Candidates Go to Final Round in Battle for Super Tuesday

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: February 3, 2008

With two days to go before Super Tuesday’s multistate nominating contests, candidates for both parties campaigned furiously on Sunday, trying to seize voters’ support in the hours before the country’s attention shifted to the Super Bowl.
A variety of weekend polls showed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was locked in a tight race with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the Democratic nomination. A CBS News poll released Sunday evening showed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama each had the support of 41 percent of the 491 Democratic primary voters it surveyed.
In contrast, Senator John McCain appeared to be heading into Tuesday’s Republican contests with a clear lead over his chief rival, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. The CBS News poll showed Mr. McCain gaining the support of 46 percent of the 325 Republican primary voters it surveyed, compared with 23 percent for Mr. Romney.
The polls also showed that significant numbers of voters have simply not yet decided who they are going to vote for, or if they have decided, are not fully committed to their decisions. About four in 10 Democratic voters and more than half of the Republican said they still could change their minds before Tuesday’s contests, the CBS News poll said. Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney both came out swinging on Sunday. At a campaign stop in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Obama criticized both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain and tried to link his opponents to the policies of the Bush administration, particularly the war in Iraq, which Mrs. Clinton initially supported.
“I can offer and clean break from the failed policies of George W. Bush,” Mr. Obama said. “I won’t have to explain my votes in the past.”
At a campaign rally outside Chicago, Mr. Romney, who has repeatedly claimed that Mr. McCain is out of step with conservative Republicans, also tried to link the Arizona Republican with Mrs. Clinton.
“There’s a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Mr. Romney said. “Which way are we going to go? Are we going to take a sharp left turn in our party, get as close as we can to Hillary Clinton, without being Hillary Clinton?”
Still, Mr. McCain appears to be picking up significant support from Republicans after relied on independents to carry him to victory in some early primaries. An ABC News/Washington Post survey showed that his support among self-identified Republicans was up nearly fourfold since December.
Part of this increased support appeared to come from Republicans rallying around the candidate now deemed most electable. And part of it, said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and second-tier Republican candidate, was a sense among some Republicans that Mr. Romney is a conservative of convenience, not of conviction.
“When we were out there supporting Ronald Reagan, he was running away from him,” Mr. Huckabee said on CNN. “That’s what rankles many of us. He’s a recent convert and now he shouts ‘hallelujah’ louder than the rest of us.”
The many winner-take-all Republican contests give Mr. McCain a chance to come within a few hundred delegates of victory on Tuesday, by some estimates.
Looking to Tuesday, Mr. Romney has concentrated his efforts in states that award delegates by caucuses and conventions, where his organization efforts can help offset the pull of Mr. McCain’s higher name recognition. He was also fighting hard to win in California, the day’s biggest prize.
Still, Mr. McCain’s emergence has political analysts speculating more pointedly about possible matchups. The ABC/Washington Post poll showed Mr. Obama narrowly defeating Mr. McCain in a head-to-head contest but Mr. McCain defeating Mrs. Clinton by an identical three-point margin.
At a campaign appearance on Sunday at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., Mr. McCain took a rare shot at Mrs. Clinton, including her in a denunciation of pork barrel spending.
“In her short time in the United States Senate, the senator from New York, Senator Clinton, has gotten $500 million worth of pork barrel projects,” Mr. McCain said. “My friends, that kind of thing is going to stop when I’m president of the United States of America.”
The race for the Democratic nomination is likely to go beyond Tuesday, partly because it is so competitive and partly because the Democrats’ proportional system allows a candidate to win delegates even while losing a state.
Together, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are advertising in nearly all the 22 states with Democratic contests on Tuesday, spending millions of dollars. On Sunday night, Mr. Obama has even purchased 30 seconds of commercial time on the Super Bowl in more than 20 states where he is competing.
Mr. Obama has been gaining more ground in the polls than Mrs. Clinton, who has stemmed the erosion that began after the Iowa caucuses but not added much to her base. A poll by the Pew Research Center shows that since mid-January, Mr. Obama increased his support significantly among independents, white voters in general and white men in particular, voters aged 50 to 64, moderates, and voters with some college or more. The poll also found increased support from him among the middle class, voters whose yearly household income is between $40,000 and $75,000.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama also received the endorsement of Maria Shriver, who joined Caroline Kennedy and their uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachasetts, in endorsing the Illinois senator. Ms. Shriver’s husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, endorsed Mr. McCain last week.
Mrs. Clinton continued Sunday to play down the frictions that she and her husband, Bill, have had with the Obama camp, saying of herself and her rival: “We have lived the progress that has been made in America, each of us has broken barriers. Whoever wins the nomination will change American history.”
But Mrs. Clinton also suggested that she would prove tougher in a general election than Mr. Obama would be, once negative charges began to fly.
“I have been through these Republican attacks over and over and over again and I believe that I’ve demonstrated that, much to the dismay of the Republicans, I not only can survive, but thrive,” Mrs. Clinton said on the ABC News program “This Week.”
Mr. Obama, on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” predicted that he would draw votes “that Senator Clinton cannot get.”
“That broadens the political map,” Mr. Obama said. “I think it bodes well for the election.”
He quickly sidestepped a question about a possible Democratic “dream ticket,” as the interviewer called it, uniting Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. “Democrats are eager to unify against the Republicans,” he said. He then pivoted to talk about his differences with Mr. McCain.
Mr. McCain, and Mr. Romney too, he said, had “essentially embraced” what Mr. Obama said was President Bush’s failed economic approach, and “both have suggested that we continue the war in Iraq.”
Mrs. Clinton, too, has begun drawing contrasts with Mr. McCain. On the Iraq war, she said, the differences “could not be stronger.” Mrs. Clinton has said she would start withdrawing American troops from Iraq within 60 days of taking office, while Mr. McCain has said American troops could be there up to 100 years.
“I personally believe there is no American military solution,” Mrs. Clinton said, “and it is imperative that we focus our attention on the political and diplomatic side of this equation.”
The contests on both sides have been so fierce that political analysts on Sunday were even analyzing intelligence on where the candidates planned to watch the Super Bowl.
Mr. McCain planned to watch from Massachusetts. Was that a pitch for votes from New England, whose Patriots are undefeated this year? Or a finger in the eye of Mr. Romney, the former governor?
And what did it mean that Bill Clinton would be watching from New Mexico, with Gov. Bill Richardson? Was this tantamount to an endorsement by the governor, or a bid for Hispanic support?
“I suspect,” Mr. Obama said, when asked about this on ABC, “that they’re just going to be watching the game.”

Reporting was contributed by Jeff Zeleny from Wilmington, Del., MichaelLuo from Chicago, Michael Cooper from Fairfield, Conn., and John Sullivan and Janet Elder from New York.

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Matéria que menciona levemente as posições dos candidatos quanto à Guerra do Iraque (parte em destaque)

Fonte: The New York Times ( caderno National - Politics)
Publicação: 3 de fevereiro 2008
Autor: Brian Knowlton
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03cnd-campaign.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp