John McCain and Barack Obama agree: Act now on job losses

New job numbers out today evidence more pain -- some of it to be felt around here -- with companies cutting 62,000 payroll slots in June, the sixth consecutive month the economy has shed jobs. The cuts were slightly more than the 60,000 economists had expected, and the unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 %.

The Labor Department announcement elicited dueling statements from John McCain and Barack Obama, pasted in full after the jump. But in a nutshell, McCain says the federal government must "enact policies to create jobs today. To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods."

Obama cited the 438,000 jobs lost this year and similarly called for immediate action, but a different prescription: "I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn."

McCain is in Mexico today, and apparently will be unveiling a new "Jobs First" agenda in Denver on Monday, an ironic confluence the Democrats have been working hard to spotlight,including an email from the Democratic National Committee's Brad Woodhouse to reporters suggesting "maybe for his own sake [McCain] should stop going to places like Michigan and telling folks their jobs aren't coming back while going to Mexico and promoting Jobs First - just a thought." 

-- Scott Martelle

Poll: Voters fear John McCain will follow George Bush's policies

Well, we'll admit it, we're suckers for polls, and a recent one that our cousins at The Swamp tipped us to is interesting -- showing that Barack Obama is tapping a potentially rich vein in trying to tie John McCain to George Bush.

The Gallup/USA Today poll found that 68% of voters said they were concerned when asked whether they thought McCain would pursue "policies that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued." Of those polled, 49% said they were "very concerned."

As the poll analysis points out: "It is clearly a delicate balancing act for McCain, as Bush remains relatively popular with the Republican base. While only 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a majority of Republicans (60%) still do. Bush's approval rating among current McCain supporters is slightly lower, at 55%."

Dive deeper into the poll and something else interesting emerges -- people aren't all that keen on change, either. Some 49% said they were concerned when asked whether "Obama would go too far in changing the policies that George W. Bush pursued." Of those polled, 30% said they were "very concerned."

So the advantage for the moment goes to change -- in moderation. Which might help explain Obama's embrace Tuesday of the concept behind the Bush administration's faith-based initiative program.

-- Scott Martelle   

Starbucks cutting caffeine lifeline -- it IS the economy, stupid

Further evidence that the economy is taking a severe beating: Starbucks is closing 600 outlets and could cut 12,000 jobs as customer visits have declined. True addicts see Starbucks coffee as their lifeblood but for most people it's a luxury, and with the economy moribund and a gallon of gas costing more than a latte, people are deciding it's a luxury they can do without.

Now we're sure there will be snarky comments posted here about Barack Obama supporters going into withdrawals, shaking behind the wheel of their Volvos. But 12,000 cut jobs is a big hit, and judging by the staffs you see at the stores, it will put a lot of college kids, or young adults in that general age group, out of work. Add them to the already unemployed construction workers, auto workers -- just fill in the blank ________.

Yes, the Iraq war is a crucial issue for the nation, and the world. But poll after poll shows that at least for now, four months away from election day, it's the economy that has people's attention. And news like this will keep it alive until the picture improves.

The question for Obama and John McCain is who can forge the better -- or at least more convincing -- policy proposals.

-- Scott Martelle

Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

Ticket Special Report: How and why Barack Obama allied himself with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

The day Barack Obama first appeared in the church office of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., more than 20 years ago, the pastor warned him that getting involved with Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ might not be "a feather in your cap."

Obama was a community organizer then trying to build support for his group on the South Side of Chicago, and a friendly minister at another church had suggested that he'd have more luck with black clergy support if he actually joined a congregation himself.

"Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what we're about," Wright told him that day, as Obama would later recount it. "They feel like we're too radical. Others [think] we ain't radical enough."

Obama ended up joining, a story he tells in his memoirs, and later was influenced enough by Wright to derive the title of a subsequent book, "The Audacity of Hope," from one of the pastor's sermons.

Some have speculated that Wright became a father figure for Obama, whose father had left the family and returned to Africa. As The Ticket noted the other day, others believe Obama was attracted by Wright's cerebral nature, as opposed to other less-educated black ministers on Chicago's South Side.

But despite the warning, the association did not seem to be a terribly risky one for Obama, given the arc of the career he was beginning to craft even then.

He was carefully constructing his resume as a street-savvy community organizer while also applying for admission to law school. Within the walls of Trinity, he found a connection to the African American community he'd lacked as a child raised by his white mother and grandparents, an important cultural marker for a biracial candidate who later would try to appeal to black and white voters alike.

He'd share church membership with some of Chicago's influential thinkers and leaders, among them lawmakers, judges and Oprah Winfrey. And in Wright he would find ...

John and Elizabeth Edwards are stars of a show they aren't at

As the fevered North Carolina primary campaign kicked into its final gear this week, John Edwards accentuated his decision to remain neutral in the Democratic presidential race he once competed in by going off on a family vacation to Walt Disney World.

But whatever recreation he and his wife, Elizabeth, were engaged in Friday night, their ears must have been burning -- in a good way. At a state party dinner in Raleigh, N.C., Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sang the praises of the Tar Heel native son they vanquished earlier this year, as well his high-profile spouse.

Clinton spoke first at the gathering and, as Times reporter Noam Levey relates, she stressed her commitment to the causes Edwards and his wife hold dear.

"Let me say what a great fighter North Carolina and working Americans everywhere had in John Edwards," Clinton said as the crowd cheered. "His courageous fight to end poverty is a fight I will see to the finish."

(Clinton has, in fact, pledged to create a Cabinet-level office devoted to focusing on poverty.)

"Let's take a minute to express our gratitude," she added.

But there was more. Clinton ...

Spike Lee on the Clintons: 'They are gonna knock out some kneecaps'

This being L.A., a suburb of Hollywood, we thought it worth nothing that Spike Lee has some opinions of the Clintons, which he'll be discussing tonight on Bloomberg TV's "Night Talk" at 10 p.m. Eastern (and yes, we know Lee is a New Yorker, but still, it's the movies).

Lee, a former Bill Clinton supporter, has slapped the Clintons around before, but the release pushing tonight's interview sounds like it might be worth checking even if just for giggles' sake (also on podcast for you tech-savvy folks).

During the interview Spike talks about why he no longer supports Sen. Clinton in the Presidential campaign, "if you know anything about the Clintons and what they've done in politics, they are gonna knock out some kneecaps." He said Bill Clinton has been "playing his whole thing like he is the great white father." "I think that they thought this thing was going to be over Super Tuesday, and Obama's a nice young guy, but they didn’t see him as a threat, but when things started to play out the way they did, then they saw their whole thing was in jeopardy, and that’s when he isn’t just the nice young little guy anymore ... he's our blood enemy -- and then that's when you start to see the things come out the side of President Clinton's neck, comments he meant in South Carolina."

Well, that should add to the calm and dignified political discourse of the campaign, no?

-- Scott Martelle

Hillary Clinton advisor talks free trade with Colombians

Mark Penn, a top strategist and mouthpiece for Hillary Clinton, makes his real money as a wheeler-dealer for Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, the international PR and crisis-management firm. And apparently while wearing that better-paying hat Penn found himself way off the Clinton message Monday as he talked with the Colombian ambassador about a bilateral free-trade agreement that Clinton opposes.

Remember, the Clinton campaign milked reports of conversations between one of Barack Obama's advisors and Canadian officials in the run-up to the Ohio primary, where trade issues are local issues. The issue then was more pointed -- did the Obama advisor tell the Canadians that the candidate's opposition to NAFTA was all smoke, little flame? -- and it helped Clinton stave off an Obama rally in Ohio.

At this point no one knows what Penn told the ambassador -- the lobbying firm has a contract with Colombia to represent it before Congress on the trade deal, the Wall Street Journal reports. The campaign insists that Penn wasn't at the meeting as an advisor to Clinton, who has said she opposes any more free trade agreements until national trade policy establishes protections for workers and other safeguards (and as a sitting U.S. senator, she presumably will have to take a formal position on the measure).

At a deeper level, Penn's dual roles are politically problematic because they point up one of the recurring complaints about how Washington works -- the revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and between those who lobby and those who govern.

One has to assume that a Clinton presidency would mean a nicely appointed West Wing office for Penn if he wanted it, so what we have here is less a revolving door than a single room with two desks. Penn is advising a client about a trade agreement it wants; Penn is bending the ear of a presidential contender who doesn't want the trade agreement. Beyond being an invitation to skepticism, that conflict plays into Obama's theme that Clinton is too cozy with the D.C. establishment to effect change.

And more broadly, it points up that "experience" sometimes comes with baggage.

-- Scott Martelle

Barack Obama thinks higher taxes are a good thing

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama went after the "We're not paying enough taxes to the government" vote today during a television interview in New York.

First, he said the Bush tax cuts ought to die. He likes that top marginal rate of 39%. Although the non-partisan National Journal recently declared him the most liberal of the 100 senators, Obama denied being a "wild-eyed liberal," which wasn't what the Journal called him, but it sounds good on TV where everything moves by so quickly.

Maria Bartiromo on CNBC's "Closing Bell" asked, "Who should pay more and who should pay less?" Predictably, the politician chose to talk about who would benefit from his higher tax plan, not who would get socked the hardest. But from his answers it sounds like the "wealthy" in his mind are those making more than $75,000.

"I would not increase taxes for middle class Americans and in fact I want to....

Call it the 'Tug at the Heartstrings Tour'

DES MOINES -- John Edwards embarks on his last big push here Thursday before all the campaigns go dark for the Christmas holiday, and he's hoping living examples will help sell his populist message of standing up for the little guy against a system corrupted by corporate influence.

All of Edwards' traveling guests figure in some way in his basic stump speech. One, a man who lived most of his life unable to speak because of an unrepaired cleft palate, illustrates his position on healthcare. Another, a laid-off factory worker, represents the effects of trade policies. And a young girl horrifically injured in a swimming pool accident (who'll be on the trail with her parents) is meant to evidence Edwards' highly successful (and enriching) legal career as a trial lawyer waging product liability and other suits against corporations.

None of the guests has any obvious connection with the war in Iraq, part of a drastically shifting narrative in the Democratic campaign that our colleague, Peter Wallsten, writes about in today's paper.

For you serious Iowa junkies, the state Democratic Party tracks all the events by all the candidates in the coming days.

Then it's Christmastime. And when the campaigns resume -- most on Wednesday, the day after Christmas -- they'll have a week that includes the New Year's holiday to try to persuade those legions of undecided and still-wooable caucus-goers to climb on board.

And if the candidates think competing among themselves is tough, check this out.

-- Scott Martelle

John Edwards and the great divide

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa -- While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were tussling elsewhere over Obama's PAC and whether a childhood essay signaled early -- and lied about -- ambitions (blame the polls), John Edwards was busy driving around north-central Iowa trying to win over the uncommitteds and make sure his supporters get out to the caucus sites on Jan. 3.

He declined to weigh in on the PAC "fracas," as he called it, but made light of the essay spat. ''It's fine to talk about our records and about issues,'' he said. ''But we probably ought to stop at age 14.''

But later in the same talk, Edwards offered a revealing choice of words that signaled he might perceive of himself as something a little different from the voters he's wooing with his populist themes of returning government to the people. It was somewhat jarring, too, coming from a candidate who is remarkably consistent on the stump.

Speaking to about 70 in the library of a Clear Lake high school on a night when the temperature outside hovered in the teens, Edwards talked about his family's encounter with health care insurance from his wife's battle with breast cancer. "I have first-class, real-life experience with this, with what people go through," Edwards said. He talked about going with Elizabeth for doctors' visits and chemotherapy treatments, then getting the insurance company statements in the mail.

"We had good insurance. And we get the statements from the insurance company -- I had no idea what those statements mean. And we're both lawyers. I ran for president and vice president of the United States. And one month they'd cover something and the next month, the same thing, they wouldn't cover. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. And I just felt to myself, I can't imagine what these insurance companies are doing to regular people out there."

The "regular people" nodded as Edwards cited that as a reason the nation needs universal health care. But even wearing jeans and talking about the nation's growing class divide, the choice of words signaled that Edwards' self-perception has moved a long way from the blue-collar kid from the Carolina mill towns.

-- Scott Martelle

New Obama and Edwards ads in South Carolina

OK, pretend you live in South Carolina and are of the Democratic persuasion, and you flip on the TV today to catch the soaps.  Which one of these ads -- both new this week -- works the best for you?  Lob your comments in the usual place (and near as we can tell, these are the only Democratic contenders on the air there).

-- Scott Martelle

My, we're a cranky lot

And it's not just the war.

The daily Poll Track column at the National Journal collates a few disparate surveys this morning and finds that, to quote another politician in another time, we're in something of a national malaise.  As Poll Track points out:

"A full two-thirds of respondents to a new Marist/WNBC poll said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a 9-point increase from fall 2006.  Harris' 'Alienation Index' has also risen slightly since last year, as more Americans told pollsters this month that they feel the nation's leaders don't care about them and are out of touch with the country at large.

"Considering such widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, it's no wonder 58 percent of registered voters responding to a new Gallup/USA Today poll said the outcome of the 2008 presidential race matters more to them than previous elections.  For many months the conventional wisdom had placed the blame for the public's angst squarely on President Bush and the Iraq war.  But recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly worried about traditional bread-and-butter issues, too."

And the butter has been melting.  So it's a "pox on both their houses" mood out there, though other polls show that more people think the Democrats are better suited to straighten the mess out than the Republicans.  Those sentiments won't mean much in the primaries and caucuses, but they will come next November.  And of course anything can happen between now and then to change the current mood.

But you have to wonder what might have happened had the national elections been this week instead of next year, and how many babies would have gone out with the bathwater.

-- Scott Martelle

When did the Edwards campaign go tone deaf?

There's a story this morning in John Edwards' hometown paper, the Raleigh News & Observer, about his campaign's apparent attempt to squelch a University of North Carolina student journalist's video report on a student volunteer at Edwards' headquarters.

But the journalist, Carla Babb, instead focused on an apparent disconnect between Edwards' rhetoric of his "two Americas" drive to improve the lives of the poor and his decision to house the headquarters in an upscale shopping center.  So the story shifted, but is far from a hit piece.  It comes across as balanced and focuses on a persistent image problem for the former trial lawyer.

The campaign apparently did not react well, demanding the piece be withdrawn and threatening to limit UNC journalism students' access to the campaign, the newspaper reported.

The result of all this?  First of all, you wouldn't have been reading about Babb's video here, or seeing the embedded video below, had it not been for the campaign's reaction to a pretty basic bit of reporting. And you wouldn't have had us reminding you about Edwards' expensive taste in haircuts, or his 28,000-square-foot bungalow.

There's nothing wrong in this go-get-'em culture of ours with getting rich -- some of our biggest heroes are rich.  What does catch people up, though, are sniffs of hypocrisy and fair play.

Voters will decide whether Edwards' decisions are out of step with his policies, though as one of the folks in Babb's piece points out, poor people tend not to get far in presidential campaigns.  And it's not like rich folks haven't done the poor a good turn before.

But from a strategic standpoint, one has to wonder where the image folks, and crisis management people, are in the Edwards campaign.  Instead of focusing on poverty, the focus is now on wealth.  Talk about not getting your message across.

-- Scott Martelle

On the Trail -- Inside a Times story -- II

This is another in a continuing series of interviews with Times correspondents about life on the campaign trail these days and how they go about doing their work. A previous interview with The Times' Scott Martelle is available here.

If you have any questions you'd like asked, leave them in the Comments section below and we'll get to them in future interviews.

Today we talk with Richard Fausset, The Times' 37-year-old Atlanta bureau chief, who recently spent three days on the road with Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards to produce this story and this collection of Edwards remarks.

Q: You've covered the L.A. mayoral race. How do you know what to look for when covering a national campaign?

A: Well, this was Edwards' poverty tour from New Orleans through the Mississippi Delta into Arkansas and Memphis, up to Cleveland and into Appalachia. But we didn't want to do a poverty policy story so much as a piece that gave a feel for Edwards on the campaign trail. What's he like? How do people relate to him?

Q: And what did you find?

A: The first day in the meetings he was more like a lawyer taking depositions, asking a lot of questions about their situations. The people looked like they were being interrogated. But as the trip wore on, he really warmed up and began to weave into his speeches the stories of the people he'd met. He's really a good speaker, able to read a crowd and its emotional timbre and adjust his remarks accordingly. I heard essentially the same speech three times, but each time he made it seem fresh and relevant to the people at hand.

He's very professional and controlled, though. There were no little gaffes or moments of unexpected openness.

Q: Did he mingle with the crowds a lot?

A: You know, he says he likes that, but I didn't see the delight. He didn't do that much. A few handshakes and smiles here and there, and then we were off to the next stop. It was a crammed schedule. Elizabeth Edwards seems to like that more.

Q: What was she like?

Poverty on their minds

As John Edwards stopped in Kentucky Wednesday to wrap up a three-day tour aimed at focusing attention on poverty in America, Barack Obama --- perhaps not coincidentially --- tackled the same issue just a few miles away from where he works as a U.S. senator.

Obama delivered a lengthy speech in Anacostia, a long-blighted District of Columbia community almost literally in the shadow of the Capitol. Some of what Obama had to say echoed what Edwards has been stressing in his bid to elevate poverty as a major topic in the Democratic presidential campaign. Indeed, for both men, Robert F. Kennedy is serving as a point of departure.

Edwards ended his trip in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Kennedy concluded a visit to impoverished parts of Appalachia during his 1968 presidential campaign. Obama invoked Kennedy and the question he posed about intense pockets of poverty in America --- “How can a country like this allow it?” --- at the very start of his speech.

Obama, no doubt cognizant of criticisms that he was light on specifics in the initial stage of his campaign, went beyond mere rhetoric as his remarks progressed, zeroing in on how he would combat urban poverty. He spotlighted the Harlem Children’s Zone, which he termed "an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children in a neighborhood where they were never supposed to have a chance" (the program was profiled in a "60 Minutes" report about a year ago).

He pledged that as president, he would "replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. We’ll train staff, we’ll have them draw up detailed plans with attainable goals, and the federal government will provide half of the funding for each city, with the rest coming from philanthropies and businesses."

He addressed the next obvious question: cost. "I’ll be honest --– it can’t be done on the cheap. It will cost a few billion dollars a year." But he shied away from the logical follow-up, where will those funds come from? He said simply: "We will find the money to do this because we can’t afford not to."

He offered several other concrete proposals, including a program for inner cities comparable to the World Bank, which aims to stimulate economic development in other counties. You can read Obama's speech here.

Edwards, for his part, has been consistently detailing his plans for attacking poverty. Proposals he unveiled Wednesday included increasing federal funding for family literacy programs. You can read the campaign's re-cap of his remarks here.

For the latest website story on the two campaigns' approaches to fighting poverty, click here. The same story is in Thursday's print edition of The Times.

-- Don Frederick

New John Edwards proposal

It may have taken 10 years to achieve the minimum wage hike that President Bush signed into law recently, but John Edwards not only is impatient for more, he wants to make sure that less time elapses between increases.

On the campaign trail today, the Democratic presidential candidate is calling for the national minimum wage to rise to $9.50 an hour by 2012. Under the law that just took effect, the wage will increase from $5.15 to $5.85 on July 24, and to $7.25 in two years.

Edwards also calls for wages to go up every year, indexed to the increase in the nation's average wage.

“No one who works full-time should have to live in poverty," Edwards said in a release put out by his campaign.

More so than the other White House contenders, Edwards has made fighting poverty a cornerstone of his candidacy. Of course, that's partly why his now-infamous $400 haircut, details about the palatial home he built for his family in North Carolina and news that he worked for a hedge fund firm linked to lending practices that hurt the poor have had such resonance --- they undercut his message. As his proposal today illustrates, however, it is a message he intends to stick with, regardless of the brickbats directed his way.

-- Don Frederick

Photo: John Edwards; Credit: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images

The rich lawyer and his poverty center

John Edwards, the former senator and current multi-millionaire who's made poverty a key campaign issue, used his nonprofit Center for Promise and Opportunity as a political base to develop his presidential run for 2008.

A hard-hitting page one article in today's New York Times reveals how the main beneficiary of the organization to fight poverty was actually Edwards himself. He used the center to build and maintain a shadow political organization with his staff employed there and his frequent travels paid for. According to the article by Leslie Wayne, the poverty center covered Edwards' expenses while he traveled internationally to meet with foreign leaders, hired consultants, attacked President Bush and traveled frequently to Iowa.

"It all adds up to a remarkable feat of keeping a presidential candidacy alive without any of the traditional bases for it," Ferrel Guillory of the University of North Carolina told the Times. And Wayne wrote, "Edwards pushed at the boundaries of how far such organizations can venture into the political realm."

This afternoon the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) issued a statement defending Edwards as "a steadfast ally," especially in the fight to raise the minimum wage and rebuild the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina.

"In making poverty the defining theme of his campaign," association president Maude Hurd said, "Senator Edwards has shown his true colors. It is a sad statement that someone working not only to raise the issue of poverty, but to offer ambitious solutions and his (sic) put his feet on the ground to end it is attacked rather than applauded."

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo: John Edwards; Credit: Paul J. RichardsAFP/Getty Images