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Obama Visits the Blue State of North Dakota
July 3, 2008
Barack Obama is serious about going where no Democrat has gone before -- or, to be precise, where no Democrat has gone in a very long time.
The presumptive Democratic nominee for president campaigned Thursday in North Dakota, a state that last backed the party's presidential ticket when it was headed by Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Campaigning in a state that has been so reliably Republican in presidential contests in recent decades that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry barely acknowledged its existence -- or a desire to secure its three electoral votes -- Obama said, "I'm a firm believer that 90 percent of success is showing up and Democrats haven't been showing up in these places."
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Colombian President Boosts McCain
July 3, 2008
At least one world leader wants John McCain to be the next leader of the free world: President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia.
While under fire from Democrats due to his government's shoddy human rights record, Uribe warmly welcomed McCain to Colombia on Tuesday. McCain praised Uribe's "substantial and positive" progress on human rights and reiterated his support for a US-Colombia free trade deal, which labor leaders and human rights activists strongly oppose.
The day McCain left the Colombian government staged a dramatic rescue of 15 hostages, including three Americans.
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No Way to Woo A Woman
July 3, 2008
The rush is on to woo women voters and the politicians and the pundits think they know the trick. Everybody from DNC chair Howard Dean to conservative pundit William Kristol is talking about sexism and why it matters. But women voters aren't stupid. If there was more than politics to all this new found-feminism we'd see policies on the table.
"I've got whip-lash" Lisa Witter, COO of Fenton Communications told GRITtv July 1. "In less than a week, the national discussion of women's leadership changed from the merits of a female president to the potential first lady's dress." Witter, who is co-author with Lisa Chen of The She Spot, told GRITtv that women voters aren't turned on by the makeover of Michelle Obama into nicey-nicey wife. "She's liked because she's strong." What's next? The cookie-baking contest?
What women want is more on policy and not just reproductive policy either, said Mia Herndon Director of Programs at Third Wave: "I'd like to hear more about urban issues, housing, transport, childcare." The war is a women's issue: women were disproportionately against the deployment, and women will be the major caretakers for injured and sick vets.
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McCain's Rovian Makeover
July 2, 2008
News broke today that John McCain is putting aide Steve Schmidt in charge of the day-to-day running of his campaign and tasking campaign manager Rick Davis with "big-picture issues such as general strategy, helping to plan the convention, picking a vice president and tending to the needs of major donors," according to The Politico's Jonathan Martin.
It's a promotion for Schmidt and a quasi-demotion for Davis, who'll still remain as McCain's closest advisor inside the campaign. More importantly, the move sends a signal to Republican powerbrokers that an often unsteady McCain campaign will emulate the tactics of the last successful GOP presidential campaign: Bush-Cheney '04.
Unlike a number of McCain insiders, Schmidt retains close ties to the Bush world. He was a top aide to Dick Cheney in the Bush White House and a key deputy to Karl Rove during the '04 campaign. More and more, of late, the McCain campaign bears Rove's imprimatur. Given the unpopularity of President Bush and voters' intense dissatisfaction with the national Republican Party, McCain can only rise so far. But Barack Obama can still fall, which is why the McCain campaign has adopted the Rove strategy of attacking Obama as a flip-flopping liberal who denigrates the troops, just as Rove did to John Kerry in 2004. Hence the three days of hyperventilated outrage over General Wesley Clark's comments about McCain's readiness to be Commander-in-Chief.
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Surveillance Protest Group Tops Obama Website
July 1, 2008
Protesters are storming Barack Obama's website. But they all support Obama.
A grassroots group of activists has been organizing on MyBo, Obama's official social networking portal, to protest the Senator's recent decision to back controversial legislation granting the President more spying powers. The effort hit a big milestone on Tuesday afternoon: It is now the largest self-organized group on Obama's website, topping networks that were launched over a year ago. The spying protest, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," launched last week. (See Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying, The Nation.)
Membership spiked to about 8,900 people on Tuesday, edging out a student group with roughly 8,600 members, and one organizer estimated that the growth rate reached a rapid four percent during the daytime. The group initially spread through the Obama network, since the site's platform instantly connects members through a dedicated email listserve. On Monday, for example, over 200 emails shot across the wire, reaching the roughly 2,300 members who opted to receive individual messages. The exchanges ranged from policy debates, like whether immunity was acceptable if the telephone companies acted in good faith, to organizing strategies, such as promoting the group on sharing sites like Digg. Then some activists open-sourced the project, creating a wiki-hub for additional actions -- from calling Obama's office to urging Keith Olbermann to promote the group -- and launched partner groups on other sites like Facebook.
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Yes We Can Talk About McCain's Service
July 1, 2008
Wes Clark stood by his criticism of John McCain in a television interview last night, stressing that while he would "never, never dis someone's service," it is legitimate to discuss what types of military experience are relevant to being commander in chief. Republicans have been twisting Clark's mundane observation that McCain's experience "getting shot down" in a fighter plane is not a "qualification to be president." Clark made the point in response to a question from CBS' Bob Schieffer on Sunday, while noting that he "honor[ed]" McCain's service and considered him a "hero."
Of course, the Republican "outrage" to Clark is both hypocritical, as The Nation's Ari Berman noted, and illogical, since McCain's war experience is laudatory but different than running the country. Professor Sandy Levinson explains:
One might say ... that John McCain displayed literally incredible valor in responding to many years of torture in Vietnam; I would also add my admiration for McCain's refusing to bear grudges against those who had been anti-War during the 1960s. But why would any person believe that "getting shot down" (which is precisely what happened to McCain) and then being tortured has anything to do with qualifying one to be President of the United States as against, say, receiving an award for displaying incredible grace under maximum pressure? ... Isn't it worth thinking about the fact that the three senators who in fact saw ground combat in Vietnam--James Webb, Chuck Hagel, and John Kerry--are all dedicated opponents of the Iraq War?
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A Double Standard for Democrats on National Security
June 30, 2008
The punditocracy is buzzing about General Wesley Clark's critique of John McCain's readiness to be Commander-In-Chief.
"In national security terms, he's largely untested and untried," Clark told the Huffington Post earlier in June. On CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Clark elaborated: "In the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents, and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions."
Clark said McCain's experiences as a POW in Vietnam made him a hero, but added: "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."
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Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying
June 30, 2008
Barack Obama tapped his sizeable grassroots network on Saturday, coordinating over 4,000 "Unite for Change" meetups across the country through the campaign's social networking portal, MyBo. At the same time, however, other supporters worked furiously over the weekend to organize a new MyBo campaign to protest and pressure Obama. Many activists are outraged by the Senator's recent announcement that he will back a controversial bill to grant the Executive more spying powers and immunize telephone companies accused of illegal surveillance. Both efforts demonstrate how Obama's national network, which broke fundraising records and turned the first term Senator into an unlikely presidential nominee, can respond to top-down edicts and spring into action for self-organized protests.
Since launching last week, the protest group, "Senator Obama Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," swelled to one of the ten largest campaign groups on Sunday. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the Democratic Congress is poised to amend under White House pressure.) It is the largest group of its kind on MyBo, which focuses on local networking, official campaign events, and constituency groups like "Women for Obama." It looks like the group grew through the Obama network, with a few web mentions on liberal sites such as OpenLeft and TPM, and it urges Obama to reject the "politics of fear" and lead Democrats to oppose the White House bill. Blogger Mike Stark says the effort demonstrates the kind of civic engagement and "open government" that Obama espouses, even if it delivers the "sting of social networking" pushback during a tight campaign.
One Democratic Internet consultant predicted that Obama's reaction could reveal his commitment to meaningful engagement with supporters. "How Obama responds will tell us a great deal about both his willingness to listen to input from his supporters and what influence the MyBarackObama community has on the campaign itself," said the operative, who wished to remain anonymous while working on another campaign. "In the meantime, this is a huge opportunity for Obama's supporters to organize around an issue, not just the candidate, and take action beyond using their credit card."
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Live From Unity, It's, Well, What Did You Expect? Unity.
June 27, 2008
Of course the unity event in Unity came off without a hitch.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were destined to stand together on stage in a battleground state where one of them would be endorsing the other. Early on, the betting was that Obama would be doing the endorsing. Then it became clear -- even if it took time for her to accept the fact -- that Clinton would be the one speaking first on the day when it came time to let bygones be bygones.
No one who followed the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination seriously -- a sub-group that, unfortunately, excludes virtually the entire broadcast and cable press corps -- could have been surprised that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have gracefully pulled off two days of joint campaign appearances.
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The Secret is Out: Obama and Clinton Get Along
June 27, 2008
No one who followed the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination seriously -- a sub-group that, unfortunately, excludes virtually the entire broadcast and cable press corps -- will be surprised that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have begun appearing jointly and comfortably with one another.
People forget that, back in November, 2006, before this race even got started, MSNBC political commentator Tom Curry headlined an assessment of the candidates: "Clinton versus Obama: Is there any difference?"
As Curry noted then, there was "a remarkable concurrence" between the contenders.
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Campaign 08
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