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Friday, May 16, 2008
As part of its advocacy for Obama's campaign, MoveOn is seeking nationwide hosts for what it calls its Bush-McCain Challenge:
Sign up to host a Bush-McCain Challenge table on Wednesday, May 28th. We'll give you everything you need to hold a successful event, including a start-to-finish guide and all the materials.
• You should hold the event in a place with lots of foot traffic at the time of your event, so that you can ask lots of people to take the Challenge. • The ideal place is in a public area like a park or open square, where setting up a table won't cause congestion or require a permit.
• You could also hold your event in a dense shopping area, near a tourist-friendly monument, or in front of a friendly grocery or natural foods store. Just think of the best place in your community to attract lots of Challenge participants.
• If you have a choice between places, opt for the one that is most accessible to media.
The best time to hold this event is at 12 noon, because we'll be inviting the media to cover our Bush-McCain Challenge.
You can also check out this droll video.
Via Halperin:
 Courtesy CNN
OBAMA PUNCHES BACK– HARD.
In South Dakota, the Senator fires back against Bush and McCain following Bush’s “appeasement” remark.
“That’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country, and that alienates us from the world… So much for civility.”
“They’re trying to fool you. They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling you the truth.” Click above for a clip.
Denies suggestion he would negotiate with terrorists.
Hits McCain hard on foreign policy– links him to George Bush and calls his Iran policy “naive and irresponsible.”
“I’m running for president to change course, not to continue George Bush’s course.”
EVENT GETS ROADBLOCK CABLE COVERAGE.
Plus: White House adviser Ed Gillespie tells reporters he’s “surprised and curious” Bush’s comment was assumed to reference Obama.
Asked why it was interpreted that way, he pleads ignorance: “I’m not a sociologist.” Read gaggle transcript.
Next up: How will Bush, McCain and his campaign respond later Friday?
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Via the NYT:
WASHINGTON — The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall.
The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.
Republicans had sought to link Mr. Childers to Mr. Obama in an advertising campaign there. Republican leaders said they were looking to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, as a model whose independent reputation appears to allow him to rise above party in a year when the Republican label seems tarnished.
But Mr. McCain’s advisers said the Mississippi race underlined his intention to distance himself as much as possible from Congressional Republicans. Mr. McCain has already been openly critical of some of President Bush’s strategies.
The level of distress was evident in remarks by senior party officials throughout the day.
John McCain has gotten so little critical press coverage in recent months that it's easy to forget he's the Republican nominee. Now, as the media turns to the general election contest, my Boston Phoenix colleague Adam Reilly has suggestions for 10 topics worth covering. Here's a taste:
1) It’s the economy, Senator
This past January, the Huffington Post reported that, in a meeting with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, McCain said he “doesn’t really understand economics.” McCain denied the report. But as his then-rival Mitt Romney noted in a subsequent press release, McCain actually has a long history of such remarks. (One example, drawn from a December 2007 Boston Globe story: “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got [former Federal Reserve chair Alan] Greenspan’s book.”) How does McCain assess his economic knowledge now? And what concrete steps, beyond a wide array of tax cuts, would he take to keep America’s economic woes from worsening?
2) His Islam problem
McCain is going to argue that Obama is dangerously inexperienced on foreign affairs. He’s already hammered Obama for his willingness to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But there’s reason to question McCain’s foreign-policy aptitude as well, especially regarding things Islamic. In 2006, McCain said he’d deal with ongoing problems in Iraq by sitting down together Sunnis and Shiites and telling them to “stop the bullshit.” This year, he’s confused Sunnis and Shiites on multiple occasions. Understanding Islam and the Middle East is absolutely essential to America’s national security. Does McCain grasp them well enough to be president? And can he demonstrate this understanding while speaking off the cuff?
3) Money and politics as usual?
Vague hints of an extramarital affair notwithstanding, the aforementioned Times story contained a kernel of a valid question: does McCain’s reputation as a reformer dedicated to reducing the influence of money on politics — a reputation McCain assiduously cultivated after he was implicated in the Keating Five scandal — square with his own actions? Consider this passage from David Brock and Paul Waldman’s recent book, Free Ride: John McCain and the Media (Anchor):
For his 1998 Senate run, McCain took $562,000 in contributions from the communications industry. . . . Before his next reelection campaign, he received $900,000 more, lagging only five senators among telecom beneficiaries. Between 1993 and 2000, McCain collected $685,929 from media companies, the most of any sitting member of Congress. What do these companies have in common? They all have interests before the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chaired at the time.
So: does McCain’s reputation as a campaign-finance reformer pass muster or not?
4) Taken-on faith
Obama’s lengthy history with Reverend Wright was his biggest weakness in the primary, a role it will probably reprise in the general election. But McCain has pastor problems of his own. During his 2000 presidential run, McCain thrilled liberals by calling Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance.” This time around, however, he’s cozied up to assorted figures on the religious right — including the late Falwell (McCain spoke at the commencement ceremonies of Liberty University, which Falwell founded, in 2006), Rod Parsley (an Ohio minister who’s urged the eradication of Islam, and whom McCain called a “spiritual guide” this past February), and John Hagee (a televangelist who, among other things, has called the Catholic Church the “Great Whore”). On the one hand, McCain has said that he doesn’t share all his endorsers’ views. On the other, he hasn’t condemned any of these individuals in the emphatic way that Obama eventually repudiated Wright. What does McCain actually think about the most problematic views of Falwell, Parsley, Hagee, et al.?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
 Hillary's role as the first truly credible female presidential candidate has offered a lot of grist for the gender mill, from her attempts, via macho swagger, to emasculate Obama, to calls that our concepts of power be separated from such reductionist terms as "pussy" and "balls."
Now, Barbara Ehrenreich has a related great read in the Nation:
In Friday's New York Times, Susan Faludi rejoiced over Hillary Clinton's destruction of the myth of female prissiness and innate moral superiority, hailing Clinton's "no-holds-barred pugnacity" and her media reputation as "nasty" and "ruthless." Future female presidential candidates will owe a lot to the race of 2008, Faludi wrote, "when Hillary Clinton broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys."
I share Faludi's glee -- up to a point. Surely no one will ever dare argue that women lack the temperament for political combat. But by running a racially-tinged campaign, lying about her foreign policy experience, and repeatedly seeming to favor McCain over her Democratic opponent, Clinton didn't just break through the "glass floor," she set a new low for floors in general, and would, if she could have gotten within arm's reach, have rubbed the broken glass into Obama's face.
A mere decade ago, Francis Fukuyama fretted in Foreign Affairs that the world was too dangerous for the West to be entrusted to graying female leaders, whose aversion to violence was, as he established with numerous examples from chimpanzee society, "rooted in biology." The counter-example of Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the first head of state to start a war for the sole purpose of pumping up her approval ratings, led him to concede that "biology is not destiny." But it was still a good reason to vote for a prehistoric-style club-wielding male.
Not to worry though, Francis. Far from being the stereotypical feminist-pacifist of your imagination, the woman to get closest to the Oval Office has promised to "obliterate" the toddlers of Tehran -- along, of course, with the bomb-builders and Hizbullah supporters. Earlier on, Clinton foreswore even talking to presumptive bad guys, although women are supposed to be the talk addicts of the species. Watch out! was her distinctly unladylike message to Hugo Chávez, Kim Jong-Il and the rest of them -- or I'll rip you a new one. ....
Whatever violent and evil things men can do, women can do too, and if the capacity for cruelty is a criterion for leadership, as Fukuyama suggested, then [Abu Ghraib's] Lynndie England should consider following up her stint in the brig with a run for the Senate.
It's important -- even kind of exhilarating -- for women to embrace their inner bitch, but the point should be to expand our sense of human possibility, not to enshrine aggression as a virtue. Women can behave like the warrior queen Boadicea, credited with slaughtering 70,000, many of them civilians, or like Margaret Thatcher, who attempted to dismantle the British welfare state. Men, for their part, are free to take as their role models the pacifist leaders Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Biology conditions us in all kinds of ways we might not even be aware of yet. But virtue is always a choice.
Hillary Clinton has smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way -- by demonstrating female moral inferiority. We didn't really need her racial innuendos and free-floating bellicosity to establish that women aren't wimps. As a generation of young feminists realizes, the values once thought to be uniquely and genetically female -- such as compassion and an aversion to violence -- can be found in either sex, and sometimes it's a man who best upholds them.
From today's NYT:
Sizable victories — the Clinton camp believes it could win West Virginia by 25 points or more — might put pressure on Mr. Obama to agree to her demands to seat the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, some of her advisers say, which would let her claim a victory on a battle she has fought for months. Accumulating victories this late in the primary season — as Mr. Obama looks so strong — might also bolster a bid for the vice presidency, should she decide to seek it. (Whether Mr. Obama would ask her, however, is very much in doubt.)
The two candidates campaigned across West Virginia on Monday, with Mrs. Clinton’s motorcade driving more than two hours through the winding hills of Appalachia, where she courted a relatively small number of voters in hopes of driving up her expected margin of victory. She is counting on a big victory to impress undecided superdelegates, the party leaders who will most likely decide the nomination.
Mrs. Clinton also wants to show strength in Kentucky and West Virginia — states Democrats have struggled to carry in presidential elections — not to mention, advisers say, pointing up what the Clinton campaign sees as the weakness of the Obama coalition. But advisers acknowledged that even if she won those states by wide margins, it was probably too late to change the dynamic of the nominating contest in her favor.
Monday, May 12, 2008
B ill Moyers was being interviewed on NPR today as I prowled for lunch in the N4N-mobile. He made the point that the uber-controversial Jeremiah Wright's most controversial statements are a relative blip in the scheme of the pastor's ministerial career.
That won't make a whit's worth of difference this fall, of course, assuming that Obama is the Democratic nominee. As Monica Crowley predicted this week on the McLaughlin Group, the GOP will try to portray Obama as being apart from America (scary pastor, periphal link to the Weather Underground, Michelle Obama's less-than-helpful remark about patriotism, etc.) Thin gruel though this is -- particularly in comparison to the litany of woe accrued by George W. Bush, she's probably right.
So the 2008 election could turn in large degree on the Democratic campaign's effectiveness in being on the offense (a la Bill Clinton in 1992), rather than the defense (John Kerry in 2004) or out to lunch (Mike Dukakis in 1988).
I was reminded of the significance of this after taking part in last week's Local 121 screening of The War Room. Although it's easy to forget now, Bill Clinton's presidential campaign faced early threats from a bimbo erruption involving Gennifer Flowers and symbolic political rhetoric about his activities as a student in the then-Soviet Union. Thanks to Clinton's message mastery, not to mention the efforts of James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, Clinton went from almost also-ran to two terms in DC.
Writing in the current Phoenix, Steven Stark makes the point that Obama would be lucky if his Reverend Wright issue has the same staying power of Flowers.
The election is a mere six months from now, but six months in politics constitutes the proverbial eternity — which is good news for Obama. Plus, the “Feiler faster” thesis, popularized by Slate columnist Mickey Kaus, holds that stories burn themselves out far faster in the Internet age.
But there are two worrisome aspects of this episode that have the potential to continue to spell trouble for Obama. The first, of course, is Wright himself. There may be more tapes of incendiary sermons; he may make more appearances. In his Detroit speech, Wright mentioned that he’s working on a book that, in his words, “will be out later this year.” If it’s before the election (and if he wants to sell any copies, it will be — most likely in October), he will go on a book tour. And the whole controversy will begin again.
Also troubling for the Obama camp, there are many more ways to keep a story like this alive than there were with the Clinton episode. Ultimately, there were only a few people that the media could go to for Flowers stories: the candidate (no luck there), Flowers herself (old news), and maybe a state trooper or two who could have indirectly witnessed something.
Friday, May 09, 2008
From the Obama campaign:
Providence, RI – The Obama campaign announced today that Attorney General Patrick Lynch and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy will launch the Rhode Island Vote for Change voter registration drive on Saturday, May 10th in Providence. Vote for Change is a 50-state voter registration and mobilization drive aimed at getting millions more Americans registered to vote and involved in the democratic process ahead of the November election.
Go to http://my.barackobama.com/voteforchange to find out more about the 101 Vote for Change kickoff events that will be held nationwide on May 10th.
WHO: U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy
Attorney General Patrick Lynch
WHAT: Vote for Change Kickoff Event
WHERE: Former Obama for America Office
235 Westminster St
Providence, RI
WHEN: Saturday, May 10, 2008
10AM
A prominent RI liberal tipped me off to this piece by the conservative Washington Post columnist, which pokes at Hillary Clinton not just for not wanting to face the music, but for being a Yankee fan.
Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.
Unfortunately, baseball's rules -- pesky nuisances, rules -- say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.
After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code. ....
Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained -- too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.
Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness," as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates. If Democrats, who genuflect at the altar of "diversity," allowed more of it in their delegate selection process, things might look very different. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Chip Unruh, press secretary for US Senator Jack Reed, got in touch after I yesterday highlighted Charlie Bakst's column on the senator. In buttressing the case that Reed will remain in the Senate in the event of a Democratic White House adminstration, Unruh pointed out the following:
In the last 27 years, over 140 people served in the cabinets of Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush, and only 1 person -- Lloyd Bentsen of Texas -- left their elected U.S. Senate seat to take a cabinet post.
After they lost their re-election bids, John Ashcroft and Spencer Abraham joined George W. Bush's cabinet, but they both had already been voted out of office by the people of their respective states and were not going to serve another term in the Senate.
There are currently three U.S. Senators who formerly held a cabinet post (Mel Martinez of Florida, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee) and then went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Unruh was also kind enough to share rough excerpts of Reed's remarks, to an AP reporter, following yesterday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana:
The great factor I think is: who is best positioned to win in November?
This is not about selecting a nominee, it is about electing a President.
And there are several encouraging things, but one encouraging thing is this huge popular turnout in these elections, which I think is a manifestation of a sincere desire for change.
And both candidates are close enough on the fundamental issues that I think it reflects the fact that there is a strong Democratic wave building.
I want to make sure we’ve got the candidate who can most effectively tap into that undercurrent of change.
They have been very good to reach out, but I have made it clear that my decision will not be based on frequency of phone calls.
The decision I am going to make, again, the key point is: who is the best candidate and how can we bring the party together quickly? Because one of the challenges that we face is not just selecting a nominee, but also ensuring that we hopefully go in to Denver unified and come out even stronger. And I think that is something we have to consciously work on.
I think there may be some pressure building, but there is something else that is out there and that is we still have some primaries to run. ....
I have not given myself a deadline because this race has been like a bucking bronco. It has been up and down, up and down. Not just in terms of results of independent primaries, but in terms of who is gaining momentum, who is breaking through.
One of the good things about this campaign is that both of these candidates have been tested by the media, by the different issues, etc.
That is something that has been constructive not only to them, but to us.
As indicated by Halperin's media roundup:
Russert on MSNBC: “We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one is going to dispute it.”
NY Times’ Nagourney: “Tuesday’s results did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s options for overtaking Senator Barack Obama may have dwindled further.”
TIME’s Michael Scherer: “Clinton ended the night no closer to winning the nomination than when she began the day - in fact, she emerged an even bigger mathematical long-shot to taking the lead either in pledged delegates or the popular vote.”
WashPost quoting “senior Clinton official”: “Absent some sort of miracle on May 31st, it’s going to be tough for us. We lost this thing in February. We’re doing everything we can now . . . but it’s just an uphill battle.”
LA Times’ Wallsten: “Clinton is preparing to push the contest beyond the voting phase of the process and into the realm of committee meetings and credentialing rules, where her campaign believes she may have a chance to overtake Obama before the party’s nominating convention in late August.”
The biggest question: Will any of her supporters (including Wes Clark) say publicly or privately she should quit?
 NY Post
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
David Brooks has a good op-ed read in today's NYT on the fundamental differences between Barack and Hillary:
Hillary Clinton went on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” incarnating her role as the first Democratic Rambo. The Clinton campaign seems to want to reduce the entire race to one element: the supposed masculinity gap. And so everything she does is all about assertion, combat and Alpha dog dominance.
A few questions in, Clinton rose from her chair and loomed over Stephanopoulos. The country hasn’t seen such a brazen display of attempted middle-aged physical intimidation since Al Gore took a walkabout on the debate stage with George Bush. It was like watching someone get elbowed in a dark alley by their homeroom teacher.
But her attempt to take over the show was nothing compared with her attempt to dominate the truth. For the first 30 minutes, she did not utter a single candid word, including, as Mary McCarthy would say, “and” and “the.”
She peddled her sham gas-tax holiday and repeated her attempt to blame Indiana’s job losses on outsourcing and Nafta. Stephanopoulos asked her to name a single economist who thinks a tax-holiday plan would work, and the daughter of Wellesley and Yale took the chance to shove the geeks into their lockers: “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”
When Stephanopoulos pointed out that Paul Krugman, a Times columnist, has raised doubts about the plan, Clinton lumped Krugman in with the Bush administration and said she wasn’t going to listen to the people responsible for the last seven years.
This wasn’t just shameless spin, it was shamelessness with a purpose. Clinton signaled that she wasn’t going to concede even an inch to the vast elitist conspiracy. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about ignoring the evidence. She was going to stomp on it, flay it and leave it a twisted mass of jelly quivering on the ground. She was going to perform the primordial duty of an alpha dog leader — helping one’s own.
Barack Obama gave off an entirely different vibe on “Meet the Press.” His campaign has been in the doldrums for the past few months. He’s never come up with an explanation about how he would actually transform politics, and his conventional substance is beginning to overshadow his unconventional style.
But, as Sunday’s contrast made clear, Obama still seems like a human being. He still seems to return each night to some zone of normalcy where personal reflection lives. He wasn’t fully candid when answering questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but there are some inner guardrails that prevent the spin from drifting too far from the truth. Thoughtful and conversational, he doesn’t seem to possess the trait that Clinton has: automatically assuming that critics are always wrong.
Obama still possesses his talent for homeostasis, the ability to return to emotional balance and calm, even amid hysteria. His astounding composure has come across as weakness in the midst of combat with Clinton, but it’s also at the core of his promise to change politics. He vows to calm hatred and heal division.
As we know, Jack Reed has repeatedly stated his intent to remain in the US Senate. Today, Charlie Bakst shares some reasonable skepticism about what might happen if a Democrat wins the White House in November.
I can understand that Democrat Reed, looking at it as an abstract idea, indeed would prefer to steer clear of the Pentagon and stay in the Senate, where he has what is likely a lifetime lock on a seat and has emerged as a top voice on military issues.
But G. Wayne Miller’s recent in-depth Sunday Journal profile of Reed reinforced my belief that the former paratrooper would not balk — could not balk — if actually asked to take this powerful and important Cabinet post.
Miller’s report was bolstered by scenes of Reed visiting West Point, the academy that transformed this son of a Cranston school janitor and became the metaphor of a life of public service. It is where Reed is an alumnus and where he taught and where, eventually, he was wed.
Anyone challenging Reed this year would have an exceedingly tough time of it, particularly considering the senator's traditionally high approval rating and his ample war chest. In a reflection of the former, Reed, by far, got the most enthusiastic reception on Saturday, at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet, during the latest induction ceremony for the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.
So far, there are no formally announced GOP candidates, although Donna Perry, executive director of the Rhode Island Republican Party, said last week on A Lively Experiment that Jonathan Scott, who challenged Patrick Kennedy in 2006, has an exploratory committee.
Can either candidate defy the expectations for today's vote in North Carolina and Indiana?
Halperin has the scoop:
INDIANA:
Polls close 7 pm ET (though most close at 6 pm since much of state is on ET) with 72 delegates at stake. Check forecasts here.
Early voting tally: At least 159,000 voters have already cast ballots, about 4% of eligible voters.
NORTH CAROLINA:
Polls close 7:30 pm ET with 115 delegates at stake. Check forecasts here.
Early voting tally: More than 488,000 have already cast ballots, nearly 13% of those eligible.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Kim wants you to know:
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 This Saturday, May 10th at 10:00AM, we will be re-opening the Obama HQ on Westminster Street for a Voter Registration Drive. After remarks from Congressman Kennedy and Attorney General Lynch (and a brief training) we'll hit the streets! Join Us!
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
Amid the news that Obama's aura of inevitability has diminished, Steven Stark looks in this week's Phoenix at how Hillary Clinton is projecting an image of toughness:
Remember that Bill Clinton was the first candidate since Calvin Coolidge elected to the presidency without any kind of military service or connection to a war effort. Still, distasteful as it may seem, he was able to secure his masculine street cred through his well-publicized “eye for the ladies” — a trait that many thought would wreck his candidacy but also enabled him to overcome doubts about his “softness.”
Which brings us back to Obama. It’s true that American culture and politics are changing, and that Obama may be the harbinger of not only a biracial but a “feminizing” trend, brought on by the huge gender shifts in American life. Still, that feminizing of our politics is likely to be welcomed far more by the young than the old, which helps explain, again, why Obama appeals so much less to elderly voters than to the young.
So doubts about a candidate’s masculinity would spell trouble regardless of the opponent. But it’s especially problematic when, well, it's a woman who’s pointing out what a wimp you’ve become. There is a well-accepted role in American life for the “tomboy” — a role, say, inhabited in pop culture by Seinfeld’s Elaine — the girl who loves hanging out in the boy’s gang. Clinton has more than willingly stepped into it.
But there isn’t a comparable role in our culture for the boy who hangs out with the girls and possesses “feminine” values, or at least one who wants to do that and be the leader of all the guys in the free world, too. Obama hasn’t goofily tried to ride a tank, thank goodness. But every day now, Clinton is on the stump, pointing out that, in metaphorical terms, Obama’s 37 wasn’t just a bad bowling score — it was a character flaw that should preclude him from becoming president. This Clinton strategy poses a question: yes, boys will be boys, but when they’re not 100 percent all-boy, can they still be elected president?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
In hindsight, it would have been better to have done this some time ago (AP via Halperin)
"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama told reporters at a news conference.
After weeks of staying out of the public eye while critics lambasted his sermons, Wright made three public appearances in four days to defend himself. The former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been combative, providing colorful commentary and feeding the story Obama had hoped was dying down.
"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington media Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."
Obama told reporters Tuesday that Wright's comments do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church.
"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said of the man who married him.
Wright criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said.
Obama said he heard that Wright had given "a performance" and when he watched tapes, he realized that it more than just a case of the former pastor defending himself.
"What became clear to me was that he was presenting a world view that contradicts what I am and what I stand for," Obama said.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
That's the formulation of Newsweek's cover. It relates to the magazine's piece on the Democrat's "bubba gap."
It is true that the McCain team still expects Obama to be their opponent in November. It is also true that on the electoral maps of many prognosticators, Obama lines up better against McCain than does Clinton. Still, there can be no doubt after last Tuesday's 9-point loss in Pennsylvania that Obama is having trouble "closing the deal," as Hillary tauntingly put it, with the Democrats. Pennsylvania voters may just admire Hillary's grittiness and prefer her relentless focus on the needs of ordinary voters who clamor for health care and better schools and worry about losing their jobs to overseas competitors. She may seem more down to earth than her competitor, who is better known for his generalities, however uplifting. But in Obama's failure to lock up the nomination, there may be something more disturbing going on as well.
Americans do not like to talk about class, and they want to believe racism is a thing of the past. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, paragons of the people, were decidedly upper class in background, style and habit, and no one seemed to mind (except some other members of the upper class, who regarded the Roosevelts as "traitors" for wanting to tax and regulate the rich). JFK and Ronald Reagan were princely in their own ways (of Camelot and Hollywood) and yet could touch the hearts of common men and women. We want our presidents to be everyman (or every woman), of the people for all the people. When Richard Nixon dressed the White House guards in uniforms more appropriate to the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, everyone hooted.
The most successful presidents have always been open and hopeful, sunny and optimistic about the promise of American equality and opportunity. But there has long been a dark side to democratic politics, a willingness to play on prejudice, to get men and women to vote their fears and not their hopes. Those prejudices fade and seem to die down, but they never quite go away. They remain embers for cunning political operatives to fan into flames.
An exit poll of Pennsylvania voters included a chilling number that makes one wonder if Americans, or at least some groups in some parts of America, are ready to elect a black president. In the poll, 12 percent of whites said that race was a factor in deciding their votes. To be sure, a quarter of those voted for Obama, and gender was also a factor (for 14 percent of women and 6 percent of men). Polling on race is tricky. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 19 percent of American voters say that the country is not ready to elect an African-American president. Yet when asked if Obama's race makes a difference, only 3 percent of whites say Obama's race makes it less likely they would support him, while 5 percent of whites (and 16 percent of non-whites) say his race would make it more likely they would support him. What people will do in the privacy of the polling booth remains mysterious. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, more than half the voters said they think "most" (12 percent) or "some" (41 percent) of the voters will "have reservations about voting for a black candidate that they are not willing to express." In close elections, decided on the margins, it is discouraging to think that a small minority of racists could make the difference.
Talking Friday on NPR, Gloria Borger used a different metaphor to describe Obama's difficulties in securing the nomination.
Hillary is like talk radio in her campaign tactics, and Obama -- who needs to more invoke talk radio -- Borger says, resembles cool jazz.
We've clearly got a long way to go until November, but my recent comparison of the Democrats to the Red Sox of yesteryear, at least for now, remains apt. And I agree with this assessment from Bob Herbert:
Senator Obama has been thrown completely off his game by a combination of political attacks (some fair, some foul), a toxic eruption (the volcanic Jeremiah Wright was a gift from the gods to the Clintons and the G.O.P.), and some pretty serious self-inflicted wounds.
You can almost feel the air seeping out of the Obama phenomenon. The candidate and his aides are brainstorming ways to counter the Clinton death-ray machine and regain the momentum. They need to generate some new excitement and enthusiasm, and they need to do it soon. ....
The big issue in this campaign is the economy and jobs. But if you were to ask most voters how Senator Obama plans to fight for them on this crucial matter, you’re likely to get a blank stare.
He should be pounding that message home with a jackhammer. Give the voters an economic program to wrap their arms around. Let them know: “I’m for you! And this is what we’re going to do!”
Friday, April 25, 2008
The New Republic is griping about a similar Obama-Clinton cover image over at Time:
 
We don't want to say that this week's cover of Time is a rip-off of our HillarAck cover that came out last month, but--oh, whatever--they totally ripped us off! All the way on down to the cover line, too: "There Can Only Be One" vs. "We Have To Choose One." Perhaps we should retaliate by putting a mirror on one of our future covers? On second thought ... no, that's a terrible idea.
UPDATE: Time's cover is derivative (not just of us).
In fact, this kind of thing has been going on for a long time. Face it, guys, we're just not that original. Here's another example, and this kind of thing probably goes back at least to the heyday of new journalism in the '60s. 
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Steven Stark, continuing his presidential race column in the Phoenix, makes the case this week that it might be time for Al Gore to come to the aid of the Dems:
In truth, Gore would be a stronger candidate in November than the two front-runners. He knows what it’s like to run in a tough presidential campaign, which, as we’re finding out with Obama, is a huge advantage. He is, after all, a Nobel Prize winner; he has the advantage of now running from outside Washington even though he’s as experienced as John McCain; and he might be able to pick off a Southern state or two. He’s already won once — with an asterisk. And he could put the electoral focus back on the economy and the Republican record of the past eight years — a record likely to continue as long as Clinton or Obama is the nominee.
Sure, Gore’s entry would obviously not be greeted with waves of enthusiasm by Obama supporters. Still, he is quite popular with one of the Illinois senator’s principal constituencies: the young.
It’s true that drafting a new candidate at this point would be unprecedented. But the virtually deadlocked race between the two remaining candidates makes it at least possible.
Several things would have to occur — and quickly. First, some senior Democrats — with the help, perhaps, of a former presidential candidate, such as John Edwards — would have to publicly urge Gore to make a run. It would help matters enormously if this group included former supporters of Clinton and Obama.
Second, though not required, a write-in campaign could be mounted in one of the remaining states, such as Kentucky or Oregon, on May 20, or Montana or South Dakota, on June 3. The advantage of Oregon is that, historically, at least one candidate — Jerry Brown in 1976 — ran a strong third there as a write-in. ....
Third, a bloc of superdelegates would have to declare for the putative candidate. Again, this isn’t impossible. There are about 25 Edwards delegates still out there that might be persuaded by Edwards himself — so that’s a start. Plus, there are enough horrified and disgruntled party elders who would welcome an alternative, if they thought they wouldn’t be making fools of themselves by going out on a limb for a candidate with no chance of being successful.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Halperin has a concise media roundup of the reax to yesterday's Pennsylvania primary win for Hillary:
NY Times: Primary highlighted “concerns about Mr. Obama’s strengths as a general election candidate. Exit polls again highlighted the racial, economic, sex and values divisions within the party.”
Washington Post: “Her margin was decisive, but even some of her most loyal supporters privately expressed doubts last night that she can prevail in the long battle against Obama.”
LA Times: “Clinton’s victory Tuesday left in play the same questions that remained seven weeks ago after her 10-point victory in Ohio.”
Time.com: The number to watch: 43 - the percentage of Clinton voters who say they’ll stay home or vote for McCain is Obama is the nominee.
Politico: For all the campaigning and money spent, Clinton won “with the same base of white women, working-class voters and white men that revived her candidacy in Ohio.”
Obama memo also calls race “virtually unchanged.” Read it here.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Kim's got the scoop on where local Obama supporters will be tonight:
 After a short meeting tonight, beginning at 8:00PM, the RI Young Democrats will be watching the Pennsylvania Primary returns. Please join us on this exciting night for all Democrats!
The meeting will be held at the Cactus Grille, located at 800 Allens Avenue in Providence, 02905 (Map).
We will be discussing a number of important items and also celebrating the record turnout of Young Democrats across the State of Rhode Island on our March 4th Primary. In fact, approximately 23,541 young Democrats went to the polls that day!
Also, don't forget, today is Earth Day - click here to view all the exciting events taking place across Rhode Island to celebrate.
We hope to see you there tonight at 8:00PM! Tell your friends and invite others! Visit us on the web at: http://www.riyoungdems.org/
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Yes, they can pull defeat from victory if they keep it up, says Bob Herbert:
So what are the Democrats doing? The Clintons are running around with flamethrowers, gleefully trying to incinerate the prospects of the party’s leading candidate, Barack Obama. As Bill Clinton put it last month: “If a politician doesn’t want to get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office.”
Senator Obama, for his part, seems to have lost sight of the unifying message that proved so compelling early in his campaign and has stumbled into weird cultural predicaments that have caused some people to rethink his candidacy.
While some of those predicaments raise legitimate concerns (his former pastor, his comments in San Francisco) and some do not (stupid questions about wearing a flag pin), he has allowed them to fester unnecessarily. The way for a candidate to eventually change the subject is to offer policy prescriptions so creative and compelling that they generate excitement among the electorate and can’t be ignored by the press. ...
That raucous laughter you hear in the background is coming from the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, President Bush and Senator McCain. They can’t believe their good fortune.
The issues still favor the Democrats. More and more Americans are losing their jobs, and many of those still employed are working fewer hours and cashing smaller paychecks. Vacation plans are being curtailed because of declining family income and sky-high gasoline prices. The value of the family home is eroding.
Instead of capitalizing on the political advantages presented by these issues, the Democrats, with their increasingly small-minded approach to this election, are squandering them.
There was always going to be resistance in the U.S. to putting a black person or a woman of any color in the White House. To overcome that built-in resistance, three things are crucially important: new voters have to be brought into the process; the nominee must have an exciting and compelling message; and the party has to be extraordinarily unified behind its standard-bearer.
John McCain, meanwhile, is looking to go wide:
ARLINGTON, Va. — Senator John McCain’s political advisers said Friday that they believed his potential appeal to independents could make him competitive in up to two dozen tossup states, twice as many as Republicans seriously contested in the 2004 presidential race.
The campaign is working to expand Mr. McCain’s electoral map by employing an unusual, decentralized structure in which it will dispatch 11 regional campaign managers across the country, assigning some to traditional closely fought states like Ohio and Florida, others to states they hope to pick up, like Minnesota, and a couple to some less common targets for Republicans, including New Jersey.
The McCain campaign, which won the primaries on a shoestring budget, is staffing up now that he is the presumptive Republican nominee. It has around 150 people on its payroll, up from less than 100 last month, and has beefed up its communications division, added a speech writer and brought on board a team of pollsters. And it is working to overcome its fund-raising disadvantage by working in tandem with the better-financed Republican National Committee.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Dan Kennedy has some good stuff on this:
Nash McCabe, the Latrobe, Pa., woman who's so disturbed about Barack Obama's decision not to make flag pins part of his everyday wardrobe, turns out to be a known Obama-hater whom ABC News tracked down with malice aforethought.
Josh Marshall: "[I]t does reinforce my sense that the disgraceful nature of the debate wasn't just something that came together wrong, some iffy ideas taken to[o] far, but was basically engineered to be crap from the ground up."
And this:
"Senator Obama is the front-runner," said Stephanopoulos, the network's chief Washington correspondent and a former Clinton White House aide. "Our thinking was, electability was the number one issue," and questions about "relationships and character go to the heart of it."
Besides, he added, "you can't do a tougher question for Senator Clinton than 'six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest.' "
But the problem wasn't that the questions were unfairly tilted against Obama; it's that they were stupid and demeaning. Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson debased the process by mouthing Colbert-like parodies of Republican talking points as though they were actual questions.
"Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?" is not a question. "I want to know if you believe in the American flag" (from a Pennsylvania woman) is not a question. For that matter, "Six out of 10 Americans don't think you're honest" is not a question.
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