Obama '08?

Does Obama even know where Peoria is?

Miller wrote:

Does Obama even know where Peoria is?

Well, his wife is in Peoria today. Maybe you could ask her.

Miller wrote:

Does Obama even know where Peoria is?

Well, his wife is in Peoria today. Maybe you could ask her.

As I said above, the distance from current policy that must be traveled; will be. Neither Hill nor Edwards can get too crazy on the war point; since both boisterously backed the war as well. The corruption being one-sided is a simple reflection of your own bias.

Federal law enforcement agents are currently searching the Girdwood home of Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, an FBI agent said.

"All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence," said Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Anchorage office. The search began this afternoon, he said. It's the only such search warrant currently being served, he said.

The corruption may be across the isle, but the Republican party are the ones who all happen to be getting caught.

Cycloptichorn

Obama's 'hidden side'
Ambitious lawyer considered politics for years, book says

August 1, 2007
BY LYNN SWEET [email protected]

WASHINGTON -- On the stump, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama suggests his political career was an afterthought. He tells of returning to Chicago from Harvard Law School to be part of a civil rights practice and teach law.
However, a new book reveals a reason Obama joined a politically connected law firm: to give him entree to the powerbrokers in Chicago's elite liberal political community who helped elect Mayor Harold Washington -- a job the new lawyer had his eye on.

Obama actually pondered a political career early on, even telling Craig Robinson, his future brother-in-law, he might get into politics after Harvard and "maybe I can be president of the United States."

This supplemental, more opportunistic narrative comes as Obama is relying intensely on his biography to propel him to the White House. It is delivered in a copy I obtained of Obama: From Promise to Power, by Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell to be published in August.

Last June 19, Obama offered an audience at the Take Back America/Campaign for America's Future conference a riff from his stump speech. "I joined a civil rights law practice, and I started teaching constitutional law. ... And after a few years, people started coming up to me and telling me I should run for state Senate. So I jumped in the race."

But another view is offered by Mendell, who covered Obama during his 2004 Illinois Senate race, which is covered in detail in his book. Spending large amounts of time with Obama, Mendell writes about what he calls Obama's "hidden side: his imperious, mercurial, self-righteous and sometimes prickly nature, each exacerbated by the enormous career pressures that he has inflicted upon himself."

Obama's interest in politics, contrary to the narrative he weaves, started long before his first run for office, an Illinois state Senate seat.

During his time at Harvard, "he wanted to be mayor of Chicago, and that was all he talked about as far as holding office," said Cassandra Butts, a law school classmate and current Obama adviser.

After Harvard and a stint working on a voter registration drive in Chicago, the much recruited Obama took a job at a firm now called Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Among other cases, the firm handled litigation stemming from reapportionment battles. But partner Judson Miner served in Mayor Washington's administration and, Mendell writes, appealed to Obama because he had "a bevy of contacts in Chicago's political circles."

Mendell also writes on a central premise of Obama's presidential candidacy: that he had the judgment to oppose authorizing the Iraq war and that his key rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, did not.

Obama decided to oppose the impending war "in part as a political calculation that he hoped would benefit him among Democrats," Mendell wrote.

Stalking Hillary
Although Clinton has no lock on the Democratic nomination, Republicans are on an obsessive quest to pick a Hillary slayer for 2008.

By Michael Scherer

Aug. 1, 2007 | ARLINGTON, Va. -- In the corner of a hotel conference room, the Republican youth circled their chairs, crumpling neatly pressed suits and skirts to hear the influential Utah Sen. Bob Bennett explain the magical key to winning the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. "Up and down, there is only one message that cuts it," the gray-haired senator told the crowd of College Republicans during their convention in late July. "That message is, 'I can beat Hillary Clinton. '"

He was speaking without a microphone, but no one mistook his words. Over the last year, as Republicans have sought out their next standard bearer, no candidate has excited their passions and united their focus more than the Democratic senator from New York. Clinton is regularly evoked in stump speeches, presidential debates and fundraising events as a symbol for all that the Republican voters stand to lose in the coming election. She is, in many ways, the glue now keeping the Grand Old Party from further splintering into disarray after the 2006 elections.

"It unifies the party. It motivates a part of the base," explains Grover Norquist, a longtime party activist who runs the group Americans for Tax Reform. "Hillary can be scary."

Hillary Clinton Most Visible Presidential Candidate
Republicans Say Campaign is Being Over-Covered

Released: July 26, 2007

Summary of Findings

The 2008 presidential campaign remained a top tier news story last week both in terms of coverage and public interest. The campaign has been one of the top five most covered news stories for much of the year, and public interest has remained fairly consistent. This past week, the national news media devoted 9% of its overall coverage to the campaign, making it the second most heavily covered story of the week, after the Iraq policy debate. Among the public, 16% followed campaign news very closely and 10% listed this as their most closely followed story.

Democratic candidates continue to have a clear advantage over Republican candidates in terms of visibility. When asked which candidates they have been hearing the most about in the news recently, 67% of the public named a Democrat while only 8% named a Republican. Even Republicans themselves name Democratic candidates more readily than GOP candidates by a better than two-to-one margin (54% name a Democratic candidate, 21% name a GOP candidate).

Hillary Clinton leads the pack as the candidate Americans have heard the most about in the news lately. More than four-in-ten (42%) name Clinton, while 22% name Barack Obama. Only 2% name John Edwards. The gap between Clinton and Obama has widened since last month when Clinton was named by 32% of the public and Obama by 20%.

The major Republican presidential candidates remain at the periphery: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson were each named by only 2% of the public. In spite of the public's lopsided perceptions of which party's candidates have been in the news lately, coverage of the candidates has been fairly balanced. For the month of June, 43% of the campaign coverage on national news outlets focused on Democratic candidates, 34% focused on Republicans (another 9% focused on both parties).

Not only are Republican candidates lagging behind in terms of visibility, GOP loyalists are less engaged in the campaign and more critical of campaign coverage. Throughout the year, Democrats have consistently paid closer attention than Republicans to campaign news. In addition, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to believe the presidential campaign is being over-covered by the media. Four-in-ten Republicans say news organizations are giving too much coverage to the campaign. Only 19% of Democrats feel the same way. Among Democrats, a majority (56%) say news organizations are giving the right amount of coverage to the campaign, and one-in-five say they are giving it too little coverage. Independents are closer to Republicans in their views about campaign coverage - 37% say the campaign is receiving too much coverage, 21% say it's getting too little coverage, and 34% say the coverage has been about right.

Poll: Bad news for McCain, good news for Obama
By JOHN DISTASO
Senior Political Reporter
14 hours, 55 minutes ago

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are on a roll in New Hampshire while Arizona Sen. John McCain continues to fall, a new poll shows.

The American Research Group's July Presidential primary poll numbers, released yesterday, show:

Obama has doubled his support in the first-primary state in the past two months and is now in a dead heat with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton at the top of the Democratic pack, with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards third at 14 percent.
Giuliani has picked up support since late June, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has leveled off, and the two are in a virtual dead heat. McCain has lost half of his support in the past month and two-thirds of the support he had in late May, according to the poll.

ARG polled 600 likely Democratic primary voters and 600 likely Republican primary voters from July 26 to 30. The Democratic poll included 400 self-identified Democrats and 200 independents. The GOP poll included 418 Republicans and 182 independents. The margin of error for each survey was 4 percent.

Among Democrats, Obama moved from 25 percent in June to 31 percent, while Clinton dropped 3 percentage points and now is also at 31 percent support. Edwards picked up 3 percentage points, moving from 11 percent in June to 14 percent.

I will say this, about the race, however. I did a breakfast on Sunday for the Creative Coalition with Ed Rollins. He definitely gave the impression that Republican pros are souring on Fred Thompson, for his messy non-campaign and his disappointing fund-raising figures. If Thompson does not get in this race, or does not win it, as far as I can tell, the Democrats do, regardless of who is the nominee. If Crazy Rudy wins the nomination, you can count on a third-party challenge from the religious right that will screw things up further for them. And if Bloomberg gets in the race, making it four candidates, and Rudy is the nominee, it also helps the Democrats because everyone agrees he is a much better mayor than Rudy was and so it destroys his raison d'etre. So the Democrats win there too. Seems to me Thompson is the only shot the Republicans have, so this is good news.