Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton battled to keep crucial New Hampshire from swinging to rising rival Barack Obama on Sunday but new polls showed him jumping into the lead. In the hotly contested Republican race, Arizona Senator John McCain leaped ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney even as Romney tried to raise doubts about McCain.
Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on surging rival Barack Obama, as polls showed he could inflict a second body blow to her White House hopes in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Clinton used a tense face-to-face debate, three days before the next crucial 2008 test, to argue her rival was inconsistent and inexperienced.
”They said this day would never come,” said United States Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the outset of his barnstorming victory speech on Thursday night. But as he arrived in New Hampshire early on Friday, Americans woke up to the historic possibility that the day when they might have a black president was closer than they thought.
Barack Obama took a big step on Thursday towards becoming the first black United States president as his campaign for change caught fire in Iowa and swept him past Hillary Clinton in the opening Democratic nominating contest. Republican underdog Mike Huckabee capped a stunning political rise to beat rival Mitt Romney in Iowa.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other White House hopefuls beseeched Iowans to vote to change America as they sought to land an early blow in Thursday’s crucial first 2008 nominating clash. Both Democratic and Republican races were too close to call, before more than 200 000 activists cast their judgements in the fabled Iowa caucuses.
White House foes chased last undecided voters ahead of Thursday’s dead-heat first nominating clashes in Iowa, as comeback Republican John McCain grabbed a new poll lead in the next key state, New Hampshire.
Barack Obama stretched his lead over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Iowa to seven points, in a new poll late on Monday, two days before the state opens the White House nominating race. The Des Moines Register poll of people likely to attend caucuses on Thursday put Obama on 32%, with the former first lady on 25%.
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/ 31 December 2007
The presidential candidates in the United States stepped up their personal attacks on Sunday to try to squeeze out an advantage in the extremely tight contest for the Iowa caucuses, now only three days away. As Democratic and Republican candidates toured in the final push before the January 3 caucuses, new polls showed the negative campaigning was effective.
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/ 30 December 2007
Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: ”Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t shoot. This is traumatising.”
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/ 28 December 2007
Barack Obama rejected rival Hillary Clinton’s vow to forge change on Thursday, as polls showed a tight Democratic White House race in Iowa, a week before the state’s lead-off nominating clash. In a soaring new speech, the Democratic senator sharpened his attacks on the former first lady.
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/ 23 December 2007
Bill Clinton has never been one to avoid the limelight. Or stay on message. Last week, as he spearheaded a mission to rejuvenate his wife’s troubled presidential campaign, he showed that old habits die hard. In a publicity stunt at a grocery store in the vital first battleground state of Iowa, the ex-president caused brief chaos by breaking away to chat to the public.
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/ 22 December 2007
A dilemma confronts many Democratic activists in the United States. They respect Hillary Clinton’s intellect. They admire her performance in the debates. But it is difficult for them to commit to a candidate who not only voted in favour of the war on Iraq in 2002, but has refused to express contrition, or any deep emotion, about that choice.
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/ 20 December 2007
A backlash against attempts to smear the presidential hopeful Barack Obama by suggesting he has Islamic connections claimed another scalp on Thursday when a former senator was forced to apologise. Bob Kerrey wrote to Obama to apologise for any insult he had unintentionally caused by bringing up the Muslim link in the process of endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
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/ 14 December 2007
Tom Shaheen, one of Hillary Clinton’s senior advisers, was forced to resign on Thursday, 24 hours after raising the drug-taking past of her main rival, Barack Obama. Although the Clinton campaign distanced itself from Shaheen’s remarks, it has been engaged in a negative campaign against Obama for the last week.
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/ 5 December 2007
Celebrity political endorsements do not get much bigger than Oprah Winfrey’s. But political experts say it is doubtful the popular United States talk-show host can sway votes to fellow Chicagoan and first-term Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the way she persuades viewers to turn books into instant bestsellers.
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/ 30 November 2007
A man claiming to have a bomb walked into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign offices on Friday and took hostages, police and witnesses said. The man had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to himself, said Bill Shaheen, a top state campaign official. He took two hostages, both volunteers, and released others, Shaheen said.
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/ 25 November 2007
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama once electrified the United States by preaching a ”politics of hope”. Unfortunately Obama then found himself outsmarted and outfought by his chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton. Now Obama has, in effect, relaunched his campaign, coming out fighting against Clinton.
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/ 15 November 2007
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told Google employees on Wednesday his meteoric rise in politics mirrored the company’s emergence as the lifeblood of the internet and he surprised his hosts by answering a geeky engineering question.
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/ 12 October 2007
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Democrat Al Gore and the United Nations climate panel on Friday intensified pressure on the former United States vice-president to launch a late bid for the presidency, but advisers said he is showing no signs of interest in the 2008 race.