacy around his Christianity. 

Raised Episcopalian, McCain now attends a Baptist megachurch in Phoenix. But he has not been baptized and rarely talks of his faith in anything but the broadest terms or as it relates to how it enabled him to survive 5½ years in captivity as a POW. 

In this way, McCain, 71, is a throwback to an earlier generation, when such personal matters were.. 

Read more..

Obama Plans Full Circle Trip to Iowa

 

By MIKE GLOVER, AP

EUGENE, Ore. (May 17) – Laying a symbolic claim to his party’s presidential nomination, Democrat Barack Obama will mark the latest round of primary voting with a rally in Iowa where his solid win in the January caucuses propelled him to his status as the likely nominee.

In announcing the rally, Obama aides on Saturday described Iowa as “a critical general election state that Democrats must win in November.” The announcement came as Obama was campaigning for primaries Tuesday in Oregon and Kentucky.    

Obama has built a solid lead in delegates over rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he is working overtime to cast an image of inevitability to his campaign for the nomination. In recent days, he has spent more time focused on his differences with likely Republican nominee John McCain than sparring with Clinton.

Iowa has been a swing state in recent elections. Democrat Al Gore narrowly carried the state in 2000, and President Bush collected the state’s seven electoral votes by just over 10,000 votes in 2004. Since that time, however, Democrats have build a substantial edge in registered voters, and turnout in the January precinct caucuses was at record levels.

Obama will be joined by wife, Michelle, for the Iowa rally, which marks the latest effort by Obama to shift attention away from the primary season and toward the November election.

Clinton began the campaign far better known than Obama and was considered the most likely nominee. Obama countered..

Read more..