Hillary and the Invisible Women | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008

CAMPAIGN 2008
The Raison D'Etre Du Jour
Suzanne Smalley 5/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
At a rally in Central Point, Ore., last night, Hillary Clinton didn't leave any doubt that she's still in it to win it. She challenged Barack Obama to a debate in Portland on Friday, where they'll both be campaigning, saying she'll meet "absolutely anytime, anywhere." She stressed her knowledge of controversial local issues, saying Obama is on the wrong side of them. And she taunted Obama for talking a good game without backing it up, not unlike, Clinton said, President George W. Bush.
POLITICS
Obama’s New Gospel
Eve Conant
Tim Roemer is a gifted salesman working a tough territory. For weeks, the former Indiana congressman has been crisscrossing primary states trying to convince Roman Catholic voters that Barack Obama is their man. Just a few months ago, there were plenty of takers. Obama beat Hillary Clinton among Catholics in Louisiana and Virginia and tied her in Wisconsin. But in more recent primaries, Catholics have decisively turned away from him. In Ohio, exit polls showed that 65 percent backed Clinton. In Pennsylvania, Clinton won 70 percent of the Catholic vote.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Only in America
Evan Thomas
There was a time, not so long ago, when the advisers to John McCain worried a great deal about running against Barack Obama. "We'll never get those kind of crowds," a McCain aide admitted, almost mournfully, to a NEWSWEEK reporter as they stood watching television coverage of a packed Obama rally in South Carolina last January. Obama seemed to have a kind of transcendent power, an ability to convince voters that he was not just another politician. Most McCain aides at the time wanted to run against Hillary Clinton, whom they regarded as a traditional tax-and-spend Democrat with unusually high negative ratings.
POLITICS
Hope vs. Fear
Jonathan Alter
With the exception of such all-Anglos as Monroe, Fillmore, Pierce and Coolidge, none of America's 43 presidents has ever borne a name that ends in a vowel. We traditionally like 'em not just white and male, but plain vanilla. President Barack Hussein Obama would pose a shock to that system.
CAMPAIGN 2008
What Hillary’s Got In Her Back Pocket
Karen Breslau
The e-mails come by the hundreds: prayers and Chinese proverbs, quotes and jokes, sent by Hillary Clinton's friends, intended to inspire and to buoy her through the tough times. The aphorisms are part of a collection Clinton has maintained all her life, starting in a scrapbook when she was a little girl, later as clippings in a binder she toted around as First Lady and, more recently, on her BlackBerry. On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, Clinton offered NEWSWEEK'S Karen Breslau an exclusive look at her collection, and she also opened up about issues of trustworthiness, getting emotional—and why she's staying in the race. Excerpts:
To Argue or Not to Argue
Howard Fineman
Growing up the son of a senator, Evan Bayh attended Washington's elite, Gothic-spired prep school for boys. Even so (or maybe because of that) he treasured summer trips back home to Indiana. His father, Birch, whose own father was a hog farmer, was a fiery liberal, an expert on the Constitution revered in capital salons. To survive in Republican Indiana, he hit every dusty crossroads and church supper. An Army marksman, Birch always stopped by the "Black Powder Shoot" in rural Friendship, where contestants fired rifles filled with cartridges of old-fashioned black gunpowder. Birch wowed the crowd—and his son—with his accuracy. Today, Evan Bayh does not own a gun. He is not a hunter. He doesn't usually vote with the NRA. Still, he knows what those Powder Shoot voters believe: that a rifle is a symbol of their identity as Americans. "You don't have to be of those voters," Bayh told me, "but you need to know where they are coming from well enough to understand their side of the argument."