Month: January 2008

A polling expert sees signs for optimism.

"I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that,’" – Bill Richardson, currently weighing whether to back the Illinois senator.

It’s alive and well among African-Americans as well.

A Florida poster – unaffiliated, of course, with the campaign – spins the primary.

A reader writes:

I am right-wing policy wonk, and pro-war at that, but what is going on transcends partisan politics.

I hear people call the comparisons to Camelot romanticized, but are they? Obama doesn’t cheat on his wife with movie stars, nor did he come from any familial wealth, especially that gained by (the equivalent of) drug dealing. It would seem an improvement over JFK, or more appropriately, a real human being that can match up to the image of the martyr JFK became.

The main reason I am voting Obama: maybe, if he is elected, people could go back to talking to each other about things that matter; and it might even be socially acceptable for people to change their mind upon reflection.

I tried not to watch it and failed. It felt phoned in. The contrast between the banal cheeriness of the president’s demeanor and the grave threats he faces was unsettling. It’s good for a president to have some emotional resilience in that job. But Bush seems almost pathologically detached from any real understanding of the effects of what he says and does. If you’re him, that’s probably a good thing. If you’re anybody else, it’s horrifying.

Los Angeles, California, 3.45 pm.

A reader writes:

I am volunteering in the Obama campaign office in the Silicon Valley – answering phones, greeting folks, etc. – for the past couple of weeks and thought you be interested in what I have seen:

A Chinese American young woman who lives in New Mexico and was on her way back home after a visit, stopped to get a bumper sticker; an African American male (60 or so) who hasn’t worked on a political campaign since Robert Kennedy’s; lots and lots of Stanford, community college and high school students of all races, religions, etc. doing hard computer work and making phone calls; the 40 something life-long Republican woman who came to change her registration and took almost half an hour to fill out the form because it was really hard for her to do but she did so she could vote in the Democratic primary; the teacher who was having difficulty deciding and just wanted to talk to someone about why we were supporting Obama and left – after signing up to make phone calls for the campaign; a 60 something white male who came in today to write a check – had been a committed Clinton supporter until Bill opened his mouth and he realized that it was still all about Bill; the hundreds of folks who made 21,000 phone calls from our office on Saturday alone as part of California’ s “Make 100,000 calls day” on Saturday… I could go on but I think you understand better than most what is happening ‘on the ground.’

It’s a coalition of the willing.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)