MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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vice presidency

Joe, himself

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Joe Biden in Springfield, IL

Sen. Joseph Biden’s remarks in Springfield, Ill., Saturday, after being introduced by Sen. Barack Obama as his vice presidential running mate.

Well, it’s great to be here! On the steps of the Old State House in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Today, Springfield, I know my feet are in the right place. And I am proud to stand firm for the next president of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Folks, Barack and I come from very different places, but we share a common story. An American story. He was the son of a single mom, a single mom who had to struggle to support her son and her kids. But she raised him. She raised him to believe in America. To believe that in this country there is no obstacle that could keep you from your dreams if you are willing to work hard and fight for it. I was different. I was an Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who like many of yours in tough economic times fell on hard times, but my mom and dad raised me to believe — it’s a saying, Barack, you heard me say before — my dad repeated it and repeated it. Said champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how quickly you get up. It’s how quickly you get up. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s your story. That’s America’s story. It’s about if you get up, you can make it.

That’s the America Barack Obama and I believe in. That’s the American dream. And ladies and gentlemen, these are no ordinary times, and this is no ordinary election. Because the truth of the matter is, and you know it, that American dream under eight years of Bush and McCain, that American dream is slipping away. I don’t have to tell you that. You feel it in your lives. You see it in your shrinking wages, and the cost of everything from groceries to health care to college to filling up your car at the gas station. It keeps going up and up and up, and the future keeps receding further and further and further away as you reach for your dreams. You know, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a mere political saying. I say with every fiber of my being I believe we cannot as a nation stand for four more years of this. We cannot afford to keep giving tax cuts after tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans while the middle-class America, middle-class families are falling behind and their wages are actually shrinking. We can’t afford four more years of a government that does nothing while they watch the housing market collapse. As you know, it’s not just the millions of people facing foreclosure. It’s the tens of millions of your neighbors who are seeing the values of their homes drop off a cliff along with their dreams.

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August 25, 2008
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No Hillary Roll Call at Convention

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The potential for Clinton (both Hillary and Bill) mischief is too great. Bill thinks he knows what’s best for Democrats and the country, and that’s for Hillary to be president.

RUSH “the Great Idiot” Limbaugh (speaking alternatively as himself and Bill Clinton): Remember all those times, ladies and gentlemen, I warned you never, ever trust a Clinton?  Nothing that happens with the Clintons is a coincidence?  Isn’t it interesting, with the Lord Barack Obama plunging in the polls, there’s a story today from the Huffington Post about how he’s losing in Pennsylvania, and they can’t believe it.  He ought to be cleaning up in Pennsylvania.  We can believe it.  We saw him lose Pennsylvania to Mrs. Clinton, and there was no evidence that he was going to pick up the votes that she won, so they’re all concerned about that.  And Bill’s out there now starting to give interviews about whether or not Obama is qualified, and of course Bill’s also doing some other things out there.  You know, he’s probably picking up the phone, he’s making phone calls.  You know he is. (doing Clinton impression) “Look, this guy can’t win.  Look at that media contention, went over there, went over there to Europe, and he’s plummeting in the polls.  The guy can’t win, he can’t win. His numbers are sliding.  I warned you. I warned this is going to happen.”  You know those phone calls are being made.  Mrs. Clinton, after earlier in the week saying she did not want her name placed in nomination at the convention, now says she does.

What’s to prevent HRC’s supporters, egged on by Bill behind the curtain, from hijacking the convention? If not for the nomination itselt, then for the VP slot (even if one had already be designated)? If not that, then some other outrageous demands.

Already, Clintonites are questioning why Obama is not up higher in the polls, despite their handing the McCain campaign a playbook to use to attack Obama.

Now, Clinton staffers, aided by some in the media, are asking questions about the Edwards affair and what impact it might have had on the nomination race if it had been known last year and Edwards was not in the race. As I remember, Edwards won no state (maybe one or two), his support nationwide, despite a galvanizing message, negligible.

HRC had the advantage of money, name-recognition and the entire Democratic party establishment and machinery behind her and lost to a virtual unknown, including a run of 11 straight loses at one point.

Some fear that Clinton’s mischief is not so much to get the nomination this time but to drive down Obama’s support so McCain wins so she can then run in 2012. HRC generously praised McCain during the primary, at one point even saying that she and McCain had crossed some leadership threshold that prepared them to lead the nation whereas all Sen. Obama had was some speech he made.

McCain’s campaign manager said over the weekend that he could consider making a pledge to serve only one term if elected.

Clinton is now saying that some of her supporters would like her quest to be validated with a roll call vote on the nomination on the convention floor in Denver. The roll call vote is usually a proforma affair, with the outcome foregone. Except, these are the Clintons we’re talking about.

Why won’t the Clintons just go away already?

August 11, 2008
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Jim Webb wrote

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of Class Struggle in the Wall Street Journal opinion editorial page. Some people think Sen. Barack Obama does not understand poor working people. I am not one of them. Obama came into politics because it has been his life’s work helping working people.

I understand Webb has other assets (and liabilities), but if he’s who it’ll takes to help Sen. Obama reconnect with this important demographic group, then I support him as our vice presidential nominee.

Here’s his article:

ELECTION 2006

Class Struggle: American workers have a chance to be heard by JIM WEBB, Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate “reorganization.” And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

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May 10, 2008
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Obama's VP choice

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My own candidate for Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee would be Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-KS. She is a wildly popular, twice-elected governor of a reliably Republican state, Kansas. She has a reputation as a consensus builder who works across the party lines to get the job done for voters. I had also thought that she may help Sen. Barack Obama assuage hurt feelings over defeating the strongest female candidate to ever run for president.

She was an early endorser of Obama who campaigned for him in several states. She is term-limited and cannot run for a third term.

Gerald Pomper, of the Board of Governors Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at Rutgers University, thinks he has a better candidate. Writing for Larry Sabato’s Crystall Ball ’08, Pomper advanced U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and argues persuasively that he would make a better choice on the ticket.

Webb is a former Republican who served as secretary of the Navy under Reagan, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and he is very vocal about his opposition to the current Iraq war, although he has a son serving there. Webb, in fact, matches McCain in war heroism and his younger and has better sense than McCain seems to have.

Webb also would bring specific political advantages to the Democratic ticket. His rural roots, vigorous language and championing of working class values would compensate for Obama’s evident weaknesses among these voters. Webb provides a populist platform on corporate regulation, trade, taxation and health care that would further extend the party’s appeal to its lower-income base. Born in Missouri, educated in Nebraska, California and the Naval Academy in Maryland, he encapsulates a national electoral appeal. Finally, to the limited extent that state residence matters, he would help to switch Virginia into the Democratic column for the first election since 1964.

Webb’s disadvantages include that he was a novelist who wrote some indecorous things about women. He can be blunt to the point of arrogance and once confronted George W. Bush in the White House about the war. Also, although he ran a highly contested U.S. senate race not too long ago, he might still need vetting.

May 9, 2008
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