Category: Barack Obama

Almost funny its so shameless:

I guess it’s because of the polls, but it looks like Hillary’s trying to trick us into believing she is, in actuality, Barack Obama. Twenty minutes after Ben Smith posted that she’d stolen the "Fired up, ready to go" line, Howard Wolfson went on Hardball and said that the great thing about Iowa was that Iowans were getting a chance to "check under the hood…kick the tires." Chris Matthews told him with a smirk, "You stole that line directly from Obama."

They’re like my high school students, staring at their neighbor’s test and hoping we can’t see their eyeballs.

When you have no inner core, it’s sometimes easier to borrow others’. God knows her husband did.

The fundamental appeal of the Obama candidacy, whatever party you belong to:

A stark contrast in tone and crowds: one older and more controlled, the other younger and more raucous. Yeah: take a wild guess whose they are. Meanwhile:

So many people came out for the rally in Sioux City that fire marshals limited the crowd to about 650 people, forcing a few hundred more into an overflow room.

Obamarama! The whole spectacle makes me fall in love with this crazy country all over again.

No idea whether this helps or hurts. Probably helps, right? It may come down to second-choices among the candidates who don’t make it to 15 percent. Clinton lags among them.

An expert names Obama and Paul the winners.

By all means necessary:

Sen. Barack Obama has had the most trouble winning support of older and rural voters, according to polls. In Cherokee, one Clinton precinct captain who asked that her name not be used questioned his prospects: “We’ve got to keep an eye on electability,” she said. “Is America ready for a black president?”

My pre-new years celebration here. I’m hurting a little bit right now, I have to say.

At least that’s what it looks like in the latest DMR poll: Obama 32, Clinton 25, Edwards 24:

In an indication of the Obama’s appeal in Iowa, Democratic caucusgoers say they prefer change and unity over other leadership characteristics. Selecting a candidate who represents a sharp departure from the status quo is 56-year-old Lansing Democrat John Rethwisch’s priority, and his main reason for backing Obama.

"I have been seeing more and more something Kennedy-esque coming from Obama," said Rethwisch, Lansing’s water and sewer administrator. "But it’s always a gamble when you get somebody in there who hasn’t got a proven track record."

More important is how Obama is winning – by appealing beyond core Democrats:

Clinton remains the favorite of the party faithful, with support from a third of self-described Democrats. However, Obama is the clear choice of caucusgoers who affiliate with neither the Democrat or Republican parties, with roughly 40 percent of them backing him in the survey.

The support from non-Democrats is significant because a whopping 40 percent of those planning to attend described themselves as independent and another 5 percent as Republican.

Obama wins the base and the center and right. If he can do that in a primary, think about what he could do in the general. Or New Hampshire. For the GOP, Huckabee also has a bigger lead in the poll than he has recently. Romney is still sweating, despite his barrage of ads. And McCain is coming up fast at 14. And Ron Paul is in fourth place! If Paul gets in the top four in Iowa, how will Fox keep him out of the New Hampshire debate?

Know hope.

(Photo: Jeff Haynes/Getty.)

Reza Aslan vents:

As someone who once was that young Muslim boy everyone seems to be imagining (albeit in Iran rather than Egypt), I’ll let you in on a secret: He could not care less who the president of the United States is. He is totally unconcerned with whatever barriers a black (or female, for that matter) president would be breaking. He couldn’t name three U.S. presidents if he tried. He cares only about one thing: what the United States will do.

I should point out that I did not argue that Obama’s face was sufficient for re-tooling America’s image in the Middle East. I said it was a huge advantage worth pondering in this election. I still think it is. There’s also a swipe that supporting Obama somehow absolves those of us who placed our trust in Bush at the beginning of this conflict. I don’t believe that. The fact that I admired a president who bungled a war, added $32 trillion to the next generation’s debt and made America a torturing nation is a matter of record – and some shame. This is not about me or anyone else in the pundit class. It is simply about what’s best for the US and the world. If Aslan has a candidate more suited to that task, he could always name him or her.

A reader writes:

Damn, talk about hitting the nail on the head. I’m also 29 and your reader’s email is dead on about our generation.  At this point I don’t know a single friend of my generation who doesn’t see Obama as the only viable candidate precisely because of his unifying pragmatism outside of the tired arguments of our parents generation.  He talks and looks like so many of us and our friends, while the other candidates seem to still be playing a game we are all too familiar with and have been disgusted by for a long time.

On a related note, I walked out of Juno the other day filled with great hope in our younger generation.  It is a great example of post boomer and post-90’s thought on abortion, marriage, love and life.  Between this and Obama I’m just about getting excited about the possibility for a rather bright future for us.