FLIP FLOP!!!!! ??????

I do not know the appropriate citation for the column below. It was posted on the Michiganders for Obama listserv. It got a warm reception. While I do not agree with every detail of the piece, the spirit of it is right on target. Barack's un-doctrinaire approach to the world is what makes him attractive. At the same time, it challenges the comfort of progressives. Filibustering the FISA bill would have been great theater and in your face to Bush, in particular, and more generally, the right-wing in this country, it is hard to know what he compromised in his acquiescence, but he may have looked more presidential by leaving the fight on the campaign trail.


The left generally, and the Socialist Workers Party in particular, accused Barack of demonizing black males. He did nothing of the sort. He is addressing the issue of uplift in the black community. While racism is a major problem facing blacks in capitalist America, a system that puts profits before people stands in the way of change toward a more just America for all Americans. That change must be both internal and external to the black community. Social and economic justice are central to toward such change. Ralph "out-of-touch" Nader even had the audacity of accusing Barack of running away from racism. When in all of his celebrated but now ego-maniacal drive has racism been central to Nader's anti-corporate crusades? He has refused to "respect" the politics of America's reality. Some, not a few, blame Nader for Bush's ascension to the White House in 2000. He has reduces himself to being an also-ran at its truest meaning of the term.



It was a bit stunning for the agnostics of the left to find Barack appealing to "people of faith." On the other hand, it is important to understand that the Jerry Falwels and Pat Robertsons of the world have given "people of faith" a bad name. Many of the real "evangelicals" of this world have been people like Father Groppi, fighting racism with NAACP Youth Group in Milwaukee, Bruce Kunder, a young white minister who lost his life to a bulldozer in Cleveland fighting against segregated housing, the Berrigan Brothers, whose burglary of the F.B.I. office in Media, Pa unveiled Cointelpro, or the Mary Knoll Nuns, whose lives were taken from then because they dared to pursue justice for peasants in El Salvador and others too numerous to name fighting for a justice that all of the left are in concert with. Against what we face in search of justice, all that can help should provide the much needed service -- believers and non-believers.

On the death penalty: Having the state play the role of taking someone's life seems to be an anathema to a democratic society and human decency. The killing of Saddam Husein at the behest of our government was grotesque. On the other hand, the reality is that the recent rape and murder of the 12 year-old by her uncle, a repeat offender, should at least give pause to knee-jerk opposition to the death penalty. The victim of the case before the Supreme Court was a case of a black victim of a black relative the perpetrator. The State of Louisiana had ruled his death. What is the appropriate sentence for child rapists?



The problem with Barack is that he is different but his instincts are good. He has lived the life of America's working class. This will be a first. He will authentically be a president not only by the people, or a president for the people, he will be a president of the people, including black people. From community organizer to president. All of a sudden, propaganda becomes reality!!!


The piece below begins to get at this complexity.
RGN

OBAMA NOT FLIP-FLOPPING

by Lynette McGrath

In all of the right-wing and left-wing chatter about Obama having shifted his position on a number of issues since he began his campaign for the presidency, I think we've lost sight of who Obama is, what his history tells us, and what he himself has told us.

What was clear from the moment of Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention in Boston in 2004, was that he was ready to lead a new movement that would unite Americans, speak to them all, lessen paralyzing partisan divisions, negotiate across the aisle-Democrats and Republicans together, and forge a new way of making decisions that would be inclusive. His legislative history and his comments throughout the primary campaign tell us that he favors a pragmatic compromise system of doing politics. He also sees himself as an appropriate embodiment of this message, emphasizing the way he himself unifies the diversity of black and white, Ghanian and American, humble origins and personal success.

I believe that progressives downplayed this message of unity and compromise and made Obama into something he never was. They thought the message of change was about a far-left progressivism that would ride over the right because that's what they themselves wanted and needed, after years of being battered by the right-wing agenda. But change is not necessarily about revolution. Obama has always been about inclusion, which isn't possible if only the progressive agenda is pushed. Now progressives are disappointed that their image is not being acted out. I remember being with friends during the primary who were talking Obama up as a left-wing progressive and thinking that wasn't quite what I heard him offering. Yet I felt happy with his candidacy because he seemed to me to be talking about the sensible compromise politics I understand from British ways of doing political business. It's a method that, when it works, gets things done to benefit the greatest possible number, but not all, and usually not those on either end of the spectrum.

Obama's commitment to the idea of unity, of valuing all and including all, is fundamental to his message and goal. He is not a liberal ideologue. He is a liberal open to compromise. He is also a sensible, rational, responsible leader who takes care to work out pragmatic solutions to difficult problems. Unlike George Bush and even Bill Clinton, who packaged his speeches as simply as possible and whose vocabulary count in his public speeches was even less than Reagan's or either Bush's, Obama acknowledges and takes account of nuance and the subtleties embedded in complicated issues. "What I don't do when I'm campaigning is to try to press a lot of hot buttons and use a lot of cheap applause buttons, because I want people to get a sense of how I think about this process," said Obama. "I think that one of the problems with political speeches is that we all know what folks want to hear. We know who the conventional, stereotypical enemies are on any given issue, and we have a tendency, I think, to play up to that. And I actually think that we're in this moment in history right now where honesty, admitting complexity is a good thing."

Psychologists tell us that when people first fall in love they go through a process called cathexis, in which the lover makes the beloved into something he or she wants and needs the other to be. After a period of time, both lover and beloved begin to see each other as they really are. This is what is happening with liberal progressives and Obama now. A relationship reality check is going on. It is not that Obama is "flip-flopping," but that liberal progressives are coming to see him for who he is-a grownup, thoughtful, non ideological politician who offers Americans a balanced, inclusive, and cooperative political future.

In his speech to the 2004 convention, Obama said,

"Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America, there's the United States of America. . . . We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America." And "[W]e are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief, "I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's' keeper," that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum. Out of many, one."

Christopher Wills, 6/25/2008 6:00:10 PMBookmark and Share, looking back on Obama's history in the Illinois legislature, writes that, "As an Illinois legislator, Barack Obama fought to expand aid to the poor-and backed legislation to withhold welfare from parents abusing drugs. He opposed making it easier to impose the death penalty on gang members, and supported it for people who kill volunteers in community policing programs. He consistently supported gun control. He also voted to let retired police and military personnel carry concealed weapons.

Just how liberal was he?

In all, Obama's record from nearly eight years in the Illinois Senate suggests someone who believes strongly that government can make life better for people, whether by offering financial help, banning dangerous guns or providing health care.

But Obama, now the Democratic candidate for president, was no ideologue. He often cooperated with Republican lawmakers, co-sponsoring their legislation and working with them on compromises. "People on both sides of the aisle would find him to be someone who would reach across to find out why people think the way they do," said William Mahar, a former Republican state senator. "He wouldn't talk just to people who agreed with him."

On Iraq, from the beginning, Obama has said that we need to be "as careful getting out as we were careless getting in." He told George Stephanopolous in a "This Week" interview in May, 2007 that he could support a war-funding bill that includes benchmarks but lacks a timetable for withdrawal.
Obama has emphasized his support for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, but also says his policy would need to accommodate to the ongoing situation in Iraq.
"I think we have some moral and humanitarian responsibilities to the Iraqi people," says Obama. "And that has to be factored in. I can't anticipate what Iraq will look like a year from now, because so much depends on how we carry out this phased redeployment and how effective we are when it comes to diplomacy."

In his health care program, Obama also hews to a workable middle ground. Rather than mandating universal health coverage and trying probably futilely to mandate coverage for all, he will set up a new, subsidized, government-operated insurance plan for people who aren't covered by their employers or Medicare. He acknowledges the difficulty and expense in potentially criminalizing young healthy people who refuse to sign up for health insurance.

His economic policy is also a compromise between the classical economic theories of Keynes and Friedman. On the whole, he seems to accept a theory that allows the free market system to operate freely as long as it continues to correct itself, but the government will intervene when it fails to do so. All credit card and mortgage issuers, and other financial services firms, will be forced to disclose all their charges clearly, fully, and in plain language. Firms that don't issue 401 K plans for their employees would be required to open a direct deposit retirement account for their workers, with an opt-out clause. For the first $1000 in savings that an employee contributed, the government would provide a $500 tax credit.

Further reading from Karen McCool:

he has had a long history of working across the aisle (compromise) ... here's a rundown of his bipartisan legislation (oct 06)
<http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/10/barack_obama.html>http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/10/barack_obama.html

Obama takes bipartisan approach (Jan 08)
<http://dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/jan/17/obama-takes-bipartisan-approach-people/>http://dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/jan/17/obama-takes-bipartisan-approach-people/

Obama calls for bipartisan approachto health care (Nov 07)
<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/459705/barack_obama_calls_for_bipartisan_approach.html?cat=5>http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/459705/barack_obama_calls_for_bipartisan_approach.html?cat=5

Here's a good article on his history in chicago politics... and his "collaborative" approach

<http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0417/p01s07-uspo.html?page=2>http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0417/p01s07-uspo.html?page=2

and you have to read this one...from Fox news no less:
Obama's state senate years show bipartisan record
<http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/25/obamas-state-senate-years-show-bipartisan-record/>http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/25/obamas-state-senate-years-show-bipartisan-record/

<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5171.html>http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5171.html
excerpt (Jul 2007)

Here's an interesting one from Feb 06

<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158975,00.html>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158975,00.html

NRA to Attack Barack

NRA plans $40M fall blitz targeting Obama By: Jonathan Martin July 1, 2008 03:55 PM EST
The National Rifle Association plans to spend about $40 million on this year’s campaign, with $15 million of that devoted to portraying Barack Obama as a threat to the Second Amendment rights upheld last week by the Supreme Court. “Our members understand that if Barack Obama is elected president, and he has support in the Senate to confirm anti-gun Supreme Court nominees, [the District of Columbia v. Heller decision] could be taken away from us in the future,” Chris Cox, head of the NRA’s political arm, told Politico. The politically powerful gun rights group will split its message efforts between communicating with its 4 million members and the tens of millions more firearms owners across the country. This fall, NRA members will get automated phone calls, mail pieces and pre-election editions of the group’s three magazines making the case against Obama. More broadly, the group will use an independent expenditure effort to hammer the Democratic nominee via TV, radio and newspaper ads in some of about 15 battleground states in the Midwest and Mountain West. “We look forward to showing him ‘bitter,’” Cox said, referring to Obama’s statement this spring that some in rural America “cling” to guns and religion out of bitterness. Since 2000, Democrats have made a conscious decision to avoid alienating gun owners and Second Amendment enthusiasts, as many in the party believe a NRA-stoked backlash cost Al Gore his home state of Tennessee , as well as West Virginia and Arkansas, in the 2000 presidential election. In the days leading up to Election Day four years ago, Democratic nominee Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) even went so far as to symbolically court gun owners, donning camouflage and hoisting a 12-gauge in what turned out to be a goose hunt in more ways than one. And Obama is now charting a similar course, never raising the gun issue on the stump except, when asked, to say that he respects Second Amendment rights. Indeed, the day Heller came down, he issued a carefully worded statement that indicated neither support nor opposition to the decision but clarity on a broader point meant to assure gun owners that he’s not a threat. McCain voiced enthusiastic support for the Heller decision. “Sen. Obama has always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms and will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, hunters and sportsmen as president,” said spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Sen. Obama also believes that we can work together to enact common-sense laws, like closing the gun show loophole and improving our background check system, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.” One pro-gun Democrat in the House said the decision would actually help Obama by clarifying that gun ownership is an individual right and further dissuading Democrats from pursuing what has proved to be a political loser at the national level. “It’s a nonissue,” said Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents a blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio-area district and has won the backing of the NRA. “Democrats have learned a lesson to not campaign on it.” And, he said, “the reality is that there is not going to be any gun legislation to get through Congress.” But Cox said the 5-4 decision had galvanized sportsmen and Second Amendment enthusiasts and would thrust the issue back into the political arena.“This is the first salvo in a step-by-step restoration of this right,” Cox said calling Heller “only the end of the beginning.” And the next step in that cause could be a politically awkward one for Obama. The NRA filed suit on Friday to overturn handgun laws in Chicago, Obama’s hometown, and three Windy City suburbs “You put a microphone to his face and ask: ‘Do you support the Chicago gun control laws?’” said Grover Norquist, an NRA board member, envisioning how to prolong the story and make the Illinois senator squirm. It’s a quandary that the NRA and the McCain campaign hope will haunt Obama in battleground states with a deep attachment to the hunting culture that crosses party lines. “We’ve probably still got 800,000 going afield opening day of deer season,” said Mike Bouchard, a former Michigan state Senate leader and gun rights advocate in a state where some schools on the Upper Peninsula still close on the first day of deer season. “And we’re very suspicious of people that pretend to be supportive of Second Amendment rights and hunting.” “We can create a wedge in unions by highlighting his anti-gun background,” Paul Erhardt, a GOP strategist who works closely with members of the gun rights community, said of Obama. While the gun culture is typically associated with the South, it’s actually the industrial Midwest where hunting is most popular. Pennsylvania has the most NRA members per capita of any state, and, after Texas, the next four states that sell the most hunting-related goods are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri, according to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. And while Bill Clinton, Gore and Kerry could all handle a gun and had been hunting many times over the years, Obama has never hunted in his life and is the furthest thing from an outdoorsman. Yet, as with so many issues on which Obama is vulnerable, McCain isn’t exactly a perfect alternative. Aside from not being a hunter, he earned the enmity of some in the gun rights movement for his advocacy of campaign finance reform and background checks at gun shows. “I don’t think they help the Republican Party at all, but I don’t think they should in any way play a major role in the Republican Party’s policy making,” McCain told CNN in 2000. Reminded of the NRA’s past clashes with McCain, Cox acknowledged the “disagreements” but quickly cited the other option. “Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment,” Cox said, noting that McCain had signed the amicus brief in support of Heller while Obama had not. Still, the NRA hasn’t yet endorsed McCain and hasn’t even decided if it will make an endorsement in the race. In the nation’s heartland, Democrats argue that the decision will not be a transcendent issue in the race. Ryan said his Reagan Democrat constituents, most of whom backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in the primary, were open to Obama and that the key was to reassure them on cultural issues before shifting to safe terrain. “It’s guys like [Gov.] Ted Strickland and Tim Ryan saying, ‘He’s cool; he’s all right; he’s not going to do anything on guns or abortion that you don’t like,’” said Ryan, who is also against abortion rights. “And he is with us rock-solid on economic issues, education and health care.” But if Cox and the NRA have anything to do with it, some of those traditional moderates will be stuck on “bitter” and Obama’s past support for strict gun-control measures. “Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories,” Cox said. “I can assure him he’s wrong on both.”
© 2008 Capitol News Company, LL

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DB670669-3048-5C12-0025B038CA8D052E

Barack Reaches Out to Believers

July 2, 2008

Obama Seeks Bigger Role for Religious Groups

By JEFF ZELENY and MICHAEL LUO

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that if elected president he would expand the delivery of social services through churches and other religious organizations, vowing to achieve a goal he said President Bush had fallen short on during his two terms.

“The challenges we face today — from saving our planet to ending poverty — are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Mr. Obama said outside a community center here. “We need an all-hands-on-deck approach.”

Some Democrats have previously backed similar efforts, but Mr. Bush’s version, a centerpiece of his first-term agenda, has been a lightning rod for criticism from those concerned about the separation of church and state and those who argued that Mr. Bush had used it to further a conservative political agenda.

In embracing the same general approach as Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama ran the political risk of alienating those of his supporters who would prefer that government keep its distance from religion.

But Mr. Obama’s plan pointedly departed from the Bush administration’s stance on one fundamental issue: whether religious organizations that get federal money for social services can take faith into account in their hiring. Mr. Bush has said yes. Mr. Obama said no.

“If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion,” Mr. Obama said. “Federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

Mr. Obama’s position that religious organizations would not be able to consider religion in their hiring for such programs would constitute a deal-breaker for many evangelicals, said several evangelical leaders, who represent a political constituency Mr. Obama has been trying to court.

“For those of who us who believe in protecting the integrity of our religious institutions, this is a fundamental right,” said Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “He’s rolling back the Bush protections. That’s extremely disappointing.”

Early in his first term, Mr. Bush issued executive orders expressly allowing religion-based groups receiving federal money to consider religion in their employment decisions, although confusion often remains in this area because of conflicting federal, state and local laws.

Martha Minnow, a professor of law at Harvard University who has written about religion-based initiatives and has advised the Obama campaign on the issue, said Mr. Obama would move to “return the law to what it was before the current administration,” in other words barring the consideration of religion in hiring decisions for such programs that receive federal financing.

“I don’t think there’s anything too controversial about that,” said. “Any religious organization that does not want to comply with that requirement simply doesn’t have to take the money.”

But evangelical leaders said not allowing religious groups to hire based on their beliefs would strip them of the very basis for religion-based programs.

“If you can’t hire people within your faith community, then you’ve lost the distinctive that is the reason why faith-based programs exist in the first place,” said Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The idea of augmenting government delivery of social services through community and religious organizations has won varying degrees of support across the ideological spectrum. Although research on the effectiveness of religion-based organizations remains spotty, Mr. Obama said groups would be regularly evaluated on effectiveness.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has struggled to overcome wariness from some evangelicals, has stepped up his outreach to evangelicals and is a proponent of religion-based initiatives as well. A McCain campaign spokesman, Brian Rogers, said Mr. McCain “disagrees with Senator Obama that hiring at faith-based groups should be subject to government oversight.”

Mr. Obama’s plan — his campaign said it would be the “moral center” of his administration — was unfurled against a backdrop freighted with electoral ramifications. Mr. Obama is signaling that he wants to make a push among white evangelical Protestants.

By focusing on centrist and more liberal evangelicals, who have been pushing the movement to broaden its agenda beyond traditional social issues, Mr. Obama is hoping to chip away at a margin that has favored Republicans. His campaign selected Ohio to announce the plan, a state where Mr. Bush engaged in a sprawling voter turnout effort among evangelicals.

Mr. Obama’s proposal was met with praise from leaders like the Rev. Jim Wallis, a prominent spokesman for more liberal evangelicals. Mr. Wallis applauded the fact that Mr. Obama, as a Democrat, was willing to talk about his Christian faith and “wants a faith-based program that’s even better than the Bush program.”

Several former Bush administration officials who had a hand in shaping the current policy, including John J. DiIulio Jr., director of Mr. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001, also applauded Mr. Obama’s proposal. Though the program is widely associated with Mr. Bush, similar ideas have been supported by Democrats.

“His plan reminds me of much that was best in both then-Vice President Al Gore’s and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s respective first speeches on the subject in 1999,” Mr. DiIulio said.

But the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Mr. Obama’s support of a program that Mr. Lynn said had undermined civil liberties and civil rights. “I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration,” Mr. Lynn said. “It ought to be shut down, not continued.”

In one example of how he would use the approach to carry out a policy goal, Mr. Obama proposed $500 million per year to provide summer education for one million poor children, with a goal of closing the achievement gaps between wealthy students and poorer ones. The campaign did not provide a cost proposal for the full program, but said the educational piece could be financed by reducing the growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the management of surplus government property.

If elected, Mr. Obama said, he would call for a pre-inauguration review of all executive orders pertaining to the religion-based program, particularly those dealing with hiring. The program would “be central to our White House mission,” he said, and would consider elevating the director of his Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to a cabinet-level post.

As he announced his proposal on Tuesday, standing outside the Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Mr. Obama harked back to his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, where Roman Catholic charities financed his programs.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under Mr. Bush but eventually grew disenchanted and left, said the Obama plan seemed to address some of the shortcomings with the Bush administration’s efforts, making, for example, religion-based initiatives part of the domestic policy structure.

Mr. Kuo, who has criticized the Bush effort as getting bogged down in partisan politics, was asked by the Obama campaign to review its proposal.

“I think it is a bold, smart, engaging attempt to use religious organizations to help the poor and to do for the faith community what the Bush administration could not,” Mr. Kuo said. “But I’m concerned that his position on hiring rights will bog down this initiative just like Bush’s position on the other side did the same thing.”

Jeff Zeleny reported from Zanesville, and Michael Luo from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/politics/02obama.html?

Huffington: No Move to the Middle

July 2, 2008

Arianna Huffington

Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers

Posted June 30, 2008 | 03:14 PM (EST)

---

Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of "I'll do these things for you" with Obama's "Let's do these things together":

"This has been the premise of Barack's politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer," Axelrod told me. "He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it."

Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.

In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters -- voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart -- allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.

Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an "unlikely candidate." Which he certainly was -- and still is. And one of the things that turned him from "unlikely" upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters -- some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn't turn out in 2004 -- to engage in the system.

So why start playing to the political fence sitters -- staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?

In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"

Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.

When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us -- especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.

The transition between the primaries and the general election -- and from insurgent to frontrunner -- is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point -- and stick with it.

In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama's attempts at "shifting toward the center," Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a "good politician. He's doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."

But isn't being a "good politician" as it's meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:

"What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.... The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."

That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said that day, "but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Was that just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric?

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.

Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/memo-to-obama-moving-to-t_b_110026.html

The Nation: Barack and the Evangelicals

Preaching to the Choir

By Max Blumenthal

On June 10, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama convened a meeting in a law office in downtown Chicago with a wide array of about thirty evangelical leaders, in an unprecedented effort to win their support. Obama insisted that the meeting remain entirely off the record, forbidding participants from disclosing his statements to the press. His campaign has kept the names of attendees a closely guarded secret. But through interviews with participants and overlooked statements in obscure publications of the Christian press, a first-hand picture of the meeting emerges, starkly at odds with the news reports that accepted the formal version at face value.

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect an error in earlier version that reported Stephen Strang is publisher of the forthcoming book by Stephen Mansfield, The Faith of Barack Obama. In fact, the book will be published by Thomas Nelson.

News accounts about the meeting stated that Obama impressed his audience with his sincerity, depth of theological knowledge and communication skills. But according to those present, he did little to assuage the hostility that many of the assembled--particularly the conservative white evangelicals--harbor toward him and his liberal positions on social issues. Those differences reached a crescendo when the Rev. Franklin Graham directly confronted Obama about his supposedly Muslim background and Christian authenticity.

Franklin Graham, son of the evangelical icon Billy Graham and head of the international Christian aid organization Samaritan's Purse, was seated next to Obama at the meeting. He peppered Obama with pointed questions, repeatedly demanding to know if the senator believed that "Jesus was the way to God or merely a way." Graham, who once incited an international controversy by calling Islam a "very evil and wicked religion," proceeded to inquire about the Muslim faith of Obama's father, suggesting that Obama himself may be a Muslim.

"They focused on abortion, gay marriage, and then Franklin Graham tried to get Senator Obama saved," said Rev. Eugene Rivers, an African-American pastor from Boston who attended the meeting. Rivers told the Religion News Service that Graham pointedly questioned Obama's "father's connections to Islam." Obama reportedly said of his father, "The least of things he was was Islamic."

Graham's spokesman, Mark DeMoss, denies that Graham asked Obama about his father's Muslim faith. DeMoss did, however, confirm that Graham questioned whether the candidate believed Jesus was the only way to Heaven. "Jesus is the only way for me. I'm not in a position to judge other people," Obama responded, according to Rivers.

Stephen Strang, a right-wing Pentecostal, was among those invited to Obama's meeting. He is the multimillionaire publisher of Charisma, an evangelical magazine, and a signatory of the World Evangelical Alliance statement urging evangelization of Jews. In naming him one of the twenty-five "most influential evangelicals in America," Time called Strang "a Bush favorite ever since his homegrown Christian publishing house, Strang Communications, released The Faith of George W. Bush, the first spiritual biography of the President, in 2003." "We didn't write it to help Bush, but it no doubt helped elect him," declares Strang. He is also a close associate of controversial End Times theology proponent Pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain recently rejected after a firestorm of criticism. Strang is a member of the board of Hagee's organization, Christians United For Israel, and a publisher of Hagee's book on Israel. Strang told me that several participants, not just Graham, expressed concern about the Muslim background of certain Obama family members. Obama replied that he had hardly known his father, who left his family when Obama was 2, and he sought to downplay the notion that his stepfather, an Indonesian Muslim, was active in his faith. "I remember [Obama] saying, 'We never went to the mosque when we lived in Indonesia,' " Strang said.

Strang told me that as the meeting drew to a close, one evangelical leader who supported Obama ("a friend" Strang refused to name) stood and "lectured" the other attendees about the faith of Obama's opponent, Republican Senator John McCain. The pro-Obama preacher railed about McCain's divorce as evidence of his lack of religious commitment, and added that McCain has demonstrated discomfort with public expressions of faith. "He also said that McCain swore on the Senate floor," Strang recounted. "He seemed to be saying that if Christians can support a flawed candidate like McCain, the implication was, why couldn't they support a candidate with flawed policies like Obama?"

Strang recalled that Obama did not rebuke the minister for his personal and pointed remarks about McCain. Instead, according to Strang, Obama simply smiled and said he would not make any attempt to undermine his opponent's faith.

Strang said he found Obama's outreach to evangelicals refreshing. "Obama was very clear that he wanted to involve people of faith in the process and he seemed to say that he would be inviting people like this to the White House," said Strang, who was invited twice to the White House by George W. Bush and once by his father. "He was very sincere and I think he scored some points." But Strang was not persuaded. He is a strong supporter of McCain. "I support him 99 percent. How I vote is based on whether the candidate is for or against life, period," Strang said.

Besides Strang, Graham and Rivers, attendees at the meeting included conservative Christianity Today editor David Neff, Evangelical Lutheran Church President Mark Hanson, conservative legal scholar and Reagan Justice Department official Doug Kmiec--who has been denied communion for his support for Obama--and T.D. Jakes, the Dallas-based African-American Pentecostal mega-church pastor who has supplanted the black church's traditional social justice teachings with "prosperity gospel" theology, preaching faith as the way to the promised land of wealth and status.

"I'm not against marching," Jakes told PBS in 2007. "But in the '60s, the challenge of the black church was to march. And there are times now perhaps that we may need to march. But there's more facing us than social justice. There's personal responsibility, motivating and equipping people to live the best lives that they can."

"Obama is said to consult Jakes on a weekly basis and called him a 'role model' of a Christian who puts his faith into social action," Sarah Posner reported in her book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters.

Another influential African-American prosperity gospel pastor, Kirbyjon Caldwell, attended the June 10 meeting with Obama. "It is unscriptural not to own land," the preacher has declared. Caldwell, a former bond dealer who founded the country's largest Methodist congregation, the Houston-based Windsor Village, has been among George W. Bush's most vocal and visible black backers. He introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention, delivered the benedictions at his 2001 and 2005 inaugural ceremonies and presided over the wedding ceremony of Jenna Bush. Bush has rewarded Caldwell's good works by lavishing his missions with federal faith-based grants.

But almost as soon as Obama declared his campaign for the presidency, Caldwell broke from the GOP, delivering a roaring endorsement for the Democrat from Illinois, hailing him for his "character, confidence and courage." "For the last twelve months, I've been talking to people who are part of the [Obama] campaign very, very regularly," Caldwell said recently.

Caldwell's endorsement did not come without controversy. Just days after Obama delivered a speech criticizing homophobia in the black church, some gay bloggers revealed that Caldwell's own Windsor Village church hosted a ministry that, according to its website, was "created to provide Christ centered instruction for those seeking freedom from homosexuality." Caldwell denied any knowledge of the ministry, though he refused to condemn it. Yet when the revelation spread from the blogosphere to the mainstream media, and proof surfaced that the ministry was an integral component of Windsor Village, Caldwell's congregation scrubbed all mention of it from its website.

Behind Obama's religious outreach effort is a group of avowedly Christian political consultants who insist that white evangelicals can be persuaded to vote Democratic if candidates overtly display their religiosity. Among these consultants is Obama campaign aide Joshua DuBois, an African-American lay minister who organized his candidate's recent meeting with evangelical leaders. DuBois himself has sidestepped questions about Obama's pro-choice politics and support for same-sex civil unions. As a paid member of the candidate's staff, DuBois has refused to state his own position on abortion. Instead, he emphasizes the appeal of the senator's social gospel message.

"There are folks who are concerned about abortion, they're concerned about gay marriage," DuBois told David Brody, a reporter for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, "but at the same time, they're concerned about health care, they're concerned about poverty, they're concerned about the war in Iraq. So I wouldn't necessarily put [Christian voters] into the two camps like that."

Mara Vanderslice has been called the "faith guru" by The Hill in Washington, DC. Her consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, recently formed a political action committee, the Matthew 25 Network, to advocate on Obama's behalf. In the past, Vanderslice has advised her clients not only to downplay their support for abortion rights and gay rights but also never to use the phrase "separation of church and state." Hired by Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, she ultimately found herself sidelined. "She was a little bit overzealous," the late Father Robert Drinan, a liberal Catholic legend and Kerry adviser, told the New York Times. Vanderslice claimed results two years later in the Congressional midterms. Her clients, she said, citing exit polling, garnered 10 percent more of the evangelical vote than two years before. Whether Democratic gains among so-called "values voters" were a result of Vanderslice's inspired appeals, or simply a reflection of the nationwide backlash against the Republican Congress and Bush's policies, does not deter her from taking credit.

As Obama has emerged, he has embraced Vanderslice's tactics. In 2006, during a speech before the Call to Renewal conference, a gathering of moderate evangelicals convened by Rev. Jim Wallis, Obama sought to break with Democratic orthodoxy by attacking unnamed "secularists." "But what I am suggesting is this--secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square," Obama declared. "Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

Obama tries to present himself as a breed apart from other Democrats, like Kerry--a liberal Catholic who was uncomfortable trumpeting his religion like an evangelical. He hopes his sermonizing before audiences such as Call To Renewal will provide reasons for the Christian right to abandon its hostility to the Democrats and rally to him.

The Backlash Builds

In mid-June, Obama's aide Joshua DuBois called Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for the Christian-right mega-ministry Focus on the Family, to request a meeting at Focus headquarters in Colorado Springs. Minnery is the top political adviser to James Dobson, founder and CEO of Focus on the Family, far and away the most influential leader of the Christian right. DuBois's request for a meeting with Dobson was apparently not freelancing but approved by the highest level of the Obama campaign and encouraged by his new religious consultants.

There are few less conciliatory and more divisive figures in American political life than James Dobson. He has vowed never to vote for a politician who does not oppose all forms of abortion, and has attacked conservative Republican lawmakers for making even the slightest compromises on social issues. Through his daily radio broadcast--the third most popular program in the United States--Dobson has likened stem cell research to Nazi experiments, equated the Supreme Court with the Ku Klux Klan and warned that gay marriage will lead to "marriage between daddies and little girls.... between a man and his donkey." Dobson has never exhibited any sign that he would moderate his draconian stands or partisan attacks.

DuBois's entreaty to Dobson was surprising in light of Obama's harsh criticism of the Focus leader. In his 2006 Call to Renewal speech, Obama compared Dobson to the Rev. Al Sharpton, another polarizing figure whom Dobson has publicly attacked. "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama proclaimed. "And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?"

That statement provided the basis for a red-faced radio tirade by Dobson on June 24--only days after Minnery fielded DuBois's meeting request. With Minnery seated at his side during his broadcast, Dobson lashed out at Obama, questioning the sincerity of his Christian convictions and accusing him of offering a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution. "I think [Obama's] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson fumed. "He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

The same day, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the far-right Rev. Don Wildmon echoed his ally Dobson's attacks. From the studios of the American Family Association's radio outlet, Wildmon homed in on Obama's declaration that America is "no longer just a Christian nation." "Go back to Rodney King--can't we all get along?" Wildmon drawled sarcastically, referring to the black man whose beating by Los Angeles cops provoked citywide riots in 1992. "This is where [Obama's] coming from."

That afternoon, another close Dobson ally, Gary Bauer, an evangelical presidential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2000, fired off an e-mail promoting Dobson's broadcast. "Anyone who takes his or her faith seriously should be deeply concerned about the possible election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States," Bauer wrote. "Obama is...the most proabortion candidate for president the Democrats have ever nominated."

Since McCain distanced himself from right-wing pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley, Bauer has emerged as McCain's most influential Christian- right backer. Dobson, for his part, remains suspicious of the insufficiently antigay Arizona senator, who has criticized the religious right in the past. Bauer's now daily e-mail blasts invariably contain appeals on McCain's behalf. In his attack on Obama, Bauer declared, "There is only one candidate who can prevent [Obama] from becoming president. That candidate is John McCain, who yesterday at California State University at Fresno once again attacked Barack Obama's proabortion extremism."

The timing of the Christian right's wave of attacks on Obama suggests movement-wide coordination. Dobson, Wildmon and Bauer are leading members of the Arlington Group, a weekly conference that brings together most of the major Christian-right outfits to devise political strategy. Their barrage against Obama was only an opening volley. As their campaign intensifies, the Arlington Group is likely to tighten its coordination, targeting the movement's message on Obama's character.

The Obama campaign's effort to neutralize Dobson has swiftly turned into open warfare. Within hours of Dobson's broadcast, a website appeared called "James Dobson Doesn't Speak For Me," featuring point-by-point refutations of his denunciation. Originally registered by Alyssa Martin, an Obama campaign intern working directly under DuBois, the registration was quietly transfered to Caldwell, the erstwhile Bush supporter now identified on the site as the de facto leaderof a "coalition of pastors" supporting Obama. Meanwhile, Vanderslice has begun raising money to buy ads in Colorado Springs (the home of Focus on the Family) highlighting Dobson's record of extreme statements.

While Obama is working to cut into the GOP's evangelical base, McCain is quietly touring the country, meeting with Christian leaders. On June 27, McCain met with Dobson's point man in Ohio, Phil Burress. "We realized that he's with us on the majority of the issues we care about," Burress said afterward. Three days later, McCain was off to the mountaintop retreat of the Graham family, where he met with both Franklin and Billy. If a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken in June is any indication, McCain has cause for confidence; he trounced Obama among white evangelical voters by a margin of 68 to 22 percent. But there remains a question of turnout for McCain .

"McCain won't have any trouble convincing evangelicals he's on their side," Warren Smith, the editor of Evangelical Press News Service, says. "The only reason they're holding back their support is to see how much they can get out of him."

For the Obama campaign, there may be little to lose by plumping for conservative Christian votes. As Smith remarked to me, "If Obama can't make any inroads with these [evangelical] folks, at least he can say he tried, which allows him to at least create the illusion of new politics. If he can do some good with them, well, great."

With little to lose and everything to gain, Obama has lifted high the cross. But are there invisible strings attached? In victory, his newfound God squad may also want to see how much faith-based benefit they might get out of him. Already, Obama has pledged to reauthorize Bush's faith-based initiative through his new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. "It will be a critical part of my Administration," he has vowed. But Obama should know by now that pastors can have their own agendas, too.

About Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute based in New York City. His work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, The American Prospect and the Washington Monthly. He is a research fellow for Media Matters for America.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080714/blumenthal

Surveillance Vote Protest

Surveillance Protest Group Tops Obama Website

posted by Ari Melber on 07/01/2008 @ 8:19pm

Protesters are storming Barack Obama's website. But they all support Obama.

A grassroots group of activists has been organizing on MyBo, Obama's official social networking portal, to protest the Senator's recent decision to back controversial legislation granting the President more spying powers. The effort hit a big milestone on Tuesday afternoon: It is now the largest self-organized group on Obama's website, topping networks that were launched over a year ago. The spying protest, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," launched last week. (See Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying, The Nation.)

Membership spiked to about 8,900 people on Tuesday, edging out a student group with roughly 8,600 members, and one organizer estimated that the growth rate reached a rapid four percent during the daytime. The group initially spread through the Obama network, since the site's platform instantly connects members through a dedicated email listserve. On Monday, for example, over 200 emails shot across the wire, reaching the roughly 2,300 members who opted to receive individual messages. The exchanges ranged from policy debates, like whether immunity was acceptable if the telephone companies acted in good faith, to organizing strategies, such as promoting the group on sharing sites like Digg. Then some activists open-sourced the project, creating a wiki-hub for additional actions -- from calling Obama's office to urging Keith Olbermann to promote the group -- and launched partner groups on other sites like Facebook.

"To reach number one, we're going to need all of us to start talking to - and emailing - their family and friends," wrote blogger Mike Stark in a missive to the group at 3:46am on Monday. "[Obama] said he'd open up government and respond to the people instead of the special interests," he added, "so let's force him to respond." Stark also recruited members at the blog OpenLeft, while the group began drawing traffic from coverage in Wired, The Nation, TPM, Time, and The New York Times.

The effort comes in a pivotal period for Obama, who is tapping his enthusiastic base for fundraising and voter turnout, yet shifting his message to prioritize general election themes. In many Democratic presidential campaigns, this is precisely the time when the base is ignored – or even defied to demonstrate the candidate's independence and "centrism." Obama's base activists, however, are still getting heard. They are reaching each other directly, through the campaign's network, and indirectly, with blogs and reporters covering their argument that Obama should not have backtracked on civil liberties. So far, Obama has not responded substantively, though his campaign was forced to acknowledge the "dialogue" under media prodding. But from the message boards, it looks like most group members want Obama to respond by reaffirming his original opposition to the White House spying bill, not simply acknowledging the conversation.

While Obama's advisers may view this week's activism as inevitable liberal tensions in a general election -- an odd gloss, given the Fourth Amendment's bipartisan credentials -- the key dynamic is the development of a sophisticated network of activists. After all, they're not asking the candidate to be more liberal, they're asking him to hold strong on his own promise to oppose the spying legislation.

Even conservative bloggers are impressed that the Obama Campaign provides an open platform for supporters to organize against the candidate's position. "Rather than react in accordance with the practices of most campaigns by shutting and muffling dissent," observed the GOP blog The Next Right, "Obama is providing dissidents (many of whom are supporters of his) the opportunity to organize on his campaign web-site." The blog contrasted the approach to top-down campaigns on the right. "Can you imagine a Bush campaign reacting like this? I can't."

Netroots activists are imagining -- and demanding -- an even more receptive response from Obama.

Update: A print article in today's New York Times covers the growing impact of this MyBo group, with more reaction from the campaign:

Thousands of [Obama's most ardent supporters] are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision. In recent days, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on a social networking site on Mr. Obama's own campaign Web site. They are calling on Mr. Obama to reverse his decision to endorse legislation supported by President Bush to expand the government's domestic spying powers while also providing legal protection to the telecommunication companies that worked with the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks... For now, the campaign is trying to put a positive spin on the new FISA fight among its supporters. "The fact that there is an open forum on BarackObama.com where supporters can say whether they agree or disagree speaks to a strength of our campaign," said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.

Several activists and bloggers predicted that Mr. Obama's move toward the center on some issues could sharply reduce the intensity of support he has enjoyed from liberal activists. Such enthusiasm helped power his effort to secure the Democratic nomination, and it has been one of his campaign's most important tools for fund-raising and organizing around the country.

Markos Moulitsas, a liberal blogger and founder of the Daily Kos Web site, said he had decided to cut back on the amount of money he would contribute to the Obama campaign because of the FISA reversal. "I will continue to support him," Mr. Moulitsas said in an interview. "But I was going to write him a check, and I decided I would rather put that money with Democrats who will uphold the Constitution."