Vote '08

We’re not going to name names - we’d be bound by journalistic ethics to list all local contributors, which we don’t have time for - but the names are available in the public record, & this site has them.

Total contributions to John Edwards’ presidential campaign in 2008 from Chattanooga residents in 2007/2008: $8221

Here are the 11 donors who gave over $200:

Photographer, Olan Mills - $4600

Trial Lawyer - $1000

Self-employed Development Consultant - $500

Retired Male - $305

Chickamauga Lock Operator - $300

Retired Female - $300

Unemployed Male - $250

Agrifos Fertilizer Inc. VP - $250

IT Guy at Unum Group - $250

Retired Female - $230

Retired Male - $216

This purpose of this post is not to ridicule the donors; regardless of your party, these folks deserve your sympathy. They believed in a man who turned out to have feet of clay.

By the way, 1175 voters in Hamilton County chose Edwards in the February presidential primary. 

From ABC News:

Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year, insists a top Clinton campaign aide, making a charge that could exacerbate previously existing tensions between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

“I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee,” former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told ABCNews.com.

Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses barely behind Edwards in second place and Obama in first. The momentum of the insurgent Obama camaign beating two better-known candidates — not to mention an African-American winning in sucn an overwhelmingly white state — changed the dynamics of the race forever.

Obama won 37.6 per cent of the vote. Edwards won 29.7 per cent and Clinton won 29.5 per cent, according to results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party.

“Our voters and Edwards’ voters were the same people,” Wolfson said the Clinton polls showed. “They were older, pro-union. Not all, but maybe two-thirds of them would have been for us and we would have barely beaten Obama.”

…

Wolfson said the Clinton campaign was aware of the issue, but did not try to fan the flames.

“Any of the campaigns that would have tried to push that would have been burned by it,” said Wolfson.

 …

Wolfson’s contention is not shared by the Obama campaign, whose officials never bought the argument that Clinton was the second choice of Edwards voters. Immediately after Edwards dropped out of the race at the end of January, Obama won eleven straight contests in a row.

Edwards ruined it for Clinton? I don’t buy it. What do you think?

p.s. Tune in to NewsChannel 9 at 6 tonight - we are attempting a story on local folks who donated money to the Chattanooga campaign.

From ABC:

“John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.

A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, has said he was the father of the child.”

Guess we know who’s not on the VP short list anymore..

& just imagine how the race would have changed if this came out while Edwards was the Presidential nominee. The race would be completely over.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Here’s the Nightline interview:

Whoops.

From Martin Eisenstadt’s blog:

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems that the new McCain ad criticizing Obama for being a celebrity has ruffled some unintended feathers. I, for one, quite liked the ad, but I hear whispers from the inner campaign staff that the phone was burning off the hook today with calls from Paris Hilton’s grandfather, William Barron Hilton (co-chair of the Hilton Hotel empire), furious that the McCain ad drew an unflattering comparison between Obama and his own granddaughter.

It seems that the elder Hilton has donated $18,400 to the McCain campaign, and $35,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the last couple of years. (Paris’s father, Rick Hilton, has given an additional $6,900 to the McCain campaign. Suffice it to say, he’s none too pleased either.)”

…

Apparently, the elder Hiltons had breathed a sigh of relief that Paris was starting to get her act together since hitting rock bottom with her stay in jail last year, when all of a sudden the McCain ad compares her unfavorably to Britney Spears and Barack Obama.

I suspect that heads will roll at the McCain headquarters - if not within the staff, then I wouldn’t be surprised if Steve Schmidt starts looking for a new consulting firm for the next round of ads. This is a reminder to my brethren at the Campaign: don’t bite the hand that feeds us.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin asks:

“Doesn’t anybody check these things before they upload them to YouTube?”

Apparently not.

All seriousness aside: goodness gracious, appearing in an online sex tape & going to jail is bad enough — but how do you recover your reputation after appearing in an ad with the Democratic nominee for President of the United States?

Story #1 is from the latest New Yorker about a neo-conservative movement afoot in the Middle Kingdom that warns of a “coming new Cold War” with the West. Good food for thought as the world’s attention turns to the Olympics next week.

Here’s how it starts:

“On the morning of April 15th, a short video entitled “2008 China Stand Up!” appeared on Sina, a Chinese Web site. The video’s origin was a mystery: unlike the usual YouTube-style clips, it had no host, no narrator, and no signature except the initials “CTGZ.”

It was a homespun documentary, and it opened with a Technicolor portrait of Chairman Mao, sunbeams radiating from his head. Out of silence came an orchestral piece, thundering with drums, as a black screen flashed, in both Chinese and English, one of Mao’s mantras: “Imperialism will never abandon its intention to destroy us.” Then a cut to present-day photographs and news footage, and a fevered sprint through conspiracies and betrayals—the “farces, schemes, and disasters” confronting China today. The sinking Chinese stock market (the work of foreign speculators who “wildly manipulated” Chinese stock prices and lured rookie investors to lose their fortunes). Shoppers beset by inflation, a butcher counter where “even pork has become a luxury.” And a warning: this is the dawn of a global “currency war,” and the West intends to “make Chinese people foot the bill” for America’s financial woes.

A cut, then, to another front: rioters looting stores and brawling in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The music crescendos as words flash across the scenes: “So-called peaceful protest!” A montage of foreign press clippings critical of China—nothing but “rumors, all speaking with one distorted voice.” The screen fills with the logos of CNN, the BBC, and other news organizations, which give way to a portrait of Joseph Goebbels. The orchestra and the rhetoric climb toward a final sequence: “Obviously, there is a scheme behind the scenes to encircle China. A new Cold War!” The music turns triumphant with images of China’s Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang standing in Tiananmen Square, raising the Olympic torch, “a symbol of Peace and Friendship!” But, first, one final act of treachery: in Paris, protesters attempt to wrest the Olympic torch from its official carrier, forcing guards to fend them off—a “long march” for a new era. The film ends with the image of a Chinese flag, aglow in the sunlight, and a solemn promise: “We will stand up and hold together always as one family in harmony!”

The video, which was just over six minutes long and is now on YouTube, captured the mood of nationalism that surged through China after the Tibetan uprising, in March, sparked foreign criticism of China’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Citizens were greeting the criticism with rare fury. Thousands demonstrated in front of Chinese outlets of Carrefour, a French supermarket chain, in retaliation for what they considered France’s sympathy for pro-Tibetan activists. Charles Zhang, who holds a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and is the founder and C.E.O. of Sohu, a leading Chinese Web portal along the lines of Yahoo, called online for a boycott of French products “to make the thoroughly biased French media and public feel losses and pain.” When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi denounced China’s handling of Tibet, Xinhua, China’s official news service, called her “disgusting.” State-run media revived language from another age: the magazine Outlook Weekly warned that “domestic and foreign hostile forces have made the Beijing Olympics a focus for infiltration and sabotage.” In the anonymity of the Web, decorum deteriorated. “People who fart through the mouth will get shit stuffed down their throats by me!” one commentator wrote, in a forum hosted by a semi-official newspaper. “Someone give me a gun! Don’t show mercy to the enemy!” wrote another. The comments were an embarrassment to many Chinese, but they were difficult to ignore among foreign journalists who had begun receiving threats. (An anonymous letter to my fax machine in Beijing warned, “Clarify the facts on China . . . or you and your loved ones will wish you were dead.”)

In its first week and a half, the video by CTGZ drew more than a million hits and tens of thousands of favorable comments. It rose to the site’s fourth-most-popular rating. (A television blooper clip of a yawning news anchor was No. 1.) On average, the film attracted nearly two clicks per second. It became a manifesto for a self-styled vanguard in defense of China’s honor, a patriotic swath of society that the Chinese call the fen qing, the angry youth.

(read the rest of the article here)

Story #2 is about the White House liason to the Justice Department, who has been revealed in a new internal report to have stained the up-until-now bedrock reputation of being apolitical during the middle years of the Bush Administration.

Read the internal report here (pdf file).

Monica Goodling was in charge of vetting all candidates for career positions at the departmetn, which up until that point had kept political considerations of each candidates out of the process.

But not any more.

In one disgraceful example, Goodling refused to hire “one of the leading terrorism prosecutors in the country” because his wife was a Democrat:

He was an experienced terrorism prosecutor and had successfully prosecuted a high-profile terrorism case for which he received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service. … The candidate’s wife was a prominent local Democrat elected official and vice-chairman of a local Democratic Party. […]

[Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) Michael] Battle, [EOUSA Deputy Director and Cheif of Staff] Kelly, and EOUSA Deputy Director Nowacki all told us that Goodling refused to allow the candidate to be detailed to EOUSA solely on the basis of his wife’s political party affiliation. Battle said he was very upset that Goodling opposed the detail because of political reasons.

Goodling’s “damaging” refusal, the report notes, forced the EOUSA to “select a much more junior attorney who lacked any experience in counterterrorism issues” and was grossly unqualified for the position:

Because EOUSA had been unable to fill the counterterrorism detail after Goodling vetoed this candidate, a current EOUSA detailee was asked to assume EOUSA’s counterterrorism portfolio. … He had no counterterrorism experience and had less than the minimum of 5 years of federal criminal prosecution experience required by the EOUSA job announcement. Battle, Nowacki, Kelly, and Voris all said they thought that he was not qualified for the position, since he had no counterterrorism experience.

Absolutely shameful. Do we remember the struggle we as Americans face, folks?

But wait - there’s more:

After Goodling resigned, [Angela] Williamson typed from memory the list of questions Goodling asked as a guide for future interviews. Among other questions, the list included the following:

Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican. [W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

We found that this last question often took the form of asking the candidate to identify his or her most admired President, Supreme Court Justice, or legislator. Some candidates were asked to identify a person for all three categories. Williamson told us that sometimes Goodling asked candidates: “Why are you a Republican?”

Wait a minute - I did say in this post’s title that these were “two interesting stories from China.” My bad. Story #2 just seemed like it was.

Is this so bad?

If you haven’t figured out that the answer is yes, or believe that this tarnishing of the reputation of many fine men & women who work for justice in this country was worth it for “the cause” (whatever that is), ask yourself this:

How would you feel if this happened under a Democratic administration?

I find that answering this question is a key way to find the truth about something, without having to be worried about being swayed by anybody’s “side” put forth in the media.

Calling for the Justice Department to keep politics out of career appointments does not give you a “label” other than “patriotic American.” This whole episode was a step towards fascism (again: see China, Communist Party). The report released today is the 2nd of 4. Hopefully we can learn to avoid this mistake in the future - a future in which it will take a long time for concepts like fairness & justice at the Justice Department to get their reputation back.

Let’s hold each presidential candidates’ feet to the fire on this issue this year, so it never happens again - what do you say?

NEW YORK (AP) - A satirical New Yorker magazine cover cartoon depicting Barack Obama and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals is on newsstands and the Obamas aren’t happy.
The illustration, titled “The Politics of Fear” and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Obama wearing traditional Muslim clothing while his wife, Michelle, is dressed in camouflage with an assault rifle slung over one shoulder and her hair in an Afro.
The cartoon is not explained inside the magazine, where readers will also find a 15,000-word story about Obama’s political education and early years in Chicago.
An Obama spokesman says when it comes to the magazine cover, “most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive,” adding, “and we agree.” John McCain is also calling it “totally inappropriate.”

Above: a discussion of the controversy with editor Hendrik Hertzberg.

One opinion: the cover is in poor taste:

“…such a complex meta-joke is, firstly, tricky to accomplish, and, secondly, too abstract to adequately smack down the gargantuan size and volume of these rumors. So the point is lost without the benefit of the “it’s about scare tactics” press release, and the cartoon fails. But, unfortunately, such a failure risks the illustration ultimately becoming part of the rumor it seeks to expose.”

Other opinion: the cover is not in poor taste:

“When liberals start policing the “poor taste” of cartoons so that some people don’t get the “wrong idea,” it only reinforces the notion that all the fearmongering was effective, and perhaps right — and also shows how weak and tenuous Democrats fear their position on terrorism remains.”

Our opinion: leaning toward the latter. Come on people, lighten up. This is satire. It’s a pretty poor attempt, but it’s not the end of the world as some are saying.

What do you think about it? Let us know by posting a comment!

We have shown you earlier on this blog how McCain does such a deft job of handling protesters at his campaign events .. so it’s a shame that the rest of his campaign doesn’t get it.

Watch the clip above to see a 61 year old woman waiting to get into a McCain rally in Denver yesterday get kicked out of line by the secret service & escorted off the (public) property by police for “trespassing.” Her crime? An admittedly crude sign that says “McCain = Bush.”

Goodness gracious, folks. John McCain’s campaign staff should not be afraid of dissent. Democracy’s a messy thing. You’d score far more points by letting this kind of thing go on - it shows that you’re able to take it. The alternative (see: the last 7 years of carefully hand-picked crowds at all events) looks, well, like something else.

& rest assured if we see this kind of behavior at an Obama event we’ll call his campaign out on it too.

Again: Democracy’s a messy thing. Embrace disorder & become stronger by doing so.

What do you think?

Whoops.

The Politico reports:

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally. 

“This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”

& eerily repeating the issue we got into yesterday, the article says

The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also raise an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials seem to some at times to imply that there is something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam.

Every single campaign cherry-picks who appears behind them, as the article points out. The article also says Obama has had people who are obviously of the Muslim faith sitting behind them at rallies. 

What do you think? 

WASHINGTON (AP) - A leader of Democrat Barack Obama’s vice presidential research team has resigned amid criticism over his personal loan deals.
Obama announced in a statement Wednesday that Jim Johnson was stepping aside to avoid distracting from the vetting process.
Johnson served on the vetting team with former first daughter Caroline Kennedy and former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.

More on the story here.

The New York Times’ columnist Gail Collins calls it a “stupid blunder.”

The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland says this decision says more about Obama than Johnson.

Yes, we’ve been meaning to blog about the above clip since it broke last week (a station-wide crackdown on overtime & my writing 2 newscasts at the same time hampered the efforts to be as up-to-date here as I would have liked).

It’s unfathomable to me that this “reverend” thought his ’stand-up’ comedy routine would have been appropriate. When your man is the apparent victor, it never helps to gloat or dance in the end-zone. That’s exactly what’s going on above.

So Obama chose a Saturday evening, with intentions of burying the story & its implications, to announce he’s breaking with his church:

Obama had little choice to do this, but it diminishes the impact of his chance to make inroads among evangelicals this year significantly. The fact that John McCain is that rare Republican (rare these days anyway) who is not comfortable wearing his faith on his sleeve was an advantage; the fact that Obama must now go in search of a new church will not play as well among the faithful. Still, anything could happen.

What do you think? We have faith that you’ll post a comment!

MSNBC’s First Read’s Chuck Todd has an interesting musing on the ‘what might have been:’

*** Did Hillary stay in too long? Given the thud with which Clinton’s RFK flub was received, it’s starting to become clear that perhaps she erred in deciding to stay in the race this long. Imagine had she suspended her campaign and still won primaries. Wouldn’t that have put her in an even stronger position than now? Obama hasn’t run a campaign against her for the last few weeks and, in turn, it’s helped Clinton prop up her personal standing. But wouldn’t she be winning over the support of some in ObamaNation if she were sort of returning the favor by getting out and suspending the campaign? And that’s the rub: At some point for her political future, she has to win back the support of Obama’s supporters. And they don’t seem to be very forgiving of her right now. The Clinton campaign may believe these folks are being irrational, but it’s the state of play right now. It’s interesting — Clinton partisans are mad at a lot of folks, but Obama isn’t at the top of the list. For Obama partisans, Clinton (or the Clintons) is at the top of their anger list. As for Clinton, she really hasn’t given a good reason for staying in (versus suspending her candidacy while keeping her delegates) for any set of voters other than those folks in Michigan and Florida or for the folks in Puerto Rico. If she were in suspension mode, she could be focusing on legacy restoration. Instead, everything she says is viewed through the prism of angling for a longshot 1% chance at the nomination. Whatever the outcome at this point, Clinton’s folks may wish they had suspended their candidacy a few weeks ago. In this case, short-term gain could end up being long-term political pain.

David Bromwich writes an excellent piece pointing out why the RFK-assassination-could-happen-again comment is wrong in the Huffington Post. At issue is the (unconscionable) blurring of the line of legitimacy, something that both Clintons suffered at the hands of Republicans in the 1990s, & something that can damage any candidate in the race irrevocably:

The most disturbing element of her remark was this: that it chose to treat assassination as just one more political possibility, one of the things that happen in our politics, like hecklers, lobbyists, and forced resignations. The slovenly morale and callousness of such a released fantasy is catching. So when, a few days later, the Fox News contributor Liz Trotta was asked her opinion of Senator Clinton’s statement, Trotta said: “some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama…Obama. Well…both if we could!” Liz Trotta laughed as she said that.

Later, she apologized, as Senator Clinton also has apologized.

Race comes easily and inevitably into discussions of Barack Obama, and never far from race is the thought of violence. It is there when you hear mentally feeble persons say, “I am afraid of this one; so afraid! something makes me afraid!” And race comes into the discussion when you hear clever people say, “He can never win the white vote; the white working class just aren’t ready for him.”

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes

“What Clinton’s evocation of RFK suggests isn’t that she had some tactical reason for speaking the unspeakable but that she and her closest advisers can’t stop running and rerunning through their minds the most far-fetched scenarios, no matter how absurd or even obscene. She gives the impression of having spent long nights convincing herself that the stars really might still align for her — that something can still happen to make the Democratic Party realize how foolish it has been.

Clinton campaigns as if she knows she will leave some Democrats with bad feelings. That’s the Clinton way: Ask forgiveness, not permission. But every day, as more superdelegates trickle to Obama’s side, it becomes a surer bet that she will not win. She and her family enjoy good health and fabulous wealth. They’ll be fine — unless, while losing this race for the nomination, Hillary Clinton also loses her soul. “

But not so fast, writes John F. Harris of the Politico, in an article that should be required reading for anyone covering the campaign. He argues that these kinds of “gotcha/gaffe” stories are part of a brave new world of campaigns, one that is wholly dominated by the internet & especially YouTube. There’s no question the power YouTube has had on this blog & others, but Harris says the victim of this desire to be first & lightning quick — & the reliance on blogs that tend to care more & shout harder — is the careful appraisal of the true impact of a story (or candidate’s quote):

This weekend’s uproar over Hillary Rodham Clinton invoking the assassination of Robert Kennedy as rationale for continuing her presidential campaign is an especially vivid example of modern journalism as hyperkinetic child — overstimulated by speed and hunger for a head-turning angle that will draw an audience. The truth about what Clinton said — and any fair-minded appraisal of what she meant — was entirely beside the point.

& I’ll end this post with the sentence that begins this article:

“The signature defect of modern political journalism is that it has shredded the ideal of proportionality.”

What do you think?

Late Friday Hillary Clinton quite uncouthly invoked Robert Kennedy’s June 1968 assassination as a reason why she’s staying in the race:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,”

How charming. Read more about it here. She quickly apologized for making the statement, but not before the Obama campaign denounced her words:

“Senator Clinton’s statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.”

Then, she (finally) apologized:

“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation - particularly for that family - was in any way offensive,” Clinton continued. “I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to and I’m honored to hold Senator Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate in the state of New York. And have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.”

BUT —

Clinton’s statement stands in contrast to the initial reation from the Clinton camp. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historic examples of the nominating process going well into the summer. Any reading into beyond that would be inaccurate,” responded Clinton campaign spokesperson Mo Elleithee.

Sheesh.

You know what this tells me, that she wouldn’t think twice about invoking the RFK assassination as a means to argue her case the very week that Ted Kennedy learns he has a brain tumor? It tells me that we can all thank our lucky stars she doesn’t have a reasonable shot at being our president. It is clear what is most important in her mind, & tact isn’t part of it at all.

If you’re reading this & are a Hillary fan, I’d love to hear why you think I’m wrong.

Hillary obits are a dime a dozen these days. But take the time to read this one, as it’s the real reason she’s lost the nomination:

“Yes, the obituary will (correctly) list several causes of fatality, particularly the decision ofher campaign strategists to essentially ignore a string of ten contests between Feb. 9 and 19 to Barack Obama. In that 11-day stretch, Obama scored one landslide triumph after another, amassing the bulk of the popular-vote and pledged-delegate lead that Clinton spent the spring chasing in vain. Had Clinton not won Ohio on March 4, her campaign would have ended on the spot. As it was, the damage from her mid-February slide has, in the end, proven insurmountable.”

Again, the whole column’s worth reading.

Have a great weekend. Check back for new posts on Memorial Day - we’ll be here!

ATTACK: McCain criticized Obama for his stance on a Veterans’ Bill being debated in the Senate:

“Perhaps, if Senator Obama would take the time and trouble to understand this issue he would learn to debate an honest disagreement respectfully. But, as he always does, he prefers impugning the motives of his opponent, and exploiting a thoughtful difference of opinion to advance his own ambitions. If that is how he would behave as President, the country would regret his election.”

Zing! Read the full statement here.

UPDATE: Obama responds:

“I am proud to stand with Sen. Webb and a bipartisan coalition to give our veterans the support and opportunity they deserve. It’s disappointing that Sen. McCain and his campaign used this issue to launch yet another lengthy personal, political attack instead of debating an honest policy difference. He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama — it’s about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention,” Obama said in a statement. “Sen. Webb’s bipartisan bill will do this, and the bill that John McCain supports would not. These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people.”

DEFENSE: McCain has had to distance himself from a religious figure, John Hagee, who has endorsed McCain but also (it has recently been revealed) made statements that appear to praise Hitler:

OOF! That’s not good.

So today McCain said,

“Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well. I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright’s extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today. “

Our take: a little late in coming out with this, as there were plenty other offensive statements from Hagee. But he is correct in saying this is not the same situation as Barack Obama & Reverend Wright. & as far as the “GI Bill” goes, I think it should be fleshed out more in a post of its own, but his refusal to vote for a bill that would help those who have enlisted since 9/11 is a hard one to portray as ‘right.’

By the way, McCain also appeared on Ellen Degeneres’ show today, & the two sparred over gay marriage. You can watch the clip here.

So what do you think about any of this? Post a comment!

Listen to what she said this week to USA Today:

Yes, she played the race card: Several critics from around the political spectrum - from the New York Times’ editorial page to the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan - say she did unnecessarily inject race into the campaign, as a last-ditch effort to derail Obama’s likelihood of being the nominee.

No, she didn’t play the race card: The counterargument is she’s merely reading from an AP story that (correctly) outlined how Clinton did vastly better than Obama in winning over white Democratic voters.

We tend toward the former. Although it’s entirely likely she wasn’t deliberately intending to make this point, there is a better-than-average chance that this is part of her subconscious belief it’s why she can win. This campaign has already created several scabs on the racial front that aren’t worth picking.

Other thing, too — imagine either Obama or McCain bragging about how they can bring members of their own race to their side. Unthinkable.

What do you think? Please weigh in by posting a comment!

Today Barack Obama distanced himself - yet again, & the furthest to date - from remarks made by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, after making some controversial comments at the National Press Club yesterday:

What do you think? Will that be enough? Or has irreparable damage to the Obama campaign been done? Post a comment! Share your thoughts!

In a move as unwelcome as Bill Clinton’s revisiting the Tuzla tale a few weeks back, Reverend Jeremiah Wright continues to provide a drag on the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Today he spoke at the national press club, saying the criticism he has drawn is “an attack on the black church.” He also rejected those who have labeled him “unpatriotic.”

(more…)

What do you think? Post a comment!

We got a distinct sense yesterday that several of the pundits at ABC News don’t see anything wrong with the way they handled last Wednesday’s debate. [Watch the roundtable of George Stephanopoulos, George Will, Cokie Roberts & Sam Donaldson here.] Blogger MediaGirl called their denial a “let them eat cake” mentality & I tend to agree.

So does a particularly conservative NewsChannel9 colleague, who hadn’t seen my criticism, but forwarded me several pieces that criticized the way the debate went.

Not all conservatives feel this way, though. Check out Michelle Malkin’s take here.

The blog Publius has a humorous take on “The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Slight Return)”:

Presidential candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held this debate on April 16, 1858 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

MODERATORS:
CHARLIE GIBSON, ABC NEWS
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS

MR. GIBSON: So we’re going to begin with opening statements, and we had a flip of the coin, and the brief opening statement first from Mr. Lincoln.

LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do? (more…)

Several of you have weighed in!

Otto J Drobny says:

I do not see why all the fuss except for the media. It should not be a surprise there are bitter people everywhere not just Pennsylvania that do not trust the government. You will find them right here in Chattanooga

Tish Jackson writes

I am amazed at how silly it is….the media, Hillary and McCain making a big deal out of one sentence that is nothing less than true when you take it in context, and when we are all honest. If there is a large contingent of Americans who are not bitter, who believe their government is taking great care of them, then please correct me and show me where they are. I believe the majority of Americans are bitter about how their government and politicians have performed, especially over the last eight years. What’s so wrong in calling it out?

It’s incredible to me that something like this will get so much attention in order to cast it in a negative light, when it is not negative. It makes those trying to make it look negative resemble petty high school kids starting a rumor they hope will stick. It also assumes that most Americans are unwilling to educate themselves, and will take the media’s word for it. Unfortunantly, it’s likely true. Why is it true? Because Americans are bitter and no longer feel they have a voice, and therefore don’t pay close attention. Ironic?…oh yeah!

What’s keeping you from commenting? All views are welcome! Tell us how you think! 

Barack Obama spent the weekend explaining himself out of some “inartful” comments he made about voters in Pennsylvania.

Read them for yourself:

“So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

The comments highlighted in bold are the ones that many have taken out of context to portray him as “elitist.” Whether or not that’s true, it will be interesting to see how this affects him in the polls.

What do you think he meant? We hope you weigh in in the comments, as this is a topic that is worthy of a lot of discussion.

We discuss this further - including responses from Clinton & McCain, & Obama’s explanation - after the jump.

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Bill Clinton apparently can’t contain himself.

The “sniper fire” tall tale Hillary Clinton has been off the radar for a couple of weeks. Needlessly, inexplicably, & ultimately damagingly, the former president brought the issue up again yesterday in a stump speech:

ABC News’ Jake Tapper adeptly parses the distortions bit by bit on his blog, Political Punch, & we’ll go through each one (7, by his count) -& add our analysis of why this is such a boneheaded move - after the jump.

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The Clinton campaign has at long last fired their chief consultant & senior strategist Mark Penn.

Penn got in trouble after it was disclosed that he’d met with representatives of the Colombian government to help promote a free trade agreement.. one that Clinton opposes. Penn later issued a statement apologizing for the meeting, calling it an “error in judgment.”

That’s not the only “error in judgement” Penn has committed since he signed on with the Clinton’s years ago. But this time it was too politically radioactive for the Clinton’s to keep him on.

Dylan Loewe at the Huffington Post says:

Penn presided over a top-down campaign in which, to the surprise of most observers, he was responsible for both crafting the message and polling its effectiveness. Normally frowned upon, such an approach often leads to self-fulfilling polling that validates the assumptions of the strategist, rather than providing an objective assessment. Perhaps that is the best explanation for a series of horribly misguided message strategies that Penn employed.

There was the now infamous inevitability argument, a message that ramped expectations to heights that Clinton could never have expected to meet. There was the change vs. experience message, one that helped validate Obama’s persona as the change candidate. And of course, when times got tough, there was the “Let’s get real” message. Showing a clear sign that the campaign did not understand its opponent, this message criticized Obama supporters rather than Obama himself, driving the wedge further between the candidate and the voters she needed to persuade.

But Penn chose not to confine his incompetence strictly to messaging, allowing it to invade all parts of the campaign strategy. His decision to forego caucus states demonstrated a glaring misunderstanding of the delegate allocation process. In a system in which losses must be minimized and wins inflated, Penn surrendered essential turf. It is equally surprising that someone who perceived his candidate as having enormous weaknesses in caucuses would have steered the campaign directly into the Iowa caucus. Had Deputy Campaign Manager Mike Henry’s recommendation been adopted — that Clinton forego Iowa — she may well have earned the nomination months ago.

& Mark Halperin at the Page has a list of reasons he should have been fired long ago, including:

2. He brought his near absence of visible professional humanity to a candidate that needs humanizing more than most.
3. He treated his colleagues with disdain.
6. He had little or no experience in winning Democratic nomination battles.
7. He simultaneously served as pollster and chief strategist - and no campaign should have as its chief strategist its pollster or admaker.
8. He was an off-putting and gaffe-prone television, conference call, and post-debate surrogate.
9. He was a lightning rod for media and labor criticism.
11. He fostered a sense of ill will and distrust with virtually all of Clinton’s other top advisers, stifled creativity, and blurred lines of authority.
12. He can be a temperamental, often immature presence.
13. He appeared to refuse to take any responsibility for Clinton’s losses.

Hmm… this sounds awfully familiar.

Let’s see.. treated colleagues with disdain.. gaffe-prone.. temperamental.. lightning rod for criticism.. stifled creativity.. misunderstood how to treat the enemy.. stayed long after it was clear he was detrimental to his boss.. & refused to take any responsibility for his mistakes…

…does this remind you of anyone else in recent history?

Yes, we know St. Patrick’s Day was a week ago, but on that day candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that as First Lady in 1996, she flew to Bosnia to help the peace process there, & said that she had to ‘endure sniper fire’ on the airport’s tarmac when she got off the plane.

Video has surfaced that seems to be contrary to that statement. Watch for yourself, first a 1996 news clip of her on that airport, followed by her statement she made last week.

The Washington Post has more on the story -or rather both stories- here.

‘Comedian’ Sinbad was also on the flight (with singer Sheryl Crow), & also doesn’t remember it the way Clinton is describing it.

This morning Clinton’s not the only one facing charges of embellishment. Barack Obama is, too.

UPDATE/4:46pm: The Clinton campaign now says she “may have misspoke” about the specifics of her Bosnia trip.

What do you think?

Barack Obama delivered a speech designed to answer questions many have had about his preacher, his past, & the issues of race in the campaign & in America.

recommends you watch it, regardless of you how you feel about the candidate:

Here are some links to pieces examining the Wright issue & what it means for Obama’s campaign:

• Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic outlines how today is a crucial one for the candidate.
• Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wonders why it took Obama so long to realize the radioactivity of this issue to thousands of his potential voters.
  
• Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics.com takes a look at the discrepancies between Wright’s divisive message & Obama’s “new kind of politics.”
• Shelby Steele of the Wall Street Journal waxes on the delicate balance (she calls it a ‘bargain‘) Obama must pull off between black & white voters.
• Rick Daugherty of the MorningCall praises Obama for sticking by his pastor through thick & thin, despite the consequences.
• James Kirchik of the Politico speculates voters in the general election will remember this episode, regardless of what Obama says today.

wants to hear from you about the speech, too, so post a comment right now!

READ THE FULL SPEECH TRANSCRIPT BY CLICKING FOR MORE…

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The first American female on a presidential ticket refuses to back down from comments she made earlier this week about Barack Obama.

UPDATE/5:16pm: CNN is reporting that Ferraro is leaving the Clinton campaign fundraising team.

UPDATE/5:22pm: Talking Points Memo has the letter:

Dear Hillary -I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.

I won’t let that happen.

Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren.

You have my deep admiration and respect.

Gerry

Find out more about what the fuss is all about after the jump.

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New York Governor Elliot Spitzer announced today he’s “spending more time with his family” after being (apparently) caught on a federal wiretap tape purchasing the services of a high-class prostitute. (Vote08 commentary: What an idiot.) You can read more about that story here.

We’re not going to focus on the ins & outs of the Spitzer case, though. No, much like this classic Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover demonstrates the myopic tendencies of New Yorkers when thinking about the rest of the country…

…we’re going to zero in on how this news story affects the presidential campaign — after the jump!

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McCain says Thursday morning that the allegations are “untrue,” but the New York Times is reporting that John McCain’s aides tried to force a lobbyist to end all contact with the senator in the months leading up to the 2000 campaign:

“A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself - instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.”

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