Category: Barack Obama

Is Obama’s campaign manager trying to spin bad forthcoming poll numbers? Noam’s take here.

Clinton isn’t blameless either:

What’s so interesting is how easily and quickly, after just a few early news accounts, the false notion that Obama is or was ever Muslim has made it into mainstream discourse.

A little antidote to the toxins of Daniel Pipes.

They’re whining about his nod to Schwarzenegger. Needlenose harrumphs here. But he’s a green conservative!

Read Ben Smith’s story on Obama’s tight, cohesive and non-leaky campaign. Compare it to Clinton’s drama-filled, conflict-ridden bandwagon. Now think of each one in the White House for four years. I know which management style serves the country best.

A reader writes:

In regards to your post that Obama’s support in rural NH is surprising; let me give you a little anecdotal evidence of his surprising support in rural central Pennsylvania:

I teach civics and government at a small rural public high school in central Pennsylvania … not exactly a hotbed of liberalism. In fact, in the mock election that I ran for the school in 2004 the students re-elected George Bush with nearly 70% of the vote. Of course now Bush couldn’t buy a compliment from the vast majority of my students, but more surprising to me than that is how they’ve turned to Obama in droves. 

We just finished a project in which we looked at six of the top Republicans and six of the top Democratic candidates and the students in my overwhelmingly white, rural, middle to lower middle class town are excited about Barack Obama.  I’ve been teaching at this school for 10 years and thought I had a pretty good understanding of the political pulse of my students and I never, never would have predicted his appeal.  It’s astounding.

But not surprising to me was who is running a distant second … Ron Paul.

A reader writes:

So far this month Mrs. Clinton has "apologized" for two Iowa county volunteer coordinators’ forwarding Obama-is-a-Muslim emails; Bill Shaheen does the Obama-is-a-druggie routine; Howard Wolfson goes on national TV and repeats it; Bill Clinton says we’re "rolling the dice" with Obama, and now Kerrey is "apologizing" for his Obama-went-to-a-Madrassa remarks.  This many events in a three-week span indicate a coherent plan.  If one accepts Mrs. Clinton’s explanations that these events are not what they obviously are, then the only other explanation would seem to be that she cannot control her campaign staff.  That seems fairly incompetent leadership for someone who claims to be ready to lead on day one.

This time from Bob Kerrey. He just couldn”t help himself.

This surprised me.

I’m struck by the lack of animus among even very partisan Republicans toward Obama. There are many reasons for Republicans to oppose his candidacy – especially those who still believe that the war on terror can be won by more war and more occupation and more torture. But even those with principled objections are oddly lacking in loathing for him. David Brooks is not alone in seeing a certain temperamental strength in the guy, a cool-headedness under fire. I keep getting emails like this one:

I was shocked by a phone conversation I had with my Dad last Friday evening.   My Dad is a doctor who reads the Wall Street Journal every day and certainly falls much more into the small government rump wing of the Republican party.  He has probably voted Republican in the last 5 or 6 presidential elections.  In 2000 and 2004 I desperately tried to convince him to consider Gore and Kerry – to no success.  I was taking a more passive approach this time around.  Completely unprompted, my father said that Obama was the only candidate worth getting excited about, and that all the others were a bunch of losers.  Even more surprising, he seems to have finally detected the perversion of conservatism created by the Christianist wing (I recommended your book a while back).  I think my Dad probably finds the prospect of a creationist president almost as horrifying as the prospect of Hillary as president.

Which to my mind is the crux of the Obama candidacy.  Obama, it seems, is a bit like Regan, in that he actually has the possibility of stealing all of those moderate republicans like my Dad to a democratic ticket.  Now if the Democrats would just realize the huge opportunity they’ve got to destroy the republicans next fall. 

Also, the latest spin from the Clinton campaign is truly shocking to me.  The whole line about there not being any “surprises” with her.   That she is tested.   I can’t think of anything further from the truth.  I live in NYC, and we all know that Bill hasn’t suddenly turned into a saint in the last 8 years.  We all know that on any day some new rumor (or truth!) could surface about him.  I think what I dread most about the prospect of another Clinton Presidency, beyond that it will do nothing to heal the rift in this country between red and blue, is that we’ll have to relive their familial psychodrama.  For me personally, none of that really matters, but we lived through this before with the media and the republicans.  As a democrat, I honestly can’t believe we want to go through it again. 

Last, the latest sleaze coming out of the Clinton campaign re Obama being a muslim and using drugs….  It is truly revolting.  People think she’s a phony because she is a phony.  I was neutral on her up until that point.  Now I loathe her.  She’s shown her true colors again…much as I tried to repress the memory.  I’d vote for McCain over her in a heartbeat.