Tag: Barack Obama (page 40)

The second section of our live blog on CNN's Faith Forum is below the fold. Use the regular comments section below if you want others to see your comments. More...

Bump and Update: Hillary took off the restraints in PA today:

She made the argument that Sen. Barack Obama's comments could cost the party the election and that the party has been seen as out of touch by male candidates in the past. Clinton also criticized Obama for not "owning up to his remarks."

Original Post:

Don't miss reading John Harris and Jim Vandehei at Politico and their new article positing that far from trying to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at Barack Obama, Hillary has been exercising great restraint.

According to Politico, Hillary believes that Obama cannot win in November. The article says, if Hillary felt free to really speak her mind, here are the points she'd make:

More...

Newsweek spends three online pages discussing Obama's foreign policy experience. Shorter version: Is a multi-cultural upbringing the kind of foreign policy experience that makes one best equipped to be Commander in Chief or President? (More on this here.)

The article focuses on Obama having grown up in Indonesia. Some quotes from the article:

• Obama says he's more experienced than McCain or Hillary:

[L]ast week Obama signaled that he'd had enough of these attacks. Not only did he not lack experience, Obama cockily told a fund-raising crowd in San Francisco, but "foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

• From a neutral Democrat:

Even some Dems who'd favor him in any contest against McCain also worry that Obama is overplaying his experience. "I don't know whether he's drinking his own Kool-Aid," says a former senior member of the Clinton administration who is not backing either Democratic candidate but would talk only on condition of anonymity because of his private-sector job. "I'm all for talking to the Cubans, or to the Iranians. I'm just not sure he's the guy to do it. The biggest administrative job he ever had was collecting articles for the Harvard Law Review."

More....

I can't help wondering what John Edwards thinks about Barack Obama's slam of rural Americans. Hillary increasingly has been adopting Edwards' positions over the past months. She showed it again this morning in Indiana:

Clinton took the stage to John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” a song that was used primarily by former presidential candidate John Edwards. Edwards prided himself in being the candidate for working class Americans, often reminding the crowds that he was the son of a mill worker. With Edwards now out of the race, Clinton is hoping to take the reigns. “When my dad grew up, it was a working class family in Scranton,” Clinton told the audience. “I grew up in a churchgoing family, a family that believed in living out and expressing our faith.”

I have to believe his phone is ringing off the hook with calls from reporters today. What would he say?

No one understands swift-boating better than Edwards, given the effect it had on his and John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. The last thing he wants is a John McCain win in November. [More...]

Via Politico, here are Hillary Clinton's comments today in Indiana on Obama's gaffe. Video here.

Now, like some of you may have been, I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small town America. Sen. Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know — not the Americans I grew up with, not the Americans I lived with in Arkansas or represent in New York.

You know, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it¹s a matter of Constitutional rights. Americans who believe in God believe it is a matter of personal faith. Americans who believe in protecting good American jobs believe it is a matter of the American Dream.

When my dad grew up it was in a working class family in Scranton. I grew up in a churchgoing family, a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith.

The people of faith I know don't "cling to" religion because they're bitter

More...

Last night in Indiana, Obama came out swinging to justify his remarks about PA voters. Today, Obama says he erred.

[Obama] said on Saturday he erred in how he expressed the concerns of those voters...Obama told a campaign rally in Muncie, Indiana, his description was clumsy and did not convey his meaning. "I didn't say it as well as I should have," said Obama,

...Obama said he believed many voters were indeed bitter about the economy and he meant to say "when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on." "So people -- they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community," he said. But he said he had not meant to imply that was a bad thing.

"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us," he said.

What he said initially:

Those voters were "bitter" about job losses and other economic woes and so "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama, an Illinois senator, said.

Is he digging himself into a deeper hole? Clinging to anti-immigrant sentiment isn't a bad thing? Isn't he still saying PA voters harbor anti-immigrant sentiment that have been passed down to them through generations?

The Chicago Tribune has the video to today's comments. He also says the brouhaha over his comments is "a little typical, sort of, political flare up." The AP has more on Obama's newest clarification.

Barack Obama gave an interview to the Advocate about his positions on gay issues. This leapt out at me:

“So I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history.’’

That strikes me about as credible as his comment about his record on anti-semitism:

And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have."

I'd call it hyperbole, except his exaggerations are not intentional. He seems to really believe it.

Also, over and over again, on issues that matter to progressives, Obama talks about how fighting for change must be viewed in terms of whether it's worth it to expend political capital to effect it: [More...]

Obama spoke in Indiana today. Here's what he had to say about abortion and the pro-life Dems rhat are supporting him:

Barack Obama said anti-abortion Democrats are backing him because they feel he respects their opinion on the issue despite disagreement on it. ...."It may be that those who have opposed abortion get a sense that I'm listening to them and respect their position even though where we finally come down may be different," he told reporters at a news conference.

"The mistake that pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization so it has not always been the case, has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved in it," he said.

"Most Americans recognize that what we want to do is avoid, or help people avoid, having to make this difficult choice. That nobody is pro-abortion, abortion is never a good thing."

Update: Comments Over 200, thread now closed.

Barack Obama's campaign responds to his gaffe about PA voters.

"Senator Obama has said many times in this campaign that Americans are understandably upset with their leaders in Washington for saying anything to win elections while failing to stand up to the special interests and fight for an economic agenda that will bring jobs and opportunity back to struggling communities. And if John McCain wants a debate about who's out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent,”

Looks like news of this gaffe may last the weekend:

His comments have been distributed to allies on Capitol Hill, to members of the Pennsylvania press corps, to talk radio hosts across the country, to Republican state parties and to the congressional campaign committees. The National Republican Congressional Committee is using the statement to whack Chris Carney, an endorser of Obama and vulnerable frosh member of congress from Pennsylvania.

Obama's entire remarks, in context, can be read here.

(This is a continuation of Big Tent's original thread on the gaffe which is about filled up.)

Update: Thread closing, here's a new one for you to continue the discussion.

Philadelphia apparently has a custom of paying local ward leaders and locals to get out the vote. Obama organizers say he won't do it.

Obama's posture confounds neighborhood political leaders sympathetic to his cause. They caution that if the senator from Illinois withholds money that gubernatorial, mayoral and presidential candidates have willingly paid out for decades, there could be defections to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And the Clinton campaign, in contrast, will oblige in forking over the money, these ward leaders predict.

"We've heard directly from the Obama organizer who organizes our ward, and he told us it's an entirely volunteer organization and that I should not expect to see anything from the Obama campaign other than ads on TV and the support that volunteers are giving us," said Greg Paulmier, a ward leader in the northwest part of the city.

The Clinton campaign hasn't said whether it will follow the custom, which again, is legal.[More...]

Where's Obama on Israel and the Palestinians? On both sides.

Since running for President, he's become an outspoken supporter of Israel. While in the Illinois legislature, he was a friend, supporter and beneficiary of Palestinians whose organizations trashed Israel.

Yesterday, when asked on the campaign trail about why he didn't denounce Louis Farakahn before he became an issue in the campaign, Obama said:

Obama reminded the crowd that he'd denounced his church’s praise of Farrakhan, saying, "I’ve been very clear about saying that was wrong. And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have."

Jake Tapper of ABC News responds:

Really? No one? Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz? No one? Wow.

More...

Update: Initial AP report here. The AP now reports that after complaints, Obama is reinstating hundreds of them.

Susie Madrak has the story and quotes Marcy Winograd at Daily Kos who says the anti-war activist and other liberal delegates have been replaced mainly with bundlers and their girlfriends.

Who was left standing, still in the running for the Sunday delegate caucuses? The bundlers and their girlfriends, the men and women who skirt campaign finance laws by bundling cash, a bundle of $2,000 here and a bundle of $2,000 there -- and some, though certainly not all, of the Obama precinct captains, loyalists from day one.

If CA is any example, progressive leaders in Penn better watch their back.

Wingrad ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Jane Harman in 2006. She had a lot of progressive support.

More on the purging at Huffington Post: "Obama's 'Big Tent' Campaign Cuts Out The Little People In California"