par Corine Lesnes, correspondante du “Monde” aux Etats-Unis depuis août 2002.

L’année du changement est en train de devenir l’année du tourment.
Pour les démocrates, rien n’est décidé.
Clinton ? Obama ? Le suspense continue.
Pour certains, c’est l’angoisse.
L’autre jour, la télé a montré une Californienne. Elle n’arrivait pas à décider.
- “J’y pense tous les jours“.

Bill Richardson (barbu, il fait son coming out latino…) a raconté ce que son voisin de bureau de vote lui a dit, deux secondes avant d’entrer dans l’isoloir:
- Je ne sais pas quoi décider

La nomination démocrate a pris un tour passionnel.
Irrationnel.
L’autre jour Maria Shriver a entendu un “appel” en se levant.
Elle s’est précipitée, pas coiffée, sur l’estrade où Ophrah officiait pour Barack Obama.
- Yes we can

Le ”white male” avait cela de bon, finalement.
C’était tellement banal.
On se posait moins de questions.
Là, chacun est renvoyé à des histoires personnelles.
Avec Hillary, c’est le rapport à sa maman (pas étonnant que les hommes aient tant de mal).
Ou les rapports de couple (elle aurait du le quitter; elle a bien fait de rester..)
Ou le rapport à l’”executive woman”.
C’est beaucoup plus compliqué, finalement, une femme (ou une “mère” ) candidat.
D’ailleurs Hillary ne s’est pas privée de citer sa maman.
- “Mom was born before women could vote and she’s watching her daughter on stage tonight”

Il y a quand même des éléments chiffrés.
Hillary gagne chez les gens modestes.
Elle est très démocrate, en fait.

Ce soir, Barack a parlé de manière un peu automatique.
Il a repris sa formule de la Caroline:
-”Ce qui a commencé dans les neiges de l’Iowa”…
Mais en l’adaptant à la suite des événements:
- “Ce qui a commencé comme un murmure à Springfield”…

Cela devient un peu répétitif, ce soulèvement collectif de la foule, sous l’effet de mots.
Mouvement.
Change.
- “Our time has come. Our movement is real”.
C’est curieux cet effet “prêche”.
Il parle et les spectateurs reprennent:
- “Yes we can”

Mitt Romney utilise le même procédé.
Lui c’est pour dire que Washington n’a rien fait.
Il égrène tout ce que “they” les républicains n’ont pas fait.
Et l’audience répond:
- “They haven’t“!
Le meilleur système éducatif du monde ?
- “They haven’t“

Au bout du compte, le verdict de Bill Kristol.
- “On est revenu à la situation d’il y a un an. Avec deux favoris: McCain et Hillary”.

Este artigo vale a pena, apesar de cumprido e só acessível a quem lê inglês. Ele permite acompanhar a evolução do processo eleitoral norte-americano e sua relação com o impacto da crise econômica na população do pais. Ele reforça minha convicção que um presidente democrata será eleito em novembro, mas muito dependerá da mensagem sobre a crise. Por enquanto, se como mostra o artigo, os candidatos Republicanos estão fora da realidade, os principais candidatos democratas permanecem com posições vagas. Os Estados-Unidos vão precisar muito mais que generalidades e os eleitores estarão muito sensíveis aos efeitos da crise.

By Edward Luce

Published: January 29 2008 19:13

FINANCIAL TIMES

The issue of economics is not something I have understood as well as I should – John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful

In many electoral cycles, Senator McCain’s recent remark may have passed unnoticed. But in an election year when most Americans believe they are already in recession, he was advised promptly to read the book by Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, that he said he was carrying around.

For a long while it was assumed the 2008 presidential election would be dominated by Iraq, fear of terrorism, restoring America’s position in the world and other foreign policy issues. But then the subprime mortgage crisis began to unfold. With a majority of economists now forecasting a recession this year, economic worries have shot to the top of the list of voter concerns. In turn, that has strengthened the already robust conventional wisdom that 2008 will be the year of the Democrats.

So is it just a question of settling who is to be the Democratic nominee and then awaiting either Hillary Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s inevitable capture of the White House? Probably, says Ray C. Fair, a Yale economist whose widely cited forecasting model predicts a 52 per cent to 48 per cent Democratic presidential victory in November, even with a mild slowdown in growth.

But Mr Fair’s model, which has a 2.5 per cent margin of error, predicts a whopping 55 per cent to 45 per cent Democratic victory in November if that slowdown indeed turns into a recession. “Almost everything, including all the non-economic factors, suggests a Democratic win this year,” he says.

Should Mr Fair’s forecast prove anywhere near accurate, it would constitute something of a revolution in American political history. The last time a Democratic presidential nominee won the presidency with more than half the vote was in 1976 when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. But that came little more than a year after the Watergate crisis had unseated Richard Nixon and cast a toxic pall over the Republicans.

The only other time since 1964 that a Democrat has won more than half the vote was in 2000 when Al Gore garnered a shade more than George W. Bush in an election eventually settled by the Supreme Court. It also came at the end of one of the longest periods of growth in American history, almost all of it under a Democratic administration.

“Al Gore lost the 2000 election in spite of the economy,” says Michael Feldman, who was a senior adviser to the then vice-president. “Because it was a time of economic contentment, the 2000 election was dominated by softer issues.”

Perhaps the most often cited recession election is 1992 when Bill Clinton deftly exploited George H.W. Bush’s allegedly inept handling of the downturn with the campaign motto, “It’s the economy, stupid”. But the recession had already ended by the time voters went to the polls – and Mr Clinton won only 43 per cent of the vote.

Many believe Mr Bush senior would have won re-election were it not for the 19 per cent vote garnered by Ross Perot’s isolationist third-party candidacy. Mr Clinton took 49 per cent of the vote in 1996 in a year when the economy was much stronger (Mr Perot again ran, taking just eight per cent of the vote). Thus recent history suggests it would be heroic to assume a thumping Democratic victory in November.

“The widespread notion that a downturn or a recession gives a clear advantage to the Democratic presidential challenger is not always supported by the facts,” says Michael Lind, a political historian at the New America Foundation in Washington. “The past offers just as much evidence that we could get a Republican president with a Democratic Congress in November as a Democratic control of both.”

History points to a slightly greater correlation between congressional election outcomes and the prevailing economic orthodoxy – if not necessarily the precise stage in the economic cycle. For example, the Democratic party controlled both branches of Congress for virtually all of the period between the late 1940s and late 1960s when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal commanded a broad consensus among voters. But the Republicans still won the White House 50 per cent of the time.

Likewise, many political analysts believe the Democratic victory in the 2006 mid-term congressional elections, which brought an end to 12 years of continuous Republican majorities in the House of Representatives, heralded a rejection of a generation’s worth of conservative economics – in addition to the anti-war sentiment on Iraq that clearly motivated many voters.

Most forecasters predict the Democrats will increase their majorities in the Senate and the House this November regardless of which party takes the White House. “An economic downturn would probably reinforce what is almost certainly going to be another good year for congressional Democrats,” says Charlie Cook, a Washington political analyst. “Voters already associate their economic anxieties and their other complaints – about corruption and inept foreign policy – with the Republican party.”

Indeed, the sentiment of the American voter suggests something much worse for the Republican party as a whole than the prospect simply of taking the blame for a short-term economic downturn. The 2006 election took place after five years of robust economic growth from which many – if not most – Americans derived scant improvement in income.

The stagnation of median household incomes since 2001 poses a far tougher structural problem for defenders of the status quo than the latest quarterly economic numbers. “What is so depressing about the Republican party right now is that it is not acknowledging the economic pain most middle-class Americans are experiencing,” says David Frum, a former speechwriter to George W. Bush, whose recent book, Comeback, warns that the Republicans face electoral banishment if they do not reform. “It is a party that has become so beholden to special interests that it cannot honestly address issues like healthcare reform even though the Republican voter is suffering from healthcare inflation as much as any other.”

Frank Luntz, a leading Republican pollster, agrees. He points to the “intellectual stagnation” of Republican ideas, which have dominated American politics for a generation. “The 2006 congressional election was just the beginning of the bad news for the Republican party,” he says. “This year it gets worse.”

Yet whoever becomes the Republican presidential nominee will have a reasonable opportunity to escape the likely fate of his colleagues on Capitol Hill. Whether it is Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani or Mr McCain, all three can plausibly dissociate themselves from Mr Bush.

Had it been a more typical election when the Republican nominee was either the sitting president or the vice-president that would not have been possible. As it is, Mr Bush’s deep unpopularity need not rub off on whoever hopes to succeed him. “Presidential politics is largely about the individual characters of the nominees,” says Mr Cook. “And none of the leading Republican contenders is closely associated with Mr Bush.”

But the Republican nominee would have to go a stage further than simply dissociating himself from Mr Bush to produce an economic narrative that strikes voters both as convincing and empathetic. More than 70 per cent of voters believe the country is on the “wrong track” – a historically high measure of public dissatisfaction. That number could well deteriorate with up to 2m home foreclosures anticipated over the next 12 months.

So far, most analysts are unimpressed by the economic policies the Republican presidential hopefuls are offering. While their Democratic counterparts have been swift to produce their own fiscal stimulus plans in the last three weeks, the Republicans were slow off the mark, in some cases embarrassingly so. For example, Mr McCain’s initial remedy for the downturn was to suggest spending cuts – a measure that would deepen rather than counter any recession.

Mr Giuliani’s plan was little better. Having denied until this month that there were any clouds on the economic horizon, the former mayor of New York recently proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rate and incentives to boost investment. Economists pointed out that the counter-cyclical effect of Mr Giuliani’s tax cuts would begin to be felt only after the end of any recession.

Mr Romney, who is the most fluent on economics of the Republican candidates, was also criticised for proposing measures such as the extension of Mr Bush’s tax cuts (which expire in 2010) that would have little or no short-term effect on the economy. “In this general election, the Republicans probably cannot get away with their usual diet of optimism and tax cuts,” says Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-centre Washington think-tank. “They will have to come up with something more original.”

Tom Gallagher, managing director of International Strategy and Investment, a broker-dealer specialising in economic research, is even blunter. “Normally when Washington gets round to passing a fiscal stimulus plan, that is a signal that the recession is already over,” he says. “But the plans put forward by the Republican nominees would only begin to take effect by the time of the next recession.”

The two leading Democratic candidates have been awarded much higher grades for the content of their fiscal stimulus plans and for having reflected in their policy platforms the public’s sense of economic dissatisfaction since campaigning began a year ago.

Given her detailed expositions on economic policy, many assume that Mrs Clinton is better placed to exploit a recession than Mr Obama, whose campaign deals in larger generalities (even though his stimulus plan received more plaudits than Mrs Clinton’s).

But both are well positioned to move into a general election with a set of economic policies tailored to the mood of the electorate – including plans for universal healthcare, higher spending on infrastructure and a dose of populist scepticism about the downsides of globalisation.

Yet presidential elections, even during recession years, are never confined purely to the economy. Nor is it yet clear that the US is heading into recession. History also shows that American voters have a partiality for divided government. “If the Democrats believe they have sewn up the presidential election because the economy is turning down, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise,” says Mr Lind.

As a chill sets in, it pays to check what plays in Peoria

With its grey-and-yellow brick Italianate façade dotted with bored, reclining cherubs, the Madison Theater in downtown Peoria speaks to another age, writes Hal Weitzman. In the 1920s, the largely blue-collar audiences at venues such as the Madison were seen as the truest test of a vaudeville show. If it played in Peoria, the saying went, it could not fail in the rest of the US.

These days, the doors of the Madison are closed, its awnings in tatters. But Peoria, a city of about 110,000 in central Illinois, retains its reputation as a typical US town, an indicator of trends in both the Midwest and the broader American heartland.

If Peoria is the quintessential American city, it sits in a state that can also be seen as mirroring the wider US. Measured by a host of demographic factors – race, age, income, education, industry, immigration and rural-urban mix – Illinois is the most representative state in the union, according to data from the Census Bureau.

Illinois is also typical in that the economy has shot to the top of voters’ concerns in the run-up to Super Tuesday next week, when the state joins 21 others – four of them in the Midwest – in primary elections for a presidential candidate.

In Peoria, concerns about the economy have been expressed very publicly. Caterpillar, the maker of construction equipment and heavy-duty engines, is based in the city and is its biggest employer. Last October the company – often seen as a bellwether for the wider economy – warned that the US was either in a recession or near to one. Buoyed by strong international sales, Caterpillar released healthy results last week but reiterated that it expected “anaemic growth” in the US economy.

Peoria itself is not yet suffering much. The city’s productivity is among the highest in the Midwest and it has largely been spared the foreclosures associated with the subprime mortgage crisis. While manufacturing remains the backbone of its economy, a healthcare boom has diversified employment. Nevertheless, Bernard Goiteen of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Bradley University in Peoria says local leading economic indicators suggest growth is slowing: in the third quarter of last year, job openings fell 6 per cent from the previous quarter, building permits were down by 25 per cent and new unemployment claims rose by 23 per cent.

These data may be a worrying signal for the Midwest and the broader US. The region represents about 25-30 per cent of the national economy, says Bill Testa, senior economist at the Chicago Federal Reserve. In spite of years of job cuts and international outsourcing, it is still manufacturing-intensive. Much of that manufacturing is of durable goods, a sector sensitive to downturns.

Across the street from the Madison, in the elegant ballroom of the Père Marquette hotel, the Peoria County Republican party held its annual Lincoln Day Dinner on Sunday night. Over chicken cordon bleu and Black Forest gateau, the talk was of volatile stock markets. “Sure, I’m worried about it – I’ve lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the past few weeks,” said Merle Widmer, vice-chairman of the Peoria county board.

On the other side of the Illinois river, in Caterpillar’s tractor plant in East Peoria, the issues are somewhat different. Steve Sanneman, who instals engines on the production line, says higher petrol and food prices mean he and his family are struggling to get by. “My biggest expense is just keeping a roof over our heads,” he says. “I’m working from pay cheque to pay cheque.” Mr Sanneman says the economy will determine his vote but has no great confidence in any of the candidates. “They talk a mean battle about the lower middle class but I don’t think they have a clue about what it’s like.”

Jim McConnoughey, head of the Peoria Chamber of Commerce and one of three candidates competing for the Republican nomination in Illinois’ 18th Congressional district, says economic issues are on the minds of most Peorians. “Rural voters are worried about higher revenues falling, young people are moving to take up jobs elsewhere and the growth of smaller manufacturers has elevated the issue of economic security.”

That view is echoed by Billy Halstead, chairman of the Peoria County Democratic party. “The economy is one of the top issues we’re hearing on the doorstep – what with the housing market the way it is – and we’re using it as a campaign tool. Unemployment isn’t high yet but a lot of our blue-collar manufacturing jobs that used to be in the city have gone.”

In Illinois, it is hard to see the economy changing the outcome of the Democratic primary. Barack Obama, who represents the state in the US Senate, has an insurmountable lead. But it could help Mitt Romney – who has pledged to fight for jobs in the industrial heartland – in the Republican primary.

At Northwoods mall in central Peoria, Brianna Brignall, a student, is working her shift at a concession selling calendars featuring John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary Clinton and Mr Obama. When asked which has sold the most, she giggles and points to one featuring a confused-looking President George W. Bush. Called “I can’t wait”, it counts down the days until Mr Bush leaves office. “I guess a lot of people will just be glad to see him go,” she says.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 28, 2008
The New York Times

It’s starting to feel a bit like 1992 again. A Bush is in the White House, the economy is a mess, and there’s a candidate who, in the view of a number of observers, is running on a message of hope, of moving past partisan differences, that resembles Bill Clinton’s campaign 16 years ago.

Now, I’m not sure that’s a fair characterization of the 1992 Clinton campaign, which had a strong streak of populism, beginning with a speech in which Mr. Clinton described the 1980s as a “gilded age of greed.” Still, to the extent that Barack Obama 2008 does sound like Bill Clinton 1992, here’s my question: Has everyone forgotten what happened after the 1992 election?

Let’s review the sad tale, starting with the politics.

Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has decried.

This bitter partisanship wasn’t the result of anything the Clintons did. Instead, from Day 1 they faced an all-out assault from conservatives determined to use any means at hand to discredit a Democratic president.

For those who are reaching for their smelling salts because Democratic candidates are saying slightly critical things about each other, it’s worth revisiting those years, simply to get a sense of what dirty politics really looks like.

No accusation was considered too outlandish: a group supported by Jerry Falwell put out a film suggesting that the Clintons had arranged for the murder of an associate, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page repeatedly hinted that Bill Clinton might have been in cahoots with a drug smuggler.

So what good did Mr. Clinton’s message of inclusiveness do him?

Meanwhile, though Mr. Clinton may not have run as postpartisan a campaign as legend has it, he did avoid some conflict by being strategically vague about policy. In particular, he promised health care reform, but left the business of producing an actual plan until after the election.

This turned out to be a disaster. Much has been written about the process by which the Clinton health care plan was put together: it was too secretive, too top-down, too politically tone-deaf. Above all, however, it was too slow. Mr. Clinton didn’t deliver legislation to Congress until Nov. 20, 1993 — by which time the momentum from his electoral victory had evaporated, and opponents had had plenty of time to organize against him.

The failure of health care reform, in turn, doomed the Clinton presidency to second-rank status. The government was well run (something we’ve learned to appreciate now that we’ve seen what a badly run government looks like), but — as Mr. Obama correctly says — there was no change in the country’s fundamental trajectory.

So what are the lessons for today’s Democrats?

First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.

Second, the policy proposals candidates run on matter.

I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama’s rejection of health insurance mandates — which are an essential element of any workable plan for universal coverage — doesn’t really matter, because by the time health care reform gets through Congress it will be very different from the president’s initial proposal anyway. But this misses the lesson of the Clinton failure: if the next president doesn’t arrive with a plan that is broadly workable in outline, by the time the thing gets fixed the window of opportunity may well have passed.

My sense is that the fight for the Democratic nomination has gotten terribly off track. The blame is widely shared. Yes, Bill Clinton has been somewhat boorish (though I can’t make sense of the claims that he’s somehow breaking unwritten rules, which seem to have been newly created for the occasion). But many Obama supporters also seem far too ready to demonize their opponents.

What the Democrats should do is get back to talking about issues — a focus on issues has been the great contribution of John Edwards to this campaign — and about who is best prepared to push their agenda forward. Otherwise, even if a Democrat wins the general election, it will be 1992 all over again. And that would be a bad thing.

Saturday’s winners: John McCain in South Carolina;
Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton in Nevada. (Associated Press)

Amy Chozick, Alex Frangos and Elizabeth Holmes (Wall Street Jornal) report on the presidential race:

Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were quick to react to the Fed’s surprise three-quarter percentage-point rate cut this morning — but offered quite different messages.

“This is a global economic crisis,” Clinton said at a news conference early this morning. “It has pushed the Fed into an emergency meeting and a rate cut in an effort to take whatever action can be taken on the monetary side to begin to try to stabilize this situation which is obviously deteriorating.”

She went on to say that President Bush already should have convened a “working group on financial markets. … This has to be regulated across markets with regulators here and regulators around the world.” She also urged top lawmakers and the White House to reach agreement at their meeting today on a stimulus package that can clear Congress quickly.

McCain, on the other hand, didn’t apply the pressure, though he did put in a plug for his stimulus plan, consisting mostly of tax cuts, and a plug for the Fed. “The role of the Federal Reserve is to ensure that our financial markets are well-functioning and to support economic growth,” he explained in a statement. “I am confident that the action taken this morning to cut two key rates will support these goals. The U.S. economy has proven to be quite resilient. I am concerned about financial market events, but with the right leadership and pro-growth policies the economy can weather this upheaval.”

In Boca Raton, Fla., Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and former head of Bain Capital, acknowledged concerns about the stock market, and mentioning his investment in a blind trust at Sun Capital, which was started by one of the event’s attendees. “I hope I still have it at Sun Capital and I hope that as of tonight Sun Capital still has it too, so we’re all a little nervous about that,” he joked.

Getting serious — and optimistic — Romney said: “I can tell you from my own personal experience that every time I’ve seen things really get scary and the markets really collapse that I put aside that fear for a moment and say, ‘Ah-ha, is this a buying opportunity?’ Because my experience has always been what goes down, comes back up.”

He then returned to the presidential pitch, saying that restoring the economy’s health “is going to require, I believe, action on the part of leadership in Washington to do those things which will convince the world that America is going to come back strong and our economic foundation is secure.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton gets a thumbs up on caucus day in Las Vegas. (AP).

By Shailagh Murray and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page A01

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 19 — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won Nevada’s Democratic caucuses on Saturday, handing Sen. Barack Obama a second consecutive setback in a volatile nominating contest that is now poised to become a coast-to-coast battle.

Competing in the first state with significant blocs of minority voters, Clinton won 51 percent of the vote, Obama took 45 percent and former senator John Edwards garnered 4 percent, the result of a colorful and at times chaotic process that included caucuses held in casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Clinton won almost every casino site and dominated among women and Latino voters, while Obama drew overwhelming support from blacks — a potential foreshadowing of how the contest could play out when almost two dozen states vote on Feb. 5.

“I guess this is how the West was won,” Clinton declared at a victory rally in Las Vegas.

Obama’s campaign argued that the outcome in Nevada was a shared victory and laid claim to 13 delegates, compared with 12 for Clinton, because of the way his support was distributed around the state. Obama aides also complained of what they said were voter-suppression tactics. “We’re not treating this as a loss,” said senior adviser David Axelrod. “We’ll keep letting them spin the victories, and we’ll keep taking the delegates.” Obama left the state without delivering a concession speech, and his campaign sent messages to supporters heralding the edge in delegates.

Clinton officials rejected the delegate claim out of hand, arguing that the count has not been finalized.

The debate over the details of delegate allotment reflected the growing intensity of the competition. After three contests in as many weeks, Clinton and Obama are still struggling for the upper hand in the race for the nomination, neither having gained sustained momentum as they have struggled through a series of fierce back-and-forths.

Clinton scored her latest victory after an especially bitter exchange last weekend over racial divisions, and after her husband took on an even more visible role as both a glad-handing surrogate on the Vegas Strip and a sharp critic of Obama. In one notable exchange on the eve of the vote, Bill Clinton lambasted a reporter who asked about a recent court ruling on the caucus arrangements; the incident, replayed repeatedly on television, bore echoes of his comment the night before the New Hampshire primary that Obama’s stance on the Iraq war is a “fairy tale.” In both states, his wife won.

The Nevada results contained some worrisome signs for Obama along demographic lines. The heavy support that Clinton won among Hispanics suggested that he could face an uphill climb to win that important group in California, New York and New Jersey, the three most populous states with primaries on Feb. 5. In the first contest in which race has played an important role, white caucusgoers in Nevada backed Clinton over Obama, 52 percent to 34 percent, and nearly two-thirds of Latinos chose Clinton. Black voters broke heavily for Obama over Clinton, 83 percent to 14 percent.

In the two weeks since her stinging third-place defeat in Iowa, Clinton has sharpened her differences with Obama to emphasize her experience and the economy, while honing in on her advantage among Latino voters. Yet even as she campaigned in Nevada — and played down expectations for how she would do here, with her advisers predicting as late as Saturday morning that the setup would favor Obama — Clinton kept an eye on California, detouring for a day of campaigning there and ramping up her statewide operation.

As the two candidates head to South Carolina, they are planning to focus increasingly on nearby Feb. 5 states such as Arkansas and Georgia, turning the Democratic nomination into a truly national race.

Racial divides could trigger renewed friction within the Democratic Party as the two sides rush to pick up support from blacks and Hispanics. Although leaders of a “black-brown” coalition have sponsored Democratic debates focused on minority issues, the two groups have a history of mutual mistrust in politics and could find themselves in a tug-of-war between Obama and Clinton. Already, the campaign has been engulfed by identity politics after remarks by Clinton about the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, and after Spanish-language ads, run by a union backing Obama, questioned Clinton’s support for Latinos.

Saturday, Clinton continued to outperform Obama among women, a trend that began with her victory in New Hampshire on Jan. 8 — in contrast to Obama’s early victory among women in Iowa. According to network entrance polling, women made up 59 percent of all caucusgoers in Nevada, and they went into the caucuses favoring the senator from New York over Obama, 51 percent to 38 percent, similar to the advantage among women she enjoyed in New Hampshire. Winning strong support from women has been the cornerstone of her strategy for winning the Democratic nomination.

Despite a late endorsement by the powerful Culinary Workers Union, Obama did not win enough support from Nevada’s hourly laborers — or any single demographic — to produce new momentum after his initial burst of success in Iowa. Since his first-place finish there, the senator from Illinois has struggled to outpace Clinton in consecutive contests and is now banking heavily on a victory next Saturday in South Carolina, where as much as half of the Democratic electorate will be African American.But Obama’s advisers said that, under the complex apportionment rules governing the Nevada caucus process, he will wind up ahead of Clinton by one delegate in the state. Clinton currently leads in the overall national delegate count, including the “super delegates” who can choose their preferred nominee without waiting for any individual state results but may also change their minds at any time.

The caucuses yesterday met to select about 11,000 delegates for a series of local and state party nominating conventions later this year, leading up to the decision on awarding the state’s 25 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, expressed confidence that Obama will take the majority. “This is a very close contest, and we obviously both did a good job at turning out voters,” Plouffe said, adding, “I do think that increasingly this is going to turn into a contest of delegates, and I think that’s an important measure.”

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson rejected the rival camp’s claim. “Hillary Clinton won the Nevada caucuses today by winning a majority of the delegates at stake,” he said. “The Obama campaign is wrong. Delegates for the national convention will not be determined until April 19.”

Perhaps the clearest winner of the Nevada caucuses was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, who secured the early spot on the calendar for his state and boldly predicted turnout of 100,000 — more than 10 times the Democratic turnout in the 2004 Nevada caucuses. That forecast appeared to come true, with upwards of 114,000 caucusgoers reported. Reid was neutral in the race, but his son, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, served as Clinton’s Nevada chairman and helped her to lock down support from the Democratic establishment.

Turnout was less impressive along the Strip, where the famous skyline of soaring casinos and neon-lighted hotels drew hundreds, rather than thousands, at nine at-large sites. Clinton won the caucus at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino 93 to 69, for example; at the Wynn, which had expected 1,000 participants, Clinton won 189 to 187. Obama won at Caesars Palace 82 to 79 and also carried the Luxor.

Polling director Jon Cohen and staff writer Paul Kane in Washington contributed to this report.

Photo Reuters

By David S. Broder

Washington Post

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The New Hampshire verdicts were reinforced Saturday in Nevada and South Carolina, bringing a degree of clarity to both parties’ nomination fights.

Hillary Clinton’s victory in the Nevada caucuses and John McCain’s win in the South Carolina primary were close enough to keep the competition going on both sides. But the winners gained significant advantages for the coming rounds.

Mitt Romney remains a serious challenger for the Republican nomination, with a win in Nevada Saturday on top of earlier victories in Michigan and Wyoming, and second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Barack Obama, winless since Iowa, nonetheless continued to draw the kind of independent support that could fuel a comeback for him, starting next Saturday in South Carolina.

Mike Huckabee, the upset winner among Iowa Republicans, was damaged by his inability to roll up comparable margins among South Carolina evangelicals.

But he remains a factor in the four-way contest on Jan. 29 in Florida, where McCain will test his momentum against Romney and Rudy Giuliani, who has rested all his hopes on the Sunshine State.

Meantime, Saturday put a severe dent in two other contenders, Democrat John Edwards and Republican Fred Thompson. With third place finishes for the two former senators, their ability to remain viable candidates appeared to be in serious doubt.

For McCain, winning South Carolina reversed the most bitter of defeats in his 2000 challenge to George W. Bush — another year where he won New Hampshire’s independents.

The Arizona senator rallied the kind of establishment support here this time that went to Bush eight years ago and secured a victory that should enable him to raise money for the coming contests against the well-funded Romney.

But McCain still faces a challenge in states, such as Florida and California, where only registered Republicans — and not independents — can vote in the GOP primary.

On the Democratic side, in Nevada, as in New Hampshire, Clinton demonstrated powerful appeal to women voters, who dominated the turnout in both states. And she trounced Obama among Hispanics, despite his endorsement by the Culinary Workers’ Union that represents many of them employed in the casino industry.

In coming, delegate-rich states, such as California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey, those two constituencies could once again be critical. Obama’s appeal to African-Americans and younger voters in both races makes him competitive, but may not be enough to push him past Clinton.

In the next contest, in South Carolina, Clinton also benefits from the weakness being shown by the third Democrat, former senator John Edwards. He has looked more and more beleaguered in each state since he edged Clinton and took second place behind Obama in Iowa.

In 2004, Edwards was able to win his native state of South Carolina, thanks primarily to his support from white voters, and he has spent more days campaigning in the state this cycle than any of his rivals. But now, looking like a loser in the national competition, he may divert fewer white votes from Clinton than the Obama campaign had hoped.

Meantime, the Clinton campaign is planning to have Bill Clinton working black audiences across South Carolina, pitting his historical ties to African-American voters against Obama’s strength.

Some veteran Democrats here see a potential pattern of racial voting that could yield a narrow Clinton victory.

Boursier.com

Playboy, leader du divertissement pour adultes basé à Chicago, n’a pas manqué de se poser les véritables questions, en cette période électorale aux Etats-Unis. Une étude portant sur 900 sondés américains, de 18 à 65 ans, et susceptibles de voter aux présidentielles 2008 aux Etats-Unis, fait ainsi grand bruit. Il s’agit du sondage “Politics of Sex” de Frank Luntz, qui va… au coeur de la question.Selon les résultats de l’étude :
- Les sondés ayant moins de 40 ans ont été plus nombreux à avoir des relations sexuelles au moins une fois par semaine qu’à voter aux présidentielles tous les quatre ans aux US ;
- 25% des sondés républicains et 35% des démocrates auraient eu plus de 10 partenaires dans leurs vies, soit des pourcentages dépassant les votes des élections locales, par exemple ;
- 55% des républicains font la chose au moins une fois par semaine, contre 43% chez les démocrates ;
- 14% des supporters de Thompson et 12% de ceux d’Obama disent faire des galipettes pratiquement tous les jours, alors que seulement 5% des fans de Clinton ou de Giuliani feraient de même ;
- 58% des sondés pensent que Bill Clinton a été le plus sexy des présidents des 40 dernières années. Ronald Reagan serait second avec 22% des votes. Richard Nixon serait le “moins sexy” pour 38% des personnes interrogées.
- Autre fait marquant, 51% des républicains et 67% des démocrates auraient déjà regardé des films classés X avec leurs partenaires ;
- Enfin, 23% des républicains et 24% des démocrates seraient partants pour une nuit inavouable dans le Bureau Ovale avec un (ou une) président qu’ils trouveraient à leur goût.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday in Nashua, N.H.
After a loss in Iowa, her campaign is fine-tuning its approach.

By PATRICK HEALY and JOHN M. BRODER

The New York Times MANCHESTER, N.H. — Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in career-threatening scrapes before, but never quite like the one they face in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, when nothing less than their would-be dynasty will be on the line.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, right,
at a news conference on Friday in Manchester, N.H.

In trying to battle back from her loss in the Iowa caucuses to Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Mrs. Clinton is recalibrating her message in hopes of producing Comeback Kid: The Sequel — achieving the reversal of fortune her husband pulled off with his second-place finish here in the Democratic nomination contest in 1992.Mrs. Clinton, after arriving here at 4 a.m. Friday, used a rally in Nashua to begin focusing on young voters and independents, two groups that flocked to the Obama banner in Iowa. She said she wanted to appeal to young people, and surrounded herself with them at the rally, in contrast to her caucus night party where older, familiar faces from the Clinton administration and her political team stood out.

Yet many of the challenges and questions she faced in Iowa — like Clinton fatigue and the generational showdown with Mr. Obama — remained part of her baggage as she flew east. While she is ahead in public polls here, she faces a popularity contest against Mr. Obama. There were empty seats, for instance, at a rally Mr. Clinton held with students at the University of New Hampshire on Friday afternoon.

And her campaign, while trying to fine-tune its strategy, is also engaging in some finger-pointing. Some advisers say that the campaign miscalculated in having Mr. Clinton play such a public role, that Mrs. Clinton could not effectively position herself as a change agent, the profile du jour for Democrats, so long as he stood as a reminder that her presidency would be much like his. Other advisers say that Mr. Obama now owns the “change” mantra and that Mrs. Clinton needs a Plan B.

“Hillary says she’ll change things, but then voters see Bill and hear them talk about the 1990s, and it’s clear that the Clintons are not offering change but rather Clinton Part 2,” said one veteran adviser to both Clintons. “That won’t win.”

Beating a sunny, charismatic opponent like Mr. Obama — especially given his embrace by such a cross-section of Iowa voters — is not part of the Clinton experience. When facing political crises, the couple’s modus operandi has been to attack their attackers and question their motives. But Mr. Obama is not Kenneth W. Starr, Newt Gingrich or Paula Jones; a presidential campaign is not a Washington scandal; and the Clinton strategy of attacking Mr. Obama’s readiness for the presidency did not work in Iowa.

Mrs. Clinton, of New York, suggested she would now be more direct in pointing out contrasts between her experience and policy ideas and Mr. Obama’s, both on the campaign trail and in their televised debate Saturday night.

“I am making the case for myself, but I think one of the ways I make that is by drawing contrasts,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Nashua.

But on Friday, she stuck to a theme she has been using against Mr. Obama for months, that her health care plan would mandate that all Americans get coverage while his would not.

She is also counting on her base of support and endorsements here, much deeper than in Iowa, to counter Mr. Obama’s appeal to young people and independents.

Fifty percent of voters who were 44 and younger supported Mr. Obama in Iowa, compared with 16 percent for Mrs. Clinton, according to a poll of Democrats entering caucus sites Thursday. Over all, 52 percent of voters said they backed the candidate who would bring needed change, and Mr. Obama won 51 percent of their support.

“You have to learn from what happened in Iowa,” said Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director. “But the message in New Hampshire has been working. It’s who she is as a person, her experience making change, the importance of picking a president that is ready. That won’t change.”

Speaking to reporters in Nashua, Mrs. Clinton played down her loss in Iowa and asserted that it was not a referendum on the strength of her candidacy.

“I was never a front-runner of any significance in Iowa — I knew it was always going to be hard for me,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Both of my two leading opponents, one had been there for years; one is from a neighboring state. So I feel that we executed what we thought was the limit of what we could produce in Iowa under the circumstances.”

Clinton advisers said Friday that they would not mount a negative advertising campaign against Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, saying the primary was too soon for such an onslaught to have any effect. And they said there were no plans to bring in new senior advisers to help right her campaign.

Yet no sooner had Mrs. Clinton finished her concession speech in Iowa on Thursday than second-guessing set in among her supporters.

One longtime adviser complained that the campaign’s senior strategist, Mark Penn, realized too late that “change” was a much more powerful message than “experience.” Another adviser said Mr. Penn and Mr. Clinton were consumed with polling data for so long, they did not fully grasp the personality deficit that Mrs. Clinton had with voters.

Advisers said that both Clintons had miscalculated the endurance and depth of what they called “the Obama phenomenon.” They both believed that, in the final months of 2007, more voters would question whether Mr. Obama was ready to be president and more reporters would pick apart his political record and personal character. Now anger inside the campaign at the news media has hardened; Mr. Clinton, in particular, believes reporters will be complicit if Mr. Obama becomes the nominee and loses to a Republican.

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Former President Bill Clinton greeting supporters
on Friday in Nashua, N.H. His role has been debated within the campaign.

Mr. Clinton’s role in the campaign has also become fodder for debate in her camp. Some advisers laud him as a vote-getter and crowd-builder bar none, and Mrs. Clinton’s best character witness. But others increasingly look at him with a jaundiced eye, saying that some of his off-message remarks have proved a distraction, and that his looming presence has undercut her promises to make a break with the politics of the past.Mr. Clinton seemed tired, almost downbeat as he worked his way through two 45-minute speeches in New Hampshire on Friday. He focused on Mrs. Clinton’s record of service and her qualifications for the presidency.

He never mentioned Mr. Obama’s name, but he seemed to draw a contrast between what he called her 36 years of public service and Mr. Obama’s relatively limited depth of experience, the very themes that did not succeed for the Clintons in Iowa.

Denny Gallaudet, an investment manager and undecided Democratic voter from Freedom, N.H., who attended a rally in Rochester on Friday with Mr. Clinton, said he sensed “a little Clinton fatigue” among voters. Mr. Gallaudet, who supported Mr. Clinton in 1992 and 1996, said he was skeptical that Democrats were still in the thrall of the former president.

“I got really mad at him about the Monica thing,” he said. “It really creamed the party.”

While Mr. Clinton hits the campaign trail for the next few days, Mrs. Clinton plans to spend the bulk of Saturday preparing for the debate, a crucial showdown with Mr. Obama in the eyes of Clinton advisers. Her allies, including Gen. Wesley K. Clark and former Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, are also fanning out in New Hampshire.

Campaign officials held a conference call with reporters on Friday, where leaders of her efforts in some of the next states to vote — Nevada, South Carolina, California — all predicted that she would win the nominating contests there.

Patrick Healy reported from Manchester, and John M. Broder from Durham. Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting from Des Moines.

Também é verdade que Bill Clinton, por exemplo, perdeu em Iowa, nas primárias que acabaram escolhendo-o candidato pelo partido Democrata a Casa-Branca. O mesmo pode se repetir com Hillary Clinton agora.

Nada de isto, porem, apaga as lições do inicio deste complexo processo de escolha. Os eleitores de ambos partidos privilegiaram candidatos pouco representativos do establishement político, defensores de posições de maior mudança, de posturas por vezes polêmicas e até com menor experiência que as principais figuras de ambos os lados.

Paradoxalmente, Hillary Clinton acabou penalizada pela sua postura mais de centro, moderada e consensual, sendo que elas eram aparentemente necessárias para reduzir a rejeição ao fato de ser mulher, progressista e com vida familiar digamos conturbada.

Pode ser que os eleitores de Iowa estejam expressando um sentimento nacional de mudanças após o desastrado governo Bush, sua política belicista e guerreira no Iraque e os impasses econômicos, conseqüência da crise das hipotecas e também do aprofundamento da desigualdade social visível na questão da saúde, da renda e do emprego, por exemplo.

Ainda é cedo para saber se o fenômeno é local ou passageiro, ou se traduz uma tendência mais profunda. O fato do beneficiado no campo Democrata ser um jovem senador negro, de origem imigrante e isto em um Estado de maioria branca e perfil conservador parece expressar algo mais que um humor passageiro.

Barack Obama tem dinheiro para sustentar a campanha e recebeu um apoio ao seu discurso de mudança, resta saber se Hillary saberá captar os novos ventos de Iowa para recuperar o espaço perdido.

New Hampshire nós dará mais uma dica de para onde vão os Estados-Unidos. Para o resto do mundo isto tem, seguramente, uma certa importância.

Luis Favre