Barack Obama discusses offshore oil drilling in Jacksonville.
Another big week in presidential politics, as both Barack Obama and John McCain are advertising now in battleground states, the two will continue battling over energy policy, Obama will campaign with Hillary Clinton for the first time and integrate much of her fundraising machine into his, and McCain makes some adjustments to his campaign in the wake of some concern from Republican political pros. We’ll also see what, if any, effect there is from yesterday’s unprecedented summit in Saudi Arabaia of oil producers and consumers.
First to how what Obama and Clinton will do this week, as the two work to heal the breach in the Democratic Party caused by their long, if foreordained, primary battle. Clinton has been on vacation since losing the nomination fight to Obama, and will return to the Senate at the beginning of the week. At the end of the week, she and Obama will campaign together publicly, and will meet with many of her top fundraisers to integrate them into the Obama campaign. That process is already underway. In fact, there will be a big unity fundraising event — with heavy assistance from top Clinton fundraisers — for Obama and the Democratic National Committee Tuesday night at the LA Music Center. It looks like around $5 million will be raised.
Meanwhile, a number of political pros in the Republican Party are concerned about the direction of the McCain campaign. The campaign has been suffering from conceptual incoherency, and many Republican insiders are deeply concerned. One of the top Republican consultants in the country put it this way in a conversation with me: “They’re stuck like flypaper to the president. Every time they start to move away, McCain turns around and gets closer to Bush.” McCain senior advisor Steve Schmidt, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign manager, is leaving the candidate’s side to take on a bigger operational role at McCain campaign headquarters.
As this was brewing, a politician McCain has been wooing decided last week to defend Obama from some of the most sensational charges against him. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican-turned-independent, a billionaire media mogul who is perhaps the leading Jewish-American politician, denounced what he calls a “whisper campaign” in some elements of the Jewish community linking Barack Obama to Islam. Speaking Friday in Florida at the breakfast meeting of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, Bloomberg called the effort “wedge politics at its worst, and we have to reject it loudly, clearly and unequivocally. Let’s call those rumors what they are: Lies.”
Bloomberg, a close friend and ally of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the whisper campaign is “cloaked in concern for Israel, but the real concern is about partisan politics. Israel is just being used as a pawn, which is not that surprising, since some people are willing to stoop to any level to win an election.”
John McCain outlines his energy policy in Houston.
The TV ad wars are fully engaged between the two candidates, with Barack Obama’s first general election ad up now in 18 states, nearly twice as many as the 10 John McCain is up in. What is Obama doing? Three very big things, explained by various metaphors.
Obama is calming the waters with regard to his unusual background, identifying himself and his life story with core American values. He is spreading the field, to borrow a term from sports parlance, advertising in many states never contested by a Democratic presidential candidate, forcing McCain to respond if he can. And he is flooding the zone, as the new ad comes immediately upon the heels of Obama’s Thursday announcement that he will eschew public financing for the general election, relying instead on his massive Internet-based small donor fundraising machine and integrating elements of the Clinton fundraising machine. (Yes, Obama has reneged by opting out of public financing. His campaign never thought it could break all the primary fundraising records. He’ll brandish his unprecedented success with small donors on the Internet as a sort of pseudo-public financing, to blunt criticism.)
While McCain will make do with $84 million in public funding, along with whatever his Republican allies raise for other operations on his behalf, Obama will have most of the ancillary stuff PLUS at likely a three to one edge in spending by their respective official campaign organizations. In other words, Obama will likely be able to spend more in each state he decides to contest, including McCain’s must-win battleground states such as the big two of the last election, Ohio and Florida. And he can go into some Republican states and put them into play, forcing McCain to spend his much scarcer resources to defend what should be his own electoral base. In fact, he’s doing this now in Georgia, where a new poll shows him only one point behind. He also, for example, has slight edges in recent polls in such usually Republican states as Colorado and Virginia.
As Obama makes these moves, McCain’s advertising strategy has a certain conceptual incoherence, with McCain having run two very different ads in the same markets in the past two weeks, striving to show independence from George W. Bush while actually changing key policy positions to those of the president.
Obama’s ad is 60 seconds long. John McCain’s ad is 30 seconds long. Obama is playing in 18 states: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
McCain is playing in 10 states: Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Missouri.
With oil prices near record highs, and gasoline prices at record highs, the two campaigns will continue fighting this week about energy policy. Frankly, neither candidate has a particularly compelling policy.
Obama has been talking about a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. But that won’t bring down the price of oil, which is set on globalized markets. Nor will it bring down the price of gasoline. It might actually increase it. Obama could rebate the proceeds of the tax to consumers, but that won’t solve the problem.
McCain has been talking about a federal gas tax holiday. Now he wants to open up more offshore oil drilling, a sharp reversal in his thinking, and has hinted about the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.
But the gas tax holiday would make on the slightest dent in the price at the pump, and could easily be swamped by future price increases. Meanwhile, the highways get a little worse due to the lack of funds.
McCain does call for more use of nuclear power. Countries like France and Japan swear by it, and with new tech have had no problems. But that has nothing to do with the oil and gasoline crises.
Now the two candidates are starting to talk about the rule of speculation in driving up the price of oil.
Barack Obama is going to start getting at one of the likely causes of the record run-up in oil and gasoline prices: speculation in unregulated markets. Yesterday, his campaign rolled out an initiative to end the so-called “Enron loophole” (inserted into federal law through the efforts of McCain advisors Phil and Wendy Gramm). The move is led by New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a former Wall Street tycoon. This is hardly the only cause, but it looks like one of them.
What the candidates intend to do about other causes of the price run-up, such as the record low of the dollar against the euro and the geopolitical risk premium, remains to be seen. …
Barack Obama is in Chicago, off the campaign trail.
John McCain is in Sedona, Arizona, off the campaign trail.
** WEBB MOVING UP. Let’s see, in the past week, Virginia Senator and former Navy Secretary Jim Webb has learned that President Bush will not attempt to veto his new GI bill, which had been opposed by Bush and John McCain on the grounds that it grants benefits to Iraq and Afghanistan vets rather than force them to re-up to get the benefits. The best-selling novelist has learned that his new book, “A Time To Fight,” is a best-seller. He’s learned that he is almost certainly on Barack Obama’s shortlist for the VP nod. And he’s been profiled on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal, in a piece entitled “Arming Obama,” as a key validator for the somewhat exotic Democratic nominee with veterans, the military, and working class whites.
** OBAMA V. MCCAIN: THE AD WARS ARE ON. What Obama and McCain are doing in their first rounds of general election TV advertising. Along with the where and the why. From my other blog.
** SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Miami, meeting with the national mayors conference and hitting John McCain on transportation and flood control issues.
John McCain is in Sedona, Arizona, off the campaign trail.
** F1 THIS WEEKEND.The globe-spanning Formula One racing circuit holds its eighth race of the 18-race season Sunday morning at 5 AM Pacific with the French Grand Prix. BMW’s Robert Kubica, who just won the Canadian Grand Prix, has moved into close contention for the world driving title with McClaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikonnen, the flying Finn who beat last season’s rookie sensation Hamilton (first black driver in F1) by one point for the most recent title.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early Monday. Crude oil closed at $135.36 on Friday, down on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on June 22nd. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
** BLOOMBERG DENOUNCES “WHISPER CAMPAIGN” AGAINST OBAMA. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, billionaire media mogul who is perhaps the leading Jewish-American politician, this morning denounced what he calls a “whisper campaign” in some elements of the Jewish community linking Barack Obama to Islam. Speaking in Florida at the breakfast meeting of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, Bloomberg called the effort “wedge politics at its worst, and we have to reject it loudly, clearly and unequivocally. Let’s call those rumors what they are: lies.”
Bloomberg, a close friend and ally of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the whisper campaign is “cloaked in concern for Israel, but the real concern is about partisan politics. Israel is just being used as a pawn, which is not that surprising, since some people are willing to stoop to any level to win an election.”
** GEORGIA: MCCAIN SHADES OBAMA.A new Insider Advantage poll of Georgia shows John McCain in a statistical tie with Barack Obama. It’s McCain 44%, Obama 43%, Bob Barr 6%. Barr, of course, is the former Georgia congressman running as the Libertarian candidate. Georgia is one of the red states that Obama started advertising in today, which McCain will have to defend.
** COLORADO: OBAMA SHADES MCCAIN.A new Rasmussen poll of Colorado shows Barack Obama edging John McCain, 43% to 41%. Colorado has gone Republican in the last three presidential elections, but Obama has made it one of the new swing states, and began advertising there today after two weeks of unchallenged McCain advertising.
** JOHNNY MAC MAKES A MOVE. John McCain’s sharply different new TV ad strategy. From my other blog.
A backstage tour of John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” bus.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Chicago and Jacksonville, Florida. He meets on economic issues with the Democratic Governors Association.
John McCain is in Ottawa, Canada, speaking to the Economic Club of Toronto. He is talking up his support for free trade and opposition to any renegotiation of NAFTA. Most voters support some renegotiation of NAFTA.
Hillary Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama. She will campaign with Obama at the end of next week in undisclosed locales, and is introducing the presumptive Democratic nominee to her top fundraisers at a meeting in Washington.
Bill Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early Monday. It is now trading in the $135 to $136 per barrel range, down on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on June 22nd.
Maria Shriver remembers Tim Russert on the memorial edition of Meet The Press.
Late yesterday, the lengthy remembrances of Tim Russert came to their formal conclusion with a star-studded memorial service at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Fittingly, in that the veteran NBC newsman and ex-political operative was a lifelong Kennedy aficionado. And of course, California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, herself a member of the Kennedy clan, had a leading role as one of Russert’s closest friends.
Russert was not a friend of mine, but he was an acquaintance. I was shocked and very saddened by his death. Whenever I encountered him, he seemed very smart, amusing, and down-to-earth. I think he was the most politically knowledgeable journalist in the country, an exceptional real-time political analyst. Which only makes sense as he was a ringer, a former top political operative and strategist. Discovered up in Buffalo by then soon-to-be Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the great late characters of American politics, and later counselor to Mario Cuomo, Russert was a more amiable Lee Atwater type. In 1984, Gary Hart famously exclaimed: “Get me a Russert!”
But Russert went off into TV news that year, realizing before most Democrats that Cuomo would never actually run for president. Once at NBC, despite what he called his “face made for radio,” he emerged within a decade first as a senior executive and then as network TV’s leading journalist, revitalizing a moribund Meet The Press in the process and running NBC’s political coverage.
I actually didn’t watch Russert much on his early Sunday morning Meet The Press. I’m usually not up that late on a Saturday night. There are some complaints that his style, dependent upon his vast insider reach, let newsmakers off the hook at key moments, for all its famed “Gotcha” moments. (Most of which I found fair.) I do know that he was very good at running presidential debates, and I greatly enjoyed his election night analysis and commentary over the years.
The elegies for Russert went on quite a bit. In a way, as heartfelt as they were with regard to him as a person, they may also have been for the man as an exemplar of a passing media and political age. One reason I did not watch Meet The Press much is the one I mischievously gave earlier. On way too early on a Sunday morning for someone who only with the advent of this site has become anything approaching a morning person. The other is that I questioned the agenda. Or more particularly, the idea of the agenda.
Russert saw Meet The Press as a way to set the table for the week in national politics. While I thought highly of him and greatly admire his skills and accomplishments, that seemed like an old idea to me. That someone, an East Coaster, running a political insider talk show in Washington, DC should drive the national political debate.
I’m not sure how much he did over the years, though I always made sure to check what he was up to. Probably more than anyone else. But that task is increasingly difficult, with the development and diffusion of new media.
The national political and media communities, as conventionally constituted, are actually concentrated in only a few places. They’re all on the East Coast.
Tim Russert was, because of his gregarious personality and tremendous skill set, perfectly positioned to be the key unelected person at the center of those two intertwined worlds.
But new technology, especially the Internet, is changing this, eroding the system. It’s why the “national” media is less dominant, though no less insistent. Why a freshman Illinois senator famous for a great speech defeated the most awesome political machine in the country. Why big-wig fundraisers are feeling major status anxiety when they see an Obama — who Russert clearly admired, incidentally — raising more money in a month without holding fundraisers or making phone calls than they can raise in a year.
Russert was an adversarial figure, in the sense that he kept checking down on a politician’s statements and positions, present and past, in the effort to get at, if not exactly the truth, certainly the story. But he was not a hostile figure. He was a man of opinions, which were frequently clear enough, but he was not a hyperpartisan. He gave people the opportunity to make their points, with respect.
Journalism is increasingly becoming more partisan. In my view, too much partisanship gets in the way of considered analysis. But shoutfests and character assassination are increasingly the order. The Russert style is being supplanted by figures such as Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, each of whom — in their own ways — lets partisanship and personal self-involvement play an ever-increasing role. I’ve enjoyed some of those folks at times, but it’s a different gig. “Very interesting; if true.”
Russert wasn’t about telling you what to think, though clearly the choice of information presented can create its own narrative. He was about telling you what he thought was happening, and why.
I think most people actually don’t like political shoutfests, which is why his approach will continue to have value. But the East Coast club has seen its brightest days come and go, and one could certainly sense that in the Russert remembrances.
One could also sense a real sense of family. Putting aside questions of elites, hidden agendas, new technologies, and all that stuff, Russert was a warm, engaging guy. I chose NBC for most of my election night viewing. While I like all their personalities, even if I don’t always agree with them, Russert’s key role there was the obvious decider.
Many viewers around the country, as it turned out, felt they lost a friend when Tim Russert died so suddenly last Friday, fittingly the 13th.
Maria Shriver was a big part of all this. California’s first lady checked in on the memorial edition of Meet The Press last Sunday, from Sun Valley. And she spoke yesterday at the Kennedy Center memorial service, after attending the private funeral service in the morning at which Barack Obama and John McCain sat side-by-side, throughout.
Russert was one of Shriver’s best friends. A confidante throughout most of her career and into her career crisis caused by Schwarzenegger’s election as California’s governor and everyone’s ultimate realization that she could not be both first lady and a network news correspondent.
Describing Russert as “a father” to many younger journalists and akin to her own “big brother,” Shriver amusingly recounted how Russert puckishly insisted he would just have to go along when she went to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro.
Appearing on Meet The Press, Shriver said Russert was always prepared to offer younger journalists advice, such as with her Castro interview. “You need me in Cuba when you’re going to interview Fidel Castro,’” he claimed. What he really wanted to do was meet Castro and discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis, a favorite topic he’d studied greatly, with the longtime Cuban dictator.
When Shriver and Schwarzenegger were thinking of getting their daughter into Boston College — where Russert’s son Luke, who delivered a very impressive eulogy yesterday — Russert insisted that she needed his help.
“You need to know people in Boston,” Russert told this member of the Kennedy family. “You need to know people in the Catholic Church.”
“He was great fun, he was a great companion,” said Shriver. And he took his show seriously. If for some reason you didn’t want to come, said Shriver, he would hound you until you did. “He’d go after people to get on that show. He really worked that angle just as much as being prepared once they finally agreed.”
“He won’t really be anyone,” Shriver recounted Russert saying of Schwarzenegger, who’d been elected governor of California in the spectacular 2003 California recall campaign, until he comes on Meet The Press.
Russert’s tongue-in-cheek humor on that score aside, there is another story I will tell another time about how Schwarzenegger nearly went on Meet The Press the year before he actually did.
For all the talk of Meet The Press and Russert’s campaign coverage, the show of his that I’m thinking of was his more relaxed cable show called, simply, Tim Russert. His amiability and sense of fun about politics came out more on that far less adversarial and formal effort. I remember a show he did last month, on the weekend, as fate would have it, that Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer diagnosis was announced.
It was a show with Ted Sorensen and Russert’s friend, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (married to Sorensen’s former speechwriting colleague Dick Goodwin). Russert and Goodwin discussed Sorensen’s very fine new memoir, “Counselor: A Life At The Edge Of History.” I’d been privileged to work some with Sorensen — who is best known as special counsel to JFK and perhaps the finest speechwriter ever — when he served as national co-chairman of Gary Hart’s presidential campaigns.
Sorensen is 80 now, and essentially blind. Russert and Goodwin skillfully guided him through a relaxed and fascinating discussion of the Kennedys and the last half-century of American political history. It was quite fascinating and engaging. And all the more poignant coming on the weekend of Ted Kennedy’s diagnosis, and not long before the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.
That’s the memory I have now of Russert.
Speaking of the Kennedys, and of Maria Shriver. She’s been sailing in recent days with her Uncle Ted. And Schwarzenegger headed out of state yesterday, perhaps to the East.
Barack Obama explains why he reneged on his earlier position to accept only public financing in the general election.
** NOTE: Incidentally, my back is killing me this afternoon, and I have another column to write.
** HILLARY URGES BIG FUNDRAISERS TO WORK FOR OBAMA. As expected, and reported here on TPM, Hillary Clinton in her late afternoon conference call with her top fundraisers, told them it’s time to put it in gear for Barack Obama.
** OBAMA TV CAMPAIGN STARTS TOMORROW. Having announced today that he will forego public financing in the general election, Barack Obama will tomorrow launch his general election TV advertising campaign. It’s a biographical spot called “Country I Love” in which the freshman Illinois senator, seated in front of a window with sun-dappled trees as his backdrop, speaks to camera while a montage of scenes from his life float past.
Obama’s ad is 60 seconds long. John McCain’s ad is 30 seconds long. McCain is playing in 10 states. Obama, who evidently intends to take full advantage of his big fundraising edge, will be playing in 18 states. Here they are: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia. I’ll have full analysis of the ad wars tomorrow.
** JOHNNY MAC MAKES A MOVE. John McCain’s sharply different brand-new TV ad strategy. No Bush, no war, no greenhouse. From my other blog.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. He holds an economic roundtable with labor leaders. Last night he held a fundraiser at the Robert F. Kennedy family home at Hickory Hill in Virginia.
John McCain is in Muscatine and Columbus Junction, Iowa and Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. McCain visits flood zone victims in Iowa and has a fundraiser in the Twin Cities.
The two candidates continue to duel over energy policy, specifically McCain’s newfound commitment to offshore oil drilling, Obama’s support for the 1993 Twin Towers terrorism trial, and Obama’s long-expected decision to avoid public financing and rely on his fundraising machine for the general election.
Why renege on public financing? Obama will now have as much as a 3 to 1 fundraising edge over the last couple months of the campaign. His incredible fundraising is due to the Internet, which he did not anticipate when he first talked about talking the public financing. There’s no sign that the Republicans will restrain their 527s, who are expected to fill the airwaves with Obama’s controversial comments and questionable associates. Obama can now spend heavily on TV advertising in states which Republicans would otherwise have no qualms about mounting no defense.
Hillary Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early Monday. It is now trading in the $134 to $137 per barrel range, down on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Saudi Arabia on June 22nd.
Al Gore with Barack Obama, Monday night in Michigan.
** THE USUAL IMPASSE. Let’s see, no progress in the chronic California budget crisis. Democrats want to raise taxes, have some cuts, some want to adopt Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to securitize the state lottery (Assembly yes, Senate no). Republicans say they want a cuts-only solution, and are trying to use their leverage to delay implementation of the state’s climate change program and change work laws. State spending has risen about 40% since 2000.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger was in San Diego keynoting the big international biotech convention. California will pursue stem cell research projects in a new partnership with Canada and with the Australian state of Victoria. And First Lady Maria Shriver was in Washington to speak at the Kennedy Center Memorial for Tim Russert. I’ll write about that tomorrow.
** SCHWARZENEGGER ON OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING. He sounds unamused about his friend John McCain’s new position: “California’s coastline is an international treasure. I do not support lifting this moratorium on new oil drilling off our coast. However, I do welcome the national discussion about how to lower the cost of gasoline—soaring prices are taking a toll on California families just as they are across the country.
“We are in this situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based oil. The direction our nation needs to go in, and where California is already headed, is toward greater innovation in new technologies and new fuel choices for consumers. That is the way we will ultimately reduce fuel costs and also protect our environment.”
** VIRGINIA: SLIGHT OBAMA EDGE. Barack Obama has a very slender edge in the latest poll of new battleground state Virginia. It’s Obama 47%, John McCain 45% in the new Public Policy Polling survey. The Virginian with the apparent biggest impact as Obama’s running mate is former Governor Mark Warner, who reaffirmed last weekend that he is running for the Senate. Senator and former Navy Secretary Jim Webb and Governor Tim Kaine don’t have as much of an impact.
** QUINNIPIAC: OBAMA UP IN TRADITIONAL SWING STATES. While Barack Obama makes moves to win unconventional new swing states, such as the Mountain West and Virginia, he has to contest with John McCain in the conventional swing states. According to the new Quinnipiac polls, he is doing well in them. Obama leads McCain in Ohio, 48-42, Florida, 47-43, and Pennsylvania, 52-40. Bitter?
** HAS MCCAIN WRITTEN OFF CALIFORNIA? Yesterday in Houston, John McCain reversed his longstanding position in opposition to offshore oil drilling, even as he launched a new, environmentally-oriented TV ad campaign to appeal to independent voters in swing states. Has he written off California? Or did he never really have a chance here? Or does he think that Californians, and Americans, for that matter, will go along with a plan that would take years to ramp up, and have no particular impact on the world oil price, given the relatively small amounts of oil involved?
** JOHNNY MAC MAKES A MOVE. John McCain’s sharply different brand-new TV ad strategy. No Bush, no war, no greenhouse. From my other blog.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Washington, DC and McLean, Virginia.
** MCCAIN TV STARTS — VULNERABILITY WRAPPED IN A MESSAGE OF STRENGTH.From my other blog.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early Monday. It is now trading in the $134 to $135 per barrel range, down on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Saudi Arabia on June 22nd.
John McCain’s new TV ad, pushing the themes of fighting climate change, distance from Bush, and his new slogan: “Reform, Prosperity, Peace.”
** JOHNNY MAC MAKES A MOVE. John McCain’s sharply different new TV ad strategy. From my other blog.
** CALIFORNIA REDISTRICTING REFORM INITIATIVE QUALIFIES. February was a huge statewide election in California. June was a bore. November will be an especially huge statewide election in the Golden State.
Arnold Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Julie Soderlund, driving somewhere on I-5 between Redding and Ashland, informs that the California Voters First initiative qualified for the November ballot after turning in some 1.2 million signatures. While legislative Democrats, who like the status quo for drawing their own district lines, not surprisingly, oppose the initiative, good government reformers like the League of Women Voters and Common Cause back it. Along with big-time Dems like former California state Controller and maximum Barack Obama guy Steve Westly, former Governor Gray Davis, super-venture capitalist and Clinton friend John Doerr, and Phil Angelides’ biggest backer, Angelo Tsakopoulis. Along with the California Democratic Council, which, as I mentioned to Ms. Soderlund just now, I was vice president of when she was an exceedingly small child.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned from Sun Valley and is back in the Capitol today for private meetings around the chronic budget crisis and other such matters. First Lady Maria Shriver, and I’ll get into this in a forthcoming column, checked in with the world on Sunday from the Idaho locale with her thoughts on her late “big brother,” Tim Russert. I’ll tell you something you probably don’t know about that, and the dramatic 2003 California recall election.
** AMERICANS SEE OBAMA AS NEXT PRESIDENT. A clear majority of American voters, led by a clear majority of independents, sees Barack Obama as the likely next president, according to the Gallup Poll.
** MCCAIN TV STARTS — VULNERABILITY WRAPPED IN A MESSAGE OF STRENGTH.From my other blog.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early yesterday. It is now trading in the $134 to $135 per barrel range, down on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Saudi Arabia on June 22nd.
** UPDATE. Gary Hart was being, as you might have supposed, somewhat ironic. As was I, as I mentioned in my e-mail reply to him. Though the word I actually use, with regard to myself, was not “ironic,” but “facetious.”
I will, instead, wear my fab Ferragamo American flag cuff links, courtesy of gf. And my American Legion lapel pin, courtesy of me.
That should, as the saying goes, be that.
** ARNOLD NOTES THE PASSING OF OSCAR-WINNING EFFECTS MASTER STAN WINSTON. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just commented on the death, at age 62, of four-time Academy Award-winner Stan Winston. He won his awards for such seminal films as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, and Aliens. Said Schwarzenegger: “The entertainment industry has lost a genius and I lost one of my best friends with the death Sunday night of Stan Winston. Stan’s work and four Oscars speak for themselves and will live on forever. What will live forever in my heart is the way that Stan loved everyone and treated each of his friends like they were family. More treasured by Stan than any Oscar, though, was the endearing love that he had for his wife, Karen, his children, Matt and Debbie and his grandchildren. I will miss him greatly and am honored to have worked with him.”
Most recently, Winston was in charge of the special effects on the current smash hit, Iron Man (which has made quirky smart guy actor Robert Downey, Jr. something of a superstar) and the upcoming fourth film in the Terminator saga, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Winston, a University of Virginia grad, died of cancer.
** GORE ENDORSES OBAMA TONIGHT IN DETROIT.A lot of Democrats I know think this should be the ticket. If nothing else, it distracts from the troubled black mayor of Motown, caught up in a web of deception around many text messages to his inamorata/top aide.
** CALIFORNIA GAY MARRIAGE AND THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE. I’ve been off doing international TV on the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same sex marriage and its impact on the presidential race. My short form answer? Not so much …
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Flint and Detroit, Michigan.
John McCain is in Washington, DC, Arlington, Virginia, and Dallas, Texas.
** MCCAIN TV STARTS — VULNERABILITY WRAPPED IN A MESSAGE OF STRENGTH.From my other blog.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 hit a record of nearly $140 per barrel early today. It is now trading in the $137 to $139 per barrel range, down a bit on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Saudi Arabia on June 22nd.
Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech at the Apostolic Church of Christ in Chicago.
Barack Obama starts the second week of his opening general election tour on the economy today with a look at his “competitiveness” agenda. The move comes a day after his Fathers Day speech at a black church in Chicago, at which he called out absentee fathers, especially in the black community, for acting “like boys instead of men.”
This is part of an expected pivot to the center by Obama for the general election. It’s also a way for the exotic Obama, father of two girls, to highlight his commonality with mainstream American culture and challenge fellow African Americans. There will be further such moves.
Meanwhile, John McCain’s new TV ad campaign continues, as does the debate over debates. McCain’s ad introduces or, actually, re-introduces this famous man in various battleground states, trying to frame the election around security rather than the economy.
McCain senior advisor Steve Schmidt tells me that the ad is airing in 54 broadcast TV markets in key swing states, a more than $3 million buy. Where exactly is it airing? Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. Another million or so is being spent on cable TV, where the ad will run on Fox News, CNN, Lifetime, The Learning Channel, and the Discovery Channel.
Here’s the ad’s text: Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.When I was five years old, my father left for war. My grandfather came home from war and died the next day.
I was shot down over Vietnam and spent five years as a POW. Some of the friends I served with never came home.
I hate war. And I know how terrible its costs are.
I’m running for President to keep the country I love safe. I’m John McCain and I approve this message.
Barack Obama isn’t running any TV ads. Right now.
Obama is campaigning far more aggresssively against McCain and the Republicans than he did against Hillary Clinton and his fellow Democrats, hammering McCain and the Bush Administration every day now. The tyro Illinois senator said at a private fundraiser in Philadelphia the other night, featuring Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, whose machine helped Hillary win one of her biggest victories over Obama but where Obama now leads McCain: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
That’s a rip-off of a Sean Connery line in The Untouchables. About “the Chicago Way.” Obama, of course, is from Chicago. Well, from Chicago via Honolulu and Jakarta.
It’s hardly all good for Obama, who is actually running behind his party in what should be an excellent year for Democrats given President Bush’s near historic levels of unpopularity.
He had to cut loose his principal veep vetter, Jim Johnson, a prominent Washington insider who vetted the last two Democratic vice presidential nominees, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards. Neither of whom turned out all that well, incidentally, though not for background problems. Johnson had received favorable treatment on loans from Countrywide, a controversial firm at the center of the subprime mortgage crisis. He’s such a political fixture that it apparently didn’t occur to Obama and his team to see if he might have any problems. Whoops!
But the move comes after McCain had to let five people go from his campaign for controversial lobbying ties, including to the murderous Burmese military dictatorship and to Saudi Arabia.
Speaking of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom will next weekend host a very unusual conference which may have great bearing on this presidential election. The most important leaders of the oil cartel are bringing together, next Sunday in Jeddah, representatives of the principal oil-producing and oil-consuming nations of the world to seek a solution to the world’s oil crisis. Or at least the portion of the crisis that has led to record oil and gasoline prices.
Obama says that the oil men in the White House, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, have done little to follow through on their promise of cheap oil following the takeover of Iraq, which was viewed as having the second largest reserves in the world.
McCain says that Obama should follow his lead in moving to suspend federal gasoline taxes over the summer.
Perhaps it’s something for the two to debate. When they finally have debates.
Both have agreed to the three standard debates, slated to begin in September. But McCain, as the underdog, naturally wants more.
He’s challenged Obama to appear with him at another ten “town hall” debates. Obama countered by suggesting that the pair engaged in “Lincoln-Douglas” debates around the nation, after the fashion of the famed 1858 series of debates between Illinois politicians Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas over slavery, and a U.S. Senate seat. (Douglas won that election, but Lincoln won the debates, setting him up to win the presidency in 1860.)
It’s amusing in that McCain and Obama have both suggested debate formats that play specifically to their respective greatest strengths.
For McCain is best at town hall meetings, where he is a master. Obama is best at platform speeches, where he is a master. And the Lincoln-Douglas format is essentially a duel of lengthy speeches, rather than a debate as we have come to know it.
There’s no agreement yet between the two camps, but talks will continue this week and ultimately there will be more than the scheduled three debates.
Neither man was his party’s best debater. Obama, especially early on, as in a Las Vegas forum which I filmed and where he bombed, struggled at times as he attempted to shoehorn elements of his stump speech into much shorter debate answers. But the lengthy campaign against Clinton honed his skills.
But Clinton also was not her party’s best debater. That was John Edwards. The Republicans’ best debater? Rudy Giuliani. For all the good it did either of those candidates. Giuliani, by the way, has resurfaced following his disastrous campaign. He is willing to help his financially-challenged party. For a cut of the take at fundraisers he headlines.
This week, Obama will continue the consolidation of his takeover of his own party. While the Clintons are on vacation — former President Bill resurfaced Thursday night to fete Warren Beatty as the liberal actor/filmmaker received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in Hollywood — Obama is moving most Democratic National Committee operations from Washington to Chicago, site of his own campaign headquarters.
The Republican National Committee will continue to operate out of Washington, near McCain headquarters. …
The 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s greatest endurance sports car race, is this weekend on an 8.5 mile course in the French countryside. This is the start and first lap of the race from the Steve McQueen film, Le Mans.
** SUNDAY – WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama, after an unscheduled stop yesterday afternoon involving sandbags, a threatened Mississippi River town, and lots of TV cameras, speaks about the challenge of being a good father at the largely African American Apostolic Church of God in Chicago.
John McCain is off the trail.
Hillary Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
** IRAQ SETBACK.Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has rejected US terms for a continuing presence in his country. Rival radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called for a new militia offensive against US forces. Both are positioning for elections later this year, mindful that most Iraqis don’t like the ongoing US presence in their country. Looking past President Bush, Iraq’s foreign minister will meet privately with John McCain on Sunday and hold a conference with Barack Obama on Monday. The UN mandate sanctioning the US presence in Iraq expires at the end of this year.
** BEATTY WINS A.F.I. — FETED BY CLINTON, HART, BROWN, MCGOVERN, AND MCCAIN.Warren Beatty received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award Thursday night. (The ceremony will air June 25th on USA.) In addition to a glittering array of celebs, the hyphenate heard in person tributes from former President Bill Clinton (surfacing for the first time since his wife conceded the Democratic presidential race), former Senator Gary Hart, former Senator George McGovern, and former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown. The crowd was also treated to a taped tribute from Senator John McCain. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is a close friend of the famously liberal Beatty, notwithstanding their political differences.
** MCCAIN TV STARTS — VULNERABILITY WRAPPED IN A MESSAGE OF STRENGTH.From my other blog.
** SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
John McCain holds a virtual town hall.
Hillary Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama.
** 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, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. 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 closed at $134.86 per barrel on Friday, down a bit on word of an unprecedented oil producers and consumers summit in Saudi Arabia on June 22nd. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
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