The Sunny Side: February 2008

Friday, February 29, 2008

From Marcelline in NY:

washingtonpost.com > Columns

>
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> Hillary's Diminishing Returns
>
> Tuesday, February 26, 2008; Page A17
>
> There is dissension in the Hillary Clinton camp. Top aides have been
> in arguments, shouting back and forth about differences in strategy.
> Should Clinton come on strong? Should she go negative? Should she be
> upbeat and positive? Here's my answer: Stop campaigning.
>
> The evidence is overwhelming that since Super Tuesday, the minute
> that Clinton steps foot in a state, her numbers start to plummet. Of
> course, Barack Obama has something to do with it. He's a phenomenon, a
> political version of Roy Hobbs, "The Natural" of Bernard Malamud's
> wonderful novel, whose physical repose is TV perfect and who will,
> when the time comes, provide a jarring visual contrast to the much
> older John McCain. Obama is nearly as good as he thinks he is.
>
> So it could be that Clinton would lose the Democratic nomination even
> if she were a gifted politician. But she has no such gift. Her smile
> is strained. She is contained. She seems unknowable, and there is that
> melancholy Billie Holiday air about her -- all those songs about a
> suffering woman. Most of us would prefer Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop
> (Thinking About Tomorrow)," the upbeat theme of Bill Clinton's first
> presidential campaign.
>
> It might seem surprising that Clinton has turned out to be something
> other than a brilliant campaigner. But consider her record. Back in
> 1999, she entered the New York Senate race in the manner of Marie
> Antoinette entering France -- to be ultimately crowned queen. When
> Clinton announced an interest in running, every other potential
> Democratic candidate -- Andrew Cuomo, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, even Al
> Sharpton -- took it as an order to vanish. The strongest of these,
> Rep. Nita Lowey, graciously stepped aside, as if Clinton was the real
> McCoy and a six-term member of Congress was an undeserving interloper.
>
> Back then, I wrote that there was "something wacky" about what was
> happening. Clinton, you might recall, was hardly a New Yorker. No
> matter. She had never won an election in her adult life. No matter.
> She was virtually inexperienced on her own. No matter. She was first
> and foremost the wife of Bill, and for party leaders and hypocritical
> feminists -- Lowey was a woman, too, for crying out loud -- she just
> had to be The One.
>
> With the Democratic senatorial nomination in hand, Clinton was set to
> go up against Rudy Giuliani. This would have been the great matchup
> between two suits inflated with little but name recognition, but it
> never came to pass. Giuliani withdrew on account of prostate cancer,
> and Clinton wound up facing . . . can you remember? It was Rick Lazio.
> Even so, Clinton did not win really big -- 55.3 percent of the vote.
> Not a landslide.
>
> Six years later, Clinton ran for reelection. Once again, she had no
> Democratic opponent, and in the general, she faced a Republican named
> John Spencer. He was little known before the election, hardly known
> during it and so forgotten afterward that I expect a segment of the
> show "Lost" to be devoted to him. Clinton won in a landslide, 67
> percent of the vote. But just two years earlier, Sen. Charles Schumer
> (D) had gotten 71 percent of the vote -- and no one ever mentions him
> as a presidential candidate. In many ways Clinton is a remarkable
> woman, but she is not proving to be a remarkable politician.
>
> Big-money Democrats have been on the phone of late, and their
> conversations have been on how to get Clinton out of the race. Some of
> these Democrats were tepid Clinton backers to begin with, wishing to
> go with the presumed winner or responding to the soft extortion of
> Bill Clinton and his allies. But others were sincerely committed and
> now fear that the Clintons, she and he, will not know how to lose --
> and will take the Democratic Party down with them.
>
> Politics can be ugly, not to mention sad. Broken dreams are strewn
> across the American landscape. Fred Thompson resigned from "Law &
> Order." Chris Dodd moved his family from Connecticut to Iowa just for
> the caucuses. Mitt Romney blew through a fortune. John Edwards
> campaigned through personal pain. The difference between a
> presidential candidate and a fool in love is only a matter of Secret
> Service protection.
>
> For Hillary Clinton, a loss has to be particularly tough. The
> presidency is not just the ultimate honor for her. It is, as others
> have suggested, a justification for all she has put up with.
>
> My cards are already on the table. I don't think that Clinton can win
> the nomination, but even if she does, I don't think she will win the
> general election. That would become apparent as she starts to campaign
> in states that have yet to see her. The harder she works, the worse
> she does.=

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

From Beth:

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Post from Beth Gersh-Nesic's Blog:
Senator Obama and the Raft of the Medusa
By Beth Gersh-Nesic - Feb 27th, 2008 at 9:58 pm EST

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On Senator Obama and Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Given Senator Barack Obama mounting lead in the Democratic primaries, I often think of Théodore Géricault’s masterpiece, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819, a gigantic painting, where a bare-chested black sailor reaches up above the horizon line, lifted by his crewmates, to signal for help from a ship that is barely perceptible in the far distance. His task is to save himself and his fellow survivors, who have been set adrift on an enormous jerry-built raft after their frigate, the Medusa, had run aground off the coast of West Africa in July 1816

The disasterous journey of the French ship Medusa became a symbol of the dysfunctional Bourbon regime, restored in 1815 under Louis XVIII after Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo. Its story parallels the Bush administration, too, as demonstrated in Joel-Peter Witkin’s Raft of the George W. Bush (2006) and Kara Walker’s Post-Katrina Adrift (2007).

At the heart of the Medusa’s misfortune were three incompetent political-appointees, Frigate-Captain Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, Lieutenant-Colonel Julien-Désíré Schmaltz (governor for St. Louis and Senegal), and a M. Richefort (port master for St. Louis), who decided to speed up their trip from France to Senegal by sailing along the treacherous coast of West Africa. The crew protested, but these overconfident men with little seafaring experience (the captain had spend the previous twenty-five years as a customs officer) took none of their advice.

On July 2, 1816, the Medusa got stuck on shoals in the Arguin Bank. Of the 400 passengers, most of the well-to-do escaped in the six life-boats. The crew, about 150, settled for a 65 by 23 foot raft. Mayhem ensued –murder, mutiny and cannibalism. About two weeks later, just four miles from shore, fifteen survivors were picked up by the Argus (the Medusa’s sister ship)—ten made it home to tell their stories to the press.

The black sailor who energetically waves his shirt toward the Argus may represent the military conscripts brought along to patrol France’s territory in Senegal. More likely, he serves to remind the viewer of France’s slave trade, which Géricault actively opposed and Leutenant-Colonel Schmaltz meant to profit from in Africa. Therefore, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa is more than a dramatic record of this event and a symbol of hope in the face adversity, it questions the body politic when its practice leads to corruption and human degradation. The artist’s choice of a black man leading the fight for survival called attention to those who had been abandoned by society, like the Medusa sailors left to fend for themselves on the open sea.

Géricault’s great painting received mixed reviews. Some critics found the work too vulgar in its realism, too unbeautiful for teaching a moral lesson. These critics were speaking in code. It was the African hero that set their teeth on edge.

Today in America, many voters might feel the same. They cannot imagine an African-American at the helm of our ship the USA. The code for their doubts is “lack of experience.” However, after eleven consecutive victories, it seems clear that Senator Obama’s grass-roots campaign has demonstrated authentic leadership skills. Those who work in the trenches know this best through their tireless phone-banking, numerous emails to each other, meetings, fund-raising events, rallies and door-to-door conversations. They see that tiny Argus though the eyes of this optimistic leader, who has been lifted up by his crew and has already set a new course for this country.

Images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_of_the_Medusa Raft of the Medusa

http://www.edelmangallery.com/witkin33.htm Raft of George W. Bush

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/08/27/toc_20070820 Post Katrina Adrift

Sources:

Alexander McKee, Death Raft: The Human Drama of the Medusa Shipwreck, Charles Scribners, 1975.

Albert Boime, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Albert Alhadeff, The Raft of the Medusa: Gericault, Art and Race, Prestel, 2002.

Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D., is an art historian, who reviews exhibitions for About.com: Art History (an affiliate of the New York Times) and teaches at Purchase College and other colleges in the Westchester/Rockland area. Her most recent book is André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005). See website: www.andresalmon.org.

She is the director of the New York Arts Exchange: www.nyarts-exchange.com.

From Kathy in MO:

I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype
by Grassroots Mom
Wed Feb 20, 2008 at 05:13:32 PM PST
The next President is going to have some MAJOR challenges.
I refuse to buy into the hype, on either side, but especially on that of Obama. However the "empty rhetoric" v. "history of accomplishments" arguments have prompted me to check it out on my own, not relying on any candidate's website, book, or worst of all supporters' diaries, like this one.

I went to the Library of Congress Website. The FACTS of what each did in the Senate last year sure surprised me. I'm sure they will surprise you, too. Whether you love or hate Hillary, you will be surprised. Whether you think Obama is the second coming of JFK or an inexperienced lightweight, you will surprised. Go check out the Library of Congress Website. After spending some time there, it will be clear that there is really only one candidate would is ready to be the next president, even better than Gore. If you don't want to spend an hour or two doing research, then I'll tell you what I discovered on the jump.

Grassroots Mom's diary :: ::
I looked up Obama and looked up Clinton. I looked at the bills that they both authored and introduced. Anyone who has been around politics, and is honest, realizes that there are a lot of reasons why a Senator votes one way or another on bills or misses votes. However an examination of the bills that each of these Senators cared enough about to author and introduce revealed much to me: what they care about, what their priorities are, how they tackle problems. And the list of co-sponsors showed something about how they lead, inspire and work with others. Finally, looking at which bills actually passed is pretty indicative of how effective each would be at getting things done.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, let's all be honest here. It is damn hard to get anything through Congress these days. And Obama and Clinton care about the same issues and have obviously worked together on a lot of legislation, whatever Sen. Clinton's campaign may imply. She is a frequent co-sponsor on his bills, and he on hers. They are both completely competent senators.

I started with Sen. Clinton.

I'm not a Hillary Hater, but I certainly didn't like her much either. I didn't like her DLC history; her votes on Iraq, Iran or the bankruptcy bill; her characterization of the years she spent as First Lady as "executive experience." Hillary Clinton is no Eleanor Roosevelt. Perhaps more like Lady Bird Johnson. Hillary claims to have brought us SCHIP (with a little help from Ted Kennedy). Lady Bird brought us Head Start as well as cleaner, nicer highways. Anyone 40 or older probably remembers when the nation's highways were basically disgusting garbage dumps lined with billboards. But no one thinks Lady Bird should have been president. Might as well argue for Barbara Bush because of her efforts on family literacy, or Nancy Reagan and the War on Drugs.

Hillary Clinton does have a solid record in the Senate, however.

I came away from my research really knowing a lot more about what is important to Hillary in her heart: kids and their well being. My research changed my feeling about her significantly. About 40% of her bills dealt with health care and/or kids. As a mom with small kids, I like her passion for children's issues. But curiously, her big bill to deliver health care to every child, the one she lauds on her website, S.895 : "A bill to amend titles XIX and XXI of the Social Security Act to ensure that every child in the United States has access to affordable, quality health insurance coverage, and for other purposes" had not a single co-sponsor. Not one, according to the Library of Congress. Why is that? Is it a bad bill? Or is she not able to recruit support for her signature issue? Or did she just submit it simply to put in the hopper, so to speak, so she could claim she was working on it. I honestly don't know the answer, but I find it curious and suspicious that not even Ted Kennedy co-sponsored it. Its sister bill in the house, H.R. 1535, introduced by John Dingell has 42 co-sponsors. It's just weird. I honestly don't know what to make of it.

S.895 was major. But most of her other bills are much smaller in scale and scope — more targeted and more careful.

For example, she introduced one bill that offered tax credits for building owners who clean up lead paint. Which is a very good thing. And Obama is a co-sponsor. "S.1793 : A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a tax credit for property owners who remove lead-based paint hazards."

Obama's anti-lead bill (S. 1306) directed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to classify certain children's products containing lead as banned hazardous substances. He had another bill prohibitting the interstate transport of children's products containing lead. (S.2132) And Hillary co-sponsored each of these.

In other words, they both care about protecting children from lead.

The difference is in the scope and the approach.

Obama's bill shows how he thinks big: do everything we can to make sure that lead-painted Thomas the Tank Engine toys don't get into the hands and mouths of millions of toddlers in this country.

Or Hillary: encourage people by offering tax credits to clean up lead paint in old buildings. People have been talking about lead paint in old buildings hurting kids in living in inner cities, since, well when I was a kid — for decades. If it is still a big problem, is offering tax credits for clean up, i.e. scrape down the walls and repaint, the best way to protect kids from lead?

How many of you parents have lead paint problems? How many have (or had) toxic Thomas the Tank Engine Toys? They are everywhere. The local bookstore and kid's shoe store and the doctor's office and the preschool and the toystore all have train tables. There is nowhere you can go anymore with toddlers that doesn't have a Thomas the Tank Engine train table covered with toxic toys. But that's just my feeling.

Obama's bills risk pissing off the toy industry and the Chinese. Hillary's risks nothing.

A lot of Clinton's health bills focus on children. Or women. She introduced a billl for research in the causes of gestational diabetes, for more pediatric research (S.895) and a rural agriculture bill to get farm-fresh veggies into schools (S.1031).

Her bill dealing with the crisis in foreclosure is actually S.2114 : "A bill to amend the Truth in Lending Act, to provide for enhanced disclosures to consumers and enhanced regulation of mortgage brokers, and for other purposes." Again, no co-sponsors. Obama also introduced a bill in the face of the mortgage foreclosure crisis: S.1222 : "A bill to stop mortgage transactions which operate to promote fraud, risk, abuse, and under-development, and for other purposes." Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 4/25/2007), co-sponsored by Dick Durbin.

In her ads and speeches, Clinton claims that she's fighting to stop foreclosure while implying that Obama is empty rhetoric. Actually, Clinton is calling for "enhanced disclosures to consumers and enhanced regulation", while Obama's bill will "stop mortgage transactions which operate to promote fraud, risk, abuse, and under-development." After looking at the two bills, Obama's appears to be tougher, more directly addressing the problem.

Speaking of Obama, here's a list of some of his proposed legislation.

Four bills on energy including
• S.1151 : A bill to provide incentives to the auto industry to accelerate efforts to develop more energy-efficient vehicles to lessen dependence on oil;
•S.115 : A bill to suspend royalty relief, to repeal certain provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal certain tax incentives for the oil and gas industry; and •S.133 : A bill to promote the national security and stability of the economy of the United States by reducing the dependence of the United States on oil through the use of alternative fuels and new technology, and for other purposes.

Clinton had only one bill that I could find that addressed the same issue, S.701 : A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose a temporary oil profit fee and to use the proceeds of the fee collected to provide a Strategic Energy Fund and expand certain energy tax incentives, and for other purposes.

Obama wants to "repeal certain tax incentives for the oil and gas industry". Clinton sees the answer in a "temporary oil profit fee" and to "expand certain energy tax incentives" for alternative energy. Obama's alternative energy bill (S.133) was co-sponsored by Harkin, Lugar and Salazar. Clinton's bill again had no co-sponsors.

On health care he introduced ten bills/amendments, including one amendment that passed: S.AMDT.1041 to S.1082 To improve the safety and efficacy of genetic tests. Other issues addressed in his proposed health care legislation were AIDS research (S.823 ), hospital report cards (S.692 — the V.A., and S.1824 — Medicare), better emergency care (S.1873), and drug price controls (S.2347).

Clinton's health care bills, for the most part, didn't impress me much, although she introduced many more bills in this area than Obama did:

S.CON.RES.63 : A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of the Congress regarding the need for additional research into the chronic neurological condition hydrocephalus, and for other purposes.
S.RES.176 : A resolution recognizing April 30, 2007, as "National Healthy Schools Day".
S.RES.222 : A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
S.201 : A bill to establish a grant program for individuals still suffering health effects as a result of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon.
S.907 : A bill to establish an Advisory Committee on Gestational Diabetes, to provide grants to better understand and reduce gestational diabetes, and for other purposes.
S.993 : A bill to improve pediatric research.
S.982 : A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for integration of mental health services and mental health treatment outreach teams, and for other purposes.
S.1065 : A bill to improve the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury in members and former members of the Armed Forces, to review and expand telehealth and telemental health programs of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.
S.1075 : A bill to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to expand access to contraceptive services for women and men under the Medicaid program, help low income women and couples prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce abortion, and for other purposes.
S.1343 : A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act with respect to prevention and treatment of diabetes, and for other purposes.
S.1712 : A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to improve newborn screening activities, and for other purposes.

and on and on. Plenty of these have plenty of co-sponsors. Obviously, Hillary Clinton really knows her stuff on the issues of health care. None of them passed, however. On Obama's side, one of his health care initiatives passed in the Senate, the aforementioned amendment to Kennedy's S.1082, the FDA Revitalization Act.

Truth be told, it was very depressing doing this research to see all these great ideas and how little actually gets done. Looking at the legislative history of Kennedy's bill is a good example. It finally passed but its sister bill in the House, H.R.2900, was the one that was finally enacted, and with it, Obama's amendment for safe and effective genetic testing. Clinton submitted two amendments to this bill, one of would have eliminated the sunsetting of pediatric data collection; the other would have begin the process to approve generic versions of complex and expensive drugs called biologics or biotech drugs. Neither were adopted.

Now let's look more closely at Obama.

I was blown away as I started going through his record. I've already mentioned his bills on health care and energy. In addition he had introduced bills on Iran, voting, veterans, global warming, campaign finance and lobbyists, Blackwater, global poverty, nuclear proliferation, and education.
On Iran: S.J.RES.23 : A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.

On votingPassed out of Committee and now on the Senate Calendar for Feb. 22, 2008
S.453 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections Please check this out! This is a great bill. We need this. I can't believe that this time voter intimidation is not already illegal.

On veterans and military personnel: S.1084 : A bill to provide housing assistance for very low-income veterans;

On global warmingS.1324 : A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuel sold in the United States;S.1389 : A bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to establish a Climate Change Education Program; S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy. (This last one passed both the House and the Senate as part of the budget bill.)

On campaign finance and lobbyists S.2030 : A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists; and S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.

On Blackwater S.2044 : A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes, and S.2147 : A bill to require accountability for contractors and contract personnel under Federal contracts, and for other purposes.

On global poverty S.2433 : A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.

On global nuclear proliferation S.1977 : A bill to provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.

I counted nine education bills, but it's getting late and I've got to get my kids ready for bed.

As I mentioned earlier, Clinton is a frequent co-sponsor on many of Obama's bills. So is Ted Kennedy. So are a number of Republicans.

Finally, Obama appears to have a better record last year in the Senate on getting his bills and amendments passed than does Clinton. I've listed everything that passed the Senate for each them at the end in boxes. But check out Thomas.loc.gov for yourself. I may have missed something.

In my eyes Obama is the superior choice in every way. He cares about more of the issues that matter to me. Kids and health care are important but so is the issue of global warming, on which Clinton introduced not a single bill last year.

Obama is a leader. With bigger majorities in Congress, much of his agenda should sail through. He can inspire this country to change course on so many things, from health care to global warming, where attitudes have to be changed first. I remember Bill Clinton's endless laundry lists of small, focus group approved initiatives. For those who say Hillary will not govern like Bill did, I respond that the people who were doing the market testing of his proposed policies were Dick Morris, of course, and Mark Penn, who is now running Hillary's campaign.

It's Obama for me! I just sent him $100. My first donation this election.

Yes, We Can!

Clinton's Successes:
S.694 : A bill to direct the Secretary of Transportation to issue regulations to reduce the incidence of child injury and death occurring inside or outside of light motor vehicles, and for other purposes. (This is currently in conference committee to reconcile difference with the House bill)
Passed in the Senate:
S.CON.RES.27 : A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of "National Purple Heart Recognition Day".
S.RES.21 : A resolution recognizing the uncommon valor of Wesley Autrey of New York, New York
S.RES.92 : A resolution calling for the immediate and unconditional release of soldiers of Israel held captive by Hamas and Hezbollah.
S.RES.141 : A resolution urging all member countries of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service who have yet to ratify the May 2006 amendments to the 1955 Bonn Accords to expedite the ratification process to allow for open access to the Holocaust archives located at Bad Arolsen, Germany.
S.RES.222 : A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
S.AMDT.666 to H.R.1591 To link award fees under Department of Homeland Security contracts to successful acquisition outcomes under such contracts.
S.AMDT.2047 to H.R.1585 To specify additional individuals eligible to transportation for survivors of deceased members of the Armed Forces to attend their burial ceremonies.
S.AMDT.2108 to H.R.1585 To require a report on the planning and implementation of the policy of the United States toward Darfur.
S.AMDT.2390 to H.R.2638 To require that all contracts of the Department of Homeland Security that provide award fees link such fees to successful acquisition outcomes.
S.AMDT.2474 to H.R.2638 To ensure that the Federal Protective Service has adequate personnel.
S.AMDT.2823 to H.R.3074 To require a report on plans to alleviate congestion and flight delays in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Airspace.
S.AMDT.2917 to H.R.1585 To extend and enhance the authority for temporary lodging expenses for members of the Armed Forces in areas subject to a major disaster declaration or for installations experiencing a sudden increase in personnel levels.
Obama's Success:
S.AMDT.1041 to S.1082 To improve the safety and efficacy of genetic tests.
S.AMDT.3073 to H.R.1585 To provide for transparency and accountability in military and security contracting.
S.AMDT.3078 to H.R.1585 Relating to administrative separations of members of the Armed Forces for personality disorder.
S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.
S.AMDT.524 to S.CON.RES.21 To provide $100 million for the Summer Term Education Program supporting summer learning opportunities for low-income students in the early grades to lessen summer learning losses that contribute to the achievement gaps separating low-income students from their middle-class peers.
S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy.
S.AMDT.905 to S.761 To require the Director of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Education to establish a program to recruit and provide mentors for women and underrepresented minorities who are interested in careers in mathematics, science, and engineering.
S.AMDT.923 to S.761 To expand the pipeline of individuals entering the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields to support United States innovation and competitiveness.
S.AMDT.924 to S.761 To establish summer term education programs.
S.AMDT.2519 to H.R.2638 To provide that one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5 million or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee owes no past due Federal tax liability.
S.AMDT.2588 to H.R.976 To provide certain employment protections for family members who are caring for members of the Armed Forces recovering from illnesses and injuries incurred on active duty.
S.AMDT.2658 to H.R.2642 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
S.AMDT.2692 to H.R.2764 To require a comprehensive nuclear threat reduction and security plan.
S.AMDT.2799 to H.R.3074 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
S.AMDT.3137 to H.R.3222 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
S.AMDT.3234 to H.R.3093 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
S.AMDT.3331 to H.R.3043 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
Senate Resolutions Passed:
S.RES.133 : A resolution celebrating the life of Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.
S.RES.268 : A resolution designating July 12, 2007, as "National Summer Learning Day".
Added:I realize, of course that several of these amendments are exactly the same. They were added to spending bills. My only reason for including them is for completeness. They are not here to pad out Obama's record. Furthermore, I want to make clear that I only looked at one single year, 2007. This is not meant as a comprehensive review of either candidate's entire Senate record. If you are interested in doing your own research, please go to http://thomas.loc.gov and look it up.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

From Anne:

February 26, 2008
Hillary's Diminishing Returns
By Richard Cohen

There is dissension in the Hillary Clinton camp. Top aides have been in arguments, shouting back and forth about differences in strategy. Should Clinton come on strong? Should she go negative? Should she be upbeat and positive? Here's my answer: Stop campaigning.

The evidence is overwhelming that since Super Tuesday, the minute Clinton steps foot in a state, her numbers start to plummet. Of course, Barack Obama has something to do with it. He's a phenomenon, a political version of Roy Hobbs, "The Natural" of Bernard Malamud's wonderful novel, whose physical repose is TV perfect and who will, when the time comes, provide a jarring visual contrast to the much older John McCain. Obama is nearly as good as he thinks he is.

So it could be that Clinton would have lost the Democrat nomination even if she was a gifted politician. But she has no such gift. Her smile is strained. She is contained. She seems unknowable and for all but women like herself, there is that melancholy Billie Holiday air about her -- all those songs about a suffering woman. Most of us would prefer Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," the upbeat theme of Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.

It might seem surprising that Clinton has turned out to be something other than a brilliant campaigner. But consider her record. Back in 1999, she entered the New York Senate race in the manner of Marie Antoinette entering France -- to be ultimately crowned queen. When Clinton announced an interest in running, every other Democratic candidate -- Andrew Cuomo, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, even Al Sharpton -- took it as an order to vanish. The strongest of these, Rep. Nita Lowey, graciously stepped aside, as if Clinton was the real McCoy and a six-term member of Congress was an undeserving interloper.

Back then, I wrote that there was "something wacky" about what was happening. Clinton, you might recall, was hardly a New Yorker. No matter. She had never won an election in her adult life. No matter. She was virtually inexperienced on her own. No matter. She was first and foremost the wife of Bill and for party leaders and hypocritical feminists -- Lowey was a woman, too, for crying out loud -- she just had to be The One.

With the Democratic senatorial nomination in hand, Clinton was set to go up against Rudy Giuliani. This would have been the great matchup between two suits inflated with little but name recognition, but it never came to pass. Giuliani withdrew on account of prostate cancer and Clinton wound up facing ... can you remember? It was Rick Lazio. Even so, Clinton did not win really big -- 55.3 percent of the vote. Not a landslide.

Six years later, Clinton ran for re-election. Once again, she had no Democratic opponent and in the general, she faced a Republican named John Spencer. He was little known before the election, hardly known during it and so forgotten afterward that I expect a segment of the show "Lost" to be devoted to him. Clinton won in a landslide, 67 percent of the vote. But just two years earlier, Sen. Charles Schumer (D) had gotten 71 percent of the vote -- and no one ever mentions him as a presidential candidate. In many ways, Clinton's a remarkable woman but she is not proving to be a remarkable politician.

Big-money Democrats have been on the phone of late and their conversations have been on how to get Clinton out of the race. Some of these Democrats were tepid Clinton backers to begin with, wishing to go with the presumed winner or responding to the soft extortion of Bill Clinton and his allies. But others were sincerely committed and now fear that the Clintons, she and he, will not know how to lose -- and take the Democratic Party down with them.

Politics can be ugly, not to mention sad. Broken dreams are strewn across the American landscape. Fred Thompson resigned from "Law & Order." Chris Dodd moved his family from Connecticut to Iowa just for the caucuses. Mitt Romney blew through a fortune. John Edwards campaigned through personal pain. The difference between a presidential candidate and a fool in love is only a matter of Secret Service protection.

For Hillary Clinton, a loss has to be particularly tough. The presidency is not just the ultimate honor for her. It is, as others have suggested, a justification for all she has put up with.

My cards are already on the table. I don't think that Clinton can win the nomination but even if she does, I don't think she will win the general election. That would become apparent as she starts to campaign in states that have yet to see her. The harder she works, the worse she does.

cohenr@washpost.com

From Kathy in MO:

Hi Sunny,

I am so nervous about the debate tonight. No one knows which Hillary we are going to see. Will it be the one that said she was honored to be sitting up there with Barack, or will it be crazy, wild-eyed Hillary who compared him to Karl Rove and George Bush and then went on to mock him and his followers??? She is acting desperate and bipolar. Hopefully, it is another sign that her campaign is in its last throes. I just hope that Obama can stay above the fray as he has done in the past. It doesn't make either one of them look presidential to be shouting insults as she as done. She has also attacked his millions of supporters like we are all just idiots following a dream. If she should happen to be the candidate, that is not a very good strategy for uniting the party and getting all these people to follow her. What she has done is exactly what we have said about her all along, she is a divisive figure. None of the states Obama has won, according to her, are important ones. She has won the only ones that will count in the general election!!! All of his followers are crazy cultists. If she is the nominee, I know alot of us will probably hold our noses and vote for her just to keep another Republican out of the White House, but I am convinced that the youth vote will not follow her. They are not loyal Democrats. They are a whole generation inspired by this man. If he is not the candidate, they do not automatically jump enthusiastically to Hillary's camp. They will probably stay home. Hopefully, Ohio and Texas will end her run, and next Tuesday, Obama will be our candidate. Hopefully, she will have the sense to make a graceful exit and begin uniting the party!
Thanks for all you do. Keep inspiring us all!

From Elizabeth:

Paul Burka of Texas Monthly, no Obamaniac himself, thinks that
at the current fever pitch of Obamania the Republicans could
lose Texas.

Texas?

February 25, 2008
Et tu, Texas?
Posted by Mark Kleiman
Paul Burka of Texas Monthly is not, or at least has not been, an Obama fan. That makes his take on early voting in Texas that much more interesting. He reports on the tidal wave of early voting, and concludes:

Barack Obama's personality and his message are dominating politics nationwide. The last candidate to stir this kind of feeling was Ronald Reagan in 1980 and before him Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Veteran political observers like me can roll our eyes over someone running for president on a platform of "Hope" and "Change," but nothing is so powerful as an idea, even a vague one, whose time has come. Obama is riding the whirlwind, and if he can make the moment last until November, it is going to sweep out the Republicans, even in Texas.
These numbers are so overwhelming, and the fifteen counties have such a large fraction of the state's registered voters -- 7,815,906 of 12,607,466, or 62% -- that what happens in other 239 counties is unlikely to alter the trend. These numbers have made me a believer. Rick Noriega could defeat John Cornyn. The Democrats can win a majority in the Texas House of Representatives. The consummate irony is that George W. Bush, who made Texas a Republican state on his way in to the presidency, may make it a Democratic state on his way out.

Rasmussen Reports shows HRC still with a one-point lead in Texas. But it also reports that 29% (!) of the people likely to vote in the primary have already done so, and that Obama is winning that group "handily." Recall that HRC won in California entirely on the basis of early voting; among those who voted on Election Day, Obama probably had a small edge. If Obama is winning the early voters an tied overall with a week to go, there's good reason for confidence.

From Hank in NY:

Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 7:45 AM
To: 'oped@washpost.com'
Subject: To The Editor

“Lest We Forget”

With all the euphoria and excitement being generated by the 2008 presidential campaigns, it is far too easy to forget that the White House is, and will be occupied by a very dangerous man for the next eleven months. Mr. Bush is already up to his ears in attempting to tie the next President’s hands by making deals with the inept Iraqi government that bypass Congressional oversight and keep American troops in Iraq, and in harms way for decades to come. Bush is at odds with the nation’s Governor’s who want to initiate public work projects in their states to stimulate the economy. The President has shown his contempt for any domestic or international programs that would make cuts in carbon emissions mandatory, which spells disaster for generations of American’s yet unborn. Mr. Bush has continuously vetoed the Child Healthcare Bill passed by both Houses of Congress, and there has not been enough gumption in that body to put the President in his place and override his contemptuous action.

While it is encouraging to see young people turning out in record numbers to support their candidates in the primaries, these new voters, their parents and grand parents, need to take up the clarion call to their elected officials and demand that Bush be stopped from doing any more harm. The next President will face a monumental task cleaning up eight years of George W. Bush’s mess. He or she will also face the issue of restoring America to the high moral ground we need to unite the rest of the world and bring an end to starvation, genocide, pandemics like AIDS and malaria, and reversing the potentially horrifying effects of Global Warming. Mr. Bush has alienated our friends and emboldened our enemies. It is high time we all banded together to make him irrelevant.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

From Judy in Westchester:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 24, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
¿Quién Es Less Macho?
By MAUREEN DOWD
If this is truly the Decline and Fall of the Clinton Empire, it is marked by one freaky stroke of bad luck and one striking historical irony.

How likely is it that a woman who finally unfetters herself from one superstar then finds herself eclipsed by another?

And when historians trace how her inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival.

The bullying and bellicosity of the Bush administration have left many Americans exhausted and yearning for a more nurturing and inclusive style.

Sixteen years of politicians in Washington clashing in epic if not always essential battle through culture wars, the right-wing war against the Clintons, the war-without-end on terror, and the war-with-no-end-in-sight in Iraq have spawned a desire for peace and pragmatism.

Hillary was so busy trying to prove she could be one of the boys — getting on the Armed Services Committee, voting to let W. go to war in Iraq, strong-arming supporters and donors, and trying to out-macho Obama — that she only belatedly realized that many Democratic and independent voters, especially women, were eager to move from hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach.

Less towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity.

Business schools have begun teaching the value of a less autocratic leadership style, with an emphasis on behavior women excel at: reading emotions and social interactions, making eye contact and expressing empathy.

At the University of Texas on Thursday morning, Obama proved that he was not a cowboy in overdrive like W. when he demurred at throwing a spiral because his pass might not be as good as the Longhorn stars’.

After so many years when W. and Cheney stomped on the world and the world glared back, many Americans would like to see their government focus more on those staples of female fiction: relationships and conversation.

At first in Austin, Hillary did not channel Jane Austen. She tried once more to cast Obama as a weak sister on his willingness to talk to Raúl Castro.

Obama tapped into his inner chick and turned the other cheek. To cheers, he said, “I think that it’s important for us, in undoing the damage that has been done over the last seven years, for the president to be willing to take that extra step.”

Hillary tried to rough up Obama on copying his pal’s language even as she copied her husband’s line from 1992: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits that the people in this state and this country are taking every day of their lives under this administration.”

While Obama looked at her warily, even fearfully, Hillary suddenly switched to her feminine side. Getting New Hampshire misty, she said she was “absolutely honored” to be there with him and that “whatever happens, we’re going to be fine.” (Her campaign defended the originality of the John Edwardsian sentiment, saying it had even been expressed by the likes of Lindsay Lohan). The press hailed the moment as heartfelt, but it was simply Hillary’s calculated attempt to woo women and protect her future in the party — by seeming more collegial. She’s furious that the Chicago kid got in the picture.

Her “My sister, my daughter” flip from muscular to tremulous left everyone confused. Many characterized her emulation of empathy as elegiac and submissive.

But she dispelled that Friday morning when she told Evan Smith, the editor of Texas Monthly, that she will push for Florida and Michigan delegates to be seated, despite her promise. Not for herself, mind you, but for them. “It’s in large measure because both the voters and the elected officials in Michigan and Florida feel so strongly about this,” she said.

Among her other cascading woes, it turns out that Hillary is not able to manage her political family’s money. Like a prudent housekeeper, Obama spent the cash he raised — including from his continuing relationships with small donors — far more shrewdly, on ads rather than on himself.

Hillaryland spent like a hedge fund manager in a flat-screen TV store. Her campaign attempted to show omnipotence by lavishing a fortune on the take-no-prisoners strategists Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn, and on having the best of everything from the set decoration at events to Four Seasons rooms. In January alone, they spent $11,000 on pizza, $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts and $95,384 at a Des Moines Hy-Vee grocery store for get-out-the-vote sandwich platters.

But total domination in the snack arena does not cut the mustard.

From Judy in Westchester:

February 24, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Audacity of Hopelessness
By FRANK RICH
WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.

It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.

As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.

Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy.

The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.

If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.

The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.

There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.

In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.

What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.

Friday, February 22, 2008

From Judy in Westchester:

Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s the Big Idea?
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By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 9, 2008
Berkeley, Calif.

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Go to Columnist Page » There is plenty for Democrats to admire in the candidacies of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

They are smart, appealing and politically gifted. High fives are in order. Their success to date represents advances in American society that many would have seen as unthinkable just a few years ago.

There’s actually a lot for Americans of all political persuasions to admire this election season. This is how we change regimes in the U.S. — peacefully. I had a long conversation the other day with a writer from Kenya, Edwin Okong’o, who is visiting the University of California campus here.

He found it difficult to hide his grief as he spoke of the murderous violence that has followed a disputed election in his country. Then he managed a smile. “It’s all about corruption,” he said. “I am always amazed when people say they are leaving the American government because they have to make more money. In my country, you go into the government to make the money.”

But for all its upside, there is something important missing from this year’s presidential campaign. In an era that cries out for real change, John McCain, the presumptive G.O.P. nominee, is selling himself to voters not as the maverick he may once have been, but as a faithful follower of policies the country should be eager to discard.

With the Democrats, we seem obsessed with whether Senator Obama can get his new voters to the polls, and whether Senator Clinton can keep enough cash coming in, and whether there’s an inch or an inch-and-a-half’s worth of difference between their positions on health insurance and the war in Iraq.

Where, in this alleged season of change, is the big idea?

What’s missing in this campaign is a bold vision of where the United States should be heading in these crucially important early years of the 21st century. In their different ways, Senators Clinton and Obama have shown themselves to be inspirational and at times even heroic figures. But neither has offered the vision that this moment in history demands.

We’re excited more by who they are than by what they’ve promised to do.

All the candidates have detailed policy proposals — masterpieces of minutiae.

But do we have any real sense of what Senator Obama will do to stop the stagnation of the middle class and resuscitate the American dream? Do we have any reason to believe that during a Clinton presidency we’ll see a transformation of the nation’s decaying infrastructure? Does John McCain have the stuff to lead us from a long debilitating period of dependence on foreign oil to a new and exciting world of energy efficiency and innovation?

The essential question the candidates should be trying to answer — but that is not even being asked very often — is how to create good jobs in the 21st century. Thirty-seven million Americans are poor, and roughly 60 million others are near-poor. (These are people struggling to make it on incomes of $20,000 to $40,000 a year for a family of four.)

The middle class is hardly flourishing. In testimony before a House subcommittee last year, Harley Shaiken, a Berkeley professor who is an expert on labor and employment, remarked: “During a period of robust economic growth, record profits and the fastest sustained productivity increases since the 1950s, only a thin slice at the top of the economic heap is enjoying higher living standards.”

Now the country is faced with a possible recession and the likelihood of moving further backward rather than forward on employment.

“We’re building exit ramps from the middle class,” said Mr. Shaiken during an interview. “But what is the path to the middle class for most Americans now? We need to figure out how to resume building entrance ramps.”

The most direct route to the middle class has always been a good job. An obvious potential source of new jobs would be a broad campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure — its roads, bridges, schools, levees, water treatment facilities and so forth.

Another area with big job creation potential is the absolutely vital quest to develop alternative sources of energy. That effort should carry the same high national priority that was accorded the Manhattan Project during World War II. I’d even call it Manhattan II.

There are moments in history that demand not just talent in a nation’s leadership, but greatness — men or women with the courage to dream bigger and the ability to convince others that those dreams can be realized.

The presidential candidates don’t seem to be rising to the nation’s many crucial challenges with the sense of urgency and the creative vision that is called for. Not yet, at least.

More Articles in Opinion »

Thursday, February 21, 2008

From Tony in Chicago!

(I rarely forward on any political rants, but this one isn't bad...er)

Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.

Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming aren’t just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.

Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.

Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if they’re too poor to vote Republican.

Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think they’re running a Taco Bell franchise.

Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good, and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in a state of total paralysis reading "My Pet Goat" while America is under attack.

And above all, liberals believe that it’s time to come together as a country and put a collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

From Judy:

From Judy:

A Badger! We have a son in law who is a Badger - great school! How are you doing on our fund raiser on March 2nd - we should be able to get some new recruits.****Reminder about event!
Fundraiser in Bedford on 3/2 with Ted Sorenson

Judy & Gordon Aydelott * Doni & Robert Belau * Cynthia Brill
Deenie & Frank Brosens * Wendy & Doug Kreeger
Cynthia & James Odell * Sarah & Robert Preston
Renee Smith * Rebecca Riley & David Carden

Invite you to join them for an afternoon discussion featuring

Ted Sorensen
Former special counsel to President Kennedy
benefiting Obama for America

Sunday, March 2, 2008
1:30PM – 3:00PM

The Home of Deenie & Frank Brosens
63 E. Field Drive
Bedford, NY

I'm off to Ohio on Friday for a week - with Wisconsin's win, and a win in Texas and Ohio Obama should be able to wrap this up.

FromERic in Obama Campaign:

Senator Barack Obama’s positions and statements on the Middle East and his strong support of Israel speak loudly for themselves. You should forward his attached positions and statements to all who have raised questions about his support or his advisors and let them judge for themselves. Here are the facts in response to the most common false attacks about Senator Obama’s advisors.

Regarding Zbigniew Brzezinski, it is important to know that he is not an Advisor. We do not call him an advisor and he does not call himself an advisor. He is a supporter and endorser of Senator Obama and they have spoken about the Iraq war once several months ago, a war which they both opposed from the beginning. Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod made very clear in a public phone call that Brzezinski had not and would not ever be advising Senator Obama on Israel and the Palestinians. The only people who call Brzezinski an advisor are the Clinton campaign – in an attempt to attack Barack Obama because they have nothing negative to say about his 100% pro-Israel policy and statements.

George Soros has made a contribution to the campaign, as have 500,000 other people. He is not advising the campaign.

Rob Malley has no official advisory role in the Obama campaign. He is among many people who has given his advice to the campaign via email, including some ideas that Senator Obama disagrees with. He has also given his ideas to other campaigns, hardly qualifying him as an Obama Advisor (corrected recently by Newsweek after being misreported). See Marty Peretz’s piece below stating the same thing.

Please note that Senator Obama’s advisors on Israel and the Middle East are:

Dennis Ross (Clinton Administration Chief Middle East Envoy)
Tony Lake (Former Clinton National Security Advisor)
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL)
Denis McDonough (Former Foreign Policy Advisor to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle)
Dan Shapiro (Former Aide to Sen. Bill Nelson and Clinton NSC)
Eric Lynn (Former Foreign Policy Advisor to Rep. Peter Deutsch)

Trust Obama on Israel

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MARTIN PERETZ , THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 3, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Florida, of course, was a different story, but back in Iowa there was no need for Barack Obama or any other candidate to worry about the Jewish vote. There are 7,000 Jews in the entire state, including 100 hassidim, who work a kosher meat-packing plant in Pottsville.
Yet speaking in Des Moines on December 18, Obama cut to the essence of the Middle East problem at a level of sophistication that ought to be a relief, if not a rebuke, to those who fret about his lack of foreign policy "experience." Obama raised three questions and answered them in a way that no other Democratic aspirant for the nomination has done.
First: Is Israel truly ready to make the concessions necessary to guarantee that a Palestinian state will be more than a "Potemkin village" - a facade without depth or substance?
"I'm confident," Obama said, "that Israel is ready and willing to make some of these concessions if they have the confidence that the Palestinians can enforce an agreement."
This is exactly right. And it is a sign that President Obama would not pressure only one side (Israel) because the other side (the Palestinians) are immune to American pressure.
On his way out the door in 2000, President Clinton actually had a map color-coding the Old City of Jerusalem: Israeli sovereignty on this street, Palestinian sovereignty on that, like the delirious maps drawn in London and Paris back in the early 20th century that burden the Middle East and Africa to this day. Clinton coerced Ehud Barak, then prime minister of Israel, to accept his map and make other concessions. He got nothing out of the Palestinians.
Yet even the most moderate Palestinians now assume that future discussions will start where Clinton left off. It is good to know that Obama understands why that won't work.
THE SECOND question is whether any agreement negotiated with Palestinian leaders can be enforced on the Palestinian people. Most Israelis are ready to make a deal and abide by it. There is no such disposition among Palestinians. Hamas, the party that won the most recent Palestinian elections and that already rules in Gaza, explicitly rejects any deal with Israel.
So what do you do?
Obama's answer, and the right one: You deal with the official Palestinian leadership, which is willing to deal, but you pressure it to take action on other fronts that will bring the people back from Hamas. We "have to make sure that Abbas and Fayad and those that are controlling the West Bank still actually start delivering something tangible that is benefiting the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, that they are ridding [their party] Fatah of the corruption that has been endemic, and are put in a stronger position politically so Hamas is not dictating the terms of Palestinian negotiations but the moderates in the Palestinian camp are dictating what the Palestinian people are willing to go along with."
Third, is this an opportunity to watch democracy flower in the Middle East, as George W. Bush has dreamed? Well maybe, in 1,000 years or so. Meanwhile, Obama grasps that any accord will require strong leadership and even some "dictating" to the moderates. This is not callous. It is realistic. But only if the Palestinian leadership realizes that "now is the time for them to step out of the ideological blind alley that they've been in for so long."
The Israelis have stepped out of their own blind alley of small settlements and lonely outposts planted in densely populated Palestinian areas. Everyone knows how very much actual land Israel will give up so that Palestine can be Palestine. No one yet knows whether the Palestinians are ready to let Israel be Israel.
OBAMA'S POINTS, which he has made many times, should reassure anyone who is concerned about what his presidency would mean for the security of Israel. And yet many are not reassured. They are alarmed by emails saying that Obama's middle name is Hussein (true, and so what?), that he is a Muslim and not a Christian (untrue, and so what if it were true?), that he took the oath of office as a senator on the Koran rather than the Bible (utterly untrue and, once again, so what?).
All these charges have been aired and negated often enough that anyone interested in hearing the truth about them has heard it. But another charge, circulating on the Internet, has not yet been sufficiently refuted. This is that Obama has advisers on the Middle East who despise Israel.
Let's take one example. There are all kinds of spooky rumors that a man named Robert Malley advises Obama on the Middle East. His name comes up mysteriously and intrusively on the Web, like the ads for Viagra.
Malley, who has written several deceitful articles in the New York Review of Books, is anti-Israel. No question about it. But Malley is not and has never been Middle East adviser to Barack Obama. Obama's Middle East adviser is Dan Shapiro.
Malley did, though, work for Bill Clinton. He was deeply involved in the disastrous diplomacy of 2000. Obama at the time was in the Illinois State Senate. So, yes, this is a piece of experience that Obama lacks.
The writer is editor-in-chief of The New Republic.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1202064572983&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

From Elizabeth:

Sent: 2/19/2008 10:31:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: The RBC Update: The "faithless delegate" strategy

((((((((((( The RBC Update: The "faithless delegate" strategy )))))))))))

2008.02.19 07:31:19

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A senior Clinton campaign official tells Roger Simon that, if
the delegate count is close in the run-up to the convention,
the campaign plans to offer some of Obama's pledged delegates
"the sun, the moon, and the stars" to get them to switch sides.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/02/the_faithless_delegate_strategy.php

Monday, February 18, 2008

From Judy fabulous video!

Click here: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Saturday, February 16, 2008

From Susan:

OPINION

Subscribe to
The Print Journal

Hillary Agonistes
By ELIZABETH WURTZEL
February 15, 2008; Page A15

I've been told that I no longer need to do yoga, take up Pilates, or study Kaballah, and I can even stop listening to Bruce Springsteen. Apparently 45 minutes at a Barack Obama rally -- preceded by two hours and 45 minutes of waiting in the snow outside to get in -- will be all it takes to change my life. Forever. An open mind, a free spirit, a loving heart, a renewed appreciation for democracy -- and possibly even thin thighs -- will be mine for keeps, if I just take in the junior senator from Illinois at a high-school gymnasium in Waukesha or a Nascar track in Pocono or an arena in Dallas. In less time than it takes to get through a single session of psychotherapy, Mr. Obama can cure me.

Meanwhile, back in Hillaryland, all I'm promised is Hillarycare.

Of course, that's not fair. Like most Democrats this time around, I feel embarrassed with the richness of both presidential candidates. The first flush of Obamarama, this latest blush of Clintonism -- either would suit me fine. But it's obvious where the real heat is: If candidates were reading material, Barack Obama would be pornography -- he's got everybody aroused, fired up and ready to go. He's turned on the body politic as no one else has in my lifetime. And it's great fun. It's good for politics, it's good for democracy, it's good for America, it's good for messianism. Young people are excited, old people are nostalgic, middle-aged people are invigorated. People are so enthralled with Mr. Obama just because it's so easy to be enthralled with him.

Which is to say, there's no accounting for charisma. Some people are simply gifted, and the only way to respond is to clear the way and let them do their magic. But this collective cathexis that created Obamamania is obviously a deep desire for authenticity, and he is the natural repository of our hidden hopes.

Mr. Obama is what the future looks like: a biracial child of divorce, schlepped halfway around the world by a conscientious but confounded single mother, abandoned by a wayward but winning Kenyan father, international but somehow still all-American, a party-hardy Harvard Law graduate. That is, an ordinary extraordinary guy, the dreamiest of all our dreams. If only every kid from a broken home could turn out to be such a fine gentleman! How can we not love him? With a million other things he could be doing, Mr. Obama actually wants to lead us. Us? What did we do to deserve him?

That's how lucky Barack Obama makes us feel.

And then there's the whole Hillary Rodham Clinton situation. What can I say? She's been called the anti-Christ, but her problem right now is that she's the anti-Obama.

There is a special kind of hate that people -- particularly women -- reserve for Hillary Clinton that is unique in contemporary politics. It's nothing like the disdain liberals feel for W., which is only to be expected, and has no special edge: Liberals believe President Bush is an undeserving doofus who made a big huge mess, that's that. But the hatred for Hillary Clinton is visceral and venal, a lot of it is female and feminist, and some of it is simply off the charts.

A young woman I respect in northern California describes Hillary as "grotesque." A middle-aged successful artist I know -- herself a bit of a virago -- thinks she's "evil." And my mother, who is admittedly a Republican, is capable of going on and on about how Hillary is in it all for herself, that she'll do anything to win, that she'll kill to push her agenda through, that she's just a disgusting human being, that the sound of Hillary's voice is enough to send her racing for the remote control to turn off her beloved Fox News. The New Republic points out that many Democrats describe Hillary Clinton as "mendacious, brutal, willing to bend (or break) any rule in pursuit of power." And they're on her side.

This special anti-Rodham anger is especially troubling because it's impossible to separate from sex or sexism. Hillary Clinton reminds me that it's possible that all powerful women are, as my friend puts it, "grotesque." They are exaggerated humans, extreme cases, everything to everybody.

Hillary is grotesque because she has gotten to where she is, indeed, by playing it every which way -- by being a career woman when that made sense, a wife when that was advantageous; working on her husband's behalf when that seemed the way to the top, then working for herself when the coast was clear; standing by her husband despite infidelities because she loved him, while belittling Tammy Wynette for offering the very advice she was ostensibly taking; pooh-poohing the prospect of having teas and baking cookies instead of having a profession, and then becoming first lady and having teas as a profession for a full eight years. Yes, Hillary Clinton will do anything, bless her heart: That is how you amass power as a woman. We hate her, because she exposes the sordid business of having it all for the grotesque thing that it actually is.

Might she have played it differently? Of course, it's possible. No one can quite explain how it is that a woman who now campaigns on the virtues of electronic health records and streamlined financial-aid forms once gave the 1969 graduation address at Wellesley College that fantasized about "a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living." Once upon a lifetime ago, Hillary Clinton could have been Barack Obama! When did she become a technocrat? How is it that Mr. Obama beat her at her own game?

Obviously, Hillary gave something up by marrying Bill. In their particular partnership, Bill is inspiration, Hillary is perspiration, that's the way it goes. She lost her voice, and no, she did not get it back in Manchester, N.H. on Jan. 10. She's been in the business of enabling charismatic men for so long, Hillary Clinton doesn't quite know how to facilitate anything but power itself.

Still, Hillary has won big states like New York, California, and even Sen. Ted Kennedy's native Massachusetts -- and by large margins. Because, finally, the ladies turn out for her, as they did for that surprise win in the New Hampshire primary.

Pollsters say that women are the most important element of the electorate, and hate her though we do, in the end, we can't help ourselves. We see Hillary, we see Barack, and we see our own version of hell: Here is this amazing woman, top of her class, implausible marriage to impossible man, works as hard as the day is long, masters all the forms and spreadsheets of governing, even manages to raise a pretty darn good kid -- and then along comes this guy, this groovy Obamarama, with his pleasing mien, his high style, his absolute fabulousness, and he wants the top floor, corner office that she earned.

And women -- women have seen this movie, women have heard this story, women know the drill, have had their manicured fingers ready to ring that particular fire alarm for years now. Women, finally, will say no to that. Real women don't care what Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver with their easy words and easy lives have to say about any of this. No one with a job takes advice from someone with a chef.

Right now, it looks like Barack Obama will be the nominee. Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win any more primaries for a few more weeks, and at that point, it may be too late for this championship season. But pundits count her out at their own peril. That woman is a force of nature. One of these years, Hillary is going to the White House. If she has to win every single vote one by one, she'll do it. If she has to take hostages, hold a gun to the head of every voter as he enters the booth, she'll do that too. She may even cry.

Never underestimate Hillary Clinton.

Miss Wurtzel, a student at Yale Law School, is the author of "Prozac Nation" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

Hillary Agonistes
By ELIZABETH WURTZEL
February 15, 2008; Page A15

I've been told that I no longer need to do yoga, take up Pilates, or study Kaballah, and I can even stop listening to Bruce Springsteen. Apparently 45 minutes at a Barack Obama rally -- preceded by two hours and 45 minutes of waiting in the snow outside to get in -- will be all it takes to change my life. Forever. An open mind, a free spirit, a loving heart, a renewed appreciation for democracy -- and possibly even thin thighs -- will be mine for keeps, if I just take in the junior senator from Illinois at a high-school gymnasium in Waukesha or a Nascar track in Pocono or an arena in Dallas. In less time than it takes to get through a single session of psychotherapy, Mr. Obama can cure me.

Meanwhile, back in Hillaryland, all I'm promised is Hillarycare.

Of course, that's not fair. Like most Democrats this time around, I feel embarrassed with the richness of both presidential candidates. The first flush of Obamarama, this latest blush of Clintonism -- either would suit me fine. But it's obvious where the real heat is: If candidates were reading material, Barack Obama would be pornography -- he's got everybody aroused, fired up and ready to go. He's turned on the body politic as no one else has in my lifetime. And it's great fun. It's good for politics, it's good for democracy, it's good for America, it's good for messianism. Young people are excited, old people are nostalgic, middle-aged people are invigorated. People are so enthralled with Mr. Obama just because it's so easy to be enthralled with him.

Which is to say, there's no accounting for charisma. Some people are simply gifted, and the only way to respond is to clear the way and let them do their magic. But this collective cathexis that created Obamamania is obviously a deep desire for authenticity, and he is the natural repository of our hidden hopes.

Mr. Obama is what the future looks like: a biracial child of divorce, schlepped halfway around the world by a conscientious but confounded single mother, abandoned by a wayward but winning Kenyan father, international but somehow still all-American, a party-hardy Harvard Law graduate. That is, an ordinary extraordinary guy, the dreamiest of all our dreams. If only every kid from a broken home could turn out to be such a fine gentleman! How can we not love him? With a million other things he could be doing, Mr. Obama actually wants to lead us. Us? What did we do to deserve him?

That's how lucky Barack Obama makes us feel.

And then there's the whole Hillary Rodham Clinton situation. What can I say? She's been called the anti-Christ, but her problem right now is that she's the anti-Obama.

There is a special kind of hate that people -- particularly women -- reserve for Hillary Clinton that is unique in contemporary politics. It's nothing like the disdain liberals feel for W., which is only to be expected, and has no special edge: Liberals believe President Bush is an undeserving doofus who made a big huge mess, that's that. But the hatred for Hillary Clinton is visceral and venal, a lot of it is female and feminist, and some of it is simply off the charts.

A young woman I respect in northern California describes Hillary as "grotesque." A middle-aged successful artist I know -- herself a bit of a virago -- thinks she's "evil." And my mother, who is admittedly a Republican, is capable of going on and on about how Hillary is in it all for herself, that she'll do anything to win, that she'll kill to push her agenda through, that she's just a disgusting human being, that the sound of Hillary's voice is enough to send her racing for the remote control to turn off her beloved Fox News. The New Republic points out that many Democrats describe Hillary Clinton as "mendacious, brutal, willing to bend (or break) any rule in pursuit of power." And they're on her side.

This special anti-Rodham anger is especially troubling because it's impossible to separate from sex or sexism. Hillary Clinton reminds me that it's possible that all powerful women are, as my friend puts it, "grotesque." They are exaggerated humans, extreme cases, everything to everybody.

Hillary is grotesque because she has gotten to where she is, indeed, by playing it every which way -- by being a career woman when that made sense, a wife when that was advantageous; working on her husband's behalf when that seemed the way to the top, then working for herself when the coast was clear; standing by her husband despite infidelities because she loved him, while belittling Tammy Wynette for offering the very advice she was ostensibly taking; pooh-poohing the prospect of having teas and baking cookies instead of having a profession, and then becoming first lady and having teas as a profession for a full eight years. Yes, Hillary Clinton will do anything, bless her heart: That is how you amass power as a woman. We hate her, because she exposes the sordid business of having it all for the grotesque thing that it actually is.

Might she have played it differently? Of course, it's possible. No one can quite explain how it is that a woman who now campaigns on the virtues of electronic health records and streamlined financial-aid forms once gave the 1969 graduation address at Wellesley College that fantasized about "a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living." Once upon a lifetime ago, Hillary Clinton could have been Barack Obama! When did she become a technocrat? How is it that Mr. Obama beat her at her own game?

Obviously, Hillary gave something up by marrying Bill. In their particular partnership, Bill is inspiration, Hillary is perspiration, that's the way it goes. She lost her voice, and no, she did not get it back in Manchester, N.H. on Jan. 10. She's been in the business of enabling charismatic men for so long, Hillary Clinton doesn't quite know how to facilitate anything but power itself.

Still, Hillary has won big states like New York, California, and even Sen. Ted Kennedy's native Massachusetts -- and by large margins. Because, finally, the ladies turn out for her, as they did for that surprise win in the New Hampshire primary.

Pollsters say that women are the most important element of the electorate, and hate her though we do, in the end, we can't help ourselves. We see Hillary, we see Barack, and we see our own version of hell: Here is this amazing woman, top of her class, implausible marriage to impossible man, works as hard as the day is long, masters all the forms and spreadsheets of governing, even manages to raise a pretty darn good kid -- and then along comes this guy, this groovy Obamarama, with his pleasing mien, his high style, his absolute fabulousness, and he wants the top floor, corner office that she earned.

And women -- women have seen this movie, women have heard this story, women know the drill, have had their manicured fingers ready to ring that particular fire alarm for years now. Women, finally, will say no to that. Real women don't care what Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver with their easy words and easy lives have to say about any of this. No one with a job takes advice from someone with a chef.

Right now, it looks like Barack Obama will be the nominee. Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win any more primaries for a few more weeks, and at that point, it may be too late for this championship season. But pundits count her out at their own peril. That woman is a force of nature. One of these years, Hillary is going to the White House. If she has to win every single vote one by one, she'll do it. If she has to take hostages, hold a gun to the head of every voter as he enters the booth, she'll do that too. She may even cry.

Never underestimate Hillary Clinton.

Miss Wurtzel, a student at Yale Law School, is the author of "Prozac Nation" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994

Friday, February 15, 2008

From Leonore:

Dear New York Women for Obama and Men too!

Please click link below to see our fantastic NY Women for Obama Rally on Saturday, Feb 2, at Merchants Gate, Columbus Circle, featuring special guests and speakers Judine Somerville, Marsha Andrews and Marvis Martin, Leonore Blitz, Sarah Haile-Mariam, Councilwoman Helen Diane Foster, Samantha Power, Kerry Butler, Frances Kissling, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, Minister Sylvia Kinard, Maddy Hyatt and produced by Margo Lion. AND SPECIAL THANKS TO EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, Ana Carril-Grumberg.
We had over 800 at the Rally and excellent press coverage.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VJGHht8AH-k

FIRED UP AND READY TO GO, and we need your HELP for the next primaries. If you have not signed up yet, please do, for virtual phone banking, which you can do at your home, or come to one of our phone banking parties, to dial undecided voters in Ohio and Texas AND we need more volunteers to travel to Ohio or Texas for the March 4 Primaries to Get Out the Vote, please contact Volunteer Coordinator Anna Lewis, acrlewis@mac.com.

THANKS TO ALL, FOR YOUR HELP TO ELECT BARACK OBAMA THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

YES WE CAN! Have a lovely "Presidents' Weekend."

Leonore Blitz and New York Women for Obama

Saturday, February 9, 2008

From Kathy in MO:

I do plan to continue my calling with MoveOn. It is really easy if you have a computer and phone by each other. They feed you numbers of supporters to call in various states. You can make quite a few calls in a pretty short time.

I am really worried about this delegate thing in MI and FL and the whole superdelegate junk. It is all so Un-Democratic. I am afraid it is going to make people angry and split the party. I am glad there are petitions and I am glad the media is picking up on this. This delegate problem goes totally against the will of the people The fact that we might not have a nominee until late August is also very troubling. McCain can be campaigning away for months and months with Obama and Clinton still battling it out. This could be ugly. Why do we have to make things to difficult in a year when the Dems should have an easy run at the White House???? The only consolation is the more people hear from McCain, the more they don't like him!!! Conversely, the more people meet and hear Obama, the more they like him! Obama just has to do well in the next couple of rounds!
One of my big fears is that the new, young, energized voters who are supporting Obama will stay home if Clinton is the candidate. Lifelong Dems know we have to support the candidate no matter who they are because the alternative is four more years of continuing Bush's failed policies. However, I don't think these young supporters necessarily see themselves as Dems. They are following the man who inspires them. I don't think Clinton will inspire these people to stay involved. There are so many ways this could all get screwed up in the fall.
They just cannot award those delegates to Clinton from MI and FL. They may have voted, but all of the names were not on all of the ballots. How was that a fair primary election? You just cannot change the rules in the middle of the game. If they hand the nomination to Clinton, I am afraid there will be alot of angry Dems who will stay home!
I am sorry to be so negative. I have just seen the Dems blow it too many times.
Hang in there!

Friday, February 8, 2008

From Anne in Chicago:

From: ROBERTASG@aol.com
Date: February 7, 2008 5:47:33 PM CST
To: jsawyer@insight-inc.net, mqdelaney@gmail.com, waydoj@earthlink.net, SNS660@aol.com, rebecca.a.shapiro@gmail.com
Subject: Fwd: Petition to DNC

Please sign & circulate this petition. Thanks.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Give-Us-Fairness

Subject: Fwd: Petition to DNC

Friends,
Hilary Clinton’s campaign is currently encouraging the Democratic National Committee to roll back its decision to take away Florida and Michigan’s delegates. During the fall of 2007, the DNC decided to strip these two states of their delegates because they chose to move their primary’s up to take place before Super Tuesday.

I believe strongly that what this country is most in need of right now is integrity. In my mind, integrity and respect comes from making informed decisions and then sticking with those decisions – no matter which way the wind blows. This decision would benefit Hilary Clinton and hurt Barack Obama’s campaign. But, no matter what is your candidate of preference, please consider that this decision would provide unfair honor disrespectful tactics. The Clinton Campaign was the only candidate that campaigned at all in these states, or even be listed on the ballot in Michigan despite DNC’s requested all candidates not to be listed and abstain from campaigning in the states.
No matter your political preference, please stand up for integrity in this country by signing onto this petition to the DNC and pass it onto others
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Give-Us-Fairness.
Thanks!
“We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate the good moments by saying ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’ - Kurt Vonnegut

From Stephanie in Westchester:

This is an argument for Cliinton's advantage:
"The superdelegates will pick the nominee — the party honchos, the deal-makers, the donors, the machine. Swinging those people takes a level of cynicism even Dr. Retail can’t pretend to understand. That’s Tammany Hall. That’s the court at Versailles under Louis XIV." David Brooks, NY Times

[And, might I add, that's the current Bill Clinton and Terry MacAuliffe?]
The following (Timothy Egan, NY Times) is an argument for Obama's electability:
Obama: The Shock of the Red
Take a look at what happened on Tuesday in the nearly all-white counties of Idaho, a place where the Aryan Nations once placed a boot print of hate — “the international headquarters of the white race,” as they called it.

The neo-Nazis are long gone. But in Kootenai County, where the extremists were holed up for several decades, a record number of Democrats trudged through heavy snow on Super Duper Tuesday to help pick the next president. Guess what: Senator Barack Obama took 81 percent of Kootenai County caucus voters, matching his landslide across the state. He won all but a single county.

The runaway victory came after a visit by Obama last Saturday, when 14,169 people filled the Taco Bell Arena in Boise to hear him speak – the largest crowd ever to fill the space, for any event. It was the biggest political rally the state has seen in more than 50 years.

“And they told me there were no Democrats in Idaho,” Obama said.

Okay, so Idaho is the prime rib of Red America. Ditto Utah, where Obama beat Senator Hillary Clinton 56 percent to 39 percent on Tuesday, including a 2-1 win in arguably the most Republican community in America – Provo and suburbs, a holdout of Bush dead-enders. These states would never vote Democratic in a general election.

But those numbers, and exit polling across the nation, make a case for Obama’s electability and the inroads he has made into places where Democrats are harder to find than a decent bagel. Yes, Hillary-hatred is part of it. But something much bigger is going on among independents and white males, something that can’t all be attributed to fear of a powerful woman in a pantsuit.

Having gone through their Hope versus Experience argument, Democrats are moving on to the numbers phase, looking for advantages in the fall. If they want to parse the Geography of Hope, they can do no better than study what happened in red counties on Tuesday.

Overall, Obama won some big, general election swing states: Colorado, Missouri, Minnesota, and a tie in New Mexico, where they may still be counting votes from the 2004 election. All will be crucial in deciding the next president.

His victory in Colorado, by a 2-1 margin, defied most predictions. Four times as many Democrats turned out as were expected, typical of the passion level elsewhere. In Anchorage, Alaska, for example, traffic was backed for nearly a mile from people trying to get into a middle school to become part of an Obama avalanche.

But back to Colorado. Obama won the liberal enclaves, as expected, but then he nearly ran the table in the western part of the state – ranch and mining country — and he did it with more than Ralph Lauren Democrats. In booming, energy-rich Garfield County, for instance, Obama beat Clinton 72 percent to 27 percent.

“We won in places nobody thought we could win,” an exultant Federico Pena, the former Denver mayor, told a victory crowd on Tuesday night. Obama’s audience a few days earlier – more than 18,000 — was so big that thousands who couldn’t get in huddled on a frozen lacrosse field to hear him.

Now broaden the picture and look at the vote among white males, traditionally the hardest sell for a Democrat. While losing California, Obama won white men in the Golden State, 55 to 35, according to exit polls, and white men in New Mexico, 59-38.

Looking ahead to Saturday, when Washington State, Nebraska, and Louisiana hold contests, Obama should add another three states to the 13 he won on Tuesday. They’re all caucus states, each with distinct advantages for Obama.

His problem – and it’s a big one – is among Latino voters, and older women. He got crushed by Hillary among Hispanics in California and New Mexico. To win the West, Latinos have to be in your camp.

Only slothful thinkers still view Democrats in the West as Prius-driving latte-sippers along the Left Coast. The larger story is about home-grown identity. Eight of the 11 Western States have Democratic governors. The Democrats picked up two Senate seats in the West in the last two national elections, and are poised to pick up two more this year, in Colorado and New Mexico.

Early on, Obama took a chance on the West, sending paid staffers to places like Boise, Idaho and Wenatchee, Washington. And the Alaska office for Obama – that was a knee-slapper at the time, but no one’s laughing now. He won the Last Frontier state by a 3-1 margin Tuesday.

Obama has made cynics wilt, and stirred the heart of long-dead politicos in places where Democrats haven’t had a pulse in years. Cecil Andrus, the eagle-headed eminence of Idaho, a former governor and Democratic cabinet member, nearly lost his voice introducing Obama in Boise on Saturday. He recalled a time when he was a young lumberjack who drove down the Clearwater Valley to see Jack Kennedy speak in Lewiston, a day that changed his life.

“I’m older now, some would suggest in the twilight of a mediocre political career,” Andrus said. “I, like you, can still be inspired. I can still hope.”

This kicked off the second biggest political rally in Idaho history. And the first? That was when President Dwight Eisenhower came to visit. Last week his granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, made a small bit of family history on her own. She said that if Obama is the nominee, “this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected.”

Thursday, February 7, 2008

From John Shields KCMO:

Until we face and correct the issues of race and gender this country isn’t going anywhere. America is in trouble; our government is simply not acting in the best interest of “The American People”.

Hilary probably is better suited and connected to keep the same old cycle of nothingness but what Baraak has is the ability to inspire the American people to get up and get busy working toward the change we need.

Until you and me get in the same boat and begin rowing all in the same direction we are going to remain dead in the water. There is only one way forward at this time and that is together, not as liberals or conservatives but as Americans.

This is not for Barack it’s for U.S., believe, work and it shall be! If you hold on to your fears expect more of the same.

I took my granddaughter to the pools with me Tuesday and when done (having a short memory), she asked a simple question. Who’d you vote for grandpa, I told her I voted FOR AMERICA. And in voting for Barack that’s exactly what I was doing. Everyone stay positive and strong and trust in the will of our Lord and Savior.

John Shields KCMO

From Judy:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Who Is More Electable?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
It’s increasingly likely that the Republican presidential nominee will be John McCain, who is also the Republican most likely to win the November election.

Senator McCain has unusual appeal among swing voters, and polls show him running stunningly well in general election matchups — even in a year that one might expect would be a Democratic romp. So that raises the obvious question: Who would be the stronger Democratic candidate?

The answer isn’t certain, partly because Barack Obama’s shine could quickly tarnish. In July 1988, Michael Dukakis was hailed as a Democratic hero with a 17-percentage-point lead over George H.W. Bush; four months later, he was a loser.

But one clue emerged in Tuesday’s balloting in 14 “red states” that were won by President George W. Bush in 2004. Mr. Obama won nine while Hillary Rodham Clinton won four and is ahead in the fifth.

“Obama would appeal much more to Republican voters,” said Susan Eisenhower, a lifelong Republican and granddaughter of the late president. “Not all Republican voters, but certainly those who might be somewhat in play.”

Ms. Eisenhower is supporting Mr. Obama and said she would be glad to enlist in a “Republicans for Obama” organization.

When pollsters offer voters hypothetical matchups, Mr. Obama does better than Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain. For example, a Cook Political Report poll of registered voters released this week found Mr. McCain beats Mrs. Clinton, 45 percent to 41 percent. But Mr. Obama beats Mr. McCain, 45 percent to 43 percent. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found similar results.

Mr. Obama also has the highest approval rating of any major candidate among independents, 62 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. He also has unusually low negatives, which gives him upside potential.

Mr. Obama does surprisingly well among evangelical Christians, an important constituency in swing states. For example, Relevant magazine, which caters to young evangelicals, asked its readers: “Who would Jesus vote for?” Mr. Obama was the winner and came out 27 percentage points ahead of Mrs. Clinton.

Politicians from red states have seemed likely to endorse Mr. Obama because many see him as the Democratic candidate who will do better in their states. Politico.com canvassed Democrats in potential swing states and concluded:

“During extensive interviews in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states, Politico found widespread belief among current and former Democratic statewide officials that Obama is the more electable candidate with their electorates. These politicians also frequently registered a fear that Clinton’s personality and past history make her too polarizing to win independent and Republican-leaning voters.”

Another way of looking at electability is to wonder whether it’s more of a disadvantage to be black or to be female. Shirley Chisholm, the black woman who ran for president in 1972, argued in effect that there were more sexists than racists in America. “I met more discrimination as a woman, than for being black,” Ms. Chisholm once said.

And recent polling and psychology research seem to back that up.

Moreover, my hunch is that a conservative woman like Margaret Thatcher may have a better chance of being elected than a feminist with a distinguished record of standing up for women’s rights. For the same reason, Mr. Obama probably has a better chance than a black candidate who emerged from the civil rights movement.

Granted, a general election campaign could shuffle judgments of electability, and it may be unwise — even offensive — to cast votes in part on how people with different political philosophies, even bigots, would cast their ballots. It’s also true that Mr. Obama has received more gentle press scrutiny than Mrs. Clinton, and if he were the nominee, he would be buffeted, investigated and swift-boated in a way that he hasn’t been (but that Mrs. Clinton has).

Then again, voters in many states have only just begun to be acquainted with Mr. Obama, and more familiarity may breed more comfort — and dispel some of the savage myths about him, such as the one claiming that he is a Muslim who doesn’t pledge allegiance to the American flag. Such lies will become harder to sustain.

Moreover, Mr. Obama’s charisma has stood up surprisingly well since he first sprang upon the stage in 2004. Some old hands believe that if he casts a spell upon many voters in red states, it’s not because of some momentary dazzle, but because he truly possesses an exceptional and enduring political talent for connecting with independent voters.

“I’ve worked for three presidents and known two or three others,” said Michael Blumenthal, who started his public career under President Kennedy and served as Treasury secretary under President Carter. “And Obama is just about the only politician I’ve ever seen who compares to Jack Kennedy.”

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. On the blog, you can also see readers setting me straight about previous columns and read posts from guest bloggers, including a Chicago teacher, Will Okun, and an aid worker in Bangladesh, Nicki Bennett.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

From Lorriane in CA:

Everyone,

I must say I was divided until the very moment I stepped into the voting booth. Both obama and hillary are so similar in their positions on all the issues and both are solid candidates. Hillary is easily accused of being ruthless, a bitch, striking deals with her husband so that she can run for pres. I saw that as simply a woman maneuvering herself in the brutal world of dirty politics and succeeding well to reach the height she has. Most other folks in the white house have done far worse and far more evil.

She did vote for the war, and she did back ‘no child left behind’ knowing that it was terribly flawed. But she has seen the dire fuck ups (excuse my language) of this past presidency and is ready to clean it up.

Because we are in such a bad state, things are so low and messed up, Obama appears to be this ‘savior’ of sorts. I feel like the population is infatuated with his charm, influence, swooned by his speeches. Illusions of JFK arise in our glassy eyes. But I sincerely wondered if he is truely capable of bringing back the U.S. from such a dark dismal state. And this is clean up on a global level.

After my back and forth indecisiveness, something so simple occurred to me. Something that I really haven’t heard discussed much – and that was time. I sat down and did my own math. I counted. I counted all the years of the Bush – Clinton years. Big Bush=4, Clinton + 8, Little Bush + 8 = 20 years. That’s 20 years of power between the Bush’s and the Clintons. If Hillary wins, we are now up to 24 –28 years of power between two very influencial families – Bush/Clinton. A Dynasty perpetuating the same power, the same cronyism, the same mess.

I voted for Obama.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Obama Music Video "Yes We Can"

By Kathy from MO

Have you seen this wonderful video? It is Barack's speech "Yes We Can" being sung along with him by various celebrities. It is really beautiful. The Black Eyed Peas said they didn't even know if Obama knew of its existence. They just felt compelled to do it being so moved by his words.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/CGBMy

New Celeb-Filled Music Video for Obama

Song from Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am Inspired by Obama Speech

Celebrity-filled music videos have been used to support many social movements, from famine relief for Africa, to support for American farmers, to opposition to apartheid in South Africa.

Video

Exclusive: Obama Inspires Black Eyed Pea

But rarely have celebrities and musicians banded together to create new music in the heat of a presidential campaign.

The Black Eyed Peas' frontman, songwriter and producer known as will.i.am, along with director and filmmaker Jesse Dylan, son of another socially active musician, Bob Dylan, released a new song Friday that attempts to do just that.

The music video "Yes We Can" premiered on ABCNewsNow's "What's the Buzz" on Friday. It was inspired, will.i.am told ABC's Alisha Davis, by Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign and in particular by the speech he has gave after the New Hampshire primary.

"It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me to be sitting here on ABCNews and making a song from Obama's speech," will.i.am said.

"The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes," Dylan said.

The music video includes excerpts from the Obama speech and appearances from a range of celebrities including: Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta and Nick Cannon.

When word got out about the song, will.i.am and Dylan said people were eager to participate.

"I'm blown away by how many people wanted to come and be a part of it in a short amount of time. It was all out of love and hope for change and really representing America and looking at the world," will.i.am said.

Dylan and will.i.am say they did not coordinate the production or release of this video with the Obama campaign and the filmmakers say they don't even know if Obama is aware of the video.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

From Sunny:

I am proudly voting for Barack Obama on Tuesday. I’d like to tell you why and encourage you to join me in supporting this inspirational, caring, qualified candidate who will make a difference in America.

First and foremost, Barack had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war from the start. Hillary voted for it. He will be right from day one on Iraq and is against the mind set that got us there in the first place. Hillary voted with Bush for the war and for the resolution naming the Iranian National Guard as “terrorists”. Being President is about judgment. Obama has been right from the beginning.

Obama brings some unique perspectives to our foreign policy since he has lived abroad and experienced global poverty. As a community organizer, he has worked with the poor and jobless. To quote Michelle Obama, he lives by the creed of “those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

Perhaps the most powerful reason to support Obama is his talent for bringing people together. He has inspired a whole new generation of voters. This is huge for the Democratic Party and the country. His talks, rallies and events are made up of participants that are young and old, black and white, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican. We want and need change in DC, and Obama will be that bridge to the 21st century we have all been seeking.

As you can see, I am throwing all of my support to Barack Obama. I believe he is the kind of candidate that comes along once in a lifetime. He can deliver change and hope and unite our badly divided country of red and blue states to the United States. To quote Dr. Martin Luther King: " We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” Please do not let our country be too late. The time is now for Barck Obama. This is not a time for patience, but a time for action. Please consider joining me in giving Barack Obama your support this Tuesday. Thanks for letting me take your time!

Love,Sunny

Another Endorsement for Obama

The Washington Post calls feminist leader, Kate Michelman, the “face of reproductive rights” and today she endorsed Senator Obama for president. Read her blog below, which was posted on Huffington Post and share this with all of your networks of women:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-michelman/why-im-endorsing-barack-_b_84658.html

Kate Michelman: Why I'm Endorsing Barack Obama

Posted February 3, 2008

The question I have been asking myself and others during my entire life in public policy and throughout this 2008 presidential Campaign -- the question which tens of millions of women and men have also been asking -- is how do we best bring America together in shared purpose, prosperity and, especially, equality.

Those of us who until last week worked for Senator John Edwards to become president were always fighting for something bigger than any of us and bigger than all of us. We were also part of a movement with the objective, John's objective, of lifting up all Americans.

John Edwards is not going to be president, and so what we who were helping him must do is now elect the individual who has deep in his core John's principles and vision for this country. And so today, with every passion and enthusiasm I have, I am endorsing Senator Barack Obama to be president of the United States

Barack Obama is also calling our nation to the greatness that we all want but that we're uncertain we can still achieve. Others talk about greatness and they even say all the right words, but they do not bring those words to life. Their words do not grab us by the arms and pull us along together.

Barack Obama, like John Edwards, is redefining what is possible and in so doing he's changing us, each one of us.

Many who had given up on politics are re-engaging. Many who had grown tolerant of the intolerable are now ready to demand more and not just from themselves but others. And many who had given up believing that the ideals of equality, dignity and justice would ever again be as politically important as money and power, now believe again.

And this too is why I'm endorsing Senator Barack Obama.

Barack and John Edwards were different candidates, with different backgrounds and life experiences, but all these many months and really throughout their lives, they have been on a common path.

Both are focused on changing our politics, both are committed to shaking the foundation of the Washington establishment, and both are profound voices for what our country should and can be.

When I endorsed John Edwards for president, I did so because I was confident he would help lift women out of poverty and protect a woman's right to make her own decisions about if or when to have a family. I was confident that if John were in the White House, the single mother, who was working two jobs, living paycheck to paycheck, and worried about health care and child care, would have more influence than the well-healed corporate CEO armed with a team of lobbyists.

And when I endorsed John Edwards I also knew that Barack Obama shared every one of these concerns, and over the course of Barack's own campaign, the nation has come to believe in him just like I always have as well.

Senator Obama is not just prepared to lead as our beloved Teddy and Caroline Kennedy have said, he is prepared to lead in a way different than we have seen for decades. Not out in front with us behind him, but rather with us beside him.

And that difference is all the difference. That difference separates just any president from a great president; and right now, we need a great president.

Barack Obama will be that great president. He will bring us all together. And together, we will change our country.
During these past many years, we have lost the sense of what we could do together, who we could be, what was possible.
That's changing.
And Barack Obama is the one changing that.
With him, greatness is again within reach.

-- Kate Michelman, Former President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

From Hank in NY:

Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 9:34 AM
To: 'letters@nytimes.com'
Subject: To The Editor

“Ask Not What J.F.K. Can Do For Obama” – Frank Rich – February 3, 2008

We should be asking the question, “What can Obama do for America?” Barack Obama is the single most unifying force running for President from either party. Senator Obama, if he receives the democratic nomination, will walk into the White House with the most diversified coalition in history. Obama will get Hillary’s Latino and women’s votes, crossover republican votes, the African American vote, and strong support from Independents. With this mandate and a largely Democratic Congress, President Obama will be able to reverse the horrible policies of the Bush administration, restore confidence in America at home and abroad, and take on the serious issues of war, poverty, the environment, healthcare and immigration. At this point in his career Obama has accomplished much more than J.F.K., and he is ready to lead America back to the high moral ground necessary to lead the world.

From Vicki in the great state of Missouri:

Date: February 3, 2008 8:19:37 AM CST
Subject: [paulloeb-articles] Two hopeful articles on Barack Obama
Reply-To: loeb@soulofacitizen.org
I invite you to the read the following piece from Paul Loeb - author and activist/environmentlist - wrote 'Soul of a Citizen' and 'The Impossible will take a little a longer.'

I know you've been getting tons of election emails, but starting with the Feb 5 SuperTuesday states, we do face a critical choice, so I hope you're lobbying your friends for the candidate you believe in. I just wrote two more articles on Barack Obama and some of the powerful aspects of his work. The first is on his appeal to young voters and how if he's the nominee, the Democrats could capture a generation of young voters for the long-term future.

The second is why as a former Edwards supporter I'm proud to support him. If you find them useful, please do forward either or both wherever it might be useful. (And if you don't or disagree, the heart of the primaries will be over soon)

Thanks much
PL
PS--I'm on the road in a place where email is working only erratically, so maybe skip writing back on this round...

How Obama Could Create a Long-Term Democratic Majority
By Paul Rogat Loeb

Commentators are talking, and rightly so, about how young voters are flocking to Barack Obama. Their overwhelming support gave Obama his Iowa margin, kept him just a few points behind in New Hampshire and Nevada, and contributed to his massive South Carolina victory. Young voters haven't always turned out historically, but they're responding to Obama's message, and together with his equally massive support from African Americans and strong appeal to independents, their passionate enthusiasm could help him expand the Democratic base enough not only to win in November, but to win decisively.

Obama also offers the chance to make this new generation part of an enduring Democratic coalition--because once young voters support a particular party a few times in a row, they're likely to gravitate toward that party for the rest of their lives.

That so many young Obama supporters are turning out to rally, volunteer and vote suggests that he might be one of those watershed candidates who really can bring a new generation into politics and help shape their long-term loyalties, permanently enlarging the Democratic share of the electorate. But because of Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama, she risks destroying this shift just as it's beginning to emerge.

Look at the historical patterns: Studies from the past fifty years find that party loyalties tend to form early--for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. It was true for the FDR generation, for those who came of age during the anti-war activism of the late Vietnam era, and with the young adults who helped cascade Reagan into office and whose compatriots have remained more conservative ever since.

Major historical events like wars and economic depressions can shift this. So can political scandals and personal crises and conversions. Systematic organizing efforts can also shift voters' worldview and context, particularly for those politically detached, which is one reason unions matter so much. Still, some major patterns get set early on, and that's likely to keep being true.

Generations need several elections to cement the pattern. The votes of 18- to 29-year-olds started shifting back in the Clinton years. Young voters gave Clinton an initial 9 point margin and increased it the next round, but their turnout dropped from the highest since 18-year-olds got the vote to the lowest in the same period.. In 2000, Gore led Bush among this group buy 3%, with Ralph Nader bleeding off another 5%. Led by increases in young African American and Latino voters, they were the only generation to favor Kerry, and did so by a ten percent margin.

These shifts accelerated in 2006. Fueled by the Bush administration's myriad disasters, young voters played a critical role, supporting Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans by a massive 60% to 38% difference. They did so in every region of the country, from a three to one split in the East to a three point margin in the South. They provided the critical margin for Senators Tester, Webb and McCaskill, and fed the victories of the four other victorious challengers. Had it been up to young Americans alone, the Democrats would have also won Senate campaigns in Tennessee, Arizona, and Nevada; Ned Lamont would have defeated Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, and a slew of additional House seats would have changed hands. The Democrats would have elected Senators from 26 states, with Republicans carrying just four.

The passion of young people for Obama's campaign is fueled by the Iraq war, an uncertain economy, major concerns about the environment and global warming, and the religious right's attacks on sexuality. But more than anything it's also fueled by Obama's eloquent insistence that change is possible and that ordinary citizens can play a key role. It's fueled by the sense that Obama's personal story anticipates the story of an America that moves beyond its divisions and tackles our fundamental problems. This group also seems to resist the idea that a presidency can simply be handed down like a dynastic succession.

Participating in numbers we haven't seen in decades, these new voters fervently want Obama to win. They're reaching out to enlist their peers and volunteering to help reach others. They can be a powerful force to help him prevail.

But if Hillary Clinton is nominated, this momentum will likely crumble. The young women and men who've been flooding the Democratic primaries and caucuses will feel betrayed by a candidate who's just finished doing her best to destroy the person they've invested their hopes in. And as a result, they may simply stay home. It's not just that Hillary is running against Obama. That would be fine. It's that she and Bill and their surrogates have relentlessly assaulted Obama's character, in a scorched-earth style worthy of Karl Rove. I've devoted an entire article todocumenting just a fraction of these instances: her lying about his record (and her on) on critical Iraq and Iran votes, and his votes on abortion choice; her unleashing surrogates like civil rights activist turned WalMart pitchman Andy Young to explain how Obama really wasn't black enough or Black Entertainment Television CEO Robert Johnson (a virulently anti-union corporate head who's backed Bush on issues like the estate tax and privatizing Social Security) to refer to Obama's youthful cocaine use, with Clinton standing next to him at a South Carolina rally.When Hillary says Obama has no right to build up "false hopes," and Bill calls Obama's vision of history "a fairy tale," how can Obama's young supporters not feel attacked in their own hope and dreams? Had Clinton run a less-harsh campaign, like that of John Edwards, she might expect to inherit Obama's passionate young voters--and volunteers. But given the virulence of her attacks, I just can't see them suddenly turning on a dime and enthusiastically supporting her.

Young voters are historically the least likely to participate. The failure of the Democrats to stop Bush's Iraq war has already made many cynical. Obama has reversed this cynicism, but if Clinton crushes the dreams of his supporters, a great many will stay home in disgust. Or, if they do end up voting, they certainly won't work to turn out their peers. As a friend said of his community college students, "the most active ones in my class say they won't even vote for her if she's nominated."

The same is true, of course, of African American voters. The Clinton campaign's attempts to cage Obama in a racial box (for instance by Bill Clinton's dismissing his massive South Carolina victory as just an echo of Jesse Jackson 's 1984 and 1988 campaigns) could have an equally disastrous impact on African American turnout if Hillary Clinton is the nominee come November. Clinton also risks the defection of people who fit neither demographic, but are simply so furious at her support for Bush's Iraq and Iran policies and her massive corporate ties, that they simply cannot let themselves vote for her. I get those responses every time I write on the subject. Taken together, if these groups stay home (and Republicans mobilized by Hillary-hatred turn out), it's easy to see how a candidate like John McCain could transform a prime Democratic opportunity into yet another needless defeat.

If the youth vote affected only the upcoming election, the stakes would be massive. But it's worse yet because Clinton's nomination would likely shift the future votes of a generation. If I thought Barack Obama were simply an empty suit, I'd be skeptical too. Like any political leader, he has his weaknesses. I wish he'd deferred less to the senior Senate leadership on issues like Iraq. But then I look at his record engaging and bringing together once-powerless individuals and communities, speaking out against the war, and linking our health care crisis to his mother dying of cancer while her insurance company tried to throw her off their rolls. I value his stress on empowering ordinary citizens to act. I see enough actions of courage and vision to suggest his presidency might just be able to equal the sum of his powerful words. Then I look at Clinton and wonder why she's fighting so fiercely against her fellow Democrats, after doing so little to fight Bush's destructive policies when he was riding high in the polls. I think this is part of what the young voters sense too and why their hopes have soared with Obama's campaign. If we dash them now, we may be paying for this choice for far longer than the next four years.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, and Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on the American Campus. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles

[AND HERE'S THE SECOND ONE ON MY SHIFT TO OBAMA AS AN EDWARDS SUPPORTER]

A Dozen Reasons Why This Edwards Voter Is Now Backing Obama
By Paul Rogat Loeb

I gave John Edwards more money than I've given to any candidate in my life, and I'm glad I did. He raised critical issues about America's economic divides, and got them on the Democratic agenda. He was the first major candidate to stake out strong comprehensive platforms on global warming and health care. He hammered away on the Iraq war, even using scarce campaign resources to run ads during recent key Senate votes. He'd have made a powerful nominee—and president.

I've been going through my mourning for a while for his campaign not getting more traction, so his withdrawal announcement didn't shock me. But sad as I am about his departure, I feel good about being able to switch my support to Barack Obama, and will do all I can to help him win.

I've actually been giving small donations to both since Iowa, while hoping that the Edwards campaign would belatedly catch fire, and exploring ways the two campaigns could work together. With Edwards gone, I think Obama is the natural choice for his supporters, and that Edwards should step up and endorse him as his preferred nominee. All three major Democratic candidates have their flaws and strengths—they all have excellent global warming plans, for instance. But Edwards wasn't just being rhetorical when he said that both he and Obama represent voices for change, versus Clinton's embodiment of a Washington status quo joining money and power.

Here are a dozen reasons why I feel proud to have my energy, dollars and vote now go to Obama:
The Iraq war: Obviously, invading Iraq remains the most damaging single action of the Bush era. Obama spoke out against it at a public rally while Clinton was echoing Bush's talking points and voting for it. Obama's current advisors also consistently opposed the war, while Clinton's consistently supported it. It's appropriate that Clinton jumped to her feet to clap when Bush said in his recent State of the Union address that there was "no doubt" that "the surge is working."

Clinton's Iran vote: The Kyl-Lieberman bill gave the Bush administration so wide an opening for war that Jim Webb called it "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream." Hillary voted for it. Obama and Edwards opposed it.

The youth vote: If a Party attracts new voters for their first few elections, they tend to stick for the rest of their lives. Obama is doing this on a level unseen in decades. By tearing down the candidate who inspires them, Clinton will so embitter many young voters they'll stay home.

Hope matters: When people join movements to realize raised hopes, our nation has a chance of changing. When they damp their hopes, as Clinton suggests, it doesn't. Like Edwards, Obama has helped people feel they can participate in a powerful transformative narrative. That's something to embrace, not mock.

Follow the money: All the candidates have some problematic donors—it's the system--but Hillary's the only one with money from Rupert Murdoch. Edwards and Obama refused money from lobbyists. Clinton claimed they were just citizens speaking out, and held a massive fundraising dinner with homeland security lobbyists. Obama spearheaded a public financing bill in the Illinois legislature, while Clinton had to be shamed by a full-page Common Cause ad in the Des Moines Register to join Obama and Edwards in taking that stand.

John McCain: If McCain is indeed the Republican nominee, than as Frank Rich brilliantly points out, he's perfectly primed to run as the war hero with independence, maturity and integrity, against the reckless, corrupt and utterly polarizing Clintons. Never mind that McCain's integrity and independence is largely a media myth (think the Charles Keating scandal and his craven embrace of Bush in 2004), but Bill and Hillary heralding their two-for-one White House return will energize and unite an otherwise ambivalent and fractured Republican base.

Mark Penn: Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, runs a PR firm that prepped the Blackwater CEO for his recent congressional testimony, is aggressively involved in anti-union efforts, and has represented villains from the Argentine military junta and Philip Morris to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

Sleazy campaigning: Hillary stayed on the ballot in Michigan after Edwards and Obama pulled their names, then audaciously said the delegates she won unopposed should count retroactively. She, Bill and their surrogates have conducted a politics of personal attack that begins to echo Karl Rove, from distorting Obama's position on Iraq and abortion choice, to dancing out surrogates to imply that the Republicans will tar him as a drug user.

NAFTA: Hillary can't have it both ways in stoking nostalgia for Bill. NAFTA damaged lives and communities and widened America's economic divides. Edwards spoke out powerfully against it. Clinton now claims the agreement needs to be modified, but her husband staked all his political capital in ramming it through, helping to hollow out America's economy andsplit the Democratic Party for the 1994 Gingrich sweep.

Widening the circle: Obviously Obama spurs massive enthusiasm in the young and in the African-American community. I'm also impressed at the range of people turning out to support his campaign. At a Seattle rally I attended, the volunteer state campaign chair had started as Perot activist. The founding coordinator in the state's second-largest county, a white female Iraq war vet, voted for Bush in 2000 and written in Colin Powell in 2004 before becoming outraged about Iraq "I've always leaned conservative," she said, "but Obama's announcement speech moved me to tears. The Audacity of Hope made me rethink my beliefs. He inspires me with his honesty and integrity." As well as inspiring plenty of progressive activists, Obama is engaging people who haven't come near progressive electoral politics in years.

The story we tell: Obama captures people with a narrative about where he wants to take America. His personal story is powerful, but he keeps the emphasis on the ordinary citizens who need to take action to make change. Clinton, in contrast, focuses largely on her personal story, her presumed strengths and travails. Except for the symbolism of having a woman president, it's a recipe that downplays the possibility of common action for change.

Citizen movements matter: Edwards not only ran for president, but worked to build a citizen movement capable of working for change whatever his candidacy's outcome. Obama has taken a similar approach, beginning when he first organized low-income Chicago communities and coordinated a still-legendary voter registration drive. His speeches consciously encourage his supporters to join together and constitute a force equivalent to the abolitionist, union, suffrage, and civil rights movements. Like Edwards, he's working to build a movement capable of pushing his policies through the political resistance he will face (and probably of pushing him too if he fails to lead with enough courage). In this context, Clinton's LBJ/Martin Luther King comparison, and her dismissal of the power of words to inspire people, is all too revealing. She really does believe change comes from knowing how to work the insider levers of power. Edwards and Obama know it takes more.

That's why this Edwards supporter is proud to do all I can to make Barack Obama the Democratic nominee and president.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

From Donna in NY:

EDITORIAL
Barack Obama for Democratic nominee
Endorsements for president 2008
February 3, 2008

Democrats preparing to vote in Tuesday's California primary can mark their ballots with confidence, knowing that either candidate would make a strong nominee and, if elected, a groundbreaking leader and capable president. But just because the ballot features two strong candidates does not mean that it is difficult to choose between them. We urge voters to make the most of this historic moment by choosing the Democrat most focused on steering the nation toward constructive change: We strongly endorse Barack Obama.

The U.S. senator from Illinois distinguishes himself as an inspiring leader who cuts through typical internecine campaign bickering and appeals to Americans long weary of divisive and destructive politics. He electrifies young voters, not because he is young but because he embodies the desire to move to the next chapter of the American story. He brings with him deep knowledge of foreign relations and of this nation's particular struggles with identity and opportunity. His flair for expression, both in print and on the stump, too easily leads observers to forget that Obama is a man not just of style but of substance. He's a thoughtful student of the Constitution and an experienced lawmaker in his home state and, for the last three years, in the Senate.

On policy, Obama and his rival Democratic candidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, are a hairsbreadth apart. Both vow to pull troops from Iraq. Both are committed to healthcare reform. Both offer candid critiques of the failed George W. Bush presidency, its blustering adventurism, its alienating stance toward other countries and its cavalier disregard for sacred American values such as individual liberty and due process of law.

With two candidates so closely aligned on the issues, we look to their abilities and potential as leaders, and their record of action in service of their stated ideals. Clinton is an accomplished public servant whose election would provide familiarity and, most important, competence in the White House, when for seven years it has been lacking. But experience has value only if it is accompanied by courage and leads to judgment.

Nowhere was that judgment more needed than in 2003, when Congress was called upon to accept or reject the disastrous Iraq invasion. Clinton faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war. At last week's debate and in previous such sessions, Clinton blamed Bush for abusing the authority she helped to give him, and she has made much of the fact that Obama was not yet in the Senate and didn't face the same test. But Obama was in public life, saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right.

Obama demonstrates as well that he is open-eyed about the terrorist threat posed to the nation, and would not shrink from military action where it is warranted. He does not oppose all wars, he has famously stated, but rather "dumb wars." He also has the edge in economic policy, less because of particular planks in his platform than because of his understanding that some liberal orthodoxies developed during the last 40 years have been overtaken by history. He offers leadership on education, technology policy and environmental protection unfettered by the positions of previous administrations.

By contrast, Clinton's return to the White House that she occupied for eight years as first lady would resurrect some of the triumph and argument of that era. Yes, Bill Clinton's presidency was a period of growth and opportunity, and Democrats are justly nostalgic for it. But it also was a time of withering political fire, as the former president's recent comments on the campaign trail reminded the nation. Hillary Clinton's election also would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page.

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

Friday, February 1, 2008

FRom Jen in LA:

Lots of momentum continues today for Senator Obama after last night’s strong debate performance! Share this email with all of your friends, colleagues, neighbors and family…

The LA Times endorses Obama
3.2 million-member MoveOn.org gives nod to Obama
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut to endorse Obama
Feminist and Author, Ellen Bravo, tells Huffington Post readers why she and so many other feminists are choosing Obama for president
Alma Rangel endorses Obama in NYC
Women for Obama debate the dynamics of the presidential race on PBS’s “To the Contrary” this week

From Donna in NY:

And if you are NOT pro-choice, about everything in your own life, don’t even open this short film. If you are, or might be, tune in. Thanx. Jane-Howard

Subject: One particular area for consideration of The Democratic Field

MoveOn Endorses Obama

by Kathy from MO

Today MoveOn.org took the unprecedented step of endorsing a candidate before the nomination. I see this as huge. There are over 3 million members of this organization that encouraged MoveOn to endorse Barack Obama 70% to 29% over Hillary Clinton. This is over 3 million grassroots activists who are spread across the US. They have the will, the money, and the voice to make things happen. They will be part of a huge GOTV campaign for Obama over the next four days. There will also be ads coming from them. This is a big endorsement that should produce votes! This is more than a union's leadership telling its members how to vote. This is millions activists speaking out in unison that they want a progressive candidate as the nominee. More than half of them are in Super Tuesday states and the rest are poised to hit the phones and the streets to Get Out the Vote! This could be a tremendous boost for Obama across the country both in workers and in votes!
On other positive Obama notes, he picked up the California SEIU union vote that had previously been given to John Edwards. He also had the largest fundraising month in his entire campaign in the month of January raising over $32 million. This was more than his three previous high months combined. He picked up thousands of new donors. I also just read that he has just been endorsed by the LA Times.
There is definitely a wave of support coming his way from across the country. Hopefully, it will carry him through to the nomination on Super Tuesday.

News Max:

First, there's a crushing ABC News story about Hillary Clinton's inaction during her tenure with Wal-Mart.

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers....
"I'm always proud of Wal-Mart and what we do and the way we do it better than anybody else," she said at a June 1990 stockholders meeting.
The story reports that video of Wal-Mart's many private board meetings never shows Clinton reacting to the other board member's vicious anti-union statements. The story also reports that Clinton's main effort on the board, improving conditions for female workers, accomplished little. Further, the story says that Clinton will keep $20,000 in donations from Wal-Mart executives, and that former President Bill Clinton has regular private meetings with Wal-Mart's current CEO.

Then there is David Broder who writes in the Washington Post that Barack Obama is the Democratic frontrunner, despite Hillary Clinton's polling leads in many February 5 states. Broder points to establishment Democratic opinion trending toward BHO.

The advantage has shifted back to Barack Obama — thanks to a growing but largely unremarked-upon tendency among Democratic leaders to reject Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former president.
The New York senator could still emerge from the "Tsunami Tuesday" voting with the overall lead in delegates, but she is unlikely to come close to clinching the nomination...
That establishment that is heading Obama's way? That's the one the Clintons have owned for nearly two decades. Think we're done? Oh, no. More after the jump.

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Zeldin compares the questionable but ultimately insubstantial legal work Clinton did for Jim McDougal in Arkansas that was later investigated by Kenneth Starr to the legal work Obama did for "slumlord" Tony Rezko that Clinton is now using as an attack line her stump speeches. After discussing the truly insignificant nature of the Rezko situation, Zeldin writes:

No one who has ever practiced law, let alone Mrs. Clinton, could argue, with a clear conscience, that these five hours on behalf of a church group that partnered with a man who at a later point in time would be alleged to be a scoundrel equated to knowingly representing a Chicago slumlord. Yet she could not resist leveling the accusation.
I suggest that this provides a window into Mrs. Clinton's character because notwithstanding the enormous suffering she had to endure when accused of wrongful conduct in her representation of Madison Guaranty — a representation that appears to have been no more than a routine business transaction — she is willing to behave no differently than did her Whitewater accusers if she can gain politically.
And heavens, we're still not finished. The New York Times reports that Bill Clinton went to the Kazakhstani president and vouched for a Canadian businessman named Giustra seeking inroads into Kazakhstan's uranium mining business. In a simple quid pro quo, Giustra later made a massive donation to Clinton's charitable foundation.

The monster deal [that Giustra signed with Kazakhstan] stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world's largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.
Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton's charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra's more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.
It may actually be a good thing for Hillary Clinton that all of this muck came out on the same day. There's only so much oxygen for news stories to breathe. At least one of these is going to wither and die without much attention.

Update: Whoops, thought we were finished. Also out today, news that Obama has raised a stunning $32 million in January, an amount which "roughly equals his previous best three-month fundraising haul." Howard Dean raised $51 million during his entire campaign in 2004.

From Moveon.org:

MoveOn members voted to endorse Barack Obama.

By volunteering these next four days before "Super Tuesday" we can help elect a progressive president for the next four years. Can you volunteer to help Obama win?

Volunteer today!

Vote results

Obama: 197,444
70.4%
Clinton: 83,084
29.6%

Dear MoveOn member,
With hundreds of thousands of ballots cast across the country, for the first time in MoveOn's history, we've voted together to endorse a presidential candidate in the primary. That candidate is Barack Obama.

Something big is clearly happening. A few weeks ago, MoveOn members we surveyed were split. But with John Edwards bowing out, progressives are coming together. Obama won over 70% of the vote yesterday, and he's moving up in polls nationwide.1 As comments poured in from MoveOn members across the country, the sense of hope was inspiring. Here's how Christine Y. in New Jersey put it:

"I've never felt so strongly about any one candidate in my entire life. He's truly an inspiration to all of us—especially the younger generation. I will stand by him 100% for as long as he's willing to stand up and fight for this country!"

What does MoveOn's endorsement mean? People-power. Together, we are 3.2 million Americans who care about our country and want change. Half of us live in states with primaries or caucuses this coming "Super Tuesday."

We know how to roll up our sleeves and win elections, and if we all pitch in together between now and Tuesday, we can help Sen. Obama win the biggest primary day in American history. Think about it: volunteering during the next four days could mean four years of a progressive president. Can you sign up right now to volunteer for Obama's campaign? Click here:

http://pol.moveon.org/volunteerforobama/?id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=535

There are lots of ways to help. You can call voters from home, go door-to-door with others in your community, travel to "Super Tuesday" states, donate, put up a yard sign, volunteer in a campaign office, or join a local meetup. Senator Obama is running a grassroots campaign, and there's a role for everyone.

Many of us feel like change is within reach for the first time in years. Here's some more of what MoveOn members see in Obama:

"This country needs real, progressive transformation. Barack Obama is the candidate who gives us the best hope of uniting and inspiring the nation to move in that direction, while also restoring America's dignity and standing as a member of the global community."—James M., Connecticut

"While I'm impressed with Clinton and believe she would make a very good president, I'm actually MOVED by Obama. In the end, I believe if Obama is elected he has the potential to bring the country together behind him."—Patricia S., Wisconsin

"He was right on the biggest question of the era—opposing the war from the start."—Jacob S., Washington, D.C.

"I support Barack Obama for the same reasons I support MoveOn.org: the more people are inspired to get involved, the better the outcome for our country. Senator Obama has demonstrated a unique capacity to inspire participation and to make public service 'cool' again. He is also sound on all the issues that matter to me and my family."—Liz B., New York

"I live in a red state, and I see my conservative neighbors and friends showing a positive interest in Barack. They like him. They are ready to be swayed. And I see my Democratic friends and family members getting excited like never before...With Barack as our candidate, I am convinced that we can win in a landslide in 2008 and usher in a new era of progressive politics."—Desirina B., Georgia

To be clear, we won't always agree with all of Obama's positions. And MoveOn members said overwhelmingly that, regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination, we'll work hard to win the White House in 2008. Whatever happens in the primary, we'll push the Democratic nominee to campaign progressively and then we'll push them to fulfill their promises after they win.

The building of a progressive consensus around Senator Obama is tangible. Earlier this week, John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy said Obama is the first presidential candidate to be as inspirational as her father.2 Yesterday, progressive magazine The Nation said that electing Obama is "a chance we can't pass up."3 And then DailyKos.com, the most widely read progressive blog, announced Obama won 76% in a reader poll this week.4

It's time to get to work electing a president who is inspiring a nation and is talking about big, progressive change. Click here to volunteer in these next crucial days:

http://pol.moveon.org/volunteerforobama/?id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=536

This is just the beginning of a long road to victory in November. Thanks for all you do, and will do to change our country for the better in 2008.

–Eli, Wes, Joan, Justin, Adam G., Adam R., Ilyse, Karin, Nita, Noah, Marika, Laura, Peter, Anna, Matt, Daniel, Carrie, Tanya, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, February 1st, 2008

P.S. As we were about to click "send" we received the following response from Senator Obama. We wanted to share it with you: "In just a few years, the members of MoveOn have once again demonstrated that real change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. From their principled opposition to the Iraq war—a war I also opposed from the start—to their strong support for a number of progressive causes, MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grassroots movement for change. I thank them for their support and look forward to working with their members in the weeks and months ahead."

Sources:

1. "Race Tightening Between Obama and Clinton," The Nation, January 31, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3364&id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=537

2. "A President Like My Father," Caroline Kennedy in the New York Times, January 27, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3360&id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=538

3. "The Choice," Chris Hayes in The Nation, January 31, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/hayes

4. "2008: 1/30 results," DailyKos.com reader poll, January 30, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3361&id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=539

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=12015-4046455-gzynCF&t=540

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Amy lawyer in NY:

Subject: Voting Obama!

Friends, Family -

Pardon the political intrusion, but almost all of you vote in a Democratic primary somewhere next Tuesday. Below are just a few of my reasons, very briefly, to support Barack Obama (I’m sure you and he have been waiting for my endorsement, but coordinating with the Kennedys this week was complicated). Wherever you are in your own thinking, please think about voting Obama and/or get your friends and family to do so! Your views and your vote really count!

1. To my mind, the question now isn’t whom you agree with more (he and Hillary are extremely close on most key issues – see http://www.barackobama.com/issues/ ). Rather, it’s this: who will frame the public debate so that our national politics move permanently (not tactically) in a progressive, tolerant, strong direction? Hillary may be a superior tactical politician. But Barack Obama has the talent, popular support and vision to affect our politics strategically. This is huge. Ronald Reagan still inhabits our politics and the way we think of government (unfortunately), especially its limitations. Obama could do the same for progressive thinking, making a long-term impact that I just don’t see Hillary making (and that, with all his small-bore policy initiatives, Bill didn’t, either). Do you? And now is the moment for a strategic shift. Think of the impact Obama has already made and imagine how he could use his talent as president. No other candidate comes close.

2. Obama’s judgment is superior. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war is neither irrelevant nor a fairy tale. It shows exactly the kind of judgment we need in a president. With nearly 4000 American lives lost and thousands more badly damaged, and American credibility pretty shredded, these judgments matter (as does her support for the war resolution). Moreover, he continues to show judgment on foreign policy issues from Iran to Pakistan and elsewhere. He knows America has power, and he’s willing to use it – as he said some time ago, if Pakistan were unwilling to go after al Qaeda, we might have to do it for them. But he also knows that our power can be a blunt instrument, and he isn’t promising toughness for its own sake.

3. Relatedly, Obama brings a depth to understanding America’s role in the world that no other candidate can match. The Bush Administration turned its back on America’s long (if bumpy!) tradition of respecting and advancing human rights and international law in times of peace and war. Everything about Obama – what he’s done, how he’s voted, what he says, and who he is – demonstrates that he understands deeply the importance of reorienting our policies related to issues such as Guantanamo and alleged terror detainees, int’l justice, Darfur and humanitarian intervention, etc. You want to get a feel for him? Compare his and Hillary’s presentations on Darfur (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEd583-fA8M&feature=related versus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyEYtHIOGhI&feature=related ). Simply put, I trust him to do the right thing on these kinds of issues. You should, too.

4. Obama is experienced. This is merely a point in his defense, but perhaps the most concise thing I’ve seen written on the topic is from Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and major FOB (welcome back, lingo of the 90s!). Here’s Reich:

“...it strikes me as unfair to claim that Obama lacks relevant experience for the presidency. When he ran in 1992, Bill Clinton had been the governor of a small, rural southern state; as such, he had only limited experience with national issues and no foreign policy experience to speak of. Incidentally, at this point in the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton has served as an elected official in the U.S. Senate for not quite eight years, and before that a First Lady in the White House. Obama has so far held elective office for almost twelve years, at both levels of government – first as an Illinois state senator and then as a U.S. Senator. Before that he was a community organizer among Chicago’s poor, and then a civil rights lawyer – two experiences that in my view are critically relevant to anyone seeking to become president of all Americans. Obama’s international experience comes first hand – his father was a goat-herder in Kenya, and Obama spent a portion of his childhood in Indonesia. And as an African-American, with all the personal experience that implies, Obama seems particularly well qualified to understand the issues that need to be addressed in order to unify America and renew the nation’s moral authority around the world.” http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2007/09/qualifications-setting-record-straight.html

I could easily go on, but I just wanted to give you a sense of my support in the hope that it tips you in his favor. Below are some links to a few of the many great pieces others have written in his support. I’m happy to talk him up, too, just let me know!

Best,

David

· On Obama’s qualities as a possible president, see David Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18brooks.html

· On Israel and the Jewish community, see Mel Levine, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1201523778582&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

· On a constitutional principle related to the Clintons, see Garry Wills, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/opinion/26wills.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

· On Obama and gay rights, see Andrew Sullivan, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/obama-and-the-g.html

· On electability, see this recent poll, http://www.gallup.com/poll/104044/Gallup-Daily-Tracking-Election-2008.aspx

· On why a Kennedy supports him, see Caroline Kennedy, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27kennedy.html

· On why Hillary is Tracy Flick, http://slatev.com/player.html?id=1377935786

From Kelly in NY:Bill's Deals Ex-Pres tainted deals

did you see this article about bill? yuck!

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?em&ex=1202014800&en=ac352702e4d9e356&ei=5087%0A

An ex-president, a mining deal and a big donor
Huge Kazakh deal follows financier’s trip with Clinton, precedes donation
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22926743/

Contact me

SunnyG

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Song from Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am Inspired by Obama Speech

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