Nigerian Times

ENPR: Racial Divide Guarantees Obama Nomination by Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney (more by this author) Posted 05/07/2008 ETUpdated 05/07/2008 ET Outlook In the wake of Sen. Hillary Clinton's dismal performance Tuesday, pressure will mount on her to get out of the Democratic presidential race against Sen. Barack Obama. She and her inner circle are determined to stay in, but since there is no way she can be nominated, don't be surprised if she gets out before the primaries end in June. Clinton needed a strong showing Tuesday in order to make a convincing pitch to super-delegates. Now her arguments to the super-delegates will go down two paths: a) The national polls that have shown Clinton running better than Obama against Sen. John McCain (though those surveys are sure to look different soon); or b) Clinton operative Harold Ickes is repeating his campaign's familiar refrain: We don't know enough about Obama, and Republicans will take dead aim against him in the gen...

Obama’s Pastor and Clintons’ Tactics Make Race a Central Issue ~ by Robert Novak and Timothy P. Carney (more by this author) Posted 03/19/2008 ETUpdated 03/20/2008 ET Outlook Race, studiously avoided by the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and subtly peddled by the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), has bloomed into a central issue in this presidential campaign thanks to the now-ubiquitous words of his mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This is bad news for Obama, but he is managing the development nearly as well as he can. National polls show a dead heat in the presidential election -- for both Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) v. Clinton and McCain v. Obama. But the cloud looming over the horizon is a financial crisis. The Federal Reserve's unprecedented intervention in financial markets to bail out Bear Stearns is intended to prevent the incipient panic on Wall Street from expanding into a depression. (See below). Amid the financial crisis with vast political implications,...