Hillary Clinton's campaign is trumpeting a victory in the endorsement race: The senator has picked up the blessings of Steven Spielberg, who says that a second President Clinton would "bring America back together, rebuild our prestige abroad and ensure our protection here at home."
Why the front-page treatment at HillaryHub? Maybe it's because Spielberg's endorsement offers a little glamour to a candidate running against a guy with rock-star status. Or maybe it's a preemptive strike at the bad news that may be lurking around the corner: There's word that Clinton will trail Barack Obama in second-quarter fundraising totals when the numbers come in next month.
In other fundraising news, the Hill reports that the National Republican Congressional Committee expects to raise $7.5 million at a dinner with the president Wednesday night in Washington. That's half what the committee raised at the dinner last year, a sign, the Hill says, that "Republican confidence in the president is in a state of collapse."
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt tells the Hill that the money woes have less to do with dissatisfaction with George W. Bush than they do with donor fatigue. But Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe pins her party's problems right on the president, telling the Hill that the GOP lost Senate seats in Ohio and Rhode Island last year as a direct result of voters' unhappiness with Bush. "It's definitely because of the president and his policies, more from the standpoint of immovability and not being willing to adjust policies in response to real-time circumstances," she said. "It wasn't just the fact that things weren't working well in Iraq, it was the president wasn't willing to adjust his policy to recognize and acknowledge that."
A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll out this week puts Bush's approval rating at 34 percent, the lowest that poll has ever found.
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