President George W. Bush announces the beginning of the Iraq
War in this March 19, 2003 evening address.
** CALIFORNIA QUICK HITS. Democratic operatives are confident that they can oust state Senator Jeff Denham from his San Joaquin Valley district in a recall vote now set for the June 3rd statewide primary. Denham drew their wrath for his role in holding up the state budget last summer, a move which yielded not much for the bloc of conservative Republicans behind the move. … Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger mused today about shifting the tax structure away from goods to services. Although he continues to oppose tax increases. Except for unspecified tax loophole closures. It’s trial balloon time, and the governor does like to usefully think aloud. … John McCain will be in California most of next week, hitting San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles for public events — the latter being a major address on national security and foreign policy to the LA World Affairs Council at the Bonaventure Hotel — and private fundraising there and in Northern California.
** THE HILLARY CLINTON WHITE HOUSE SCHEDULES: SOME PROBLEMS. Finally, after being sued by the conservative Judicial Watch group, most of Hillary Clinton’s White House schedules as first lady — with substantial elements left very vague, or redacted altogether — have just been put out.
Notes the Guardian: On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country’s onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut’s tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called “Hats on for Bella” in Washington.
In her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has touted her experience in the Clinton White House as preparation to lead the nation in a time of crisis. “Ready on day one” has been her slogan.
But an initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton’s schedules from her days as first lady, released today by the National Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, shows that she was often far from the site of decision-making during some of the most pivotal events of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Clinton, who was an accomplished attorney and first lady of Arkansas before moving to the White House, frequently claims more than 30 years experience in public life, contrasting herself with Barack Obama’s slimmer resume – he served several years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the US Senate in 2004.
The Clinton campaign claimed on Wednesday that the release of the papers would show Clinton to have been an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of the US. But the documents from her office in the White House threaten to undermine her claim to have played a major role in Clinton’s foreign policy decisions.
For instance, Clinton has said she helped negotiate the April 1998 Good Friday agreement between warring factions in Northern Ireland. But while Catholic and Protestant figures hashed out last-minute details of a power-sharing agreement in Belfast, Clinton was at the National Press Club in Washington at a party honouring Bella Abzug, a congresswoman from New York City who had died recently. While President Clinton phoned major participants in the peace talks, she met with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and joined a farewell party for Democratic operative Karen Finney. On the day the agreement was actually signed, she met with Philippine first lady Amelita Ramos.
When Nato launched air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country’s onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, Clinton toured ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut’s tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor, and stayed overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel there.
** SCUFFLING OVER IRAQ. On this anniversary of the announcement of the aerial bombardment of Iraq — five years ago tonight — the presidential candidates are scuffling over the war and its meaning. Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama gave a major speech today in North Carolina, just outside the base at Fort Bragg, home of key airborne and special operations forces, where he said: “The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was” and that he would shift the focus to “the battles that need to be won … against al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
“The war in Iraq,” Obama declared, “has emboldened Iran, which poses the greatest challenge to American interests in the Middle East in a generation, continuing its nuclear programme and threatening our ally, Israel. Instead of the new Middle East we were promised, Hamas runs Gaza, Hezbollah flags fly from the rooftops in Sadr City, and Iran is handing out money left and right in southern Lebanon.”
Continuing in this vein, Obama said: “The war in Iraq has emboldened North Korea, which built new nuclear weapons and even tested one before the administration finally went against its own rhetoric, and pursued diplomacy. The war in Iraq has emboldened the Taliban, which has rebuilt its strength since we took our eye off of Afghanistan. Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaida, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe haven in Pakistan — a thousand miles from Iraq.”
Obama, who opposed the invasion of Iraq as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, criticized John McCain for his little gaffe yesterday in Jordan, where the Republican candidate misspoke, saying that Iran is training Al Qaeda. Iran, as McCain clearly knows, has trained and equipped Shiite guerillas. Obama also criticized rival Hillary Clinton for her vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, but concentrated more on McCain and President George W. Bush, criticizing them for the quagmire.
While Clinton shot back that Obama did little as a senator to stop the war until he started running for president, the major exchange was with McCain and company.
In Obama’s view, the move into Iraq has created a “security gap” for the US.
While McCain toured Israel with fellow Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, McCain senior advisor Mark Salter fired back at Obama with a blistering memo, in which he said: “Senator Obama says that ending the war will not be easy, that ‘there will be dangers involved.’ Yet, in that patented way of his, he declines to name those dangers. Let me enumerate a few: al Qaeda, which is now on the run, will survive, claim victory and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the ‘tactics’ of the surge, still exist and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda, which would almost certainly ignite again civil war in Iraq, a civil war that could easily descend into genocide. To say that invading Iraq was used as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda is one thing. To pretend that our defeat there won’t provide an even bigger one is foolish supposition. Iran, which trains Shia extremists and is known to arm and equip Sunni extremists, a fact Senator Obama is apparently unaware of, will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, as will other countries in the region, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These are some of ‘dangers,’ that our premature withdrawal from Iraq will engender, and they all have the potential to destabilize the entire region. A realistic plan to prevent them from occurring is what people with experience in statecraft call ’strategy,’ something Senator Obama has not offered yet.”
** MICHIGAN RE-DO PRIMARY DIES. Despite a trip to Detroit this morning by Hillary Clinton, who hoped for a game-changing new contest at the end of the primary season, the bid to have a new primary held to make up for the illegitimate one held in January has failed. One of the key problems is that proponents of the do-over, mostly Clinton supporters, would not allow anyone who voted in the Michigan Republican primary, which did count, to vote in a re-done Democratic primary. Many independents and some Democrats voted for John McCain in the January Republican primary.
The initial shocked sample from the immediate aftermath of the incessant playing of the Jeremiah Wright video excerpts has rotated out of the track.
Both Obama and Clinton trail John McCain in this poll by six points.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama campaigns in Fayetteville and Charlotte, North Carolina. He will deliver a major address on the Iraq War, near Fort Bragg.
Hillary Clinton campaigns in Detroit, Michigan and in Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia. She is going to Detroit in a last-ditch bid for a do-over of the illegitimate Michigan primary, in which she claimed victory in January.
Bill Clinton campaigns across Pennsylvania, in Bethlehem, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, and Stroudsburg.
** CLINTON RELEASING FIRST LADY SCHEDULES. Hillary Clinton, under fire for not releasing information about her activities as first lady, presidential pardons, the post-presidential riches of herself and former President Bill Clinton, and the identity of the contributors to the $500 million Clinton Presidential Library, today releases most of her schedules from the White House years.
Barack Obama’s campaign focuses in on Hillary Clinton’s role
in authorizing the Iraq War.
** DENHAM RECALL IS ON. Republican state Senator Jeff Denham, who incurred the wrath of Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata for his role in holding up the California state budget last summer, got bad news late yesterday. Secretary of State Debra Bowen has certified a recall election against him. Perata and state Democrats succeeded in gather some 60,000 signatures to qualify the recall vote. Which I’m told will take place the day of the June 3rd statewide primary election.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger continues his push for California budget reform this morning in a meeting with East Bay local elected officials, business, and community leaders. The event will be webcast live at 10:40 AM.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern affirms that Hillary Clinton was
very helpful in the Northern Ireland peace process.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Barack Obama’s speech responding to the Jeremiah Wright
controversy, on race in America, this morning in Philadelphia.
** THE WRIGHT/WRONG EFFECT.A new CBS News national poll shows that most who have heard of the Jeremiah Wright comments — and it’s not a majority, despite all the fuss — say they don’t care that much. But of those who do, it’s very negative. Among Democrats, the damage is limited, as I suspected at the end of last week. 76% say their view of Barack Obama is unchanged, while 15% say they think less of the presidential frontrunner for the association with his former pastor. Among all voters, 65% say their view is unchanged, but 30% say they view more Obama more negatively as a result. Clearly something Obama needed to get in front of. Which he has done with a speech which will undoubtedly lead to ongoing discussions of race in America for weeks and months to come.
** THE OBAMA SPEECH: SHORT FORM (RE-PUBLISHED). I wrote this a few hours ago, but don’t see it. Eh, technology. Barack Obama’s speech this morning in Philadelphia was clearly quite the success. (Um, which may be why I have the video and full text on NWN.) Obama may well have locked up the Democratic presidential nomination today, not that he did not have a strong grasp on the prize before, as readers are well aware. But what does it mean for the country? What does it mean for a general election race against John McCain, should the Clintons continue to fail in their relentless efforts to derail the tyro Illinois senator?
For that, we will have a column tomorrow. Because Obama is not exactly out of the woods here.
** MICHIGAN RE-DO PRIMARY PROBABLY DEAD. In another blow to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, the make-over Michigan primary now appears dead. Michigan jumped the queue, violating Democratic National Committee rules that all the candidates agreed upon, to go early. Clinton nonetheless declared victory there, after ending up as the only major candidate to leave her name on the ballot. Despite her claim it was obvious she would get no delegates from the Motor State, nor any votes to make up her gap in the popular vote against Barack Obama. Her backers pushed for a re-vote in Michigan on June 3rd. But the do-over required a two-thirds vote in the Michigan Legislature, and Republicans were not anxious to pay the freight. In addition, the Clinton campaign was too cute by half. When you read the actual plan their allies put forth, you discovered that anyone who voted in the Republican primary in January — the only one which counted, mind you — was barred from voting in the real Democratic primary in June.
Obviously, a great many independents voted for John McCain in January. Many of them would have voted for Obama in a real Michigan primary. As the Clinton campaign was very well aware.
I wonder if the Clinton campaign really wanted another Michigan primary. Unlike Florida, where Clinton would have been favored, Michigan looked to me like a true toss-up.
Next move for the Clintons, with the Florida and now Michigan make-over votes now dead? Attempts to have the delegates she “won” in these states seated at the convention. In my view as an analyst, not to mention someone who in an earlier life served on many committees of the national Democratic Party (as well as a member of Veterans for McCain), it ain’t gonna happen.
** OBAMA SPEECH ON RACE IN AMERICA: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama speaks and campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton campaigns in Philadelphia and Millersville, Pennsylvania.
Bill Clinton campaigns across Indiana in Lawrenceburg, Richmond, and Fort Wayne.
John McCain continues his tour of the Middle East and Europe.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST ON BUDGET REFORM THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger discusses California budget reform with local elected officials, business, and community leaders from the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino Counties) in this live webcast at 9:45 AM.
New York investor/publisher Mort Zuckerman thinks the US is
in its worst economic crisis in decades.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
John McCain celebrated the 35th anniversary of his release from
the Hanoi Hilton over the weekend.
** OBAMA SPEECH ON RACE IN AMERICA TOMORROW MORNING. Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama will give what is described as a major speech on race in America tomorrow morning at 7:15 AM Pacific at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Given the furor over some of his former pastor’s statements, I expect it will be covered live on all cable news nets.
The US military surge has achieved some successes in Iraq. But the surge alone is not a solution. More things, which go under the rubric of political reconciliation, have to occur for there to be a lasting solution. One of those key things is successful negotiation with Iran, which has been moving in fits and starts. The presence of McCain signals Iran that maybe they shouldn’t wait to deal with another president after George W. Bush, and should in fact cut a deal now. McCain has a decent chance of winning the White House in November. His presence indicates a continuity with the current policy, which he championed into existence.
** TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY REJECTS CLINTON CAMPAIGN CHALLENGE TO CAUCUSES WON BY OBAMA. Following Barack Obama’s victory in the Texas Democratic caucuses, in which more than one million people participated, which gave Obama a victory in the overall Texas primary/caucuses, Hillary Clinton’s campaign tried to block the next phase of selection of national convention delegates. The Texas Democratic Party has just released this statement to NWN from Texas Democratic chairman Boyd Richie: The Texas Democratic Party and local Democratic Party organizations around our state are working to turn the enormous opportunity created by the record Democratic turnout experienced on March 4th into a positive outcome for Texas Democrats this fall and in 2010. We are proud of both our Presidential candidates who helped create that turnout. We ask now that the campaigns work with us rather than become an impediment to this extraordinary opportunity to build our party.
On March 4th, our Democratic precinct conventions experienced record turnout of roughly one million precinct convention attendees, a ten-fold increase from the previous high attendance mark. As expected in any record turnout involving hundreds of thousands of people, there were reports of problems caused by long lines and crowded facilities. These problems are not unique to Texas. Similar problems, in proportionately similar numbers, occurred in pure caucus states like Iowa and Nevada.
The overwhelming majority of problems reported in Texas do not affect the legitimacy of delegate allocation. It is important to remember that the precinct conventions are just the first of three steps where delegates and alternates are selected. “Final results” will not be determined until June 6-7 at the Texas Democratic State convention. And at each convention step, Texas Democratic Party rules provide a credentials process to address problems and provide an avenue to register complaints and make formal challenges
For that reason, the Texas Democratic Party will not do as suggested by one campaign and circumvent Party rules to set up an unnecessary, ad hoc “verification” process that could effectively disqualify delegates selected at their precinct conventions after the fact. The Party has never stated any intention to set up a verification process of this nature because Party rules already provide for “verification” through our credentials process. Candidates who wish to disqualify delegates must pursue formal challenges based on evidence filed appropriately in accordance with our party’s rules.
The Texas Democratic Party plans to conduct our district and county conventions on March 29 and our June State Convention in accordance with procedures set forth in Texas law and party rules. Both campaigns have the opportunity and responsibility to do their jobs by documenting evidence, filing challenges if warranted, and turning out their delegates in a system that rewards such an effort when final delegate results are determined at the State Convention in June.
** NO FLORIDA MAKE-OVER PRIMARY. As I’ve been suggesting, there will be no make-over vote for the Florida primary, nor will the result from late January stand as a legitimate primary. This is a serious blow to Hillary Clinton’s hopes for a comeback, as she “won” big in the first primary — which everyone agreed would not count — and would have been favored to win by a good margin in a re-vote.
** CNN NATIONAL POLL: OBAMA OVER HILLARY. It runs counter to my gut instinct, but a new CNN poll conducted Friday through Sunday night has Barack Obama holding a solid lead over Hillary Clinton, 52% to 45%.
The Rasmussen robopoll, reflecting a short-term hit from the Wright controversy, gives Obama only a two-point edge, 46% to 44%, over Clinton.
** MARKETS ROLLER COASTER. The New York stock market has yo-yoed up and down and up today. Markets in Asia and Europe are down. Crude oil plummeted over $5 a barrel today on expectations of a global economic slowdown, if not recession. The dollar hit a new low against the euro. Gold is at a record high.
With the fall of Bear Stearns, is another Wall Street investment banking firm looking to go down? Some say Lehman Brothers is a prime candidate. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve is making government funds available to Wall Street firms to stem a liquidity crisis.
Bear Sterns, by the way was valued at $63 a share a week ago. $30 a share at the close of business this past Friday. And $2 a share when it was taken over yesterday.
** CLINTON SPEECH OVERSHADOWED BY OBVIOUS EVENTS. Hillary Clinton’s advertised major address on Iraq was simply a restating of her old proposals repackaged into attacks on John McCain (who she says would continue the Bush strategy, which is actually a new strategy that McCain pushed through) and Barack Obama (for not doing enough to end the war, though her campaign says they vote the same on the war now, so …). It’s completely overshadowed, predictably, by the wild economic news over the weekend and today.
The Clinton brain trust needs a vacation.
** SCHWARZENEGGER STUMPS FOR BUDGET REFORM. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning up a half-hour late in Fresno this morning, kicked off a round of campaigning for California budget reform.
“Budget reform,” says Schwarzenegger, “is the foundation we need for everything else we value in California including education, health care and public safety. California’s “feast-or-famine” cycle and automatic spending threatens the state’s long-term fiscal stability, jeopardizes funding for core programs and leaves the most vulnerable victim to erratic, unpredictable assistance.”
Joined by Fresno Mayor Alan Autry and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, Schwarzenegger says he wants to set up a “rainy day fund” in good revenue times to tide over programs — which he says should continue to grow — when revenues are down. And wants the ability to trigger cuts if necessary, though the exact form of the proposal is still not set.
He also wants to tie budget reform with passage of the next state budget, something which will be a struggle. However, a key Democrat, state Senator Dean Florez was also on hand, participating in a fairly freewheeling little town discussion with Schwarzenegger and others. He said that crisis could well make it easier to gain passage this year.
Intriguingly, Schwarzenegger took credit for putting $45 billion back into the California economy via his first year moves of restructuring the workers compensation reform system, “$25 billion,” and cutting the car tax, “$20 billion,” in his first year as governor. One of the ironies is that, had the car tax not been cut, the state budget problem would be relatively minor.
Obama has taken a predictable hit, though not a huge hit, in tracking polling over the weekend, in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright videos.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama campaigns in Monaca and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War (which actually began March 20th) in Washington, D.C. and attends the inauguration of New York’s new governor, David Paterson, in Albany.
John McCain is on his tour of the Middle East and Europe.
** NO MORE REZKO? Lost in the shuffle of furor — can there be a shuffling furor? — around Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary statements, Barack Obama sat down with the Chicago press Friday afternoon to answer all their questions about his relationship with political fixer Tony Rezko.
You’ll notice I’ve never said much about this. You know, Rezko helped the Obamas buy their house, raised money for him, etc. My gut instinct was that it was ultimately not a very big deal. The Chicago press, which has been relentless on the issue, now seems to agree.
From the editorial in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama waited 16 months to attempt the exorcism. But when he finally sat down with the Tribune editorial board Friday, Obama offered a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives.
The most remarkable facet of Obama’s 92-minute discussion was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST ON BUDGET REFORM THIS MORNING. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with local elected officials in Fresno and discusses what he sees as the need for reform of California’s budget process. The event will be webcast live at 10:05 AM.
THE MORNING COLUMN
The week ahead in presidential politics will be dominated by the continuing crisis in the credit markets, John McCain’s tour of the Middle East and Europe, and ongoing reverberations around race in the Democratic contest, notably the outrageous remarks of frontrunner Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
It’s beyond the scope of this column to get into the markets situation, but that and the ongoing economic slowdown which some economists say is a recession will only further economic disquiet as the number one issue in the presidential race.
Next to McCain, who is touring the Middle East and Europe this week. And who celebrated the 35th anniversary of his release from the Hanoi Hilton over the weekend, as seen in the video above.
The ongoing Democratic fight, and Hillary Clinton’s fateful decision to place her purported national security crisis management credentials in contrast to Obama’s inexperience front and center in the race, is a big opportunity for McCain. Polls show that he is quite competitive with both Democrats in general election match-ups. National security and foreign relations are unique strengths for the man who is probably America’s most famous Vietnam War hero. As someone who’s served more than 20 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain has the sort of experience Hillary can only dream of, and has traveled the globe meeting with established and up-and-coming leaders.
This is McCain’s eighth trip to Iraq, and comes in advance of General David Petraeus’s return to the US next month to report on the situation there. McCain, of course, championed the change in strategy in Iraq which has led to a number of successes there of late. Sectarian violence and U.S. and civilian casualties have all gone down. But a lasting solution in Iraq is still not at hand. Next week, McCain will give his own report in the form of a major address on national security affairs in Los Angeles, before the LA World Affairs Council.
McCain has visited every region of the world, including Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, and has been on the ground in the wild terrain of Waziristan, one of the regions of Pakistan in which Al Qaeda and Taliban forces have safe havens. On this trip, he’s meeting with the leaders of Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Britain, and France.
The meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom McCain has already met three times, will be particularly interesting. For McCain is doing what Sarkozy did; run to succeed an unpopular president of his own party. A major difference being, of course, that Sarkozy was actually a minister in the ruling government, whereas McCain has the advantage of being a rather independent senator of the president’s party. Still, there are major similarities which I’ll return to in a future column.
While it made sense for Clinton, in her attempt to mount a comeback against Obama, to run the famous “3 AM” TV ad, it plays right into McCain’s hands. And Clinton has gotten no closer to winning out over Obama. Actually, since her ballyhooed comeback on March 4th, Hillary has lost further ground to Obama in the race for earned delegates — most of John Edwards’ Iowa delegates broke for Obama over the weekend, and a trickle of superdelegates to Obama continues with none going to Hillary — and Obama has regained his lead in national polls.
Obama also got the best of last week’s controversy over key Hillary backer and 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, who claimed that the Democratic presidential frontrunner is where he is because he’s a black man, the media is sexist, and she was being criticized for her views only because she is white.
But he’s not getting the best of the controversy over his former pastor’s outrageous statements. The only saving grace for Obama is that, at least on the current facts, it’s a survivable situation for him.
I’ve spoken with figures in both the Hillary Clinton and John McCain campaigns, and neither is under the impression that Obama is anywhere near being finished by this controversy. Though he is getting easier for McCain to run against in the general election.
Wright has made a variety of inflammatory statements, including the allegations that the US government caused AIDS, the 9/11 attacks may have been karmic retribution for US military moves abroad including the nuking of Japan, that blacks continue to be oppressed by whites, that a black Jesus was killed by whites (in the form of Roman Italians), and so forth. Some of this stuff is clearly vicious nonsense.
The only good things for Obama here is that he didn’t say this stuff himself. And the canard that he’s really a Muslim has probably been put to rest.
Of course, conservative blogs — such as here, and here — are loving it.
My personal observation: I’ve heard this kind of thing before in black churches, having visited them with Democratic and Republican politicians, as well as on my own. A common thread with a number of religions is an ideology of oppression justifying a self-righteous anger. Which may have, well, more than a little to do with one of history’s great and terrible constants: Religious-based warfare.
Much of the black church is steeped in a seething anger. Some on the right blame it on the ’60s left. Actually, it goes back to slavery. Some of my Virginia ancestors owned black slaves, which of course makes the descendants of those slaves a unique population in America. At some point, you stop apologizing for the past. That doesn’t mean the anger doesn’t continue.
Obama finally got around to addressing the issue of his longtime pastor’s comments on Friday afternoon in this column on the Huffington Post. Does Obama address this stuff adequately? You be the judge. I wouldn’t sit through any of those comments by Wright that have been played over and over. (And Obama says that he did not.) Should he have stayed with the church, Trinity United Church of Christ, which is quite popular and also gives him street cred in the black community? A lot of people are forgetting that as recently as last October, Hillary actually had a big lead over Obama among black voters. And that many older black leaders criticized Obama for not being “black enough.”
All this will play out over time. Obama also went on the three main cable news channels, including Fox News with its Hannity & Colmes show. As is not uncommon, the shoutfest side of Fox News overplayed its hand. Sean Hannity, who crusaded against John McCain to no avail and learned nothing from the experience, disqualified himself in real time from interviewing Barack Obama — Hannity announced that Obama is “finished” as a presidential candidate and is not fit to serve in the Senate — so the interview was conducted by correspondent Major Garrett.
Between Hillary making national security crisis management a top issue and Obama having associates who say dumb and offensive things, there is ample reason for pollster Scott Rasmussen to call McCain “the luckiest man on the planet since Ringo Starr.”
But McCain, like other Republicans, has some problems in the religion area. There’s Rev. Rod Parsley, who, as the conservative Times of London notes, McCain called his “spiritual guide.”
Says Parsley: “I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.”
There’s Rev. John Hagee, who denounces Catholics in terms so vehement I don’t want to repeat them. There’s Jerry Falwell, who said after 9/11 that New York deserved to be attacked for its wickedness.
The good thing for McCain is he’s not actually a member of their churches. The better thing for McCain is that the Democrats are talking about this stuff while he gets to talk about his favorite issue areas of national security and geopolitics. And the ongoing Democratic contest, which is still likeliest to end in an Obama nomination victory, allows McCain the time to develop his themes and hone a message on the economy.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
But by all means, let’s get back to discussing political sex scandals and the errant words of the associates of presidential candidates.
WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
John McCain is in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq on a fact-finding/meta-presidential campaign tour with fellow members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, notably his buddies Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman.
That’s because at least half the John Edwards backers there — he finished second to Obama, with Hillary Clinton third — are going with Obama. The rest are sticking with Edwards.
** THE WEEKEND OF A TUMULTUOUS WEEK. Well, after the end of an unprecedented eleven-week string of rapid-fire presidential primaries and caucuses — and a turbulent week marked by matters of race, gender, and private lives that essentially obscured any real discussion of public policy — things will be a bit more sedate on NWN.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is campaigning in Indiana.
Hillary Clinton is campaigning in Pennsylvania.
John McCain is preparing for his trip to the Middle East and Europe.
** ANNIVERSARY FOR MCCAIN. 35 years ago, John McCain was released from the Hanoi Hilton. I’ll get into that, with video, on Monday.
** F1 STARTS … TONIGHT!The new season of Formula One racing begins tonight at 9:30 PM with the Australian Grand Prix. The seven-month, 18-race circuit will span the globe before the F1 world driving championship is determined. Last year it came down to the final race of the season, in Brazil, and in the end the champion was separated from the next two by only one point.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Barack Obama’s former longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
delivers an incendiary sermon in which he says a black Jesus was
oppressed by whites and “Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger.”
6:50 PM UPDATE: As is not uncommon, the shoutfest side of Fox News overplayed its hand. Sean Hannity, who crusaded against John McCain to no avail and learned nothing from the experience,, disqualified himself in real time from interviewing Barack Obama, so the interview was conducted by correspondent Major Garrett. Obama said he wasn’t around for the various outrageous comments. Why he stuck with the guy? He had some answers. I’ll have to review my tape to see if I actually buy them. In any event, he didn’t make a fool of himself.
Meanwhile, the show replayed the Jeremiah Wright stuff repeatedly, including a Hannity & Colmes interview with Wright — in which Wright actually came off better than I expected, although at least one of the hosts doesn’t seem to get it — and had panels stacked with conservatives and a few Democrats, only one of which I’ve heard of. That would be Bob Beckel, who was not so quietly furious.
Not too clever of the Fox producers … Having fired talk show host Melanie Morgan on. Offhand, I forget which of her ridiculous comments she was fired for, but it might come to me over the weekend.
6:10 PM UPDATE: Barack Obama is about to appear on Hannity & Colmes on Fox News. Hannity has just announced that Obama is “finished” as a presidential candidate and is not fit to serve in the Senate.
** WRIGHT/OBAMA UPDATE: Barack Obama is appearing tonight on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC to discuss the various inflammatory statements by his longtime and now former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (See the video above.) Wright is now no longer a member of the Obama campaign’s African American religious advisory committee.
** OBAMA FINALLY ADDRESSES WRIGHT STATEMENTS. Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has finally addressed the latest round of past statements by former pastor Jeremiah Wright unveiled in the media — some of them in the incendiary video above — with this column on the Huffington Post.
Wright has made a variety of inflammatory statements, including the allegations that the US government caused AIDS, the 9/11 attacks may have been karmic retribution for US military moves abroad including the nuking of Japan, that blacks continue to be oppressed by whites, that a black Jesus was killed by whites (in the form of Roman Italians), and so forth.
Of course, conservative blogs — such as here, and here — are loving it.
My personal observation: I’ve heard this kind of thing before in black churches, having visited them with Democratic and Republican politicians. A common thread with a number of religions is an ideology of oppression justifying a self-righteous anger. Which may have, well, more than a little to do with one of history’s great and terrible constants: Religious-based warfare.
Does Obama address this stuff adequately? You be the judge. I wouldn’t sit through any of that stuff. (And Obama says that he did not.) But then, I’m certainly not one of the more religious folks around.
The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.
As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Let me repeat what I’ve said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
With Rev. Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.
** NATIONAL GALLUP POLL: OBAMA LEADS CLINTON.In the new Gallup Poll, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton, 50% to 44%.
Clinton and Obama were tied, 45% to 45%, the day before the March 4th primaries in which Clinton hoped to stop Obama in his tracks.
Both Democrats are tied with John McCain.
** HUGE CLINTON LEAD IN PENNSYLVANIA. The new Strategic Vision poll of the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary on April 22nd shows Hillary Clinton with a huge lead over Barack Obama, 56% to 38%.
This may be Hillary’s strongest state outside her home state of New York. It’s an old-line state, dominated by older voters and traditional constituencies. Her longtime advisor, CNN commentator James Carville, describes it as “Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in between.” The primary is closed to independents. Governor Ed Rendell is very popular, and is pushing hard for her with his political machine. And former President Bill Clinton remains quite popular there.
** SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAN TOM MCCLINTOCK KICKS OFF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN TOMORROW. Longtime Southern California state Senator Tom McClintock, the state’s leading right-wing politician now termed out of the Legislature by term limits, kicks off his campaign for a Northern California seat in Congress tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM with a speech to volunteers at his Roseville campaign headquarters outside Sacramento.
Then he, and they, will walk precicnts from 11 AM to 2 PM.
McClintock has spent his entire career representing Southern California districts in the state Assembly and Senate. Interspersed in there are four losing campaigns for statewide office, including for governor in the 2003 recall and lieutenant governor in 2006. He also ran unsuccessfully for a Southern California seat in Congress. Now he seeks to win DC corruption scandal figure John Doolittle’s seat. But he faces stiff opposition from former Sacramento area Congressman Doug Ose, and, should he win the primary, from the Democrats in the former of retired Air Force Colonel Charles Brown.
** MICHIGAN RE-DO PRIMARY MOVING FORWARD AS FLORIDA FADES.A Michigan do-over primary appears to be moving forward even as the prospect of a Florida do-over primary fades. The Michigan primary, a make-up for the event that violated party rules in January and didn’t count, despite Hillary Clinton’s claim of victory there, could take place on June 3rd. That’s the same day as Montana and South Dakota, where Barack Obama is favored. In the latest polling, Obama and Clinton are deadlocked in Michigan. In contrast to Florida, where Clinton would start out with a big edge.
A blue-ribbon group of four top Michigan Democrats formed to seek a resolution met in Washington on Thursday with top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign and by conference call, separately, with Barack Obama’s camp. They are looking for a compromise acceptable to the state party, the Democratic National Committee and both presidential campaigns.
Members of the blue-ribbon group are U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Democratic National Committee member Debbie Dingell and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. Sources close to the negotiations said the talks were centering on a state-run, privately financed June primary of voters who would be willing to declare themselves Democrats.
A compromise may be announced as early as today, the sources said, but they added that details must be negotiated, including figuring out how the party declaration would work, nailing down $10 million or more in private financial backing and securing legislative and gubernatorial approval to call the election.
With the Arctic ice cap melting, the US, Russia, and Canada have launched
a race for the vast store of hydrocarbon resources beneath the North Pole.
** THE COMING ARCTIC OIL RUSH. In one of history’s emerging great ironies, the melting of the Arctic ice cap is setting off an oil rush. Some 25% of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves are estimated by some to be situated at the planet’s North Pole. In the past year, the fabled Northwest Passage has begun to emerge in what was once an utterly ice-locked sea.
“The increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region with potential consequences for international stability and European security interests,” EU High Representative Javier Solana wrote in a presentation to EU leaders.
The growing strategic pressure in the region is “illustrated by the recent planting of the Russian flag under the North Pole” and it “challenges Europe’s ability to effectively secure its trade and resource interests in the region,” Solana wrote.
In recent years the rapid warming of the Arctic environment has driven the pack ice farther north than ever before, opening up new maritime routes around the north of Europe, Asia and North America and making new territories open to mineral exploitation. The most striking example came on August 2, when a Russian submarine dropped a Russian flag on the sea-bed under the North Pole in a bid to lay claim to the territory. But that claim is strongly contested by the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway – all states with a strong Arctic presence.
** EBAY’S WHITMAN JOINS MCCAIN CAMPAIGN. Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of eBay, will join John McCain’s team, serving as national co-chair. In addition to raising money, Whitman will be a prominent surrogate for McCain.
Under the leadership of Whitman and others over the past 10 years, eBay has grown from a start-up with 30 employees and $4 million in revenue to a Fortune 500 company with nearly 15,000 employees and almost $8 billion in revenue. The company has enjoyed more than 40 consecutive quarters of sequential revenue growth since its initial public offering in September 1998. More than a million people around the world make all, or part of their living on eBay.
Whitman has held multiple positions in the corporate world, most notably serving as a vice president of Bain & Company, a management consulting, venture capital, and corporate takeover firm.
It was there that Harvard MBA Whitman met Mitt Romney, the great right hope in the Republican presidential primaries for whom she served as national finance co-chair. Whitman, who is also a friend of former Virginia Senator George Allen, is touted by some Republicans as a possible candidate for governor of California in 2010.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCASTS TODAY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will hold two live webcast events today.
At 10:15 AM, he has a press conference at the Milken Foundation in Santa Monica to discuss the release of the report of his advisory committee on education excellence. That event will be webcast live.
At 12 noon, Schwarzenegger participates in the Wall Street Journal’s “ECO:nomics” conference in Santa Barbara. There he will discuss economic growth through the development of green technology. The event will be webcast live.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
Left-of-center cable icon Keith Olbermann rips into the Clinton
campaign for its practices in last night’s 10-minute commentary.
** DEMOCRATIC DEBATES ON TAP NEXT MONTH. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have agreed to two Democratic presidential debates next month. On April 16th, the two will square off in Philadelphia in a debate to be aired on ABC. On April 19th, they will meet again in a city yet to be determined in North Carolina, for a debate on CBS. If Clinton agrees, that is. The Clinton campaign has not yet accepted the second debate, to be moderated by CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
** SUPPORT FOR IRAQ POLICY FINALLY ON UPSWING. According to a new Pew Research national poll, 53% of Americans now think that “the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” in Iraq. That figure is up from 42% in September 2007.
The number of Americans who believe the war in Iraq is going “very well” or “fairly well” is also up, from 30% in February 2007 to 48% today.
This is not to say that the situation cannot go south again.
But in the meantime, half of self-identified independents polled now believe the US should “keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized.”
The upswing in support for the Iraq policy — or actually, the latest Iraq policy — corresponds with the resurgence of John McCain’s presidential candidacy.
** FLORIDA RE-DO PRIMARY DEAL FALLING APART. A touted re-do primary offered late yesterday by Florida Democratic Party leaders, backed by the Hillary Clinton campaign, appears to be falling apart. Scheduled for June 3rd — coincidentally the same day as the South Dakota and Montana contests, in which Barack Obama is favored — the primary would have utilized a vote-by-mail procedure (privately funded) with some in-person voting centers.
As my neighbors in Oregon can attest, vote-by-mail elections can work well. But in Oregon, it took about 10 years before they adequately dealt with various logistical and legal concerns. June 3rd is a lot closer than a decade away. And, since this would be an election and not a caucus, and a very different sort of election than has ever been conducted before in Florida, the US Department of Justice would probably have to approve it. On a major fast track. Also, mail-in elections appear to be illegal in Florida. Oops.
I’m not surprised by these obvious problems. Are you? So, back to square one, apparently.
** NEW OIL PRICE RECORD, CALPERS ADJUSTS INVESTMENT STRATEGY. Oil hit yet another new price record today — $111 per barrel — as the dollar hit another record low against the euro and gold surged over $1000 an ounce.
We’d already seen the rise of commodities speculators and entrepreneurs to financial preeminence, reflected by the fact that Moscow has just surpassed New York as the global capital of billionaires.
** RASMUSSEN NATIONAL POLL: OBAMA BACK ON TOP. The new Rasmussen robopoll has Barack Obama back on top among Democratic voters nationally, 48% to 41% over Hillary Clinton.
Among African-American voters, Obama leads 81% to 7%. Among white voters, Clinton leads 50% to 39%. Among women, Clinton leads by eleven, 51% to 40%. Among men, Obama leads by thirty-two, 60% to 28%.
Among white women, Clinton leads by twenty-eight. She trails by fourteen among white men.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain all attend to their Senate duties in Washington, D.C. McCain also has a fundraiser in Philadelphia, while Bill Clinton has fundraisers in New York.
** OIL TAX HIKE DRILL FAILS IN CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE. Not surprisingly, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s move to impose an oil severance tax as part of a solution to California’s chronic budget crisis failed late yesterday in the Assembly. The bill lost on a party line vote, 45-30.
California is the only major oil producing state in the US without an oil severance tax. 22 other states, including Texas, have such a tax.
Nunez tied the oil tax to pending cuts in public education funding, but to no avail. Now, that is. This is part of a kabuki that will play out for months before finding some sort of resolution this summer.
** CALIFORNIA EMINENT DOMAIN REFORM MEASURE ALSO ELIMINATES RENT CONTROL AND RENTERS RIGHTS LEGISLATION. Proposition 98 on California’s June statewide ballot has raised 80% of its funding — now something over $2 million — from landlords interests. The initiative, by an odd coincidence, would abolish local rent control ordinances and other renters rights laws regarding notice of eviction and return of deposits.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After hitting a new record of $110.70 in earlier trading, crude oil is trading up in record territory in the $109 to $110 per barrel range, after hitting an earlier all-time record of $110.20 per barrel yesterday.
Barack Obama last night on Hardball after his landslide Mississippi victory.
** NEW NATIONAL POLL BAD FOR REPUBLICANS, GOOD FOR MCCAIN.A brand-new Wall Street Journal poll shows that, by 50% to 37%, American voters want a Democrat to succeed George W. Bush as president. But in specific match-ups, John McCain gives his party a better than fighting chance. He trails Barack Obama by only 47% to 44%, and Hillary Clinton by 47% to 45%.
Although Clinton runs roughly as well as Obama against McCain, Democrats nationally now view Obama as having the best chance to beat McCain, by a strong 48% to 38% margin.
Chief among the strengths of the Republican nominee-in-waiting is his experience with national security issues, as a naval aviator and longtime senator. “Americans can visualize John McCain behind the desk in the Oval Office,” says pollster Peter Hart. “The difficulty is where his policies are, and is he going to take the country where it wants to head.”
Former President Bill Clinton, incidentally, now has a net negative image score — meaning that more voters view him unfavorably than favorably — for the first time since shortly after leaving the White House in disarray in the wake of some very controversial 11th hour pardons.
** GERALDINE FERRARO RESIGNS. 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro has just resigned from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her racial comments yesterday — in which she first claimed that Barack Obama’s frontrunnership is due to his being a black man, interpolated by saying that Hillary has not won because she is a woman, and ended by saying that she, Ferraro, is criticized for her remarks because she is white — created a firestorm. Although the Clinton campaign defended her yesterday, while distancing the candidate from her specific comments, her position was obviously untenable.
“The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you,” Ferraro wrote in her resignation letter to Hillary Clinton. “I won’t let that happen.” After more than a day of hanging to the message.
** THE CAMPAIGNS THIS MORNING. (WHILE I SLEPT AND AMERICA WAS ON SPITZER WATCH.) The Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns continued their bickering this morning, around who is more credible on national security (as John McCain shouts: “Huzzah!”), party infighting on race and gender, and the status of Michigan and Florida.
That means dueling groups of retired generals and admirals — a wash, since even I don’t recognize most of the names — more back and forth around the recently rediscovered Geraldine Ferraro and her fascinating view that being black is a huge advantage in American life, and tit for tat about the delegations of the two aforementioned states, disallowed under party rules that both campaigns agreed to.
The Clintons want the two primaries to count, even though they clearly did not at the time. That won’t happen. The Florida congressional delegation doesn’t want any re-vote. Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a key McCain backer, wants a re-vote (more chaos for the Dems, and maybe a boost for Clinton as a bonus) but won’t pay for it. There is talk of mail-in primaries in both states, but those are hard to conduct with any degree of confidence about ballot security. The Obama campaign is very open to caucuses, which they expect to win given their superior organizing ability and more committed supporters. The Clinton campaign doesn’t want that. It’s a continuing muddle.
Hillary Clinton is fundraising and attending to Senate duties in Washington, D.C.
Bill Clinton is campaigning in Erie and Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Barack Obama holds an event with retired generals and admirals in Chicago and attends to Senate duties in Washington, D.C.
John McCain appears in Exeter and Manchester, New Hampshire and in Boston, mostly for fundraising.
** GOVERNOR ELLIOTT SPITZER’S RESIGNATION SPEECH. Here is the full text of the statement delivered within the past hour by New York Governor Elliott Spitzer: “For the past few days, I have begun to atone for my private failings with my wife, Silda, my children and my entire family. The remorse I feel will always be with me. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for the love and compassion they have shown me.
“From those to whom much is given, much is expected. I have been given much — the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York, and the chance to lead this state. I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every New Yorker and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I sincerely apologize.
“I look at my time as governor with a sense of what might have been. But I also know that as a public servant I, and the remarkable people with whom I work, have accomplished a great deal. There is much more to be done, and I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people’s work. Over the course of my public life I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor. At Lt. Gov. Paterson’s request, the resignation will be effective Monday, March 17, a date that he believes will permit an orderly transition.
“I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings our greatest glory consists not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. As I leave public life I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and my family. Then I will try once again outside of politics to serve the common good and to move toward the ideals and solutions which I believe can build a future of hope and opportunity for us and for our children. I hope all of New York will join my prayers for my friend David Paterson as he embarks on his new mission, and I thank the public once again for the privilege of service. Thank you very much.”
CNN’s John King lays out the Clinton scenario for how Hillary
might catch up to Obama.
** JOHN MCCAIN’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER ADMONISHES REPUBLICAN SUPPORTERS AND OPERATIVES TO REFRAIN FROM PERSONAL ATTACKS. Following three episodes in the last two weeks of conservative Republicans trying to make political hay out of Barack Obama’s middle name — a talk show host warming up a McCain rally crowd, a state party official, and an Iowa congressman — McCain for President campaign manager Rick Davis has just sent a memo around the country admonishing Republicans to play it straight.
“John McCain is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. It is critical, as we prepare to face off with whomever the Democrats select as their nominee, that we all follow John’s lead and run a respectful campaign focused on the issues and values that are important to the American people.
“Overheated rhetoric and personal attacks on our opponents distract from the big differences between John McCain’s vision for the future of our nation and the Democrats. This campaign is about John McCain: his vision, leadership, experience, courage, service to his country and ability to lead as commander in chief from day one.
“John has held himself to the highest standards and he will continue to run a respectful campaign based on the issues.
“We expect that all supporters, surrogates and staff will hold themselves to similarly high standards when they are representing the campaign. To help guide you, please find talking points below.”
The memo then continues laying out McCain’s background and views on a variety of issues.
** SCHWARZENEGGER CONFERS WITH ECONOMIC ADVISORS AS PREDICTABLE BUDGET TANGO (SLOW-MO VERSION) CONTINUES. While NWN has been focused principally on the most intense and rapid-fire set of presidential nomination contests in American political history, the impasse over California’s chronic budget crisis has continued.
Frankly, nothing surprising has occurred. It’s all been very predictable. This morning, Schwarzenegger is conferring with his council of economic advisors about the state’s fiscal situation and the overall economy.
Meanwhile, over the last several weeks, Schwarzenegger has worked on implementing the Big Bang Bonds infrastructure package he spearheaded in 2006. He’s announced $394 million in Proposition 1B bond funding for 106 transit projects, $73 million for affordable housing projects in Proposition 1C and Proposition 46 funds to help families rent or purchase affordable housing, $69.5 million in permanent low-interest loans from the Proposition 1C housing bonds to jumpstart 14 affordable multi-family projects, and $10.5 million to train workers displaced by the housing slump, and $5.6 million to help displaced mortgage and banking workers find new jobs.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading up in record territory in the $108 to $109 per barrel range, after hitting an all-time record of $110 per barrel yesterday.
In Mississippi, a big win for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, 61% to 37%. Coming on the heels of Obama’s 61% to 38% win in Wyoming on Saturday — and coupled with Obama actually winning the overall Texas primary/caucus contest last Tuesday, as I projected for you a week ago — the upshot is that Obama is actually further ahead of Clinton in the Democratic nomination race than he was a week ago.
The Mississippi win was built on the most overwhelming black vote of the campaign, 91% to 9% for Obama, and a big edge for Hillary among the white vote, 71% to 27%. This has been the racial pattern in the Deep South primary states, with Obama getting about a quarter of the white vote, with the exception of Georgia. Georgia, of course, has Atlanta, a sprawlig cosmopolitan metropolis which has had a successful black leadership with a history of winning white votes. Obama has done much better with white voters in other Southern states, such as Virginia and Maryland.
Mississippi also continued the generation gap seen in contests throughout the campaign, with Obama dominating among voters under the age of 50, and Clinton doing best among older voters, with her strongest support among those 65 and up. The gender gap evident in most of the campaign was muted in Mississippi because of the racial factor.
I reported a week ago that Obama would be the winner there in the overall delegate race, narrowly losing the primary popular vote after Clinton unveiled her “3 AM” TV ad, and overwhelmingly winning the caucuses that night. Which turn out to be the biggest caucuses in presidential campaign history, with over one million people participating. Counting the caucuses was time-consuming, and the Clinton campaign moved on election night to block reporting of the partial count, in which Obama had a sizable lead.
In addition to ending up a few delegates further ahead among those won in the primaries and caucuses last Tuesday and this, Obama has also picked up many more superdelegates than Clinton over the past week.
How does Clinton win? I’ll get into all the particulars in the days and weeks ahead, but the answer boils down to this. The Clintons must screw up Obama. (Not precisely the term I had in mind.) Try to put him off balance, try to crack him, hope for mistakes — some of which come from some of the inexperienced hands in his campaign, as we saw last week with his economic and foreign policy advisors — typecast him as shallow, inexperienced, the black candidate.
In that regard, Geraldine Ferraro’s striking remarks, published at the end of last week in a small daily newspaper in Southern California but which only came to light today, offered a clue.
Ferraro, an affirmative action beneficiary herself as the first female vice presidential nominee of a major party, said that Obama is succeeding only because he is black. She ended the day by saying that people are criticizing her only because she is white. And that Hillary is behind because of sexism.
Hillary Clinton disassociated herself from Ferraro’s remarks, but did not separate Ferraro — a former New York congresswoman and failed Senate candidate who serves on her national finance committee and makes some speeches for the campaign — from her organization. Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams then defended Ferraro.
I think this is a major mistake by the Clinton campaign. While it may serve to further Obama’s identification as “the black candidate,” clearly one of their strategic imperatives now that they have lost the black vote — which Hillary had last year until black voters realized with his Iowa victory that whites could vote for Obama — it makes race and gender major flash points within the Democratic Party.
It might help lock down a victory for Clinton six weeks from now in Pennsylvania. After all, James Carville calls Pennsylvania “Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in between.” But Pennsylvania, as one of the oldest and most established of states, is already identified as a should-win state for Clinton, and her baseline level of support in the polls starting out is roughly 20 points, so it will be hard for Hillary’s team of spinners to win their usual expectations game.
A party which should be united, in a year which should be a good year for it, even against a war hero with the maverick appeal of John McCain, may find itself embroiled in a firestorm of internecine warfare.
Plus, it could easily backfire on the Clintons. It certainly did after South Carolina. Ferraro’s comments were actually not very clever, especially her parting shot of the day. And she makes it obvious that she thinks her constituency deserves more for its greater sense of victimhood, always an untoward sentiment to express in public, especially from someone rich and famous on behalf of someone rich and famous.
But all this will emerge, or not, over time.
Meanwhile, John McCain and company, after a big fundraiser tonight at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, contemplate many weeks if not months of civil war amongst the Democrats. If not quite the catbird seat, it is nonetheless a good place to be for the old pilot, excuse me, naval aviator.
According to Politico blogger Jonathan Martin, Romney had this to say: “I think any Republican leader in this country would be honored to be asked to serve as the vice presidential nominee, myself included,” Romney told FOX’s Sean Hannity in a broadcast set to air tonight. “Of course this is a nation which needs strong leadership. And if the nominee of our party asked you to serve with him, anybody would be honored to receive that call … and to accept it, of course.”
What about those very hard feelings from the primaries?
“There are really no hard feelings, I don’t think, on either side of this,” Romney said in the interview.
Hmm.
Well, I might not turn down being John McCain’s vice president, either. But that’s also not too likely.
5:20 PM Pacific — Obama Wins Mississippi
Fox News and MSNBC have projected Barack Obama a big winner in the Mississippi Democratic presidential over Hillary Clinton.
The exit poll horserace number, not yet reported: Obama 58%, Clinton 41%.
The black turnout was not actually as large as some expected. It amounted to 48% of the electorate.
Obama won the black vote, 91% to 9%. Clinton won the white vote, 72% to 27%.
67% of Mississippi voters said Obama was the most inspirational candidate. 61% said Obama offered the most detailed plans. Most voters picked the economy as the top area of concern, and Obama led Clinton on that issue, 54% to 45%.
4:45 PM Pacific — The Ferraro Flap
While Mississippi has been unfolding, the candidates campaigning in Pennsylvania, the head of US Central Command quitting, and New York Governor Elliot Spitzer still not quitting, a blast from the past entered the media mixmaster.
Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman ever nominated on a major national ticket — the Democrats’ 1984 vice presidential nominee — is on the Hillary Clinton national finance committee. At the end of last week, the South Bay Daily Breeze, located south of LA, published an interview with her in which she complained about “sexism” being the cause of Clinton’s political problems and said that Barack Obama has become a surprising success because he is black.
Ferraro told the Daily Breeze: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
Hillary Clinton didn’t react to this at first. Later, as it flared up during the day, she said, “I do not agree with that. It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”
Ferraro also said Obama has it easy because of a “very sexist media.”
“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign – to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against,” she said. “For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media.
The Obama campaign, which said sayonara to senior foreign policy advisor Samantha Power last Friday after she told the British press that Hillary is a “monster” and that Obama would not necessarily follow his current Iraq withdrawal timetable, pounced on this.
“The bottom line is this, when you wink and nod at offensive statements, you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” Obama chief strategist David Axelrod declared in a conference call.
“There’s no other way to send a serious signal that you want to police the tone of this campaign,” he said. “And if you don’t do those things then you are simply adding to the growing compendium of evidence that you really are encouraging that.”
Ferraro, back in the spotlight years after her moment of glory, went on Fox News to say that Obama’s campaign should stop criticizing her, because he’d need her to raise money for him in the fall. Then she called the Daily Breeze back and said: “I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white.”
Over on the left, Kos said: “Ferraro is unhappy that people are calling b.s. on her suggestion that Obama is winning only because he’s black (which clearly was a huge advantage for Presidents Jackson and Sharpton). This is officially really bad for Clinton.
“The Obama campaign quickly removed a relatively obscure adviser for calling Clinton the apparently dreaded and beyond-the-pale “M” word. How does Clinton react to Ferraro’s race baiting? She turns around and accuses Obama of playing the race card.”
Actually, it was Clinton’s new campaign manager, Maggie Williams, who did that.
In the center/center-right, Mickey Kaus said: “True statement (a.k.a. a Kinsley gaffe). And if Geraldine Ferraro was Gerald Ferraro, she’d be an unknown hack ex-Congressman, not a pathbreaking former vice-presidential candidate.”
What do I say? Well, I’m more interested in other stuff. Having said that, I cast my national convention delegate vote to make Ferraro the first major party female vice presidential nominee. A distinction she got simply because of her gender.
So, she should know about affirmative action. And might want to consider the irony of her position.
Which has one huge difference with that of Obama. Ferraro didn’t win anything other than a New York congressional seat. She was picked by powerful men to try to make a play for the female vote.
Obama is succeeding on his own hook.
4 PM Pacific — More Mississippi Exits
More from from Mississippi primary exit polls …
65 years of age and older: Clinton 56%, Obama 44%
18-29 years of age: Obama 67%, Clinton 32%
One in five Democratic voters are independents. One in 10 are Republicans.
The Democratic primary is drawing twice as many voters as the Republican primary.
Some bad news for Obama’s hopes to carry Mississippi in the general election, if he’s the nominee. Some experts think the old Confederate state could go blue, with a huge mobilization effort of the black vote. A lot of Clinton voters say they wouldn’t be satisfied with him.
2:50 PM — Mississippi Exits
From the Mississippi primary exit polls …
Who made the most unfair attacks?
Hillary Clinton 70%, Barack Obama 30%.
Who is the most honest and trustworthy candidate?
Barack Obama 60%, Hillary Clinton 39%.
Who is the most credible commander-in-chief?
Barack Obama 55%, Hillary Clinton 45%.
1:30 PM Pacific — Bill Clinton Does It Again
The Hotline blog reports that former President Bill Clinton, campaigning up in Pennsylvania, has set a high bar for his wife’s showing there in the April 22nd primary.
“She’s got to win a big victory” here, he told a group of older voters in a senior citizen center in Western Pennsylvania. “If she wins a big, big victory in Pennsylvania, I think it’ll give her a real big boost going into the next primaries.”
Clinton promised that he and Hillary and daughter Chelsea will be all over Pennsylvania “like a wet blanket between now and April 22nd.”
Like a wet blanket?
Clinton sent up a big trial balloon Saturday in Pass Christian, Mississippi, saying he wants to see Obama on the national ticket with his wife. Then he took two days off the campaign trail. Only to see Obama shoot that balloon down yesterday. Along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who says that since Hillary says John McCain is a better choice for commander-in-chief, the contradiction is too glaring.
12:40 PM — Back And Forth In The Land Of Penn
While Mississippi votes, and I’m hearing the early turnout seemed on the low side, perhaps due to morning rain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama slog away today in Pennsylvania.
Clinton ripped into Obama, saying: “I understand Senator Obama is talking about energy today, right here in Pennsylvania. And that’s great. But talking about problems is easy. Solving problems is hard. And speeches are no substitute for solutions. Speeches won’t lower gas prices, stop climate change, or lessen our dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia.
“The true test comes when it’s time to match rhetoric with results,” said Clinton. “And unfortunately, we’ve seen that Senator Obama’s promises and speeches are often just words.”
Clinton went on to blast Obama for voting for “Dick Cheney’s energy bill loaded with new tax breaks for oil companies.” Which, of course, passed.
She blasted him also for talking about fixing NAFTA, while “his top economic adviser assured the Canadian government that he wouldn’t really follow through.” Which the Canadian government actually denies.
And for promising to withdraw from Iraq “within 16 months. But his top foreign policy adviser said he’s not really going to rely on that plan. I guess that plan is just words, too.”
For his part, Obama toured a wind turbine factory — where he refused to comment on 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro’s (she’s a big Hillary backer) attack on him as a lucky candidate for being black — and held a town hall meeting.
“We need real change – the kind of change that’s about more than switching the party in the White House,” Obama said. “We need a change in our politics – a leader who can end the division in Washington so we can stop just talking about our challenges and start solving them; who doesn’t defend lobbyists as part of the system, but sees them as part of the problem; who actually says what he means and means what he says; and who will be a voice for middle class Americans every day for the next four years.”
Obama talked up his plan to build up a “green” energy sector to replace jobs lost in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, said he would “fix” NAFTA, and stop tax breaks for companies that out-source jobs.
10:50 AM Pacific — Sinbad On That “Harrowing” Bosnia Trip
Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she’s taking much grief on the campaign trail.
Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.
In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the “scariest” part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’”
Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. “They said there might be sniper fire,” Clinton said.
Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn’t remember that, either.
“I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.’”
In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, “We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.”
Say what? As Sinbad put it: “What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.’”
10:20 AM Pacific — Clinton Tries To Shore Up Her National Security Bona Fides
The Hillary Clinton campaign has pushed back against the hard Obama shots on her claims of major experience in national security affairs.
On Northern Ireland, the Clinton campaign says this: “The Obama campaign claims George Mitchell, the person in charge of the investigation, supports their view that Hillary’s claims about Northern Ireland are exaggerated. John Hume, who won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work on Northern Ireland: “I can state from firsthand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland… Anyone criticizing her foreign policy involvement should look at her very active and positive approach to Northern Ireland and speak with the people of Northern Ireland who have the highest regard for her and are very grateful for her very active support for our peace process.”
(Hume, incidentally, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with someone who says that it is “silly” for Hillary to claim a central role on Northern Ireland.)
“George Mitchell, who is cited in the Obama memo as an authoritative source, told Katie Couric last night that Hillary played “a helpful and supportive role” in Northern Ireland that ended up making “a difference in the process.” …
On Kosovo, the Clinton campaign gets a testimonial from Richard Holbrooke, the actual negotiator of the Dayton Accords, who says: “It was dire in May 1999 when Hillary Clinton arrived in Macedonia. The government of Macedonia had slowed the flow of refugees from Kosovo to a trickle. After visiting refugees and gaining a first-hand assessment of the situation, the First Lady had intense talks with President Gligorov and Prime Minister Georgievski. In these talks, one in the Presidential Palace, another in the residence of the American Ambassador, Christopher Hill, Mrs. Clinton pressed the Macedonian government to fully open the border so that Kosovar Albanian refugees could flee the war zone to safety. She also committed herself to work with the government and people of Macedonia who also faced an emergency because of the threat to their own safety and stability. Hillary Clinton promised to take action to help the Macedonian economy. Returning to Washington, she pressed hard in the administration for action to support the Macedonians.”
The Clinton pushback memo doesn’t really debunk the debunking from President Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, though it does reiterate that she was on the scene on some key issues as an advocate.
Advantage Obama on this exchange.
But in a larger sense, it’s advantage John McCain.
10 AM Pacific — Obama Comes Out Swinging On Hillary National Security Claims
The Barack Obama campaign is playing tougher now with Hillary Clinton. Greg Craig, a top Obama foreign policy advisor now, was Bill Clinton’s lawyer during his impeachment crisis. He was also the director of the Policy Planning Office in the U.S. State Department during the Clinton Administration.
He’s just penned a very tough memo debunking Hillary Clinton’s claims of experience in national security management.
“When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed “the Commander- in-Chief test” is simply not supported by her record.
“There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.”
On Northern Ireland, Craig cites new British press reports debunking Clinton’s claims of having played a central role in bringing about peace in Northern Ireland.
“Senator Clinton has said, “I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.” It is a gross overstatement of the facts for her to claim even partial credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland. She did travel to Northern Ireland, it is true. First Ladies often travel to places that are a focus of U.S. foreign policy. But at no time did she play any role in the critical negotiations that ultimately produced the peace. As the Associated Press recently reported, “[S]he was not directly involved in negotiating the Good Friday peace accord.” With regard to her main claim that she helped bring women together, she did participate in a meeting with women, but, according to those who know best, she did not play a pivotal role. The person in charge of the negotiations, former Senator George Mitchell, said that “[The First Lady] was one of many people who participated in encouraging women to get involved, not the only one.”
“News of Senator Clinton’s claims has raised eyebrows across the ocean. Her reference to an important meeting at the Belfast town hall was debunked. Her only appearance at the Belfast City Hall was to see Christmas lights turned on. She also attended a 50-minute meeting which, according to the Belfast Daily Telegraph’s report at the time, “[was] a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times.” Brian Feeney, an Irish author and former politician, sums it up: “The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn’t on it.””
Craig also works to debunk Clinton claims on Rwanda (where she now says she privately US intervention, which did not occur to stop the genocide), Bosnia and Kosovo.
On Kosovo, Craig writes: “Senator Clinton has said, “I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo.” It is true that, as First Lady, she traveled to Macedonia and visited a Kosovar refugee camp. It is also true that she met with government officials while she was there. First Ladies frequently meet with government officials. Her claim to have “negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo,” however, is not true. Her trip to Macedonia took place on May 14, 1999. The borders were opened the day before, on May 13, 1999.”
Obambi no more?
9 AM Pacific — Where They Are Today, And Why
While voters turn out in the Mississippi Democratic presidential primary — where turnout is expected to be big, and the weather is mostly mild, with temperatures in the 50s and some rain — the candidates themselves have moved on to Pennsylvania today. Which doesn’t vote for another six weeks. Hillary Clinton has a big lead there, a natural state for her with an older population and traditional constituencies. She needs a big win to keep up her candidacy, and that is why she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are spending the day there.
Meanwhile, John McCain is trying to shore up support in Missouri, a key swing state in the fall, and hoping to score some badly needed funding later in the day in New York City.
BARACK OBAMA tours a former steel mill-turned-wind turbine farm in Pennsylvania, then does a town hall meeting in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania.
HILLARY CLINTON has rallies in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
BILL CLINTON has events across Pennslyvania, in Washington, Canonburg, and Center Township.
JOHN MCCAIN has a town hall meeting and press conference in St. Louise, Missouri, and then heads to New York City for needed fundraising, topped by a big event tonight at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
THE MORNING COLUMN
It’s another contest in the now long slog for the Democratic presidential nomination, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton square off today in the Mississippi primary. Obama is the favorite, but former President Bill Clinton has been stumping there to see if his wife might make a breakthrough, or at least have a good showing after losing badly in Wyoming on Saturday.
Nevertheless, Obama does have the opportunity to come out of today’s primary with a bigger lead over Clinton in earned delegates than he had before last Tuesday’s contests. Which is the exact opposite of what the Clinton campaign hoped for and promised.
It’s “Game Day: Mississippi.” I’ll be anchoring PJ Media network’s coverage throughout the day, weaving together reports and information from correspondents and contacts inside and outside the contest states, as usual. The anchor coverage will be linked to and, to an extent, mirrored here on NWN. This is a continuation of the “Game Day: Iowa,” “Game Day: New Hampshire,” “Game Day: Michigan And Vegas,” “Game Day: Nevada And South Carolina Republicans,” “Game Day: South Carolina Democrats,” “Game Day: Florida Republicans,” “Super-Duper Tuesday Special Edition,” “Game Day: Semi-Super Saturday,” “Game Day: Chesapeake Tuesday,” “Game Day: Wisconsin And Hawaii,” “Game Day: Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont,” and “Game Day:Wyoming” packages.
Mississippi, a Deep South state along the Gulf of Mexico that was part of the core of the old Confederacy, has a population of 2.9 million. Once a state with an African American majority, today it is 61% white and 37% black. Mississippi has the lowest per capita income of any state in the US, and is increasingly dependent on casino gambling.
In politics, it’s usually conservative. Governor Haley Barbour is a former Republican national chairman. The two US senators are Republicans. While two of its four congressmen are Democrats, one of whom is black, the other is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress.
Although former Governor Ray Mabus, a Democrat, thinks Obama might win the state in the general election, that’s not the way it’s been going in presidential races. In today’s Democratic primary, over half the voters are expected to be black.
Hillary Clinton says she will “level the playing field against the
special interests” in this TV ad for the Mississippi primary.
At his event yesterday morning in Columbus, Mississippi, Barack Obama, whose campaign may be stiffening its spine in a more supple way — I believe that some of his famous supporters have gotten together and chatted with the Obama campaign leadership — rejected the Bill and Hillary Clinton gambit to have him on the national ticket. As the veep to Hillary, who of course trails by a significant margin despite last week’s comeback of sorts.
“Now first of all with all due respect, with all due respect,” he said during a town hall meeting. “I have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I have won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So I don’t know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place. If I was in second place I could understand but I am in first place.”
In 1992, he noted, Bill Clinton, now touting him for vice president, said that the “most important criteria” for vice president was that that person must be ready to “be commander in chief.”
“They have been spending the last two or three weeks saying I am not ready. I don’t understand. If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president? I don’t understand.
“You have to make a choice,” Obama said, shooting down the notion. “Are you going to stick with the past, or are you going to move to the future?”
“She’s only doing this because she’s behind and she doesn’t have any toys,” noted Fox News commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle, San Francisco’s former first lady as the former wife to Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Former President Bill Clinton stumped the state for his wife over the weekend and appeared in Meridian Saturday night with novelist John Grisham.
The ex-prez, after savaging the freshman Illinois senator earlier in the campaign, called for a Clinton/Obama ticket at a rally in Pass Christian. Clinton, now that he has toned down his bad cop routine, is getting good results again for his wife.
The conventional media has pushed a storyline that Bill Clinton is locked in a closet. Actually, he has been campaigning feverishly and effectively in midsized and small markets. If you look at his schedule in Ohio and Texas, it coincides with the best-performing areas for his wife. He’s still a very huge deal with Democrats around the country, and having a former president show up outside the elite media markets is impactful.
With how he’s been campaigning since Tuesday, it’s obvious that Clinton thinks he can have an impact in Mississippi, which is expected nonetheless to go to Obama.
How’s it going? Well, there are three new polls. One, by Insider Advantage for the Southern Political Report, showed a relatively small Obama lead over Clinton, 46% to 40%, on March 6th.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
John McCain’s new “Man In The Arena” ad, melding Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, Michael Mann, Young Indiana Jones-style documentary, and Star Trek.
** TOMORROW — GAME DAY: MISSISSIPPI. Tomorrow it’s “Game Day: Mississippi.” I’ll be anchoring PJ Media network’s coverage throughout the day, weaving together reports and information from correspondents and contacts inside and outside the contest states, as usual. The anchor coverage will be linked to and, to an extent, mirrored here on NWN. This is a continuation of the “Game Day: Iowa,” “Game Day: New Hampshire,” “Game Day: Michigan And Vegas,” “Game Day: Nevada And South Carolina Republicans,” “Game Day: South Carolina Democrats,” “Game Day: Florida Republicans,” “Super-Duper Tuesday Special Edition,” “Game Day: Semi-Super Saturday,” “Game Day: Chesapeake Tuesday,” “Game Day: Wisconsin And Hawaii,” “Game Day: Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont,” and “Game Day:Wyoming” packages.
** SUPERDELEGATE WATCH. Since last Tuesday: Barack Obama 12, Hillary Clinton 0.
** MCCAIN LEADS CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE. John McCain will lead a delegation of US senators and congressmembers to the ME and Europe on March 18, 19, 20, and 21. They will visit a variety of cities, including Baghdad, Jerusalem, London, and Paris. More details to follow.
** SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. By the way, the white guy who keeps playing Barack Obama on those pro-Hillary skits, a fellow named Fred Armisen, also played Steve Jobs in the notorious iPod skit I ran last year. Which, naturally, NBC has pulled from the Net.
How does the white guy who played Steve Jobs play Barack Obama? With black face, and a rather halting, semi-doltish voice.
Armisen made a great Steve Jobs. That is why I ran the sketch on NWN. I know Steve Jobs, having worked the Apple account at Regis McKenna Inc., as the special assistant to Regis McKenna, two decades ago when Steve was the super-coolest guy ever in high tech. Armisen is a terrific Jobs. He is a lousy Obama.
** FIRST TAKE ON NEW YORK GOVERNOR SPITZER. Speaking from near total ignorance of the immediate situation, here is my take. “Client 9.” That is very, very hard to spin. If this was the road this famously married politician was going to go down, he should have picked a woman and made her his mistress.
Instead of being involved with another woman, something that can be explained, or at least rationalized and apologized for, in a number of ways, he is involved with a ring. One can care for a woman, no matter how ill advised that might be with regard to the situation in play. One does not care for a ring. By which I mean a prostitution ring, not a diamond ring. Hasta la bye bye.
** OBAMA REJECTS CLINTON VICE PRESIDENTIAL GAMBIT. At his event this morning in Columbus, Mississippi, Barack Obama, whose campaign may be stiffening its spine in a more supple way today — I believe that some of his famous supporters have gotten together today and chatted with the Obama campaign leadership — rejected the Bill and Hillary Clinton gambit to have him on the national ticket. As the veep to Hillary, who of course trails by a significant margin despite last week’s hype.
“Now first of all with all due respect, with all due respect,” he said during a town hall meeting. “I have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I have won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So I don’t know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place. If I was in second place I could understand but I am in first place.”
In 1992, he noted, Bill Clinton, now touting him for vice president, said that the “most important criteria” for vice president was that that person must be ready to “be commander in chief.”
“They have been spending the last two or three weeks saying I am not ready.
“I don’t understand. If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president? I don’t understand.
“You have to make a choice,” Obama said just now, shooting down the notion. “Are you going to stick with the past, or are you going to move to the future?”
“She’s only doing this because she’s behind and she doesn’t have any toys,” noted Fox News commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle, San Francisco’s former first lady as the former wife to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has been campaigning for Hillary and is fooling around with the idea of running for governor of California.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Hillary Clinton campaigns in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Barack Obama campaigns in Columbus and Jackson, Mississippi.
John McCain appears in Phoenix, Arizona and St. Louis, Missouri.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST ON STRATEGIC GROWTH PLAN AT 10:50 AM PACIFIC. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this morning tours the Northern California carpenters training facility in Fairfield, which is on I-80 between Sacramento and San Francisco. Afterwards, Schwazenegger and carpenters union leaders will hold a press conference to promote the need for carpenters to build the public works projects passed in Schwarzenegger’s Strategic Growth Plan of 2006.
This is part of the $42 billion Big Bang Bonds infrastructure package overwhelmingly adopted by California voters after negotiations between Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders Don Perata and Fabian Nunez.
** NEW RECORD OIL PRICE. Crude oil hit yet another new record price in this morning’s trading of a whopping $107 per barrel.
Who remembers when the Bush Administration said that one of the benefits of the Iraq War would be lower oil prices because of our control of the world’s second largest oil reserves?
THE MORNING COLUMN
This week in presidential politics, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton square off in Tuesday’s Mississippi primary, as the Democratic race goes on, and on, with Obama in the lead but the Clintons clinging to their long-presumed power position. While the Democrats fight on, seemingly to the August convention in Denver, John McCain lays his plans.
Great news long-term for the Republicans, right? Yes. And no, looking at this result over the weekend. Former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s once very red Illinois congressional seat turned blue in Saturday’s special election, with a big assist to the new Democratic congressman from Obama, who cut the closing TV spot for the winner and turned over part of his organizing team.
But back to the Democratic foodfight.
The ex-prez, after savaging the freshman Illinois senator earlier in the campaign, called for a Clinton/Obama ticket over the weekend while barnstorming through Mississippi. The Clintons say Obama doesn’t have the chops to be president in a national emergency. But they say they want him to be vice president. Cheeky, since he has a clear lead in earned delegates she almost certainly won’t be able to close. And strange, since the first thing a vice president has to be is the someone who can replace the president in, yes, a national emergency.
Meanwhile, Clinton received a setback with regard to her claims of national security experience. She’s taken of late to claiming substantial credit for brokering the peace deal in Northern Ireland. But the Telegraph reported on Saturday that a Nobel Peace Prize winner for the Northern Ireland deal is deriding Hillary’s claims as “silly.”
Too bad for Obama that a very good storyline for him was totally obscured by a couple of his advisors shooting off their mouths to people they don’t know. Too bad for Hillary that this campaign has a long way to go.
And so much for the notion of the Clintons being fully vetted. Here is a tip of an iceberg that Team McCain and the Republican National Committee intends to fully expose in the still less than likely event that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee. Bill and Hillary Clinton are still blocking release of the former president’s pardon records. They left the White House seven years ago.
Another story that Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Power’s outburst about Hillary being a “monster” — and her musings to the BBC that Obama may not be serious about this Iraq withdrawal thing — totally obscured.
Even though the Clintons’ amazing post-presidential wealth, and the massive secret contributions taken in by the Clinton Presidential Library, are big issues waiting to be seized by either Obama or McCain, the fact remains that Bill Clinton is still a major asset for his wife’s campaign.
The conventional media has pushed a storyline that Bill Clinton is locked in a closet. Actually, he has been campaigning feverishly and effectively in midsized and small markets. If you look at his schedule in Ohio and Texas, it coincides with the best-performing areas for his wife. He’s still a very huge deal with Democrats around the country, and having a former president show up outside the elite media markets is impactful.
With how he’s been campaigning since last Tuesday, it’s obvious that Clinton thinks he can have an impact in Mississippi for Tuesday’s primary, which is expected nonetheless to go to Obama.
One thing that I simply don’t get is why Obama is not using surrogates much more effectively. Why is Obama responding to the chaff thrown up by a Howard Wolfson? Put Teddy Kennedy, or some other real heavyweight, on there to squash the mouthy staffer. He’s a blitzing linebacker, but no Lawrence Taylor. Just drive him out of the play.
Which does not excuse Obama advisors like Austan Goolsbee (waggish Democratic insiders call Ohio, which broke hard late against Obama in the wake of the leaked Canadian government memo saying the Obama economic advisor pooh-poohed the candidate’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric, the “Goolsbee Primary”) and Samantha Power from their lack of appropriate circumspection. The Obama team needs to learn some very hard lessons from these episodes. Everything folks like that say can be used against them and seen, by virtue of their association, as representing the views of the next president of the United States. Even the fact that they said something, whatever it actually was, as in the case of Goolsbee and the Canadians on NAFTA. That’s especially true in dealing with people they don’t actually know. Which will increasingly be the majority of people they deal with.
As I expected, the overall winner in Texas will end up being Barack Obama. Obama, as you know, narrowly lost the popular vote in the primary to Hillary Clinton, 51% to 48%. But that will only yield her a few more delegates. And Texas is a combination primary/caucus state. And there, Obama is clearly winning in the caucuses.
And the final result from Saturday’s Wyoming Democratic caucuses: Barack Obama 61%, Hillary Clinton 38%. Obama wins 7 delegates to the Democratic national convention in Denver, Clinton wins 5.
This means that Obama has already made up all but a handful of the delegates Clinton made up on him last Tuesday. When she won big in Ohio, split a pair of opposing New England landslides in Rhode Island and Vermont, and as we projected, narrowly lost the overall Texas primary/caucus contest.
The Democrats are locked in an increasingly fateful impasse. The upstart Obama has a lead in earned delegates and primary and caucus votes that Clinton almost certainly can’t overtake. But she is not going away. And she is choosing to try to take the inexperienced Obama down through FUD, a classic marketing technique, inciting fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the lesser known brand. By marketing herself as the best choice to handle national security crises.
Which plays precisely into the hands of one John Sidney McCain III, perhaps America’s most famous Vietnam War hero, a man with decades of real experience as a US senator dealing with national security and foreign policy. And who, just like Hillary Clinton, voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. But who, unlike Hillary Clinton, argued strenuously to change the failing policies in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. And who, unlike Hillary Clinton, was the champion of the so-called surge strategy which at last brought at least a modicum of success in to the Iraq policy they both supported.
The McCain crew are, let’s say, not displeased by the developments in the Democratic Party. They like “the contrasts” being drawn. And the ones likely to be drawn in the not terribly distant future, as Obama’s campaign is at last striking back, raising Hillary Clinton’s brandishing of a local fixer who helped a young politician buy a house and seeing it with the “undiscovered country” of the Clintons’ sudden post-presidential wealth and enormous (and studiously undisclosed) fundraising, much of it from foreign sources with major geopolitical agendas, for the Clinton Library.
These are things Team McCain would themselves cause to be put very much in play were Hillary to emerge as the Democratic nominee. But they are still principally focused on Obama, whose emergence and dynamics yet confound, at least in some ways, the tried and true Republican electoral calculations.
The now likely months of strife, as the Clintons look for more hard angles through which to try to pry the nomination away from Obama, is fabulous news for John McCain, who now has many weeks if not months to organize, fundraise, hone his message, and watch his two superstar Democratic opponents gnaw on each other like badgers.
McCain goes to Iraq next week. He’s embracing the conflict, and the need for a settlement there, and will be laying out anew his different view on the prosecution of the Terror War. He’ll also travel throughout the Middle East, and to Europe. It will become apparent that McCain knows the foreign leaders and is very familiar with the issues wherever he goes. Or so goes the plan.
Next month, he will formally kick off his general election campaign — which, of course, he has already kicked off somewhat less formally — with what might be described as a biography tour of America. He will visit key places in his life which also have historical and values resonance in America, such as the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, various military bases, and historical landmarks.
Since McCain has been deeply involved in the historical events of America for more than 40 years — and his father and grandfather before him were both four-star Navy admirals, and thus historical actors in the rise of America from a promising 19th century industrial power to its current superpower status — he has a broad canvass on which to work.
As Team McCain takes over the Republican national party apparatus — getting down to “the granular level,” as one puts it — they also work on message development.
The two-minute TV ad above, a web video production, is an interesting stab at the task, a development in the seedbed, as it were. Produced by McCain’s in-house “Foxhole Productions,” the piece, called “Man In The Arena” (after a famous Teddy Roosevelt quote), posits McCain through the past, present, and future.
The few who have written about it since the end of last week focus on the quotes — actually, vintage footage — from Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt.
But the piece is much more impressionistic than that. Which is why it’s done in an impressionistic style. There is constant motion throughout, nothing so static as ruminations about particular Churchill and TR quotes would imply. The viewer moves through the clouds, toward the sun, and then into the cosmos itself (as in the film Contact, with radio messages from the planet’s history making their way into deepest space) as Churchill intones his deathless words about fighting on the beaches, landing grounds, and fields, before finally revealing the late British PM as he confers with his wartime commanders. Then dissolves again through a time and space transition as Churchill says “We will never surrounder” into a scene of McCain saying, “Keep that faith, keep your courage, stick together, stay strong.”
The piece’s Michael Mann style then becomes perfectly evident as the opening piano figure beneath the imagery and words continues its insistence and is joined by soothing yet driving synthesizer music. Throughout, a montage of scenes and snippets from McCain, Teddy Roosevelt (who pledges all his heart and energy to the task), Churchill, American history, and Americana ensue interspersed with Mann’s patented fast-forward stop-action photography of urban night scenes and the cosmos motif.
“I know who I am,” says McCain. “I know what I want to do. I don’t seek the office out of a sense of entitlement. I owe America more than she has ever owed me.”
Several phrases are placed on the screen during the course of the two minutes: “The time has come. For a man in the arena. Ready. More than aspiration, leadership.”
An interesting glimpse at a work in progress.
Back to more prosaic matters.
McCain this week has fundraisers and fundraising development events at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac today, the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday, the Taj Hotel in Boston on Wednesday, the West Shore Country Club in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on Thursday at noon, the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia on Thursday night and the Hilton in Chicago on Friday. Then, following a brief respite, probably in what would be McCain’s Western White House in Sedona, Arizona, he’s off to the ME and Europe.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
The final result from the Wyoming Democratic caucuses: Barack Obama 61%, Hillary Clinton 38%.
Obama wins 7 delegates to the Democratic national convention in Denver, Clinton wins 4, with the other not yet determined.
This means that Obama has already made up all but a handful of the delegates Clinton made up on him last Tuesday. When she won big in Ohio, split a pair of opposing New England landslides in Rhode Island and Vermont, and as we projected, narrowly lost the overall Texas primary/caucus contest.
The Wyoming caucuses had a record turnout today. Small numbers still, of course, in a state which, while it is 10th in the union in land area, is 50th in population. In 2004, less than 700 turned out for the caucuses. Today it was nearly 9,000. And many hundreds more were reportedly turned away, mostly in what turned out to be Obama strongholds, perhaps confused by the lack of a regular statewide starting time, as each of the 23 counties had their own schedule. Wyoming, incidentally, was a Democrats only contest, with no same day registration, in a state in which there are far more independents than the 59,000 Democratic registrants.
Next up? The Mississippi primary on Tuesday.
Former President Bill Clinton stumped the state for his wife throughout the day and is appearing in Meridian at this writing with novelist John Grisham.
The ex-prez, after savaging the freshman Illinois senator earlier in the campaign, called for a Clinton/Obama ticket this morning in Pass Christian. Clinton, now that he has toned down his bad cop routine, is getting good results again for his wife.
The conventional media has pushed a storyline that Bill Clinton is locked in a closet. Actually, he has been campaigning feverishly and effectively in midsized and small markets. If you look at his schedule in Ohio and Texas, it coincides with the best-performing areas for his wife. He’s still a very huge deal with Democrats around the country, and having a former president show up outside the elite media markets is impactful.
With how he’s been campaigning since Tuesday, it’s obvious that Clinton thinks he can have an impact in Mississippi, which is expected nonetheless to go to Obama.
With 19 of the 23 county caucuses reporting in, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton in the Wyoming Democratic caucuses, 58% to 41%.
Just over an eighth of the delegates elected from the county level to the state convention are left to be selected, so Obama has easily won this contest.
There are reports of hundreds of people being turned away from overflow caucuses, mostly in what turn out to have been Obama strongholds — on account of showing up late (caucus start times varied throughout the state) — so the tyro Illinois senator’s edge is probably understated.
I’ll report in with Wyoming wrap-ups, and a look ahead to Mississippi on Tuesday, later today.
12:15 PM Pacific — Obama Winning Wyoming
With 16 of Wyoming’s 23 county caucuses reporting, Barack Obama is winning the state over Hillary Clinton, 60% to 39%.
I think most of the urban centers, relatively speaking are in. So we can call this.
Former President Bill Clinton spending all day Thursday campaigning across the state and Hillary Clinton spending Friday trying to pick up momentum from holding off Obama on Tuesday does not appear to have done much for the Clinton campaign.
I’ll have more detail and other reports as the day continues.
Noon Pacific — Obama Leads In Rural Wyoming While Hillary Gets Bad News From Britain
Barack Obama has taken an early lead in Wyoming’s rural counties over Hillary Clinton, 54% to 45%.
Meanwhile, Clinton received a setback with regard to her claims of national security experience. She’s taken of late to claiming substantial credit for brokering the peace deal in Northern Ireland. Something which I don’t recall her saying much before she came up with her “3 AM” ad gambit against Obama and, having followed the matter at the time, had not occurred to me. I’ve read quite a few biographies of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was in the center of tackling the Northern Ireland problem, and Hillary Clinton does not figure prominently.
From the article, written by the paper’s Northern Ireland correspondent at the time: Mrs. Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.
“I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland,” she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.
Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: “There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president.”
Central to Mrs Clinton’s claim of an important Northern Ireland role is a meeting she attended in Belfast in with a group of women from cross-community groups. “I actually went to Northern Ireland more than my husband did,” she said in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 6th.
“I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants from both traditions, having them sitting a room where they had never been before with each other because they don’t go to school together, they don’t live together and it was only in large measure because I really asked them to come that they were there.
“And I wasn’t sure it was going to be very successful and finally a Catholic woman on one side of the table said, ’You know, every time my husband leaves for work in the morning I worry he won’t come home at night.
“And then a Protestant woman on the other side said, ’Every time my son tries to go out at night I worry he won’t come home again’. And suddenly instead of seeing each other as caricatures and stereotypes they saw each other as human beings and the slow, hard work of peace-making could move forward.”
There is no record of a meeting at Belfast City Hall, though Mrs Clinton attended a ceremony there when her husband turned on the Christmas tree lights in November 1995. The former First Lady appears to be referring a 50-minute event the same day, arranged by the US Consulate, the same day at the Lamp Lighter Café on the city’s Ormeau Road.
The Belfast Telegraph reported the next day that the café meeting was crammed with reporters, cameramen and Secret Service agents. Conversation “seemed a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times” and Mrs Clinton admired a stainless steel tea pot, which was duly given to her, for keeping the brew “so nice and hot”.
Among those attending were women from groups representing single parents, relationship counsellors, youth workers and a cultural society. In her 2003 autobiography “Living History”, Mrs Clinton wrote about the meeting in some detail but made no claim that it was significant.
11:10 AM Pacific — Bill Says Obama Should Be On Ticket While Clinton Campaign Attacks Again
While Wyoming Democrats crowd into their state caucuses today, and the candidates themselves take a day off the trail — Barack Obama is in Chicago and Hillary Clinton is in Washington — former President Bill Clinton barnstorms across Mississippi, which holds its primary on Tuesday. Clinton, who closes out his day joining mega-novelist John Grisham at a rally tonight in Meridian, Mississippi, was in Pass Christian this morning.
An interesting perspective considering how the former president has savaged the upstart young senator in the past.
“I know that she has always been open to it,” Clinton said at a high school on the Gulf Coast, “because she believes that if you can unite the energy and the new people that he’s brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she’s carried overwhelmingly, if you had those two things together she thinks it’d be hard to beat.
“I mean you look at the, you look at the, you look at the map of Texas and the map in Ohio. And the map in Missouri or — well Arkansas’s not a good case because they know her and she won every place there. But you look at most of these places, he would win the urban areas and the upscale voters, and she wins the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president. If you put those two things together, you’d have an almost unstoppable force.”
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign continued its assault on Obama’s qualifications with its now routine attack statements.
Which shows the fine line the trailing Clintons are attempting to walk here. Although they’ve succeeded in tripping up Obama — thanks to foolish statements from advisors, among other things, as well as getting the media to bite on their latest ploys in changing the expectations game from what they said only a few weeks ago — he still is raising far more money and has a probably insurmountable lead in earned delegates.
They have to try to defeat him, while holding out the prospect that he would become the vice president.
Which, incidentally, Obama rejected last night in Wyoming.
10:10 AM Pacific — First Wyoming Returns!
The first returns are in from the Wyoming Democratic presidential caucuses. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ran dead even in the first of 23 county caucuses to report throughout the day.
However, the returns are from Niobrara County, the state’s smallest county. From a caucus held in the home of Everett and Fredda Lou Kilmer in picturesque Lusk, Wyoming.
Clinton and Obama split the county’s sole delegate to the state party convention where the actual delegates to the Democratic national convention will be selected. 323 delegates are being selected today in the county caucuses for the state convention.
The national convention delegates will be selected in the proportions won by the candidates in today’s county caucuses, so today’s contest will tell us who won, but not who the actual national convention delegates will be.
On a somewhat more serious note, widespread reports are coming in from the more populous areas of Wyoming of thousands crowding the cafeterias, high school gymnasiums and so forth selected for the caucus sites before it became apparent that this barnburner of a race would continue through today.
There are long lines to get in, and some people are being turned away as late arrivals, somewhat confused by the different start times around the state.
THE MORNING COLUMN
Happy International Women’s Day! A bigger day in Europe, to be sure, than in, say, Wyoming. But today we’ll see if Hillary Clinton can use the Wyoming caucuses to get some momentum of her own after, in some ways, halting Barack Obama’s momentum on Tuesday.
Wyoming was the first state in the union to the elect a woman governor, Nellie Ross. And as former President Bill Clinton pointed out when he barnstormed through the state on Thursday, the Wyoming state slogan, dating back to the 19th century, is “Equal Rights.” But students of Western history know that was something of a marketing ploy, designed to draw more women out to a remote yet beautiful territory comprised of the High Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned in Wyoming yesterday, and both made appearances in Obama cousin Dick Cheney’s hometown of Casper, while Hillary split off to the capital of Cheyenne and Obama went to Laramie.
Obama closed out his Wyoming campaigning last night drawing 8500 people to a rally in Laramie, as the Laramie Boomerang reports. The biggest political rally in the history of a state with a population of 520,000.
There he delivered his standard stump speech, with a little twist for Dick Cheney’s home state crowd. “No matter what else happens, the name George W. Bush won’t be on the ballot. The name of my cousin Dick Cheney won’t be on the ballot,” he said, to the laughter of the crowd. “We have enough money, ideas, energy and inspiration. What’s been missing is the American people trying to take this country back. If you decide, then we cannot be stopped,” he said.
There are no polls in Wyoming. Not that polls have done all that well this year. But we do know there is virtually no African American base for Obama in this state bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho.
Hillary Clinton’s most recent attack ad against Obama.
It’s “Game Day: Wyoming.” I’ll be anchoring PJ Media network’s coverage throughout the day, weaving together reports and information from correspondents and contacts inside and outside the contest states, as usual. The anchor coverage will be linked to and, to an extent, mirrored here on NWN. This is a continuation of the “Game Day: Iowa,” “Game Day: New Hampshire,” “Game Day: Michigan And Vegas,” “Game Day: Nevada And South Carolina Republicans,” “Game Day: South Carolina Democrats,” “Game Day: Florida Republicans,” “Super-Duper Tuesday Special Edition,” “Game Day: Semi-Super Saturday,” “Game Day: Chesapeake Tuesday,” “Game Day: Wisconsin And Hawaii,” and “Game Day: Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont” packages.
The state’s population is 90% white, 6% Latino, 3% Native American (or American Indian, as the casino tribes of California now seem to prefer), and 1% black. Wyoming’s economy is based on resource extraction and tourism. The state has never had a personal or corporate income tax, and the sales tax doesn’t apply to food. Staunch support for the Second Amendment (right to bear arms) is a top priority in the state Democratic Party platform.
Wyoming hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in 1964.
But it does have a Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal. Governor Freudenthal, who won narrowly in 2002 over a somewhat hapless candidate backed by famously acerbic former Senator Alan Simpson, won an easy re-election in 2006.
Governor Freudenthal says he is neutral in the race between Obama and Clinton. But he was appointed by former President Clinton as US attorney for Wyoming, the post he used to prepare his run for governor.
Former Wyoming Governor Mike Sullivan, Bill Clinton’s US ambassador to Ireland, is pushing for Hillary. As is former Wyoming Secretary of State Kathy Karpan, a familiar figure in national Democratic politics, who introduced Hillary Clinton yesterday with a plea to make International Women’s Day a reality in Wyoming today.
Meanwhile, Wyoming Democratic Party chairman John Millin is for Obama. Last fall, he caused some controversy by saying that Hillary inspires so much hatred in the Mountain West that her nomination would put all Mountain West Democrats in danger if she headed up the ticket.
Iowa Governor Chet Culver has also been stumping for Obama in Wyoming.
Here is how the caucuses will unfold.
12 delegates to the Democratic national convention will be selected in 23 county caucuses held around the state. To make things more complicated seeming, the caucuses are taking place all at different times, from the early morning to the late afternoon.
I’ll be giving you reports throughout the day, both on doings within Wyoming, and on other campaign developments.
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