Clinton widens lead over Obama in latest US poll

UNITED STATES: New York Senator Hillary Clinton further widened her lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama in her attempt to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2008 presidential race, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup poll Tuesday.

The poll shows Clinton at 48 percent — up eight percentage points from a similar poll three weeks ago — and Obama at 26 percent, down two points. Third is former North Carolina senator John Edwards, with 12 percent.

The survey, which polled 1,012 adults and has three point margin of error, was carried out August 3-5 after an exchange between Clinton and Obama over handling foreign policy that both sides sought to highlight.

A smaller subsample of the poll, querying 490 Democrats and independents about who would do a better job in certain foreign policy realms, showed a strong lead across the board for the wife of former president Bill Clinton.

Sixty percent said she would do a better job handling international terrorism and 56 percent said she would be better in the role of commander in chief of the military than Obama.

Earlier democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparred over relations with Pakistan on Tuesday, and Clinton took fire for accepting donations from lobbyists during a lively debate before labor activists.

To the cheers of 17,000 union members at Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears football team, Obama defended his recent comments that he would be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan without the approval of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Clinton, a New York senator, and fellow Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut questioned Obama’s judgment. Dodd called the comments “irresponsible” and Clinton warned of destabilizing Musharraf’s government. She called Obama’s approach “a very big mistake.”

“You can think big, but remember you shouldn’t always say everything you think if you’re running for president because it has consequences across the world. And we don’t need that right now,” Clinton said.

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois and early war opponent, wondered why he was being attacked by Senate rivals who voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. Democratic presidential candidates Dodd, Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware all voted to authorize the war.

“I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me,” Obama told union members gathered in Chicago before a meeting of the AFL-CIO’s executive council on Wednesday to begin discussion of a presidential endorsement.

Washington, Wednesday, AFP, Reuters.