Emotions in U.S. politics are running high after General Petraeus testimony on Iraq earlier this week and President Bush’s speech after the release of the White House report on Iraq. Republicans as well as Democrats are divided in their reactions to the report’s results and the speech. Democrats who have been arguing for an immediate ending of the war in Iraq have been put into the extreme corner by Petraeus testimony and yesterdays’ speech by President Bush.

General Petraeus, commander in chief in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Iraq, testified before Congress in expectation to the release of the White House report on progress in Iraq early this week. The report, that was released yesterday, shows a lack of progress towards peace and stability in Iraq, with progress in only 9 of 18 benchmarks set for the Iraqi government. Read the full report here.

In reaction to the report President Bush addressed the American citizens via a television speech. The president showed dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in Iraq. He announced that he will retire troops from Iraq, but that a fast retirement would be irresponsible and a possible disaster for the Iraqi people and the stability in the region. Mr. Bush plans to bring home 5.700 troops by Christmas.

Democrats favouring a fast retirement of troops are now vulnerable for accusations of being weak, something that causes the already existing divide within the Democratic party to deepen. Grassroots democrats are still pushing for a direct ending of the war, while the Democrat leadership fears a possible emergence of an image of weakness for the Democratic party, something that may have a significant influence on next year’s elections. However, although announcing the retirement of troops, President Bush did not offer a clear strategy towards ending the war, a weakness that might turn out to be a possibility for Democrats in Congress to push for their own strategy. Democrats do not have the majority to veto the President, but an alignment with Republican critics of the developments in Iraq might empower them enough to do reach a majority.

The democratic presidential candidates are now reacting to the Petraeus Report and to Bush’s speech, with Larry King having Barack Obama live in his late night show. Live from Iowa, in a reaction to the Petraeus report, Obama was very critical about the results of Bush’s strategy and he kept pleading for a different strategy in Iraq. He also stressed that, in opposition to his rival in the running up to the presidential elections Hillary Clinton, he has been opposing the War in Iraq since its beginning. Obama also praised fellow democrat Jack Reed, who earlier this week was responsible for the Democratic response to Bush’s speech. Read the full text of the speech here.

The war in Iraq, and especially the question of how to end the war, will be of major influence in the 2008 presidential elections. Let us hope that the fight for the presidency will not be determining the strategy in Iraq but that it will be the other way around. Whoever finds a possible strategy to end this horrific chaos and grow seeds for stability in Iraq and its neighbouring countries, deserves the presidency. The Bush era will end in January 2009 but Iraq will not, and this is becoming clearer every day as progress stagnates and violence stays alive in Iraq.

Sources:

www.uspolitics.einnews.com

www.ft.com (Financial Times)

www.cnn.com

According to the Huffington Post, Barack Obama will be giving a speech in Clinton, Iowa this afternoon. The speech will be about major Iraq policy issues, and will be very critical towards the Bush administration. Excerpts from the speech were published today by the Huffington Post:

“Turning the Page in Iraq”

We hear eerie echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq in the way that the President and Vice President talk about Iran. They conflate Iran and al Qaeda. They issue veiled threats. They suggest that the time for diplomacy and pressure is running out when we haven’t even tried direct diplomacy. Well George Bush and Dick Cheney must hear - loud and clear - from the American people and the Congress: you don’t have our support, and you don’t have our authorization for another war. (…)

“Conventional thinking in Washington lined up for war. The pundits judged the political winds to be blowing in the direction of the President. Despite - or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. Too many took the President at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves. Congress gave the President the authority to go to war. Our only opportunity to stop the war was lost.”

“There is something unreal about the debate that’s taking place in Washington… The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand. The American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We’ve had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet. We’ve had enough of mounting costs in Iraq and missed opportunities around the world. We’ve had enough of a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged.”

“I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002. I opposed it in 2003. I opposed it in 2004. I opposed it in 2005. I opposed it in 2006. I introduced a plan in January to remove all of our combat brigades by next March. And I am here to say that we have to begin to end this war now.”

“Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now. We should enter into talks with the Iraqi government to discuss the process of our drawdown. We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later. But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year.”

“Some argue that we should just replace Prime Minister Maliki. But that wouldn’t solve the problem…The problems in Iraq are bigger than one man. Iraq needs a new Constitutional convention that would include representatives from all levels of Iraqi society - in and out of government. The United Nations should play a central role in convening and participating in this convention, which should not adjourn until a new accord on national reconciliation is reached.”

“The President would have us believe there are two choices: keep all of our troops in Iraq or abandon these Iraqis. I reject this choice… It’s time to form an international working group with the countries in the region, our European and Asian friends, and the United Nations…. We should up our share to at least $2 billion to support this effort; to expand access to social services for refugees in neighboring countries; and to ensure that Iraqis displaced inside their own country can find safe-haven. …. Iraqis must know that those who engage in mass violence will be brought to justice. We should lead in forming a commission at the U.N. to monitor and hold accountable perpetrators of war crimes within Iraq.”

“I’m here today because it’s not too late to come together as Americans. Because we’re not going to be able to deal with the challenges that confront us until we end this war. What we can do is say that we will not be prisoners of uncertainty. That we reject the conventional thinking that led us into Iraq and that didn’t ask hard questions until it was too late. What we can say is that we are ready for something new and something bold and something principled.”

Source: The Huffington Post

Rebublicans Mitt Romney and John McCain are the biggest money spenders in the first two quarters of this year’s run up to the presidential elections. Mitt Romney spent more than $11 million on his campaign in the first quarter and more than $20 million so far in the second! Republican presidential candidate John McCain spent more than $8 million on his campaign in the first, and more than $13 million in the second quarter.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the two biggest spenders on the Democrats’ side, being good for more than $41 million spent together so far in the first two quarters of 2007. Obama was the number 1 democrat spender in both the first and the second quarter. See for more details on presidential candidates’ campaign spending the Interactives at Yahoo.com

Writing early September 2007, the most prominent democratic presidential nominees for the 2008 U.S. presidential elections are:

• Hillary Clinton, New York Senator
• Barack Obama, Illinois Senator
• John Edwards, former Senator from North Carolina

• Dennis Kucinich, Ohio Congressman, former Mayor of Cleveland
• Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
• Joe Biden, Senator of Delaware
• Chris Dodd, Senator of Connecticut
• Mike Gravel, former Senator
• Al Gore is high up in the polls, although it is still not clear whether the man will run for president in 2008. He has been busy with his book “An Inconvenient Truth”, which won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

The official campaigning period has hardly begun, and nominee Hillary Clinton already spent more than $ 20 million on her presidential campaign. Back in the 1990s, her husband had “only” spent $ 20 thousand at this particular time in the run up to the elections.

Traditionally, Labor Day (early September) marks the kick-off for the presidential campaigns for the year after, however, it seems like the presidential campaign for the 2008 elections already started right the day after the 2004 presidential elections.

The long weekend of Labor Day 2007 was used as the kick-off for the presidential candidates’ campaigns, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigning in New Hampshire with their families, and John Edwards interrupting a two-day campaign in Iowa to receive the endorsements of two labor unions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers of America, together representing more than one million members. Receiving the two union endorsements makes that, with a total of three endorsements, John Edwards is ahead of Hillary Clinton, who received two union endorsements and Chris Dod, who so far has received one union endorsement.

Hillary Clinton is leading the polls, with Barack Obama coming in second at a safe distance. However, in some primary states, the race is closer and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are wound up in a three-way battle for the top positions. Such is the case in Iowa, a lot of campaigning therefore is expected from the democratic presidential nominees in Iowa in the coming months.

Technology plays an important role in the 2008 presidential campaigns, as the big online democratic debate that was organised by CNN and YouTube on Monday July 23rd 2007 shows. Citizens from all over the U.S. could ask their questions to the presidential candidates, who answered the citizens live. The CNN/ YouTube format is being hailed as a transformational moment in the history of presidential debates (BBC News). It has been marked as very democratic and as a reflection of the dominant role the internet plays and will play in the 2008 campaign.

The democratic presidential nominees themselves also use the internet as a major campaigning tool. Hillary Clinton has her own website where you can subscribe to support her and where you can win a lunch with Hillary at her home in Washington when you contribute to her campaign. www.hillaryclinton.com

Barack Obama totally discovered YouTube as the ideal way of promoting himself. His site is loaded with YouTube videos from his campaign tour and he created his own profile on YouTube. At this blog you’ll find one of his speeches.

Also John Edwards benefits from YouTube and put some videos on his website www.johnedwards.com

At DemocraticPresidentialNominees.com we try to keep you posted on the developments in the run up to the 2008 presidential elections of the United States.

In the coming weeks, this blog will lay out the top issues that the democratic presidential nominees are concerned with. Besides covering information available from the candidates’ websites, The Washington Post will be a major source of information as it has launched a special series called “The Presidential Field”. The Washington Post follows all individual candidates for the 2008 presidential elections, including a campaign tracker and an issue coverage tracker for every candidate.

At DemocraticPresidentialNominees.com, besides keeping you posted on news about the democratic candidates, we will be comparing the statements on major issues from the candidates’ official websites with information gathered by the Washington Post. We will be analysing whether the issues targeted as most important on the candidates’ websites, will be reflected in their speeches and television debates. It will be interesting to see whether the candidates’ speak according to the promises they make on their weblogs.

Expect analyses for each of the most prominent democratic presidential nominees in the coming weeks, as well as more general news about democratic candidates on the road to the White House.