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Candidates Move Campaigns to Next States; Men Use Dead Friend in Attempt to Cash Check; Supreme Court to Weigh Case on Voter IDs

Aired January 09, 2008 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The sounds of confrontation in the Persian Gulf. U.S. Navy warships prepare to fire on Iranian speedboats just before the speedboats retreat. Iran says the tape is fake.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: The fog lifts, the smoke clears, and this is what's left on Interstate 4 in Florida: mile after mile of burned- out chain-reaction pileup. At least three people are dead.

Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

LEMON: Two new winners, two key comebacks. In one day the presidential race gets more competitive and more complex.

Hillary Clinton defies the polls and delivers a win over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and John McCain revives a Republican campaign that once was on life support, beating out Mitt Romney. Now the races are looking like marathons, with South Carolina one of the big next prizes.

PHILLIPS: And some of the candidates are already down south. Live pictures now from Spartanburg, South Carolina, where Republican Mike Huckabee is stumping after a third-place finish in New Hampshire. His GOP rival, Fred Thompson, also in the Palmetto State, along with Democrat and native son John Edwards.

But before South Carolina, there's Michigan, which holds its primary next Tuesday. John McCain and Mitt Romney are both there now. Romney's hoping for home-field advantage in his native state, but McCain's hoping to snatch another win, as he did yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My friends, I didn't go to Washington to go along to get along, or to play it safe to serve my own interests. I went there to serve my country. And that, my friends -- and that, my friends, is just what I intend to do if I am so privileged to be elected your president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And here's the Republican breakdown from New Hampshire and the primary there. McCain got 37 percent of the vote, Romney 31 percent. Mike Huckabee followed with 11 percent. Rudy Giuliani, who limited his New Hampshire campaigning to focus on other states, got 9 percent.

LEMON: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both looking forward to the Democratic horserace ahead. Obama says his second-place finish in New Hampshire, despite late polls showing him in the lead, won't slow his momentum.

Today he won the endorsement of an influential labor union in Nevada, which holds its caucuses on the 19th. He's hoping for an even bigger union endorsement in Nevada this afternoon.

Clinton says her New Hampshire win reflects the Granite State's famous independent streak.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe in what we can do together. In the future, we will build together. There will be no more invisible Americans. So we're going to take what we've learned here in New Hampshire, and we're going to rally on and make our case. We are in it for the long run!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, here's the Democratic breakdown. In New Hampshire, 39 percent of the vote for Clinton, 37 percent for Barack Obama. John Edwards follows with 17 percent and Bill Richardson with 5 percent.

Iowa and New Hampshire voters have spoken, so what's next in the race to the White House? Well, next Tuesday, it's the Michigan primary. Republican Mitt Romney was born and raised there, but John McCain, well, he won the Michigan race in 2000.

No Democratic delegates are up for grabs. That's punishment from the national party after Michigan moved its primary date.

Saturday, January 19, brings the Nevada caucuses. That same day Republicans hold their primary in South Carolina. One week later, this is the same -- in that same state, a different party. The Democratic primary in South Carolina is Saturday, January 26.

Then Florida closes out a busy month. Its primary is Tuesday, January 29.

February 5 is the big day, Super Tuesday, more than 20 primaries and caucuses, including those in California, New York and also Georgia.

For more information on -- for more on the New Hampshire primary and for the next stops of the presidential candidates, go to CNNPolitics.com. It is your one-stop shop for all things political.

PHILLIPS: A man accused of killing a Georgia hiker is back in court this hour. Gary Michael Hilton now faces a murder charge, but he won't face the death penalty. That's because of a deal that he made with prosecutors that led them to Meredith Emerson's body on Monday.

An autopsy indicated that Emerson died of blunt force trauma to the head. Authorities say it happened three days after she disappeared.

Conditions are clearing between Tampa and Orlando, but the interstate is not. A 15-mile stretch of I-4 is still closed hours after a series of horrific chain-reaction crashes. The worst involved about 50 vehicles.

All the wrecks are blamed on dense fog and thick smoke from a brush fire. Some cars were crushed under tractor trailers, and big rigs burned down to their tires. At least three people have died. Countless others are hurt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF GRADY JUDO, POLK COUNTY, FLORIDA: If you're involved in it, it's the worse you've ever seen. OK? And it is bad. Any time there's a fatal accident, any time there's severe injuries, it's very bad.

But once again, it may be by the grace of God that there's only three fatalities when you see the fatality of what we're dealing with here today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: The sheriff says that one of his own deputies was hurt in the pileup, as well, but he managed to crawl out of the car and help rescue other people.

LEMON: Fog, fierce storms and record highs. Talk about a wild winter so far, Chad Myers. And winter just started a little while ago.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It keeps moving, doesn't it?

LEMON: Yes.

MYERS: Things keep moving from west to east. Now, Florida would have liked to have some rain or some wind or something to mix that fog up but it didn't happen this morning. Clear skies, calm winds allowed that fog and that smoke, obviously, to settle to the ground.

The rain is away from Indiana and Ohio. It has moved up into parts of northern New York, really, almost -- it's not even -- way upstate, and then also into New England.

But the rain from a couple of days ago still making the Kankakee, the Wabash and, in fact, the Tippecanoe rivers out of their banks in some spots. Here's some of the latest pictures. Literally, we got this in about 20 minutes ago. Some of them may even still be live. The helicopter may still be up. This is from Monticello, a beautiful community. Just all along the banks of this river and a few lakes that are caused -- a couple reservoirs made by some dams. People have these boat houses and beautiful little river-front homes, and the water just had nowhere to go.

It rained really much farther up the hill, almost up near Gary. They had eight, ten inches of rain up there. Well, if you get over the ridge that doesn't drain back into Lake Michigan, you have to drain into the "Tippecanoe or into the Wabash. And the Tippecanoe here -- remember, the Tippecanoe and Tyler, too"? The Tippecanoe River here, and this is all running down. Eventually, you'll get into the Wabash and then all the way down into the Mississippi, really for that matter, or the Ohio, and then all the way down even into the Gulf of Mexico.

But there's a lot of draining to go before this is finally all said and done. And people are still struggling to get out of the way of some of that, just out of the way, really, of some of that rain. A lot of people out of their houses and, obviously, into some shelters.

Some snow into the Rocky Mountains for today. Couple of good inches, maybe even a foot or two in some spots of the highest elevations of some of the ski resorts. And severe weather tomorrow. That looks just like yesterday in the same place that we did have it yesterday -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Chad, thank you very much.

A look at just how close U.S. warships got to an armed confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran calls these pictures fake. You can judge for yourself right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

PHILLIPS: Also, a deadbeat customer at a check-cashing store. Something expired, and it wasn't the check.

You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: One down and one to go. After three weeks on the lam, Jose Espinosa was captured yesterday a whopping six blocks from the New Jersey jail he and a fellow inmate had broken out of.

That man, Otis Blunt, is reportedly in Mexico and had called Al Sharpton to negotiate his surrender. Sharpton left Mexico today empty-handed.

And here's the cell the inmates had shared. They hacked a hole in the wall and slipped away on December 15.

PHILLIPS: Well, it took the Virginia Tech massacre to spur Congress to action. But more than five years after it was proposed, a new law exists, aimed at keeping guns away from mental patients.

President Bush signed the measure yesterday. It's designed to improve a national database used to screen potential gun buyers, making it easier to identify people with serious mental problems.

One of the bill's sponsors says if the law had been in place earlier, it might have prevented Seung-Hui Cho, from buying a gun. Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech last April.

LEMON: A couple guys allegedly trying to score their dead friend's dead presidents bring his body along for the ride. Three hundred and fifty-five dollars and no sense -- S-E-N-S-E. Straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: All right. I couldn't believe this one. This next story mirrors the plot of that movie -- remember "Weekend at Bernie's"? With characters straight out of "Dumb and Dumber."

Two guys, allegedly trying to cash their late friend's Social Security check, wheel his body with them through the streets of New York and leave it outside the check-cashing store.

Reporter Nina Pineda of our affiliate WABC is here with details.

Nina, I'm sure New Yorkers thought they had seen everything, but not quite anything like this before.

NINA PINEDA, WABC CORRESPONDENT: You know, Don, exactly. That's what police are saying, too. And you can see some strange things in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan often, but a dead body on a chair, an office chair, fully dressed at 3:45 in the afternoon? I mean, that's pretty strange, even for New York.

I'm waiting for the suspect to come out of the police precinct. You just can't wait to ask them, whose idea was it after they discovered their roommate was dead to say, "Hey, let's go cash in on the corpse"?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It could happen anywhere, but it's typical of that comment, only in New York. You never know what you could see.

PINEDA (voice-over): New Yorkers think they've seen it all, but a dead body slumped in an office chair, that's something new.

RAPHAEL REYNDSA, EYEWITNESS: And I see these guys pulling this body in a chair, in a computer chair.

PINEDA: What this witness saw was Virgilio Cintron. He's been wheeled down 9th Avenue on a rolling office chair, parked in front of this check-cashing store while two men tried to steal his Social Security check by attempting to convince the Pay-O-Matic cashier their buddy was alive.

REYNDSA: He wasn't breathing at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was clearly dead to you. REYNDSA: He was clearly dead to me, yes.

PINEDA: An off-duty police officer saw the whole sick shenanigan and questioned the men.

REYNDSA: The officer said, "What are you guys doing?" And he was trying to take the body inside the cashier, so he -- the officer stopped them.

PINEDA: One might be a roommate of the 66-year-old. Cintron died of natural causes before he was so unnaturally treated in the hours after he passed away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't believe my eyes. They should definitely be charged with something. Where did they get the dead body?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PINEDA: And that's the question. I mean, what do you really charge these guys with? Police are saying illegally transporting a corpse is usually reserved if somebody kills someone and then tries to move their body.

These guys may only just be charged with check fraud. But we're waiting to see. I think the D.A.'s office is struggling. And Don, as you were saying when you came to me, this check, just $355 for what they did to this poor soul.

Nina Pineda for WABC. Back to you in the studio.

LEMON: Three hundred -- Nina, $355. And as we said in our tease, and no sense -- S-E-N-S-E.

So you're saying just check fraud. They're in court now. Any time they're expected to get out? Do you know?

PINEDA: Actually, Don, we were expecting them to be taken to the arraignment. But I think that, as we said, the D.A.'s office might be struggling with it, because they're still talking to them inside this police precinct.

They did find out that the man died of natural causes.

LEMON: Yes.

PINEDA: So they don't think they'll be charging them with anything to do with his death.

LEMON: All right, Nina, if you get an update for us, please check back in and let us know. Thank you for very much joining us today.

PINEDA: Will do.

PHILLIPS: Our affiliate out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, WTMJ, just brought this videotape in to us out of Kenosha. This is the aftermath of that tornado that our Chad Myers had been talking about. What we saw this morning.

Chad Myers, you first told us about it, that it was happening yesterday afternoon, tore through various areas. And this is the -- the end game that we do not like to see.

MYERS: Yes. This is the one that it started in Illinois, moved across the Illinois-Wisconsin border, and then right on up into this area here. It's to the west of Racine and to Kenosha.

We're watching these pictures, and we do know now that this was an EF-3 tornado, an F-3. The enhanced Fujita scale. What that means is about 140 miles per hour.

We do know that 15 people with this tornado were injured. Also, many of the homes that were hit were, in fact, completely taken off their foundation completely. And in this picture, I think that's -- that's clear.

You can see, though, the randomness of the tornado. And that's just how we -- one of the ways that they figure out how wide the tornado is, and also to make sure that it was a tornado and not just wind damage.

It would take one heck of a wind gust to knock homes down like that. But it has happened, especially in a mobile home that's not tied down well; 100-mile-per-hour wind gusts can do this type of damage. But with the house next to you still standing, with just a blue tarp on the roof, obviously lost a few shingles -- many people lost most what of what was left of their lives there. They're picking up the pieces now.

No one killed in this tornado, though, only 15 injuries. I guess -- and one of the real -- the meteorologists up there said I can't believe that -- because they had 15 minutes' warning, that was great news. But he still can't believe that everybody survived this.

PHILLIPS: Yes. Good news. The best news out of that. Chad Myers, thanks.

MYERS: You're welcome.

PHILLIPS: Well, at the nation's high court today, it's Democrats versus Republicans. Justices are considering a challenge to an Indiana law that requires voters to show photo IDs before they can cast their ballots. One party likes that idea. The other doesn't.

Our justice correspondent Kelli Arena joins us now from Washington.

Kelli, who brought the case before the Supreme Court?

KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, it was the Democratic Party and the NAACP. They're basically leading this fight. And as you said, this law was originally passed by a Republican state legislature. The Democrats argue that the law, which does require people to get government-issued IDs before they vote, is just an effort by Republicans to discourage the elderly, the poor, minority voters who tend to vote for Democrats, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So what does the state say?

ARENA: Well, Indiana argues, "Look, this is just one of many steps that we've taken to make sure that the elections are fraud- free."

The opposing side, they say, hasn't brought forward anyone who's actually been harmed by the law. So this is all based on -- a hypothetical situation.

PHILLIPS: Well, do you have any predictions?

ARENA: You know...

PHILLIPS: Do I dare ask that question?

ARENA: You know, the justices seem to me, in all my wisdom, to be reluctant to completely strike down the law. The key swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, seems to suggest that the vote -- the law could be upheld, with possibly some changes down the road.

But the case definitely broke along ideological lines. You know, the court's four liberal justices, much more critical than the conservatives. But it's all going to come down to, Kyra, is a sense of balance: weighing the voter fraud issues versus the voters who are inconvenienced. And it may -- it may set a precedent for that, at least.

PHILLIPS: OK, oh, wise one. When do we expect a ruling?

ARENA: That I could tell you.

PHILLIPS: OK, good.

ARENA: We're expecting a ruling in June, which is going to be well before the presidential election, which of course, is the big concern here, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Kelli Arena, we'll watch it. Thanks.

LEMON: Confrontation from the U.S. Navy's point of view. Video of this week's high-seas run-in with Iran.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Twenty-two past the hour. Three of the stories we're working on for you right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

In court this hour, Gary Hilton. He's the man accused in the brutal killing of a Georgia hiker. An autopsy shows 24-year-old Meredith Emerson died of blunt force trauma to the head three days after she vanished.

New developments in the shooting death of an off-duty Miami detective. Police now think James Walker was caught in the crossfire when a man in an apparent jealous rage fired an assault rifle at a couple. That man is now being held without bond.

And remember these New Jersey jail inmates? Well, they staged an escape that mirrored the movie "The Shawshank Redemption." Now one of them is back in custody. The other had talked to the Reverend Al Sharpton about negotiating his surrender in Mexico yesterday, but that didn't happen.

PHILLIPS: Stocks took a tumble on Tuesday, pushing the major averages into a correction. Susan Lisovicz on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange explains what the heck is going on.

Hey, Susan.

(STOCK REPORT)

PHILLIPS: Well, what does that mean for the economy? Are we in a recession?

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's really one of the -- if you had to -- if you had to put it in a word, yes, it's fear of a recession, because investments really are a reflection, a forward-looking reflection of where the economy is going.

What is a recession? We'll have a primer on that, too. That's -- the most common definition of that is two consecutive quarters of contraction in GDP, the overall economic growth in the U.S. We haven't had it, thankfully, but Goldman Sachs joining the chorus of folks out there saying we're going to have one.

Goldman Sachs saying that it's going to happen in the second quarter and third quarter and that the Fed will act aggressively to try to pull us out of it with another 1.75 basis points in rate cuts. So that would be a lot of relief coming.

And whether -- and whether the U.S. economy goes into a recession or not, what the Fed does and what the president does with the stimulus package that's being talked about in Washington will certainly influence on how the economy fares -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Susan Lisovicz, we'll keep talking.

LEMON: The presidential hopefuls leave New Hampshire behind but not before some pollsters and pundits take one on the chin. What's next in the race for the White House? We'll look ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

LEMON: All right. Let's take a review. A few headlines out of New Hampshire.

The one-time Democratic frontrunner was supposed to lose, but instead she won. And the Republican winner's campaign was given up for dead just a few short months ago. So where do we go from here? That's a good question.

Let's bring in our senior political analyst David Gergen, senior contributors Carl Bernstein and also Donna Brazile. Thank you all for joining us. You were up awfully late, and you all look pretty good. You look great, to say that you were up so late.

And Carl, by the way, I appreciate the necktie. We're wearing the same. So I got to ask you this...

DONNA BRAZILE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: There must be a sale on -- on those ties. David, you better run out to the store.

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Don, you've got a way with words.

LEMON: You all have a way with words. And what you want to ask you, though, is we may not have a way with polling because it appears that the polling of the pundits, which was wrong and is there any way to explain any of this? Let's start with Donna.

BRAZILE: Look, New Hampshire was Senator Clinton's firewall. She had layers of support. She had tremendous outpouring from women. I don't think the polling was wrong. I don't think the pundits was wrong. In fact, I was e-mailing back and forth to the Clinton people yesterday and said it appears that your voters are coming out. I think Independents looked at the polls in the closing days and they say, oh, Obama's going to be OK ...

LEMON: Yes.

BRAZILE: ...why don't I just go over there and support John McCain. And women perhaps in the last 72 hours, especially undecided women, unmarried women, they looked at Hillary Clinton and they heard that moment of humanity when she basically talked about her passion and why she was in the race, and they said you know ...

LEMON: And Donna ...

BRAZILE: ...she is my girl. And that was chic power coming to fruition.

LEMON: And she -- we're going to talk about that because whether it was a crying or what have you, but I want to get back to these polling -- these polls.

And David, I want to ask you this. I mean, just a week ago, we looked at these polls and it showed that Obama was 10 points ahead, David Gergen. And then all of a sudden, there is a margin, plus or five. And I don't know if we were within that. Another poll, again ...

GERGEN: That was 10 days ago.

LEMON: ...New Hampshire poll, CNN projection, 39 percent. But still, this was 10 days ago. And then all of a sudden, what happened?

GERGEN: It wasn't 10 days ago. That was one day ago.

LEMON: It was -- well OK, go ahead.

GERGEN: OK, listen, I think we need to be a little humble about telling everybody what happened ...

LEMON: Right.

GERGEN: ...because we sure as heck didn't understand it before it happened and we didn't see it coming. I will say that it is very difficult, notoriously polls in primary states are notoriously unreliable, in New Hampshire in particular. It's hard to know how big the Independent group is that you should put in your poll sample because you don't know if the Independents are going to go over and vote in the other party. And that's part of it.

But you know, it was not just the public polls that were wrong. The Clinton campaign ...

LEMON: Right.

GERGEN: ...thought he was going down ...

LEMON: They were in the Obama campaign as well.

GERGEN: ...they were (INAUDIBLE) -- and the Obama campaign thought they were going up.

Now, you know, in hindsight, I would offer the idea or thought that I think Barack Obama in retrospect sat on his lead. He got very cautious and that she came in with a different game plan from Iowa and that is instead of being the imperial candidate she was in Iowa, she came in to answer people's questions in New Hampshire. She put -- and she exposed herself who she was at a vulnerable moment in time. I think all of that ...

LEMON: I'm glad, David, I'm glad you bring that up. I'm glad you bring that up because let's take a short -- let's look at that moment that everyone is talking about real quickly. And then, let's talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LEMON: Carl Bernstein, is this real and are we going to see more of this? I think I heard you last night saying that this was going to be -- Hillary Clinton has taken over her own campaign and we're going to see less of Bill. Is that correct?

BERNSTEIN: Well, that's certainly what people are saying inside the campaign. She said the other night in Iowa, she said I'm running this campaign. And everybody failed to listen to her say that. She is a woman in charge when she wants to be, the title of my book. And she knows it hasn't worked up 'til now their way. Apparently, she's bringing in her own chief of staff from the White House, Maggie Williams, to coordinate the campaign. Mark Penn, who's really in there because of Bill, is going to have a lesser role.

But the most important thing is that she is beginning to show herself a little bit as a real person. You saw it in the debate when she said a number of things, including, look -- I'm running as a woman running for president. That's the first time we've heard that. She can be very -- David knows this, he worked with her. She can be very compelling.

What we have seen until now has been a campaign for restoration of the Clintons -- plural -- for the White House, and I think there has been a great deal of response against it among many rank and file Democrats who otherwise hold the Clintons in some affection.

LEMON: Yes, and I want to say this, and then we're going to move on to the Republicans. It doesn't seem to -- what happened last night doesn't seem to have stopped the momentum as it concerns Barack Obama. In the first eight days of 2008, we're getting word from his campaign that he raised $8 million, and just since midnight last night, $500,000.

Donna, real quick, just tell me about that, not stopping the momentum here?

BRAZILE: Oh, absolutely not. Obama has ignited something in this country. He's a magical candidate. Look, he will come under additional scrutiny over the next couple of weeks. But I do believe that he's ready and prepared to be president. That's clearly something the voters will have to decide.

But in terms of change, he has started a conversation, and now Clinton has decided to join it. And that's a good thing for the Democratic party and it's good for the country.

LEMON: OK, and David Gergen ...

GERGEN: Can I -- can I ...

LEMON: Go ahead.

GERGEN: Can I just say one point?

LEMON: Yes. GERGEN: Whether you like Obama or Clinton, I must tell you, I think last night's results were fundamentally healthy for the country, for the campaign, and for the candidates. What it means is we're not going to have a rush to coronation.

We were on the verge of just anointing Barack Obama. This is going to put him through further testing. He needs that as a young candidate, he needs more vetting.

Other parts of the country want to have a voice in this. I'm out in California. I can tell you when I talked to an audience of 3,000 last night in Oakland and said that Hillary Clinton had won, they erupted in applause, but they also made it very clear, they want a voice. They don't want to leave this just to Iowa and New Hampshire. This is very healthy to have this campaign go on on both sides.

LEMON: OK, yes. And I want to talk about that. Now, John McCain. I mean, everyone said -- I mean, this campaign was dead in the water as of a couple months ago, maybe even a couple weeks ago. Does this revive him and what kind of momentum does this give him -- Carl?

BERNSTEIN: Obviously, it does. I think also it's a response to another candidate, Mitt Romney, who has said everything to suit anybody -- any audience that he's after. I think it's a kind of demonstrable pandering, the likes of which I have rarely seen, even in presidential politics.

And I think he stepped all over himself against McCain, who is a candidate known for straight talking, for integrity. I think Romney's going to have a very difficult time. It's given new life to the possibility that Giuliani can do something, as well as kept Mike Bloomberg in the background, still humming away thinking he wants to get into this thing.

LEMON: But of course, I mean Mitt Romney has the money to hang on. And when you're in New Hampshire and Iowa, you get to meet every single person. But in larger states, and in larger areas, some of the candidates may not have enough money to hang on to this. Do you think that's going to play out when it comes to this?

BERNSTEIN: Well, first of all, I think we haven't talked about John Edwards. John Edwards is hanging in the campaign. He says he's in it for the distance, and he takes away votes from Obama, not from Hillary Clinton for the most part. That could be a significant factor.

I think there's a very important thing. David started to get at it. I think all this needs to slow down. I think that we need plenty of analysis, we need a little more slow motion. We need to look at these people as human beings. We need to read and look about their lives, going all the way back to their childhood. There are books on Obama, there are books on Hillary. And I'm not just saying my book.

LEMON: And Carl -- you bring up -- you to get that one in there. But this brings up an ... BERNSTEIN: Not just my book.

LEMON: This brings up -- I know.

GERGEN: Shameless ...

LEMON: ...pointing out that two times.

BRAZILE: But have you a great book, Carl!

GERGEN: He's absolutely shameless on this!

LEMON: But I want to ask you this, Donna. I want to ask you this since you ran the Gore campaign, have you seen -- are we moving faster and more furious than we were before even in recent years past when it comes to gauging which candidate we think is going to win, or as Carl said before, coronating -- or David, one of you said -- before a coronation of one single candidate?

BRAZILE: I think this is the most exciting campaign I've ever seen in presidential politics. Look, on the Republican side, the voters have selected Huckabee in Iowa, in Wyoming, they've selected Romney. Last night, McCain. We go on to Michigan on the Republican side, we'll see what they think. And then South Carolina, Nevada ...

LEMON: Right.

BRAZILE: ...this is great. It's great for democracy, it's great for the country. We are seeing record turnouts on both sides of the political aisle. And what we're hearing is that voters want change and so, let's see how the Republicans function next week in Michigan. That's a state that needs a voice, a leader for change on the economy and so many other issues. This is going to be an exciting electoral season. Put on your seatbelts, we don't know right now who's going to win.

LEMON: Yes, and you know what I want to ask you, which I saw you guys talking about last night, which is very interesting. It was a question of race that we've been talking about in this campaign. And someone -- I forget who had said it, said it is going to be very difficult to criticize Barack Obama and his wife when you see them there, they're a good looking couple and in this climate, especially when it comes to race. Anyone of you can answer that. Do you agree with that and where do you think this is going to take us?

BERNSTEIN: I'm not sure what you mean by criticizing them on the basis of race. One of the extraordinary things that Obama ...

LEMON: I'm ...

BRAZILE: He's not running as a black candidate.

BERNSTEIN: That's exactly -- Donna's got it just right.

BRAZILE: He's running as a leader who's offering a vision for the country. BERNSTEIN: That's right, exactly.

BRAZILE: And I don't think -- you know, people asked me last night about the so-called Bradley effect, the white voters who may have gone into the privacy of the ballot box and cast their vote another way based on the polls. I don't think the Bradley effect came into fruition last night. I think what happened was that Hillary Clinton caught a wave, the undecided vote for her, especially undecided women. And we didn't see the so-called Tom Bradley effect when people often assume that white voters say one thing to pollsters and another thing once they get into the ballot booth.

GERGEN: Let me just add, I'm very glad Donna made that point because too many have jumped into the idea that white voters in New Hampshire said, I'm going to be for Obama and they were lying about it just to sort of help their reputations. I don't think we saw that last night. I don't think that race played a big factor.

Remember that just next door, in Massachusetts, his good friend, Deval Patrick, African-American, got elected governor just a few months ago. And the polls there called it square on. He got exactly the vote that was predicted going in to that just next door. I don't think that happened in New Hampshire. I think ...

BERNSTEIN: Also, look at his appeal to Republicans and Independents, which is quite extraordinary. This is something we've never seen. And there are a lot of Republicans that are talking with excitement and have switched over to vote for Obama.

LEMON: Carl, David, I could listen to you guys all day, you bring up very good points and it is very interesting stuff. I've watched you until you went off the air last night. David Gergen, Carl Bernstein, love the neck tie, and Donna Brazile, thank you all for joining us and giving is ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Buy his book. Buy his book.

LEMON: Yes, buy his book.

BRAZILE: Go get a tie, David. Go get you one of those blue ties, David.

LEMON: And go get some sleep, all of you. All right.

BRAZILE: Thank you.

LEMON: Take care, guys.

You can see all the day's political news any time, day or night, at cnn.com/ticker. We're constantly updating it for you with the latest from the candidates on the campaign trail.

PHILLIPS: And back to the drawing board. What doctors and parents hoped was an answer for autism, isn't. The theory and the results in the NEWSROOM.

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PHILLIPS: Mercury and autism. For years parents have been concerned that one may lead to another. And mercury was even taken out of certain vaccines for children. But what's happened since is not what doctors expected. Our medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is here with more on that.

So tell us, what's the deal?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We've all heard about this alleged link between childhood vaccines and autism. I know I get lots of phone calls from new mommy friends saying, should I get the shots, should I? What people seem to be worried about the most is mercury in the vaccines. Well mercury came out of vaccines some years ago, and so what doctors decided to do was to see, gosh, since we took mercury out of almost all vaccines, have autism rates gone down? Because of course you would expect that they would go down.

But, guess what? That is not what they found. Let's take a look at what they did find. They found that in 2004, three for every 1,000 births -- they had three cases of autism. But then after they took the mercury out, they actually had four cases of autism per 1,000 children. So that isn't at all what you would expect to find. And so this definitely led at least the study author to say this -- he said, that this study shows that the -- " ...very clearly shows that autism did not arrive through a vaccine."

Now, Kyra, I of course would want to say that people who do believe the vaccines cause autism -- and a lot of times these are parents of autistic children, they don't buy this at all. They point to several flaws in the study. They think that mercury still is a culprit.

PHILLIPS: Well if it is not the mercury, then what's making autism rates go up?

COHEN: Right, because autism rates are going up. That's absolutely for sure. There are a lot of theories about this. One of them is that doctors may just be getting better at diagnosing autism. So for example, a child who, decades ago, would have been called "mentally retarded," now they understand that child is actually autistic, which is a different diagnosis. So, a lot of people say, we're just catching autism more so it just looks like rates are going up.

PHILLIPS: Well should we talk about some of the signs if your child may have autism?

COHEN: Sure. There are certain signs that parents ought to look for. First of all, if your child, by the age of one year, is not babbling and pointing, that's definitely something that you want to look out for. Also if at two years your child isn't saying words and phrases, that's another warning flag that you want to go to your doctor and say, can you check my child for autism, I think perhaps he or she might have it.

PHILLIPS: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks.

LEMON: Dynamiting to create an avalanche. Why do some areas go to such extreme measures? Find out here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

PHILLIPS: Confrontation from the U.S. Navy's point of view. Video of this week's high seas run-in with Iran. We'll talk about it.

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LEMON: President Bush is on his first official visit to Israel, and later to the Palestinian territories. He and Israel's prime minister spoke to reporters just a short time ago. An optimistic Mr. Bush said Palestinians should realize there's more than peace and security at stake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The best way to make sure that the Palestinians realize there is a hopeful future, in which it's their interest to live in peace with Israel, it's for them that they've got an economy in which they can make a living. And Tony Blair has helped along that, and so has America. And so you're watching three tracks parallel each other. And the one of course you are asking about is whether or not the leadership has got the willingness and the desire and the drive to design a state, compatible to both sides. And my answer is, yes, I think they will.

EHUD OLMERT, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: It's timely and it's very important to encourage the process with you and Secretary Rice, head start in Annapolis a few weeks ago, and that we -- both sides, I believe, are very seriously trying to move forward with now, in order to realize the vision of a two-state solution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: The president's itinerary, Israel today, a meeting with the Palestinian president tomorrow, several stops throughout the Middle East in the coming days.

PHILLIPS: More back and forth between the U.S. and Iran over Sunday's confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. national security adviser is warning Iran it's fishing in troubled waters. And Iran is accusing the Pentagon of faking video of the run-in.

CNN's Jamie McIntyre has the pictures.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: As sailors on the U.S. Destroyer, Hopper, are ordered to general quarters, manning their battle stations, the ship blasts a loud horn repeatedly. In an effort to warn Iranian speed boats to steer clear. Instead, they zip around and between the U.S. warships. The radio crackles with an ominous threat from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps manning the fast attack boats.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am coming to you.

MCINTYRE: From the bridge of the Hopper, a warning to back off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your identity is not know, your intentions are unclear (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You will explode after a few minutes.

MCINTYRE: At this point, after nearly 30 minutes of provocation from the Iranians, the hopper is preparing to unload its 50 caliber machine guns, but the Iranians give up the dangerous game.

BUSH: We viewed it as a provocative sac act. It is a dangerous situation. And they should not have done it. Pure and simple.

MCINTYRE: The video does not show the small white boxes the U.S. Navy says were dumped in the Gulf near the trailing ship in the three- ship formation, but it does clearly show how close the Iranian patrol boats came. If one had turned and sped directly toward one of the U.S. ships, it would have hit it in a matter of seconds.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Our next hour, I'm going to talk live with a retired Navy captain who's quite familiar with (INAUDIBLE) moves, and he commanded a U.S. ship much like the one involved in Sunday's incident. Captain Alec Fraser live next hour right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

LEMON: A battle is brewing in South Carolina. The African- American vote is considered crucial in that state's Democratic primary. We'll hear what black voters there are saying about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Republican Mike Huckabee stumping live in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Huckabee's hoping religious conservatives in the Palmetto state will boost his campaign after a third place finish in New Hampshire. But, he's not the only candidate hoping for a bit of a southern comfort. CNN's Dana Bash has more from Spartanburg.

Hi, Dana.

DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Don.

Well, Mike Huckabee just wrapped up his very first event here in South Carolina since the New Hampshire primary, and he didn't do as well as others, of course, in New Hampshire. He finished a distant third.

But it actually was a respectable distant third given the fact that he is somebody who doesn't necessarily appeal to the kind of Republican that resides in New Hampshire. His comfort zone, if you will, is in a state like this one, is in South Carolina. So we got off the plane with Mike Huckabee, knowing full well that he knows that he really has to do well here -- actually, probably has to win this state of South Carolina.

The primary is on January 19th. In order to really be a viable candidate and show that he's more than just a one-state wonder, if you will. Now part of the way that the Huckabee campaign is going to try to achieve that is a similar way that they won the Iowa caucuses.

Like Iowa, South Carolina has a pretty big evangelical and Christian conservative base, so you've heard it already in his very first address here already in South Carolina. He lingered a lot longer on something that he talked about a lot in Iowa, and that is his consistent stance opposing abortion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want you to know, I'm not confused about the value of a human life. And it is not something I've had to wrestle with and change my mind over, because I believe with all my heart that one of the fundamental issues in this country that we have got to deal with is the sanctity of every human life, the intrinsic worth and value of every human being.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now it is not just the evangelical base that really matters here in South Carolina, you talk to Republican officials here, they say it is not just that, it is also the economy, it is also the military. So he is going to have to really be -- it is a big challenge for him to appeal to all of that, that wide sort of swathe of Republicans here in South Carolina, particularly given who he is up against here.

It is going to be fascinating, Don. Here's why, you remember back for the past several weeks, John McCain and Mike Huckabee have had this kind of love fest, because they've had a common enemy, and that is Mitt Romney. They were each fighting against him in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively.

Well the two of them are going to be battling head-to-head in the state of South Carolina, because just like for Mike Huckabee, it is equally important for John McCain to do well in South Carolina. You remember your history, in 2000, John McCain won New Hampshire, he won Michigan but he was stopped in an absolute bloodbath if you will, here in South Carolina by George W. Bush.

So, he is really going to have to prove he chops and prove that he can move on -- John McCain, by winning here. So the two of them are really going to at it here. Don't forget Mitt Romney. He's also going to be battling here in South Carolina, too. It is going to be fascinating to watch on January 19th.

LEMON: Dana Bash, thank you very much.

PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, caught on tape. Two months before he was caught up in the Georgia hiker murder case, the police had footage. The guy on right, back in jail. The guy on the left, police are pretty sure they know where he is. We'll have the latest on a jail break right out of the movies.

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