Tag: Barack Obama (page 52)

Momentum's all Obama. had the set tuned to Fox adult cartoons, good mix of spots for Obama, none for Clinton (or Repubs, Paul should have bought.)

Obama's Iraq spot was an excellent fit for American Dad.

All had a notable flaw. Type only of "Vote Feb. 19". Should scream THIS TUESDAY. For spots on shows targeting the 18-22 demographic, I'd even add "you can register at the polls. bring Photo ID and proof of address."

With no school tomorrow, everyone stuck at home due to weather, these should have been especially high viewership for the youngest eligibles. I'm presuming Obama had tghe monopoly in other Wisconsin markets.

On to the predictions...  

Paul Lukasiak, guest-blogging at Taylor Marsh's blog, crunches the numbers of votes cast so far in the Democratic presidential race. Why? Barack Obama is arguing that super-delegates should comply with the "will of the people."

Mr. Lukasiak's premise:

Based on exit polls, among the approximately 16.3 million people who identified themselves as Democrats, over 678,000 more voted for Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama. If we’re going to “let the people decide" who the Democratic nominee would be, shouldn’t we be basing that on the will of Democrats themselves?

Here's the table of votes. His analysis is below, but go read his whole post, I've just reprinted highlights:

Here's some early morning news items:

• A new Alabama poll shows McCain would sweep the state in November by double digits, and it might happen throughout the deep south.

Alabama has voted for the Republican nominee every year since 1980.

McCain's double-digit lead emerged even though poll respondents' biggest concern was the economy, an area not considered one of his strengths. The poll results also offered evidence that despite President Bush's slumping approval ratings, the GOP retains a tight grip on the region, at least in national races.

"My expectation is that Alabama and Georgia and maybe all of the Deep South is going to end up in the Republican column, regardless of who the players are," University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock said. "If they don't, it's going to be a massive Democratic blowout."

....McCain is well-known for his appeal to independents, about two-thirds of whom would support him over either Democrat, according to the Press-Register/USA poll.

• Hillary and Obama both spoke at the Founder's Gala dinner in Wisconsin last night. Here's where they differ:

(Update: Comments at 200 and now closed on this thread.)

The Times constrasts "the cult of personality" with charisma. It's a long article. Here are the quotes I took from it:

I'll give the first round to the challenger, Barack Obama:

From the day Mr. Obama announced his candidacy, he has billed it as a movement, and himself as the agent of generational change. He has mocked his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for accusing him of raising “false hopes.” “We don’t need leaders who are telling us what we cannot do,” he said in New Hampshire. “We need a president who can tell us what we can do! What we can accomplish! Where we can take this country!”

Next round goes to Sean Willnetz, a Princeton Historian and friend of Hillary's, who says:

“What is troubling about the campaign is that it’s gone beyond hope and change to redemption,” said Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton (and a longtime friend of the Clintons). “It’s posing as a figure who is the one person who will redeem our politics. And what I fear is, that ends up promising more from politics than politics can deliver.”

Next round goes to Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whom I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but nonetheless, when she's on teevee, I am mesmerized by her stories. In this case, its: [More...]

Not surprisingly, here, there and everywhere.

He believes (as do I) that the Second Amendment conveys an individual right to bear arms. But, he supports reasonable regulations on those rights. So where does reasonable regulation end and infringement on an individual's rights begin?

Obama is actually straddling the issue somewhat like the Bush Administration did when it filed a brief in the [D.C. gun] case last month. He does support individual rights, but says—and this is the qualifier--the government can impose reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. And he then suggests that pretty much any existing laws are reasonable.

Here's Obama's position and the video of his remarks. Shorter version: He straddles.

More...

The TimesOnline says the right wing is set to attack Barack Obama s the ultimate "liberal socialist" in the mold of George McGovern.

LEADING Republicans believe they can trounce Barack Obama in the presidential election by tarring him as a shady Chicago socialist. They are increasingly confident that his campaign could collapse by the time their attack machine has finished with him.

Sample attack:

Obama has the voting record of a “hard-left” socialist, according to [Grover]Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator.

“It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”

More...

The bad news is voting machines malfunctioned in Harlem and many Obama votes didn't get counted. The good news: It's being rectified.

The tip-off: Several Harlem precincts recorded 0 votes for Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

Neither campaign nor experts attribute the errors to anything but human error and the way the ballots were laid out.

[More...]

Wisconsin's Democratic primary, open to Independents, is Tuesday. Hillary Clinton is now campaigning in the state. Here's her schedule:

• 02/16: Join Hillary at the Brat Stop
• 02/17: Join Hillary "Solutions for America" Town Hall in De Pere
• 02/17: "Solutions for America" Rally in Madison with Hillary

Both Hillary and Obama will attend and speak at the Founders Day Gala tonight at 6pm CT in Milwaukee.

Here's the exit polling (pdf) from the 2004 Wisconsin primary between John Kerry and John Edwards. NAFTA was a big issue.

The latest polling by Research 2000 has Obama ahead, but within the margin of error. [More...]

Friday night, every cable news show I watched, mostly on MSNBC, took former President Bill Clinton to task for reverting to attacks on Barack Obama, much like he did before the South Carolina primary.

Now comes the Dallas Morning News, with just the opposite story.

Headline: "Bill Clinton avoids attacks on Obama in East Texas."

The story:

On a campaign swing through East Texas on Friday, Bill Clinton said over and over that he has nothing against Barack Obama.

"I'm not against anybody," he told an overflow crowd in the student center at Tyler Junior College. "I'm for Hillary." Later, he added: "If you disagree, you have another very attractive choice."

The former president, admitting that Texas looms as a make-or-break state for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential hopes, scrupulously avoided attacks on Mr. Obama – attacks of the type for which he was roundly criticized after the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary.

Go figure.

[More...]

The Washington Post lays out the problems for Obama in Texas. Shorter version: He still suffers from a lack of support in the Hispanic community.

It begins with John McCain, who does have Hispanic support in Texas:

The Latino community is a critical piece of any Democratic candidate's general election calculations. Against John McCain, who has championed comprehensive immigration reform to his detriment in the Republican primaries, the Democratic nominee will face an opponent who begins the general election with a credible chance of holding a solid minority of the Hispanic vote.

On to Hillary: [More...]

The Center for International Policy, a group whose mission is "promoting a U.S. foreign policy based on international cooperation, demilitarization and respect for basic human rights," has released two reports in the past month comparing the positions of the Republican and Democratic candidates on immigration, using their own words, statements on their websites and their votes in Congress. On the Republican side, McCain and Huckabee are included; for the Democrats, it's Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

The presidential candidates of the Democratic Party share a common conviction that the country badly needs comprehensive immigration reform that offers a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The policy positions of the Democratic Party candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama—stand in sharp contrast to those offered by the Republican Party candidates, with the partial exception of John McCain.

[More...]

Even sporting a pair of blue boxing gloves, Hillary Clinton came out swinging today at a General Motors plant in Ohio:

In a speech to General Motors workers and executives, Clinton trumped Obama's own economic plan from a day before and appeared to be channeling former rival John Edwards' populist anti-corporate message.

The Specifics of her plan:

She said she would rein in oil, insurance, credit card, student loan and Wall Street investment companies and generate $55 billion a year that would be used for middle class tax cuts, create jobs and pay for an array of domestic programs.

On Obama: [more]