Obama '08?

nimh wrote:

Quote:
UNEXPECTED WIN

Bill Foster's easy victory in Dennis Hastert's old district really is quite a bellwether. I don't know if it points to Obama having massive coattails (the race was in Illinois, and Obama cut an ad for Foster), or the national mood being grim for Republicans, or both, but folks at the RNC are very, very scared today. It's all the worse for them because Foster ran as a proud Democrat. Illinois didn't elect a Blue Dog yesterday, they elected a guy whose web site banner actually has the word "Democrat" in it, who wants to withdraw from Iraq, who brags about his father working on the Civil Rights Act. The only exception is immigration, where he's got some fairly restrictionist rhetoric.

(Photo used under no license at all from Nick Beaudrot.)

Posted by Ezra Klein on March 9, 2008

See for more info also HERE.

(Oh, and for anyone tempted to see racism in the photo's caption, as one sorry commenter on Beaudrot's blog did: look up "lolcat"... :wink: )

It's still racist! Cool

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Ticomaya wrote:

blatham wrote:
I consider that there is a real advantage in the dems having two targets that the Republicans have to try to keep hitting. It doubles the work and money.

Nice effort to try and make lemonade.

Well, it lines up with something Karl Rove said:

Quote:

"A long Democratic battle doesn't automatically help the Republicans," longtime Bush strategist Karl Rove wrote in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, two days after Clinton's victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island revived her candidacy. "In fact, it hurts the Republicans in certain ways. Mr. McCain becomes less interesting to the media. Stories about him move off page one and grow smaller. TV coverage becomes spotty and short."

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On the same note..

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

You'll find it peppered all over A2K.

"Yeah, well while Obama and Clinton rip each other to shreds, McCain isn't getting any news coverage. So take that dude!"

From where do they receive their marching orders?

Karl Rove apparently, since he signed off on the point :wink:

(I think he was even the one first bringing it - I remember Blatham linking to him saying that a week or two ago already.)

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Tico either hadn't thought about it much or he was just playing a game. In either case, any serious response to his post seemed a waste of time.

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JPB wrote:

Please... you're talking IL IL Republicans brought in Alex Keys for the Senate race and Oberweis for the house. I'm all for making hay out of hay, but this is straw.

But Keyes as Senate candidate is a different matter altogether. Illinois as a state is leaning very Democratic nowadays - well, you know, you live there. But the 14th district is a Republican stronghold. You're talking about a seat that had been Republican for at least 50 years! It wasnt just Hastert; his four predecessors were all Republicans too, all the way back at least to 1958.

This should have been a very safe Republican seat, even apart from the Republicans having spent over a million dollars on it and McCain having campaigned for Oberweis.

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OMGOMG! A Rich Lowry column in the National Review that mostly makes sense to me. Should I worry?

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blatham wrote:

Tico either hadn't thought about it much or he was just playing a game. In either case, any serious response to his post seemed a waste of time.

Much like any response to your posts, I suppose.

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nimh wrote:

JPB wrote:
Please... you're talking IL IL Republicans brought in Alex Keys for the Senate race and Oberweis for the house. I'm all for making hay out of hay, but this is straw.

But Keyes as Senate candidate is a different matter altogether. Illinois as a state is leaning very Democratic nowadays - well, you know, you live there. But the 14th district is a Republican stronghold. You're talking about a seat that had been Republican for at least 50 years! It wasnt just Hastert; his four predecessors were all Republicans too, all the way back at least to 1958.

This should have been a very safe Republican seat, even apart from the Republicans having spent over a million dollars on it and McCain having campaigned for Oberweis.

The 14th District includes what is now the 'Research Corridor' of Chicagoland. Aurora, Batavia, St. Charles, Elgin, and Carpentersville are all very much part of the Chicago suburban sprawl that has become more and more Democratic (as have the rest of the Chicago suburbs). Traveling east on I-88 from DeKalb toward Chicago you hit the wall of Chicagoland at Aurora. It's an interesting site... farmland, open land, more farms and then, BAM - just west of Aurora you hit Chicagoland it's associated masses. That wall is moving ever westward and as more people move into the 14th District it will in all likelihood become less conservative in it's politics.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/IL14_109.gif

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nimh wrote:

OMGOMG! A Rich Lowry column in the National Review that mostly makes sense to me. Should I worry?

You've put that important "almost" in there, nimh.

He's a smart fellow but (like David Brooks) he's really at his intellectual best when on Lehrer's PBS Newshour doing fill in for Brooks. The slow, careful, tempered discourse of those sessions keeps the two of them honest. I find both of them enlightening and endarkening in about equal proportions.

There are two elements in this piece which hint pretty strongly of his internship under Kristol who I think is the slickest overt propagandist around.

The first is the unrelentingly negative portrayal of Clinton. There is no intention she might harbor nor any act she might carry through on which isn't fully describable in negatives only. The possibility of anything else never even makes an appearance. Kristol (via his numerous outlets and in tandem with others of similar goals) has been framing the discourse on Hillary in precisely this manner for nearly two decades.

The second element relates to the framing he sets up in the last three paragraphs. Try to find a suggestion in there of anything positive regarding Obama (aside from the 'he's not Hillary or Hitler' unspoken premise). Then, consider the options he presents for Obama...more correctly, the options he presents for how WE, the readers, ought to think about what Obama might do and what this tells us about his character. He can, IF he has "the guts", go on to a fight-to-the-death contest with Hillary. That's option one. The second option is that he'll wimp out because he doesn't have "guts"...an empty suit AND an empty spine as well...won't that make a great VP?!

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Just to add anecdotal evidence to JPB's points, nimh, do you remember the across-the-street neighbors I had in Naperville? Jack's family? They are very liberal Democrats. They moved to Hastert's district -- a brand-new subdivision, on the edge of a lot of new development out there. They had a view of a farm when I saw them last but at the pace things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the farm is no longer. But they're not the kind of residents that have typically been in Hastert's district, and there are a lot of people like them doing similar things for similar reasons.

I still think Foster's win is significant, but I agree with JPB that the district that Foster won is very different from the district Republicans have been winning for the last 50 years.

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The results from the 14th District are very interesting. As I noted in my "Turning-Point Election" thread, there has been a leftward movement in suburban areas across the nation, and IL-14 may be part of that movement. On the other hand, there are a number of other factors to consider. It was a bye-election, and turnout was very small. Still, in a district that is heavily Republican, that should not have mattered much. Furthermore, as I think JPB pointed out, Foster had the good fortune of running against Jim Oberweis, who is a much-disliked figure in Illinois politics. Of his previous five campaigns, he won two: the GOP nominations for the special and general elections in the 14th District, and he won them both on the same day against a splintered opposition. Oberweis is, I believe, considered by many a nasty campaigner, and he goes negative almost immediately in every election (both Oberweis and Foster traded rather vicious ads during the runup to the special election). Voters have shown pretty consistently that they just don't like Oberweis as a politician (as an ice cream vendor, however, he's ok), and that may have depressed Republican turnout for the election. That's not a good sign for GOP prospects in the general election, where the same two candidates will square off against each other.

Getting back to the theme of this thread, one of Foster's great assets in this race was Obama's endorsement. Obama filmed two commercials for oster which ran in the Chicago tv market (even though none of IL-14 crosses the city limits). For those who say that endorsements don't matter, it's quite evident that, at least in Illinois, that's not the case. Obama's coattails are pretty formidable, and Obama has already carried one of his protegés into a statewide elective office largely on the strength of his endorsement (state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias). In contrast, McCain's endorsement of Oberweis did little -- except perhaps to take some of the burnish off of McCain's reputation.

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We lived in Naperville back in the early seventies, but we didn't discuss politics with any of our neighbors. I was a registered republican back in those days, but changed to independent more than a decade ago.

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Kristol brings up the significance of this bye-election (cute, joe) in his NYT column yesterday, along with some other interesting stuffs...

Quote:

McCain's Daunting Task

By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: March 10, 2008
Buried inside Sunday's papers was a noteworthy election result. In a special election to replace former Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, first-time Democratic candidate Bill Foster emerged victorious. George Bush easily carried the district in 2004, as has every recent G.O.P. presidential candidate.

This Democratic pickup suggests that, for now, we're in an electoral environment more like 2006 than 2004....This isn't encouraging for G.O.P. prospects in 2008.

Then, of course, he goes on a bit to quickly pass over Hillary and Barack as having less than nothing to offer before the clouds part and the sun breaks through and choirs sing yiddish hallelujas for white-robed SaviorMcCain. Kristol makes some campaigning suggestions for McCain. These guys love the war metaphors when speaking of dems or liberals...

Quote:

A sustained assault highlighting these weaknesses of Obama or Clinton could be effective.

But when speaking about republicans, the questions becomes, do you want to 'risk' creating some indigestion...

Quote:

Still, he'll have to take risks. He could embrace a "Sam's Club" domestic-policy reform agenda, oriented toward the legitimate concerns of middle-class and working-class families, even if it gives country-club Republicans heartburn. (He could also criticize corporate boards that have rewarded C.E.O.'s lavishly as they've managed their companies into the ground.)

Note that Kristol advises that McCain take the bold step (for vote-getting purposes, mind you) of actual criticism of corporate boards. No legislation or regulation...criticism. Now that's boldness.

And then, the VP question. Some of you may be surprised to discover who the most impressive conservative in public life is deemed to be. I was.

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10kristol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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Kristol in the NYTimes wrote:

I agree. He needs to remain consistent on this (unlike Obama) and he'll be ok.

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nappyheadedhohoho wrote:

Kristol in the NYTimes wrote:

I agree. He needs to remain consistent on this (unlike Obama) and he'll be ok.

Unfortunately, consistency isn't McCain's strong suit. He's going to be hit for his various flip-flops on positions hard.

Cycloptichorn

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I only referred to his position on the war. He has been consistent. Can you say the same for Obama?

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blatham wrote:

i still think the lieberman thing would be bizarre - even though it's a definitely possibility. no democrats wanted lieberman's support. petraeus on the ballot would be interesting...

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nappyheadedhohoho wrote:

I only referred to his position on the war. He has been consistent. Can you say the same for Obama?

Sure - he's been against it from the start.

Cycloptichorn

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joefromchicago wrote:

Getting back to the theme of this thread, one of Foster's great assets in this race was Obama's endorsement. Obama filmed two commercials for oster which ran in the Chicago tv market (even though none of IL-14 crosses the city limits). For those who say that endorsements don't matter, it's quite evident that, at least in Illinois, that's not the case. Obama's coattails are pretty formidable, and Obama has already carried one of his protegés into a statewide elective office largely on the strength of his endorsement (state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias). In contrast, McCain's endorsement of Oberweis did little -- except perhaps to take some of the burnish off of McCain's reputation.

Obama still has to explain his endorsement of Baby Stroger last year - another coattail win, imo. I'm forever grateful that I don't live in Cook County.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

nappyheadedhohoho wrote:
I only referred to his position on the war. He has been consistent. Can you say the same for Obama?

Sure - he's been against it from the start.

Cycloptichorn

Yes. That's his favorite line and one he thinks is his money quote. Unfortunately for him, he has shown no consistency on what should be done now. Even his advisors have hinted he doesn't mean what he says in regard to ending the war.

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