Barack Obama

Anyone who doubts the possibility of a landslide victory for Barack Obama in November probably didn't see John McCain on the stump on this week.

The problem with Mr. McCain's appearances in Maine and New Hampshire on Monday and Tuesday was not merely that the crowds he attracted were smaller or less ardent than those who customarily flock to see Mr. Obama – though they were. Nor was it that asserting his opponent would "lose a war in order to win a political campaign" smacked of frustration – though it did.

The more fundamental weakness was Mr. McCain’s failure to answer a very basic question: Why does he want to be president? His stump speech provided no compelling rationale for his candidacy and no real roadmap for where he wants to lead the nation.  read more »

Once again, the right is up in arms, yelling that the Liberal Media is conspiring to distort coverage and silence opposing views so that their chosen candidate might claim the White House. Several specific developments account for the current clamoring.

One is the presidential-level press coverage of Barack Obama’s trip to Afghanistan and the Middle East, where he’s been accompanied by all three network news anchors and many of the most prominent television and print correspondents. John McCain, meanwhile, has taken many similar excursions but never received remotely comparable coverage. And this week in particular, McCain seems sort of like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone – left by himself while everyone else heads overseas.  read more »

Rapper Nas joined members of MoveOn.org and Color of Change today outside FOX News headquarters to protest what they say is the network’s racist coverage of Barack Obama, black institutions and black people. Color of Change claims about 620,000 people signed petitions against FOX News.

An hour after he was scheduled to appear, the self-labeled Black Republican finally emerged from an SUV in a white t-shirt and jeans. He gave a short speech berating FOX for its “racist smears on Obama and all black Americans.”

“We already knew that FOX is not a news network, they are propaganda machine,” Nas said.  read more »

Time is dwindling for Obamamaniacs who hang their allegiance on their walls. Russell Simmons’ Art for Life auction ends tomorrow (July 24) at 2 p.m., and with it, the opportunity to pay over $100,000 for one of three original and unique, soon-to-be iconic Obama ‘HOPE’ stencilings. These approximately 4 feet by 6 inch pieces were produced by Shepard Fairey on mixed media (or what appears to be newspaper and wallpaper) and can now be admired in reproduced poster form in college dorm rooms across the country. That is, if your friend was one of the liberal junkies keen enough to pounce on them when they were released on Jan.  read more »

At last week's Netroots Nation convention in Austin, online-politics innovator Andrew Rasiej told Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand that the campaign had still not demonstrated clearly to netroots supporters that an Obama administration would commit to online transparency and an open line of communication with them.

(It was perhaps an indication of the campaign's failure to convey that commitment that no more than about 30 people attended that particular panel discussion -- despite it being one of the few sessions during the four-day convention which featured potential powerbrokers in an Obama administration.)

In a follow-up conversation, Rasiej argued, as he did in his remarks to Hildebrand, that the campaign needed to do a better job of telegraphing to online activists that there would be greater openness and more opportunity for them to provide meaningful input in an Obama administration.  read more »

Last night at an event in Jamaica I spoke with City Councilman James Sanders, a former Marine and early Barack Obama supporter, who is in favor of Obama's plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. (John McCain has also said he will increase troop numbers in Afghaistan).

"The battle in Afghanistan, we have to win," Sanders said. "There, I justify putting in more troops."

During a June 18 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Steven Roth, New York real estate kingpin and the chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, suggested that a President Barack Obama could lead the United States out of its economic imbroglio.

“President Obama comes in, O.K.—that’s not a political prediction by the way, this is just a fantasy—and somehow or other, he does what he says he was going to do. He gets us out of the war,” began Mr. Roth in his heavily inflected New Yorkese.

In Mr. Roth’s imagined course of events—related to a deeply skeptical roundtable of pundits—the future president would use the billions of dollars that aren’t wasted overseas, coupled with increased tax revenues, to pay down the deficit.  read more »

Steve Hildebrand was getting an earful.

Barack Obama’s soft-spoken deputy campaign manager had just finished a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas, on July 19, during which he had called on liberal bloggers to help meet the demands of the 24-hour news cycle by beating back criticisms of the candidate. The more people there were participating in the campaign, he argued, the greater the likelihood of Mr. Obama’s election and an enduring Democratic majority.

Much of the audience applauded, but one high-profile attendee took exception to Mr. Hildebrand’s portrayal of an enlightened, democratic campaign.  read more »

Barack Obama knows which countries border Iraq; he understands the difference between Shia and Sunni; and he is probably aware that Czechoslovakia no longer exists—but as John McCain complains, the young senator has “no military experience whatsoever.” Indeed, like both of the last two presidents, Mr. Obama possesses scant credentials in national security and foreign policy.

Why, then, does he appear increasingly plausible as the next president? Assurance, grace, and mastery of the facts have helped to lift his stature, as did his daring decision to venture abroad, directly challenging his older opponent’s perceived strength. But granting his talent and initiative, the strongest argument for the Democrat is the weak performance of the Republican regime’s vaunted “grown-ups,” including Mr.  read more »

As noted by The Times' Caucus writer Michael Falcone, Tucker Carlson will be appearing in a 30-second commercial for an anti-Barack Obama documentary called Hype: The Obama Effect, created by Citizens United.

In the clip, Mr. Carlson, MSNBC's Senior Campaign Correspondent, is shown saying, "Well, the press loves Obama. I mean, not just loves—I mean an early teenage crush."

Crushes run both ways, of course. (Strange bedfellows, etc.) In the July issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott wrote an essay headlined Mad About the Guy, in which he criticized some right wing pundits' "Man Crush" on John McCain, including The New York Times' David Brooks, who gushed to Chris Matthews, "I love the guy."

Nuri al-Maliki was once dismissed as a powerless politician with a fleeting grip on his office. Now, though, the Iraqi prime minister is apparently strong enough to change the fundamental terms of the war debate in the U.S. presidential election in a way that dramatically improves Barack Obama’s standing on the issue.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Maliki began hinting publicly that he’d favor some kind of timeline for the departure of American troops in Iraq. Then last weekend he went further – much further – telling Der Spiegel that he wanted the Americans out “as soon as possible” and that Obama’s call for a 16-month phased redeployment of U.  read more »

Michael Bloomberg wants to hear where Barack Obama stands on the issue of free trade, he said earlier today, adding that he thinks John McCain has “a better record on this issue.”

Bloomberg was speaking across the street from City Hall, where the Consumer Electronics Association launched a nationwide bus tour advocating free trade with Colombia, among other countries.

“I think that John McCain has a better record on this issue than Barack Obama,” Bloomberg said. McCain, Bloomberg said, advocates “trading with the only ally we have left in Latin America, namely Colombia.”

“I’d like to hear a lot more from him about how he thinks we could reopen NAFTA without becoming a big loser in that,” the mayor added.  read more »

A reader loyal to Hillary Clinton points out that of the roughly 300 Hillraisers who bundled money for her, it appears only a few gave money to Barack Obama or the D.N.C. in June, according to the F.E.C. filing.

Giving to Obama's Victory Fund were Mark Aronchick, Clarence Avant, John Emerson, John Graham, Chad Griffin, Marc Nathanson. Contributors to the D.N.C. included Rashid Chaudhary, Gary Gensler, Ambassador Arthur Schechter and Maureen White.

Other Clinton donors subsequently have given to Obama, and bundled a lot of money for him too. But the paucity of names so far illustrates how slow-going the unity efforts have been.

Last week presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama contributed an op-ed to The New York Times headlined "My Plan for Iraq."

In it, Senator Obama wrote:

Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

According to The Drudge Report, Mr. Obama's Republican rival, Senator John McCain, attempted to file a rebuttal but didn't make it past The Times editorial board.  read more »

Here's Obama supporter Isac Weinberger in City Hall's Room 4A talking about the prospect of Barack Obama meeting with Palestinian leaders -- it's a necessity, he says, like when Israeli leaders first went to Germany -- and giving advice about what other groups should be on the agenda. (All of them, he says.)

AUSTIN, Texas—By Sunday morning, most of the speakers and bloggers attending the Netroots Nation convention had gone home. In preparation for the convention's final key note—a plenary on "eco-equality"—volunteers in the convention center's gaping main exhibit hall distributed leaflets against various outrages ("No Forced Vaccination" or "Put Impeachment Back on the Table.") Ed Madej, a digital cartographer who blogs on the Daily Kos under the name Ed in Montana, sat alone at one of the tables blanketed with such fliers, checking weather maps on his laptop for any possible disturbances on his way home to Helena.

Under jumbo screens featuring freeze-framed poses of panelists talking about "marketing and monetizing your blog" or taking "online engagement to offline activism," or Howard Dean lecturing in an open-collared shirt and tan jacket, Madej offered his own impression of this year's convention.  read more »

There’s a conventional view that John McCain faces an impossible political balancing act.

He badly needs his party’s conservative base to stand with him in November, but that base doesn’t particularly like or trust him. However, if he reins in his more moderate instincts and caters to these activists with the purity and intensity they demand, he’ll do irreparable harm to his standing with independent voters. And, especially with the number of Republican-identifying voters dwindling, victory this fall is unthinkable without substantial independent support.

But is McCain’s predicament problem with his base actually as dire as all that? The most recent data from Gallup, whose daily tracking poll has shown McCain within a few points of Barack Obama for weeks now, has him winning conservative Republicans – that is to say, the Republican base – by a 90-6 percent margin.  read more »

AUSTIN, Texas -- During a panel at the Netroots Nation convention on Saturday afternoon, Barack Obama’s soft-spoken deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, talked about how he hoped that this, his 22nd year working on political campaigns, would be his last one because it offered the opportunity to register “millions and millions of new Democrats, new progressive voters.”

In other words, this would be the election that would provide an enduring Democratic majority.

“We’re never going to have it as good as we have it right now,” said Hildebrand, who wore a grey t-shirt with Obama's face on it . “So get behind this effort, let your readers know how important this is.  read more »

Last Thursday, former Vice President Al Gore joined the many voices that have been calling for a crash program-a "moon-shot" national effort to get us off of fossil fuels. Senator Obama applauded the speech saying "For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat."

At the moment, neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain are taking as aggressive a position as Gore is taking. The energy industry doesn't know how to deal with this newest energy crisis. At the heart of the discussion is the impact of our current energy practices on our economic well-being and on national security.  read more »

Here’s a quick interview with PR guy Matthew Hiltzik, a former spokesman for the state Democratic Party who did Jewish outreach for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate race, in which I ask him what advice he'd have for Barack Obama ahead of a politically perilous swing through the Middle East.

Among Hiltzik's suggestions, doubtless inspired by certain memorable aspects of his Clinton experience: Get a good translator.

Intern extraordinaire Bharat Ayyar listened to NPR's Michael Martin interview David Paterson,who waxed poetic on NPR about his speech to the N.A.A.C.P. yesterday (where he was uncharacteristically outspoken about that New Yorker cover).

Today, Paterson talked about African-American leadership. Of the civil rights leaders, he said, “These people had to invest their energy on the abolition of slavery, preempting of segregation and the establishment of civil rights when they should have been spending their God-given talents finding new inventions for manufacturing, creating new transportation ideas, medical and scientific research, and perhaps nuclear physics.

"We have just wasted so much of our talent forcing African-Americans, Hispanics and women to invest their great ability in trying to make the Constitution valid and the Declaration of Independence read true," he said.  read more »

Assemblyman Rory Lancman of Queens has plenty of advice for Barack Obama about his upcoming trip to the Middle East, where Obama has said he will meet with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Lancman, whose district includes a large Orthodox Jewish population, is in the habit of making his view on the Middle East clear. Last month, he delivered some unsolicited advice to Obama about Israel, and last fall, Lancman co-authored an op-ed with Ed Koch, endorsing Hillary Clinton's position on Iran.

At about the 3:20 mark, Lancman says what's important “for a person running for president of the United States-- because they’re not running for prime minister of Israel--is to show they have a commitment to defending the United States' interests vigorously.  read more »

Two radically different story lines are emerging in the presidential race, depending on what kind of poll you look at.

If you look at the national-level data, Barack Obama seems to be underachieving. In the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, the presumptive Democratic nominee holds a scant two-point edge over John McCain. The margin is also two points in Rasmussen's daily poll—which also shows a dead-even race when "leaners" are factored in. Some other recent polls have been a little more favorable to Obama, but the combined weight of the available national data strongly suggests that Obama, despite his personal popularity and the enormous built-in advantages his party enjoys this year, is locked in a much closer race than he should be.  read more »

In a new seven-minute Web video, John McCain does to Barack Obama what the D.N.C. and progressive groups have been doing to McCain for some time now, juxtaposing various statements Obama has made about Iraq to show how his position has changed.

Also, there's much, much more of that trippy music.

The $52 million the Obama campaign raised in June is a good deal more than John McCain's $22 million, and much better than the $30 million number reported earlier in the week, which an Obama bundler had advised me was very low.

But the relevant bar is really whether it’s enough to fund the 50-state, mega-scale campaign Obama is running, and enough, compared with what McCain has, to make up for the loss of public financing.

At least in the opinion of one Democratic consultant I spoke to today, it is.

The consultant, speaking on background, said the total amount of money at Obama's disposal, when combined with the D.  read more »

With this new ad, and a speech on solutions for new security threats, Barack Obama is presenting his youth as an asset for national security, an area where John McCain has traditionally been considered stronger.

For example, it's hard to imaine McCain, who has repeatedly admitted to being somewhat inept about the internet, delivering a plan for cyber security with much credibility.

After saying yesterday that he is seeking a nuclear weapons-free world, Barack Obama expanded on his security program today with a speech that lays out a plan for "cyber security" and an anti-bioterrorism program.

He cited the report from the 9/11 Commission, which described a "failure of imagination" in preparing for terrorist attacks.

Here's the text:

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama—as prepared for delivery
Summit on Confronting New Threats
Purdue University
July 16, 2008

It’s great to be back in Indiana with such a terrific group of experts. In a few moments, we’ll open this up to a discussion, but first I’ll make a few comments about some of the emerging threats that we face in the 21st century, and offer some ideas about how we can face those threats.  read more »

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An expression of outrage is the highest compliment that politicians can bestow upon a satirist. So when spokesmen for Barack Obama and John McCain echo each other and many another stuffed shirt in complaining about the current cover of The New Yorker, the magazine’s editors and cartoonist Barry Blitt should accept such remarks in precisely that spirit.

From Mark Twain to Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, there have always been people who didn’t get it—or worried about the damage that would ensue when other people didn’t get it. Today in America, despite the rising influence of The Daily Show and The Onion, it can be hazardous to be too hip for the room.  read more »

Conventional wisdom can be and often is wrong, especially when it comes to running-mate speculation.

Maybe you can remember back to 1992, when just about every wise man and woman opined on the supposed importance of Bill Clinton, then a 45-year-old Southern governor, balancing his ticket with a gray-haired Northerner. Clinton, of course, ignored them and picked an even more youthful Tennessean named Al Gore, forming a visually powerful partnership that netted 370 electoral votes and made an utter mockery of conventional wisdom.

But there are times when, just like the proverbial broken clock, conventional wisdom actually gets it right. Case in point: the widely repeated view that Barack Obama needs to compensate for his perceived national security and foreign policy inexperience by selecting a running mate with reassuringly impeccable credentials in those areas.  read more »

Barack Obama’s Iraq speech on July 15 was comprehensive, forward-looking and unapologetic.

Which, for some of his supporters, prompted a basic question: What took him so long?

“I’ve been dealing with people sending me e-mails about his faith-based initiatives, and asking me about his statements about choice, his various votes and gun issues—this is now a whole month of this now,” said one major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama, describing some of the many gripes his liberal supporters have had with him during his transition to the general election. “This is the first big speech as the presumptive nominee that shows that he is ready to lead.  read more »

There has apparently been a collapse of comic literacy in the United States of America, as the magazine-reading class in this city has deteriorated to the point at which it can no longer absorb a political cartoon. Barry Blitt’s assault on the bias and profiling leveled at Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama, “The Politics of Fear,” on the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue of The New Yorker embodies the kind of wit that was once standard issue in great cartooning from John Tenniel to Herblock.

Mocking the racial preconceptions that the yahoos have tacked onto the Chicago politician Barack Obama—whose first name isn’t much stranger to the American palate than Adlai’s or Lyndon’s once were—was Blitt’s really good idea.  read more »

Slate's Christopher Beam has something to get off his chest.

In a post last night, Mr. Beam, who writes the website's 'Trailhead' blog, confessed that he may have accidentally set off the ridiculous Barack and Michelle Obama "terrorist fist-bump" meme that found its way into this week's New Yorker's cover illustration by Observer contributor Barry Blitt. That cover has spawned more op-eds, blog posts, news segments, and articles than, frankly, Media Mob is willing to link to, making it the most talked about magazine moment in history since Miley Cyrus bared her back in Vanity Fair, lo, two months ago.

According to Mr.  read more »

The reported estimates of Barack Obama’s June fund-raising totals have been lowball figures, according to a major bundler to the campaign with knowledge of its haul.

“We’re going to report the June number in a couple of days and it is very good,” said the bundler. While the fund-raiser refused to name an exact figure, he dismissed the roughly $30 million reported by the Wall Street Journal as much too small.

“Don’t even think about that,” said the bundler. “It’s in excess of that. I think it’s a very, very good number.”

When word leaked late last week that Barack Obama would be joined on his upcoming visit to Iraq by Chuck Hagel, it set off an understandable round of Hagel-for-V.P. speculation. But the actual prospects of the Nebraska Republican joining the Democratic ticket can be summed up simply: a bold and brilliant idea that has just about no chance of becoming reality.

In terms of Mr. Obama's general election imperatives, the impact of Mr. Hagel's addition to the ticket would be seismic - easily dwarfing the boost that any other potential ticket-mate (except Al Gore, if you place him in that category) might offer.  read more »

Andrew Delbanco, the distinguished critic and biographer of Melville, gives Barack Obama two thumbs up in The New Republic (www.tnr.com), explicitly allowing his favorable literary judgment on Mr. Obama’s two books to shade into a political endorsement ("this man—to my ear, at least—is the real deal"). It’s a strange, leapfrogging idea, to think that a politician’s prose opens a window into his heart. "It is hard for any writer," says Mr. Delbanco, "no matter how selective his memory or guarded his words, to conceal himself in his writing. I suspect (I’ve never met him) that the weaknesses and strengths of Obama’s writing reflect those of his character—a virtuosity that tempts him to be pleased with himself and impatient with others, but also an awareness of human complexity.  read more »

Here's Joe Biden on an Obama campaign conference call earlier arguing that John McCain had no idea what he's talking about when it comes to foreign policy:

"Quite frankly, I've known John for over 32 years. I don't understand anything about John's policy here. John talks about the central concern is the war on terror yet it's in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, we know where they live, where they're building, it's in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And John's policy in Iraq prevents us from having a larger strategy to deal with that."

Asked what he thought of McCain's idea that Iraq could one day have a level of American troop presence like that in Korea, Biden said, "I love John, he has been my friend for 33 years.  read more »

Here is Obama's new communications team. Unlike the campaign's appointments in areas of policy and fund-raising, there is no integration with the Clinton campaign.

Obama Campaign Unveils New Communications Staffing for the General Election New Additions in Chicago and Denver Bolster Efforts Chicago, Il – The Obama Campaign today announced its general election communications operations which includes several new additions and new roles for several long-time aides. The campaign also announced that Democratic consultant Jenny Backus will be the senior Obama communications official in Denver working on the Democratic convention working with Obama aide Liz Oxhorn. Other changes include: Robert Gibbs, one of Senator Obama’s longest-serving and closest aides, has been elevated to Senior Strategist for Communications and Message taking on a broader strategic portfolio for the Fall campaign while continuing to serve as senior communications aide travelling with Senator Obama.  read more »

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The McCain campaign just responded, with a conference call, to Barack Obama's rearticulated plan for an end to the war in Iraq by arguing that Obama's intention to withdraw troops, despite the security improvements, amounts to political posturing, and that he is more concerned with winning the presidential election than winning the war.

Senator Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's chief surrogates, said that Obama was sending this message to American soldiers returning from Iraq: "Appreciate your service, but you didn't do any good."

Obama has always carefully couched his calls for withdrawal from Iraq with talk of the heroism of American troops, and has blamed a lack of political progress in Iraq, which is what the surge was supposed to accomplish, for many of the country's problems.  read more »

Media Matters for America, the progressive media watchdog group, has posted a video of curmudgeonly shoutfest host John McLaughlin slurring presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama this past week on The McLaughlin Group .

In the clip, above, Mr. McLaughlin addressed the controversy surrounding Jesse Jackson's whispered threat to cut Mr. Obama's nuts off, by saying "Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo—a black on the outside, a white on the inside—that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"  read more »

In his media column today, David Carr revisits the hubbub surrounding Barack Obama's decision to allow Access Hollywood to interview his daughters. Obama eventually told Matt Lauer that the family "won't be doing it again," but Carr suggests that the whole incident ultimately worked to the Obama campaign's advantage.

To be sure, the Obamas haven't shied away from softer media outlets, and at least one expert thinks that is a good thing for them.

In an e-mail exchange last week, I asked Jin Chon, Hillary Clinton's press secretary for specialty media, who had a fair amount of success putting Clinton in the generally friendly confines of entertainment shows, about the merits of politicians using entertainment-focused media.  read more »

There have been about a hundred polls conducted since Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination on June 3 and there'll be about a thousand more between now and Election Day. So the results from two of the most recent should be taken with the customary grain of salt.

That said, the most recent Newsweek and Rasmussen surveys suggest at least the possibility that a phenomenon that shaped previous elections might be at work again this year.

The background: Newsweek's numbers, released late last week, found Barack Obama ahead by just three points over John McCain, a near-evaporation of what had been a 15-point advantage when the magazine last commissioned a poll three weeks ago.  read more »

Chris Dodd says that he's being vetted by the Obama campaign, supposedly a sign that he's progressed to a more serious level of vice presidential consideration. But is that really what's going on?

Dodd endorsed Obama soon after ending his own presidential bid in January and served as a loyal and aggressive surrogate during Obama's protracted nomination fight with Hillary Clinton. When Obama emerged as the winner, Dodd began making it clear that he wanted to be considered for the VP slot.

But he's not exactly ideal running-mate material. A liberal from Connecticut, he'd do little to expand the Democratic ticket's geographic or ideological appeal, and—despite his considerable Washington experience—his credentials wouldn't necessarily provide the instant reassurance on national security issues that Obama would presumably want in a gray-haired running-mate.  read more »

Donors to Barack Obama expect his campaign to raise just over $30 million in June, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Even if that estimate is a tactial lowball, the number is well below the astronomical figures reported during the primary. And when contrasted with the $22 million June haul the McCain campaign reported yesterday, and the additional $95 million McCain campaign aides hope to raise by the end of the summer through the RNC and state victory accounts, it seems to diminish the notion of the Obama campaign's Internet fund-raising operation as a bottomless well.

And if the $30 million number is at all accurate