WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton 's top strategist predicted Thursday that up to a quarter of Republican women could support Clinton in the presidential contest — a claim that later drew sharp rebukes from the rival campaigns of Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani.
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Mark Penn, Clinton's senior adviser and pollster, told reporters that private surveys suggested about 24 percent of Republican women could vote for Clinton because of "the emotional element of potentially having the first woman nominee."

Penn's claim that Clinton would win the support of GOP women was flatly challenged by Obama pollster Joel Benenson in an e-mail to reporters.

"Penn's assertion is entirely baseless and refuted by a number of public polls. Moreover, these polls also indicate sizable defection among Democratic women should Sen. Clinton be the nominee," Benenson said. "While it may not be her fault, Clinton appears to be as polarizing a figure as ever, showing the least crossover appeal of any of the Democratic candidates."

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Democrat John Edwards blamed Bill Clinton's administration Saturday for trade agreements unpopular with labor unions and warned against electing "corporate Democrats."

The Democratic presidential hopeful, speaking to union carpenters, tied rival Hillary Rodham Clinton to the business interests that unions claim were served by her husband's trade liberalization, to the detriment of workers.

Edwards described the North American Free Trade Agreement as a blow to the middle class that President Clinton put in place while the first lady was failing in her mission to reform health care.

"In the 1990s, we didn't get universal health care, which we needed," he said. "We got NAFTA, which we didn't need.

"I think we've been asking the wrong questions about these proposed trade deals," he added. "The question seems to have been, 'Is this trade deal good for the profits of big multinational corporations?'"

Edwards said his administration would ask, "Is this trade deal good for jobs and for working, middle-class America?"

The former North Carolina senator says he would renegotiate the 1993 deal that lowered trade barriers among the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

In campaign news, Congressmember and Democratic hopeful Dennis Kucinich has been excluded from today’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa. Debate sponsor the Des Moines Register told Kucinich he isn’t eligible because he doesn’t meet local requirements on a local campaign office and paid staff. Kucinich’s Iowa field director works out of a home office. The most recent poll of likely Democratic voters shows Kucinich has one percent support in Iowa—the same as Senator Chris Dodd. Nationally, Kucinich has two percent support—the same as Bill Richardson and Senator Joe Biden. Dodd, Richardson and Biden are all taking part in today’s debate. In a statement, the Kuncinich campaign called the exclusion “arbitrary and unreasonable”, saying: “[If] the Register has decided to use hair-splitting technicalities to exclude the leading voice of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, the entire process is suspect.”

Mr. Edwards’s plan calls for immediately withdrawing 40,000 to 50,000 troops. Nearly all of the remaining American troops would be removed within 9 or 10 months. The only force that would remain would be a 3,500-to-5,000-strong contingent that would protect the American Embassy and possibly humanitarian workers.

Over the past five years, Mr. Edwards’s position on Iraq has undergone a substantial evolution. In 2002, as a senator, Mr. Edwards was among the Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Mr. Edwards has said he was convinced by the intelligence that Saddam Hussein controlled stocks of unconventional weapons, but in the Senate speech explaining his vote he also endorsed the Bush administration’s argument that a new democratic Iraq “could serve as a model for the entire Arab world.”

In November 2005, Mr. Edwards wrote an op-ed article for The Washington Post entitled “The Right Way in Iraq,” in which he argued that his earlier vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq was a mistake, while making the point that it was still important to provide American troops with “a way to end their mission honorably.”

Toward this end, Mr. Edwards called at the time for establishing a more effective program to train Iraqi troops and channeling reconstruction work to Iraqis instead of American contractors. While he called for removing a significant number of American forces, he also emphasized that the withdrawals should be “a gradual process.”