Obama '08?

LOL if you are a lawyer, it is a wonder you haven't been disbarred for malpractice. You said that the quote was from [NBC news There is a world of difference between NBC news and an opnion columnist for MSNBC. Even you should understand that news is different from opinion. Really, I know why you spend so much time wiling away the day here as you obviously don't have any work.

If Keith Olbermann says BOR is an idiot tonight. I can't come on here tomorrow and claim that "NBC news said that Bill O'Reilly is an idiot."

Well, I could but I would be wrong just as you are wrong. But you are either to stupid or too bullheaded and blind to see it.

PORTLAND - A group of Oregon politicians stood on the capitol steps in Salem Wednesday morning to endorse their candidate for president.

The group of legislators and elected officials gave their endorsement for the senator they want to see in the White House and it was an all-Obama crowd.

Five state senators and 19 state representatives, along with the state superintendent of schools and state treasurer pledged their votes to Barack Obama.

Independent senator Avel Gordly announced she would change her party affiliation and become a registered democrat after meeting Obama at a campaign rally.

"He said to me, I need the help of independent like yourself, and I told him then, he could count on my support. And, let me tell you why: Barack Obama is a unifier," Gordly said.

Representative Mary Nolan told the group she wants her daughter to be able to have a woman as president, but does not believe that Hillary Clinton is the candidate.

Nolan repeated what many others agreed, Obama's message of change is one, they believe, is worth sharing.

None of the legislators are superdelegates for Oregon, but still hope their endorsement encourages others to support their candidate.

Voters here, as in neighboring Ohio, where Mr. Obama lost the white and aging blue-collar vote, tend to elect politicians whose language rarely soars and whose policy prescriptions come studded with detail.

"The problem with talking about hope all the time is that these are not hopeful lands; Obama is talking change to people who equate change with life getting worse," said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic Party consultant who has studied the political culture of these working-class states [..].

Obama Is Moving to Down-to-Earth Oratory

The Speech is his finely polished sword, a transcendent weapon. Seen and heard on a thousand YouTube postings, Senator Barack Obama's speeches have made a happening of that hoariest of campaign forms, the stump speech.

But Mr. Obama sheaths that sword more often now. He is grounding his lofty rhetoric in the more prosaic language of white-working-class discontent, adjusting it to the less welcoming terrain of Pennsylvania. His preferred communication now is the town-hall-style meeting. [..]

He often mentions his background as a community organizer but in passing, a parenthetical. Not this time. "I got into public service as an organizer," Mr. Obama told these 1,200 mostly white Pennsylvanians in a local high school gymnasium. "There were a group of churches, mostly Catholic parishes, and they hired me for $12,000 plus car fare." That detail drew knowing chuckles in a town where the median income hovers at just over $20,000. [..]

Then, echoing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's focus on bread-and-butter concerns, Mr. Obama went on to talk about the price of gas and to offer the precise amount of his health care premium and to explain exactly what he would do about the foreclosure rate and Big Oil and Big Energy and how he would stop companies from moving to China.

On Monday, he added a dollop of denunciation of corporate salaries at Countrywide, a company at the center of the subprime loan implosion. "So they get a $19 million bonus while other folks are losing their homes," he said in Lancaster. "What's wrong with this picture?"

Mr. Obama's effort to master a plain-spoken and blunt language that extends back centuries in Pennsylvania is accompanied by no small stakes. [..] Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama's Democratic rival, has studied this argot. Her style of declamation tends toward that of the school valedictorian, but she grounds her talks in detail after detail after detail ?- her plan for stanching foreclosures, for tuberculosis, for tax breaks and so on and on, every program coming with a precise dollar sign attached.

A thrill these talks are not, but G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, noted that politics that attended to the precarious details of life could provide comfort to the hard-pressed.

"If you're an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want to know about job training, who pays your health care," Dr. Madonna said. "Obama's speeches are uplifting but without much specificity, and that's a tough sell for working people who don't live in a world of ideas." [..]

His challenge comes laden with complication. Pennsylvania's culture, as the historian David Hackett Fischer noted in his book "Albion's Seed," is rooted in the English midlands, where Scandinavian and English left a muscular and literal imprint. These are people distrustful of rank, and finery, and high-flown words. It should come as no surprise that the word "blather" originated here.

Mr. Obama does not shrink from arguing that the days when high school graduates could find good-paying union job in mills and factories are gone. In Johnstown, he spoke of retrofitting shuttered steel mills into high-tech factories to build wind-powered turbines. "I don't want to make a promise that I can bring back every job that was in Johnstown," he said. "That's not true."

Some in the audience applauded; others sat stolidly.

"There is a romance in the Rust Belt about bringing back those old industrial jobs and the culture those jobs represented," Mr. Sheinkopf said. "Their message to a politician is, Restore our jobs, restore our culture." [..]

The candidate's best weapon in this race just might be Senator Casey. Laconic to the core, a politician who dominates the working-class cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, he seems intent on refashioning his candidate ?- still very much a long shot in the primary. In his telling, Mr. Obama is nearly a shot-and-a-beer guy.

"We can't just curse the darkness. We have to do our best to roll up our sleeves," Mr. Casey said. "He'll fight for your jobs, and your families' jobs. Understand this: All of our battles are his battles."

Mr. Obama stood and watched; he might as well have been taking notes.

We've had almost a year of this plain talk from Obama in town hall meetings in this same style and substance, but no one was paying much attention. It is good to see that people are starting to listen.

Roxxxanne wrote:

LOL if you are a lawyer, it is a wonder you haven't been disbarred for malpractice. You said that the quote was from [NBC news There is a world of difference between NBC news and an opnion columnist for MSNBC. Even you should understand that news is different from opinion. Really, I know why you spend so much time wiling away the day here as you obviously don't have any work.

If Keith Olbermann says BOR is an idiot tonight. I can't come on here tomorrow and claim that "NBC news said that Bill O'Reilly is an idiot."

Well, I could but I would be wrong just as you are wrong. But you are either to stupid or too bullheaded and blind to see it.

That's the distinction you were parsing?

Never mind that you blustered into this threaoudly exclaiming that, "Anyone with a brain would understand that soz meant "projected" to be allocated."

To which I replied: "Anyone with a brain would know I was quoting NBC and not soz." The obvious point being that soz didn't mean anything of the sort.

And you proceeded to shout from the rooftops that "Tico was wrong," and "misogynist Tico this," and "blowhard Tico that" ... begging anyone to see that Tico had made a mistake.

And what is this mistake you were so desperate to trumpet?

That I said soz was quoting NBC when in fact she was quoting "NBC's Domenico Montanaro," a political researcher who works for NBC news. He is not an opinion columnist -- where the hell did you get that?

You're an idiot.

We've had almost a year of this plain talk from Obama in town hall meetings in this same style and substance, but no one was paying much attention. It is good to see that people are starting to listen.

The question is, are they listening to what he says because he has caught their attention with his ideas and philosophy or are they listening for "gotchas" now that the nominating convention is getting closer?

We've had almost a year of this plain talk from Obama in town hall meetings in this same style and substance, but no one was paying much attention. It is good to see that people are starting to listen.

The question is, are they listening to what he says because he has caught their attention with his ideas and philosophy or are they listening for "gotchas" now that the nominating convention is getting closer?

but then I'm not going to get my Progressive firebrand (and he might not be electable in America anyway).

Obama dons a blue collar

Baltimore Sun

<snipped>

Obama [..] blames his defeat in Ohio, at least in part, on a lack of time to introduce himself to voters, an excuse he won't be able to use in Pennsylvania [..]. To promote his regular-guy themes, Obama is midway through a six-day bus tour that is taking him from one end of the commonwealth to the other, his longest campaign swing in a single state this year.

Rolling across the steep hills and narrow valleys of the western Pennsylvania countryside, his bus does not advertise its presence. There is not so much as an Obama bumper sticker, much less a campaign banner, on the outside of the rented luxury liner [..].

The unmarked bus and somewhat stealthy nature of his campaign swing - many stops aren't announced in advance - also reflect the highly nuanced Obama effort in this state. He is trying to lay the groundwork for a Pennsylvania comeback, while keeping expectations in check, something his campaign has been less effective in doing than Clinton's. [..]

There will be fewer big rallies and more dialogue with voters at campaign events, he said, though yesterday Obama spoke to more than 10,000 people at Penn State University, his first mass event in the state.

Already, on his "road to change" tour, he's dropped into sports bars [..] and mingled with steelworkers at plants outside Pittsburgh and in Johnstown. He's also made himself available for interviews with many, if not most, of the state's local TV and radio stations and daily papers, while spending millions more than Clinton on an intensive ad campaign.

Interviews with voters illustrate both the progress he's making and the challenge he faces against Clinton [..]. Obama supporter Frank Kovach, 64, of Vinco, a retired union electrician, likes Clinton but thinks "she's beholden to the lobbyists." He gave the first campaign contribution of his life to Obama and likes "the idea that it's not big corporations that support him. It's ordinary people."

But Andy Peretin, 65, a retired steelworker from Johnstown, said he's leaning toward Clinton, along with "most people my age," because of her experience in Washington. "She can probably get more things done." [..] David Swain, 58, who works part-time for the county, said he'd like to see an African-American president but favors Clinton because of her health care expertise. [..]

Obama's Pennsylvania strategy could generate a primary election surprise - not a victory, according to politicians and analysts in the state, but a closer finish than the polls are showing now. [..] It seems hard to believe that he can win this state, but he might be able to get it into single digits," he added, which could be interpreted as a victory.

Ron Burkett, 45, of Quecreek, said he changed his registration from Republican to Democrat so he could vote for Obama in the primary. But he says that racial prejudice will hurt Obama's chances. "People say they don't know a lot about Barack Obama," he said. "That's because they're afraid to say they won't vote for a black man."

Obama's uphill climb in Pennsylvania

PENNSYLVANIA | Uses grass-roots campaigning as underdog

Chicago Sun-Times
March 31, 2008

In Pennsylvania, where Sen. Barack Obama is still the underdog, smaller crowds are supposed to be better. [..] During his bus tour, Obama has concentrated on the grits and gravy of politicking -- personal contact.

Before rolling out of Pittsburgh, Obama visited with workers outside a U.S. Steel plant. In Johnstown, he toured a wire factory. In Altoona, he ate hot dogs at a local restaurant and went bowling. And at Penn State in University Park, he toured the agricultural facilities [..].

Obama told reporters during a press briefing that the personal interaction represented a tweak of his campaign strategy. "We were having these huge rallies, and it's just hard to get questions and have a lot of interaction," Obama told reporters after the Johnstown rally where about 1,200 people showed up, a small crowd compared with some of his other rallies.

"We're having an event a week, and so you couldn't really take time for the retail politics that I enjoy and think helps people know me better," he said. "We're gonna be doing more town hall meetings, fewer rallies." [..]

At the Penn State rally, an estimated 22,000 people showed up [..]. A few hours later, Obama spoke before a standing-room-only crowd in the Forum Auditorium in the State Capitol Complex in Harrisburg, where he took questions.

The crowd was so enthusiastic, Obama had to ask them to settle down. Among the questions posed were concerns about Medicaid fraud, the lack of care for the mentally ill, education and universal health care. [..]

Hillary Clinton continues to enjoy strong support among people in the region, including those who look back on the Clinton years fondly. Cesar Prado, a manager at Century III Chevrolet in West Mifflin, said Hillary Clinton was a trusted adviser to her husband. Prado, who switched his registration from Republican to Democrat so he could vote for Clinton, said she's best equipped to get the economy back on track.

"If you spend eight years around Alan Greenspan, you're going to learn something," Prado said, referring to the former Federal Reserve chairman who served during the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history during Clinton's administration. "If she doesn't get the nomination, I will change (my registration) back."

Something to keep in mind. NOT that every single person who says he cant vote for Obama because he feels he doesnt know enough about him (not enough of a record, etc) must be a racist.

But [...]

And another thing...

I've been hearing complaints that if it were the other way around -- if Hillary was ahead and people were calling for Barack to drop out -- that there would be charges of racism. But this is another example of their dishonest, win at any cost tactics. Hilliary should drop out because she has run an unbelievably negative, nasty campaign against a genuinely good candidate (no one can deny that, and no one can make the same charge against Obama). It's unforgivable, and it should stop.