Politics News

Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:


Barack Obama swept the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state Saturday night, slicing into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s slender delegate lead in their historic race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He also won caucuses in the Virgin Islands, completing his best night of the campaign. Obama is still riding the Super Tuesday wave and yesterdays Saturday wave was: Obama 4- Hillary 0 for the day.

In sideline political news Bush # 43 tried to cast McCain as a true conservative. Why not! Bush even thinks that he’s a true conservative. But back to the big news.

Obama’s winning margins were substantia and impressivel, ranging from 67% of the vote in Washington state and Nebraska, 57% in the Louisiana Primary, to nearly 90 percent in the Virgin Islands. Pretty darned impressive. FOX News exit polling showed Obama won both high- and low-income voters and the majority of women, 54 percent to Clinton’s 45 percent. One in five Louisiana Democratic voters also live in a union household, and they picked Obama 56 percent to 41 percent for Clinton. Black voters picked Obama by more than 80 percent.

As in his earlier Southern triumphs in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Obama, a black man, rode a wave of African-American support to victory in Louisiana. Hillary made no mention of the night’s contests as she appeared at a Democratic Party dinner in Virginia, site of one of three primaries this Tuesday. Instead, she criticized Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee in all but name. “We have tried it President Bush’s way,” she said, “and now the Republicans have chosen more of the same.”

She left quickly after her speech, departing before Obama’s scheduled arrival. But his supporters made their presence known, as chants of “Obama” floated up from the audience as she made her way offstage.

Has anyone heard anything from New Mexico yet?

In all, the Democrats scrapped for 161 delegates in the night’s contests. In initial allocations, Obama had won 31, Clinton 9. In overall totals in The Associated Press count, Clinton had 1,064 delegates to 1,029 for Obama. A total of 2,025 is required to win the nomination at the national convention in Denver. But when you subtract out the super delegates, Obama rules!

Well, at least he gets the nod of the people. The super delegates are another thing and the way things look, we’re headed to a Democratic convention that the “insiders” will choose- not the people. On to the Maine caucus today, for whatever that may count later this summer.

Maine Democrats are holding caucuses this afternoon and early this evening in 420 towns and cities across the state. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are making a play for the 24 delegates at stake.

Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:


There’s a big debate in tinsle-town tonight and the TWO BIG GUNS get to square off at each other and I am sure they will. Hillary needs to regain some MO as in momentum. The uncontested win in Florida where no delegate seats were up for grabs didn’t get Hillary anything but a few minutes of TV exposure. The South Carolina landslide is still sliding for Barack Obama- even past the Ted Kennedy kudos!

If you wondered whether if the Barack-Star could compete for the Super Tuesday sweepstakes. Think no longer! $32,000,000.00 says he can!

Barack Obama raised $32 million in the single month of January, matching his best three-month period last year, aides said Thursday. The money positions Obama for the sweeping Feb. 5 primary contests, when 22 states will be in play for the Democratic nomination. Aides also announced that with their money they can now advertise in states beyond the Super Tuesday.

Obama is advertising in all but two of the Feb. 5 states and plans to begin advertising in states with upcoming contests, including Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said the campaign attracted 170,000 new donors for a total of 650,000 donors overall.

“We think that the strength of our financial position and the number of donors does speak to financial sustainability if it ends up going through March and April,” Plouffe said of the race. “We think we will have the financial resources to conduct vigorous campaigns in the states to come.”

And one of those contributors came from Hillary’s home state of New York.

The late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan threw his considerable political weight behind Hillary Clinton, helping her win her Senate seat from a state where she had never lived, but that hasn’t deterred his widow from backing Hillary’s rival Barack Obama for 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

In a statement e-mailed to David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, Elizabeth B. Moynihan attributed her support for Obama to Caroline Kennedy Schlosberg’s Times Op-Ed article where JFK’s daughter endorsed Barack Obama, as well as her own displeasure with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s recent hostility toward Obama’s candidacy. You just never know what one person’s endorsement might bring.

Mrs. Moynihan wrote that her husband, who died in 2003, “would have become excited, as I have, to see Barack Obama rekindle hope in our young as he encourages them to participate in the political process, and I know Pat would approve, applaud and encourage me to join Caroline Kennedy in supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. It is a rare gift to be able to inspire people to share a vision that requires commitment and dedication.

Barack should be all smiles before the debate tonight. We’ll have to wait until the debate is over to see if he’s still smiling. With John Edwards out for the Democrats (and Rudy for the Republicans) the stage is really small now for tonights Democratic debate.

James William Smith asked:


Barack Obama’s candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination has struggled throughout 2007 in the public opinion polls because his campaign has not developed a clear, focused message that provides Democratic voters with a reason to vote for him.

Obama has raised over thirty million dollars for his campaign during the first six months of the year and has considerable popular, grass root support, so the resources are available to deliver the message. But what is the message? Should Democrats vote for Obama and cross their fingers and hope?

Consider this from Barack Obama in February of 2007 at a Democratic National Committee Meeting: “There are those who don’t believe in talking about hope,” Obama told the crowd. “They say, Well, we want specifics, we want details, and we want white papers, and we want plans. We’ve had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we’ve had is a shortage of hope. And over the next year, over the next two years, that will be my call to you.”

In July, as the polls began to show Obama falling further behind Hillary Clinton, Davis Plouffe ( Barack Obama’s campaign manager) had this to say in a letter to reassure campaign contributors. “One of our opponents is also the quasi-incumbent in the race, who in our belief will and should lead just about every national poll from now until the Iowa caucuses. Expect nothing different and attach no significance to it. It is clear you did not in this past quarter and we would encourage everyone to keep our sights focused on doing well in the early primaries and caucuses, and then using our organizational advantage nationally to clinch the nomination in February.”

The fact is that the “quasi-incumbent” that Plouffe referred to was Hillary Clinton, who in some public opinion polls had a nearly forty percent unfavorable rating with Democratic voters. It also should also be pointed out that there is no discussion by Plouffe of the Obama message or the strategy to get that message out.

In a column in July 2007, by David Paul Kuhn, Obama campaign advisors outline the strategy of their campaign as being modeled after insurgency campaigns like that of Ronald Reagan. As Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said of Reagan “Now, it is blasphemy for Democrats, but that hope and optimism that was Ronald Reagan allowed him to “transcend” ideological divisions within his own party and the general electorate.”

It is true that Reagan projected hope and optimism. However, Reagan got elected with a clear message of smaller government, lower taxes, and less government bureaucracy. At the time that message was called the “Reagan Revolution.”. It should be pointed out that once again beside “hope” there is no discussion by Belcher of the Obama message or the strategy to get that message out.

In August, with John Edwards attacking Hillary Clinton for taking campaign contributions from Rupert Murdoch, (We later found out that John Edwards made $800,000 on his last book deal from a Murdoch publisher. ) the Obama campaign decided that their candidate was an outsider who was going to clean up Washington. Here is how that turned out (from the Associated Press): Democrat Barack Obama, who says he swims in “the same muddy water” of lobbyists and fundraising that corrupts Washington, is pledging to reform the system if elected President. “I have a bunch of friends who were state lobbyists. The fact of the matter is … I played poker with them, so I don’t think that lobbyists are evil,” said the first-term Illinois senator. “I just think they’ve got an agenda and you got to be clear about that, and not pretend that they don’t. Why else are they getting hired and making all this money unless they’re actually getting something done?”

If you were a Democratic voter and wanted to see real reform in Washington, D.C. would that message from Barack Obama be a catalyst for you to vote for him in 2008?

Also, consider that after attacking Hillary Clinton for months over her vote in the Senate to support the war in Iraq, Obama had this to say about Pakistan: “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

It sounds like Obama who has called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be in favor of invading Pakistan. If you were a Democratic voter and wanted to see an immediate end to the hostilities in Iraq, would this message about Pakistan, from Barack Obama be a catalyst for you to vote for him in 2008?

The early 2007 strategy of the campaign was apparently to capitalize on Obama’s star qualities with the American public. The campaign would use Obama’s book , “ The Audacity of Hope” to formulate a positive message of “hope” that would be delivered by Barrack’s gifted oratorical abilities to audiences that were longing for a fresh new face in Washington, D.C. The campaign would raise a lot of money and spend much of it in the early primaries to insure victories that would create a “domino” effect in other primaries and propel Barrack Obama to the Democratic nomination. However, as the year progressed, the fresh new face began to look like a politically inexperienced fresh new face to potential Democratic voters. To counter that impression of political inexperience, we are now seeing his campaign search for a message for voters to consider beside hope. Searching for a message in the middle of the campaign can become a painful experience for a candidate on election night.

The result of this campaign strategy can be seen in the latest polling data. Barrack Obama trails Hillary Clinton by twenty two percent nationwide and has now fallen behind Clinton in the early primary states of Iowa and South Carolina .

Throughout 2007, Barack Obama’s political campaign has been based solely on a message of hope. In an insurgency campaign facing a formidable opponent, the candidate needs a message that has much more audacity than that.