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This Week in Politics

Clinton's Chance for Democratic Nomination Seen as Slim; Some Evangelicals Unhappy with Republican Party

Aired May 10, 2008 - 18:00   ET

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

(NEWSBREAK)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR, THIS WEEK IN POLITICS: Welcome. I'm Tom Foreman. This week in politics, everyone was talking about Hillary Clinton resigning from the race, everyone except Senator Clinton. Clinton. Hillary Clinton has fought for victory like a grand master, looking for the move that would break Barack Obama's tightening grip on the nomination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Vote for yourselves, for your jobs, for your futures. Give us a chance to make history together. Thank you and God bless you and God bless America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: For a time the game seemed to go her way, her surge with working class white voters, his problems with his pastor and Obama playing defense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The last few weeks. the campaign hasn't been about issues. It's been about me. But I think the American people, they don't want to be sold another bill of goods. They don't want a campaign that's about flag pins and sniper fire or about the comments of a former pastor. They know we can do better than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: But a small margin of victory in Indiana couldn't make up for a crushing defeat in North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I want to thank, of course, the people of North Carolina.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: And the headlines that followed. Yes, the news media has written her off before and she has proven them wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee. And I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: But this time, the situation is desperate. She has been backed into a corner, short on money, short on delegates and increasingly facing calls to surrender.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. SEN. GEORGE McGOVERN: I think the time has come.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: The fight is still there, the dedicated followers, the will to win too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Don't believe all the stuff you read in the press. She could still win this thing if you vote for her big enough. We're going to have to resolve Michigan and Florida. And when they do, she can win the popular vote and all this raining on her parade is designed to discourage people from voting here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Maybe. But the road to victory, once so certain for Hillary Clinton, now seemed paved with nothing but long shots, like it says in the song, thank God I'm only watching this game. And watching with me is Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, a long-time veteran of the Capitol Hill political chess game and CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley on one of the few days we've allowed her to leave the campaign trail. Candy, it looks for all the world as if Hillary Clinton right now is just waiting and hoping that lightning will strike Barack Obama.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, for an implosion. There's no other way to figure this at this point. She would need to convince super delegates who were like this even if they've already committed for her. The uncommitted are really kind of holding back at this point out of a certain respect for Hillary Clinton and a great respect for the millions of women who voted for her. They don't want to try to muscle her out. But this is very definitely as we call the famous final scene.

FOREMAN: So she would need something enormous, much bigger than the Jeremiah Wright scandal to come over Barack Obama. It's possible, could be out there, but no evidence of it right now.

STEVE ELMENDORF, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: A lot happens in politics in a short period of time. We have a few weeks left and I think people are still voting. They're going to vote until June 3rd. I think we're going to have a Democratic nominee soon. We're certainly going to have one in early June. I don't think these sort of dire predictions that this will all go to the convention are going to happen. FOREMAN: What about the question of Michigan and Florida? She sent a letter to Barack Obama that said, I'm asking you to join me in working with representatives from Florida and Michigan and the Democratic National Committee to arrive at a solution that honors the voices of the millions of people who went to the polls in Florida and Michigan. Candy, was that going to work at all even if she gets Florida and Michigan now, it looks like all that does is bring her up to kind of closer to even.

CROWLEY: (INAUDIBLE) Florida and Michigan. I think every Democrat understands the necessity for seating them. The question is, how are they going to seat them, for whom? This is about coming out with some sort of formula that will recognize and satisfy the Clinton campaign on their win in Florida and not give her the nomination. I mean, they cannot be definitive seatings but they will seat them.

FOREMAN: She reiterated something this week which also raised a lot of eyebrows. She came out of this latest round and said again, there's the issue of electability. She's argued it all along. Hillary Clinton put it bluntly in an interview with "USA Today." She said, I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on, as evidenced -- she cited a Associated Press article, that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again and on it goes. Once again, Steve, she raised the specter of race that has really inflamed things against her, it seems.

ELMENDORF: I think the electibility argument is very legitimate. I think this has been a long campaign though and I think both candidates will probably look back at it and there will be some things they wish they hadn't said. I think the wording there was probably a mistake. But, you know, she is, I think, the best candidate in the general election but Barack Obama is also a very good candidate in the general election.

FOREMAN: Isn't there a sense though Steve at this point that she should be looking beyond this race? She should be looking at what she can salvage out of this as opposed to saying somehow, I'm going to throw out another charged racial comment and somehow win this.

ELMENDORF: Well, I think it's a very close race and I don't think it's a question of salvaging anything. I think at the end of this race, both candidates will have acquitted themselves very well.

FOREMAN: Do you think she really has a legitimate chance of winning the nomination?

ELMENDORF: Very close race. If you look...

FOREMAN: No, no, I asked you to a question. Do you think she has a legitimate chance of winning?

ELMENDORF: She is the underdog, there is no question. But I don't think we should take away the rights of people in the states that are coming up to vote if someone has not reached the number of delegates you need to win the nomination. Somebody is going to reach that number and they're going to do it in early June and the race will be over and we will look at back at this as having been a very good experience for both candidates and the Democratic Party, because the only thing we're talking about this week is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John McCain is not even in the news, which I think is a sign that's good for the Democratic Party and good for voters to hear.

FOREMAN: He's going to be here in five minutes. We'll see what happens with that. What about this question of the vice presidency, Candy? That's coming up again, the notion of whether or not she can somehow negotiate her surrender by saying you have to give me something big like the vice presidency and being the first woman vice president of this country is not chicken feed. It's a big deal

CROWLEY: It would be a good deal. But I have consistently said I just do not see this. I don't think it's going to happen. So I want to be consistently wrong if it does happen. Nevertheless, first of all, I don't know what she brings to the table with a ticket with him at the top, geographically, politically, I don't know what she brings. I also just don't think that this is coming from the inside out. It's coming from the outside in. People are always looking for some way to bring this party together. Well, if we put them both on the ticket. Now it's how are we going to get her out? Maybe if we give her the vice presidency. I don't think it comes organically from this campaign.

FOREMAN: When you're saying you don't know what she brings. Couldn't she bring the old line Democrats, the people who are hesitant about him, who did like her?

CROWLEY: Well, maybe. But you've got a group of people who say they're never going to vote for her and a group of people who say they are never going to vote for him. If they are different people, they've got a problem. I just don't think this is a practical ticket. Steve probably loves it, but I don't get it.

ELMENDORF: One of the things we have to note here is this is about votes and delegates of course. But this election, more than anything else in modern history, has been about money. While Barack Obama is doing very very well in this, Hillary Clinton revealed this week that she's had to put more of her own money into this, $6.4 million or so. Listen to what she said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: It's a sign of my commitment to this campaign. It's a sign of how much I believe in what we're trying to do and my supporters have been incredibly generous. You know, they are putting money into this campaign on an hourly basis. We historically in the last several months have been outspent two to one, three to one, four to win, even five to one, but we've remain competitive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: More on the suggestion (ph) Steve is that she needs to stay in the race right now precisely because of the money. She's got a lot of money, but nobody wants to throw away $10 million. They would like to get it back. She could raise it back now or Barack Obama, with all of his money, would help her retire that debt. Do you buy any of that?

ELMENDORF: I don't. I think she's going to stay in this race because she believes she has a chance to win. When she believes she doesn't have a chance to win, I think she'll get out of the race. And I think that the money issue, she's been very fortunate and her husband has been very fortunate and I don't think the debt is the main issue. I do think money is a real issue in this campaign. I think at the end of the day, there's an old saying that presidential campaigns don't end, they run out of money. And I think she's going to have to see how the fund-raising goes over the next several weeks to be competitive in the states that are coming up.

FOREMAN: Candy, Barack Obama still playing it cagey here, a little bit like Steve here. He's saying, it's like the movie "Princess Bride." There's a difference between a campaign that's completely dead and one that's mostly dead. He's saying still that her campaign if mostly dead, but still very real.

CROWLEY: Of course. Again, they cannot appear to be pushing her out of the race. She has too many ardent supporters and millions of them. They can't afford to offend either her and there is a great deal of respect for Hillary Clinton, despite some reservations about parts of her campaign. So they don't want to do that to her. So some super delegates are holding fire. And the Obama campaign understands completely. They cannot push her out of this race. Having said that, they are planning trips to other non-primary states. They are talking about when they think they'll get past the delegation. They are plotting for the fall. But they cannot publicly be saying, yeah, it's mine so let's move on. It just isn't going to work. They can't do that to her or her supporters.

FOREMAN: Very, very quickly here, if you're a Hillary Clinton supporter or an opponent, what are the last remaining things that you think could salvage her campaign?

ELMENDORF: I think it's all about voters in the states that are coming up and trying to win enough delegates, win big enough to get ahead and when to have super delegates decide that they think she's the better candidate for the general election. The math is tough. It's an uphill fight, but the game is not over yet.

FOREMAN: All right, Steve, thanks for being here. You, too, Candy. Good to talk with you.

What could well be the beginning of six months of political warfare is already at the boiling point. That's the general election. We'll have a look at the Republicans secret battle plan in just a moment.

Later, are some portions of the religious right ready to abandon the Republican party? Imagine that.

From jobs, to housing, to oil prices, the brutal realities that politicians promise they can fix, but how? That's all coming up, but first, CNN producer Josh Rubin finds real pain where you find it, too, out at the pump.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSH RUBIN, PRODUCER, ELECTION EXPRESS: We're at the Flying J truck stop outside Indianapolis, Indiana, talking to truckers, talking to regular people about how fuel prices are affecting them.

GEORGE MAUSER, INDEPENDENT TRUCKER: I've been doing this for a little over 23 years. I'm 71 years old and I'm not going to retire because I don't have anything to retire on.

RUBIN: $630 to fill this up.

PETER PANIC, INDEPENDENT TRUCKER: That's not a fill up. It's about half a tank.

MAUSER: It's now come to the point that I can't make a living. I'm spending almost as much as I make for fuel.

PANIC: Everybody has trouble keeping up with it.

MAUSER: If I could sell the truck I could sell the truck and live on what little I got out of it for a while.

RUBIN: Can you still make a living at it?

PANIC: Got to keep running. There's nothing else we can do, right?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It feels really incredible in a moment of seriousness to receive the nomination of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. It's a very humbling...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know those guys aren't around anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: With that little dig at John McCain's age, it could be a hint of the kind of smash mouth cage fight we can expect in the general election. Here to help me referee it all, Mike Madden, Washington correspondent for salon.com and Republican strategist Rich Galen who writes on his own blog, mullings.com. Rich, let me start with you. It does appear that even as the Democrats have been sorting this out, the Republicans have been taking shots from the sidelines and beginning to probe what they think are weaknesses in either candidate, but especially Barack Obama.

RICH GALEN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I don't think there's any question that the betting line as Damon Runyon once wrote, the race doesn't always go to the swift nor the battle to the strong but that's the way to bet. And I think that's the way Republicans are betting now. So they're probing, probing, probing and I think the little back and forth that we saw last week about Hamas on one side and losing his bearings on the other side, that was exactly what was going on there. They're just seeing where the weak spots are.

FOREMAN: Mike, what do you think the weak spots are that they have discovered already? Because certainly you could argue that while they were getting the guns ready, the Democrats were handing them ammunition as they attacked each other.

MIKE MADDEN, SALON.COM: I think a lot of the weak spots are those that Hillary Clinton has already found for them. You talk to Republican strategists like Rich and they will say Jeremiah Wright is fair game. Bill Ayers is fair game, the notion of questioning Obama's patriotism sort of in subtle ways and whether he's too liberal and sort of out of touch with mainstream voters, all the stuff that Senator Clinton has been doing through the campaign I think you can expect Senator McCain to do.

FOREMAN: Republicans are going to follow up. In his conversation with Wolf Blitzter, Barack Obama right here appeared to bring up that age issue, one that's sure to reappear with this upcoming contest with McCain. Let's take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: ... for him to toss out comments like that, I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination.

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FOREMAN: Only hours later, the McCain campaign came out with a blistering response. He used the words losing his bearings intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue. We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy and it's the oldest kind of politics there is. Wow, Rich. The Democrats have been saying for ages, the Republicans are going to play tough, this looks like it.

GALEN: That was Mark Salter and he's pretty good at this stuff. So there is a, I think what you saw there was that when McCain talked about Hamas would rather have an Obama presidency than a McCain presidency, that went to, I think, where the Obama people feel either intellectually or psychologically or both most vulnerable, this business that crinkles around the Internet that maybe Obama might be Muslim, maybe he went to Muslim schools. We don't know that stuff and that really -- I think that the reaction of Obama was a reaction to that. Let me just finish this. He also went on to say that we shouldn't have any name-calling right after that piece. You just call a guy a horrible name but then you say, oh, we're not going to do that.

FOREMAN: Plenty of that going on. I want you to listen to another one here if you can very quickly from what Mitt Romney had to say. He's been kind of quiet and suddenly he popped up with this hardball.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R) FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you look at Barack Obama you see say person who is well spoken and articulate. He can read a prompter very well and energize a crowd, but he has not accomplished anything during his life in terms of legislation or leading an enterprise or making a business work or a city work or a state work. He really has very little experience. And the presidency of the United States is not an internship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Mike, I think that this battle in a large way is going to break down to this issue of experience in part because the converse to what he is saying, which is that Obama is not experienced, is going to be exactly what Obama said about Hillary Clinton. Yeah, John McCain is really experienced in the old ways of Washington and that's what you don't want any more.

MADDEN: He's too experienced and the wrong kind of experience, I guess. But that's actually what Governor Romney is saying is exactly what a lot of McCain's senior aides, in particular Mark Salter, have been saying about Obama for a while. They sort of see him as building an impressive movement, but a movement that's mostly about himself. You know, they would like people to focus on the difference between McCain, who's spent years in public service on behalf of his country versus Obama who they think is a relative newcomer, who doesn't have a whole lot of accomplishments to show for himself.

GALEN: This is like a third-party campaign, the Obama campaign, which almost always are sort of cults of the individual.

FOREMAN: Why do you say that?

GALEN: Because it's like Ross Perot, who is the guy, "Unsafe at Any Speed?"

MADDEN: Ralph Nader.

GALEN: Ralph Nader. It is not, this happens to be in the Democratic Party, but it really is about Barack Obama. And that's typically what happens with third party candidates. Everybody kind of gets excited.

FOREMAN: Couldn't some people argue that about John McCain as well though, because John McCain, he doesn't fit into the glove really well of what the Republicans thought they were looking for six months ago.

MADDEN: I think that's what's interesting. If you're an opponent of Obama it's easy to look at Obama's campaign and say well it's all about him. But clearly he's attracted millions of supporters across the country who don't see it as all about Obama. They're responding to something beyond just we like this guy a lot. There may be a fundamental lack of understanding. If you like him, you like him. If you don't like him, it's hard to figure out why people are so excited.

GALEN: You don't have to like the way politics is done in Washington. It is the way it's done in Washington. We are speaking earlier about Hollywood. You are don't like Hollywood, but if the three of us said, we're going to go out and make movies, we'd would be stripped naked at Hollywood and Vine by noon because we have no idea how the game is played.

FOREMAN: Rush Limbaugh doesn't like Barack Obama and he always has something to say. Listen to what he was saying this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO SHOW HOST: We have done our part to expose Obama through our support of operation chaos effectively using the Clinton campaign as our foil. And Obama and the Democratic Party are the weaker for it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Well, I don't know really in the end if the Democrats are the weaker for it as much as Republicans may wish it, because the simple truth is what you're saying. McCain and Obama are going to be playing an awful lot on the same field, the field of the moderate, middle, the strength of the people who might go either way. That is going to be a tough battle, isn't it, Rich?

GALEN: This is a 50/50 country. What nobody can figure out -- if they say they can --

(NEWSBREAK)

GALEN: You got to get to 274 electoral votes and whatever it takes to get there, each side will try.

FOREMAN: It'll be a battleground, thanks Mike, thanks Rich.

Straight ahead, heaven help us, are we seeing a real change in the politics of evangelicals?

But first, see if you recognize this quote, I can't believe the way you do business out here. That's how Chili Palmer (ph) described Hollywood in the great movie "Get Shorty" and nothing seems to have changed. Sources say movie mogul Harvey Weinstein who backs Hillary Clinton called Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi this week and allegedly threatened to cut off fund-raising for other Democrats unless she backs his plan for a revote in Florida and Michigan. Pelosi reportedly said no rather emphatically and Weinstein now says he wasn't threatening anything. He just wants her to consider the idea. We'll be back in a minute, too. But, first, let's go to the rest of this week's political side show.

Is the pope in your fave five? Benedict XVI's American visit gave him a bounce in public approval polls here. This summer he'll follow up by reaching out to young Catholics. The pope will send inspirational words of wisdom via text messaging for Catholic world youth day. It is a lot faster of course than those illuminated manuscripts and you've got to know his service is great. Can you hear me now?

Roses are red, violates are blue, plants have rights just like you. An ethics panel commissioned by the Swiss government has declared that it is morally wrong to arbitrarily kill a flower or plant. The panel was interpreting a new provision in the Swiss constitution, a provision it says protects all living organisms. What's next, felony charges for farmers?

Finally, in a new poll, a third of young people say would be willing to devote their lives to public service if only someone would, well, ask them. The news would probably be more encouraging if they hadn't also overwhelmingly said their favorite public servant on TV is Joseph Fitzpatrick Fitzgerald Quimby -- yes, that's right, Diamond Joe Quimby, the mayor from the "Simpson's." We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN ANCHOR, THIS WEEK IN POLITICSA: Going against the usual trend, something actually happened here in Washington this week. A group of evangelical Christians issued a manifesto. It said many things of course, because preachers can be that way, but one overarching idea could set the political world reeling.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN (voice-over): The religious right, the combat infantry of the Reagan revolution, the battle over abortion law and gay marriage wants a change. At least these evangelicals do. They are declaring they're tired of divisive politics, tired of watching political in-fighting trump all the good they could be doing.

OS GUINNESS, EVANGELICAL LEADER: Our proposal in the manifesto is to join forces with all those who support a civil public square, a vision of public life in which people of all faiths and of course that means no faith, are free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faith.

FOREMAN: For Democrats, the timing is good. The party has been pushing to overcome a perceived faith gap that many feel has hurt them with churchgoing voters. Now candidates are appearing in more religious settings and conversations.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I try to do is, as best I can, be an instrument of his will.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I obviously, was fortunate to be able to rely on and be grounded in my faith, which has been an anchor for me throughout my entire life.

FOREMAN: Mara Vanderslice is part of that effort.

MARA VANDERSLICE, COMMON GOOD STRATEGIES: I think the biggest thing that we have done wrong is sort of say that we just want a separation of church and state and only speak about religion in terms of separation.

FOREMAN: Evangelicals are now leading public support for many issues dear to Democrats, global campaigns against AIDS, hunger, poverty. Many Democrats can see that according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Michael Cromartie.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE, ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER: I think genuinely religious people obviously in the Democratic party who say we need to stop toning down how our faith relates to public policy issues, whether it's the environment or if it's on questions of the economy or war and peace. We need to start framing our concerns in religious language so it might appeal to religious believers in America.

FOREMAN: Some staunchly conservative evangelicals are critical of the manifesto. They are proud of the gains they've made through conservative Republican ties and if Democrats want their support, some political analysts say the Dems will have to give something more, accepting at least some limits on some types of abortions, for example. But backers of the manifesto insist this is about Christians doing good in God's name and that goal, not politics, must guide all their alliances.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN: Imagine people in Washington not acting on the basis of pure politics. That's a best case scenario. When we come back, CNN's very own prophet of doom, Ali Velshi, will look at the worse- case scenarios for the economy. And later, what would your mother say? But first a look at some of the other news in this week in politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA BUSH: The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its peoples' basic needs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: It's not what you would expect from Laura Bush or almost any first lady in recent memory for that matter, a blistering criticism of the military government in Myanmar even as the U.S. offered aid after a weekend cyclone killed tens of thousands.

In a sight we're sure to see many times in the months to come, silent protesters stood outside a Georgia prison as convicted murder William Earl Lynn (ph) was executed. This marked the end of an unofficial moratorium while states waited for a Supreme Court to rule that death by a combination of lethal drugs is not cruel and unusual.

And in a scene of tremendous pageantry, Russia's new president Dmitri Medvedev (ph) was sworn in. Hope you enjoyed the music and the parade since it's fairly certain that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, will keep his hands on any real power. And we will really be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOREMAN: Lead singer Shirley Manson of Garbage riding high on a new depression. We want to talk about depression or at least recession, we turn to CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velsi way up there in New York. Ali, how are you doing today?

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's not true what she says, I'm not only happy when it rains, economically speaking. In fact, the future could go either way. We're right at that inflection point. It could be grim and rainy but there could be some sun peeking out Tom.

FOREMAN: Do you have any indication as we look at this summer when the economy is going to be such a big issue in the election here.

VELSHI: Yeah.

FOREMAN: And what's going to happen, probably if it goes well, that favors Republicans a little bit. If it goes badly, then probably it favors the Democrats a little bit, because people want a sea change. Any real indication of which way it's leading?

VELSHI: Well, here's the thing. While we discuss the fact that the economy is issue number one and that's how Americans have responded to polling questions we've asked them, it's not so much the economy, as it is everybody's personal economy. Gas prices, inflation, jobs, housing, things like that. If gas prices and oil prices stay where they are, I think that's going to be bad news for Republicans. And it's just going to be bad news for people and the way they think about the economy.

FOREMAN: You have given us a terrific sketch here that I want to show everybody of what the best and worst-case scenarios are. In oil best case, best case about $60 a barrel. That costs you $2.50 a gallon at the pump, worst, $200 a barrel, that's about $6 a gallon at the pump. Ali, what would make either one of these happen? What should be looking for?

VELSHI: $60 a barrel happens and I think it's very unlikely, $60 a barrel happens if for some reason, all of this speculation, all the people buying and selling oil who aren't in the oil business who are just doing it as an investment, get out of the market. They only do that if there were other investments that were better. So the U.S. dollar strengthens dramatically. The stock market shoots up. The housing crisis is over. That's not likely to happen certainly before November. Some people think though we might end the year around $100 a barrel. I also don't know that we're getting to $200 a barrel. The more likely scenario is by some of the smartest minds on Wall Street is about $150. So your real range is $100 to $150, probably but those are the extremes.

FOREMAN: All three of the candidates believe that they can do something to affect that price. Listen to what they say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLINTON: We're going to go after OPEC, which remember is a monopoly cartel. There's nothing free market about it.

OBAMA: Senator Clinton said I'm going to take it right to OPEC. And I thought to myself, you say you've been in the White House for eight years. You've had two terms as a United States senator and haven't said a word about OPEC.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A billion dollars of your dollars every single day is going overseas to OPEC countries, every single day, a billion dollars. And some of that money is ending up in the hands of terrorist organizations that want to harm America and destroy us. My friends, we must have oil independence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Well, we'll have to see if they can do anything about OPEC, Ali. Do you have any faith in that?

VELSHI: We are decades away from anything referring to oil independence and that's if we invest trillions of dollars right now in squeezing oil out of everything possible. That's just silly talk. We get most of our oil from other countries and we depend on a lot on the oil coming from OPEC and by the way, we buy a lot of it. That's why it cost so much money. Twenty five percent of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz which is governed and controlled by Iran. Most of the energy that we spend around that part of the world is making sure that that oil keeps coming through. The U.S. has no influence over OPEC. It's not a member. It can't do anything about it.

FOREMAN: Let's move quickly through some other areas. You mentioned the best and worst for home prices. The best up 6 percent, the worst, down 3 percent. Which one is going to win out and why?

VELSHI: It depends on whether people think we are in the process. If they think we're low enough to start getting in and interest rates are still low, people start to push the prices up. Again, I don't think we're not going to see a 6 percent rise. That's pretty dramatic. The probable scenario is about level for the end of the year, but again that depends on how fast people can catch up and not fall behind and get more foreclosures on the books.

FOREMAN: And one that really hits home for a lot of people, job losses. You're showing that the best would be about 120,000 job losses, the worst would be about 600,000 job losses. You're saying first of all, there will be job losses either way. Why?

VELSHI: We've already seen a quarter of a million job losses this year. The only thing that can save us at this point is if the U.S. dollar remains low. That's the benefit of the U.S. dollar remaining low. We sell more goods to other countries. We make more things than we sell. But the bottom line is, we are in the slowdown. We are already here. Job losses can take a long time to turn around. Businesses have to say, oh, the economy is getting better. We're going to invest more in building a plant or open more stores and hire more people. That shift takes a long time to turn around. We're going to lose more jobs, there's no question. It's just a matter of how many we lose. Again best guess right now, probably somewhere in the middle, maybe another quarter million jobs.

FOREMAN: I can invest no more time talking to you as much as I would like to. Thanks for being her, Ali.

Still to come on THIS WEEK IN POLITICS, President Bush was obviously ready to walk his daughter Jenna down the aisle this weekend, but can he get the Israelis and Palestinians paired up before he leaves office? That's coming right up. But first, our weekly look at viral videos.

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OBAMA: Our nation is at war and our planet is in peril.

FOREMAN: Politics a short time ago in a galaxy not so far away. Barack Skywalker versus Darth Clinton. This youtube version even has the bar scene. It is sort of like "Star Wars," endless fighting for reasons no one can understand and still no end in sight. For the life of me, I can't remember the names of the three candidates. Anyone? Funny, this seems familiar somehow.

OK, I know we promised never to show Obama girl again, but that is former Democratic candidate Mike Gravel (ph) himself doing those dance steps. It's like a friendlier more innocent campaign, a feeling we all lost so very long ago.

So are you going to join the Gravel team?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll think about it.

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FOREMAN: The sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades echoing through central Beirut this week as the Hezbollah militia fought Sunni fighters supporting the government while the outgunned Lebanese army could just stand by and watch. The fighting reveals how close Lebanon is to another all-out civil war and how desperately important it is to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict just to the south of that country. President Bush is promising a peaceful solution there but time as Ed Henry reports, is quickly running out.

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ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Touring the region for the first time as commander in chief, President Bush was downright bullish about the prospects for a Mideast peace deal back in January.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I believe it's possible. Not only possible, I believe it's going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office. That's what I believe. HENRY: But four months later, there's little progress. So the president has shifted from saying it will happen to it might happen, pointing the finger of blame at the terror group Hamas.

BUSH: Still hopeful we'll get an agreement by the end of my presidency. Hamas, if you're Israel and you've got people lobbing rockets into your country, you're going to take care of business.

HENRY: Hopes of a peace deal first stoked at November's Annapolis summit are fading fast with little fruit coming from bi-weekly meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

SCOTT LESENSKY, U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE: It's kind of a gloomy mood you might say in the region. Time is running out. We've been totally silent on the core issues that divide them, Jerusalem settlements, where the borders will be, what the nature of the settlement would look like.

HENRY: Another major problem, the key players have tenuous grips on power. Abbas is fending off questions about whether he will soon be ousted now that Hamas is controlling the Gaza strip.

MAHMOUD ABBAS, PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I must do everything that I can, you know, to serve the cause of my people. It is not an issue of being in power or not. It is really to serve the interests of your people and this is my duty and if I succeed, great. If I cannot succeed, I'll be very disappointed.

HENRY: Olmert, who has denied any wrongdoing, is facing an intense criminal investigation into whether he accepted bribes years ago as mayor of Jerusalem.

LESENSKY: They each have weak coalitions at home and neither side seems to be willing to take the kind of risks and to talk honestly to their people about the concessions that will have to be made.

HENRY: And it's written in stone, of course that, Mr. Bush is leaving office in January. The most revealing moment of his last Mideast trip came when he candidly admitted the pressure of just having 12 months to get a peace deal. Now the clock is down to eight months and ticking. Ed Henry, CNN, Washington.

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FOREMAN: Thanks, Ed. Yes, to quote the Talking Heads, life during wartime, it ain't no party.

In a minute, we're strapping on our Kevlar for fast track. All you need to know to survive the next week in politics. Keep your heads down and sit tight.

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FOREMAN: It's time for fast track, everything you need to survive the next week in politics. This week it takes us to Charleston, West Virginia, where we find our senior political analyst Bill Schneider standing by. Bill, you're in West Virginia, a vote is coming up there. Everybody says Hillary Clinton is going to win. So why does it matter?

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a state full of older, white, more conservative blue collar Democrats. These are Bush Democrats. Bush carried this state twice. It's an old, new deal state that turned Republican. If Hillary Clinton wins by a big margin, some people are projecting 60 percent or more, it's a message to Barack Obama he's going to have to work hard to bring this state back into the Democratic fold if he's the nominee.

FOREMAN: Bill back here in DC, we used to cover Congress. Are we going to go back and cover them any time soon?

SCHNEIDER: Well, Congress is doing what it always does best, spending money. It's voting on a military funding bill, on a housing bill, bills that are chock full of those spending programs that Republicans don't like. Well, President Bush says he might veto some of those bills and that could set up a confrontation in which the guy under pressure will be John McCain because a lot of those bills contain some very popular spending programs. Is he going to support President Bush's veto? We'll be watching.

FOREMAN: With all this talk about super delegate votes and how important they are, apparently one of them has put his on the auction block. What's going on?

SCHNEIDER: Well, there is a Democratic super delegate from Sacramento, California, Steven Ibara (ph), who says that he wants $20 million for his super delegate vote. No, he's not going to put it in his pocket. He says he wants the Democratic Party to commit that much money to registering Mexican-American voters. He said this is the sort of thing that goes on all the time; it just isn't done in public. Well, why not? It's his vote. And if he wants to sell it, he can do anything he wants with it.

FOREMAN: Thanks very much, Bill. Good travels out there.

In just a moment, all of you moms stay tuned, something special just for you. Right now something special for all of us, our late night laughs.

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JAY LENO: Hillary Clinton is not throwing in the pant suit, no siree bob.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Hillary Clinton has one thing in common with President Bush, neither of them has an exit strategy. There you go. Ouch!

LENO: They say the Clinton campaign is out of money. Today Republicans said, how much you need?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Barack Obama's favored in the states of Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. And Hillary is favored in the state of denial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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FOREMAN: If you value your life, you've remembered that this is Mother's Day weekend. The candidates certainly have. So here are three tributes to political moms, beginning with Chelsea Clinton.

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CHELSEA CLINTON: I do fundamentally know that my mother is not only the strongest and the most prepared candidate, but would be the best president for me as a single 28-year-old and also for me as the young mother that I hope to be under our next president.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was the sweetest nicest child I've ever known. I think he'll make a wonderful president. Well, he's not perfect. Did I say that?

MCCAIN: Doesn't pay enough attention to his mother, I think.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm happy. I have no complaints.

OBAMA: Everything that I am, I owe to her. She was the kindest, most generous person I ever met. And her values and her integrity still guide me.

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FOREMAN: That's it for THIS WEEK IN POLITICS. I'm Tom Foreman. Thanks for watching, especially you, mom, straight ahead, CNN NEWSROOM.