Almost as soon as Barack Obama entered the Senate, he and his advisers began charting a careful course to the White House that would take several years, reports the Chicago Tribune's Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons. They would build a brand identity of Obama as a "unifier and consensus-builder, an almost postpolitical leader."
In the Senate Obama has tried to avoid "severe political bruises" mostly by putting a premium on working well with others and tacking close to home in the beginning. In 2005 he "turned down just about every national media invitation that came his way that first year," focusing on Illinois.
On Iraq, Obama has "has not been a moving force," turning down a partition plan in summer 2005, fearing that the proposal was "fraught with complexities and that he could be seen as overstepping his expertise." Obama was opposed to withdrawal from Iraq until this May. Generally Obama has a "decidedly liberal voting record," but has not been above touting home-state interests: he worked for tax breaks and incentives for refineries that turn coal into liquid fuel that would help southern Illinois coal industry and backs nuclear power, which would help the Exelon corporation that donated nearly $160,000 to his presidential campaign last quarter.
Obama's chief rival, Hillary Clinton, owes her lead in some polls to the support of "lower-income, lesser-educated women -- voters her campaign strategists describe as 'women with needs'," reports the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut and Matthew Mosk. "Obama, by contrast, is faring better among highly educated women, who his campaign says are interested in elevating the political discourse." Obama's campaign said they'll receive more female supporters of Clinton's once he is better known among them. John Edwards' campaign said women have doubts about Clinton and only when other campaigns start exploiting these doubts will it show in polls.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Cooper reports that Clinton chair Terry McAuliffe said the campaign raised $23 million so far in the second quarter. As the quarter closes, Clinton is tapping the "growing clout of the Indian-American community," reports the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein. Next month Clinton will speak to 4,000 alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Down south, the Clinton campaign is catching grief from two Florida politicians for saying they endorsed Clinton when in fact they hadn't, reports The Hill's Alexander Bolton. Next door in South Carolina, Clinton hired a new communications director for the state: Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe's communications director Zac Wright.
On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani's campaign made some news out of Iowa. First Read's Chuck Todd writes that an Iowa spy "received a live voter ID call from the Giuliani campaign on Friday evening," asking what the voter's first and second caucus choice is and who he or she wouldn't vote for. The voter was also asked if he or she could be persuaded to change his or her mind about their first choice and what issues were most concerning.
The Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that the co-chair of Giuliani's Iowa campaign "served on the board of the state's chapter of Planned Parenthood and led the organization's fundraising drive in 2002." The campaign said Giuliani enjoys "widespread support from Republicans across the spectrum in Iowa and across the country."
Out in California, the San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci reports that John McCain "enthusiastically expressed his resolve to continue fighting for the issue of immigration reform," and was upbeat about his campaign, saying that he's doing well in state polls and "the fundraising is better." Fred Thompson was also in the state at the Hoover Institute where he was briefed on a host of domestic and foreign issues, about which he "furiously took notes and asked thoughtful questions."
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