Houston DWI Attorney Paul B. Kennedy

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In Congress these days, the health care debate is as much about patience as patients.

In a closed-door meeting of feisty House Democrats this past week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., served notice that in these final days before the Senate and House present comprehensive bills to overhaul the nation's system, hers is running short.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., had interrupted Pelosi's presentation about one version of the bill with questions about its cost. According to Pomeroy and others, she cut him off - twice - with a question of her own:

Is there any version you could support?

Yes, Pomeroy said, but not the one most likely to succeed.

Pelosi moved on.

To the White House and Democratic leaders, Pelosi's question is the only one that matters at this late date. The answers help divide lawmakers into two columns: "yes" and "yes, if" under certain conditions. In another private meeting Friday, Pelosi forced her rank and file on the record by asking for a show of hands to register support for the public option plan she prefers.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., select committee chairmen and senior White House officials are meeting nightly in search of a bill that could win the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

At the White House, President Barack Obama is willing to play lobbyist in chief, but first he needs a bill.

So close to that pivot point and getting close to year's end, it's no longer a debate about whether there will be a health care bill. The questions are when, how - and who can compromise.

Democratic leaders expect their members, looking ahead to next year's elections, to vote for a health care bill despite any misgivings. But the vote-counters have no real way of knowing until each chamber produces a bill.

That's why negotiators have slogged through months of hearings, hundreds of amendments and meetings with members that require interminable listening, waiting, reassuring, cajoling and answering questions from the recalcitrant.

For Reid and Pelosi, that process continues. Making a member feel heard - and promising something he or she can boast about at home - can pay off.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., sent out a blaring news release Friday after her meeting with Reid, saying she raised "the unique challenges Louisiana is facing in terms of Medicaid and the special concerns I have about teaching hospitals." She said he understood these challenges and considered ways to address the problems.

Patience is limited, however.

Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had a testy exchange after Schumer made comments on cable news that some saw as pressuring the Nevada Democrat to make up his mind about putting a government-run insurance option in the Senate bill.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Friday that patience among negotiators runs out "a little more often now" than earlier in the process.

"I say, 'Hey, we are in this together. Sixty votes. Let's keep our eye on the ball,'" he said.

The pressure on Democratic lawmakers is enormous.

The success of a health care bill is largely the success of the Democrats who control Congress and the president they helped elect. In a time of lingering recession, there is no more compelling pocketbook issue than health care overhaul. It's an effort that's intensely personal because it could affect eve! ry Ameri can.

Much depends on each lawmaker's needs - political, substantive, even temperamental - leading up to an election in which all 435 House members and one-third of the 100-member Senate face election. The calculus is different for each member on the fence.

The vote of one might hinge on fear of voters' cries about government-run health care. A lawmaker with an eye on growing deficits might want to know about containing costs. What someone might really want is the ego-stroke and the political cover of a personal appeal from the president.

An awkward meeting with Obama in the Oval Office Thursday evening illustrated just how far senators are from putting those pieces together. The only takeaway not likely to be disputed: Reid grabbed an apple on the way out.

Neither of the government-run options had received pledges of support from 60 senators but both could hit that threshold, Reid told Obama, according to congressional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive talks.

One version would use the public option as a threat that would kick in if private insurers do not lower premium costs by certain deadlines. Some liberal senators would have trouble voting for that one, Reid said. The other would allow states to opt out of the public option, chief proponent Schumer told Obama.

The meeting ended with the president pledging to help rally support for whichever version crosses the 60-vote threshold first.

For Reid, it was back to his office and the phones. On Friday, Reid was meeting one on one - with no staff - with Landrieu, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Baucus, whose committee had passed one of the two Senate health care bills.

"We're having a debate, and members have to reflect and represent their districts," Pelosi said. "And we're hearing from them."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the special interest war over health care, the White House and congressional Democrats have the nation's drug makers and hospitals generally on their side; the insurance industry, not so much.

Now the bill's supporters are making a play to lock in the American Medical Association, the organization that says it represents 250,000 doctors and medical students in every state and congressional district. The principal enticement, a $247 billion measure making its way to the Senate floor, aims to wipe out a scheduled 21 percent rate cut for doctors treating Medicare patients and replace it with a permanent, predictable system for future fee increases.

The AMA, firmly in favor of higher pay for doctors, began airing ads last week saying the increase would "protect seniors' access to quality care." In case lawmakers need any inducement to act, a late 2008 study by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress, found that nearly 30 percent of Medicare patients looking for a new primary care doctor had trouble finding one.

Yet the AMA won't yet pledge support for the major health care bill that is the chief objective of the White House and congressional Democrats, despite a request that several officials say was made at a meeting last week with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Nor does it seem eager to soft-pedal another of its own top priorities, legislation to restrict medical malpractice payments.

"We continue to press for significant medical liability reform because we know that is a very important contributor to unnecessary health care costs," Dr. J. James Rohack, president of the AMA, said in an interview in which he decli! ned repe atedly to say whether the organization had been asked to back off.

Higher payments to doctors and curbs on medical malpractice awards "in my mind are separate issues. I can't speak for how other people are putting this whole thing together," he added.

Evidently not in the minds of Democrats. Several officials say that request, too, was conveyed to the AMA and other doctor groups in last week's session with Reid. Not coincidentally, any limitations in medical malpractice awards are anathema to trial lawyers, whom Democrats count as among their most reliable and generous campaign supporters.

The dance is one of many in the long-running health care debate, the issue that has consumed Congress, the administration and a vast constellation of outside groups for months.

Take the Senate Finance Committee, which last week approved a middle-of-the-road measure that may eventually prove a template for a compromise on an issue that has defied solution for decades. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine drew headlines when she became the first Republican to support White House-backed health care legislation.

But according to some of the bill's supporters, a vote that occurred with little fanfare several evenings earlier was crucial to the legislation's survival.

It pitted the drug makers and the White House on one side and most of the committee's Democrats on the other.

At issue was a plan by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to sweeten drug benefits for certain Medicare beneficiaries - normally something all lawmakers can favor. In this case, Nelson proposed raising fees on drug companies by $106 billion over a decade to cover the costs. "Did PhRMA come to the table in the agreement with the White House with enough? A number of us feel that is not the case," he said of the industry.

But his approach happened to run afoul of a deal! the ind ustry made months ago with the White House and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the committee's chairman. Drug makers would cover $80 billion of the cost of the legislation over a decade, and the White House and Baucus would help shield them from attempts by other lawmakers to impose additional fees or taxes.

Left undisclosed for weeks was a critical codicil - that the industry would bankroll an expensive advertising campaign to promote the bill's passage, at a cost of $100 million or more.

Passage of Nelson's proposal "may well undermine our ability to pass comprehensive health care reform in this Congress and I think that would be a great tragedy," Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said shortly before the vote.

Baucus, too, spoke against Nelson's recommendation, although he added, "we have to find some other time and some other way to fill the doughnut hole," a reference to a gap in coverage under the Medicare prescription drug program.

Of Nelson, Baucus said, "I frankly wish the senator had decided not to push" for a vote.

Not only Baucus, but also the White House had urged Nelson to drop his amendment, according to Senate sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. On the vote, the chairman, Carper and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., joined all committee Republicans in opposing the plan, and it failed on a vote of 13-10.

The drug deal was secure, and so, too, the bill.

Special interest politics was also at play for the nation's hospitals. They, too, have a side deal with the White House and Baucus, and they also received a measure of protection in the bill that cleared the committee.

At the last minute, the chairman decided to shield them from any future cuts to be recommended by an independent commission charged with recommending savings in Medicare.

The insurance industry?

Reid made an unusual appearance at a Senate committee hearing recently to support repeal of 60-year-old antitrust laws that benefit insurance companies.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - David Espo is chief congressional correspondent for The Associated Press.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.

Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill's true cost by $150 billion or more. That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.

The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Some moderate Democrats have expressed reluctance to support a bill as high as $1 trillion. Last month, Obama said in a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress that he preferred a package with a price tag of around $900 billion.

Obama also said he would not sign a bill that raised deficits, and the CBO estimates the emerging House bill meets that objective. Officials said the measure would reduce deficits by at least $50 billion over 10 years and perhaps as much as $120 billion.

Democrats also said the bill would slow the rate of growth of the giant Medicare program from 6.6 percent annually to 5.3 percent.

"The bill will be paid for over 10 years. It will reduce costs but also will not add a dime to the deficit" in future years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference.

St ill, Obama's speech provoked enough concern among House Democrats that senior presidential aides were called to a meeting in the Capitol to explain precisely what the president had in mind when he set the $900 billion target.

The figure of $871 billion "is a coverage number. I think the White House has made that very clear. It is a number about coverage," Pelosi said recently when asked about the size of the measure.

Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for the White House, said, "The speaker is working on a plan that meets with the president's price tag of around $900 billion for health insurance reform and will not add a dime to the deficit."

House Democrats took steps to fulfill another of Obama's goals during the day, announcing their legislation would completely close a gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage within a decade, five years faster than originally contemplated.

In addition, Pelosi said, "as of Jan. 1, 2010, our legislation will give a 50 percent discount for brand-name drugs to recipients in the donut hole and it will reduce the size of the donut hole by $500."

After months of delay, Democrats in the House and Senate are aiming for votes next month on legislation to fulfill Obama's goal of expanding coverage to millions who lack it, banning insurance industry practices such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and slowing the growth in health care spending nationally. The House bill will also lift the insurance industry's exemption from federal anti-trust laws, a provision under consideration in Senate negotiations as well.

With time growing short, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are struggling independently with the most controversial of all issues involved with health care, proposals for a government-run insurance option to compete with private industry.

In the House, Democrats have tent! atively concluded they cannot win passage of the provisions favored by most liberals, one calling for a nationwide government-run plan with payments to doctors and hospitals linked to rates paid by Medicare. It was unclear what fall-back plan was under consideration, but the internal disagreement cast doubt on plans to publicly unveil legislation early next week.

Across the Capitol, Reid, D-Nev., assessed support for a nationwide government-run insurance option that would allow states to opt out of the system. While the plan evidently enjoys a clear majority, it is uncertain whether it can command the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened Republican filibuster.

Democrats hold 60 votes in the Senate, but one, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has spoken out strongly against a so-called public option. A few other members of the rank and file have been non-committal.

One, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., met with Reid during the day and later issued a statement saying she was encouraged that a compromise might be possible. She also added pointedly that she had told Reid about "the unique challenges Louisiana is facing in terms of Medicaid and the special concerns I have about teaching hospitals," a possible signal that easing home-state concerns could influence her vote on the larger, national question of a government-run insurance option.

Also opposed is Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican this year who has voted for a Democratic-drafted health care bill in committee. As an alternative, she favors allowing the government to step in only if there is insufficient competition in the private insurance industry.

Nor was it clear whether Democrats would be able to enlist additional Republicans. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, frequently mentioned by Democrats as a potential convert, said in an interview, "We can't afford the health care system that we have right now. And if we can't afford th! e one we have right now, how are we going to afford another one that's going to cost more money."

For Reid, the question of a government-run option is one of a many thorny issues to be settled before he can bring health care legislation to the Senate floor. He and senior committee chairmen have been meeting with top White House aides in recent days to produce a bill, and hopes of largely wrapping up the work by the end of the week went unfulfilled.

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Eds: Associated Press writers Chuck Babington, Laurie Kellman and Erica Werner contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming.

Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.

In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.

The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change - from melting ice caps to the world's oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.

The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic's thermostat.

Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities - such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles - are behind a temperature increase. That's down from! 47 perc ent from 2006 through last year's poll.

"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."

Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said politics could be drowning out scientific awareness.

"It's a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instill a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public," he said.

Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.

Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.

Jane Lubchenco, head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a business group meeting at the White House Thursday: "The science is pretty clear that the climate challenge before us is very real. We're already seeing impacts of climate change in our own backyards."

Despite misgivings about th! e scienc e, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority - 56 percent - feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.

But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week.

Under cap-and-trade, a price is put on each ton of pollution, and businesses can buy and sell permits to meet emissions limits.

"Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science.

Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling.

People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.

One of those lawmakers, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, told reporters Thursday that she was happy with the results, given the interests and industry groups fighting the bill.

"Today, to get 57 percent saying that the climate is warming is good, because today everybody is grumpy about everything," Boxer said. "Science will win the day in America. Science always wins the day."

Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming.

Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant - at around 80 percent - in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results.

He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it.

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Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States built pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday, signaling that a troop increase could articulation on a successful runoff acclamation and that the Obama administering would be receptive to a power-sharing accord amid Karzai and his chief rival.

A affiliation government or added political arrangement that included Karzai's rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, could accommodate a critical internal check on Karzai, who is broadly advantaged to win the presidential runoff set for Nov. 7.

President Barack Obama and Sen. John Kerry, who pressed the administration's interests in weekend talks with Karzai in Kabul, both hinted Wednesday that pending deliberations on accessible U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan could be affected by the Afghan leader's behavior.

Karzai's weak and corruption-riddled government has been blamed in part for the resurgence of the Taliban and for widespread Afghan civilian disillusionment. The Afghan national acclamation in August was bedridden by massive fraud that led to the auctioning of a third of the results, providing a block for the U.S. to columnist Karzai to accede to the runoff with Abdullah.

Kerry, whose meetings with Karzai helped advance to the runoff agreement over the weekend, said Wednesday afterwards a White House session with Obama that the president should wait until afterwards new acclamation to make his accommodation on troop strength.

Obama himself said Wednesday in a television account he might not announce his accommodation on sending added troops until afterwards the runoff.

Both statements had the subtle force of accretion pre! ssure on Karzai by implying that the administration's accommodation on U.S. troop backbone in Afghanistan might depend on how the runoff turns out.

The Massachusetts Democrat said Wednesday that it wasn't "common sense" for Obama to determine whether added U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan afterwards knowing the acclamation results. "You really appetite to apperceive that this has worked, and you appetite to apperceive what's coming out of it," Kerry said.

Officials said Obama's pending accommodation had acutely figured in the U.S. discussions with Karzai about how to resolve the political impasse.

Several admiral stressed that the looming troop plan accommodation was not used candidly to force Karzai to concede on the election's contested first round, but one highly placed U.S. official in Afghanistan said the United States used Obama's deliberation over troop numbers as leverage.

That official spoke on action of anonymity because Obama has not appear whether he will accede to a U.S. military request for bags of additional forces.

Karzai and Abdullah settled on the runoff following weeks of acrimony over Afghanistan's fraud-pocked national election. But both sides additionally are considering a affiliation government that could either replace the runoff or follow it.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. would not be opposed to a power-sharing deal, depending on its legitimacy and how it was implemented. Obama appeared to allude to the still-fluid discussions Wednesday.

"I think we're still in - finding out how this accomplished action in Afghanistan is activity to unfold," Obama said in an account on MSNBC.

While careful to say that any power-sharing accord would have to appear from the Afghans and not the U.S., American admiral were clear that Karzai's afraid accep! tance of a runoff vote may not be abundant by itself.

Karzai and Abdullah have about dismissed the abstraction of sharing power, but there have been reports of private horse-trading discussions afore and since Tuesday's announcement of the runoff.

Kerry told reporters afterwards affair with Obama on Wednesday that in Afghanistan he "did not altercate nor did I even attempt to put on the table the abstraction of a coalition."

It would be inappropriate to raise that possibility and would make it seem to Afghans that the United States was calling the shots, Kerry said. However, he accustomed the issue was being discussed in Kabul, and said there may have been talks amid the Karzai and Abdullah camps on it "even today."

In an account Wednesday with The Associated Press, Kerry said the discussions with Karzai grew intense at times.

"I turned up the dial a few times, accept me," Kerry said.

He added: "They were actual emotional. And they were actual amorous and actual heated at times but accurately heated. You apperceive there was never anger, there was always the intensity of the argument."

Another State Department official said Abdullah's camp had bidding absorption in a affiliation or power-sharing deal, and that some Karzai aides, concerned about the after-effects of a runoff, are accommodating to accede the abstraction admitting the president's public repudiation of the idea.

That official said the U.S. would support any advance that leads to the formation of a credible government in the eyes of the Afghan people. The official spoke on action of anonymity because the negotiations don't involve the U.S.

That could include a affiliation or added power-sharing arrangement that is either formed to annihilate the need for a second annular or one that is created using the after-effects of ! the runo ff.

But there are no accoutrement for a affiliation in the Afghan Constitution, and it is not clear how such a accord would work or remain enforceable.

The most important near-term goal for the U.S. was Karzai's acceptance of acclamation agency after-effects and his acceptance that the impasse must be resolved.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Laurie Kellman, Ron Fournier and Julie Pace in Washington and Robert H. Reid in Kabul contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday acclaimed Afghan President Hamid Karzai for accepting acclamation artifice findings that invalidated nearly a third of the votes cast for him in August.

Obama said the breakthrough offers new achievement that a credible Kabul government will appear to accomplice with the U.S. and NATO in battling a resurgent Taliban insurgency and blocking al-Qaida's return.

Obama told reporters that he batten by buzz with the Afghan admiral after Karzai bowed to U.S. burden and appear that he agreed to a runoff acclamation Nov. 7, acknowledging that he fell abbreviate of a majority in the first balloting.

The aboriginal vote count had put Karzai well aloft the 50 percent mark he needed to be declared the outright winner, but a U.N.-based analysis bent that hundreds of bags of his votes were tainted. Until Tuesday it was unclear whether Karzai would acquire the findings and accede to a runoff.

"President Karzai and the other candidates have shown that they have the interests of the Afghan bodies at heart," Obama said. "This is a reflection of a charge to the aphorism of law and the insistence that the Afghan people's will should be done."

In his animadversion at the White House, Obama accepted the work of U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who was joined in talks in Kabul over the weekend by Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who active the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama additionally acknowledged the work of American troops angry in Afghanistan.

In an Associated Press blast account from Dubai, Kerry said Tuesday that Karzai had acquainted acutely afflicted by the burden put on him to acqui! re a run off and the implication of Afghan incompetence.

"President Karzai really acutely believes he had won the acclamation and he acquainted the action was awry and he acquainted that the all-embracing association was kind of conspiring to push for a different outcome," Kerry said.

"He acquainted very acutely about the flaws of the process. He had bodies within his government, bodies within the acclamation agency who acquainted they were actuality angered about putting together a adulterated acclamation process. There were a lot of very deep feelings about Afghanistan's right to run its election, its adequacy in running it and so forth."

Obama put a positive circuit on Karzai's decision.

"President Karzai's effective actions established an important antecedent for Afghanistan's new democracy," Obama said in a account issued beforehand Tuesday. "The Afghan constitution and laws are strengthened by President Karzai's decision, which is in the best interests of the Afghan people."

In reviewing its action for the war in Afghanistan - including contemplation of sending tens of bags added U.S. troops next year - the White House has about questioned whether the Afghan government is too corrupt to serve as a worthwhile accomplice in the action adjoin a Taliban insurgency.

Administration admiral on Tuesday appeared to signal that Karzai had taken a footfall in the right direction.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed Karzai's advertisement as a addition for Afghan democracy. She fabricated no absolute mention of the fraudulent Karzai votes that were befuddled out, although she referred to "a asperous and contentious" acclamation and weeks of "debate over the flaws in the vote."

"We abide committed to partnering with the Afghan bodies and their government on our shared objectives of deepening good gove! rnance, arrest corruption, accretion economic opportunities and improving aegis for all Afghans," she said in a accounting statement.

Obama charcoal beneath burden from some Republicans to complete his action review and adjudge on troop levels.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a arch apostle of bolstering U.S. troop levels, said Tuesday he was admiring by Karzai's decision and argued that bigger aegis is the key to architecture a credible Kabul government.

"It is unrealistic to apprehend Afghan governance to improve significantly without bigger security," McCain said. "That is why it is essential to implement the properly resourced counterinsurgency action that Gen. Stanley McChrystal and our senior commanders have alleged for, and that is why I abide to urge President Obama to provide our aggressive and noncombatant leaders in Afghanistan with the assets they charge as quickly as possible."

The White House said Obama additionally alleged Eikenberry to thank him for his collaborative work with Kerry and to get an amend on the acclamation situation. Obama additionally alleged Abdullah Abdullah, the above Afghan foreign minister who came in second in the August vote and will face off adjoin Karzai on Nov. 7.

Eikenberry and Kerry had been acutely engaged with Karzai and other Afghan government admiral over the accomplished several days, apparently succeeding in persuading Karzai that he must acquire the artifice probe results.

Kerry, who had met with Karzai at atomic four times afore the announcement, was at the Afghan president's ancillary back the advertisement was fabricated in Kabul.

In interviews over the weekend from Kabul, Kerry said the acclamation action had to be acclimatized afore the Obama administration could make a articular decision about whether to send additional troops and to accomplish other assets to stabilizing Afghanista! n.

< class="ap-story-p">Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, said the Obama administration needs to adjudge on a war action and not "sit on our hands" waiting for acclamation after-effects and a government to appear in Kabul. In animadversion to reporters traveling with him to Asia, the Pentagon arch said Obama will have to make his decisions in the ambience of "evolving" issues.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it has not been bent whether Obama will wait to advertise an Afghan action until after the after-effects of the runoff. Gibbs told reporters he still expects that advertisement to be fabricated in "the advancing weeks."

Regardless of the election's outcome, Gibbs said, "We've got to make sure we're making advance with a accomplice in that government." He additionally said the next U.S. action affair on Afghanistan may be pushed back until early next anniversary because Gates and Vice President Joe Biden are traveling abroad.

Obama was widely accepted to adjudge on the next steps in Afghanistan afore he begins an extended cruise to Asia next month.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Miga, Steven Hurst, Lara Jakes and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The leader who prods his critics to put politics aside is doing anything but these days: President Barack Obama is campaigning for his party's future.

Barreling Tuesday into several days of frenetic political activity, Obama The Campaigner has work to do in helping raise money and rally loyalists for lesser-known Democrats.

Dollars aren't materializing as much as expected - even with a record-shattering fundraiser like Obama at the party's helm and working furiously to bring in cash. And, two weeks before off-year elections, Democrats are facing the prospect of losing hard-fought gubernatorial races in Virginia and perhaps New Jersey, contests that depend on the Democratic base and that to a certain degree are shaping up as a test of Obama's political strength.

All that's a wake-up call for a party that controls both the White House and Congress and for a president elected in an electoral landslide less than a year ago.

So, as the Democratic standard-bearer, Obama is putting his time on the line and his prestige to the test with a blitz of fundraisers and campaign appearances.

He is asking donors not just for money, but also a burst of campaign energy to help him get his enormous domestic agenda passed, particularly health care reform. He does knowing it is harder to get people jazzed up to lobby Congress than to win an groundbreaking election.

"It now falls to us," Obama told donors at a $30,000-per-couple fundraiser on Tuesday. "I hope that everybody here is willing to recapture that sense of excitement that comes from a big but achievable challenge, not a superficial excitement that comes from election day, but an exciteme! nt that comes from knowing we took on something that had to be taken on."

Obama stood to raise as much as $3 million in New York for the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday as well as an unspecified sum for Bill Owens, the Democrat in a special congressional election in upstate New York. He paired an official White House event - a visit to a joint terrorism task force center - with the fundraising trip, meaning a reduced cost of presidential travel for the campaigns while taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab.

In the coming days, the president also will campaign for Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida, a notable cashing-in of Obama's time as he fights to pass health care reform and tries to find a winning Afghanistan strategy.

It's not just this year's races that are at issue but also the broader state of the Democratic Party - from cash-flow to enthusiasm - heading into next year. In the 2010 elections, Democrats will try to defend their majorities in Congress and seek to pick up governor's seats.

The party in power typically loses congressional seats in the first election of a president's term. Obama certainly wants to avoid the fate of Bill Clinton, who similarly swept into office with youthful energy only to see his party lose control of Congress two years later.

With all that at stake, Obama is choosing to insert himself intensely into the process while keeping in mind that he also could be associated with defeats should Democrats lose.

Including Tuesday's events, Obama will have headlined 23 fundraisers so far in his nine-month presidency, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who keeps a detailed log of presidential activities. This compares with six for President George W. Bush's first year in office, though his efforts were cut short because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama! is calc ulating that he can't afford criticism from the Democratic Party's base supporters that he's not helping candidates. But there are also risks to full-throttle campaigning: His own power is being gauged.

"If governors and members of the House and Senate come to the conclusion that Obama's personal support is not transferrable or that his supporters have not remained mobilized, the impact of his personal charisma will be seen as more limited than it was a year ago," said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in New York.

"All in all, he gets more credit for making a public effort than for sitting on the sidelines and watching Democrats at risk fend for themselves," Sherrill said.

Overall, Democrats aren't in terrible financial shape.

Through September, the committee that works to elect Senate Democrats brought in $33 million compared with $29 million for its GOP counterparts, and the committee that works to elect House Democrats has raised $44 million compared with $27 million for the countering Republican effort. Also the Democratic and Republican committees that work to elect governors were almost even in fundraising during the first half of this year.

But Democrats certainly aren't seeing the jaw-dropping sums of the 2008 presidential campaign year. And some Republican candidates are out-raising Democratic opponents in the money hunt in key 2010 races.

In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk out-raised Democrat Alex Giannoulias last quarter and is keeping pace overall in the race for Obama's old Senate seat. In two states where Democrats hope to pick up Senate seats open because of Republican retirements, Republicans Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio vastly outraised Democrat Kendrick Meek in Florida in the past quarter, and Republican Rob Portman is swamping Democrat Lee Fisher both this past quarter and overall.

In the House, several dozen Republican challengers in Democratic-held districts have raised more than $100,000 through September, an increase from June when that was true of just over a dozen such GOP candidates. And as of June, the Republican governors had $20 million cash on hand, compared with only $12 million for Democratic governors.

Also causing concern for Democrats: The DNC hasn't raised as much as party operatives thought it would and the Republican National Committee under Chairman Michael Steele has exceeded Democratic expectations. The DNC has raised nearly $55 million, including $8.2 million last month, through September, compared with $59 million, including $8.7 million last month, for the RNC.

Democrats are being hampered by a host of factors, including the recession.

Obama also extended his ban on money from political action committees and lobbyists to the DNC, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors aren't ponying up as much as expected, and grass-roots supporters who were the bedrock of last year's campaign aren't as energized as they were when there was a clear objective - taking the White House from Republicans by electing Obama.

"It's hard to raise money if you're in power. The ideological giver or party giver may be thinking, 'Didn't we just win this election?'" said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor who has studied giving to parties and candidates. "Also, Bush is gone, and a lot of the Democrats were motivated by anti-Bush feelings in previous cycles."

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Sidoti reported from Washington.

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PURCELLVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Just a year afterwards this ancient Confederate state helped elect a black man president, Democrats are desperately aggravating to hang onto the governorship.

A lot has changed: Loyal Democrats are added chastened than aftermost fall. Republicans are energized. Independents are proving to be ... independent. Voters of all kinds seem disenchanted.

Just like Americans nationwide.

The challenge between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds provides a snapshot of sorts - 12 months afterwards America adopted Barack Obama as admiral and advertisement Democratic majorities in Congress, and one year afore midterm elections in every state.

And the picture, in Virginia as in the nation, is not pretty for Democrats.

Republicans are far added accursed up than Democrats, and independents who leaned larboard just a year ago are tilting away. Frustration over the status quo, fear of the country's direction, and disillusionment about political leaders span the ideological spectrum.

"I'm disgusted by everything. We couldn't be at a worse abode in this country," said Maria Taylor, a waitress in Purcellville's baby business district. She calls herself an absolute and hasn't absitively whom to abutment as Virginia's abutting governor.

At the adjacent hardware store, adolescent undecided aborigine Cary Koppie, a one-man mowing company, is so affronted he says he may sit out this election. "They're all a agglomeration of liars," he said. "You don't apperceive who the heck to vote for anymore."

Two weeks afore the Nov. 3 election, polls show McDonnell, a above stat! e attorn ey general, leading Deeds, a above state legislator, by about bifold digits. After two terms of Democrats at the helm, voters may afresh be appetite change. Every four years since 1997, Virginia has called the applicant of the opposite affair from the one that controls the White House.

Prospects arise better for Democrats in New Jersey, area embattled Gov. Jon Corzine is in a close race with Republican Chris Christie in this year's added governor's race. Corzine is favored to win; it's a Democratic-leaning state and absolute Chris Daggett is sucking abutment from both parties.

Obama will be campaigning for Corzine on Wednesday and has stops lined up for Deeds, too, afore Election Day.

The outcomes won't adumbrate abutting year's midterm results. So much could change. Jobs could return. Health care overhaul could pass. War in Afghanistan could be winding down. People could feel better about area the country is heading.

But given Virginia's newfound swing-voting behavior, the McDonnell-Deeds outcome will be a key admeasurement of how America feels and, perhaps added importantly, how absolute voters are acting ahead of the 2010 elections. Independents will be analytical as Democrats try to protect their majorities in Congress and pick up governorships in a number of states.

Here in Virginia, as well as in the wider U.S., Republican crossover voters and independents are breaking from the Democrats, partly because they're put off by Obama's government expansion and expensive policy proposals like bloom care. The question in Virginia is how they'll split between McDonnell and Deeds - if they turn out at all.

"Neither one of them makes me particularly excited," said Dale Thompson, a gun-shop buyer who shuns affair labels and thinks "society's a mess." Still, he's acknowledging McDonnell - "the least angry of the bunch."

Down the str! eet, toy -store buyer Bill Lupinacci, 51, a Republican who backed Democrat Tim Kaine for governor in 2006 and Obama in 2008, is undecided - and turned off by both the candidates for the state's top office. "They're spending best of their time on attack ads rather than putting forth their positions on the issues."

McDonnell has been forced to defend his graduate academy apriorism from 20 years ago that criticized career women, gays and cohabiting bachelor couples. Deeds has drawn criticism for afresh refusing to specify how he would raise the $1 billion a year bare to revive analytical transportation projects.

The race additionally is an important test of whether the droves of base Democratic voters - the blacks, Hispanics, bachelor women, young bodies and first-time voters whom Obama admiring aftermost abatement - will turn out and abutment a Democrat if the admiral is not on the ballot.

Some are certain not to cast votes this abatement because only the best motivated bodies turn out in off-year elections.

There additionally are break that some Virginians who made up the president's diverse winning coalition were enthusiastic Obama 2008 voters, not reliable Democratic Party voters, and perhaps not alike Obama 2012 voters, should he run for re-election as expected. That would mean they would be up for grabs come 2010.

Consider Jake Crocker, a self-employed marketing adviser who owns Richmond's Easy Street cafe. He backed Obama and said he'd gladly do so again. But he's voting for Republican McDonnell because he sees similarities to pro-business Democrat Mark Warner, the above governor and now senator. "He's a guy who gets it," Crocker said of McDonnell.

Conversely, Eddie DuRant, an environmental adviser in Virginia Beach who supported Obama a year ago, afresh absitively to vote for Deeds. DuRant was swayed by McDonnell's graduate thesis, saying, "It appears he ! has an u ltraconservative amusing agenda that is not in band with what I believe."

Places like Purcellville in Loudoun County, a sprawling swath to the west of Washington, could provide clues to aborigine attitudes in added swing-voting places in battlefield states: Arapahoe County in suburban Denver, Anoka County abreast Minneapolis-St. Paul, Westmoreland County abreast Pittsburgh, Jefferson County abreast St. Louis.

Around here, farmland, country manors and a bevy of loyal GOP voters have given way to shopping centers, subdivisions and a mishmash of Republicans, Democrats and independents in recent years. Loudoun County's accelerated advance has changed its politics; the area has become a analytical front in statewide elections.

Long a reliably Republican bastion, this is area Democrats aboriginal felt the start of a national political sea change in 2005. Their gubernatorial candidate, Kaine, won the county and the race. It accepted to be a harbinger for 2006 when Democrats, fueled by huge assets in counties like Loudoun, won one Virginia Senate seat, and 2008, when they claimed the second while voting for a Democratic presidential applicant for the aboriginal time since 1964.

This county and others adjacent are expected to advance either McDonnell or Deeds over the top - and accord important clues about the country's aggregate state of mind.

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Bob Lewis reported from Richmond.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration was elated a month ago when the Russian president said sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program could become "inevitable." Washington's reaction may have been significantly premature.

Dmitry Medvedev's words were seen as a major Kremlin shift and one that would buttress U.S. attempts to combine renewed negotiations with Tehran and a united front that threatened Iran with punishing global sanctions for failure to come clean.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany believe Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon behind the cover of what Tehran says is a program designed solely to enable a homegrown network of reactors to generate electricity.

Russia and China, the other two key players who engage Iran on the nuclear issue, had routinely rejected tough sanctions, arguing that negotiations were the way forward.

But Medvedev emerged from talks with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month to declare of Iran: "In some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

While clearly delighted with those words, the White House hotly rejected analyses that Medvedev was signaling a course change as a payoff for Obama's decision a week earlier to scrap a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The U.S. missile system, conceived under the Bush administration purportedly to defend against attack from Iran, had become a major factor in deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations.

Nevertheless, the president's top Russia adviser acknowledged that the decision against moving forward on missile defense - a deployment that Moscow said would have threatened its security - was a factor in! Medvede v's remarks.

"Is it the case that it (the missile defense decision) changes the climate - I think that's true, of course," Mike McFaul said at the time.

While Medvedev said sanctions could become necessary, Moscow was not long in telling Washington - and major trading partner Iran - that the time had not come yet. That clearly deflated expectations raised when Washington drew so much attention to Medvedev's much hailed remarks.

"Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the Russian capital last week.

And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who absented himself on a trip to Beijing, drew a line under Lavrov's comments.

"If we speak about some kind of sanctions now, before we take concrete steps, we will fail to create favorable conditions for negotiations," Putin said. "That is why we consider such talk premature."

Positions could clarify somewhat in Monday talks in Vienna, where the U.S., France, Russia, the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran hash out a proposal that would send some of Tehran's low enriched uranium to Russia for further processing to fuel an aging Iranian reactor used for medical research.

If expanded, that program might become the model for undercutting the need for Iran to continue with Iranian uranium enrichment, a technology which could shortly achieve the sophistication to boost low enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon.

And later this month, Iran will allow U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to examine a newly disclosed uranium enrichment facility under construction near the holy city of Qom, a nuclear plant that Iran only notified the world of just days before it was announced to the ! world by Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Iran's new, if limited readiness to cooperate after years of stonewalling once its secret nuclear program became public could portend a more significant shift by Tehran. And Medvedev could be partly responsible.

"This time, it seems to me they (the Russians) are moving a bit to suggest to Tehran that Russia should not be taken for granted or ignored when it comes to meeting what Russia also says are legitimate expectations about Iranian behavior," said James Collins, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

But, he said, the "administration probably overplayed their hand" in that the Russians' patience for negotiating with the Iranians could stretch far beyond that of Washington. In the U.S. the urgency of capping Tehran's perceived nuclear threat is deeply enmeshed in the messy and highly partisan domestic political climate - a heavy drag on Obama's ambitious agenda.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Steven R. Hurst reports from the White House for The Associated Press and has covered international relations for 30 years.

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