Category Archives: Election

Obama Substance

Beyond the noise, listen to the substance of the candidates. peace, mjh

Peter Beinart – Obama at the Helm

Luckily, Obama doesn’t have to rely on his legislative resume to prove he’s capable of running the government. He can point to something more germane: the way he’s run his campaign.

Presidents tend to govern the way they campaigned. Jimmy Carter ran as a moralistic outsider in 1976, and he governed that way as well, refusing to compromise with a Washington establishment that he distrusted (and that distrusted him). Ronald Reagan‘s campaign looked harsh on paper but warm and fuzzy on TV, as did his presidency. The 1992 Clinton campaign was like the Clinton administration: brilliant and chaotic, with a penchant for near-death experiences. And the 2000 Bush campaign presaged the Bush presidency: disciplined, hierarchical, loyal and ruthless.

Of the three candidates still in the 2008 race, Obama has run the best campaign by far. McCain’s was a top-heavy, slow-moving, money-hemorrhaging Hindenburg that eventually exploded, leaving the Arizona senator to resurrect his bankrupt candidacy through sheer force of will. Clinton’s campaign has been marked by vicious infighting and organizational weakness, as manifested by her terrible performance in caucus states.

Obama’s, by contrast, has been an organizational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer. From the beginning, the Obama campaign has run circles around its foes on the Internet, using MySpace, Facebook and other Web tools to develop a virtual army of more than 1 million donors. The result has been fundraising numbers that have left opponents slack-jawed (last month Obama raised $40 million, compared with Clinton’s $20 million).

Peter Beinart – Obama at the Helm – washingtonpost.com

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For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and “wiretaps without warrants,” he said. (He was referring to the lingering legal fallout over reports that the National Security Agency scooped up Americans’ phone and Internet activities without court orders, ostensibly to monitor terrorist plots, in the years after the September 11 attacks.)

It’s hardly a new stance for Obama, who has made similar statements in previous campaign speeches, but mention of the issue in a stump speech, alongside more frequently discussed topics like Iraq and education, may give some clue to his priorities.

In our own Technology Voters’ Guide, when asked whether he supports shielding telecommunications and Internet companies from lawsuits accusing them of illegal spying, Obama gave us a one-word response: “No.”

(Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Republican Ron Paul, for their part, came to the same conclusion in our survey.)

Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

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Obama pledges Net neutrality laws if elected president | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
Posted by Anne Broache

If elected president, Barack Obama plans to prioritize, well, barring broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from prioritizing Internet content.

Affixing his signature to federal Net neutrality rules would be high on the list during his first year in the Oval Office, the junior senator from Illinois said during an interactive forum Monday afternoon with the popular contender put on by MTV and MySpace at Coe College in Iowa.  

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that broadband operators shouldn’t be allowed to block or degrade Internet content and services–or charge content providers an extra fee for speedier delivery or more favorable placement.

The question, selected through an online video contest, was posed via video by small-business owner and former AT&T engineer Joe Niederberger, a member of the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. He asked Obama: “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate Net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint FCC commissioners that support open Internet principles like Net neutrality?”

“The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality.”

Obama pledges Net neutrality laws if elected president | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

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When Barry Became Barack | Print Article | Newsweek.com

Obama had made up his mind that he wanted to move to a more urban, intense and polyglot place. “He said something to the effect that he needed a bigger and more stimulating environment intellectually.”

Obama wanted a clean slate. “Going to New York was really a significant break. It’s when I left a lot of stuff behind,” he says. “I think there was a lot of stuff going on in me. By the end of that year at Occidental, I think I was starting to work it through, and I think part of the attraction of transferring was, it’s hard to remake yourself around people who have known you for a long time.” It was when he got to New York that, as he recalls it, he began to ask people to call him Barack: “It was not some assertion of my African roots … not a racial assertion. It was much more of an assertion that I was coming of age. An assertion of being comfortable with the fact that I was different and that I didn’t need to try to fit in in a certain way.”

He stopped drinking and partying, leading what he calls “a hermetic existence” for two years. “When I look back on it, it was a pretty grim and humorless time that I went through,” he recalls. “I literally went to class, came home, read books, took long walks, wrote.” Politics was a passion, but he was disillusioned by radicals who claimed to have all the answers. At one point after graduation, he went “in search of some inspiration” to hear Kwame Toure (the former Stokely Carmichael) speak at Columbia. A thin young woman stood up to question Toure’s push to establish economic ties between Africa and Harlem: was that practical, given the difficult state of African economies? Toure cut her off, calling her brainwashed, and others shouted her down. “It was like a bad dream,” Obama wrote later.

Obama kept detailed journals in New York. It was good practice. “Writing journals during those two years gave me not only the raw material for the book, but also taught me to shape a narrative in ways that would work,” he says. When he later became a community organizer in Chicago, part of his job was storytelling. “His job largely consisted of interviewing community members and creating a narrative out of their experiences, the problems the community faced,” says his boss at that time, Gerald Kellman. Eventually, even Chicago would seem too small a stage. He told Kellman “he did not feel there would be large-scale change brought about by organizing.” Large-scale change was what Obama was aiming for.

When Barry Became Barack | Print Article | Newsweek.com

Someone Skipped the Kool-aid

Follow the link below to read marjorie’s critique of The Speech. I’ll wait….

marjorie says…

m-pyre: An Obama Critique

All over the Web, people are gushing over Obama’s speech. I’m often drawn to the contrarian and outsider, so I appreciate marjorie’s critique. I would point out that starting with the European invasion of this hemisphere might have been over-reaching — leave something for the first Native American presidential candidate to address. Further, going that far back risks alienating Spain’s descendants, a group Obama may have trouble reaching. (And, let’s not forget this continent was, in fact, once devoid of all human life, until the ancestors of today’s First Americans invaded and conquered the land. Did the buffalo welcome them as liberators? Besides, we’re all brothers and sisters and share each other’s sins and goodness.) My easy retort should not outweigh my appreciation for marjorie’s thoughts. Indeed, I have more praise and fewer objections to that than she has to Obama.

I’m stunned by such a thoughtful speech that breaks so many conventions, including being so long. When was the last presidential speech anyone applied the phrase “teachable moment” to? Seriously, even for all the wonkiness both Clintons get and deserve credit for, when was either so insightful or inspiring? (Obviously, I had to skip 7+ years of BushCo.) We are watching a brilliant mind at work. (Granted, this is a topic he has been thinking about his whole life.)

As an aside, make note that even some conservatives are genuinely drawn to Obama. Left and Right often make the mistake of thinking only of themselves as smart and the opposition as idiots. As repulsed as I am by conservatives congratulating themselves as “deep thinkers” (snort, choke, gasp), some of them really aren’t idiots. Certainly, even coma victims are tired of listening to Commander Dimwit and are counting the days until something better comes along. (Is McCain really the best we can do?) peace, mjh

PS: Over at newmexiken.com, some deep thinker comments, “You people sure are easy to fool.” No conservative should get away with saying such a thing without having his ears boxed and being forced to watch endless loops of a smirking Duhbya swaggering across the deck of the aircraft carrier. Fool.

pps: Obama’s speech: The reviews – First Read – msnbc.com

“That was the most awful speech I have ever heard
and furthermore how can he remain friends with this
Pastor that said all of these awful things about America!no my message will probably not be posted
Obama is full of crap and I think its very scarey
to see how is glazed eyes follwers think he is
Jesus come to earth…… no sweethearts not Jesus
he seems more like the Anti-Christ to me .God Please
protect America.
” – R.Williams Texas (Sent Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:41 AM)

What a load of horse apples! I cannot support Barry Obama because of his socialist views, that big government is the answer to all the problems, and his cowardly foreign policy. He has “embraced” either side of his racial heritage when it was advantagous to him. He is a polictial opprotunist of the first degree or he would not be running for President on such thin credentials. His “fans” folk to his “star power” because the media has made him their “cleb du jour”, like they did JFK. All show and no “go”. Open your eyes, ears and minds people! He said NOTHING of substance! But for Obama-ites, nothing is enough. – Saltwater Cracker, Fla. (Sent Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:41 AM)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/19/782888.aspx

Let’s Elect the Rich, Old, White Guy!

Clinton, McCain delay on making tax returns public
By William Douglas, MCT

Both McCain and Clinton are wealthy. McCain was listed as the ninth-richest member of Congress last year by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. It pegged McCain’s net worth at more than $44 million, with most of the money coming from his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, who is chairwoman of the nation’s third-largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship. The family also has extensive real estate holdings.

Clinton was listed as the 21st richest lawmaker, with a net worth estimated at $12 million, but she could be worth up to $50 million based on her 2006 financial disclosure form for Congress. It’s much less detailed than tax records.

Obama didn’t crack the Congress Top 50, listing a net worth of $456,000 to $1.14 million.

Clinton, McCain delay on making tax returns public | ajc.com

GOP now CSA

Listen to the two Republicans angrily call each other crazy. The GOP is now the CSA: Crazy, Scared and Angry. (If you see an older yet appropriate meaning in CSA, good eye.) peace, mjh

Entry Fee May Be Cause of GOP Flap
By Jeff Jones
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Politics Writer

State Republican Party executive director Adam Feldman said the county convention was run fairly and blasted Cargo.
    “If wouldn’t surprise me if Dave Cargo said that aliens flew in from Roswell to vote in the Bernalillo County convention, but that doesn’t make it true,” Feldman said.
    Feldman maintained that Cargo in the past has had his own convention entry fee paid for him. But Cargo said that’s untrue.
    “He’s crazier than hell,” Cargo said.

ABQjournal NM: Entry Fee May Be Cause of GOP Flap

PS: It’s fitting, isn’t it, that Republicans pay to vote.

a generational distinction

Transcript of Obama’s Interview on “NewsHour”

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I’m not sure if it was inevitable. I think that there’s no doubt that race and gender are powerful forces in our society. They always have been. And I think it would have been naïve for me to think that I could run and end up with quasi-frontrunner status in a presidential election as potentially the first African-American president that issues, race wouldn’t come up any more than Senator Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up.

But, ultimately, I don’t think it’s useful. I think we’ve got to talk about it. I think we’ve got to process it. But we’ve got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what’s different and that if we’re going to solve any of these problems, we’ve got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before.

MS. IFILL: Is that the speech you’ll be giving tomorrow in Philadelphia?

SEN. OBAMA: That will be a major focus of it.

MS. IFILL: You have also cast this as a generational distinction of the sort of things that Reverend Wright said being the baggage of a fiercely intelligent African-American man of his generation and Geraldine Ferraro’s as well. When does one person’s baggage become another person’s memory/history?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, look, there’s a continuum. But I think that, you know, when you look at somebody like a Reverend Wright who grew up in the ’50s or ’60s, his experience of race in this country is very different than mine in the same way that Geraldine’s experience being an intelligent, ambitious woman, you know, is very different than a young woman who’s coming up today and potentially has a different set of opportunities.

Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I’m not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that’s part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let’s acknowledge a difficult history, but let’s move forward in a practical way to get things done.

MS. IFILL: Has this been damaging to your campaign?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, the – I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign. I think part of what has always been the essence of my politics, not just this campaign, but my life is the idea that we’ve got to bring people together. Now, part of that is biographical as somebody who comes from a diverse background with a white mother and an African-American father growing up in Hawaii and Asia. You know, it’s in my DNA to believe that all of us have something fundamental in common.

The Page – by Mark Halperin – TIME

Calm and Measured

Obama laughs at [Clinton’s] contention.

“We were told that these contests would not count,” he tells Steve Inskeep. “Sen. Clinton agreed. Our name was taken off the ballot in Michigan, and in Florida we did no campaigning. Now, if people think that that is a normal democratic way of running an election, then that’s not the America that I know.” …

“Look, we’re going to abide by whatever the Democratic National Committee determines is fair,” he says. “But the important point is … that we agreed not to participate in this process. Not just me, but Sen. Clinton did as well. If you ask my 6-year-old, should that election count, she would probably be able to figure out that that’s not fair.”

NPR: Obama: Michigan, Florida Do-Overs ‘Not Realistic’

Schemer

Hillary Clinton says the results of Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary should count, even if Barack Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot.

That was his choice,” she says in an interview with Steve Inskeep. “There was no rule or requirement that he take his name off the ballot. His supporters ran a very aggressive campaign to try to get people to vote uncommitted.” [mjh: It’s very important to remember that Obama supporters pushed for ‘uncommitted’ specifically in response to Clinton’s campaign in Michigan, against the terms all had mutually agreed to.]

The states of Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates when they defied the rules of the national Democratic Party and moved up the date of their primaries. Clinton remained on the ballot in both states, while Obama stayed on only the Florida ballot.

Neither candidate was supposed to campaign, in accordance with the Democratic National Party’s wishes.

NPR: Clinton Says Michigan and Florida Should Count