(CNN) - CNN has learned that former first daughter Chelsea Clinton will be campaigning for her mother in Puerto Rico Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week.
The announcement comes on the heels of the Clinton campaign's admission that it is currently $20 million in debt and among increased talk by political pundits about when and how Sen. Hillary Clinton will exit the race and concede the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama.
Puerto Rico holds its presidential primaries on June 1 so the decision to send Chelsea Clinton to the island appears to signal her mother's intention to remain in the race at least until early next month.
In her efforts to help her mother, Chelsea Clinton has lucked out by getting assigned to campaign in not one, but two tropical locales. The younger Clinton previously campaigned in Hawaii prior to that state's Democratic caucuses in February and this week's trip will be her second to Puerto Rico on her mother's behalf.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/05/09/art.clintonindiana.jpg caption="A Clinton supporter set the bar in Tuesday's vote very high."]
LOGAN, West Virginia (CNN) – Political campaigns usually look to lower expectations – but one of Hillary Clinton’s supporters took the opposite tack Monday, setting the bar for a West Virginia primary win at an unprecedented high at an enthusiastic campaign event.
“You think this crowd’s noisy?” said West Virginia Senate Majority Leader Harry Truman Chafin. “Just wait ‘til we win like 80-20.”
“We’ve got to give her a vote tomorrow of 80-20 or 90-10,” he added moments later.
A campaign spokesman quickly tried to downplay Chafin’s remaks, saying “We appreciate his exuberance, but we're pretty sure this race is going to be much closer than that.”
Polls suggest Clinton will win West Virginia very easily - recent polls have shown her beating the Illinois senator by as much as 40 percentage points.
But Chafin isn’t the only one raising expectations.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/05/12/art.clintonsmile.jpg caption="Hillary Clinton compared her Campaign to JFK's Monday.'"]
(CNN) - Hillary Clinton said again Monday that no Democratic presidential candidate can win without a victory in West Virginia - and drew a parallel between her own campaign and John Kennedy’s 1960 White House run.
“It was West Virginia that made it possible for John Kennedy to become president,” Clinton said at a Clear Fork, West Virginia campaign stop. “Now, John Kennedy didn’t have the number of delegates he needed when he went to the convention in 1960. He had something equally as important - he had West Virginia behind him, because it’s a fact that Democrats don’t get elected president unless West Virginia votes for you…”
Barack Obama may be the party’s pledged and superdelegate leader – but that status does not appear to have helped him in West Virginia, where Clinton leads by 30-40 points in recent state polls.
“So I’m here today because I know what’s really going to matter tomorrow,” said Clinton. “It’s the votes of the people of West Virginia and if you will come out and honor me with your vote I will work my heart out for you.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/05/12/art.wright.bush.gi.jpg caption=" George W. Bush may do as much damage to John McCain's chances of being elected as Jeremiah Wright does to Barack Obama's, according to results of a recent USA Today/Gallup poll."]
Turns out President Bush might do more damage to John McCain's campaign than the Reverend Jeremiah Wright does to Barack Obama's.
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds 38% of likely voters say McCain's ties to the president make them less likely to vote for the presumptive nominee in November. 33% says Obama's relationship with Wright has the same effect.
However, there is more of an upside when it comes to the relationship with President Bush, with 7% of those surveyed saying they're more likely to vote for McCain because of his association with Mr. Bush. That's compared to only 1% who say they're more likely to vote for Obama because of Wright.
To read more and contribute to the Cafferty File discussion click here
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2008/images/02/04/art.blitzer.cnn.jpg caption="Blitzer: A one- or two-vote swing could make all the difference on the nation's highest court."] (CNN) - The next President of the United States will have an enormous opportunity to shape the U.S. Supreme Court for decades. That’s because several members of the court are getting up there in years.
John McCain says he would pick Justices along the lines of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, two conservatives nominated by President Bush. Barack Obama told me last week that he would favor nominees along the lines of Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, two liberals nominated by former President Bill Clinton.
Clearly, the two presidential frontrunners have a major disagreement on this critically important issue, and no doubt it would be a major consideration for voters in the fall.
Given the current split among the nine Justices, the next one or two members will have an incredible opportunity to shift the balance. Among the most sensitive issues that could be considered would be the future of Roe vs. Wade and abortion rights for women.
I raised this issue the other day with Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut who supports abortion rights. The former Democratic vice-presidential nominee strongly supports John McCain. Lieberman voted to confirm the nomination of Roberts; he voted against Alito. The future of the Supreme Court, he said, is “a big issue for me. I’m a lawyer. I’m a former attorney general.”
He supports McCain largely because of his stance on major national security issues. I asked him if he feared Roe versus Wade would be oveturned by McCain’s future Supreme Court nominees. “Look,” he replied, “I think it’s the law of the land.” But he would be “upset” if it were overturned. “This is an important issue. But there are a lot of important issues. One is to protect our security. Senator McCain is by far best prepared to do that.”
How important is the future makeup of the Supreme Court to you?
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