|
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana: The Democratic White House race appears to be
tightening ahead of key voting showdowns next week and suggested
Barack Obama was damaged by the row over his fiery former pastor,
polls showed.
Meanwhile, Obama’s foe Hillary Clinton weighed
into the latest furor over Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s rhetoric,
branding his comments offensive, as she drove towards critical
primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday.
A CBS/New York Times poll found 51 percent of
Democratic voters believe Obama will be the party standard-bearer
against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain—down 18 points
from a month ago.
Obama’s unfavorable rating among registered
voters also rose from 24 percent a month ago to 34 percent in the
survey taken between April 25 and 29, at the height of the latest
Wright uproar.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released
Wednesday also found that the percentage of voters who identified
with Obama’s values had dipped slightly, to 45 percent from 50
percent last month.
The NBC poll showed Obama and Clinton closely
matched in a general election showdown against Republican
presumptive nominee John McCain. Obama led the Arizona senator 46 to
43 percent compared to Clinton’s 45 to 44 lead.
Wright once claimed AIDS was a racist government
plot and suggested after the September 11 attacks in 2001 that black
citizens sing “God Damn America” to protest their treatment by
whites.
But Clinton also has a battle to win of her own
as Iran on Wednesday strongly condemned her for threatening to
destroy the country, vowing to respond to any attack.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon
dated April 30, Iran’s deputy permanent representative to the
United Nations Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi slammed Clinton for making “such
a provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible statement,” which
constituted “a flagrant violation” of the UN Charter.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the
president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next 10
years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an
attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”
-- AFP
|
