He secured at least the VP spot months ago and until Hillary hit back hard he was poised for total victory and is still the odds-on favorite. The 3am spot has gotten way too much ink and didn't run in Ohio at all. Obama's media team handled it brilliantly, almost instantly counterpunching. Unlike other Obama supporters, his media team didn't whine about how unfair it was they just fought back.
Fight is the operative word here.
The country is in a recession, not teetering or flirting with one but in one and one of some significance. Abroad we do have many enemies who do nothing but plot ways to do us harm. Americans need to be assured that their Commander-in-Chief will not only be wise and measured but will, when the need comes, kick some ass.
Campaigns, especially extraordinarily long ones like this one, give the voters such a long, long time to test drive their prospective POTUSes. For John Kerry the crucial test was the Swift Boaters. As Josh Marshall so aptly pointed out, his wimpiness so demoralized Democrats and alienated independents because it was intuited that if he couldn't defend himself against the Republican attack machine how could we expect him to defend us against al Qaeda?
Obama's message of changing the way Washington works, of making it more civilized and tolerant is smacking right into Hillary's old-fashioned street brawling. The Republicans, of course, will fight even dirtier. The question Obama needs to answer and answer now is how he plans on dealing with adversaries who are not intent on being agreeable.
Bobby Kennedy not only embodied hope but when he embraced Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers he personified the struggle for what is right, the fearless will to battle entrenched interests.
That is what we need to see from Obama right now. Now anger, not kneecapping, but strength and the will to fight.
If he had asked for my advice I wouldn't have fired Samantha Power. That was old-politicking. Your lieutenant makes a gaffes and they're immediately kicked off the bus. The silly slip of the tongue would have been a perfect time to show an unusal toughness, a rewriting of the rule book. Ms. Powers would apologize profusely, as she did, and then Obama would have said this:
"Trash talk is a staple of pro sports and has unfortunately infected politics. Nevertheless, it's not a capital offense. This isn't grade school, this is a battle for the future of this nation. Ms. Powers has apologized. I have apologized. Now if Howard Wolfson or Mark Penn want to call me a 'snot-nosed upstart' or 'Dumbo ears' then let's just call it even. Come on, people, we are all too busy for this childishness."
And then he wouldn't say another word about it and let the Clinton camp keep whining and acting pissy about it.
That would have shown the "Obama Doctrine" of new politicking in action. Unfortunately, instead Obama surrogate Tom Daschle did the typical Washington tit for tat and whined that Wolfson should resign because he likened Obama to Ken Starr.
Clinton isn't on the pedestal, Obama is, so he has so much farther to fall if he's proved to be ordinary.
Trey Ellis is the author of Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.
It is Senator Clinton who brings two decades of baggage with her.
Senator Clinton is losing delegates and superdelegates.
It is Senator Clinton who must assess the damage she is doing to the party.
Any fool knows that McCain is Bush lite.
Senator Clinton is not a stronger candidate. The votes tallied thus far prove that. Senator Obama is winning in states that usually go for the Republicans. Obama can win any state that Clinton can. So do the math. We need the unity that Obama brings to the process. Senator Clinton has been throwing mud at him because she is desperate now that she sees what a great candidate Obama is and that she is losing to him across the nation.
Senator Obama has brought dignity and respectfulness back into the political game. He has tried to discuss policy and issues, and he has more knowledge than Clinton who has not passed any meaningful legislation since she won her Senate seat in New York on her husband's coattails.
It is Senator Clinton who is running on her husband's name, which is now tarnished. Where is he now anyway? There are so many years of bad memories of the Clintons. These memories range from Bill Clinton signing NAFTA when he promised not to (sending our jobs overseas)--to the sex scandals in the White House (which I could care less about--but not the Republicans though, they will come out in droves, droves I tell you, to vote against her). Bill Clinton is the reason the Neocons got their foot in the door and won the White House AND the Congress. I, for one, will never forgive him. It will be the same if Senator Clinton runs. They will drag out all the bad news that has accumulated over their political lives and it will be a real shame.
So many young voters have recently become a part of the political process because they see the hope that Senator Obama brings. They have read his books, which are out selling Clinton's, McCain's and Huckabee's combined. Senator Obama is a brilliant young man and you only detract from yourself by revealing that you do not know more about him.
Senator Obama has done many things right, and made more than a few mistakes. But if we don't make mistakes, then how can we ever learn? Right now, what's done is done, and Obama will move on.
But Samantha Power has a keen political mind, and if Obama should become president, I can only hope he will find a role for her among his advisors.
That's why the 3am ad continues to have power. Obama is a 12 year old.
Obama is a punk who wants to go to Washington and "change" the 230 years of American greatness (which I am sure most Obamaniacs think is nothing to be proud of). But guess what? Most Americans do NOT trust Obama's judgement. They think he is an arrogant 12-year-old.
They do not trust Obama to "change" America in some undefined way. What is he going to do? Pick Al Sharpton as Attorney General? Farrakhan as Secretary of the Interior?
I'm not in love with Bush, but I have some PROFOUND suspicions about Obama and the "changes" he wants to make.
This is in totally contradiction to his whole "message" of hope and of power to the people. He has shown that he is a complete and total HYPOCRITE, because he ignores all of his stated principles when they get in the way of his political ambitions.
In fact, Obama is EXACTLY THE SAME as George BUSH. EXACTLY the same. When Bush disenfranchised Florida voters in 2000, he used EXACTLY the same argument as Bush. The same horses**t about "not changing the rules" in the middle of the game.
As if DISENFRANCHISING 26 million people is part of the "rules".
If Obama had any INTEGRITY whatsover, he would actively supporting a REVOTE in Florida and Michigan. But he is a FOOL. That is why, if he manages to STEAL the nomination by DISENFRANCHISING the 4th largest and 7th largest states, he will be DEMOLISHED in the general election.
Obama is showing himself to be an opportunist, a hypocrite and a liar, and that is alienating large numbers of the white voters who initiallly supported him. Soon, his only supporters will be people like Al Sharpton, who don't care about the truth, but only care about putting a black person in power.
_____________________________________________________________
Ooops, you forgot to say "may I now compare Obama to Hitler?"
Forget to say "may I" and you go back to the start line.
Not true. As a Columbus resident, I myself witnessed the advertisement at least 10 times prior to the date of the actual primaries.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/124171,CST-NWS-obama05.article
But Obama is a basically decent man, and I don't understand the impulse people have to tear down such people with cynicism and sarcasm. Or worse.
It's almost as if people WANT him to be rotten and read that desire into what he does rather than waiting for proof that he has clay feet.
There is not even scant proof of that. Clinton's healthcare initiative broke up on the rocks of special interests primarily because she would not include legislators in the process. She wanted the credit for herself.
Her Senatorial record shows a smattering of non-controversial legislation such as child care issues. On this and other issues she has not had a single, solitary, co-sponsor. Obama's record is both more consequential and he gets co-sponsors from both sides of the isle, as a junior Senator.
As a first term Senator Obama has shown he can already "work the levers of our political system" better than Clinton. Honestly, I do not know how anyone could misinterpret these records.
I believe Obama and I see a purple nation, not a blue or red nation. Don't think that Obama doesn't have this all figured out. He will win the nomination and the presidency by focusing in places where the traditional democrats don't bother to win. Is this the "typical Democratic strategy"? No. But, the world has changed. The "base" doesn't matter anymore and Obama has figured this out. For example, Alaksa will probably go Democratic in the fall election. And Alaska - surprise! - will be Obama territory.
People accuse Obama of being some sort of "chardonnay" liberal. I say, so what? There are a lot more chardonnay liberals and young liberals and left-of-center liberals than there are working class Dems, old Dems and rural Dems. The cities are where this election will be won and Obama is a city man. The rural voters will just stay home this election season. As Michelle Obama recently said in The New Yorker, "We Got Him" meaning that not only does Obama have the nomination basically sewed up, but he's gonna cream McCain in a cakewalk to the Presidency.
I won't bother to go down the list of sleazy underhanded things Obama has done to even get where he is now, which is sitting on modest lead of about 125 delegates, primarily as a result of his admittedly clever campaign tactic of getting a bunch of enthusiastic college students to dominate caucuses in states like Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming where the total turnout is less than population of one of these college campuses. It's clever, but if this gimmick at the end of the day doesn't work it's not because anyone stole anything, it's that his gimmickry was seen thru and people decided not to buy it.
Also, nobody's "accusing" Obama of being a "chardonnay liberal". He is a caricature of one.
In fact, Obama is quite funny, if he unfortunately wasn't stepping into an area where he is so clearly over his head and doesn't belong. Obama does have the potential to be a super-star, loved by all,
and possibly even President some day if he earns it. Right now, he hasn't earned and even if he were to win it, the price would be so high that it's likely that his administration would be simply an ongoing disastrous farce from day one.
He gives speeches as if he thinks he's MLK, JFK, RR and others all rolled into one. He even copies their speeches line by line and delivers them with great flourish and raises great emotions within the listeners in the audience.
However, at the end of the day, Obama is not any of these people, and he has lived a relatively privileged life growing up in Hawaii prep schools and Ivy League colleges, so after a while and a lot of speeches people start asking questions. If they had slam-dunked Hillary as they planned, it would have been a different story. But he didn't. She's still in the game and he is in a street fight with her to get 2025 delegates.
Maybe Tom Daschle, Gary Hart, John Kerry, and Ted Kennedy can yell "Boo!" to all the delegates and they will jump to and follow orders. However, this crew has had a notoriously disastrous record of putting up any kind of fight about anything. Kennedy is the toughest of the bunch and it is kind of amusing that he is the one most offended by the Clintons' behavior given his long history of questionable moral character. I'm no moralist, but if you live in a glass house, .... .
I have been working on this metaphor for Obama: he is a gigantic empty suit that has been blown up into a huge float that is hovering over our consciousnesses. Now Hillary has come along and blasted so many holes in that suit that all the fund-raising in the world isn't going to be able to blow up this suit again.
In CA 1 delegate=11,361 votes
In ID 1 delegate=1,218 votes
So, 1 delegate in ID represents almost 10 times the voters in CA
The delegates are predetermined before the the actual votes. So, if ID had only 100 voters total they would still get the same number of delegates to split.
The super-delegates need to take all this into account as well as other factors. Since neither candidate will reach 2025 to win, it's up for grabs. The supers don't have to give it to the one with the most delegates at that point.
The 3 a.m. call commercial barely ran in Texas as the Clinton campaign had little money, and the commercial was given more airtime on the news and in the media. It didn't say anything derogatory about Senator Obama, but rather asked an open ended question. That question "who do you want taking that call?" doesn't even necessarily suggest to the listener, that Senator Clinton should be taking that call. If you look at the exit polls in every state, people respond that Senator Clinton definately is perceived as having more experience, but EXPERIENCE has consistently been low on the peoples list for their decision. This commercial was a smart way of bringing that question to the top of the list versus the bottom of the list. This is politics people! Obama's campaign did it with their catch phrase of Change and capitolizing on people's disgust with Bush/Cheney these last 8 years. However, Change has been the most common theme of any challenger to an incumbent, for it is the only platfom that a challenger can win by. Again, this is POLITICS as usual! Nothing original here folks!
Senator Obama countered with an exact copy of the same commercial but ended by calling into question Senator Clinton's judgement and ended by claiming Senator Obama had always opposed the war, while failing to mention that he wasn't in a position to vote, or that since then his voting record is the same as Senator Clinton's. He questions her judgement, a Senator from New York who was a Senator at 9/11 and at ground zero, a Senator with what I see as a higher degree of pressure as the towers fell in her state, to protect the people who she represents. I am anti-war, but I don't think I could have voted otherwise if in the same position. I don't see how someone who didn't share the same responsibilities to serve and to protect can question someone who did? Even Senator Obama is on record for saying he really couldn't say how he would have voted if he actually had been in the position to vote on the resolution. But heh, it's Politics!
I really like how he copied the 93' tactic of Harry and Louis fliers, while in Ohio. This wasn't an attack against Senator Clinton, but rather an attack against Universal Healthcare, which I find repugnant. And I especially like Senator Obama using a KNOWN misquote in the NAFTA fliers he sent in Ohio.
So please, stop saying Senator Obama is above politics as usual, he is anything but. His advisors are the same advisors the Clintons had, that Daschle had, that Kerry had, etc. It's all more the same and you do him and his campaign a diservice by putting him up on this holy pedestal of he can do no wrong. If he wins the nominee, we can't have an October surprise that causes him to fall so hard and fast that McCain wins.
My wife was there in San Antonio. She saw both HRCand Barack. And the ad ran constantly.
Clinton continually attacks the most unimportant details because she knows the only way to beat the candidate with far more positive potential is to squirm in the mud and fool the dumbest voters around us.
__________________________________________________________
Interesting, though, because that would have been a natural comeback for Obama to use if he were interested in playing the usual "tit for tat" game. People would have laughed, he'd have made a good point and made Hillary look bad.
I'm sure his staff put that one out there. It's just so obvious. But Obama stayed above the fray and didn't descend to that level. Good for him.
Whether or not having the dignity to refrain from using an obvious dig will help him or not remains to be seen, but I'm glad he didn't go that way.
Obama's on the record stating that he would release anyone working for his campaign that didn't failed to maintain his promise of a change from "old poilitics".
The press went completely ape over the Canadian "wink" even though the whole story was invented and Tim Russet was practically salivating over the opportunity to try to nail Obama to Farrakhan.
In short, it isn't just the Clinton camp who would be htting him on the head about not keeping his word that he would release any aide or campaign surrogate who didn't tow the "new school politics" ethos, the media would waterboard him repeatedly with it.
Though I think what Samantha Power did was completely human, and really nothing compared to what the Clinton camp has done so far, it DID personally attack Sen. Clinton and at a time where Sen. Clinton is playing the media bias card, the gender card, and every other card we can imagine, the LAST card Obama needs to GIVE her is the hypocrite card.
Having released Samantha from the campaign, the worst that can be said about Obama is "A surrogate got out of line, but he kept his word about being serious about that politics of change thing."
And that's EXACTLY what Obama wants people saying..