Racism Alarms Obama Backers

Candidate's foot soldiers encounter name-calling, vandalism, bomb threats

At WashingtonPost.com, Kevin Merida reports:Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Meeting cruel reaction

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."

Vandalism, bomb threats

The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."

Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.

"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.

Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.

"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "

Skilled at bridging divides

Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.

Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.

For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.

Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Racial attitudes difficult to measure

Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.

Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.

Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."

People with funny feelings

The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.

At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.

Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."

"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.

He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."

Like him?

"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.

Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.

As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."

But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.

Pennsylvania Gets Offers For Turnpike

The Wall Street Journal reports:

At least two bidding groups submitted undisclosed cash offers late Friday for
the 75-year lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in what could represent one
of the largest deals in the coveted U.S. infrastructure sector.

One of the bidding groups is led by Spanish toll-road operator Abertis
Infraestructuras SA and includes undisclosed financial partners, a company
official said Saturday. A person familiar with the situation said another
binding bid was filed by Spain's Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructura de
Transporte SA in partnership with Australia's Macquarie Infrastructure Group.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley advised Pennsylvania's government that a
long-term lease of its Turnpike can cover the $1.7 billion for its annual
highway and transit needs, estimating the value of the 500-mile highway at
$12 billion to $18 billion.

Disclosed terms of the proposed 75-year lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike are
similar to the privatization of Chicago's Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road.
The city of Chicago raised $1.83 billion in 2005 by leasing its Chicago
Skyway for 99 years. Indiana, in turn, obtained $3.85 billion in 2006 through
the 75-year lease of the Indiana Toll Road. Both deals allow significant toll
hikes over the long run, and both were won by Cintra and Macquarie.

The proposed formula for toll increases at the Pennsylvania Turnpike includes
a 25% hike set for next year. Tolls can then match inflation or rise annually
by at least 2.5%. Pennsylvania's government believes such a tolling formula
benefits drivers, as it won't be required to toll other highways.

Clinton Aide Says Race May Not Go To Convention

The New York Times reports:

As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton rejected calls for her to drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, her campaign signaled Thursday that Mrs. Clinton might not take the battle all the way to the convention at the end of August.

“I don’t see it going to the convention,” Terry McAuliffe, her campaign manager, said in a televised interview.

In recent days, a number of party leaders have called on Mrs. Clinton to cede the nomination to her opponent, Senator Barack Obama, but the Clinton campaign has insisted that she would fight through the end of the primary season. Appearing NBC’s “Today” show, Mr. McAuliffe echoed Mrs. Clinton’s determination to fight on, but said the party’s superdelegates would resolve the contest soon after the final election is tallied.

“I think the superdelegates are going to move very quickly,” he said. “After June 3, this is going to come to a conclusion.”

Mrs. Clinton showed no signs of slowing down on Thursday as she began a three-state campaign swing in advance of contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon. Appearing beneath the state Capitol dome in Charleston, W.Va., Senator Clinton told a small but enthusiastic crowd that she would not stop until the remaining six contests are complete.

“I think we want to keep this going so the people of West Virginia’s voices are heard,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton’s criticism of Mr. Obama was muted during her appearance; she said she has done much better than her opponent with certain key voter segments, including women, older voters and blue-collar workers. Mrs. Clinton trails Mr. Obama in pledged delegates and cannot catch up in the remaining races, but she said argues that she would be more successful in the general election against the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

While Mrs. Clinton set out on 20 hours of appearances, Mr. Obama appeared Thursday at the Capitol in Washington. He shook hands with members of both parties and posed for photographs during the 45-minute appearance in the House of Representatives.

As he walked through the chamber, Mr. Obama said he expected Mrs. Clinton to win West Virginia and Kentucky and described her leads in those states as “insurmountable.”

“My goal is to bring the party together as soon as possible,” he said.

In an appearance on CNN on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Obama focused his attacks on Mr. McCain, who he said was “offering us four more years of the same policy that has gotten us where we are now.”

Asked whether he would consider Mrs. Clinton as a vice presidential running mate, Mr. Obama said it would be “presumptuous” to consider such thing before the race is over, although he complimented Mrs. Clinton as a candidate and said, “Obviously, she would be on anyone’s short list.”

But Mr. Obama said consideration of a running mate at this point would be premature.

“We haven’t wrapped this thing up yet,” he said.

One issue that remains to be settled in the Democratic race is the disposition of votes in Florida and Michigan, whose delegates have been blocked because of a conflict with the Democratic Party over the timing of those states’ primary elections in January. Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly said that the failure to resolve the conflict could draw the contest into the convention and has insisted that the matter needs to be resolved.

“And if we don’t resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention — that’s what credentials committees are for,” Mrs. Clinton said in an interview with The Washington Post in March.

In his appearance on the “Today” show, Mr. McAuliffe also said the question of Florida and Michigan needed to be settled by the party. But he did not seem to think it would stand in the way of concluding the race by early June.

“Within a week or two after June 3, I think it will be all over,” he said.

Mr. McAuliffe also dismissed criticism that Mrs. Clinton was dividing the party by staying in the race. He argued that the hard-fought race has energized Democratic voters and noted the Bill Clinton was not selected as the president nominee until June 1992, and the Democrats handily won that election.

“We have all said we will be together at the end,” he said.

Once-Secret Memos Question Hillary Clinton's Honesty

The Washington Times reports:

A decade before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton admitted fudging the truth during the presidential campaign, federal prosecutors quietly assembled hundreds of pages of evidence suggesting she concealed information and misled a federal grand jury about her work for a failing Arkansas savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater probe, according to once-secret documents that detail the internal debates over whether she should have faced criminal charges.

Ordinarily, such files containing grand jury evidence and prosecutors' deliberations are never made public. But the estate of Sam Dash, a lifelong Democrat who served as the ethics adviser to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, donated his documents from the infamous 1990s investigation to the Library of Congress after his 2004 death, unwittingly injecting into the public domain much of the testimony and evidence gathered against Mrs. Clinton from former law partners, White House aides and other witnesses.

The documents, reviewed by The Washington Times, identify numerous instances in which prosecutors questioned Mrs. Clinton's honesty, an issue that continues to dog her on the campaign trail after she was forced to acknowledge earlier this year exaggerating a story about coming under sniper fire as first lady during a visit to Bosnia in 1996.

For instance, the papers say prosecutors thought Mrs. Clinton first concealed her legal representation of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association — and the money she made doing it — during the 1992 presidential campaign when she and her husband, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, came under fire in a questionable Arkansas real estate project known as Whitewater.

Beginning in March 1992 and continuing over the next several years, Mrs. Clinton steadfastly denied that she ever "earned a penny" in representing her Rose Law Firm clients, including the failing thrift's owners, James and Susan McDougal — the Clintons' partners in the Whitewater Development Corp. project.

But the newly discovered records, more than 1,100 pages in 30 separate documents, tell a different story.

A June 1998 draft indictment of Mrs. Clinton's Rose firm partner Webster L. Hubbell, who followed the Clintons to Washington in 1993 as associate attorney general, said Mrs. Clinton did legal work for Madison "continuously" from April 1985 to July 1986. It also said she represented the thrift before the Arkansas Securities Department for approval to issue preferred stock, helped Madison obtain a questionable broker-dealer license to sell the stock and was actively involved in a failed Madison project known as Castle Grande.

The draft indictment clearly asserts that Mrs. Clinton, despite her denials, represented Madison and its projects "in a series of real estate and financial transactions." A separate 183-page report included in the Dash documents said Mr. Hubbell and Mrs. Clinton "concealed from federal investigators the true nature of their work" with Madison and its various entities.

Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson disputed the allegations.

"This is a baseless accusation which was looked into over a decade ago in an investigation that took $71.5 million and eight years to determine there was no case," he said.

But exit polls from Tuesday's North Carolina and Indiana primaries found that about half of the voters in each state said they didn't find Mrs. Clinton "honest and trustworthy."

Mrs. Clinton misspoke in March when she claimed she had come under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996. She said she and her daughter, Chelsea, ran for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed in Tuzla. She later admitted to making a "mistake."

The Library of Congress documents have not been released publicly. A library official said they are still being "processed."

In April 1998, Whitewater prosecutors, divided over Mrs. Clinton's truthfulness, argued over whether to indict her on charges of lying under oath about her legal work for Madison. Lawyers and others close to the probe said a draft indictment of the first lady became "a work in progress" after Mrs. Clinton's January 1996 grand jury appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Prosecutors concluded at the time, the sources said, that she had testified falsely in denying doing legal work in the Castle Grande venture.

"There is concern among some about how successful they might be in bringing a criminal indictment against Mrs. Clinton for obvious reasons, but there is no lack of desire to do so," one lawyer familiar with the probe said at the time. The lawyer said the decision rested on two major points: whether there was sufficient evidence to contradict her sworn testimony and, more importantly, whether prosecutors could win the case in court.

No indictment was sought, but Whitewater prosecutors noted at the time, according to the Dash documents, that sworn statements by Mrs. Clinton were contradictory and misleading and that her involvement with Madison"s failed real estate project known as Castle Grande project was only fully detailed with the discovery of her Rose firm billing record summaries in the White House living quarters in January 1996 — two years after they had been subpoenaed.

A week before the summaries were found, the Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC) said in a Dec. 28, 1995, report it had little information on Mrs. Clinton's ties to Madison or Castle Grande. After their discovery, the agency concluded Mrs. Clinton was more involved with the two entities than was previously known.

The summaries said Mrs. Clinton billed Madison for 60 hours of legal work, spoke with Madison officials about the Castle Grande project on 14 occasions, discussed legal matters with Madison's owners — the McDougals — 16 times, had 28 meetings with Rose firm lawyers on Madison, and met with state regulators about Madison at least twice.

At the time, Madison was seeking help from Mrs. Clinton's Rose Law Firm in Little Rock to fend off state and federal regulators concerned that the thrift was insolvent. Madison also wanted to jump-start a questionable preferred stock deal to pump much-needed cash into the operation and was desperate to keep the government from shutting it down.

In December 1995, the Senate Whitewater Committee also made public handwritten notes of a telephone conversation that contradicted assertions made by Mrs. Clinton during the 1992 presidential race that she had little participation in the legal representation of Madison when state and federal regulators were deciding whether to shut it down.

The notes, by New York lawyer Susan Thomases, one of the first lady's closest advisers, said Mrs. Clinton had numerous conferences with officials at Madison, that she reviewed documents, that she made calls to discuss a preferred stock plan aimed at keeping the failing thrift afloat, and that "she did all the billing."

The committee released 350 pages of Madison files that said Mrs. Clinton, according to the billing summaries, had made significant claims on the thrift for legal services, and at one point was listed exclusively as the billing attorney. The summary is all that remains, since the original Rose firm billing records for Madison disappeared.

In May 1995, as the Whitewater investigation expanded into separate probes by Senate and House committees, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the RTC and a federal grand jury, Mrs. Clinton denied in sworn affidavits any knowledge of a Madison real estate project known as Castle Grande, saying she had "no recollection" of doing legal work for the 1,050-acre development.

Madison was closed in 1989 at a cost to taxpayers of $70 million. Castle Grande failed at a taxpayers' loss of $4 million.

Another major area of concern, authorities said, was an option agreement regulators said "facilitated" a questionable $300,000 payment to Seth Ward, the Madison official to whom Mrs. Clinton had spoken about Castle Grande. The agreement was written by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Hubbell and guaranteed Mr. Ward a payoff and negated his liability in the project. While the option was never exercised, it disguised the reason for the payment and created a paper trail to justify the outlay to Mr. Ward, who was Mr. Hubbell's father-in-law.

Mrs. Clinton told the RTC in May 1995 she had no memory of providing legal services for Mr. Ward and said in a sworn statement she did not know the Castle Grande name, thinking the project was called IDC even though the Castle Grande name was widely associated with the site.

Not truthful

According to the Dash documents on Whitewater, investigators also challenged Mrs. Clinton's public statements on what she knew at the time of Mr. Hubbell's March 1994 Justice Department resignation. Mrs. Clinton told reporters she thought he quit over an "internal billing dispute" with his former Rose firm partners that "likely would be resolved."

But the records said that three months before the resignation, Mrs. Clinton had been told by another Rose firm partner, Allen Bird, that Mr. Hubbell's "billing problems were very serious" and documents released during the Senate Whitewater hearings in 1996 said that two weeks before Mr. Hubbell resigned, Mrs. Clinton was notified formally that her former law partner was involved in a conflict-of-interest investigation and he might have lied in a sworn statement to federal regulators.

The Dash records also state that Mr. Hubbell's extensive role in a conflict in the Rose firm's representation of Madison and his testimony under oath to the RTC had meticulously been described in a March 1, 1994, memo written by White House Associate Counsel W. Neil Eggleston and forwarded to Mrs. Clinton by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes.

The records said Mr. Eggleston's seven-page memo described concerns by the RTC and the FDIC on whether the Rose firm had disclosed its prior legal representation of Madison in an FDIC lawsuit against the thrift's former auditors and whether Mr. Hubbell had disclosed his relationship with Mr. Ward in Castle Grande.

Mr. Eggleston's memo, according to the records, said the RTC had concluded the Rose firm disclosed neither the prior representation nor Mr. Hubbell's relationship, noting that an "ultimate finding" of nondisclosure would mean that "Mr. Hubbell was not truthful in his recollection." Mr. Eggleston said a finding against the firm would mean that it was "permanently barred from any further work for the RTC or the FDIC (and possibly other banking regulators.)"

He also said that while it was "not clear" whether the FDIC or the RTC would review the accusations under an actual conflict standard, there was the possibility of sanctions in the case, including "criminal liability," the records said.

The records also said Whitewater investigators were concerned that Mrs. Clinton played a key role in helping Mr. Hubbell obtain consulting contracts after his March 14, 1994, Justice Department resignation.

In a report titled "Hubbell Hush Money Summary," Whitewater investigators said that a day before Mr. Hubbell quit, Mrs. Clinton and other top administration officials met privately at the White House to arrange for him to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees at a time his cooperation in the Whitewater probe could have resulted in charges against the then-first lady.

The records said Mrs. Clinton took an active role in White House efforts to "take care of" Mr. Hubbell financially, helping to locate campaign supporters who divvied up more than $450,000 over the next nine months mostly for consulting work he never did.

In 1997, Mr. Starr subpoenaed White House records to determine whether the consulting fees were intended to guarantee Mr. Hubbell's silence in the Whitewater probe. Mr. Starr also wanted to know whether the White House had sought or directed the payments.

An Oct. 22, 1998, report said Mr. Hubbell's fees were arranged through "high administration officials or advisors," including Mrs. Clinton, whom was described as "the direct impetus for at least one client." Others who helped were identified as White House Chief of Staff Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty; former Democratic National Committee Chairman Truman Arnold; Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan; Small Business Administration Chairman Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff; and U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, the Clinton-Gore campaign chairman in 1992 who later served as commerce secretary.

An April 21, 1998, report questioned why White House officials would choose to "support Hubbell and take care of him" at a time "[Mrs. Clinton] was on notice that Hubbell engaged in a widespread pattern and practice of cheating the [Rose Law Firm]." The report said a "sinister reason" could be Mr. Hubbell knew about Mrs. Clinton's role in doing legal work for Madison and other related companies.

A May 21, 1997, memo, noted that most of the company officials who paid him consulting fees said no work product was ever produced. The report said one employer told investigators the only document Mr. Hubbell produced was "his bill."

Mr. Hubbell pleaded guilty in December 1994 to mail fraud and income-tax evasion in the theft of $482,410 from his Rose firm clients and partners and failing to pay $143,747 in taxes. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison, serving 16 before being released.

The Whitewater probe ended on March 21, 2002, when Independent Counsel Robert W. Ray, who succeeded Mr. Starr, concluded in a final report there was "insufficient evidence" to bring charges against the Clintons. But the report also said statements by the Clintons to investigators were "factually inaccurate" and that White House delays in the production of evidence and the "unmeritorious litigation" by its lawyers "severely impeded the investigation's progress."

Clinton Makes Case For Wide Appeal

USA Today reports:

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Clinton's blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions.

The Obama campaign, looking toward locking up the nomination, stepped up pressure on superdelegates who have the decisive votes in their race.

In both states, Clinton won six of 10 white voters, according to surveys of people as they left polling places.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that in Indiana, Obama split working-class voters with Clinton and won a higher percentage of white voters than in Ohio in March. He said Obama will be the strongest nominee because he appeals "to Americans from every background and all walks of life. These statements from Sen. Clinton are not true and frankly disappointing."

Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

CLINTON: Campaigning continues despite dire forecasts
OBAMA: Faced with a divided party
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton's comment was a "poorly worded" variation on the way analysts have been "slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms."

However, he said her primary support doesn't prove she's more electable. Either Democrat will get "the vast majority" of the other's primary election votes in a general election, he said.

Clinton lost North Carolina by 14 percentage points and won Indiana by 2 points after competing full-out in both states. She had loaned the campaign $6.4 million in the past month. She said she might lend more.

"We should finish the contests we have and see where we stand after they're over," she said, referring to the six remaining primaries that will end June 3.

There were signs of unrest Wednesday, even among Clinton allies. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein wondered to The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, "whether she can get the delegates that she needs." Former South Dakota senator George McGovern, whose 1972 presidential bid gave Clinton her first political experience, switched his support from Clinton to Obama.

Obama Plans To Declare Victory May 20

In Politico.com:

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race.

The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates—a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination—a tally that includes Florida and Michigan.

“We don’t accept 2,025. It is not the real number because that does not include Florida and Michigan,” said Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton’s two chief strategists. “It’s a phony number.”

Wolfson said they intend to contest the DNC’s 2,025 number “every day,” as well as any declaration of victory made by Obama based upon that number, because it does not include Florida and Michigan.

In January, Clinton won both states by wide margins when Obama did not actively contest them. The two states were stripped of their delegates for holding early primaries not sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee.

Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold—1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included.

“On May 20 we’re going to declare victory,” said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be “the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes.”

While the nature of that declaration of victory is “still developing,” in the advisor’s words, the Obama campaign contends that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates should be the party nominee.

“Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded,” wrote Obama campaign manager David Plouffe Wednesday in a memo to superdelegates. “It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules - your rules - which we built this campaign and our strategy around.”

But the Clinton campaign’s insistence on counting Florida and Michigan would alter not only the overall delegate math, but the pledged delegate math as well. Because if the two states are included in the count, the total number of pledged delegates would rise from 3,253 to 3,566—which means the magic number for a majority rises to 1,784, not 1,627 as the Obama campaign asserts.

By hewing to that interpretation, the Clinton campaign would thus be able to raise doubts about a May 20 declaration of victory by Obama.

Since the earliest possible resolution of the Florida/Michigan dispute is May 31, when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet in Washington to address petitions from Michigan and Florida DNC members, the 11-day period between the May 20 primaries and the RBC meeting could produce a chaotic stretch where Obama claims to be the party nominee while Clinton argues otherwise.

Already, the two campaigns are gearing up for the battle.

“With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days,” wrote Plouffe in his memo. “While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.”

“You can declare mission accomplished but that doesn’t mean that the mission has actually been accomplished,” Wolfson said.

Obama Victorious, Clinton On The Ropes

At Huffington Post, Thomas Edsall writes:

Hillary Clinton, who for seven weeks has crawled, kicked and bitten her way back into contention, suffered a blow on Tuesday, halting the momentum behind her bid for the nomination just when she had begun to regain credibility.

In the universe of political clichés, she is on life support, her oxygen choked off, her knees buckling, unable to stanch the bleeding, down for an eight count, on the ropes, praying for the bell to ring, desperate to get her wind back.

The results yesterday were a split decision, with Obama winning big in North Carolina and Clinton apparently carrying Indiana by a few percentage points. Clinton was widely viewed as needing a double-digit win in Indiana, and either a close loss or actual victory in North Carolina.

In North Carolina, she suffered a crushing, 15-point-plus defeat at the hands of Barack Obama with 115 convention delegates at stake. He won black voters, who are roughly a third of the state's Democratic primary electorate, by a 91-7 margin. White voters, who make up just over 60 percent of the state's Democratic voters, backed Clinton 61-37.

In Indiana, Clinton appeared headed for a more modest 2 point or less victory. There, she won 60-40 among white voters, who made up 80 percent of the turnout, while losing black voters 8-92.

Clinton's success among white voters is very likely to continue to raise questions concerning Obama's viability among whites, who play a larger role in general elections than in Democratic primaries.

For Hillary, the outcome in Tuesday's primaries was particularly painful, coming after an extraordinary revival of her campaign with solid victories in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"After the Reverend Wright controversy, Hillary Clinton had the nomination in her hands. Obama was suffering the worst press month of his campaign," said Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos. "Then she had a choice. She could have gotten bigger, more presidential, less political, could have risen to defend Obama. 'This is outrageous and has no place in politics.' She didn't do that. Instead, she chose to become smaller, more political, less presidential. Her own political instincts betrayed her."

The demographic patterns on Tuesday suggest an intensification of racially polarized voting.

In the March 4 Texas primary, Clinton won whites (46 percent of the total), by 55-44; she won Latinos (32 percent of the total) by 66-32, while Obama carried blacks by 84-16.

In Ohio, also on March 4, white Democrats (76 percent of the primary turnout) backed Hillary 64-34, while blacks (18 percent of primary voters) supported Obama 87-13.

Seven weeks later, in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, white Democrats (80 percent of primary turnout) voted 63-37 for Clinton while blacks (15 percent of the total) votes 90-10 for Obama.

"It looks like a big win for Obama in North Carolina and a narrow win for Clinton in Indiana," said Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz as the first exit polls were released. "That's not good for Hillary. She needed a breakthrough -- a big win in Indiana and a win or a narrow loss in North Carolina. It looks like she's not going to get either. Obama will add to his delegate lead."

It is unlikely, however, that Clinton will give up at this stage.

"I can tell you right now [what the Clinton people will argue]. The battle goes on, a fight to the death, one delegate at a time, never say die, millions of Democratic voters yet to be heard, white working class people will vote for McCain instead of 'him,' blah, blah, blah," declared Lawrence F. O'Brien, Democratic lobbyist, donor, and the son and namesake of the Democratic National Committee chair in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Open Left's Chris Bowers wrote: "Given that Obama was already ahead... and that there are now very few states remaining, that is a very good night for him....it is just what he needed to help turn around the media narrative."

Clinton has demonstrated an extraordinary will to win, and a refusal to quit when she was losing primary after caucus after primary. Her campaign is now arguably at the stage where it is dependent on miracles -- like the surfacing of a new, and worse, Jeremiah Wright controversy or a Chicago scandal implicating Obama.

Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, contended, in effect, that it's all over but the shouting:

"I have long viewed this in a simple way: two things matter, delegates and popular votes. If Obama wins both, he cannot be denied the nomination. If these numbers [early returns] hold up, he will erase her gains in Pennsylvania and have a near-insurmountable popular vote lead. That will do it, and I expect a stream of superdelegates to move to him in the coming week-plus."

While it was clearly Obama's night, there were some small glimmers of hope for Clinton in the exit poll data.

In Indiana, she very narrowly beat Obama (51-49) among men, held her own (56-44) with working and lower middle class voters without college degrees, and won among the one in five white, self-described "independents" -- often an Obama constituency -- by a slim, 52-48 margin.

In addition, the 67 percent of Indiana voters primarily concerned with the economy now completely eclipse the 18 percent who give top priory to the Iraq war. Hillary wins the economy voters by 53-47, while Obama carries the Iraq-priority voters by 54-46.

Conversely, the significance of Clinton's victory in Indiana was undermined by indications that a statistically significant number of Republicans, perhaps as many as 7 percent of all the votes cast, were following the suggestion of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh to cast ballots for her in the Democratic primary.

Further elaboration can be found in the analysis of my colleague Sam Stein. Just over one in ten Indiana Democratic primary voters was a Republican, a constituency that has backed Obama on other contests, but in Indiana Clinton won them 53-47, possibly as a result of Limbaugh's exhortations.