Obama '08?

Quote:

Barnstorming Obama plans to pick Republicans for cabinet
As he jets across two key states whipping up the support that could finish off Hillary Clinton this week, the Democratic frontrunner is already mapping out a government of all the talents.

Richardson will be Obama's VP choice.

xingu wrote:

See your sticking your foot in your mouth again RL.

And lying.

You might think that all Kenyans would be vigorously supporting Mr. Obama. But Kenya has been fractured along ethnic lines in the last two months, so now Mr. Obama draws frenzied support from the Luo ethnic group of his ancestors, while many members of the rival Kikuyu group fervently support Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama's success tied to his eloquence

The Miami Herald
Sun, Feb. 24, 2008

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

A few words in defense of words.

This, in light of the latest knock on Sen. Barack Obama, which is that, while he's good with words, words are all he's got. He is eloquent and inspiring, this analysis goes, but eloquence and inspiration do not a president make.

It's a line of criticism that has been argued by pundits (David Brooks in The New York Times used the word ''vaporous''), by the presumptive GOP nominee for president (``eloquent but empty,'' said Sen. John McCain) and by Obama's rival for the Democratic nod (''Speeches don't put food on the table,'' said Sen. Hillary Clinton).

That last worthy must feel not unlike Wile E. Coyote did in trying to tag the Road Runner -- or like congressional Republicans did in trying to tag her husband. Nothing she throws sticks. Indeed, one senses a flailing desperation in Clinton's scramble to find the rock, broken bottle or brickbat that will knock Obama offstride.

She accused him of being afraid to debate her and never mind that there have been, like, 57 debates already.

She accused him of stealing lines from a speech by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. And never mind that Patrick, an Obama supporter, says he gave the lines to Obama and said, ``Here, use this.''

Knockout blows these are not.

And if those criticisms miss the mark, the argument that eloquence is somehow empty misses the point -- not simply of Obama's primary season success, but of the presidency itself. Don't get me wrong: To the degree Clinton or anyone else calls Obama out over a paucity of specifics in his proposals, the criticism is fair. But that's not the same as saying words don't matter. Or even that they matter less.

The chief executive's power does not derive solely from the authority vested in him by the Constitution. To the contrary, it derives also, and in some ways, more so, from his ability to rally the people, to inspire them in some great challenge or crusade.

We do not live -- yet -- in a dictatorship. Americans do not move because they are told to move; they move because they are inspired to. It is no accident that history's most successful presidents are the ones who were able to frame, with concision and grace, America's challenges and hopes, the ones who had greatest command over what Theodore Roosevelt famously called ``the bully pulpit.''

Think Ronald Reagan saying government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem. Think Franklin Roosevelt declaring that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Think Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg vowing a new birth of freedom.

Now, try to remember anything Millard Fillmore ever uttered. A hundred years from now, will anyone still be saying, ``I'm the decider?''

What some of us don't understand is that Obama is not running a campaign; he is rallying a movement. After seven years of what may go down as the worst presidency ever, after the grime of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, after dreary years of internecine sniping where ideological purity has routinely trumped national interest, Americans want something else. Something higher.

Whether Obama can deliver that something else is a fair question. But the thing is, he recognizes and responds to the hunger for it. That's the reason Clinton can't lay a glove on him, the reason he's won 10 primaries in a row, the reason he's cracked her coalition and even inspired Republicans to switch parties.

Clinton and others seem to think all those people have been scammed, flim-flammed and razzle-dazzled. It's a condescending conclusion.

I suspect that if anybody bothered to ask them, they'd say that what they've been, at last, is heard.

Richardson will be Obama's VP choice.

Obama picks up one more Ala. delegate

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is now one convention delegate ahead of Sen. Hillary Clinton in Alabama, but the method of selecting Obama's delegates has caused a rift between his campaign leadership and some of his supporters.

And enough delegates are still left undecided to give Clinton a chance to pull ahead by convention time.

The State Democratic Executive Committee on Saturday elected Alabama AFL-CIO President Stewart Burkhalter as an unpledged add-on delegate for the convention.

Burkhalter, who was backed by the Obama campaign, won by six voters over Jerome Green of Birmingham, who was supported by Clinton's team.

Burkhalter said he will vote for Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

Burkhalter's selection gives Obama 29 delegates from Alabama and Clinton 28, with 3 other delegates still to announce their choice.

"Now it's getting a little close to right," said Ted Hosp, a Birmingham attorney helping the Obama campaign.

Obama won Alabama's presidential primary on Feb. 5 by 14 percentage points, but the Democratic Party's complex formula for allocating delegates ?- and the awarding of automatic delegate spots to some party leaders and elected officials ?- has kept the delegate count close in Alabama.

Going into Saturday's meeting, each candidate had 28 delegates. And unlike Georgia, none of Clinton's delegates in Alabama have switched to Obama. Or vice versa.

Alabama voters chose the people to fill about half of the delegate spots during the primary Feb. 5. But 10 delegate seats for Obama and eight for Clinton had to be filled by the State Democratic Executive Committee on Saturday.

Forty-four people signed up for the Clinton spots and paid their $50 qualifying fee. The executive committee elected eight after some spirited campaigning.

Sixty-five people paid the $50 qualifying fee to run for the 10 Obama spots, but his campaign organization used the party's rules to whittle the list to the 10 it wanted. The rest were removed from the ballot. That guaranteed the executive committee would elect the 10 the Obama campaign wanted.

Some of those booted off the ballot were furious.

"It's just not democratic," said party activist Pam Miles of Madison.

Hosp and state Rep. Merika Coleman, co-chair of Obama's campaign in Alabama, said the campaign headquarters in Chicago made the decision to select 10 people who would stand with Obama no matter what happens in the close delegate race.

"With the race this close we have to be able to protect the integrity of the delegate count for Senator Obama," Coleman, D-Birmingham, said.

Obama's supporters were also worried that Joe Reed, the chairman of the party's black wing, the Alabama Democratic Conference, would push a slate for the Obama delegate slots even though his wing of the party endorsed Clinton.

"You wouldn't want someone who supported another candidate to select the delegates," Coleman said.

"That's just a lie," Reed said. "They had some folks they wanted to pay off."

He noted that not all the 10 had been longtime supporters of Obama. For instance, Birmingham attorney Giles Perkins had been a leader of John Edwards' campaign in Alabama until Edwards dropped out.

Messages to Obama's Chicago headquarters for comment Saturday were not immediately returned.

Leaders of Obama's campaign in Alabama predicted supporters would get over the disagreement and pull together, but some of the new people that Obama's campaign brought into Democratic politics were not so sure.

Joe Webb, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said he had volunteered in Obama's campaign and had scraped together $50 to run for a delegate spot ?- only to be knocked off.

"It's hurt my support. I'm going to have to do some soul searching to see if I can still support him," said Webb, who will be casting his first vote for president in November.

Three people who are delegates from Alabama because of their offices have not yet endorsed a candidate. They are state party Chairman Joe Turnham of Auburn, party Vice Chairman Nancy Worley of Montgomery, and U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer of Huntsville.

Worley rallied votes Saturday to overwhelmingly defeat a resolution offered by an Obama supporter that would have required the three to vote for Obama at the convention due to his big win in Alabama's primary.

Richardson will be Obama's VP choice.

Democrats dare to dream in long-red Texas

Chicago Tribune
March 1, 2008

For the first time in more than 30 years, Democrats?-and even some Republicans ?-are openly wondering whether Texas could actually be in play come the November presidential election and not simply a slam-dunk for the Republican nominee.

The signs of potentially seismic political changes are mounting on the eve of Tuesday's primary [..]. Early-voting turnout on the Democratic side smashed all previous records, even in staunchly Republican suburbs, foretelling potential crossover votes in November. [..]

Some prominent Texas Republicans have fallen into scandals and were forced aside by party leaders worried about a voter backlash.

Meanwhile, one of the most potent national issues for Republicans?-their aggressive campaign against undocumented immigrants?-strikes a dissonant chord in Texas, a state that once was a part of Mexico and where the sound of Spanish being spoken does not automatically induce angst.

And the state's demographics are relentlessly shifting power from the older white Texans who make up the Republican base to younger Hispanics and African-Americans, who are more likely to vote Democratic. [..]

Texas Democratic leaders are even more optimistic about their prospects, citing as evidence the most recent election in sprawling Dallas County, where Democrats swept all the local offices, and the fact that Democrats picked up two seats in Congress and eight seats in the state House in the last two years.

"Texas today is at most 40 percent Republican, a solid 30 percent Democratic, and we have 30 percent of our electorate that will vote both sides of the ticket," said Jim Dunnam, the Democratic leader in the Texas House. "We think we're riding a tide and we're going to have a wave in November. We'd just like somebody to help us with the wave."

Of course, not everyone agrees with Dunnam. State Republican leaders scoff at the idea that Texas Democrats can ever rise from the dead, at either the state or national level. [..]

Even Hillary Clinton, who the most recent Texas polls suggest is trailing Obama heading into Tuesday's primary, seems to share that view.

"I'd love to carry Texas" in November, Clinton told Texas Monthly magazine last month, "but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee."

To Dunnam, that sounded as though Clinton was writing off Texas like so many national Democrats before her ?- a sentiment that helped push him into Obama's corner.

"Sen. Clinton's comment seems to dismiss Texas as a `red state' with little meaning to Democrats after March 4," he said at a news conference last week. "Sen. Obama ... has a vision that will include us, not an electoral calculation that would use us and discard us."

In fact, some political experts say the scenario in which Texas votes Democratic in November works only if Obama is the nominee, because of his potential to draw new voters and independents to his side.

Obama might even prove attractive to some Texas Republicans, if a recent comment by a leading Republican strategist is any indication.

Mark McKinnon, a former Bush insider and chief media adviser for the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, told National Public Radio last month that he would leave the McCain campaign if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee.

"I met Barack Obama, I read his book, I like him a great deal," said McKinnon, whose political consulting firm is based in Austin. "I disagree with him on very fundamental issues. But ... I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama."

Clinton, by contrast, is a more polarizing figure and does not have the same crossover appeal, Obama's supporters assert.

"I don't think Sen. Clinton can create the broad-based coalition she needs to turn a state like Texas blue," said state Rep. Rafael Anchia, a Dallas Democrat. "The Republicans are praying for Hillary Clinton to be at the top of the ticket, because they think they can get record numbers to the polls against her."

Richardson always seems to me to be a grandstanding buffoon, about as sophisticated as cornpone, with the gravitas of Maxwell Smart.