The race for White House

2006-11-10 14:50

Washington - The end of the 2006 congressional elections marked the start of the 2008 race for the White House, with Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani as the front-runners.

No major candidates have officially announced plans to run for their party's nomination, but with the US house of representatives and senate in control of the opposition Democrats, hopefuls are positioning themselves for a 2008 bid.

"We believe in our country, and we're going to take it back, starting tonight!" Clinton told supporters following her re-election as senator for New York.

The former US first lady has a substantial lead in early polls for her party's nomination: An October 27 CNN poll showed Clinton has 38% support among Democrats to win the party nomination, 11 points ahead of her nearest rival, Illinois senator Barack Obama.

Clinton had enjoyed a 28% lead among Democrats before Obama, born to a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, announced in late October that he was considering a White House run.

In recent weeks, the popular Obama, 45, has been travelling the country supporting Democratic candidates for congress and hawking his second book, The Audacity of Hope.

However, the two leading Democrats are running against history: No US senator has been elected president since John F Kennedy in 1960.

Giuliani leads Republican race

On the Republican side, the same CNN poll showed Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York during the September 11, 2001 attacks, leading his party's nomination with 29%, followed closely by McCain, the senator from Arizona, with 27%.

Giuliani's hopes were buoyed by a WNBC/Marist poll released in October, showing that he would beat Clinton in a head-to-head race for the US presidency.

The poll found that 49% of voters would back Giuliani, against 42% for Clinton. Nine percent were undecided.

"Democrats seem to support (Clinton) as their main candidate for president - she's way ahead of anybody else - and it seems like Republicans are just waiting for her to be the candidate so they can vote against her," Giuliani said in an August interview with the New York Daily News.

But Giuliani would first have to defeat McCain, a straight-talking politician whose name is often linked to the noun "maverick," for the party nomination.

"This is a wake-up call for the Republican party," said McCain, commenting on the mid-term election results.

McCain has been in the national spotlight since 1973, when he was released after more than five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He unsuccessfully ran for president in 2000, losing to the current president.

If elected, McCain, now 70, would become the oldest US president to take office, beating Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when he took the job in 1981.

Other possible candidates

Democratic dark horse candidates include:

2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry, who may have seen his hopes dashed after remarks widely seen as a slight against US troops in Iraq. Kerry apologised for what he described as a "botched joke", but the remarks were aired for days on television. Kerry was criticised by both Democrats and Republicans for the remarks.

Former vice president and 2000 Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore, who has made warning about the effects of global warming his main cause. Gore says he is not interested in the job.

Kerry's 2004 running mate, former senator John Edwards. The ex-senator has been heading a research centre studying poverty at the University of North Carolina and has delivered speeches in states important for the nomination, such as New Hampshire and Iowa.

Other possible Republican candidates include:

Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who polled second (behind Giuliani and ahead of McCain) in a September 20 WNBC/Marist poll among Republicans. Rice seems to enjoy the speculation in interviews but has made no indication that she wants the job.

Newt Gingrich, who led the 1994 Republican party takeover of the house of representatives and served as speaker. Gingrich, however, remains a divisive figure who may have little national support.

- AFP