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Testing lines for 2008, Democrats with presidential ambitions accused President Bush and the Republicans of making a mess of the economy and Iraq while arguing that Democrats offer the best hope for a rising middle class that's preferred the GOP. "They're not taking care of America. They're bankrupting our country and failing to address the problems," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Monday, citing skyrocketing gas, college and health care costs. Speaking to the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist think tank, she and three other yet-declared presidential candidates argued that Republicans have ignored the very people who make up much...

DENVER (Reuters) - New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible White House contender in 2008, said on Monday the Bush administration had hurt working Americans and Democrats must offer new ideas to strengthen the middle class. "Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle-class life have soared," Clinton told the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, a group that aided her husband Bill Clinton's rise to the presidency in 1992 but has clashed in recent years with the party's more liberal wing. "A lot of Americans can't work any harder, borrow any more or save any less," she said...

Americans are earning less while the costs of a middle class life have soared," Clinton told the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, a group that aided her husband Bill Clinton's rise to the presidency in 1992 but has clashed in recent years with the party's more liberal wing. "A lot of Americans can't work any harder, borrow any more or save any less," she said in unveiling the group's "American Dream Initiative," a package of proposals to make college and home ownership more affordable, help small businesses, improve retirement savings and expand health insurance coverage. Clinton said President George W. Bush...

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not at her best when she is being compared to her husband. So you have to wonder why she invites it. Monday found her in Denver at the annual meeting of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, unveiling what the DLC calls "The American Dream Initiative." It is a project that she has led for a year, and that could help form an agenda for her own bid for the White House — if, that is, she decides to run. [snip] They are variations on many of the programs that were hallmarks of Bill Clinton's presidency. But...

Will Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton get Rupert Murdoch's vote if she runs for president in 2008? Don't count on it. Appearing on "The Charlie Rose Show," the media mogul said that if the 2008 presidential contest came down to a choice between Clinton, D-.N.Y., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., he would "probably support McCain. If it was happening today, I think so." According to the Financial Times, Murdoch's comments came just days after he hosted a New York fund-raiser for her Senate re-election campaign. Murdoch's media holdings include the New York Post and Fox News. His surprising decision to host...

NEW YORK - Most New Yorkers don't think Sen. Hillary Clinton should run for president and a majority think she would lose - and if Rudy Giuliani ran against her, New York would become a red state, according to a new poll. In a hypothetical Clinton-Giuliani matchup, New Yorkers would hand the state's crucial 31 electoral votes to the former mayor by a 52 percent-43 percent margin, according to a new Marist poll.

Source: HillPAC campaign spending report Photo: AP WASHINGTON - In a blitz to build up political favors, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is forking over big bucks to Democratic Party bigwigs in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - the first three states in the 2008 White House race. Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner for 2008, gave $5,000 to Iowa gubernatorial nominee Chet Culver last month.... She's also ponied up $5,000 to the state party in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucus. Clinton made a similar $5,000 investment with the state party of New Hampshire - land of the...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's camp threw the bookkeeping team under the bus yesterday in claiming a clerical blunder.....federal fund-raising report showed Clinton's re-election committee paid $182.85 on April 17 and $145.77 on May 26 for staffer to spend the night at the Hampton Inn in Des Moines - ground zero for presidential hopefuls. Clinton spokesman Ann Lewis said, "Nobody on FOH [Friends of Hillary] staff went to Iowa - staffers were actually traveling to Texas and Albany.........

Hillary Clinton Asks Oprah Winfrey to be Running Mate in 2008? By Cris Bergman Jul 19, 2006 A published report will claim that Oprah may have a new suitor from the political spectrum. A report set for Star Magazine's weekly offering will claim that Hillary Clinton has put out a feeler to see if Oprah would consider the veep spot on the 2008 ticket. That should send shock waves through DC and especially the Republican Party. Though Hillary has yet to declare her official candidacy it is near certain that she will run and she is far and away the...

For all those Republicans and a few Democrats who think Hillary Clinton can't possibly be elected President, I have two words for you: Ronald Reagan. I remember it well. He was too old. He was too conservative. He was too scary. And he was elected in two landslides. The exact same kinds of assumptions about electability 25 years ago are alive and well in 2006, and they are just as wrong for Hillary Clinton today as they were for Reagan in 1979. She's too divisive. Too calculating. Too marred by the Clinton years. Oh, - and she's a woman. Never...

Hillary's Secret '08 Election Strategy Revealed!Tom Bevan Thu Jul 13, 10:28 AM ET The only interesting part of Lois Romano's frontpage rehash of voters' doubt about Hillary Clinton in this morning's Washington Post comes at the very end: "She will define herself, and we will have the money to do it," said one close adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Clinton has forbidden those close to her to speculate publicly about 2008. "People have to get to know her, know that she was once a Republican, that she's a big Methodist. . . . That will happen."...

Hillary Clinton has been cosying up to Wall Street in recent weeks with a series of meetings with top executives that could help her follow the path blazed by her husband ahead of his first presidential run. People familiar with the meetings said they appeared intended to help Wall Street figures get to know the New York senator better as she coasts through an easy 2006 re-election campaign and paves the way for a possible Democratic presidential run in 2008. Bill Clinton's early forays to Wall Street helped advance his bid for the Democratic nomination in 1992. Some events, such...

. . . But Clinton’s new, er, friendship isn’t helping his wife’s presidential aims . . . As potential girlfriends go, Belinda Stronach would rank as a true catch. She is single, youngish (she just turned 40), attractive, wealthy, impeccably well-connected and politically ambitious - glamorous in every respect. Two years ago, Time magazine listed her as one of the 100 most powerful people on the planet. The tabloids cut to the chase: they called her the "blonde bombshell" or "Bubba's blonde." Bubba, of course, is Bill Clinton. He has been photographed with Stronach (right) several times. The sightings seem...

Hillary Clinton has a complicated dance to do as she prepares for the 2008 presidential election. She has to move far enough to the left to win the Democratic presidential nomination, while staying close enough to the center to win a presidential election. She has to satisfy the anti-war left that can’t abide her position on the war without giving those who would brand her as purely political in the worst sense of the word an opportunity to accuse her of the biggest flip-flop of the decade. And, she has to accomplish that while sitting in the Senate and voting,...

Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton has disappointed the New York gay community by specifically leaving out any pledges on gay marriage in her call for equality for gay people.

In a quiet, methodical style reflecting his Midwestern roots, Sen. Evan Bayh is laying the foundation for a presidential campaign and prompting some Democrats to talk about a candidate with a realistic shot. "The chatter that you hear is that he's a good guy and nice and he has that honest, Midwestern feel to him, kind of like Harry Truman," said veteran Democratic strategist Dane Strother. "That's all appealing." In his fifth trip to Iowa in the last year, the centrist Indiana Democrat opened a three-day swing Thursday with a fundraiser in downtown Des Moines for legislative candidates. He mingled...

There has been much speculation lately over whether Hillary Clinton is a shoo-in, after all, for the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the general election. I happen to think the doubts are warranted, not so much because of Hillary's weaknesses, but those of the Democratic Party. I used to be among those who thought the nomination was Hillary's for the taking but that she would have serious difficulties winning the general election. After observing her relentless commitment to transforming her image, however, I grudgingly softened about Hillary's general election prospects. Sometime later, I changed my opinion again to wondering whether...

I have long laughed off the assertion that Hillary Clinton is unelectable as president, given that two rotten candidates such as Al Gore and John Kerry came quite close to the White House in 2000 and 2004. My theory holds that even Hillary could not possibly be as stiff and unlikeable as Gore or as clueless and unlikeable as Kerry, who nevertheless both very nearly won 270 electoral votes. But Matthew Yglesias, a young lefty pundit with an intriguing contrarian streak, has challenged those who hold my view. Here's his evidence:

An earthquake is rumbling in the American state of Connecticut. Its fault line could soon swallow Hillary Clinton's presidential chances. The man who used to be the next vice president of the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman, is in grave political trouble. At the beginning of August he could well be beaten in the primary for his own Connecticut Senate race. [snip] Democratic activists are so riled about the president and his war that their tolerance of moderate leaders is perilously thin. And internet activists have managed to combine their anger with fundraising nous sufficient to do serious damage. The...

SUDDENLY, it looks as if Hillary Clinton is running scared over 2008. A batch of Hillaryland moves over the past few weeks suggests a nervous- Nellie president wannabe rather than a confident Democratic front-runner. She hired a lefty blogger and cozied up to anti-war activists by pledging to desert pal Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) if he loses a primary over Iraq and runs as an independent. To boot, hubby Bill Clinton went out to court activists in the first-test states of Iowa and New Hampshire by vowing that his wife supports their favored positions SUDDENLY, it looks as if Hillary...