Summary: The lines are drawn in the Democratic skirmish over the Pacific rim trade bill: President Obama is for it. House Democrats are not. But where is the party's presidential frontrunner in all of this? Jim Newell of Salon talks about the cautious role being played by Hillary Clinton. It was never scientific anyway, and it proved to be unnecessarily expensive for candidates who wanted to make an impression. So Kathie Obradovich of the Des Moines Register is not exactly mourning the decision to end the Iowa Straw Poll, which Republicans have been utilizing in the summers before the caucuses since 1979 but is being canceled this year because candidates have been bypassing it. But she does say it helped winnow the field and led to some interesting results. And in our "this week in political history feature," former Al Gore Chief of Staff Ron Klain talks about his former boss, who declared his presidential candidacy 16 years ago this week, and is reminded of all the "what ifs" associated with the 2000 election and the long recount in Florida. Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
