The Swamp: McCain paints Obama’s portrait

Defining one’s opponent is a key task of any campaign, and simply put, McCain has had a long head start. As early as Feb. 12–the day McCain and Obama each won primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. — McCain suggested Obama was guilty of hollow promises and a messianic self-image.

“To encourage a country with only rhetoric, rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people, is not a promise of hope,” McCain said, alluding to Obama’s speaking skills and campaign theme. And in another jab he added, “I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need.”

Unlike McCain, Obama has been fighting a two-front war, trying to beat back an onslaught from Clinton while taking opening shots at McCain. Recently Obama has started focusing more squarely on the presumptive Republican nominee, attacking his positions on the war and the economy.

But because of the long, bruising Democratic campaign, McCain has gotten an early jump. Day by day, week by week, McCain has been portraying Obama as inexperienced, self-entitled and effete, a candidate coddled by a loving press corps and lacking the judgment necessary for the highest office in the land.

It’s a line of attack likely to last through the fall election.

“We’ll make the case that Barack Obama is a wonderful new voice selling old, discredited ideas, including the most massive tax increase since Walter Mondale ran for president,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior McCain adviser. “It’s a combination of weakness, not being ready to be president and not being able to deliver on the things he says he will deliver on.”

The Swamp: McCain paints Obama’s portrait

The Page - by Mark Halperin - TIME

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP

Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

The Page - by Mark Halperin - TIME

PS: The slaughter of Eight Belles was tragic, especially so soon after Barbaro. This is a vicious “sport” akin to boxing or ultimate cage fighting. Sickening.

Huckabee says Obama’s former pastor needs him to lose - International Herald Tribune

“His (Obama’s) campaign is not being derailed by his race, it’s being derailed by a person who doesn’t want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country,” Huckabee told reporters.

Wright has claimed AIDS was created by the U.S. government to kill “people of color” and that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were spurred by the United State’s “terrorism” against minorities at home and abroad.

“Jeremiah Wright needs for Obama to lose so he can justify his anger, his hostile bitterness against the United States of America,” Huckabee said. [mjh: Therefore, Vote for Obama!]

Huckabee on Obama, Wright: ‘Cut some slack to people who grew up on the back of the bus’ | Political Insider

“As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement’ — I grew up in a very segregated South.

“And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you — we’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie, you have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant, you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.

“And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment, and you have to just say, ‘I probably would, too.’”

Yesterday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich visited Drew University in New Jersey, where he took questions from 20 political science majors there. When one asked him how the government could justify stripping rights from Americans in such pieces of legislation as the Patriot Act, Gingrich said that the government has a “right to defend society,” and when under threat, “people will give up all their liberties“:

“If there’s a threat, you have a right to defend society,” Gingrich said. “People will give up all their liberties to avoid that level of threat.“

Gingrich is directly contradicted by Benjamin Franklin, who rejected the notion that one should give up one’s liberties out of fear:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

For nearly eight years, America has suffered mightily under the clumsy thumb of Duhbya, born on third base with a silver spoon in his mouth, a spoiled rich kid who caught every break every step of the way. Duhbya is an elitist masquerading as Joe Sixpack, a guy rich enough to have a ranch in the desert on which all he does is clear brush and entertain Saudi royalty.

Every time a brouhaha arises in the next 6 months, ask yourself, what are you being distracted from? Recently, Barack Obama said a lot of Americans are pissed off. OK, he said, “bitter.” They’re pissed off at being lied to and used as canon fodder by elitists who run everything in AmeriCo. And rather than rise up in revolution, as Thomas Jefferson hoped we would, the pissed-off self-medicate with all the opiates of the people. If there is anyone who should be grateful for that fact, it is the Republican Party, the prime purveyor of said opiates.

But, it appears that if you actually do disdain “ordinary people,” you may have good reason for that. If The People let the two richest, most privileged (oldest and whitest) candidates convince them that the poorest, least privileged candidate is “out of touch,” then, once again, The People get what they deserve.

Anyone who votes for John McCain is voting for George Duhbya Bush. It’s that simple. And Hilary Clinton has proved herself to be McCain’s doppleganger in terms of shape-shifting to mesh with the next group of voters. McCain and Clinton are rich. They are elite. They are more of the same.

Is this election another bout of smoke and mirrors? Smash the status quo. Make *real* change.

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

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)

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

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

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.

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