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Friday, May 16, 2008
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
In April 2007, I reported on how Erica Sagrans, a Brown alum and former Phoenix contributor, isn't the only staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with a Rhode Island connection. The speaker's press secretary is Brendan Daly, the brother of Channel 12 newsman Sean Daly.
Yesterday, Politico reported on how Brendan Daly is among those featured in a new book on some of DC's players:
THE GANG'S ALL HERE: Today marks the publication of the political talker of the year, "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Background Power," by John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib. Get hungry - a FULL CHAPTERS each on Ken Duberstein, David Rubenstein, Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen and Tom Cole, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Karl Rove, Hilary Rosen, Lea Berman, Eli Pariser and Kyle McSlarrow, Ed Rogers, Billy Tauzin, Elliot Abrams, Brendan Daly, Jim Jordan and Terry Nelson, Sam Brownback and Pete Wehner, Mara Vanderslice and Jim Webb, Bernadette Budde and Andy Stern, Charlie Rangel and Jim McCrery, and Robert Strauss and Ken Mehlman.
With photos of all of them, including Hilary Rosen whispering to the late Jack Valenti, Lea Berman in the White House, a besweatered Brendan Daly at his computer, Jim Jordan with laptop and Starbucks, Senator Brownback looking like a leaning cardboard cutout as he stands on a tractor, and a smiling Ken Mehlman standing next to a seated Robert Strauss with a big globe behind them.
Jonathan Martin's précis: "The intro on how the Dubai Ports World blow-up came about is great behind-scenes reporting. A cool tick-tock. Also cool reporting on Lea Berman grappling with the China visit. There were some protocol incidents — new details on all the craziness that went down that day and leading up to visit. At one point, she had to literally tell the Chinese translator to get up from chair so the American-preferred translator could sit. Good inside buzz on how Brendan Daly dealt with the Speaker's Syria trip, with juicy details about a private Pelosi heads-up to the President followed by Dana Perino dinging Pelosi publicly and Daly then sending her a what's-up e-mail. Great bookend chapter about Strauss and Mehlman, the old and new guard at the same firm."
Except J-Mart's bitter that Hampden-Sydney is misspelled. (Jordan's alma mater!)
Gordon Johndroe on page 169, on Speaker Pelosi's assertion that "the road to Damascus is a road to peace": "National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe, a veteran of both Bush presidential campaigns and of the First Lady's staff, noted acidly that the road to Damascus is littered with victims of terrorism."
(Aboard Air Force One: "Unfortunately, that road is lined with the victims of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the victims of terrorists.")
Brendan, here's the Amazon link.
Kudos + congrats to my friend Matt, an occasional Phoenix contributor, who graduates this week from Roger Williams Law School.
The RI Populist was today among the winners of the Metcalf Diversity in Media Award (named for former ProJo publisher Michael Metcalf), which are presented for public-interest reporting by Rhode Island for Community and Justice:
Matt Jerzyk and the Rhode Island's Future blog for "Papitto Whistleblowers Punished"
Demonstrating the power of the internet in advocacy, Matt used his blog to influence change at Roger Williams University. The Rhode Island's Future website consistently addresses human rights issues and advocacy in a medium for the new millennium.
Ardent Democrat Matt has also been selected to go to the DNC in Denver:
PAWTUCKET - Rhode Island Democratic Party Chairman Bill Lynch congratulated RIFuture.org founder Matt Jerzyk [yesterday] on being named to the Democratic National Convention's "State Blogging Corps." One blogger was selected by the DNC from every state to accompany the local delegation to the August nominating convention and offer their unique perspective to online audiences that will be closely reading and watching from home.
"Matt's done a great job helping to bring new people and new ideas into our party. His site has become a must-read for people who follow politics in Rhode Island, and his sincere passion for social justice and equal rights is truly representative of what the Democratic Party has always stood for," Lynch said.
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.
Matt has the details:
Attention political junkies!
There will be a screening of THE WAR ROOM, the 1992 Clinton campaign documentary on Wednesday, May 7th at 700pm at Local 121's speakeasy (downstairs). Marti Rosenberg Yours truly will be moderating the post discussion with Scott MacKay, Ian Donnis, and Kate Coyne-McCoy.
This event is free and open to the public.
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.
Monday, April 28, 2008
While US Senator Jack Reed's disavowals of interest in a Cabinet job may be familiar to readers of this blog, G. Wayne Miller's charasterically lengthy portrait of the senator in the Sunday ProJo made for an excellent read, speaking to his stature and his diligence. It's no wonder that he routinely rates as Rhode Island's most popular elected official.
In his 12th year in the U.S. Senate and 16th year in Congress, Rhode Island's senior senator has established himself as a leading voice on military and national-defense issues. With seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and Kennedy's health committee, Reed has also emerged as an authority on economic and working-class issues. Reed is 50th in Senate seniority, but Knowlegis, a nonpartisan Congressional analysis group, ranks him the 17th most powerful senator overall –– ahead of Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd, former presidential candidates. ....
ALTHOUGH A search would surely find detractors in Washington, none surface during several days spent with Reed in the capital. Even senators who disagree politically with his liberal social politics and his stand on Iraq acknowledge respect for him. That stand is incorporated in legislation, the June 2006 Levin-Reed amendment. The amendment would require the Secretary of Defense to begin reducing the number of American forces in Iraq within 90 days of adoption. The amendment does not yet have the support needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
"I've served in the Senate with great Rhode Island senators," Majority Leader Harry Reid says. "John Chafee was my pal, my friend. I liked him so very much. And then, of course, Senator Pell was a wonderful man –– totally different than Chafee but somebody I got along with. Jack fits the mold of how I see senators from Rhode Island, even though those two were much more patrician and came from families with lots of money. Jack didn't but he's still as good as those two great senators. If you asked me to say something bad about Jack, I'd have trouble finding it."
Someone I know once wrote to Reed's office with a constituent issue. If memory serves, the constituent received a return letter the next day.
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!”
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
Last week, when I took part in a taping of A Lively Experiment, Ron St. Pierre asked whether it was wrong for state lawmakers to take a spring break with the state facing such dire fiscal problems. Lou Pulner offered the best response, describing how the traditional last-minute passage of a cascade of legislation poses a greater concern.
Now, House Finance, on the second day after the legislative break, says it is expected to vote today on the supplemental budget. While a small number of individuals controlling the process is status quo on Smith Hill, it hardly seems to offer the chance for thorough consideration of the budget.
STATE HOUSE – The House Finance Committee is expected to vote on the supplemental budget (2008-H 7204) for the 2008 fiscal year this evening. The committee is scheduled to meet today, April 22, at the rise of the House session (likely sometime after 5 p.m.) in Room 35 in the basement of the State House. The committee has canceled all other business it had planned for today.
The committee is also scheduled to take up numerous bills this week at hearings at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday at the rise of the House session, the committee will hold a hearing on the status, outlook and prospects for Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium. All hearings will be held in Room 35.
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/
Monday, April 21, 2008
From the Young Dems:
We hope you can join us at our next meeting, which will be held . . . on Tuesday, April 22nd at 8:00PM. The meeting will be held at the Cactus Grille, located at 800 Allens Avenue in Providence
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!
We hope to see you there! Tell your friends and invite others!
Visit us on the web at: 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. | |