WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will try to establish a cooperative new relationship with Latin America this week, but U.S. resistance to change on highly symbolic issues like Cuba and immigration could undercut the effort, analysts said.

Obama travels to Mexico on Thursday for his first visit to the region as president and heads to Trinidad and Tobago on Friday for the Fifth Summit of the Americas. As he did at the G20 summit of major economic powers in London this month, the president plans to emphasize listening to regional leaders and working on shared goals.

"With all that is at stake today, we cannot afford to talk past one another," Obama said on Saturday in his weekly radio speech. "We have to find, and build on, our mutual interests."

Jeffrey Davidow, Obama's special adviser for the summit, said there had been a push to establish a new tone with pre-summit consultations and diplomacy. Obama met Mexican President Felipe Calderon before taking office and several Cabinet officials have visited Latin America.

"I think coming so early in the administration," Davidow said, "this ... legitimately can be seen as a new beginning."

Obama's popularity, compared to former President George W. Bush, and his performance at the G20 give him tremendous goodwill among fellow leaders as he begins the visit, analysts said, but much hinges on his pledge to listen and learn.

"WALK THE WALK"

"What matters is the day after," Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, told a briefing. "If the U.S. is ... saying that they're willing to listen and to learn ... you have to walk the walk.

"And in this regard there's a number of issues that should not be removed from the agenda: things like Cuba, things like immigration," he said.

Those issues, though not on the summit agenda, are sure to be debated. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and like-minded leaders are expected to push for Cuba to be readmitted to the Organization of American States. Debate over Cuba would underscore the divide between the United States and the region.

Washington has said it would not end its 47-year-old embargo on the communist island. But Obama is looking at loosening restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba, steps many view as inadequate.

"The measures that the administration seems to be willing to roll out regarding Cuban-American family travel are so limited in their impact, narrow in their scope that perversely this administration, which wants the summit not to be a Cuba summit, might make it a Cuba summit," said Julia Sweig, head of Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

SPOTLIGHT ON U.S. ECONOMY

That would be a mistake, analysts said, because the main issue confronting the leaders is the global economic crisis. As Latin America's main trade partner, the United States can best help the situation by getting its own economy back on track.

"The recovery of the U.S. economy is the key factor and everyone will be looking to President Obama for his description of how his plans are laid out," said Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International studies.

Moreno said five years of 5 percent growth had lifted 40 million people in Latin America out of extreme poverty, but a 1 percent drop in gross domestic product from the global recession would send 15 million people sliding back.

"The best way to assist the hemisphere would be to fix the U.S. economy, resisting understandable but self-defeating impulses toward trade and investment protectionism," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas.

Many analysts said Latin America's pursuit of prudent economic policies over the past decade -- low debt, open markets, free trade -- had left it better able to cope with the global recession. Now the region needs to see the United States step up and take its own medicine, they said.

"I think we need to send a very strong signal to the world and to Latin America in particular that the advice that we were giving them earlier applies to us as well," said Mustafa Mohatarem, chief economist at General Motors.

PRESIDENT NEWS: US WILL establish new relationship with Latin America

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US PRESIDENT NEWS:GLIMMERS OF HOPE FOR SLUMPING ECONOMY?
President Barack Obama declared Friday that the slumping economy has begun to show "glimmers of hope," but cautioned that it remains severely stressed and will require lots more work to turn it around.

Glimmery - shining softly and intermittently; "glimmery candlelight"

Once criticized for talking too pessimistically about the economy, Obama is highlighting the positive.

"We're starting to see glimmers of hope across the economy," the president said after a White House meeting with his economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and top economic adviser Larry Summers. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also participated in the session.

Obama echoed Summers' prediction a day earlier that the "sense of a ball falling off a table" would end in a few months.

The president highlighted signs of thawing in the credit markets, particularly for small businesses seeking loans, along with tax cuts he said workers will soon see in their paychecks and a jump in mortgage refinancings due to historically low interest rates.

Obama said those positive moves as well as infrastructure work and other spending underwritten by his $787 billion stimulus program all point to welcome signs of long-anticipated economic improvement.

"We're starting to see progress," Obama said. "And if we stick with it, if we don't flinch in the face of some difficulties, then I feel absolutely convinced that we are going to get this economy back on track."

The president threw in a dose of sober reality, too.

"Now, we have always been very cautious about prognosticating and that's not going to change just because it's Easter," Obama said. "The economy is still under severe stress."

Unemployment hit a 25-year high of 8.5 percent in March, and many people are still losing their homes or jobs, or fear losing them.

"So we've still got a lot of work to do," Obama said. Without elaborating, he said the administration would take steps in the coming weeks to help further improve the business climate.

Gauging Wall Street's response to Obama's more upbeat take had to wait as the markets were closed for Good Friday.

Friday's meeting was the first between Obama and his economic team since he returned from an overseas trip partly focused on the global economic crisis. He participated in a meeting last week in London of leaders from the 20 wealthiest and developing economies.

Also at Friday's meeting were Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers; Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Schapiro and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan.

Recent economic statistics have hinted at signs of recovery from the recession that began in late 2007, including evidence that stock market investors, shoppers and homebuyers are less nervous than before. Wells Fargo & Co. issued a strong profit forecast this week, the government saw a drop in claims for unemployment benefits and several retailers predicted solid sales for April.

Once criticized for too much sour economy talk — Obama often told an anxious public that the situation would get much worse before it got better — he has begun to highlight the positive.

On Thursday, he urged eligible homeowners to refinance their mortgages using a special government program. He sat with a group of homeowners who had shaved hundreds of dollars from their monthly bills because of low interest rates.

"We are at a time where people can really take advantage of this," Obama said.

His top economic adviser sounded a note of cautious optimism, as well.

"The sense of a ball falling off a table, which is what the economy has felt like since the middle of last fall, I think we can be reasonably confident that that is going to end within the next few months, and we will no longer have that sense of a free fall," Summers said Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington.

However, he said it was too soon to forecast how strong the rebound would be and when it would take hold. He also refused to predict how high unemployment will rise before a sustainable recovery begins.

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Judaism (from the Greek Ioudaïsmos, derived from the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah";in Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, Yahedut, the distinctive characteristics of the Judean ethnos)is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts. Judaism presents itself as the covenantal relationship between the Children of Israel (later, the Jewish nation) and God. As such, many consider it the first monotheistic religion. Many aspects of Judaism correspond to Western concepts of ethics and civil law. Judaism is among the oldest religious traditions still being practised today, and many of its texts and traditions are central to other Abrahamic religions. As such, Jewish history and the principles and ethics of Judaism have influenced various other religions, including Christianity and Islam.

Followers of Judaism (as well as members of the Jewish people) are called Jews, and the Jewish collective is regarded as an ethno-religious group, for reasons derived from the sacred texts that define them as a nation, rather than followers of a faith. In 2007, the world Jewish population was estimated at 13.2 million people, 41% of whom lived in Israel and 40% of whom lived in the United States.

US PRESIDENT : Private White House meal for Jewish voters?
Barack Obama is inviting close friends and staff to a private White House meal Thursday to mark Passover, part of the new president's effort to reach out to Jewish voters.

Among the invited is Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers, and family friend Eric Whitaker, who is visiting from Chicago and attended a seder last year with the campaign. First lady Michelle Obama and the family's two daughters also plan to attend.

The staff guest list includes aides from the campaign trail who marked last year's Passover at the Sheraton hotel in Harrisburg, Pa. Obama's personal aide, Reggie Love; Michelle Obama's deputy chief of staff, Melissa Winter; personal aide Dana Lewis and associate social secretary Samantha Tubman all received invitations.

Also on the guest list are Eric Lesser, a personal aide to senior adviser David Axelrod, and his family. Lesser worked during the New Hampshire primary and later handled baggage for traveling reporters. White House videographer Arun Chaudhary — a constant presence on the trail — landed invitations for his family.

Others in the exclusive group include Michelle Obama's counsel and friend Susan Sher; Herbie Ziskend, a staff assistant to Vice President Joe Biden's policy and economic advisers; and White House deputy director of advance and special events Lisa Kohnke.

Two of the administration's highest-profile members of the Jewish faith will miss the dinner. Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel doesn't plan to attend and Axelrod expects to be in Chicago with his family.

The White House says the seder meal will be traditional, including matzo, bitter herbs, a roasted egg and greens in the family dining room in the executive mansion. The evening will feature the reading of the Haggadah, the religious text of the holiday.

Passover began at sundown Wednesday. It celebrates the Jewish exodus from Egypt after 400 years of slavery.

White House aides say they believe this is the first president-hosted seder at the White House. President Bill Clinton's aides planned seders, but Clinton isn't known to have attended.

Obama's move won quick praise from the National Jewish Democratic Council.

"By hosting the first presidential seder in America's history, President Barack Obama shows the personal and deep relationship he has with the Jewish community," said Alexis C. Rice, the group's deputy executive director.

US PRESIDENT :-Private White House meal for Jewish voters?

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Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday's first minutes. The town of Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns' ballots but got no votes.

"I'm not going to say I wasn't surprised," said Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson, whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch's first voter.

With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day. Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.

Being first means something to residents of the Granite State, home of the nation's earliest presidential primary and the central focus — however briefly — of the vote-watching nation's attention every four years.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin said Dixville Notch is proud of its tradition, but added, "The most important thing is that we exemplify a 100 percent vote."

Dixville Notch resident Peter Johnson said the early bird electoral exercise "is fun." A former naval aviator, Johnson said he was voting for McCain, but added, "I think both candidates are excellent people."

Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, "First in the Nation, Dixville Notch."

The tradition drew spectators, including Tim McKenna, who drove with his wife 16 miles from Cambridge, N.H., to witness the event.

"Living in New Hampshire, you hear so much about it in the news," said McKenna. "I think it's a very historic election this year."

Ed Butler, a Democratic state representative who runs the Notchland Inn in Hart's Location, said, "Being this small and being able to be first just makes it that much more special."

Although scores of states have voted early, the two villages are the first to officially announce the results on Election Day.

New Hampshire law requires polls to open at 11 a.m., but that doesn't stop towns from opening earlier. It also allows towns to close their polls once all registered and eligible voters have cast ballots.

Hart's Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had to get to work early. Hart's Location got out of the early voting business in 1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back in 1996.

Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about halfway between the White Mountain National Forest and the Canadian border, followed suit in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year, and before Tuesday, the town had gone for a Democrat only once since then. That was in 1968, when the tally was Democrat Hubert Humphrey eight, Nixon four.

U.S. election :OBAMA Granma -Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham died?

Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham (October 26, 1922- November 2, 2008) and Stanley Armour Dunham (March 23, 1918 – February 8, 1992) were the maternal grandparents of Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois and Democratic nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They raised Obama from age 10 in their Honolulu, Hawaii apartment, where the widowed Mrs. Dunham lived until her death on November 2, 2008,in the same city as Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng.

Barack Obama's grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.
Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said Dunham died late Sunday at her Honolulu apartment after a battle with cancer.
"She's gone home," Obama said as tens of thousands of rowdy supporters at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte grew silent in an evening drizzle.
"And she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side. And so there is great joy as well as tears. I'm not going to talk about it too long because it is hard for me to talk about."
But he said he wanted people to know a little about her — that she lived through the Great Depression and World War II, working the latter on a bomber assembly line with a baby at home and a husband serving his country. He said she was humble and plain spoken, one of the "quiet heroes that we have all across America" working hard and hoping to see their children and grandchildren thrive.
Obama learned of Dunham's death Monday morning while he was campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
"So many of us were hoping and praying that his grandmother would have the opportunity to witness her grandson become our next president," said Hawaii state Rep. Marcus Oshiro, an Obama supporter. "What a bittersweet victory it will be for him."
Republican John McCain issued condolences. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives," the statement by John and Cindy McCain said.
Last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to Hawaii to be with Dunham as her health declined. He told CBS that he "got there too late" when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at age 53 and wanted to avoid that mistake again.
Outside the apartment building where Dunham died, reporters and TV cameras lined the sidewalk as two police officers were posted near the elevator. Signs hanging in the apartment lobby warned the public to keep out.
The Kansas-born Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised their grandson for several years in Honolulu while their daughter and her second husband lived overseas. Her influence on Obama's manner and the way he viewed the world was substantial, the candidate told millions watching him accept his party's nomination in Denver in August.
"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."
Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she graduated from high school. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in 1942. After several moves to and from California, Texas, Washington and Kansas, Stanley Dunham's job landed the family in Hawaii.
It was there, in a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, that Stanley Ann met Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama. Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last.
Stanley Ann later married an Indonesian, and Obama moved to that country with his mother and stepfather at age 6. But in 1971, her mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. He stayed with the Dunhams until he graduated from high school in 1979.
In his autobiography, Obama wrote fondly of playing basketball on a court below his grandparents' 10th-floor Honolulu apartment, and looking up to see his grandmother watching.
Madelyn Dunham, who took university classes but never earned a degree, nonetheless rose from a secretarial job at the Bank of Hawaii to become one of the state's first female bank vice presidents.
"Every morning, she woke up at 5 a.m. and changed from the frowsy muumuus she wore around the apartment into a tailored suit and high-heeled pumps," Obama wrote.
After her health took a turn for the worse, her brother said on Oct. 21 that she had already lived long enough to see her "Barry" achieve what she'd wanted for him.
"I doubt if it would occur to her that he would go this far this fast. But she's enjoyed watching it," Charles Payne, 83, said in a brief telephone interview from his Chicago home.
Stanley Dunham died in 1992; Obama's father is also deceased.
When Obama was young, he and his grandmother toured the United States by Greyhound bus, stopping at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Disneyland and Chicago, where Obama would years later settle.
It was an incident during his teenage years that became one of Obama's most vivid memories of the woman he called "Toot" — a version of the Hawaiian word for grandmother, tutu.
She had been aggressively panhandled by a man and, for safety's sake, she wanted her husband to take her to work. When Obama asked why, his grandfather said Madelyn Dunham was bothered because the panhandler was black.
The words hit the biracial Obama "like a fist in my stomach," he wrote later. He was sure his grandparents loved him deeply. "And yet," he added, "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears."
Obama referred to the incident again when he addressed race in a speech in March during a controversy over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother," he said.
Dunham was "a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street."
Madelyn Lee Payne, the oldest of four children, was born in October 1922 in Peru, Kan., but lived much of her childhood in nearby Augusta.
From his grandmother, Obama "gets his pragmatism, his levelheadedness, his ability to stay centered in the eye of the storm," his sister told The Associated Press. "His sensible, no-nonsense (side) is inherited from her."

U.S. election : 6(McCain) of 8(Obama) key states

Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain in six of eight key battleground states one day before the U.S. election, including the big prizes of Florida and Ohio, according to a series of Reuters/Zogby polls released on Monday.
Obama holds a 7-point edge over McCain among likely U.S. voters in a separate Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll, up 1 percentage point from Sunday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Obama heads into Tuesday's voting in a comfortable position, with McCain struggling to overtake Obama's lead in every national opinion poll and to hold off his challenge in about a dozen states won by President George W. Bush in 2004.
The new state polls showed Obama with a 1-point lead in Missouri and 2-point lead in Florida, within the margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. But Obama also holds leads in Ohio, Virginia and Nevada -- all states won by Bush in 2004.
The five states where Obama is ahead have a combined 76 electoral votes. Along with states won by Democrat John Kerry in 2004, they would give Obama 328 electoral votes -- far more than the 270 needed to win the White House.
Obama also leads by 11 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which McCain has targeted as his best chance to steal a state won by Kerry in 2004.
McCain leads Obama by 5 points in Indiana and by 1 point in North Carolina -- both states won by Bush in 2004.
"Obama's lead is very steady. He could be looking at a big day on Tuesday," said pollster John Zogby. "These are all Republican states except Pennsylvania, and that does not look like it's going to turn for him."
In Florida, the biggest prize being fought over on Tuesday with 27 electoral votes, Obama leads McCain by 48 percent to 46 percent. The two were running dead even at 47 percent one week ago.
OBAMA LEADS IN OHIO
In Ohio, the state that decided the 2004 election with a narrow win for Bush, Obama has opened a 6-point edge. He also has a 6-point lead on McCain in Virginia and an 8-point advantage in fast-growing Nevada.
Obama leads McCain by a statistically insignificant 1 point, 47 percent to 46 percent, in Missouri. McCain has the same 1-point edge in traditionally Republican North Carolina.
McCain has a solid 5-point lead in Indiana, which has not supported a Democrat for president since 1964. Obama has worked to put Indiana in the Democratic column, and plans a visit there on Election Day to try to help turn out the vote.
In the national poll, Obama leads by 15 points among independents and by 13 points among women, two crucial voting blocs in Tuesday's election. He leads by 1 point among men and among all age groups except those between the ages of 55 and 69, who favor McCain by 1 point.
McCain leads among whites by 13 percentage points but is only attracting about 25 percent of Hispanics. In 2004, Bush won more than 40 percent of Hispanics.
Both independent Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr were at 1 percent in the survey, with about 2 percent of voters still undecided.
The rolling tracking poll, taken Thursday through Saturday, surveyed 1,205 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day's results are added, while the oldest day's results are dropped to monitor changing momentum.
The state surveys also were taken Thursday through Saturday with a sample in each state of between 600 and 605 likely voters. The margin of error in all eight states was 4.1 percentage points.

Former President Bill Clinton said that Democrats were more likely to lose in November if Hillary Clinton is not the nominee, and suggested some were trying to "push and pressure and bully" superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely."I can't believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out," Clinton said at a South Dakota campaign stop Sunday, in remarks first reported by "ABC News."Clinton also suggested some were trying to "cover up" Sen. Clinton's chances of winning in key states that Democrats will have to win in the general election.

" 'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.' "Clinton did not expound on who he was accusing.The former president added that his wife had not been given the respect she deserved as a legitimate presidential candidate."She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence," Clinton said. "And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running.""Her only position was, 'Look, if I lose I'll be a good team player.

We will all try to win, but let's let everybody vote, and count every vote,' " he said.The former president suggested that if the New York senator ended the primary season with an edge in the popular vote, it would be a significant development."If you vote for her and she does well in Montana and she does well in Puerto Rico, when this is over she will be ahead in the popular vote," Clinton said."And they're trying to get her to cry uncle before the Democratic Party has to decide what to do in Florida and Michigan," which Clinton said the party would need to do "unless we want to lose the election."The current requirement to claim the Democratic presidential nomination is 2,026 delegates, a formula that does not take into account delegates from Florida and Michigan, whose contests were not sanctioned by the party because they moved them up earlier on the primary calendar.

But if those votes were counted as cast, Hillary Clinton would still trail rival Barack Obama in the overall delegate count.The former president said Sunday that the media had unfairly attacked his wife since the Iowa caucuses, repeating an often-used charge that press coverage had made him feel as though he were living in a "fun house.""If you notice, there hasn't been a lot of publicity on these polls I just told you about," he said. "It is the first time you've heard it? Why do you think that is? Why do you think? Don't you think if the polls were the reverse and he was winning the Electoral College against Senator McCain and Hillary was losing it, it would be blasted on every television station?"He added, "You would know it wouldn't you? It wouldn't be a little secret. And there is another Electoral College poll that I saw yesterday had her over 300 electoral votes. ... She will win the general election if you nominate her. They're just trying to make sure you don't."

Barack Obama began sketching the outlines of his expected presidential contest against Republican John McCain on Saturday, saying the fall election will be more about specific plans and priorities than about questions of political ideology or who is more patriotic.
Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in "town hall" events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick.

He did not mention that Clinton supports a similar plan.

Obama also said he soon will campaign in Michigan and Florida, two battleground states whose Democratic primaries were essentially nullified by party disputes, angering many voters. He is scheduled to campaign Tuesday in Missouri, marking the first such visit to a state where the primary is over and McCain awaits him in the fall.

Saying he still has not secured the nomination, Obama nonetheless entertained several questions about the likely outlines of a contest against McCain. As he campaigned in Oregon, whose primary is May 20, Obama picked up four superdelegate endorsements, erasing Clinton's once-substantial lead among the party leaders who will determine the nominee.

Many party leaders feel it is only a matter of time before the former first lady must concede defeat. But Clinton forged ahead Saturday, holding a fundraiser in New York.

"Let's keep going, stay with me, this is a great adventure and we're going to make history," she told the crowd.

Speaking with reporters in Bend, Ore., Obama brushed aside suggestions that the fall campaign may be largely about his race, liberalism or patriotism.

"In a contest between myself and John McCain," he said, "there is going to be a very clear choice on policy that I don't think is going to have to do with ideology and who theoretically is more liberal or who's more conservative. I think it is going to have to do with who has a plan to provide relief to people when it comes to their gas prices, who has a real plan to make sure that everybody has health insurance, who's got a real plan to deal with college affordability."
"So rather than an abstract set of questions about, 'Is he too liberal, is he too conservative, how do voters handle an African American, et cetera,' I think this is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans and our vision for the future," he said.

Obama said he realizes he must continue introducing himself to millions of Americans who do not know him well, and acknowledged that some question his patriotism because he no longer wears a lapel flag pin.

WASHINGTON - The amazement was on their faces. Hundreds waited for Barack Obama on that evening in South Carolina, 15 weeks ago, to claim victory — a surprising victory, surprisingly large.

And amazing it was. It made it possible for him to stand today on the verge of being the first black person ever nominated for president by a major party.
One could guess the thoughts of the blacks and whites in that crowd: Can you believe that our state — South Carolina, first to secede and first to open fire in the Civil War — is now catapulting a black man to the front of the presidential contest in a year that bodes well for Democrats?
"Race doesn't matter," some began to chant. "Race doesn't matter!"
The cry soon gave way to more familiar chants of "Yes we can," and everyone in the auditorium surely knew that race does still matter in so many ways. But in a pinch-me moment, they seemed to realize that a barrier had been broken with a swiftness and certainty that even they had not foreseen.
Even more astounding, the man vaulting ahead of the universally known former first lady, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, had been a state legislator only four years earlier — a lawyer with no fame, wealth or family connections.
Now, the entire nation and countless foreigners are absorbing a moment that had seemed decades away, if possible at all. Smart strategists and rank-and-file voters ponder how Obama rose so far so fast, and theories abound. Historians will sort it out someday, but Obama's blend of oratory, biography, optimism and cool confidence come to mind most immediately.
It's not just about him, of course. If America can seriously think of putting a black man in the White House, surely it must also profoundly rethink the relevance of race, the power of prejudice, the logic of affirmative action and other societal forces that have evolved slowly through the eras of Jim Crow, desegregation and massive immigration.
Maybe the toughest question is this:
Is Obama, with his incandescent smile and silky oratory, a once-in-a-century phenomenon who will blast open doors only to see them quickly close on less extraordinary blacks?
Or is he the lucky and well-timed beneficiary of racial dynamics that have changed faster than most people realized, a trend that presumably will soon yield more black governors, senators, mayors and council members?
Presidential campaigns have destroyed many bright and capable politicians. But there's ample evidence that Obama is something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy, who seems to touch millions of diverse people with a message of hope that somehow doesn't sound Pollyannaish.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, a black Maryland Democrat who endorsed Obama early, says the Illinois senator convinces people of all races that Americans as a society, and as individuals, can achieve higher goals if they try.
"He says we can do better, and his life is the epitome of doing better," says Cummings, noting that Obama was raised by a single mother who sometimes relied on food stamps. "He convinces people that there's a lot of good within them."
And why should they believe such feel-good platitudes? "Because he's real and he has confidence in his own competence," Cummings says.
Without question, Obama is an electrifying speaker. At virtually every key juncture in his trajectory, he has used inspirational oratory to generate excitement, buy time to deal with crises, and force party activists to rethink their assumptions that a black man with an African name cannot seriously vie for the presidency.
A prime-time speech at the Democratic convention in Boston catapulted him to national attention in 2004. When his presidential campaign badly trailed Clinton's high-flying operation, he gave it new life with a timely Iowa speech that outshone her remarks moments earlier on the same stage. And a heavily covered March 18 speech about race relations calmed criticisms about his ties to his former pastor, although Obama had to revisit the matter when the minister restated incendiary remarks about the government.
Obama has a compelling biography, too. The son of a black African father he barely knew, and a white Kansan mother who took him from Hawaii to Indonesia, he was largely raised by his white maternal grandparents. He finished near the top of his Harvard law class, then rejected big firms' salaries to work as a community organizer in Southside Chicago, where he found a church, his wife and a place that felt like home.
But all those attributes don't explain the Obama phenomenon.
Other great orators have fallen short of the presidency, including Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan.
Plenty of brilliant people have tried and failed, too. Bill Bradley was a Princeton graduate, basketball star and Rhodes Scholar.
Intriguing biographies aren't enough, either. John Glenn was an astronaut and American hero, but he couldn't get off the presidential launchpad.
Jim Margolis, a veteran campaign strategist now working for Obama, thinks it is his blend of all these traits, wrapped in "authenticity," which makes Obama's message of hope and inclusion seem plausible, not pie in the sky.
Margolis interviewed many of Obama's Harvard classmates for TV ads and documentaries. They told him Obama "was wise beyond his years, and never talked down to people," Margolis said.
"He has this amazing ability to connect with people and understand their problems," he said. "And through it all, there is this optimism."
For a politician with only four years of experience at the federal level, Obama also has spot-on instincts, associates say, and a steely confidence in his convictions, in good times and bad. His roughest patch came after Clinton revived her campaign with wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and a renewed uproar over Obama's former pastor threatened to consume his campaign.
Obama rejected advice to criticize Clinton more fiercely, and went back to his themes of political and racial reconciliation. His solid win in North Carolina and near miss in Indiana confirmed his judgment.
Obama and his small core of longtime advisers also outsmarted the vaunted Clinton team by focusing early on small caucus states, where he racked up important wins. His fundraising has been nothing short of astounding, with millions of dollars pouring in via the Internet from people who never gave a politician a dime.
Obama fans often search for words to express their attraction.
"He just really electrifies you when you are listening to him," said Lena Bradley, 78, a beauty salon owner in Washington. "He has something that's leading him."
As ephemeral as "something that's leading him" sounds, it's hard to explain in more clinical terms his impact on people. But it's there.
As recently as June 2006, a lone reporter could travel with Obama in cars and small planes as he campaigned for other Democrats in state after state. On one such visit to Massachusetts and New Jersey, his charm was on full display before crowds of various size, age and ethnic makeup. He made teenagers guffaw by saying people pronounced his name "Yo Mama." He quoted scripture in a black church, and set every head nodding.
On a plane ride he talked with the reporter for an hour, on the record, with barely a hint of the nervousness or hedging that most politicians understandably display to someone with a pen, pad and tape recorder.
Before an audience of 300 people in East Orange, N.J., Obama spotted local resident and famous singer Dionne Warwick. He smiled impishly and sang, "If you see me walking down the street," the opening line of her hit, "Walk on By." The crowd roared its approval of his on-key ad lib.
Some veteran politicians also see "something that's leading" Obama, whether they can explain it or not.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a longtime friend and supporter, said "nothing was ever the same" after Obama's Boston speech.
Durbin recalls pulling Obama into a vacant meeting room in Chicago's Union League Club, where both had spoken on a Friday afternoon in November 2006. He felt it was time for his young colleague to decide whether to run for the White House.
"There are moments in life when you can pick the time," Durbin said he told Obama. "But when it comes to running for president, the time can pick you. You've been picked. This is your moment."
A short time later, Obama launched his candidacy.

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton's campaign plans to dispute it.It's a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race.The Obama campaign agrees with the Democratic National Committee, which pegs a winning majority at 2,025 pledged delegates and superdelegates—a figure that excludes the penalized Florida and Michigan delegations.

The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination—a tally that includes Florida and Michigan."We don't accept 2,025. It is not the real number because that does not include Florida and Michigan," said Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton's two chief strategists. "It's a phony number."Wolfson said they intend to contest the DNC's 2,025 number "every day," as well as any declaration of victory made by Obama based upon that number, because it does not include Florida and Michigan.

In January, Clinton won both states by wide margins when Obama did not actively contest them. The two states were stripped of their delegates for holding early primaries not sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee.Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold—1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included."On May 20 we're going to declare victory," said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be "the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes."While the nature of that declaration of victory is "still developing," in the advisor's words, the Obama campaign contends that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates should be the party nominee."Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded," wrote Obama campaign manager David Plouffe Wednesday in a memo to superdelegates. "It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules - your rules - which we built this campaign and our strategy around.

But the Clinton campaign's insistence on counting Florida and Michigan would alter not only the overall delegate math, but the pledged delegate math as well. Because if the two states are included in the count, the total number of pledged delegates would rise from 3,253 to 3,566—which means the magic number for a majority rises to 1,784, not 1,627 as the Obama campaign asserts.By hewing to that interpretation, the Clinton campaign would thus be able to raise doubts about a May 20 declaration of victory by Obama.Since the earliest possible resolution of the Florida/Michigan dispute is May 31, when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet in Washington to address petitions from Michigan and Florida DNC members, the 11-day period between the May 20 primaries and the RBC meeting could produce a chaotic stretch where Obama claims to be the party nominee while Clinton argues otherwise.

Already, the two campaigns are gearing up for the battle."With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days," wrote Plouffe in his memo. "While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.""You can declare mission accomplished but that doesn't mean that the mission has actually been accomplished," Wolfson said.

Barack Obama, the US Democratic presidential hopeful, has played down a row with his rival Hillary Clinton over the circulation of a photo his aides say plays on some US voters' negative views of Muslims.

The Drudge Report website had published the image of Obama wearing Somali clothing, which it alleges was sent by Clinton staff.

Campaigning in the state of Ohio on Tuesday, Obama said: "I've told my staff and I'm sure Senator Clinton has told her staff, 'let's play to win, but let's make sure that we are maintaining the kind of campaign that, win or lose, it will be a campaign we are proud of'."

The photo controversy overshadowed a high-profile endorsement for Obama from Chris Dodd, the senator and former presidential candidate.

Dodd became the first former Democratic presidential candidate to endorse Obama, just hours before Obama and Clinton were set to engage in the final televised debate before polls in Ohio and Texas.

Obama, whose father came from Kenya, donned the clothes after being presented with them by tribal elders in a 2006 visit to the African state.
The Illinois senator said he expected there to be disagreements between the campaigns but that the photo was not indicative of Clinton's tactics.

"Certainly, I don't think that photo was circulated to enhance my candidacy, I think that's fair to say. Do I think that it is reflective of Senator Clinton's approach to the campaign?"

The row comes ahead of a crucial debate between the two on Tuesday in the key battleground state of Ohio.

'Desperate' move

Obama's aides had accused the Clinton camp of "shameful, offensive fear-mongering", saying the photo is a smear attempt as it plays on some US voters' belief that he is a Muslim, when in fact he is a practicing Christian.

Professor Abdallah Schleifer, a foreign policy specialist at the American University in Cairo, told Al Jazeera the photograph seemed to be a "desperate" attempt to tarnish Obama's image in the US.

"It's not simply a matter that it's a picture of Obama, dressed as - quote - a 'Somali elder' ... it includes a turban - he's wearing a turban," said Schleifer.

"Why is that a smear? Well ... You have to understand that in America there is a section of society for which terrorism and Muslims are associated together."

A Clinton campaign volunteer was sacked last year after circulating an email that falsely suggested Obama was a Muslim.

Obama's foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, said the circulation of the photograph was divisive and suggests "that the customs and cultures of other parts of the world are worthy of ridicule or condemnation".

Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman, said: "I just want to make it very clear that we were not aware of it, the campaign didn't sanction it and don't know anything about it."

Rivalry between Obama and Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has become increasingly bitter in recent days and foreign policy has become a focal point.

In a speech in Washington DC on Monday, the former first lady criticised the Illinois senator's foreign policy experience, saying he had veered between pledging to meet leaders of nations such as Iran and Cuba as president to warning of US strikes on al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

Tougher message

Clinton has lost the last 11 Democratic presidential nominating contests to Obama and many analysts have said that she needs to win the forthcoming Ohio and Texas polls on March 4 to retain a chance of winning the nomination.

After a debate with Obama last Thursday in Texas in which she said she was honoured to share the stage with him, Clinton has toughened her message in the past few days.

A Quinnipiac University poll published on Monday showed Clinton leading Obama in Ohio by 51 per cent to 40 per cent among probable Democratic voters.

Two weeks ago, Clinton led by 55 per cent to 34 per cent, a sign that the momentum Obama has gained from 11 straight victories was paying dividends in the state.

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton clashed sharply in a high-stakes one-on-one debate on Tuesday, accusing each other of falsely portraying their stances on health care, trade and other issues.

AGGRESSIVE CLINTON

With her campaign on the line, Clinton has aggressively challenged Obama in the last few days, questioning his readiness to become commander in chief and chiding him for the health care campaign literature sent to Ohio voters.In the debate, she attacked Obama for claiming she supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which she said she believes should be renegotiated. She was first lady when her husband, President Bill Clinton, approved the deal.The trade agreement is unpopular in Ohio, where it has been blamed for contributing to a broad loss of manufacturing jobs in the state."You know, I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning. I didn't have a public position on it because I was part of the administration. But when I started running for the Senate, I have been a critic," Clinton said.Obama repeated the charge and said he would push to have NAFTA redone."I think that it is inaccurate for Senator Clinton to say that she's always opposed NAFTA. In her campaign for Senate, she said that NAFTA, on balance, had been good for New York and good for America," he said.Clinton complained about having to take the first question more often than Obama, and made reference to her campaign's charges that he gets an easier ride from the national media than she does.She pointed to a television skit that portrayed a fawning press posing questions to Obama."If anybody saw 'Saturday Night Live,' you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," she said. "I just find it kind of curious that I keep getting the first question on all of these issues."Clinton, who has questioned Obama's foreign policy experience, also stumbled over the likely new Russian president when asked if she knew the name of the successor to President Vladimir Putin -- Dmitry Medvedev."Medvedev -- whatever," she finally said.The two contenders revisited their differences on the Iraq war. Clinton said Obama, an early opponent of the war, had the advantage of not being in the Senate in 2002 when she voted to authorize the war.But Obama said her vote "facilitated and enabled" President George W. Bush's decision to go to war."Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one, but in fact she was ready to give into George Bush on this critical issue," Obama said.

Clinton, who needs to win next week in Ohio and Texas to keep her U.S. presidential campaign alive after Obama's streak of 11 straight victories, went on the attack early in the debate at Cleveland State University in Ohio.

Obama fired back repeatedly in several testy but controlled exchanges during a debate that seemed unlikely to change the dynamic of the race before next Tuesday's contests.
The debate was sharper in tone than last week's encounter in Texas, but far less personal and angry than a Democratic debate last month in South Carolina.

Clinton kept up her recent criticism of Obama campaign literature sent to Ohio voters that she said mischaracterized her health care proposal, which includes mandates requiring Americans to purchase health insurance.
"We should have a good debate that uses accurate information, not false, misleading and discredited information, especially on something as important as whether or not we will achieve quality, affordable health care for everyone," the New York senator said.
Obama, an Illinois senator, said Clinton has frequently misrepresented his health care plan, which does not include mandates and which some critics suggest could leave 15 million Americans uninsured.
An estimated 47 million Americans -- about a sixth of the population -- now have no health insurance, either privately or through the government.
Clinton, once the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination to contest November's presidential election against the Republican candidate, has lost big leads in public opinion polls in Ohio and Texas as Obama has gained momentum and made inroads among her supporters.
Obama said he was interested in bringing the cost of health care down and enforcing mandates could create a burden on some low-income Americans. Clinton's criticisms, he said, were part of a consistent pattern.
"Senator Clinton has ... constantly sent out negative attacks on us, e-mail, robo-calls, flyers, television ads, radio calls, and we haven't whined about it because I understand that's the nature of these campaigns," he said.
"But to suggest somehow that our mailing is somehow different from the kinds of approaches that Senator Clinton has taken throughout this campaign I think is simply not accurate."