SNEAK PEEK: Hitting the Trail in Vienna VA
Dodd has Iowa all to himself
November 29, 2007— -- 34 days until the Iowa caucuses
There are just over 800 hours left until voting begins, if you are partial to the Ron Paul way of counting down until the Iowa caucuses.
On Friday, six Democratic presidential candidates will step off the campaign trail in Iowa and head to Vienna, VA to make their case to DNC members at the party's annual fall meeting.
Democratic presidential hopefuls John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson are scheduled to speak during the morning session and Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton will speak during the afternoon session.
Edwards later travels to Iowa for the Culver-Judge holiday party.
The presidential hopefuls will speak to about 400 DNC members as well as supporters of their campaigns who can attend their session. They will not take any questions. DNC chairman Howard Dean is also expected to address the committee at 10:30 am ET.
Chris Dodd is skipping the meeting to stay on the trail and continue campaigning with firefighters in Iowa. He may be making the smartest move of all the candidates – or the most risky.
No candidate can really afford to waste any time away from Iowa between now and Jan. 3. Friday Dodd can highlight that he thinks it's more important to glad hand with Iowans than make his case to the party leaders. But he does risk alienating those 400 DNC members who do have sway in this nominating race.
Tivo Alert! John Edwards sits down with Charlie Gibson for ABC News' "Who Is?" series airing tonight on "World News."
Edwards talked about what makes him different in this campaign: "When I was running in the nomination process in 2003 and 2004, I'd spend most of my time thinking about being a candidate. And since that time, I've spent most of my time thinking about what I'd want to do as President. And those two things are not the same." LINK
On Friday at 8:00 pm ET C-SPAN airs an interview with Bill Clinton where the former president talks about his presidential records and the criticisms over the release of his wife's records from her time as First Lady.
Clinton said he wants to push the release of more documents, "including the request for documents about Hillary's time in the White House."
"They'll show how hard she worked on a wide variety of issues, and what she did in her travels around the world to advance America's cause. So, I'd like it if the records got out there," the former president said. We have proved that we are pushing this stuff out the door as soon as we can. I am not afraid to have my records made public. I worked hard. Hillary worked hard. Our people worked hard. We did our best to do a good job.
Bill Clinton takes to task the press and political opponents of his wife. "Essentially what's happened is that some members of the press and people in the political community who are on the other side of Hillary – which they have every right to be – are taking the position that, because she's running for president, all the rules should be suspended and they should get what they want, and they should get it now, whether we go through the regular processes of the Archives or not, and whether we treat people on a first-come, first-served basis or not."
Mike Huckabee jams with the Tilton (NH) School's rock band and speaks to students and residents at an event at the school. (We imagine him leading off with something like this: "In the words of AC/DC: We roll tonight... to the guitar bite... and for those about to rock... I salute you.) LINK
