My little politics blog

Carpetbagger on how hard Hillary has tried to win SC:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14372.html

Barack Obama is not so in need of celebrity assistance as was the charisma-challenged Kerry. But, as Obama takes his campaign on the road to "Super Tuesday" states such as California and New York, Obama will be making the Kennedy connection.

The Democratic presidential candidate who won a landslide victory in South Carolina Saturday got a taste of Camelot Sunday, when Caroline Kennedy indicated that she saw something of her father, former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in the young senator from Illinois.

Caroline Kennedy, as JFK's relatively apolitical daughter, brings a piece of the mantle to the Obama campaign. Ted Kennedy, as JFK's very political brother, brings the rest of it. Even if other members of the clan back the campaign of Hillary Clinton -- as Robert Kennedy Jr., did in November -- the combination of endorsements from Caroline and Ted effectively delivers the family name to Obama.

That delivery is expected to be completed Monday morning in Washington, where Senator Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy plan to appear with Obama at a rally at American University.

Of all the endorsements that Obama has received, these two may be the most important. And they come at precisely the right moment. "The America of Jack and Bobby Kennedy touched all of us. Through all of these decades, the one who kept that flame alive was Ted Kennedy,'' says Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt, an Obama backer with close ties to Kennedy. "So having him pass on the torch is of incredible significance. It's historic."

Word from the Kennedy camp is that, after delivering his endorsement, the Massachusetts senator will hit the campaign trail. In particular, Kennedy will concentrate on winning union members and Latinos for Obama. With the campaign of former Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton relying heavily on strong support from Hispanics to renew her run for the presidency, the targeting of Kennedy's campaigning could be even more of a blow to Clinton than is his decision to endorse her foe.

Taylor Marsh has, as far as I'm concerned, long since forfeited any reputation for fairness she might ever have had. But yesterday, as far as I'm concerned, she gave up whatever claim she might have had to being a feminist:

"And now some bloggers seem to want to paint Clinton as they bad guy, er, girl. So to Josh I say, yes way. But of course, as usual, it's all Hillary Clinton's fault! Your daily whine brought to you by the Obamabots and the sanctimonious side of the Always Eager to Lose Wing of the Democratic Party."

News Flash: when someone comes up with the idea of changing the rules [delegates in MI and FL] out of the blue, that person is responsible for his or her actions. If those actions are bad, we say that they are his or her fault, even if that person is Hillary Clinton. The alternative is to say that that person is not a responsible moral agent -- that she didn't know what she was doing, or is too weak or mentally unstable to be held responsible for her actions, or was forced to do what she did by something too strong for her to resist, or for some similar reason is just not accountable for what she does. When one of these conditions is met, of course the person in question is not responsible for what she does. Moreover, in some circumstances -- e.g., the rape of a young adult woman while she was intoxicated -- feminists ought to protest when there is too great a focus on the woman's responsibility for being drunk, as opposed to the man's responsibility for raping her.

But nothing like that is the case here. No one came close to forcing Hillary Clinton to do what she did. She is a grownup, and a pretty powerful one at that, and she is solely responsible for this decision. And feminists, of all people, should recognize that the idea that women are not responsible for their actions in a case like this is just a way of saying that we are not autonomous agents at all.

Aboard her plane, Clinton's aides admitted they had seen the rout coming, but styled it as an aberration, on territory -- with half of the Democratic electorate made up of African Americans -- favorable for her foe.

One aide said campaign strategists had argued the former first lady should bypass the state altogether.

But Clinton decided she needed to put up at least a token fight, to show she would wage a 50 state campaign for the presidency.

The good news for Clinton is, it makes the Obama campaign's accusations that Clinton was ignoring the state look pretty silly. The bad news for Clinton is, if she loses, she won't be able to say, "I wasn't seriously trying to compete there anyway."

One media narrative that seems to be taking root is of Obama as the candidate of lofty rhetoric and Clinton as the maven of pedestrian policy talk. At a rally at Furman University here Tuesday, Obama brought the audience to several peaks, raising his voice over the applause while describing how his days as a community organizer "taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things" and how "the dream that so many generations fought for feels like it is slipping away."

But the address was saturated with proposals. Obama called for tax rebates; a one-time boost in Social Security checks; extending unemployment insurance; mortgage aid for those facing foreclosure; raising the minimum wage; protecting pensions; and college tuition credits. And that was before he got to his support for solar and wind power and biodiesel fuel. (There was no discussion of how he would pay for all this, other than to say his health-care plan would be partly financed by ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.)

How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.

From the AP:

Quote:

Aboard her plane, Clinton's aides admitted they had seen the rout coming, but styled it as an aberration, on territory -- with half of the Democratic electorate made up of African Americans -- favorable for her foe.

One aide said campaign strategists had argued the former first lady should bypass the state altogether.

But Clinton decided she needed to put up at least a token fight, to show she would wage a 50 state campaign for the presidency.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i-W8_9luvkT_RMN_DeplOsj4Nnlw

Oh bullshit. "A token fight"? It was more than a token fight, she just lost it.

The Clinton campaign claims that the senator from New York is abiding by the no-campaigning pledge because Sunday's two Florida events were technically closed to the public. But the stops were treated as major news events in a state where many Democrats have expressed anger over the absence of the party's presidential candidates during a period when Florida is overrun by Republican contenders.

The truth of the Clinton strategy was writ large in a memo from top strategist Howard Wolfson, who announced on the day of the campaign's dismal showing in South Carolina that, "Regardless of today's outcome, the race quickly shifts to Florida, where hundreds of thousands of Democrats will turn out to vote on Tuesday. Despite efforts by the Obama campaign to ignore Floridians, their voices will be heard loud and clear across the country, as the last state to vote before Super Tuesday on February 5."

"Efforts by the Obama campaign to ignore Floridians"?

Obama's just abiding by the pledge. Admittedly, it's a foolish pledge. None of the campaigns should have taken it, and they all should have agreed to drop it. But in the absence of such an agreement, Obama is not ignoring Floridians. He is remaining true to his word.

Of course, Obama is surging, while Clinton is desperate.

Clinton is now rejecting that politeness along with the no-campaigning pledge.

"I will try to persuade my delegates to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida," she declared before arriving in Florida. "Democrats have to win Michigan and have to try to win Florida and I intend to do that. The people of Florida deserve to be represented in the process of picking a candidate for president of the United States."

That may sound like a high-minded embrace of democracy -- or at least realism regarding the fall campaign -- but it's really nothing more than the latest political gambit from a Clinton campaign that is developing a reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules. Having "secured" Michigan, Clinton is now playing her Florida card. If she wins big in the Sunshine state and then succeeds in qualifying delegations from Michigan and Florida for the convention, the senator will get the bulk of the close to 350 delegates from the two states. That's more than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina combined will send to the convention.

"People are generally very surprised to hear from us," Obama volunteer Cori Allen said as she made calls in Lawrence [KS] that night. "When you call back in Kansas, people will say literally, 'You want to talk to me?' Even the Republicans stay on the line longer."

"I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, 'So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?' But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"

More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid.

The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration's detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to "restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community." The attorneys are representing the detainees in habeas corpus lawsuits, which are efforts to get individual hearings before federal judges in order to challenge the basis for their indefinite imprisonment without trial.

Obama staffers first appeared in Kansas in October, four months before the Feb. 5 caucus and three months before the first Clinton organizers arrived in the state. There are now 18 Obama workers in Kansas, or six times the number of Clinton staffers. All this for a state that will choose 32 delegates on Tuesday, compared with 370 in California and 232 in New York.

"Showing the ability to perform well across the country, particularly against Senator Clinton, who was the inevitable national front-runner for most of the campaign, has great value," Plouffe said in an earlier interview with The Trail. "If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, the night of Novermber 3, we're going to be talking about a lot more states in play than Senator Clinton."

Thirteen Kansas legislators gathered in the ornate statehouse rotunda in Topeka on Jan. 17 to endorse Obama. They said the Clinton and Edwards campaigns had done almost nothing to reach out to them, while the Obama staff had called repeatedly -- often after organizing groups of activists in the legislators' districts.

By saying voters in their districts were supporting Obama, the campaign workers persuaded the legislators to take a closer look.

"It's a response to voters who are telling us whom we should support," said Sen. Anthony Hensley, the senate minority leader.

Obama and The Gays

If you're a Democrat, it isn't really a contest. We all know the record of the Clintons on gay equality. In the words of Melissa Etheridge, they "threw us under the bus" when it was politically expedient for them (after they'd bled the gay community financially dry). Here are a few YouTubes of Obama's public, proud and often risky defenses of gay and lesbian equality - in front of non-gay audiences and not prompted by questions. The Ebenezer sermon, when he called on black congregants in MLK's church not to condemn or ostracize their "gay brothers and sisters" (after the 9 minute mark). The AU speech (around the 9 minute mark again). His stump speech, "Countdown To Change." Obama was the only Democratic candidate to mention gay and lesbian equality in his announcement address. In South Carolina, he spoke of the importance of gay outreach to religious voters.

I've had two core principles in my own work in defense of gay equality: supporting the simple equality of gays and straights under the law; opposing the toxins of identity politics and a balkanized gay identity. The way Obama transcends his own multiple identities, the way he both embraces his difference and yet seeks a common political discourse: this is the model that makes the most sense to me. Neither denying difference nor being defined by it is a path all minorities would be better off pursuing. And Obama's call for self-empowerment rather than self-defeating victimology is particularly apposite for gays and lesbians.

Rosendahl said he was impressed with Obama's track record on issues of importance to the LGBT community. He specifically noted the following:

·Obama supports the repeal of the entire federal Defense of Marriage Act, and has done so ever since he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004.

·Obama has taken stronger positions on dismantling "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and on fully inclusive workplace protections, than any candidate in the presidential race.

·Obama is a strong supporter of every major piece of LGBT legislation in Congress today.

·Obama supports fair tax treatment for gay and lesbian couples.

·Obama supports equal immigration rights for gay and lesbian couples.

·Obama supports domestic partner benefits for federal workers.

·Obama, while in the Illinois Senate, sponsored a fully inclusive anti-discrimination law that included both sexual orientation and gender identity.

·Obama sponsored the Microbicide Development Act to fund research critical to combating HIV/AIDS in the United States and around the world.

·Obama spoke out on World AIDS Day to an audience of evangelical leaders at Saddleback Church, publicly disagreeing with the leaders in attendance who opposed condom distribution.

·Obama, in Illinois, worked to enact a law that authorizes licensed pharmacists to provide clean needles in small, controlled numbers, a reform that is credited with achieving dramatic declines in the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users.

·Obama, in the U.S. Senate, supported efforts to lift the ban on federal funding for regulated needle exchange programs that are proven to work in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

·Obama has continued to raise the issue of LGBT civil rights in forums and town halls nationwide. During a high-profile speech on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at King's Ebenezer Baptist Church, he challenged his audience to support gay and lesbian rights with the same fervor they brought to their own struggle for civil rights.

"The more I have listened to Barack Obama," Rosendahl said, "the more convinced I have become that his commitment to our civil rights is deep and heartfelt. I am impressed that he continually raises the issue of gay civil rights, even in front of audiences hostile to our issues. I look forward to a Democratic administration that takes up our cause, instead of taking us for granted.

"I strongly urge my fellow LGBT voters in California and across the country to vote for Barack Obama for President."

This is entertaining reading -- Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin talk about how horrible McCain is:

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/5261/

GLENN: If John McCain would get into office and this stuff would happen, I really honestly think, Michelle, and talk me down from this tree, I think John McCain is more dangerous even than Hillary Clinton because at least Hillary Clinton has Bill Clinton to make her triangulate eventually. There will be no stopping between John McCain and the Progressives of going down a road that is massive internationalists. Right or wrong?