Clinton vs. Obama: which is the liberal, which is the conservative?
As many Democratic leaders have noted -- and as various debate moderators have discovered -- policy differences are not the driving force in the clash between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nod.
There is a divergence in their approach to healthcare coverage, and shadings exist in how each would go about extricating the U.S. from Iraq. But the way they've split the Democratic electorate almost exactly in half does not seem primarily based on the issues, as a little-noticed exit poll result from the Pennsylvania primary underscores.
Among voters in that contest who identified themselves as liberals, 51% favored Obama, 49% Clinton.
Among those who termed themselves conservatives, 52% supported Clinton, 48% Obama.
So for Democrats who lean left and for those who lean right, the contrast between the two apparently was indistinguishable.
Clinton got her winning margin in the state from moderates -- 60% of this bloc backed her, 40% went for Obama.
-- Don Frederick
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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The difficulty at this point is separating the rhetoric from the policy. What's most shocking is how quickly Hillary has run away from her husband's economic policies -- which were the most successful aspects of his administration. It may be tempting to pander to the "little guy" during an election year by attacking trade and promising bailouts and spending, but it would be healthier to remember that the "little guy" did pretty well under Bill Clinton's policies of free trade and fiscal discipline. The results were low inflation, low interest rates, and a strong economy -- anybody got a problem with that?
Posted by: Richard | April 24, 2008 at 12:43 PM
I don't think the question is which one is liberal and which one is conservative. The question is which one is honest and trustworthy and which one is deceitful and manipulative.
Posted by: N.E. BodybutHillary | April 24, 2008 at 01:42 PM
It's Called Monica Lewinsky, It's Called Whitewater, It's Called Travelgate, It's Called Being a Pathological Liar, It's Called being Greedy, It's Called Being Spineless, It's Called A lot of Things....
Posted by: mariann | April 24, 2008 at 02:55 PM