ABC News: Obama: ‘Old Politics Just Won’t Do’

“The way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq, who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like, and who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed,” Obama said. …

In his speech, Obama argued against the politics of divide and conquer, without pointing the finger directly at the Clintons. [mjh: The following points a finger at Rove, not the Clintons.]

“We’ve faced forces that are not the fault of any one campaign — forces that open American wounds,” Obama said. “The politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon. A politics that tells us what we have to think and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/Story?id=4215588&page=2

I’m especially tired of George Stephanopolus spinning things Clinton’s way while masquerading as a ‘journalist.’ He was Clinton’s communications guy — and it seems he still is. Read this speech. mjh

Transcript of Obama’s Speech Wednesday in Denver, Colorado
The Past Versus the Future, January 30th, 2008

In Background, a Battle for Superdelegates – washingtonpost.com, By Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane

Of the nearly 300 superdelegates who have committed to a candidate, out of a total of 796, Clinton leads Obama roughly by a 2-to-1 ratio, according to numerous counts. The lead is so substantial, her campaign asserts, that even if Obama pulls ahead in pledged delegates after Feb. 5, Clinton will probably retain a modest edge in the overall delegate tally.

But there is a catch. While delegates chosen in a primary or caucus are technically committed to a candidate, superdelegates can change their allegiance at any time. …

While many superdelegates are prominent names in political circles — including Clinton aides Harold Ickes and Minyon Moore — the largest number, a total of 411, are rank-and-file members of the Democratic National Committee — such as local party activists who work in manufacturing and teachers unions — many of whom rose to power during the Clinton administration. These local activists may not bring the same symbolic freight a Kennedy does, but they count equally as superdelegates and are overwhelmingly allied with Clinton.

In the event that Clinton and Obama arrive in Denver for the party’s nominating convention with roughly equal numbers of pledged delegates, superdelegates could make the difference.

Richardson’s Choice | The Trail | washingtonpost.com, by By Jose Antonio Vargas

“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.'”

[hat tip to newmexiken.com]

Web exclusive: ‘Obama the conservative’ by Johan Wennström | Prospect Magazine

Right speech, wrong party.” That was the conclusion of a number of conservative commentators after Barack Obama’s celebrated performance at the Democratic national convention in 2004. This speech was very different from anything else delivered that night. Unlike many other Democrats, Obama used his moment in the limelight to send out a positive and constructive message about an end to the bickering of partisan politics; to the spin and cynicism that has defined political life in America since the 1990s. This is a message Obama has continued to spread in the run for his party’s nomination for president.

Obama’s hopeful non-partisan tone appeals to those conservatives who have been disillusioned by the polarising George W Bush presidency. After eight years with a leadership that has deepened the political divide in America, they long for a president capable of rising above the standard ideological fray.

The conservative blogosphere is currently flowing over with such comments, uttered by people who are tired of seeing their country torn apart by fierce arguments between the Bush and Clinton camps, and the cultural wars fought by the Christian right and die-hard secularists. These sentiments were recently summed up in an excellent essay in the Atlantic magazine by the conservative journalist and commentator Andrew Sullivan (known in Britain through his columns for the Sunday Times), where he came out as a passionate supporter of Obama.

The attraction of Obama to Sullivan and other conservatives is not surprising. In fact, their support is consistent with the constructive wing of the philosophy of conservatism. Those stuck in the world of divisional politics can be baffled by this. How, they ask, can people who admire Reagan and Thatcher also have time for Obama?

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9988
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Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters, by Andrew Sullivan

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce. …

Of the viable national candidates, only Obama and possibly McCain have the potential to bridge this widening partisan gulf. Polling reveals Obama to be the favored Democrat among Republicans. McCain’s bipartisan appeal has receded in recent years, especially with his enthusiastic embrace of the latest phase of the Iraq War. And his personal history can only reinforce the Vietnam divide. But Obama’s reach outside his own ranks remains striking. Why? It’s a good question: How has a black, urban liberal gained far stronger support among Republicans than the made-over moderate Clinton or the southern charmer Edwards? Perhaps because the Republicans and independents who are open to an Obama candidacy see his primary advantage in prosecuting the war on Islamist terrorism. It isn’t about his policies as such; it is about his person. They are prepared to set their own ideological preferences to one side in favor of what Obama offers America in a critical moment in our dealings with the rest of the world. The war today matters enormously. The war of the last generation? Not so much. If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems, Obama may be your man. …

It is worth recalling the key passages of the speech Obama gave in Chicago on October 2, 2002, five months before the war:

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

The man who opposed the war for the right reasons is for that reason the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama

The Associated Press: Morrison Endorses Obama for President By NEDRA PICKLER

“In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates,” Morrison wrote. “That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

“Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace — that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom,” Morrison wrote.

In 1998, Morrison wrote a column for the New Yorker magazine in which she wrote of Bill Clinton: “White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

Obama responded to Morrison’s endorsement with a written statement: “Toni Morrison has touched a nation with the grace and beauty of her words, and I was deeply moved and honored by the letter she wrote and the support she is giving our campaign.”

The Page – by Mark Halperin – TIME
HALPERIN’S TAKE: Six Reasons Why the Kennedy Endorsement is a Big Deal

While endorsements don’t usually matter much, Edward Kennedy’s does because:

1. He has a huge following with Hispanics, a big deal in California and other Super Tuesday states, and one of Obama’s weaknesses.

2. The symbolic Kennedy family thing — the ultimate message of change, viability, Democratic legitimacy, and youthful excitement.

3. The national press will be obsessed with the story for days and days to come, with no downside for Obama; the local press coverage when Kennedy travels for Obama will be ginormous.

4. It sends a message to other senators and superdelegates that it is OK to be for Obama — they don’t have to be afraid of the Clintons.

5. He has a huge following among working-class, traditional Democrats, one of Obama’s weaknesses.

6. He has a huge following among union households, another of Obama’s weaknesses.

http://thepage.time.com/halperins-take-five-reasons-why-the-kennedy-endorsement-is-a-big-deal/

Ted Kennedy and the Hierarchy of Endorsements – The Fix, By Chris Cillizza

In the hierarchy of endorsements, Kennedy coming out for Obama falls into the category of “symbolic endorsement,” the most coveted of all because it is not simply the typical pat on the back and photo-op, but rather it signifies something larger about a candidate.

Kennedy, after all, is not simply the senior senator from Massachusetts. He’s Ted Kennedy — last of the brothers of the original first family in American politics (sorry Bill and Hillary) and standardbearer for liberals everywhere. For people of a certain vintage, Ted Kennedy serves as the embodiment of what it means to be a Democrat.

Winning Kennedy’s endorsement then, is important for Obama in a number of ways. It — coupled with the endorsement by John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline Kennedy over the weekend — makes a tangible connection in voters’ mind between JFK, Robert F. Kennedy and Obama. That is a crucial connection as Obama seeks to continue to transform himself from a candidate into a movement on Feb. 5 and beyond. Kennedy’s endorsement also gives Obama some opening to approach a group of rank-and-file Democrats — union households, middle class whites — who will be two of the crucial groups up for grabs on Feb. 5.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/01/ted_kennedy_and_the_hierarchy.html