Obama Needs More Than Change
By Philip Klein - The American Spectator - Aug. 27, 2008

DENVER -- Tuesday was a great night -- for Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the evening didn't do much to advance the candidacy of the man who will actually be their party's nominee.

It's true that Clinton helped to unify the party after a protracted primary by declaring herself "a proud supporter of Barack Obama" and saying, in as many ways as she could, that "he must be our President." But her speech was weak in explaining why Obama must be elected.

This was not an isolated example. Throughout the night, one after the other, Democratic speakers came on stage and made a case for Obama that could have been made for any generic Democrat

.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer ... fired up the crowd with a rousing call for change, but when it came to pitching the man who will be the party's nominee, he couldn't do much better than, "Can we afford four more years? Is it time for a change? When do we need it? And who do we need as the next President of the United States of America? That's right. Barack Obama is the change we need!"

Mark Warner, former Virginia governor ....

His meandering speech talked about "the race to future" and declared that, "we need a president who understands the world today, the future we seek and the change we need. We need Barack Obama as the next President of the United States." The argument for why we specifically need Obama never got more substantive than that.

It's true that this is a change election and that an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush -- which is why Democrats went into this year as the favorites to win the White House.

Obama's challenge is not to convince Americans that they need change, but to overcome the public's reservations about whether he is the man to deliver it. The Democratic National Convention could have been a four-day infomercial to convince skeptics why Barack Obama is ready to be president. So far, other than a successful speech by Michelle Obama, the convention has largely failed to present a case that will sway undecided voters

...

The fact that Democrats are having such a difficult time making the case for Obama without attacking President Bush cuts to the underlying problem facing Obama's candidacy -- that he's a freshman Senator who hasn't accomplished anything of significance.

In the Democratic primaries, the tale of how Obama gave up a high-paying Wall Street job to become a community organizer in Chicago made liberal audiences swoon, but it doesn't resonate as deeply among the general electorate.

Next week, by contrast, Republicans in Minneapolis will have four days to highlight McCain's character, heroic war record, and decades of experience.

Read more in the American Spectator
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American Spectator.

One of the most despicable alliances this election cycle: Obama defends Swift Boat financier

Obama on Sunday met with and defended a primary financier of the group that helped sink Kerry’s 2004 bid.
Photo: AP


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12591.html

Update in a slightly related news - Obama met and praised an actual swiftboater




By KENNETH P. VOGEL Politico - 8/17/08
RENO, Nev. — Barack Obama on Sunday met with — and defended — one of the primary financers of the group that was perhaps most responsible for sinking Sen. John F. Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid.

Obama huddled privately with T. Boone Pickens in a small conference room in the bowels of a casino hotel to discuss the legendary Texas energy trader’s much-publicized energy policy proposal.

But while the two men posed for pictures before the meeting, Obama was asked how it felt to be meeting with the man “who tore down” Kerry’s campaign.

Pickens, who gave $3 million to the anti-Kerry 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, smiled awkwardly as Obama fielded the question.

Obama was asked how it felt to be meeting with the man “who tore down” Kerry’s campaign.:

“Ah, you know, he’s got a lot longer track record than that,” Obama said. “He’s been doing, ah, he’s a legendary entrepreneur and you know, one of the things that I think we have to unify the country around is having an intelligent energy policy.”

But Pickens is more than just a Republican activist. He was among the most generous donors to the outside groups colloquially known as 527s that both Obama and McCain have decried as exploiting a major loophole in campaign finance laws.

In addition to his contributions to Swift Boat Veterans, Pickens gave $2.5 million to the Karl Rove-linked 527 group Progress for America and also has been a major bundler for Republican candidates.

Read AP Story story on Politico

PUMAs want delegates to back Hillary

By Lee McGuire - 11 News - Thursday, August 7, 2008HOUSTON -- Democratic Party delegate Roger Harris has heard the cheers for presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama. He has also heard the silent message coming in his e-mail box.

“The first round I got 99 (e-mails). The second round I got 50 and the next round I got 60. All in the same day,” said Harris, who will be an Obama delegate to the party's national convention.

The messages are from the PUMA political action committee. A PAC that is urging delegates to stick by Hillary Clinton and cast their votes for her at the party's nominating convention.

“I think it would ratchet up the intensity of people who feel passionately about their particular candidate to see that one or the other makes the final cut,” said Harris.

The PUMA PAC is an independent group and is not associated with Hillary Clinton. In fact, on Thursday she said she hopes the party will be fully unified at the convention in Denver later this month.

Still, she has yet to resolve whether she is going to put her name in for a vote during the convention.

The PUMA PAC hopes she does. The group told 11 News that it's also urging Clinton to challenge Obama to a vote at the convention.

A vote the political group said would heal the party, not divide it.

“You can't achieve unity by telling one side to shut up,” the PAC said in a statement to 11 News. “You have to let the delegates vote for their candidate on the first ballot.

“The fact is, (the party is) extremely split.”

So, despite bowing out of the race and throwing her support behind Obama, does this mean the race is not over?

“I wouldn't call it mischief. I'd call it good intentions. Hillary Clinton not only ran a good race, but also like Barack Obama, was a first,” said 11 News political expert Bob Stein.

A competition many thought was over is now being waged one delegate at a time.

“There are people who would say, ‘well it's mudslinging,'” said Harris. “But you know competition is part of what this country is all about.”
Read more on KNOU HOUSTON

Obama infuriates the Left - Obama Supports FISA Legislation, Angering Left

By Paul Kane - The Washington Post -
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a "vital national security matter" — and alienating his base.

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

This marks something of a reversal of Obama's position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries," but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."

Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law — crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders — provides insufficient court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The immunity outcome is predetermined," Feingold wrote in a memo today.
Obama came down on the side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who argued that a provision in the new law reaffirmed that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying. President Bush has argued that a war-time chief executive has powers that trump FISA.

"It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance — making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law," Obama said today.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the most prominent Republican opponent of the compromise bill, issued a statement today calling that exclusivity provision "meaningless because that specific provision is now in [the] 1978 act." Specter said Bush just ignored existing law in starting the warrantless surveillance program.
Read more in the Washington Post

Heal now, candidate tells CBC

By Mike Soraghan - The Hil - June 6, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) conciliatory tone turned sharp on Thursday when Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.) pressed him on how there needs to be healing in the Democratic Party.

"Look, Diane," Obama said, according to a participant who attended the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) meeting. "John McCain, if he's elected, is going to pick a Supreme Court that will roll back every gain women have made in the last 50 years."

Seeming frustrated, Obama started talking more bluntly about why women should be supporting him over Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), whatever their feelings about the divisive Democratic primary campaign.

"He can be pretty direct," said the CBC source. "It was a pretty lively meeting."

The direct approach has its risks. As a woman and a former supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Watson is one of the CBC members whom Obama needs to win over.

And her protests that the party still needs healing are a reminder of the lingering bitterness left over from a campaign that some say had sexist and racial overtones.

During the primary, Watson said she had received political threats for her support of the former first lady. And Watson had publicly criticized Obama for opposing the CBC's effort to cut off federal funds to the Cherokee Nation. The CBC is upset with the Cherokee for excluding Freedmen — descendants of slaves once owned by tribal members — from tribal membership.

Obama's meeting with the CBC represented an early test of his leadership as the Democratic nominee, especially because some in the Black Caucus were ardent backers of Clinton and want her to be Obama's running mate.

Obama started the meeting on an inclusive note, telling members who had supported Clinton "that was then, and this is now," according to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).

"He said he understands how those of us in politics get involved in supporting people, through friendships or geography or relationships," said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), a former John Edwards supporter who campaigned for Obama in the North Carolina primary. "He said he'd been involved in that himself."

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a Clinton supporter who predicted Obama's victory long before he claimed it, said he felt the olive branch was appreciated.

"Several members expressed appreciation to him for saying that," Cleaver said. "There's still emotions connected to that campaign. He took a major step in being a magnet to these people."

What impressed Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) was when Obama told them, "If Hillary had won, the first thing he would have told his supporters is that [they] should support her."

Some participants also reportedly pressed him on whether the campaign would provide "street money," or "walking-around money" — the campaign cash dispensed to people to drive voters to the polls on Election Day. Obama said the campaign wouldn't provide it, because he's relying on his large network of volunteers to handle Election Day turnout.

Fence-mending was the point of Obama's stops in and around Capitol Hill this week. His campaign scheduled meetings with members of the Hispanic, Black and women's caucuses. Each represents a community with longstanding ties to the Clintons. Hispanic members have pointedly said that Obama needs to reach out more to their community.

It didn't always work. Some female members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus reportedly stayed away from the photo opportunity after the event.

The women's caucus meeting was canceled Thursday because it conflicted with House votes.

More than one-third of the 42 members of the CBC supported Clinton for president, even though black voters overwhelmingly supported Obama in the primaries. A few members, including Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Donald Payne (D-N.J.), initially backed Clinton and then switched to Obama.

Some members have reportedly feared that they might face primary challenges or other political retribution for not having supported their only Senate member.

The Illinois senator will need the CBC's full support as he faces McCain in the fall. Black voters are a key element of Obama's voter base, and he enjoys strong support among them. But he needs them to turn out at the polls, and that's where black elected officials, whether they were for Clinton or Obama, can help.

Republicans have cited getting 16 percent of the black vote in Ohio as a key factor in President Bush winning his second term.
Read more on the hill

Clinton's Ghost: Tense Moment in Obama's Meeting With Black Caucus

Just What Was Said Between the Presumptive Democratic Nominee and Clinton-Supporting Congresswoman?
By JAKE TAPPER and KATE SNOW - - June 20, 2008
A Thursday afternoon meeting between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus grew tense and emotional for a moment -- perhaps illustrating that weeks after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., suspended her presidential campaign, some nerves remain frayed.

Most of the meeting was cordial, and after a presentation by Obama's pollster, many members of the CBC had nothing but pleasant exchanges with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

But not everyone.
Sources at the meeting said that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a Clinton supporter, expressed the desire that Obama and his campaign would reach out the millions of women still aggrieved about what happened in the campaign and still disappointed that Clinton lost.

Obama agreed that a lot of work needs to be done to heal the Democratic Party, and that he hoped the Clinton supporters in the room would help as much as possible.
According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it."

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a longtime Clinton supporter, did not like those last three words -- "Get over it." She found them dismissive, off-putting.

"Don't use that terminology," Watson told Obama.

Clarke did not react the same way.
"I, personally, as a Hillary supporter, did not take that as something distasteful," Clarke said. "Nothing like that."

But, Clarke said, Watson "latched on to those three words."

In Clarke's view, Watson thought Obama had just told her to "get over it." She didn't appreciate that, and she told him so and emphasized that it was a heated campaign and lot of healing remains to be done.

"I agree," Obama said. "There's healing on both sides."

Obama then said two sources at the meeting said that he'd held his tongue many times during the campaign against Clinton in the interest of party unity and sensitivity. Clinton and her allies had suggested he was a Muslim, had said he wasn't qualified to be president.

According to the sources, Obama suggested he bit his tongue every time. He could be asking for an apology, he could be asking for the Clintons to reconcile with him, but he chose to rise above it.

Everyone involved agreed that most of the meeting was cordial, and that there is unanimity on the need to work hard to elect Obama.

But clearly tensions remain.

Clinton and Obama are scheduled to put on a good public show for the cameras next week, regardless of any beneath-the-surface Sturm and Drang. The former competitors will campaign together and appear at a fundraiser in Washington at the end of next week.
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