Former US president Bill Clinton gave terse backing to Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Tuesday, as his wife returned to politics for the first time since her agonizing primary defeat.
Timed to coincide with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s reappearance in Congress, Bill Clinton issued a one-sentence statement through his spokesman to put a lid on months of fireworks on the party’s nominating campaign trail.
“President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States,” spokesman Matt McKenna said.
PHOTO: AP
Hillary Clinton said the Democrats must unite after her bruising primary fight with Obama to maximize their chances of success against Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election.
But Bill Clinton chose not to declare his allegiance to Obama in public. And he is not scheduled to speak at the first joint campaign rally between his wife and the nominee tomorrow in the New Hampshire town of Unity.
After greeting dozens of staff and well-wishers gathered on the Senate steps, Hillary Clinton told reporters that tomorrow would “be a symbolic event that I hope will rally the Democratic Party behind our nominee.”
Asked about running as Obama’s vice presidential nominee, the New York senator said: “You know, it is not something that I think about. This is totally Senator Obama’s decision and that’s the way it should be.”
And Clinton, nearly three weeks after conceding to Obama and pledging an all-out joint effort against McCain, warned disaffected supporters who might be considering a protest vote for the Republican to reconsider.
“If you care about the issues I care about and the future that I outlined during my campaign, then you really have to stay with us in the Democratic Party and vote for Senator Obama to be our next president,” she said.
Meanwhile, Obama reached out to some of the US’ most visible citizens — Hollywood stars who threw their support and abundant cash behind a presidential candidate whose historic White House bid could easily become the stuff of movies.
The fundraising gala in Los Angeles on Tuesday marked a decided push by Obama to shore up private funding for his race against McCain roughly a week after the Democrat backtracked on a promise to use public money for his presidential race.
That decision leaves the Illinois senator, who has already shattered fundraising records by raising US$287 million by the end of last month, free to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the general election.
Obama’s campaign refused to say how many millions he and the Democratic National Committee raised at the gala, but Democratic officials put the number at close to US$5 million. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the numbers publicly.
The event — in which top tickets went for more than US$30,000 — drew top-tier celebrities like actors Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid and boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard. Also in attendance was Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, who created two music videos for Obama during the primary season — including one called Yes We Can that set music to clips from his speeches and became an Internet sensation.
Beyond the fundraising, the event reflects the continuing push by Obama to pull together support within the party after a divisive primary battle against Clinton, whose husband had long been viewed as a darling of the entertainment industry.
Obama appealed to the those in the crowd who might have supported Clinton. The long primary, he said, “I know caused some heartburn and some frustration.”
He said he and Clinton “were allies then and we’re allies now.”
Earlier in the day, Obama asked his finance team to help Clinton pay off a debt of at least US$10 million from her failed campaign.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS