SMRs and AMRs

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Book: Obama, Biden clashed in '08

By: Jonathan Martin
Politico.com
January 9, 2010

The relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden grew so strained during the 2008 campaign, according to a new book, that the two rarely spoke and aides not only kept Biden off internal conference calls but refused to even tell him they existed.

Instead, a separate campaign call was regularly scheduled between the then-Delaware senator and two of Obama’s top campaign aides – “so that they could keep a tight rein on him,” write journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in “Game Change,” a long-awaited account of the 2008 campaign.

The book, based on over 300 interviews, reveals a series of previously undisclosed stories about the epic race. POLITICO obtained it Saturday at a Washington bookstore.

In addition to the discord between the president and vice-president, the authors write:

–Before the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, party strategists Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald, both then working for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s presidential candidacy, met secretly with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and a group of her closest confidantes to consider a last-minute entry into the race – and even polled New Hampshire voters about the idea. Ultimately, though, Chelsea Clinton persuaded her mother to opt out of a run, arguing that voters wouldn’t forgive her for breaking a pledge to serve a full Senate term.

(More here.)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home