Many of the calls and conversations I have with people who are Obama supporters express a concern that he is being attacked, viciously, and he is not fighting back. Such fears need calming. 80% of the American people say they are dissatisfied with where we are in this country. Of that number there is a sufficient number of the American people who are sick and tired of both the conservative and Republican brands. The choice of Sarah Palin by McCain has provided a spark in their campaign. There are a number of whites, a few of them former Hillary Clinton supporters, but most disaffected Republicans, who were looking for any excuse to not reveal their racism by voting for McCain. A campaign that was fledgling experienced a decided jump in donations following the annoucment of Palin for the Vice President slot on his ticket.
There is no need to panic. While the Obama campaign does need to rebut the attacks, Obama does not need to get into the dirt with the slimy Republicans. The politics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove will be defeated. The lies worked in the past. The lies worked when the white working class, the so-called “Reagan Democrats,” bought the racist lie that their problem was the Civil Rights Movment and black folks. In this election at this time, not even Sarah Palin can be the “lipstick” on the pig that has been the program of the Republicans and the Obama campaign will expose the and win the election. Bill Clinton says: “Obama will win big” this fall.
On the other hand, it’s not over till it’s over. It’s going to happen and we must make it happen!!! Run to the finish. RGN
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September 12, 2008
Obama Plans Sharper Tone as Party Frets
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
Senator Barack Obama will intensify his assault against Senator John McCain, with new television advertisements and more forceful attacks by the candidate and surrogates beginning Friday morning, as he confronts an invigorated Republican presidential ticket and increasing nervousness in the Democratic ranks.
Mr. McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate and the resulting jolt of energy among Republican voters appear to have caught Mr. Obama and his advisers by surprise and added to concern among some Democrats that the Obama campaign was not pushing back hard enough against Republican attacks in a critical phase of the race.
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama needed to move to seize control of the campaign and to block Mr. McCain from snatching away from him the message that he was the best hope to bring change to Washington.
After back-to-back attack ads by Mr. McCain, including one that misleadingly accused Mr. Obama of endorsing sex education for kindergarten students, the Obama campaign is planning to sharpen attacks on Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin in an effort to counter Mr. McCain’s attempt to present himself as the candidate of change with his choice of Ms. Palin.
Mr. Obama's campaign released two new advertisements this morning that underscored the tougher road it is taking, criticizing Mr. McCain for, among other things, favoring tax cuts for corporations and acknowledging that he doesn't know how to use a computer or send e-mail. "Things have changed in the last 26 years, but John McCain hasn't," an announcer says in one advertisement. "After one president who was out of touch, we just can't afford more of the same."
The new tone is to be presented in a speech by Mr. Obama in New Hampshire and in television interviews with local stations in five swing states, backed up by new advertisements and appearances across the country by supporters.
In addition, advertising themes will be pay equity for women, an issue that has particular resonance as the campaigns battle for female voters, and a more pointed linking of Mr. McCain to President Bush and Republicans in Washington.
But Mr. Obama’s aides said they were confident with the course of the campaign. They said that, other than making some shifts around the edges, particularly in response to Mr. McCain’s effort to seize the change issue from Mr. Obama, they were not planning any major deviation from a strategy that called for a steady escalation of attacks on Mr. McCain as the race heads toward the debates.
That response is characteristic for a campaign that has presented itself as disciplined and unflappable and is reminiscent of the way Mr. Obama’s campaign reacted a year ago when it came under fire from allies who said it was not being tough enough in going after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“We’re sensitive to the fluid dynamics of the campaign, but we have a game plan and a strategy,” said Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe. “We’re familiar with this. And I’m sure between now and Nov. 4 there will be another period of hand-wringing and bed-wetting. It comes with the territory.”
Still, Democrats outside the campaign suggested Mr. Obama should be urgently working to regain control of the message.
“The Obama message has been disrupted in the last week,” said Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama. “It’s a time for Democrats to focus on what the fundamentals are in this election.”
Phil Singer, who was a press secretary for Mrs. Clinton in her primary campaign against Mr. Obama, said, “The Obama people need to reboot and figure out ways to make the McCain-Bush argument newsworthy again.”
The uneasiness among Democrats is the result of a confluence of factors in the week since Mr. McCain accepted his party’s nomination in St. Paul. The selection of Ms. Palin became the defining event of Mr. McCain’s convention, revving up the conservative base and drawing the spotlight away from Mr. Obama.
Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive campaign has sought to put Mr. Obama on the defensive in each news cycle, using any development at hand, like Mr. Obama’s colloquial comment this week about putting “lipstick on a pig,” to keep attention away from Democratic messages about the economy and the similarities between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush.
And a series of quick polls taken after the Republican convention have suggested that Mr. Obama has lost support among white women and independent voters. Polls taken so close to major political events are notoriously unreliable, but Democrats remember what happened in 2004, when Republicans used the period right after Senator John Kerry’s nomination to undercut him with a series of attacks.
By every indication, Mr. Obama’s aides underestimated the impact that Mr. McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin would have on the race. Mr. Obama and his campaign have seemed flummoxed in trying to figure out how to deal with her. His aides said they were looking to the news media to debunk the image of her as a blue-collar reformer, even as they argued that her power to help Mr. McCain was overstated.
“Everyone was astonished that she drew 9,000 people to Lancaster the other night,” said Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod. “But we drew 10,000 people there last week.”
“They got a transient boost from the sort of imagery surrounding her selection,” Mr. Axelrod said. “But I think things will settle in. She will be a candidate and not just a symbol.”
Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s aides said they had been taken aback by the newfound aggressiveness of the McCain campaign under Steve Schmidt, who has played an increasingly powerful role since last summer. Even as the aides have denounced the tactics as unsavory, they acknowledge that Mr. McCain is running a more effective campaign than he was a month ago.
“They had big problems in their campaign, and they made adjustments,” Mr. Axelrod said.
To a large extent, the perception that Mr. Obama is struggling is based on national polls taken in the days after the convention. But Mr. Obama’s campaign views such measures as irrelevant and focuses on what is going on in the 18 or so swing states.
Mr. Plouffe argued that the attention being paid by national news media outlets to events like Mr. Obama’s lipstick comment was not mirrored in local news coverage. What is more, the Obama campaign has filled the airwaves in some states with advertisements that link Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush.
And for all the concern voiced by Democrats to Mr. Obama’s aides that the candidate has not hit Mr. McCain hard enough, he has increasingly assailed Mr. McCain in recent days, mocking his attempt to present himself as an agent of change and denouncing his campaign style as a break from the promise he had made to practice a new kind of politics. Yet, at least on television, Mr. Obama’s critique did not break through the lipstick debate.
Inside the campaign headquarters in Chicago, aides said, there have been no emergency conference calls or special strategy sessions to deal with the new dynamic in the race.
Still, interviews with advisers and supporters suggested a concern not seen in the Obama campaign since its most competitive days in the long primary fight with Mrs. Clinton.
“You can’t be so stubborn that you don’t react or adjust to events,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have been given up for dead any number of times in this process, so it does stiffen your spine a little bit.”
One adjustment for the Obama campaign comes as Mr. McCain is seeking to claim the Democrats’ theme of change by pointing to Ms. Palin. For months, advisers to Mr. Obama had assumed that Mr. McCain would play up his experience; Mr. Plouffe said he welcomed what he argued would be a campaign fought out on the issue of change.
“This is a very major development,” Mr. Plouffe said. “John McCain jettisoned his message and his strategy. It is now about change. We’re going to lean into that very, very hard.”
In the midst of all this, Mr. Obama had a private lunch on Thursday with someone he battled with for much of the year but who knows how to put the Republicans on the defensive: former President Bill Clinton. Discussion topics, aides said, included how Mr. Obama might handle Ms. Palin in the days ahead.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Krugman on McCain Lies!!!!
The Republicans have a long history of gutter politics, in my lifetime from Watergate to the present. That George McGovern was beaten badly in 1972 is a fact. However, the important point that has been obscured is that election was stolen by the dirty tricks of the Nixon Republicans. They bugged Larry O’Brien’s office, the chair of the National Democratic Party. The Watergate hearings exposed the tutors and role models for Karl Rove like Donald Segretti. Segretti worked for the CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President) and performed “dirty tricks” of which he was later convicted as a part of the Watergate scandal and the removal of Nixon from office within 24 months of his election. Republican corruption is in their DNA. That being the case, it is important to understand that this 2008 McCain campaign is no different. The legacy of Segretti and Lee Atwater, lives on in the Karl Rove and the McCain camp. Lies are at the core McCain campaign. Thanks to Paul Krugman some of these lies are being exposed. RGN
September 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”
Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.
So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.
Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.
And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.
One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.
But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
September 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”
Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.
So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.
Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.
And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.
One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.
But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
Important Videos on McCain!!!
Check out and distribute the videos (left frame) showing the real John McCain. These and more are or will be posted to get out the word about the dangers of allowing a McCain presidency. John McCain does not have the temperament to be president. His definition of self finds its essence in war. Distribute the word.
Just Because He Is Black!!!!
This piece is floating around out there on the Internet. It is a great response to the so-called “reverse racism” inherent in the accusations that blacks are voting for Obama just because he is black. In a few words, the response says what needs to be said. It is interesting that voting for Obama because he is black is a violation of some moral code and illegitimate. Yet, when whites say they will not vote from him because he is black, that is just the way the world is, moral code or no moral code. The authorship is unknown but given how I received it, I assume it is public domain. RGN
-Just Because He's Black
A white man asked his black friend, 'Are you voting for Barack Obama just because he's black?'
The black man responded by saying, 'Why not? Hell, in this country men are pulled over everyday just ’cause they're black; passed over for promotions just ’cause they're black; considered to be criminals just ’cause they're black; and there are going to be thousands of you who won't be voting for him just because he's black! However, you do not seem to have a problem with that!
This country was built with the sweat and whip off the black slaves' back, and now a descendent of those same slaves has a chance to lead the same country, where we weren't even considered to be people, where we weren't allowed to be educated, drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, or even
vote.
So yes! I'm going to vote for him! But it's not just because he's black, but because he is hope, he is change, and he now allows me to understand when my son says that he wants to be president when he grows up, it is not a fairy tale but a short term goal. He now sees, understands and knows that he can achieve, withstand and do
ANYTHING …..just because he's black!'
-Just Because He's Black
A white man asked his black friend, 'Are you voting for Barack Obama just because he's black?'
The black man responded by saying, 'Why not? Hell, in this country men are pulled over everyday just ’cause they're black; passed over for promotions just ’cause they're black; considered to be criminals just ’cause they're black; and there are going to be thousands of you who won't be voting for him just because he's black! However, you do not seem to have a problem with that!
This country was built with the sweat and whip off the black slaves' back, and now a descendent of those same slaves has a chance to lead the same country, where we weren't even considered to be people, where we weren't allowed to be educated, drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, or even
vote.
So yes! I'm going to vote for him! But it's not just because he's black, but because he is hope, he is change, and he now allows me to understand when my son says that he wants to be president when he grows up, it is not a fairy tale but a short term goal. He now sees, understands and knows that he can achieve, withstand and do
ANYTHING …..just because he's black!'
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Needed: Funds for the Homestretch
Now is the Time! Now is the time to make sure this moment in America’s history does not slip away! I know that readers of this blog are likely to be supporters of Barack Obama for the presidency. If fact, readers of this blog are likely to love Obama. That is great!!! Yet at this critical moment, what Obama needs is not so much your ROmance, but your FInance! Up until now, the people, not lobbyists and people with big bucks, have been responsible for Obama’s record-breaking fundraising. His campaign is a people’s campaign. Overwhelmingly, his donors have been small donations -- $10, $25, $50, etc. These amounts, particularly given the importance of this election, are affordable for almost everyone who is employed.
I am reminded of a brief conversation I had at the sociology meetings. It was a conversation with a well-respected colleague whose politics have always seemed to be in the right place. This colleague is well-established in the field. Rather than one of the skeptics about an Obama victory, this colleague was an Obama enthusiast. Of course our meetings were in late July, early August, long after the primary season, including the primary for the state in which this colleague resides. In the conversation, the colleague stated that they were so impressed with Obama, “I am going to give him some money!”
Going to???!!! Where have you been? How could it be that among the enlightened, there is a tendency to think political donations are somebody else’s business? Obama reminds us “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” It is up to us to make it happen. The Civil Rights Movement did not just happen. Yes, people were in the streets, but of necessity, we came to know the “freedom ain’t free,” the movement required financial sacrifices and donations.
The Obama campaign is no different. Up until now, the support has been there with him having record-breaking success. Because of that success and KNOWING that the right-wing Republicans would have unlimited access to funds to defeat him, Barack, with our support, decided to forego the restrictions of public funds. That was wise. That way he does not have go up against the T. Boone Pickens-type Swift Boaters that attacked John Kerry in 2004.
Now that we are in the general election and McCain has put “lipstick” on his campaign, his stock has gone up. More money is going into the Republican coffers. Some of the most recent polls show McCain even taking the lead.
As the article below states, there is a need for a renewed effort to make sure Obama is successful. It must be done to rid of us right-wing Republican rule. It is time for a people’s victory, as opposed to the military-corporate-industrial complex. It is time for history to be made with an Obama victory. He won’t win without the Finance!!! Your donations are needed. We must make this happen. RGN
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September 9, 2008
Straining to Reach Money Goal, Obama Presses Donors
By MICHAEL LUO and JEFF ZELENY
After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it.
Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”
At a convention-week meeting in Denver of the campaign’s top fund-raisers, buttons with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up.
The signs of concern have become evident in recent weeks as early fund-raising totals have suggested that Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass public financing may not necessarily afford him the commanding financing advantage over Senator John McCain that many had originally predicted.
Presidential candidates in a general election have typically relied on two main sources of money: public financing, along with additional money their parties raise.
In choosing to accept the public money, the McCain campaign now gets an $84 million cash infusion from the United States Treasury. Mr. McCain is barred from raising any more money for his own campaign coffers but can lean on money raised by the Republican National Committee, which has continued to exceed expectations.
Meanwhile, Obama campaign officials had calculated that with its vaunted fund-raising machine, driven by both small contributors over the Internet and a powerful high-dollar donor network, it made more sense to forgo public financing so they could raise and spend unlimited sums.
But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.
The Obama campaign does not have to report its August fund-raising totals until next week, so it is difficult to tally what it has in the bank at this point. A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C.
The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.
A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and finished with just $13 million in the bank.
Still, the Obama campaign said last Thursday that it had raised $10 million over the Internet in the 24 hours after the speech by Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, at the Republican convention on Wednesday, a one-day record for the campaign.
David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, said the majority of the Obama campaign’s donors during the primary had yet to write checks for the general election. When they do, he said, it will be the equivalent of the large injection of cash the McCain campaign is receiving from the government — about $70 million or $80 million.
“We’re confident that we will meet our financial goals, but it’s hard work,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have a long way to go in the next six weeks.”
Members of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee were briefed during the convention in Denver by Mr. Plouffe. Penny Pritzker, the Obama finance chairwoman, announced new state-by-state fund-raising goals. The decidedly business-oriented nature of the meeting reflected the burden on the Obama campaign in the coming weeks.
“I think McCain made the right call,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996. “The Republican National Committee is strong. They have the resources to make this race almost financially on par.”
Democratic strategists disagree, pointing out that campaign finance rules impose serious restrictions on Mr. McCain’s ability to fully make use of his party’s bank account.
“It’s not just the limitation of dollars when you accept public financing, it’s the limitations that go with that spending,” said Tad Devine, a senior strategist for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. Mr. Devine added that choosing to accept public financing was the Kerry campaign’s single biggest mistake because it limited the campaign’s resources.
The McCain campaign had by far its best fund-raising month ever in August, when it collected $47 million for its coffers and $22 million for the party, finishing the month with more than $100 million in the bank that will now be at the disposal of the R.N.C., according to several finance officials.
McCain fund-raisers said they also hope to raise an additional $100 million for the party in September and in October, taking advantage of the sizable contribution limits for the party. The party’s Internet fund-raising has also picked up significantly since the announcement that Ms. Palin would join the Republican ticket. Combined with the $84 million from public financing, that would leave the McCain campaign with about $300 million at its disposal.
A recent e-mail message to McCain fund-raisers unveiled new incentives to spur them in their final push. For the primary, anyone who raised $100,000 or more earned the title of Trailblazer, while those who raised $250,000 or more became Innovators. Now Trailblazers who raise another $100,000 for the party for the general election can become Super-Trailblazers, and Innovators who raise another $250,000 earn the title of Super-Innovators.
Officials have also sketched out plans for Ms. Palin to do some 35 fund-raisers over the next two months. Mr. McCain will be dispatched for only four major fund-raisers: one on Monday night in Chicago, in which the party raised about $4 million; another next week in Miami, then Los Angeles and New York in October, finance officials said.
But even if the McCain finance team, led by Lewis M. Eisenberg, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and Wayne L. Berman, a Washington lobbyist, meets its goals, the campaign will have complete control over only the $84 million from the federal government, as well as $19 million in party money that is permitted to be used in coordination with the campaign.
The Republican Party can spend unlimited amounts of its money independent of the McCain campaign. It can also split the costs of so-called hybrid advertisements with the campaign, commercials that must promote not only Mr. McCain but also other Republicans down the ticket, something media strategists said could be ineffective when trying to create a cohesive message. Nevertheless, McCain fund-raisers pointed out the pressure is now on the Obama campaign to raise far more than it ever has before.
The Obama campaign set a goal in mid-June of raising $300 million for the campaign and about $150 million for the Democratic Party over four-and-a-half months, fund-raisers said. As of the end of July, however, the Obama campaign was well short of the $100 million a month pace it had set, taking in about $77 million between the campaign and the party that month.
It is not yet clear whether the Obama campaign will be able to ratchet up its fund-raising enough in the final two months of the campaign to make up the difference.
Even Mr. Obama’s fund-raisers in Illinois were admonished in an e-mail message last Thursday to step up their efforts to “show the other regions that his home state still has it.” The donors, who were also reminded they had each promised to collect $300,000 for the campaign, were asked to raise $25,000 each for an event on Sept. 22 at a Chicago museum.
The new state-by-state goals unveiled by campaign officials in Denver stunned at least some in the room and included sizable increases for at least some states, according to interviews with several Obama fund-raisers.
The campaign has created a fund-raising committee, the Campaign for Change, which allows fund-raisers to harvest additional checks of more than $30,000 that will then be divvied up among state Democratic Parties in 18 battleground states, with Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan receiving the most.
In a campaign swing through South Florida over Labor Day weekend, Mr. Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., met with several small groups of major donors and sent out an e-mail appeal to supporters of his own unsuccessful presidential campaign, as well as to Jewish supporters. The effort brought in more than $1 million in four days.
Campaign officials expect their Internet fund-raising engine to ramp up as the election approaches. And they hope that much of the high-dollar fund-raising can be done without Mr. Obama. In the New York area alone, there are some 18 events planned in September, all with surrogates, including Mrs. Clinton, Caroline Kennedy and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.
But campaign officials conceded that Mr. Obama inevitably will have to make some appearances. On Friday night in New Jersey, Mr. Obama devoted five hours for two fund-raising events, including one at the home of the singer Jon Bon Jovi, in which the ticket was $30,800 a person. Mr. Obama is also scheduled to appear at back-to-back fund-raisers in Los Angeles on Sept. 16.
I am reminded of a brief conversation I had at the sociology meetings. It was a conversation with a well-respected colleague whose politics have always seemed to be in the right place. This colleague is well-established in the field. Rather than one of the skeptics about an Obama victory, this colleague was an Obama enthusiast. Of course our meetings were in late July, early August, long after the primary season, including the primary for the state in which this colleague resides. In the conversation, the colleague stated that they were so impressed with Obama, “I am going to give him some money!”
Going to???!!! Where have you been? How could it be that among the enlightened, there is a tendency to think political donations are somebody else’s business? Obama reminds us “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” It is up to us to make it happen. The Civil Rights Movement did not just happen. Yes, people were in the streets, but of necessity, we came to know the “freedom ain’t free,” the movement required financial sacrifices and donations.
The Obama campaign is no different. Up until now, the support has been there with him having record-breaking success. Because of that success and KNOWING that the right-wing Republicans would have unlimited access to funds to defeat him, Barack, with our support, decided to forego the restrictions of public funds. That was wise. That way he does not have go up against the T. Boone Pickens-type Swift Boaters that attacked John Kerry in 2004.
Now that we are in the general election and McCain has put “lipstick” on his campaign, his stock has gone up. More money is going into the Republican coffers. Some of the most recent polls show McCain even taking the lead.
As the article below states, there is a need for a renewed effort to make sure Obama is successful. It must be done to rid of us right-wing Republican rule. It is time for a people’s victory, as opposed to the military-corporate-industrial complex. It is time for history to be made with an Obama victory. He won’t win without the Finance!!! Your donations are needed. We must make this happen. RGN
________________________________________
September 9, 2008
Straining to Reach Money Goal, Obama Presses Donors
By MICHAEL LUO and JEFF ZELENY
After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it.
Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee, calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”
At a convention-week meeting in Denver of the campaign’s top fund-raisers, buttons with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up.
The signs of concern have become evident in recent weeks as early fund-raising totals have suggested that Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass public financing may not necessarily afford him the commanding financing advantage over Senator John McCain that many had originally predicted.
Presidential candidates in a general election have typically relied on two main sources of money: public financing, along with additional money their parties raise.
In choosing to accept the public money, the McCain campaign now gets an $84 million cash infusion from the United States Treasury. Mr. McCain is barred from raising any more money for his own campaign coffers but can lean on money raised by the Republican National Committee, which has continued to exceed expectations.
Meanwhile, Obama campaign officials had calculated that with its vaunted fund-raising machine, driven by both small contributors over the Internet and a powerful high-dollar donor network, it made more sense to forgo public financing so they could raise and spend unlimited sums.
But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.
The Obama campaign does not have to report its August fund-raising totals until next week, so it is difficult to tally what it has in the bank at this point. A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C.
The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.
A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and finished with just $13 million in the bank.
Still, the Obama campaign said last Thursday that it had raised $10 million over the Internet in the 24 hours after the speech by Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, at the Republican convention on Wednesday, a one-day record for the campaign.
David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, said the majority of the Obama campaign’s donors during the primary had yet to write checks for the general election. When they do, he said, it will be the equivalent of the large injection of cash the McCain campaign is receiving from the government — about $70 million or $80 million.
“We’re confident that we will meet our financial goals, but it’s hard work,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have a long way to go in the next six weeks.”
Members of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee were briefed during the convention in Denver by Mr. Plouffe. Penny Pritzker, the Obama finance chairwoman, announced new state-by-state fund-raising goals. The decidedly business-oriented nature of the meeting reflected the burden on the Obama campaign in the coming weeks.
“I think McCain made the right call,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996. “The Republican National Committee is strong. They have the resources to make this race almost financially on par.”
Democratic strategists disagree, pointing out that campaign finance rules impose serious restrictions on Mr. McCain’s ability to fully make use of his party’s bank account.
“It’s not just the limitation of dollars when you accept public financing, it’s the limitations that go with that spending,” said Tad Devine, a senior strategist for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. Mr. Devine added that choosing to accept public financing was the Kerry campaign’s single biggest mistake because it limited the campaign’s resources.
The McCain campaign had by far its best fund-raising month ever in August, when it collected $47 million for its coffers and $22 million for the party, finishing the month with more than $100 million in the bank that will now be at the disposal of the R.N.C., according to several finance officials.
McCain fund-raisers said they also hope to raise an additional $100 million for the party in September and in October, taking advantage of the sizable contribution limits for the party. The party’s Internet fund-raising has also picked up significantly since the announcement that Ms. Palin would join the Republican ticket. Combined with the $84 million from public financing, that would leave the McCain campaign with about $300 million at its disposal.
A recent e-mail message to McCain fund-raisers unveiled new incentives to spur them in their final push. For the primary, anyone who raised $100,000 or more earned the title of Trailblazer, while those who raised $250,000 or more became Innovators. Now Trailblazers who raise another $100,000 for the party for the general election can become Super-Trailblazers, and Innovators who raise another $250,000 earn the title of Super-Innovators.
Officials have also sketched out plans for Ms. Palin to do some 35 fund-raisers over the next two months. Mr. McCain will be dispatched for only four major fund-raisers: one on Monday night in Chicago, in which the party raised about $4 million; another next week in Miami, then Los Angeles and New York in October, finance officials said.
But even if the McCain finance team, led by Lewis M. Eisenberg, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and Wayne L. Berman, a Washington lobbyist, meets its goals, the campaign will have complete control over only the $84 million from the federal government, as well as $19 million in party money that is permitted to be used in coordination with the campaign.
The Republican Party can spend unlimited amounts of its money independent of the McCain campaign. It can also split the costs of so-called hybrid advertisements with the campaign, commercials that must promote not only Mr. McCain but also other Republicans down the ticket, something media strategists said could be ineffective when trying to create a cohesive message. Nevertheless, McCain fund-raisers pointed out the pressure is now on the Obama campaign to raise far more than it ever has before.
The Obama campaign set a goal in mid-June of raising $300 million for the campaign and about $150 million for the Democratic Party over four-and-a-half months, fund-raisers said. As of the end of July, however, the Obama campaign was well short of the $100 million a month pace it had set, taking in about $77 million between the campaign and the party that month.
It is not yet clear whether the Obama campaign will be able to ratchet up its fund-raising enough in the final two months of the campaign to make up the difference.
Even Mr. Obama’s fund-raisers in Illinois were admonished in an e-mail message last Thursday to step up their efforts to “show the other regions that his home state still has it.” The donors, who were also reminded they had each promised to collect $300,000 for the campaign, were asked to raise $25,000 each for an event on Sept. 22 at a Chicago museum.
The new state-by-state goals unveiled by campaign officials in Denver stunned at least some in the room and included sizable increases for at least some states, according to interviews with several Obama fund-raisers.
The campaign has created a fund-raising committee, the Campaign for Change, which allows fund-raisers to harvest additional checks of more than $30,000 that will then be divvied up among state Democratic Parties in 18 battleground states, with Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan receiving the most.
In a campaign swing through South Florida over Labor Day weekend, Mr. Obama’s vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., met with several small groups of major donors and sent out an e-mail appeal to supporters of his own unsuccessful presidential campaign, as well as to Jewish supporters. The effort brought in more than $1 million in four days.
Campaign officials expect their Internet fund-raising engine to ramp up as the election approaches. And they hope that much of the high-dollar fund-raising can be done without Mr. Obama. In the New York area alone, there are some 18 events planned in September, all with surrogates, including Mrs. Clinton, Caroline Kennedy and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.
But campaign officials conceded that Mr. Obama inevitably will have to make some appearances. On Friday night in New Jersey, Mr. Obama devoted five hours for two fund-raising events, including one at the home of the singer Jon Bon Jovi, in which the ticket was $30,800 a person. Mr. Obama is also scheduled to appear at back-to-back fund-raisers in Los Angeles on Sept. 16.
Khalfani on Family Values, Race, and Politics
Monday, September 8, 2008
Telling the Truth about Family Values and Race in America Politics
It is about time that there is a person of African descent and a woman running and nominated for President and Vice President in the United State. It is shameful that it has taken this long. I applaud the American people in the Democratic Party for nominating and affirming Obama's candidacy. Likewise, I applaud McCain for selecting Palin as his running mate.
However, here is where the differences begin to become clear. Although Senator Obama has asked his staff not to address personal family issues of his opponents, I have to take a different stand as a sociologist who studies, teaches and writes about social problems and race relations.
The Mc-ites and Bush-ites have been talking about family values for the last 10 year as though there was nothing more important. For goodness sake, they impeached former President Clinton on the issues of family values. But Bush has not been impeached on war crimes. Something is wrong.
It is time to standup to the double standards of the so-called "Right," that is so often very Wrong. Wrong on the economy; wrong on the wars (still no WMD); wrong on health care; wrong on Maat (truth, justice, righteousness & balance). We need to identify, document and publicize all of the Wrong of the "Right". In fact, we should begin to refer to the "Right" and the "Far Right" as the Far Wrong. The Republican Party is just the wrong Party.
All of a sudden, McCain and Palin's family structure and portrait of family values are now good old American standards. Give us a break. McCain married Cindy, his current wife, one month after divorcing Carol, his previous wife. He met Cindy in 1979 while still married. Are these the family values we want to teach our children? Are these presidential family values. Is this not similar to the reason the Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton.
(Reference - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html)
As the Palin candidacy and legacy becomes unveiled we see more about her and her family. Here is a person with little experience being presented as having great experience. Furthermore, you have a Vice Presidential candidate who has a 17 year old daughter who is pregnant. This situation has suddenly come to be presented as the typical American family situation. We often do not want to talk about the ugly side of America, but if Michele Obama's daughter was 17 and pregnant the presidential campaign would be over for Barack. The racial double standard is that since Palin is European (White) the rules of what constitutes acceptable family values can change. This change is embraced by the media, the wRong Party (I mean Republican Party), and many Americans. However, if we are honest and transparent about these differences, we could agree that racial disparities exist that need to be confronted.
We need to point out the hypocrisy in the McCain/Palin campaign. The Mc-ites suggested that Obama was pulling the "race card," but no one said anything about Palin pulling the "woman card." The reality is that each candidate must run on his or her strengths including being a woman or African in America, a father or veteran or any other role that one plays in society. This does not suggest that someone is pulling some card it simply reflects who they are in this complex world.
Let us not be tricked by double standard. We must face racism in our society and we must call the wRong Party to task every time we see hypocrisy.
Obama has been more transparent and presents a more favorable example of family values than either of the Republican candidates.
Hotep (Peace),
Akil Kokayi Khalfani, Ph.D.
Dr. Khalfani is a sociologists and bestselling author of The Hidden Debate. akilkk@gmail.com
Telling the Truth about Family Values and Race in America Politics
It is about time that there is a person of African descent and a woman running and nominated for President and Vice President in the United State. It is shameful that it has taken this long. I applaud the American people in the Democratic Party for nominating and affirming Obama's candidacy. Likewise, I applaud McCain for selecting Palin as his running mate.
However, here is where the differences begin to become clear. Although Senator Obama has asked his staff not to address personal family issues of his opponents, I have to take a different stand as a sociologist who studies, teaches and writes about social problems and race relations.
The Mc-ites and Bush-ites have been talking about family values for the last 10 year as though there was nothing more important. For goodness sake, they impeached former President Clinton on the issues of family values. But Bush has not been impeached on war crimes. Something is wrong.
It is time to standup to the double standards of the so-called "Right," that is so often very Wrong. Wrong on the economy; wrong on the wars (still no WMD); wrong on health care; wrong on Maat (truth, justice, righteousness & balance). We need to identify, document and publicize all of the Wrong of the "Right". In fact, we should begin to refer to the "Right" and the "Far Right" as the Far Wrong. The Republican Party is just the wrong Party.
All of a sudden, McCain and Palin's family structure and portrait of family values are now good old American standards. Give us a break. McCain married Cindy, his current wife, one month after divorcing Carol, his previous wife. He met Cindy in 1979 while still married. Are these the family values we want to teach our children? Are these presidential family values. Is this not similar to the reason the Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton.
(Reference - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html)
As the Palin candidacy and legacy becomes unveiled we see more about her and her family. Here is a person with little experience being presented as having great experience. Furthermore, you have a Vice Presidential candidate who has a 17 year old daughter who is pregnant. This situation has suddenly come to be presented as the typical American family situation. We often do not want to talk about the ugly side of America, but if Michele Obama's daughter was 17 and pregnant the presidential campaign would be over for Barack. The racial double standard is that since Palin is European (White) the rules of what constitutes acceptable family values can change. This change is embraced by the media, the wRong Party (I mean Republican Party), and many Americans. However, if we are honest and transparent about these differences, we could agree that racial disparities exist that need to be confronted.
We need to point out the hypocrisy in the McCain/Palin campaign. The Mc-ites suggested that Obama was pulling the "race card," but no one said anything about Palin pulling the "woman card." The reality is that each candidate must run on his or her strengths including being a woman or African in America, a father or veteran or any other role that one plays in society. This does not suggest that someone is pulling some card it simply reflects who they are in this complex world.
Let us not be tricked by double standard. We must face racism in our society and we must call the wRong Party to task every time we see hypocrisy.
Obama has been more transparent and presents a more favorable example of family values than either of the Republican candidates.
Hotep (Peace),
Akil Kokayi Khalfani, Ph.D.
Dr. Khalfani is a sociologists and bestselling author of The Hidden Debate. akilkk@gmail.com
Monday, September 8, 2008
Ron Walters on McCain-Palin
McCain Hiding Under Palin’s Political Skirt
By Ron Walters
The truth about the Republican nominee, John McCain is that because he has been unable to mobilize the base of his party (a fact on which the media has refused to focus) he has had to rely on his Vice Presidential pick, Sara Palin to do so. Hiding under her skirt of popularity, his campaign has come alive, with Palin as the putative nominee instead of him.
But because he has put her out there, Palin runs the risk of being vetted in public and it will not wash to say that her 17 year old daughter, Britol’s pregnancy is out of bounds. Remember the firestorm caused by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Dan Qayle’s rant against the fictional TV character Murphy Brown, who wanted to have a baby out of wedlock during the 1992 campaign, in a speech where he was trying to promote “family values.”
Because of the high number of teen pregnancies in the black community, conservative politicians have made subtle inferences about the immorality of blacks and linked it to the Democratic party for some time. At the same time, when they were in power, Republicans systematically cut job training, youth programs, poverty programs and anything that would help young teenagers have live positive options.
Rejecting help for pregnant teens seems to be a practice of Sara Palin, who cut a program proposed by the Alaska legislature just this year from $5 million to $3.6 million. This mirrors John McCain’s history of cutting programs aimed at reducing teen pregnancy over his career. Hypocrisy is not even close to the image they present as they embrace Bristol Palin and her unwed lover on the stage of Republican convention and legitimize their role in this election.
There is a question whether conservatives will be embarrassed as Sara Palin’s record comes more fully into view, with tad-bits like the patriotism she and her husband showed as members of the Alaska Independence Party which wanted to succeed from the US, or that she lied about her support of the “bridge to nowhere,” or putting the executive jet on EBay, or any number of things. Conservatives may feel locked in because she is the only “reliable conservative” on the ticket and therefore, may hold their nose and support her even though there are serious conflicts with their basic ideology and the Palin’s past behavior.
What I think we will see, therefore, is that Independents will reject Sara Palin’s hard right posture toward things like Abortion rights and continue to move toward Obama. However, Obama has to release Hillary Clinton or some credible surrogate from his campaign to expose the readiness of the new Republican star to be a heartbeat away from a 72 year-old president. Remember John Kerry.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. of Michigan Press)
By Ron Walters
The truth about the Republican nominee, John McCain is that because he has been unable to mobilize the base of his party (a fact on which the media has refused to focus) he has had to rely on his Vice Presidential pick, Sara Palin to do so. Hiding under her skirt of popularity, his campaign has come alive, with Palin as the putative nominee instead of him.
But because he has put her out there, Palin runs the risk of being vetted in public and it will not wash to say that her 17 year old daughter, Britol’s pregnancy is out of bounds. Remember the firestorm caused by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Dan Qayle’s rant against the fictional TV character Murphy Brown, who wanted to have a baby out of wedlock during the 1992 campaign, in a speech where he was trying to promote “family values.”
Because of the high number of teen pregnancies in the black community, conservative politicians have made subtle inferences about the immorality of blacks and linked it to the Democratic party for some time. At the same time, when they were in power, Republicans systematically cut job training, youth programs, poverty programs and anything that would help young teenagers have live positive options.
Rejecting help for pregnant teens seems to be a practice of Sara Palin, who cut a program proposed by the Alaska legislature just this year from $5 million to $3.6 million. This mirrors John McCain’s history of cutting programs aimed at reducing teen pregnancy over his career. Hypocrisy is not even close to the image they present as they embrace Bristol Palin and her unwed lover on the stage of Republican convention and legitimize their role in this election.
There is a question whether conservatives will be embarrassed as Sara Palin’s record comes more fully into view, with tad-bits like the patriotism she and her husband showed as members of the Alaska Independence Party which wanted to succeed from the US, or that she lied about her support of the “bridge to nowhere,” or putting the executive jet on EBay, or any number of things. Conservatives may feel locked in because she is the only “reliable conservative” on the ticket and therefore, may hold their nose and support her even though there are serious conflicts with their basic ideology and the Palin’s past behavior.
What I think we will see, therefore, is that Independents will reject Sara Palin’s hard right posture toward things like Abortion rights and continue to move toward Obama. However, Obama has to release Hillary Clinton or some credible surrogate from his campaign to expose the readiness of the new Republican star to be a heartbeat away from a 72 year-old president. Remember John Kerry.
Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (U. of Michigan Press)
Vennochi on Palin
Sarah Palin's song and dance
By Joan Vennochi
Globe Columnist / September 7, 2008
CAN SARAH PALIN pick up where Hillary Clinton left off?
Palin wowed delegates with a confident, cutting speech aimed at hockey moms with a chip on their shoulder.
She could have been singing along to Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" - "Some people look down on me, but I don't give a rip. I'll stand barefooted in my own front yard with a baby on my hip."
It was great theater. But to John McCain, all that really matters is whether his running mate can pick up where Clinton left off and expand the GOP voter base.
The aging Joni Mitchell crowd makes up Clinton's most faithful following. But during the Democratic primary season, Clinton also wooed Gretchen Wilson territory and went after Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter" - along with their men.
Now, the GOP is trying to steal away those voters by appealing to them on cultural issues.
Democrats expect most Clinton backers to stick with Barack Obama because of such issues as the economy and the Iraq war.
But politics isn't all in the head; a lot is in the heart. That's where Palin comes in.
Besides igniting the culture wars that historically help the GOP, Palin also fanned the flames of the gender wars Clinton tried to smother in Denver.
Questions about Palin's qualifications and ability to juggle children and career dominated convention headlines, along with the soap opera revolving around the candidate's 17-year-old pregnant, unmarried daughter.
Taking a page from the Clinton campaign handbook, the first-term governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla skillfully turned the criticism into a sexist attack by Washington elites.
It worked in the convention hall. But once the novelty of Palin's candidacy begins to rub off, she still must answer for her weak resume and right-wing ideology.
And how long can she play the attack dog, before reminding voters of that famous Barbara Bush assessment of Geraldine Ferraro: "rhymes with rich"?
"Women are scrutinized to a different degree than men. People are always worried about whether a woman is up to the job," said Barbara Lee, who runs a foundation that conducts research on female candidates, especially for governor.
It isn't fair or right. But so far, there's no reason to believe the rules of political engagement are any different for a Republican than they are for a Democrat.
Obama beat Clinton, a former first lady and US senator, by raising doubts about her experience. His running mate, Joe Biden, has been a US senator for more than three decades and is considered an expert on foreign policy. When Palin goes head-to-head in a debate, she will have to show depth and knowledge that match her opponent's. Biden will help disguise any of her weaknesses if he is patronizing or overbearing, both distinct possibilities.
Palin's speech set out the outlines of the Republican attack against Obama: he will raise taxes and expand government. A big part of the GOP strategy is to paint Obama as an out-of-touch elitist.
Despite the bravado, it's hard to see how Palin's beliefs attract a critical mass of core Clinton backers. Palin opposes abortion. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She was for pork before she was against it. She describes the war in Iraq as "a task from God." And those are just the highlights of a political agenda that resonates strongly with evangelicals.
A recent CBS poll showed the race tied between Obama and McCain. In the poll, McCain has the edge with men. But Obama continues to have a lead with women. The poll also shows the majority of Clinton supporters continue to support Obama - 67 percent in this poll, up from 58 percent.
Can Palin's play for Clinton voters work?
It could depend on how many women - and men - agree with this verse from "Redneck Woman"
"You may think I'm trashy, a little too hardcore. But in my neck of the woods, I'm just the girl next door."
Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com.
By Joan Vennochi
Globe Columnist / September 7, 2008
CAN SARAH PALIN pick up where Hillary Clinton left off?
Palin wowed delegates with a confident, cutting speech aimed at hockey moms with a chip on their shoulder.
She could have been singing along to Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" - "Some people look down on me, but I don't give a rip. I'll stand barefooted in my own front yard with a baby on my hip."
It was great theater. But to John McCain, all that really matters is whether his running mate can pick up where Clinton left off and expand the GOP voter base.
The aging Joni Mitchell crowd makes up Clinton's most faithful following. But during the Democratic primary season, Clinton also wooed Gretchen Wilson territory and went after Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter" - along with their men.
Now, the GOP is trying to steal away those voters by appealing to them on cultural issues.
Democrats expect most Clinton backers to stick with Barack Obama because of such issues as the economy and the Iraq war.
But politics isn't all in the head; a lot is in the heart. That's where Palin comes in.
Besides igniting the culture wars that historically help the GOP, Palin also fanned the flames of the gender wars Clinton tried to smother in Denver.
Questions about Palin's qualifications and ability to juggle children and career dominated convention headlines, along with the soap opera revolving around the candidate's 17-year-old pregnant, unmarried daughter.
Taking a page from the Clinton campaign handbook, the first-term governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla skillfully turned the criticism into a sexist attack by Washington elites.
It worked in the convention hall. But once the novelty of Palin's candidacy begins to rub off, she still must answer for her weak resume and right-wing ideology.
And how long can she play the attack dog, before reminding voters of that famous Barbara Bush assessment of Geraldine Ferraro: "rhymes with rich"?
"Women are scrutinized to a different degree than men. People are always worried about whether a woman is up to the job," said Barbara Lee, who runs a foundation that conducts research on female candidates, especially for governor.
It isn't fair or right. But so far, there's no reason to believe the rules of political engagement are any different for a Republican than they are for a Democrat.
Obama beat Clinton, a former first lady and US senator, by raising doubts about her experience. His running mate, Joe Biden, has been a US senator for more than three decades and is considered an expert on foreign policy. When Palin goes head-to-head in a debate, she will have to show depth and knowledge that match her opponent's. Biden will help disguise any of her weaknesses if he is patronizing or overbearing, both distinct possibilities.
Palin's speech set out the outlines of the Republican attack against Obama: he will raise taxes and expand government. A big part of the GOP strategy is to paint Obama as an out-of-touch elitist.
Despite the bravado, it's hard to see how Palin's beliefs attract a critical mass of core Clinton backers. Palin opposes abortion. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She was for pork before she was against it. She describes the war in Iraq as "a task from God." And those are just the highlights of a political agenda that resonates strongly with evangelicals.
A recent CBS poll showed the race tied between Obama and McCain. In the poll, McCain has the edge with men. But Obama continues to have a lead with women. The poll also shows the majority of Clinton supporters continue to support Obama - 67 percent in this poll, up from 58 percent.
Can Palin's play for Clinton voters work?
It could depend on how many women - and men - agree with this verse from "Redneck Woman"
"You may think I'm trashy, a little too hardcore. But in my neck of the woods, I'm just the girl next door."
Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Frank Rich puts Palin in perspective.
Frank Rich puts Palin in perspective. RGN
September 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage
By FRANK RICH
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.
Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.
The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.
As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)
Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.
We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.
She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.
How long before we learn she never shot a moose?
Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.
He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.
That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.
As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”
The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.
This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.
We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.
In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.
“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.
What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.
That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.
September 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage
By FRANK RICH
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.
Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.
The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.
As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)
Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.
We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.
She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.
How long before we learn she never shot a moose?
Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.
He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.
That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.
As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”
The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.
This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.
We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.
In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.
“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.
What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.
That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.
Will Whites Vote for Obama
From its beginnings, America has been a white nation, with white nationalism being at the core of whites maintaining political power. With the defeat of the white supremacist Jim Crow South, adherents to this ideology who wanted to be "respectable" had to modernize their discourse. The expression of that "modernization" became the "Reagan Revolution." As is now commonly known Reagan opened his 1980 Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of the civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner. In the aftermath of George Wallace's forays in the North in 1968 and 1972, it became common knowledge that there was a receptivity to white nationalism in the North. Even so, as a former Governor of Alabama, Wallace remained a regional figure. Nixon flirted with the "southern strategy," but it took Ronald Reagan in 1980 to consolidate white nationalism in its current form as mainstream. Reagan legitimized racism in the mainstream. His economic policies were hostile to the poor, particularly impoverished blacks. His racism was evidenced as he pandered to the racists by promoting the stereotype of the "welfare queen." At the core of the so-called "Reagan Democrats" were union members who were disaffected from their union's support for civil rights. He took his campaign to the white working class be holding the 1980 Republican National Convention in historically working class city, Detroit.
After almost 30 years of "Reagan Revolution," the bankruptcy of conservatism has been exposed. 80% of the American people say the country is going in the wrong direction. Thanks to Bush-Cheney, conservatism and the Republican brands are now in disrepute. The war in Iraq, the economy, and corruption, all contribute to the dissatisfaction. Under these circumstances, one would think Barack Obama would be a shoo-in. At this point, what should be a landslide looks like a tight race between him and the current version of John McCain the Republican nominee. The closeness of the race can be attributed to the fact that Barack Obama is an African American.
Given America’s historic white nationalism and the fact that Barack is black, there was no question that this election is to be a referendum on white nationalism. Barack has broken barriers when it comes to being a black nominee of a major political party. His success in winning out over the powerful Clinton organization required broad based support. For an electorate that is in the mood for change, Barack is the logical candidate. The polls show a consistent but close Obama lead. It is this closeness that worries many about his candidacy. It is worrisome because there is a significant segment of whites who SAY they will not vote for Obama because he is black. If there are a number of whites who are willing to express their racism by saying they will not vote for Obama, the question becomes how many whites are not WILLING to state that they will not vote for him because he is black. It is this phenomenon that proved to defeat Tom Bradley in his run for governor of California. Bradley led in the polls but lost the election, ergo “The Bradley effect.”
Under the circumstances, it seems to be clear that this election is a referendum on white nationalism. There is reason to believe that Obama should win by a landslide but Don Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer warns that maybe it’s true: White America is not ready for a black president. Should that be the case, America may be beyond hope -- at least for the foreseeable future. RGN
The American Debate: It's little discussed, but Obama's race may be decider
By Dick Polman
Inquirer National Political Columnist
Let us swing the door ajar and invite the elephant into the room. One big reason Barack Obama is locked in a tight race, rather than easily outdistancing his opponent, is because he is black.
That factor is rarely discussed in polite political conversation. People tend to dance around it, talking instead about Obama's perceived inexperience, or his youth, or his perceived airs, or his liberal voting record. And racist sentiment rarely shows up in the polls, because a lot of people don't want to share their baser instincts with the pollsters; they'll save that instead for the privacy of the voting booth.
But the incremental evidence - anecdotal and even statistical - has become impossible to ignore.
Union organizers in the key state of Michigan complain in the press that, as one puts it, "we're all struggling to some extent with the problem of white workers who will not vote for Obama because of his color." An aging mine electrician from Kentucky is quoted as saying, "I won't vote for a colored man. He'll put too many coloreds in jobs." An elderly woman in a New Jersey hair salon is overheard complaining about Barack and Michelle Obama the other day, about how blacks supposedly have larger bones than whites, and about how she's fleeing America if Obama wins.
Jimmy Carter, while attending the Democratic convention, cited race as a "subterranean issue," yet at times this year it has been bared for all to see. Case in point, Pennsylvania. On the day of the Democratic presidential primary, 12 percent of the white Democratic voters told the exit pollsters that race mattered in their choice of candidate; of those whites, 76 percent chose Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama. The same pattern surfaced in other states, including the key autumn state of Ohio.
This is worth pondering a moment longer. If 12 percent of Democratic voters are willing to tell exit pollsters, eye to eye, that race was an important factor, to Obama's detriment, isn't it fair to assume that the real percentage (including those who kept their sentiments private) was actually higher? And what might this portend for the general election, when the white electorate will be broader, and hence significantly less liberal, than in Democratic contests?
Here's one hint. Last June, the Washington Post-ABC News poll devised a "racial sensitivity index," based on a series of nuanced questions that were designed to measure the varying levels of racial prejudice in the white electorate. The pollsters came up with three categories, ranging from most to least enlightened. The key finding: Whites in the least-enlightened category - roughly 30 percent of the white electorate - favored John McCain over Obama by a ratio of 2-1.
A few prominent Democrats did broach this sensitive topic at the Denver convention. Dee Dee Myers, the former Bill Clinton aide, shared her concerns at one political forum, and with good reason. She worked for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the 1980s, when it appeared that Bradley was a cinch to win his U.S. Senate contest despite his race. The final round of polls showed him winning comfortably. He lost.
"I lived through that," Myers said. "We're whistling past the graveyard if we think that race was not a factor in the Democratic primaries. Today's young voters will get us past these attitudes," but it will take time. As for millions of older voters, "they talk about having 'culture' problems [with Obama], but to separate culture from race is impossible."
And Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos blog, said: "It's human nature. A lot of people want to cling to the comfortable world that they've always lived in. The Obamas don't look like what First Families have always looked like. This will be one of the factors in the fall, because a lot of people simply want to stick with what they've known in the past."
The race obstacle is not necessarily fatal, of course, because in the end it may be trumped by other factors - such as McCain's age, or nagging concerns about handing the nuclear football in an emergency to a "hockey mom" as GOP vice presidential candidate whose chief national security credential is the proximity of Alaska to Russia.
But clearly Obama needs to tread carefully, arguably by stressing lunch-pail economic issues and continuing to present himself as a "post-racial" candidate. He will need to dispel these white suspicions, if only because whites will continue to dominate the electorate - they constituted 77 percent of all voters in 2004 - even if he manages to inspire an historic black turnout. He has to bond somehow with blue-collar whites, yet he cannot show too much passion, because, as Democratic strategist Joe Trippi explained to me, "those whites don't like to see a black guy getting angry, it's a dangerous thing for an African American candidate to do."
I'm not suggesting that racism would be the sole explanation for an Obama loss. Nor am I seeking to insult those who object to Obama purely on the issues. But if Obama winds up losing after having posted a seemingly solid polling lead on election eve, we may well find ourselves pondering the words of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in 1854 that "public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our own private opinion."
After almost 30 years of "Reagan Revolution," the bankruptcy of conservatism has been exposed. 80% of the American people say the country is going in the wrong direction. Thanks to Bush-Cheney, conservatism and the Republican brands are now in disrepute. The war in Iraq, the economy, and corruption, all contribute to the dissatisfaction. Under these circumstances, one would think Barack Obama would be a shoo-in. At this point, what should be a landslide looks like a tight race between him and the current version of John McCain the Republican nominee. The closeness of the race can be attributed to the fact that Barack Obama is an African American.
Given America’s historic white nationalism and the fact that Barack is black, there was no question that this election is to be a referendum on white nationalism. Barack has broken barriers when it comes to being a black nominee of a major political party. His success in winning out over the powerful Clinton organization required broad based support. For an electorate that is in the mood for change, Barack is the logical candidate. The polls show a consistent but close Obama lead. It is this closeness that worries many about his candidacy. It is worrisome because there is a significant segment of whites who SAY they will not vote for Obama because he is black. If there are a number of whites who are willing to express their racism by saying they will not vote for Obama, the question becomes how many whites are not WILLING to state that they will not vote for him because he is black. It is this phenomenon that proved to defeat Tom Bradley in his run for governor of California. Bradley led in the polls but lost the election, ergo “The Bradley effect.”
Under the circumstances, it seems to be clear that this election is a referendum on white nationalism. There is reason to believe that Obama should win by a landslide but Don Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer warns that maybe it’s true: White America is not ready for a black president. Should that be the case, America may be beyond hope -- at least for the foreseeable future. RGN
The American Debate: It's little discussed, but Obama's race may be decider
By Dick Polman
Inquirer National Political Columnist
Let us swing the door ajar and invite the elephant into the room. One big reason Barack Obama is locked in a tight race, rather than easily outdistancing his opponent, is because he is black.
That factor is rarely discussed in polite political conversation. People tend to dance around it, talking instead about Obama's perceived inexperience, or his youth, or his perceived airs, or his liberal voting record. And racist sentiment rarely shows up in the polls, because a lot of people don't want to share their baser instincts with the pollsters; they'll save that instead for the privacy of the voting booth.
But the incremental evidence - anecdotal and even statistical - has become impossible to ignore.
Union organizers in the key state of Michigan complain in the press that, as one puts it, "we're all struggling to some extent with the problem of white workers who will not vote for Obama because of his color." An aging mine electrician from Kentucky is quoted as saying, "I won't vote for a colored man. He'll put too many coloreds in jobs." An elderly woman in a New Jersey hair salon is overheard complaining about Barack and Michelle Obama the other day, about how blacks supposedly have larger bones than whites, and about how she's fleeing America if Obama wins.
Jimmy Carter, while attending the Democratic convention, cited race as a "subterranean issue," yet at times this year it has been bared for all to see. Case in point, Pennsylvania. On the day of the Democratic presidential primary, 12 percent of the white Democratic voters told the exit pollsters that race mattered in their choice of candidate; of those whites, 76 percent chose Hillary Rodham Clinton over Obama. The same pattern surfaced in other states, including the key autumn state of Ohio.
This is worth pondering a moment longer. If 12 percent of Democratic voters are willing to tell exit pollsters, eye to eye, that race was an important factor, to Obama's detriment, isn't it fair to assume that the real percentage (including those who kept their sentiments private) was actually higher? And what might this portend for the general election, when the white electorate will be broader, and hence significantly less liberal, than in Democratic contests?
Here's one hint. Last June, the Washington Post-ABC News poll devised a "racial sensitivity index," based on a series of nuanced questions that were designed to measure the varying levels of racial prejudice in the white electorate. The pollsters came up with three categories, ranging from most to least enlightened. The key finding: Whites in the least-enlightened category - roughly 30 percent of the white electorate - favored John McCain over Obama by a ratio of 2-1.
A few prominent Democrats did broach this sensitive topic at the Denver convention. Dee Dee Myers, the former Bill Clinton aide, shared her concerns at one political forum, and with good reason. She worked for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the 1980s, when it appeared that Bradley was a cinch to win his U.S. Senate contest despite his race. The final round of polls showed him winning comfortably. He lost.
"I lived through that," Myers said. "We're whistling past the graveyard if we think that race was not a factor in the Democratic primaries. Today's young voters will get us past these attitudes," but it will take time. As for millions of older voters, "they talk about having 'culture' problems [with Obama], but to separate culture from race is impossible."
And Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos blog, said: "It's human nature. A lot of people want to cling to the comfortable world that they've always lived in. The Obamas don't look like what First Families have always looked like. This will be one of the factors in the fall, because a lot of people simply want to stick with what they've known in the past."
The race obstacle is not necessarily fatal, of course, because in the end it may be trumped by other factors - such as McCain's age, or nagging concerns about handing the nuclear football in an emergency to a "hockey mom" as GOP vice presidential candidate whose chief national security credential is the proximity of Alaska to Russia.
But clearly Obama needs to tread carefully, arguably by stressing lunch-pail economic issues and continuing to present himself as a "post-racial" candidate. He will need to dispel these white suspicions, if only because whites will continue to dominate the electorate - they constituted 77 percent of all voters in 2004 - even if he manages to inspire an historic black turnout. He has to bond somehow with blue-collar whites, yet he cannot show too much passion, because, as Democratic strategist Joe Trippi explained to me, "those whites don't like to see a black guy getting angry, it's a dangerous thing for an African American candidate to do."
I'm not suggesting that racism would be the sole explanation for an Obama loss. Nor am I seeking to insult those who object to Obama purely on the issues. But if Obama winds up losing after having posted a seemingly solid polling lead on election eve, we may well find ourselves pondering the words of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in 1854 that "public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our own private opinion."
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Sarah Palin: What Have the Republicans Wrought?
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John Ridley: How Conservatives See Palin vs the Black Community
John Ridley has put the Palin candidacy in perspective. Talk about spin? Can there be a clearer case? RGN The Huffington Post
September 4, 2008
Your Pocket Guide to Speaking Palin-guage (Vol. 1)
Posted September 3, 2008 | 03:12 PM (EST)
Up in the Twin Cities area folks are speaking a new language. Or, should I say Palinguage. It sounds sorta familiar because it's Latin based. But different from the plain English we're used to speaking, in Palinguage recognizable words take on new meanings. Won't you take a moment to learn some Plainguage so you can talk like a hypocritical conservative?
REPEAT THE FOLLOWING:
If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "token hire." If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "game changer."
If you live in an Urban area and you get a girl pregnant you're a "baby daddy." If you're the same in Alaska you're a "teen father." (Actually, according to your own MySpace page you're an F'n redneck that don't want any kids, but that's too long a phrase for the evil liberal media to take out of context and flog morning noon and night).
Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America. White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."
If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic." Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."
Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic." Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."
If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're "reckless." A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick."
If you say that for the "first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country" it makes you "unfit" to be First Lady. If you are a registered member of a fringe political group that advocates secession that makes you "First Dude."
A DUI from twenty years ago is "old news." A speech given without proper citation from twenty years ago is "relevant information."
And, finally, if you're a man and you decide to run for office despite your wife's recurrence of cancer you're a "questionable spouse." If you're a woman and you decide to run for office despite having five kids including a newborn... Well, we don't know what that is 'cause THAT'S NOT A
FAIR QUESTION TO ASK.
Got some Palinguage? They're keeping tabs
The Detroit Labor Day Rally
Obama in Detroit appearance: Help hurricane victims
Shortened speech says spirit of labor movement can go to work
Barack Obama cut short a Labor Day speech to an expectant, fired-up crowd at Detroit's Hart Plaza, offering prayer instead of political punches to acknowledge concerns about Hurricane Gustav.
"There is a time to argue politics, and there's a time to come together as Americans," he said in deference to distressed and evacuated gulf coast residents and a storm that threatened great damage but lost power as it slammed into Louisiana.
In his first Detroit appearance as the Democratic presidential nominee, Obama surely disappointed many in the crowd -- estimated at more than 20,000 in Hart Plaza and another 10,000 just outside along Jefferson Avenue -- with less than 10 minutes of remarks, although people appeared forgiving. Many had waited hours in lines that snaked around buildings to see Obama after the annual Labor Day parade.
U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan stirred their anticipation in speaking to the crowd before Obama arrived, comparing the event with John F. Kennedy's Labor Day speech in Detroit during the presidential campaign of 1960.
Obama apologized for his brevity and urged compassion and togetherness. He held a moment of silent prayer and asked for donations to the Red Cross.
"I want all of us to remember that when we show solidarity with those folks in Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas and Alabama, that we are expressing the true spirit of the labor movement. Because the idea behind the labor movement is that you don't walk alone, you're not by yourself.
"Each of us are vulnerable by ourselves. ... But when we are unified, we come together in a more perfect union."
Still, Obama managed to serve up pro-labor sentiments, telling the crowd that he supports federal legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize. In a lighter moment, he sang a few bars of Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools," while the singer looked on from the crowd.
"I'm a labor guy, I believe in the labor movement," Obama said. "It's important to have a president who doesn't choke on the word union. I believe we need a Department of Labor that believes in labor."
The shortened speech was a relief to organizers of the Detroit International Jazz Festival. He left the stage 15 minutes before the start of a tight schedule of acts in and around Hart Plaza. Noticeably absent from a stage full of politicians and union leaders were embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, and U.S. Rep. John Conyers.
Later, Obama canceled a planned overnight stay in Milwaukee to return to his Chicago headquarters and monitor Hurricane Gustav's damage to gulf coast states. His campaign offices in North Carolina solicited nonperishable goods for Gustav's victims.
In Pittsburgh, Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, declined to march in that city's Labor Day parade, saying it would be inappropriate.
In Battle Creek on Sunday, Obama and Biden tore into Republican presidential candidate John McCain and stirred a crowd of 10,000 or more with a litany of promises for middle-class families. Republicans criticized the speech as inappropriate, with potential suffering at hand from Gustav.
Some of those who listened under a hot late-morning sun Monday accepted Obama's brief speech.
"Not at all," said Linda Ard, 63, of Puerto Rico, when asked whether she was disappointed. She was visiting her friend Karen St. Martin, 64, of Wyandotte. "It was worth it seeing him. I think he did a terrific job. He hit exactly the right note."
Ken Hobbs, 44, a firefighter from Ypsilanti, said he was disappointed after waiting an hour in line with his son, Kindred, 14. "After watching his other speeches and liking those, I was kind of looking for a little bit more than that," Hobbs said. "But what can you say? I guess he's got a busy schedule, he's supposed to be in Monroe. I'm disappointed, but glad to be able to see him."
At the Monroe event, Obama sternly refused to react to news reports that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant.
"Families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits," he told reporters. "I would strongly urge people to back off those ... stories."
Obama said his mother was 18 when she gave birth to him.
"That should never be a topic of our politics," he said.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm joined Obama in Monroe.
If the people in Detroit wanted fiery pro-union speeches, they got them from three of the nation's top labor leaders who preceded Obama to the stage -- AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who introduced Obama to the crowd.
See Gettelfinger, Obama speak
Sweeney later praised Obama: "I think he did the right thing by putting aside partisan politics. He expressed himself on the labor movement, the need for people to come together in time of need."
Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF at 517-372-8660 or christoff@freepress.com. Staff writer Ben Schmitt and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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