Author: Michael O. Allen
Striking distance
Obama about to clinch victory, aide says From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
(CNN) – Barack Obama will formally capture the Democratic presidential nomination soon after next week’s final primaries, the Illinois senator’s top campaign aide is predicting.
In an interview with the New York Daily News, Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said that after the June 3 primaries in South Dakota and Montana, Obama will “be at the number we need to claim the nomination.”
“We’re very close now,” Axelrod said. “When the primaries end, I think, we’ll be where we need to be. … We’ll be at the number we need to claim the nomination.”
According to CNN’s latest estimate, Obama is now 52 delegates short of clinching the Democratic nomination while Clinton is 246 delegates short of the magic number. There are 86 pledged delegates up for grabs in the remaining three contests. Just over 200 superdelegates also have not publicly declared who they are supporting.
Obama is unlikely to clinch the nomination with pledged delegates alone, but his campaign has said it expects enough superdelegates will declare their support of the Illinois senator soon after the final two primaries.
Axelrod’s comments come two days after Bill Clinton suggested some are trying to “push and pressure and bully” superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely.
The former president also suggested Sunday that if the New York senator ended the primary season with an edge in the popular vote, it would be a significant development.
“If you vote for her and she does well in Montana and she does well in Puerto Rico, when this is over she will be ahead in the popular vote,” said Clinton.
Memorial Day
SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:
On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience today, our sense of patriotism is particularly strong. Because while we gather here under open skies, we know that far beyond the Oregon Mountains, in the streets of Baghdad and the outskirts of Kabul, America’s sons and daughters are sacrificing on our behalf. And our thoughts and prayers are with them.
Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas
Sen. Barack Obama offers a different vision for U.S.-Cuba relations and a new posture to the Americas.
Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas: Remarks of Senator Barack Obama before the Cuban American National Foundation, May 23, 2008 (as prepared for delivery)
It is my privilege to join in this week’s Independence Day celebration, and in honoring those who have stood up with courage and conviction for Cuban liberty. I’m going to take this opportunity to speak about Cuba, and also U.S. policy toward the Americas more broadly.
We meet here united in our unshakeable commitment to freedom. And it is fitting that we reaffirm that commitment here in Miami.
In many ways, Miami stands as a symbol of hope for what’s possible in the Americas. Miami’s promise of liberty and opportunity has drawn generations of immigrants to these shores, sometimes with nothing more than the clothes on their back. It was a similar hope that drew my own father across an ocean, in search of the same promise that our dreams need not be deferred because of who we are, what we look like, or where we come from.
Here, in Miami, that promise can join people together. We take common pride in a vibrant and diverse democracy, and a hard-earned prosperity. We find common pleasure in the crack of the bat, in the rhythms of our music, and the ease of voices shifting from Spanish or Creole or Portuguese to English.
These bonds are built on a foundation of shared history in our hemisphere. Colonized by empires, we share stories of liberation. Confronted by our own imperfections, we are joined in a desire to build a more perfect union. Rich in resources, we have yet to vanquish poverty.
Continue reading “Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas”
Women & Lizards
Lee & Donny
in politics . . .
ChattahBox
A First Lady of a different kind
CNN – 50 minutes ago
By Jonathan Mann (CNN) — Take a brilliant, strong-willed, American woman. Let her marry a rising politician, start a family, build a successful legal career, and then emerge as a polished public figure in her own right.
The War Over Michelle Obama TIME
Tenn. GOP Sen. Wants Obama Ad Pulled CBS News
New York Times – Reuters – Indianapolis Star – National Review Online
all 212 news articles »
POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: Friday, May 23, 2008
Compiled by Mary Grace Lucas, CNN Washington Bureau
Washington Post: POW Aftereffects in McCain Unlikely
Sen. John McCain’s 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam undoubtedly changed the course of his life. But now that he is 71, that remote trauma seems unlikely to shorten his life span or to lead to mental or physical conditions that are not already apparent.
LA Times: Obama makes moves for fall election
The Democratic front-runner looks for a running mate, talks with party officials and campaigns where it counts — all while trying not to overstep while Clinton is still in the race.
The Hill: GOP says troop cuts likely to help McCain
GOP Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid could receive a boost if additional troops are withdrawn from Iraq this fall, according to his Republican colleagues. The Arizona senator’s allies said Gen. David Petraeus’s remarks Thursday that he expects to recommend more troop withdrawals this fall would validate McCain’s arguments that last year’s troop surge was needed to stabilize Iraq.
NY Times: As Race Wanes, Talk of Clinton as No. 2 Grows
While Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers insist that she is determined to win the Democratic nomination, friends of the couple say that former President Bill Clinton, for one, has begun privately contemplating a different outcome for her: As Senator Barack Obama’s running mate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Obama to tour key Western states
(CNN) — Barack Obama will travel to three crucial swing states next week, the latest sign the Illinois senator is moving into the general election phase of his campaign.
As first reported by the Web site Talking Points Memo and confirmed by an Obama campaign aide, the Illinois senator plans to make stops in New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado next week.
Specifically, Obama will make stops in Las Cruces, New Mexico Monday, the Las Vegas area on Tuesday, and the Denver area on Wednesday.
No, wrong!
Ellen discusses gay marriage with McCain
Jezebel, where I first saw this, did not seem to have a problem with Ellen’s interview with McCain:
John McCain appeared on Ellen today, where he must’ve realized that he would be facing questions about his stance on legalizing gay marriage posed by an actual gay person that America adores. Ellen, who plans to get married to her girlfriend Portia de Rossi this summer, was firm without being too — oh, hell, I’ll just say it — Rosie O’Donnell-ish. McCain, of course, was not persuaded by her points, but he wished her “every happiness.”
I disagree and not respectfully either. It’s the old ‘separate but equal’ thing that the Supreme Court struck down however many decades ago. I think Ellen allowed herself to be disarmed by McCain (he works the same magic with much of the media). We “respectfully disagree” is actually horse-shit. McCain is wrong and Ellen should have not only told him that, she should not have given him an out with the “walk me down the aisle” line. I am really disappointed with Ellen in that exchange. If this is the price you pay to be seen on mainstream tv, I think it’s too much of a price for her to pay. Not worth it.
Let me tell you why this is important and why such encounters must not be cost-free for McCain like this one was.
John McCain is not a maverick, nor is he a moderate. He is an orthodox Republican. Just check his voting record. He is a right-wing ideologue who subscribes to a whole host of policy positions that are highly injurious to progressive causes.
But he masks this with a genial manner and a highly solicitous posture to the media, which help him win moderates and independents. He is so successful at this that even his right-wing friends often don’t see him as one of them. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to fall for that.
And every time someone like Ellen allows McCain to waltz through her studio scot-free (McCain was on your set to do business, Ellen! He was not there on a social call), we lose another opportunity to pin him down on what he truly believes.
Remember, the next President of the United States, the office McCain is running for, will make appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States. George W. Bush, another genial Republican candidate, “a uniter, not a divider,” gave us the John Roberts court, with Samuel Alito riding side-saddle.
Data point . . .
Sen. Jim Webb brought up another subject on that video:
Speaking of oil going to $130, we should all remember that the month that Congress approved this war in Iraq, oil was $24 (a barrel).
Asked about the spectacle of Pres. George W. Bush panhandling around Saudi Arabia, offering the royal family there inducements to increase oil production and, thereby, lowering the price of crude oil, he said:
It’s kind of sad when you think about the fact that what we need here is a comprehensive energy strategy that takes into account all the different aspects, including nuclear. We haven’t had a new nuclear power plant in something like 30 years. Nuclear is clean, it’s safe when it’s done right.
The president of the United States is offering the Saudis the capabilities to go to nuclear when we’re not talking about that here. We need a really dramatically different national strategy on energy and I think all of us are coming to that conclusion. It’s just how we get there from here.
So we are going to get the Saudis nuclear and they’re going to bleed out all the oil and get the capital–I’m not picking on just the Saudis–but they’re going to be able to capitalize their future while we’re draining ours. That doesn’t make any sense.
Webb
“Black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it’s, ‘if you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight,’ ” Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said in this video.
“If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government,” he added.
Listening to Jim Webb in this rather too brief snippet convinces me more than ever that he should be Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate. I don’t know if he’ll accept the vice-presidency but, I think, together, he and Obama could craft a message that could reshape the Democratic Party for generations to come.
I want to take race off the table as a wedge issue. I want to make the Republican Party a minority party that speaks to only a small percentage of Americans, the very wealthy. I believe in Webb and his wisdom. He should definitely be a part of the national dialogue.
He mentioned in the video a Wall Street Journal opinion-editorial article that he wrote in Oct. 2004. In Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish vote , Webb examined the Republican Party’s success wooing poor and working class whites to their cause:
To an outsider George W. Bush’s political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry.
Campaigning, hard
Obama praises (old) McCain
Now, we need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich friends and high-priced lobbyists, but as the defender of fairness and opportunity for every American. And let me be fair about this. Now, John McCain has agreed with me on some of the steps we need to make our government more ethical and accountable. Almost a decade ago, he offered a bill that, in his words, would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists. Let me repeat that.
This — ten years ago, John McCain offered a bill that said he would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists. And he did this because he said that having lobbyists on your campaign was a conflict of interest. This is what he said ten years ago.
Well, I’ll tell you that John McCain then would be pretty disappointed with John McCain now, because he hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington to run his campaign. And when he was called on it, his top lobbyists actually had the nerve to say, ‘The American people won’t care about this.’
Well, I think the American people do care about it and I know they have a clear choice in this election: we can either have a election in which we are taking on the root causes of special interests dominated politics in Washington or we can ignore the problem and we can wake up four years from now and still be talking about an energy crisis and still be talking about a health care crisis and still be talking about a tax code that’s not fair to you. I don’t want to wake up that way, neither do you.
That’s a choice we’ve got in this election. We’re going to change how politics is done in Washington.”
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