The fight over health care reform is getting personal today.

Republicans have released a new ad targeting a handful of moderate Senate Democrats, accusing some of them of being "sell-outs" because they voted in favor of continuing the debate on their party's health care reform bill.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele spoke to Kiran Chetry on Monday's American Morning, saying the Democrats are overstepping their reach on health care reform.

Read more: Health care debate tests political pragmatism

Hillary Clinton is looking presidential to many Americans these days. A new CNN poll puts her well ahead of Vice President Biden and Sarah Palin as the “most qualified” to be president.

Now we’re getting to see a side of her that didn’t come out on the campaign trail – her favorite television show, and a certain “crush.”

Vogue contributing editor Jonathan Van Meter traveled to Africa to get a rare look at the secretary of state. His feature is in December's issue of the magazine. Van Meter joined John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Wednesday. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

John Roberts: You spent about three weeks with her. A couple weeks in Africa, and a week at the U.N. General Assembly. Sat down with her a couple times. What most surprised you about her?

Jonathan Van Meter: I think what most surprised me was that she was more accessible and more pleasant and friendly and easy to talk to than I expected. As a journalist I've heard so many stories about how difficult she is to interview – maybe she has relaxed now that she's no longer in electoral politics. I found her sort of unguarded at moments and just pleasant. Cheerful. She was always in a good mood.

Roberts: So the very scripted person we saw on the campaign trail loosens up a little bit?

Van Meter: Yeah. I got to see her one morning in Africa, she had gone for a swim in the ocean. Her hair was wet. She came to meet me for breakfast for an interview. She just looked like a woman that had gone for a swim in the ocean. She was just incredibly relaxed and pleasant.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more: Sarah Palin tells Oprah about controversies, future

By Nailah Ellis Timberlake

Before the release of Sarah Palin’s book on Tuesday, it was already listed as the number one bestseller on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s online. Palin was paid an estimated $1.25 million for her memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," by publisher HarperCollins. She collaborated with author Lynn Vincent to completed her 423-page book in four months.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday.

The first stop on her multi-city book tour will be on Wednesday at a Barnes & Nobles in Kentwood, Michigan where manager Danett Mae said, “The response has been phenomenal. We’ve gotten inquiries from customers across the country and we plan to accommodate as many people as possible.”

Mae couldn’t estimate the amount of people they were expecting to come out but the hope is that everyone who lines up will be able to meet Palin and get their book signed. Currently the schedule released by the publisher shows that Palin’s book tour is only stopping in small cities throughout the country, but more cities are expected to be added at a later date.

In addition to her book tour, Sarah Palin appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show Monday afternoon where she discussed her White House run as a vice presidential candidate, her family, her politics and her future. Many think it’s a positive and strategic move for Palin because Oprah’s selling power is unquestionable. Palin supporter and attorney Marianna Picciocchi thinks that it was an excellent idea to go on Oprah. Picciocchi said, “I’m glad she did it. It was a good idea because of widespread coverage and she got to speak on her history and what she’s done. Her track record in Alaska shows that she’s an effective leader and people will have more insight into her now.”

Read the rest of this entry »

By Jim Acosta

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while we get to do a story that has a real life-changing impact on somebody's life. Ian Pearl is one of those stories. He's the disabled man we profiled last month. Living on a respirator with muscular dystrophy, he was just weeks away from losing his health insurance.

His insurance company, Guardian, had canceled his coverage. Guardian had found a loophole in New York state law that allowed the company to drop his coverage as part of a slew of policies it had decided to dump. The Pearl family's lawyer showed us a Guardian company e-mail that had referred to Ian's policy as one of the "dogs." It was a reference to the fact that Ian's care costs a million dollars a year.

Well, one day after the story aired, the company reversed itself, apologized, and restored Ian's policy.

But the story doesn't end there. New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman has now announced legislation called "Ian's Law," which seeks to close that insurance loophole.

Because of Ian's condition, he couldn't make it to the news conference. But he appeared via video conference and announced his intention to see this law passed across the country and potentially on a national level.

Watch Ian speak at the news conference

One thing we didn't get to mention in our piece is that as a kid, Ian was a poster child for people with muscular dystrophy. He later became president of his high school.

Now Ian is a spokesman and leader once again, fighting for health care reforms that protect the disabled from a system that sometimes fails to safeguard this country's most vulnerable people.

Related: Insurance company does an about-face

Political heartburn. After two big election night losses in New Jersey and Virginia, some Democrats are beginning to wonder if their party is out of step with the American people.

Republicans won in both states Tuesday night thanks in large part to independent voters – the same independent voters who helped sweep Barack Obama into the White House just one year ago. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux reports.

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe. Copyright © 2009 by David Plouffe.

The Audacity to Win

By David Plouffe

Excerpted from Chapter 6: Roller-Coaster Time

On Friday, January 4, we landed in New Hampshire after
4:00 a.m. As we got to the hotel, it was nearly time for the day’s
first conference call, so I skipped sleep altogether. Instead I
checked our online fund-raising numbers; they were through the
roof, with over $6 million raised in the hours since we were declared the winner of the Iowa caucuses. It was like a lit
match had been dropped in gasoline. New donors and fund-
raisers were showing up everywhere, wanting to help a potential winner, and our previous
donors and fund-raisers were digging deeper as their initial investment was rewarded in Iowa.

Obama made it clear from the beginning that he did not want to be left shouldering a big debt. I had always managed campaigns that way, so we had prepared for the worst and had hoped for the best, budgeting conservatively post-Iowa and projecting only $10 million raised for all of January. We assumed that even with a loss we could cobble together enough money through our diehard supporters to execute our game plan in the remaining early states.
Now, we almost certainly would raise over $10 million in the first eight days of January alone and might raise over $30 million in January, giving us what we believed would be a huge financial advantage for Super Tuesday. In the space of a few hours, we had not just won Iowa but also considerably strengthened our ability to compete against Clinton in a drawn-out slugfest.

Read more

It was a big night for the GOP. The governors' mansions in Virginia and New Jersey going from blue to red – two states President Obama carried just one year ago.

What does that mean for 2010? Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele spoke to our John Roberts on Wednesday's "American Morning.

They started following an up-and-coming senator named... Barack Obama. Then he ran for president.

And it was an incredible case of being in the right place – at the right time – for a group of filmmakers who ended up being eyewitnesses to history.

HBO will debut their documentary tonight – at 9 p.m. ET. Our Alina Cho got a sneak peek.