A website dedicated to the man so uniquely unqualified to be President. This blog by by radio talk host Todd Feinburg has been replaced by RealClearThinker.com.
The GOP loses another senate seat as Gordon Smith falls in Oregon. What happened?
In the end, the Democrats succeeded primarily because of two factors. First was the willingness of a little-known rookie speaker of the Oregon House, Jeff Merkley, to ignore the advice of friends who thought he should stay in his job and eventually run for governor. Instead, Merkley decided to challenge Smith when more established political figures weren't willing to take the gamble.
Second was the decision of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and it's hyper-aggressive chairman, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, to back Merkley to the hilt. The committee helped Merkley fend off a tough primary challenge and spent $11.6 million on ads attacking Smith -- more than anyone else in the race, candidates included.
Polls from both sides showed the race essentially tied in the last week. Isaacs said he figured two things put Merkley over the top: the superior voter turnout effort mounted by Democrats and an ad featuring Obama urging Oregonians to help him by electing Merkley.
The hope for an end to financial struggle - mortgage payments, college tuitions, transportation - is a universal one. The belief that relieving some of that burden from those with the least is the job of government - not by improving one's potentials but by gifting - is a driving force of liberalism. This is the cruel hoax of Barack's hope message.
I don't see why it matters much even if VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill's book is a celebration of the wonder of Barack. She's from PBS, so we weren't expecting her to be other than highly supportive of the Democratic ticket.
The McCain camp is claiming it didn't know about Gwen Ifill's book prior to agreeing to her as moderator for the VP debate.
Democrats, who don't see skin color, are orgasmic over Barack because he is black.
If that's true, it just shows the McCain campaign's incompetence. The debate moderators were agreed to on August 6. Ifill's book was reported in the Associated Press two weeks earlier.
The same thing happened in Massachusetts two years ago, where we elected a disaster of a governor, in part, because he is black. Deval Patrick, who I believe has given up on any ideas of running for a second term, seems to be counting on being brought to Washington in an Obama administration. The idea that that he is also to be featured in Ifill's book lends a comical air to the tomb long before its release.
We've been around the block on this hope and change nonsense in Massachusetts. And we know that the purveyors of hope being inexperienced, or black, doesn't help them do job they're unqualified for.
As has been the case throughout his career, Barack Obama has ducked the opportunity to lead on the biggest issue of the day. For example,
Obama and his wife, Michelle, were among thousands attending the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. He hailed the caucus, founded nearly 40 years ago, as laying the groundwork for his nomination, and he asked the crowd to join him in his historic run for the presidency.
There he was, in the midst of a group of congressmen, one third of whom voted against the bailout. Did he lobby them to support the measure?
Obama was given the foundation's Harold Washington Award, named after the late Chicago mayor and honoring the senator's work in coalition-building. He saluted Washington, who he said had inspired him to move to Chicago and become a community organizer.
If he was privately twisting arms, his work was not very effective.
Obama (D) then devoted the rest of his 20-minute speech to economic issues and to emphasizing the differences between his positions and those of his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R).
"Change isn't just a slogan, saying, 'I'm for change, too. I'm a maverick,' " he said, pausing for the crowd's laughter and applause. "He's taking my stuff."
If Barack has any stuff that's effective, he wasn't throwing it Saturday night.
Are people voting for Barack because he represents Change? It hardly seems possible, since his time in the U.S. Senate has shown him to be one of the top representatives of the status quo.
Consider this. Last year, the average United States Senator voted with his party 84% of the time. Obama, on the other hand,
...voted with his party 96 percent of the time. In the prior two years, his number was 95 percent, making him the fourth most partisan member of the Senate. And not just partisan, but also highly ideological. In 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama’s voting record made him “the most liberal Senator.”
Are people misunderstanding the word Change, or is change simply code for liberal? I have many otherwise intelligent people telling me they're voting for Barack because they want Change, but they're all liberals.
Throughout his Senate career, according to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the dean of liberal advocacy groups, Obama voted “right” 90 percent of the time. Actually this is misleading, since ADA counts an absence as if it were a vote on the “wrong” side. If we discount his absences, Obama voted to ADA’s approval more than 98 percent of the time.
But the change that Barack was selling during primary season was something greater than extending the ineffective leadership of congress over to the executive branch. He was talking about fundamentally changing the way Washington does business. Thus far in his career, however, change is not something he's attempted.
Remember during primary season, when Barack worked really hard to convince people he was the candidate who could bring change? Once he got the nomination, he changed all his positions, so pretending to be a new kinda politician seemed like a waste of all the money that Barbra Streisand, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg had been giving him.
Now, Barack tries to reclaim control of the conversation with a two minute ad that shows a desire to get serious, again, about pretending to be an agent of change.
Who needs Barack to enunciate what politics will look like after he changes the way Washington does business?
It appears Barack Obama's teleprompter is hitting the campaign trail.
Who needs Barack when we can all just read it for ourselves?
The Democratic presidential nominee has never tried to hide the fact he delivers speeches off the device, though normally he doesn't use one at standard campaign rallies and town hall events.
The man who wants to change the way Washington does business doesn't trust himself to speak for himself. He wants the technology there to support him - even if he's standing in cow dung.
But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday — making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring.
There's a plan for making Barack seem less a member of the Ivy League Elite and more like everyday working folk!
One ticket talks about change, the other has a proven ability to deliver it. Once again, McCain/Palin proves itself to be the true change ticket, as it forces change on Barack Obama.
Barack Obama has suddenly changed his campaign slogan and signage replacing the 19 month Obama campaign event staple with a new one: "Change We Need."
The addition of Sarah Palin has created turmoil in the presidential race, and forced a revamping of the Obama approach.
Former Howard Dean guru Joe Trippi explains that Barack is making the mistake that Hillary made during the primaries - he's running as an insider, forgetting the enormous power of the change message:
What worked for Obama is now working for McCain. The important lesson for the Obama campaign is that the Clinton campaign kept looking at its research, kept stressing experience and did not adjust until it was too late. The McCain campaign has not only adjusted to the Obama message, they have changed the terrain.
The tables have been turned - McCain/Palin represents a change ticket - real mavericks who've practiced and achieved change, not just used it as a brand. Obama's got to find his way back onto the playing field.
Now the Obama campaign and its allies need to understand that in arguing that John McCain represents a third term of George Bush and the GOP agenda it is the Obama campaign that risks sounding partisan in a country that yearns for the post-partisanship of “country first” and “shaking things up in Washington.”
What does Trippi think Obama should do?
Get back to being an outsider. And get there fast. Clinton adjusted too late. McCain may have adjusted in the nick of time. Will Obama’s campaign make the right adjustment now?
The job of the media in our society is an important one - it is expected to shine a light on government, forcing it to do the will of the people.
Today, though, in the age of affluence, we are a people without a will. The newspapers go unread, the news departments have been merged with the entertainment divisions, and journalistic standards have given way to ratings. The unemployed bright light of the media has been retooled into a disco ball, offering flash and excitement, scattering the national consciousness rather than providing clarity.
To win elections, campaigns have adjusted to the environment. In order to gain control of the fast moving flashes of light from the ball, they have learned to provide the news machine the fuel it requires. This is not a world in which facts survives, as it is a world where facts are not relevant. It is a world of messages and impressions - using subtle positioning to divide people into camps. Are you Dunkin' Donuts, or are you Starbucks?
The short attention span of the era means that perceptions are absorbed by the accumulation of snippets. Not from 30 second commercials, but from portions of them - not from their entire messages, but from momentary messages within. The "truths" that campaigns seek to communicate are assembled out of scraps of data grabbed from the political universe. The data is the paint on the pallet of the message crafters - it doesn't matter if the cause of a candidate's statement may have been severed from its effect! The creators of the message are the starving artists of the time - fully prepared to externalize the truth of their inner eyes at any cost.
The McCain messengers are not bothered by nattering nabobs who run in circles complaining that we shouldn't be talking about lipstick. Lipstick covers up Change, and Change is the word that the Lipstick artists must keep from being spoken.
They can't know what Barack's intention was when he spoke of lipstick and pigs - what's important is that the linkage to Palin was too strong to ignore in the minds of viewers. The Hillary message is reinforced - Barack doesn't behave well with women.
The Barack messengers aren't hemmed in by their parties’ long commitment to fight discrimination - they disparage McCain for being old, proving the point by noting that he doesn't use email.
It doesn't matter, in their world, whether McCain does or does not use email - or whether such a detail is worthy evidence of presidential preparedness. What matters is that the feeling evoked by the very accusation - McCain is too old, too out of touch!
This is the how the tug of war of politics is fought today. For the past year, Barack got a free ride from the media, which promoted his message of change and hope with a free media campaign unrivaled since the development of the PR industry. For the past two weeks, Sarah Palin has taken over Barack's endless summer, riding the wave that has gone, in a moment, from promoting Barack to pounding him.
A year ago, John McCain's campaign was in shambles. He had been buried under the weight of the contempt his own party felt toward him for his practice of reaching across the aisle and forging compromises with the Feingolds and Kennedys. Taking great personal risk to affect change, he has climbed back from the drubbing to win his party's nomination.
Now, McCain faces a candidate who has always put personal ambition above policy - he has never risked his career for any goal, and he has never affected change of any kind.
If the media was doing its job, it would be shining the light on the truth that McCain is the candidate of change, and that Barack's lack of experience should really disqualify him from serious consideration for the presidency.
While we wait for that to happen, we'll have to be content to enjoy the craftsmanship of the spinmeisters, pumping away at their looms, weaving the truth as they see it – no matter how hokey.
Barack had best leave the lipstick jokes to the women. He got in a bit of trouble yesterday venturing into unfamiliar territory.
The point Barack Obama was making today is that John McCain is not about change. Rather he and running mate Sarah Palin are about more of the same - no matter how they package it.
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still going to stink.”
Not a nice way to talk about a woman.
The McCain team is saying that’s mockery gone too far. They say Obama called Palin a pig - drawing a parallel to Palin’s well-used remark that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick.
“It’s clear to me — as I’m sure it will be to fair-minded Republicans, Democrats and independents across the country — that Senator Obama owes Governor Palin an apology,” said former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, the chair of the newly formed “Palin truth squad.”
Citing historical president, the Obama team disagrees.
In fact, you can Google it. Exhibit number one comes from Vice President Dick Cheney four years ago - also on the campaign trail.
”As we say in Wyoming, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” quipped Vice President Dick Cheney in a stump speech yesterday, with reference to John Kerry’s claims he would be a credible war president.
Exhibit number two comes special delivery from the Obama campaign pointing out that Senator McCain himself used this phrase almost a year ago describing Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.
“I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” he said of her proposal.
Just further evidence that Barack is off his game a bit.
Boy, this new McCain campaign sure is a pleasure. Such tenacity in not letting Barack get away with the standard lines. In his continued celebration of the old kinda politics, it was reported yesterday that Barack was going after Sarah Palin for misrepresenting herself on earmarks. Sarah's not going to stand for it.
Gov. Palin hit back at Sen. Obama during an evening rally in the Land of Enchantment Saturday, arguing that the Democrat is in no place to lecture her on federal earmark requests.
“Today our opponent brought up earmarks and frankly I was surprised that he raised the subject. I didn’t think he’d want to go there,” she said. “Our opponent has requested nearly one billion dollars in earmarks in just three years…about a million dollars for every working day. Just wait until President John McCain puts a stop to that.”
Since Obama is a traditional politician, he lies virtually everytime he opens his mouth. Might as well wack him when he does it.
The state of Alaska has also requested hundreds of millions of dollars during Palin’s first year as Governor but she noted today that she “cut back earmarks in our state” this past year.
Why didn't Barack stick to his primary campaign theme of changing the way Washington does business. That's an idea that Americans are receptive to.
“I’m ready to help John McCain end earmarks once and for all…eleventh hour, behind closed doors, no public scrutiny, the earmark system that is broken–we will end that,” she said.
Since converting to being a traditional politician, he's opened the door for McCain/Palin to challenge him for rightful ownership of the "change" brand.
Live by the fad, die by the fad. Preliminary numbers indicate more Americans tuned in to hear John McCain speak last night than did for Barack a week ago.
Across all broadcast networks Thursday, Sen. McCain’s speech ended the night with a 4.8 rating/7 share, compared to Sen. Obama’s 4.3/7 average, according to overnight numbers from metered households in 55 U.S. markets measured by Nielsen. These ratings are preliminary, however, and are subject to change.
Some might argue, of course, given his sluggish style of speaking from the teleprompter, that McCain might have been better off if the big audience had tuned in only for Sarah Palin the day before.
But the entry of Palin into the race has redefined it, taking much of the newness and luster from the Democratic ticket and moving it over to the GOP. As a result, the conventions end with ownership of the "Change" brand in dispute.
When Sen. John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate last week, he declared they would "beat the long odds to win a tough election on a message of reform and integrity." Alaska's governor promised they would take "our message of reform to every voter of every background." Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) pronounced McCain "a restless reformer," now with a running-mate "reformer" to boot.
While some complain the meaning of "change" as touted by McCain remains nebulous, that makes his change just like Barack's.
In McCain's attempt to fire up the Republican base without losing his "maverick" image, calls for reform have come to mean a pledge to "change" Washington -- with little explanation of what that change would be or how that change would take effect. "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd," McCain warned last night. "Change is coming."
Barack proposes to fundamentally change the way Washington does business, ushering in a new era of bipartisanship, an end to the influence of special interests over policy, and conducting foreign policy in a more thoughtful manner.
Considering that Barack has no experience with any of these activities, it makes sense to assume that John McCain, who has shown leadership and had successes in each of these areas, is the more appropriate person to turn to in order to achieve change.
People have been wondering for some time, if elected President, how Barack Obama would go about uniting the country. Now we know. By criminalizing Republicans.
"We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offense that's occurred," Biden said Monday at a Florida campaign stop. "If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued — not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, (but) out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.
Now that's a plan to end the divisiveness in Washington!
This will play well with those segments of the Democratic Party where the hardware that keeps them hinged to reality has come loose. To treat their Bush Derangement Syndrome, nothing less than retaliation will do. And no matter how much Biden denies it, vengeance and retribution are driving the threats.
Apparently, the Obama camp fears losing the wacko wing of the party as it abandons the principles that won it the nomination.
With all the challenges facing the next administration... surely the last thing America needs is to be torn apart by the spectacle of small-minded, self-centered politicians seeking revenge on their opponents.
Have you ever seen the real BarackObama in action? I don't mean the candidate BarackObama, who says he's going to bring us a new Washington but can point to no actions that would indicated this is going to part of his future. I mean someone who has actually lived the ideal that Barackcontemplates - someone who is truly post-partisan.
Before she was running against him, Sarah Palin—the governor of Alaska and now the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States—thought it was pretty neat that BarackObama was edging ahead of John McCain in her usually solidly red state. After all, she said, Obama’s campaign was using the same sort of language that she had in her gubernatorial race. “The theme of our campaign was ‘new energy,’ ” she said recently. “It was no more status quo, no more politics as usual, it was all about change. So then to see that Obama—literally, part of his campaign uses those themes, even, new energy, change, all that, I think, O.K., well, we were a little bit ahead on that.”
Even though she knew she was being considered, on some level, as a possible GOP VP pick, Sarah Palin didn't mind talking in ways that some might consider disloyal about the presidential race. In other words, unlike Barack, she wasn't going to alter her stances to curry favor and gain power.
She also noted, “Something’s kind of changing here in Alaska, too, for being such a red state on the Presidential level. Obama’s doing just fine in polls up here, which is kind of wigging people out, because they’re saying, ‘This hasn’t happened for decades that in polls the D’ ”—the Democratic candidate—“ ‘is doing just fine.’ To me, that’s indicative, too. It’s the no-more-status-quo, it’s change.”
Sarah Palin, like John McCain, can say that she's willing to risk personal political damage to be who she is and believe what she believes - and she can point to specific examples of having done so.
This was two weeks ago, at the statehouse in Juneau. After persistent reports, in July, that Palin was on McCain’s short list of potential running mates, her name had faded back into obscurity. Nobody in Alaska seemed to take her seriously as a national prospect, and she had shrugged the whole thing off on television, telling CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that, before considering the job, she would want to know “what is it, exactly, that the V.P. does every day.”
That sounds like someone who has the conviction to change the way Washington does business.
Now, at the statehouse, she sat, unattended by aides, curled up in a cardigan, and explained that what she had done every day since becoming governor was to stick her thumb in the eye of Alaska’s Republican Party establishment. “The G.O.P. leader of the state—we haven’t spoken since I got elected,” she said.
Barack walked away from his support for federal funding of elections, his promise on FISA, and his unequivocal commitment to withdraw troops on a fixed schedule - once cornerstone principles of his candidacy - because he wants power. That's doesn't forshadow a leader who will be an agent of change.
She went on, “I guess if you take the individual issues, two that I believe would be benchmarks showing whether you’re a hard-core Republican conservative or not, would be: I’m a lifetime member of the N.R.A.—but this is Alaska, who isn’t?—and I am pro-life, absolutely.” She continued, “I guess that puts me in a box of being hard-core Republican.” But she said she recognized that “the Democrats also preach individual freedoms and individual rights, capitalism, free market, let-it-do-its-thing-best, let people keep as much of their money that they earn as possible. And when it comes to, like, the Party machine, no one will accuse me of being partisan.”
Jeez. So this is what a real post-partisan candidate talks like. I have to admit, it will take some getting used to.
So the possibility that Obama might win Alaska did not worry Palin: “Turning maybe purple in the state means, to me, it’s more independent, it’s not the obsessive partisanship that gets in the way of doing what’s right for this state, and I think on a national level that’s what we’re gonna see.” And she added, “That’s why McCain is the candidate for the G.O.P.—because he’s been known as the maverick, as the conduit for some change.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, we now know that there are people out there who are actually living Barack's fantasy. John McCain, who has a long record of taking political hits for doing what he thinks is right without regard for partisan considerations, and Sarah Palin, who doesn't look at the world through red and blue colored glasses.
...on McCain’s signature issue—the prosecution of the war in Iraq—she did not sound so gung-ho. Her son is a soldier, and she said, “I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”
Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? I believe she just did.
What will Barack be doing tonight in his speech? Let's figure that he'll aggressively assert that he can handle being Commander in Chief, and he'll probably offer some specifics about what Hope and Change are all about.
According to a focus group conducted by pollster Frank Luntz, Obama’s problem is partially that the remaining undecided voters are getting a little tired of talk of the constant invoking of the watchwords “hope” and “change.”
I know that I'm getting sick of Barack being the blank slate who avoids specifics at all costs.
If Obama reverts to the lofty and ethereal language about his election being the moment that the sea levels receded and the sick were healed — the kind of talk Hillary mocked as celestial choirs singing — then these undecided voters may throw heavy objects at their television.
I have too much affection for my TV for that.
One of Luntz’s focus group members lamented the lack of substance behind the “charismatic talk,” and found much agreement from the rest of the group. Another said he was tired of “oratory” and another said “it’s not about change.”
There you go.
Luntz was blunter in assessing Obama’s flaws, urging both candidates to “cut through the crap” and describing a scenario where Obama comes across as “the beautiful politician who has the words but not the solutions,” and voters turn away.
If you haven't seen McCain's "Broken" ad yet, take a look. This is a theme that will play a major role in the campaign - an attempt by McCain to kidnap the mantle of change. He is, after all, the guy who's been living what Barack can only put forth as an concept - reaching across the aisle to create compromise legislation, and suffering political pain for pursuing maverick positions.
...records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, raised in contributions of that size.
As with everything in the Obama campaign, the money situation is not as it has been portrayed.
While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Mr. Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the United States Senate. He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago prior to the 2004 Senate race, and once elected, set out across the country starting to cultivate some of his party’s most influential money collectors.
This won't matter to those who Barack tricked in order to get the nomination. But it will matter to voters looking at him for the first time in the fall campaign, trying to decide if he is the change agent he pretends to be.
The Obama fund-raising operation is meticulously organized. Bundlers are assigned tracking numbers, and the finance staff sends them quarterly reminders of how they are doing in meeting their goals.
