Obama '08?

Like I said; there are a lot of things I strongly disagree with my preacher about politically but since I have ties there in my community and my family goes there and there is nothing religiously I disagree him with about; I still go there.

If anyone is interested, Andrew Sullivan has posted the full text of Jeremiah Wright's "Audacity To Hope" sermon in 1990.

Obama was not the only national African-American figure to cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described herself as a congregant, but in recent years has disassociated herself from the controversial minister

revel wrote:

Like I said; there are a lot of things I strongly disagree with my preacher about politically but since I have ties there in my community and my family goes there and there is nothing religiously I disagree him with about; I still go there.

I have a great deal of difficulty understanding this. I have, in the past, changed the church I attended because I disagreed with the political views ministers have expressed from the pulpit.

I can't imagine staying in a church/temple/synagogue that didn't reflect my religious and political positions, or at least didn't reflect something I disagree with.

But one has the sense that elsewhere in this great land the bloom is coming off the Obama rose.

Presently, there is a two-pronged propaganda campaign being waged against Obama from the right's noise machine.

The most obvious is the Reverend Wright 'issue' which is nearly filling the talk radio menu along with Fox and print/web. It's a Swift Boat strategy to designed to smear the character, loyalty, judgement, honesty etc of Obama. As Limbaugh, last week, bemoaned the situation as he saw it, "Everyone hates Hillary but no one hates Obama yet" - a situation in need of correction.

And this attack is, predictably, designed to push white peoples' buttons and fears a la Harold Ford Jr and "Call me, Harold (giggle giggle)". Note Miller's earlier post here about the Reverend "waving his palms". Real american preachers don't sway while holding their hands in the air and waving their palms. Look how alien he is. Look how weird african americans' christianity is. And look how into black power they are. A black candidate who is actually black is dangerous, is alien, is not american, IS NOT LIKE YOU, white voters! To be tempted by this man is to just maybe walk right into a mugging.

The second prong of the present effort has been evident for a week or two now (it precedes the Wright matter). The theme pops up throughout the conservative propaganda unverse and we see an instance of it in today's NY Times column by Kristol...

Quote:

But one has the sense that elsewhere in this great land the bloom is coming off the Obama rose.

link

This, along with all the other co-ordinated instances of the same idea being forwarded, is a marketing strategy that relies upon nothing more than repetition. Say it often and promote it broadly and facilitate the notion out in the market that there is a consensus that this is so. As Rove described it to Suskind (member of "the reality-based community) a few years ago, "We create our own reality".

As always, it has the added advantage of being an attack. When a candidate or target is defending himself/herself/itself, then that campaign's message is diminished and the campaign doing the attack moves out of the spotlight (and it's safer outside).

My advice to Obama supporters (and other rational people) is to avoid falling into this trap. McCain is easily as susceptible to this sort of attack regarding his religious affiliates. When some twit here tries to forward this smear, slam them back with twice as much of the same stuff but against McCain instead.

*** Clinton's super problem: By our count, the Clinton campaign hasn't publicly announced the support of a new superdelegate since just after February 5. Indeed, since Super Tuesday, Obama has gained 47 new superdelegates*, while Clinton has lost seven (including Eliot Spitzer). Does Clinton have a bigger problem on the superdelegate front than folks realize? Why do we think party leaders -- who saw the Democrats lose governorships, state legislatures, and the control of Congress during the Clinton years -- suddenly jump on board the Clinton campaign? Isn't this the reason the Clinton campaign has only been able to keep uncommitted supers from climbing board Obama's bandwagon but they haven't been able to woo a new super to their side in a month? ? Isn't this also an explanation for why the Clinton campaign has done so poorly in the caucuses? The caucuses are made up of the activists who follow this stuff closer [sic] and think about things like electability and who can help the party keep Congress, etc. If Clinton's not winning over caucus activists, why should we believe she'll win over a large enough chunk of superdelegates to overcome Obama's pledged delegate lead? Ultimately, her best chance is to convince supers that Obama is completely unelectable on par with McGovern, an argument that might have been helped a tad by Rev. Wright.

WRIGHT AND FALWELL

Ezra Klein @ The American Prospect

Ross Douthat writes, "Obama may have to go further down the road to explicitly disavowing his pastor. His connection to Wright isn't the equivalent of John McCain's going to Liberty University to make nice with Jerry Falwell. It's the equivalent of John McCain taking his wife and children, most Sundays, to Jerry Falwell's church."

Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the feminists contributed to 9/11, fine to believe we must support Israel so the Jews can be largely annihilated in a war that will trigger the End Times, fine to believe we're in a holy battle with the barbaric hordes of Islam, fine to believe that we went to the Middle East to prove "our God is bigger than your God." What you can't believe is that blacks have suffered a long history of oppression in this country, that they're still face deep institutional discrimination, and that a country where 100 percent of the presidents have been rich white guys is actually run by rich white guys. More to the point, even if you do believe those things, you certainly can't be angry about it!

Clinton and Obama campaigns hurl new accusations

LA Times

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs called on Clinton to release full post-White House tax returns; disclose all "earmarks," or pet projects, the New York senator had inserted into spending bills; and release all documents on the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Presidential Library, including a list of donors.

"What is lurking in those documents?" Gibbs asked. "There are gaps that need to be filled," said senior Obama strategist David Axelrod.

"This is a tried and true technique of the Obama campaign that has repeatedly shifted negative when they find the momentum working against them," said senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn.

He suggested the Obama campaign was trying to "deflect public opinion from their losses in Ohio and Texas" and from Clinton's strength in Pennsylvania.

When asked whether the Obama campaign's request for tax information was what the Clinton team considered a personal attack, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said: "When you accuse somebody of being disingenuous and question their integrity and their honesty, as they are doing, that constitutes a personal attack."

Obama lays out his plan for America

IndyStar.com (The Indianapolis Star)
"Indiana's No. 1 local media site"
March 15, 2008

PLAINFIELD -- For more than an hour today, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama laid out his case to Hoosiers why they should make him the next president.

At times, the Plainfield High School gym packed with more than 2,000 cheering people was a din of noise, as Hoosiers roared their approval of his promise to bring the troops home from Iraq and care for injured soldiers, end the nation's reliance on foreign oil, rebuild the economy and improve education.

At other times, though, the room was almost silent. Such was the case when Obama spoke about one of the last times Indiana's primary election mattered, as it will May 6 when voters choose between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It was 1968. Sen. Robert Kennedy was in Indianapolis to campaign for the presidency and had to break the word to an inner-city crowd that the Rev. Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

In a famous speech Kennedy delivered that night, he called for unity and an end to hate.

That, Obama said, is why he's running for president.

"If we can come together there is no challenge we can't face down," Obama said. "I'm here to report the American people are ready for change."

Obama spoke for about 20 minutes, then answered questions from the audience for another 45 minutes on everything from whether he would change No Child Left Behind -- he would -- to saving Social Security. On that, he proposed raising the cap on payroll taxes. Right now, people pay payroll taxes only on their first $97,000 in income. That means, he said, that 94 percent of folks pay on every dime they make, while billionaire Warren Buffett pays only on a tiny fraction of his income.

If elected, he said, he would focus immediately on three things: Bringing the troops home in a responsible manner; universal health care reform that continues private insurance but helps people afford it; and a new energy policy. Do those things, he said, and other programs such as improving education become doable; fail, and the nation would be bankrupt.

People reacted with a disappointed "aah" when Obama finally said his time was up. But he promised to be back to campaign aggressively in Indiana.

12:10 p.m.: Hoosiers eagerly await Obama visit

PLAINFIELD, Ind. -- Several hundred Hoosiers lined up in the cold fog this morning eager to get front-row seats to see Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.

Obama is making his first Indiana campaign stop today with a town-hall meeting at Plainfield High School as he tries to win Indiana's 72 electoral votes up for grabs in the May 6 primary election. [..]

Indiana's primary election usually is irrelevant, with the nominations of both parties sewn up long before Hoosiers cast their votes. This year, though, neither Obama nor Clinton has the 2,025 delegates needed to claim the nomination, and Indiana's votes, while not decisive, will matter.

That has electrified many voters here, and the 2,000 free tickets to today's Obama event were snatched up in only a half-hour or so after they became available on the Internet.

One of those who got a ticket -- and was so excited that he was the first person waiting to get into the Plainfield High School gymnasium -- was Tim Durham of Indianapolis.

Durham isn't your typical Democratic supporter. His grandfather is Republican Beurt SerVaas, the former president of the City-County Council.

Durham, wearing an "Obama 2008" T-shirt he had made for this occasion, said he arrived at 5:45 a.m. The 17-year-old said he had wanted to camp out outside the high school overnight but was turned away by security.

The Park Tudor High School junior will be able to vote in both the primary and the general election because he turns 18 on May 16. Anyone who is 18 before the general election can vote in both.

Though his family roots are Republican, Durham said, he is inspired by Obama.

"I like how he tries to bring everybody together," he said.

Also arriving early to see Obama was Leona Glazebrooks, a government teacher at Warren Central High School. She was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, where Obama solidified his rising star status with his keynote address. Now, she hopes to win a spot as a delegate to August's national convention in Denver and cast her vote for Obama.

Glazebrooks said the decision to back him wasn't easy at first. She has long wanted to see either a woman or a minority leading her party's ticket, and this year she was faced with the choice of both.

But, she said, she settled on Obama in part because of the enthusiasm she saw in her students for him.

"I felt like he was bringing and inspiring a lot of non-voters," she said. "He is changing the paradigm of the election."

The latest from Senator Obama is that he wasn't in the pews when Reverend Wright used "white arrogance" and "the United States of White America" on July 22, disputing the NewsMax report that's been circulating. I didn't link to that piece or cover it because, after all, we are talking about NewsMax . But one thing that will clear all of this up is if Senator Obama will release his schedule. Seems simple enough.

But the reality is that this is the second time Senator Obama's judgment has come into question. He's had a long relationship with Tony Rezko, too. Now his preacher of two decades is damaging Senator Obama, whether the Clinton campaign wants to talk about it or not. After all, Reverend Wright is no Geraldine Ferraro, even though people want to equate the two.

Maybe Democratic voters, as well as Republican and independents that turn Democratic for a day, don't care what Wright and Rezko will bring in the general election, but frankly, the Democratic party elders should. That's why they exist, though let me say again that the caucus system is undemocratic, and if the DNC had a better plan for nominating a candidate we wouldn't be in this mess. But they don't, so we are. But the sad fact is that whether the DC Democrats, Obama's supporters and the Obama blogs want to admit it or not, Wright has damaged the Obama brand terribly.

Got judgment?

Maybe the voters will decide the nominee. But if things stay even, the superdelegates may have to do it. If so, they will have to decide whether Senator Obama can withstand the Republican onslaught already rolling out on all things Reverend Wright. On Clinton's side, she has her negatives as well, but also the reality that Obama's supporters may not support her. As I said recently, if Obama is the nominee, taking myself out of this analysis, there is no evidence Clinton supporters will support Obama either, a fact that's hardened recently. At a time when this was supposed to be a Democratic year, challenges to manifesting our presidential dreams are definitely afoot.

The above video adds another chapter to the How Much Did Senator Obama Know About Reverend Wright's Views? book, now being compiled across the political spectrum. When I saw it, I further verified its authenticity through this video via CBS2 Chicago. The warm greeting and exchange from Senator Obama towards his minister took place last June 2007.


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