All,
The following article from today's San Francisco Chronicle contains some excellent political advice for Obama. I suggest he take it because contrary to popular belief in many circles BILLARY, INC. is still running scared...So my message for Barack is simply this: Stay on point and on message brother and DO NOT TOSS THOSE DOGS A BONE...
Kofi
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/EDKOVG4R9.DTL
A plan for Barack Obama
Caille Millner
Monday, March 10, 2008
It's been a rough week for Sen. Barack Obama, and an even rougher week for his supporters. He took his eye off the ball for a minute to attack Sen. John McCain - and Sen. Hillary Clinton pounced, throwing the kitchen sink at him. Meanwhile, the thin-skinned media, falling prey to her campaign's whining about how much "tougher" they've been on her than on him, allowed her to set the tone for the entire news cycle during the last week before the elections in Ohio and Texas. (You can fill my in-box all you want, Clinton fans, but the media has been sweeter to Clinton than you know. There's been scant mention of Monica, Whitewater, Marc Rich, cattle futures ... oh, did I just say all that)
Those of us who admire the senator, meanwhile, are feeling wrung out and exhausted. Obama's got to bounce back. I think that he will - but he'll have to do it smartly, because for him, the race has entered its most precarious phase. If he attacks the Clintons using gutter politics, he'll lose - those are the tactics that they excel at, and he can't beat them at their own game. More importantly, he risks losing his message and his base by stooping to their level. Here's my advice for him and his supporters.
-- Ignore John McCain for now. The split results in Ohio and Texas offered Obama one advantage - it confused his eventual opponent, John McCain. McCain had started to attack Obama, but now he's got to sit tight and watch how this plays out. Putting the Republican nominee on the sidelines right now probably isn't the best thing for the Democrats in the fall - the Republican National Committee has taken advantage of the calm to outraise the Democratic National Committee by tens of millions of dollars so far - but we'll have to deal with that later. For now, Obama can - and must - focus on the battle in front of him. If he wants to mention how much stronger a president he'll be than McCain, that's cool, but only after he's reminded voters how much stronger he'll be than Clinton.
-- Be an iron fist in a velvet glove. There's no need to be impolite to Clinton. Unlike some observers, I don't think it was weak at all for him to accept Samantha Power's resignation after she called Clinton a "monster." It showed that Obama keeps his staff on a tight leash - unlike Clinton - and emphasizes positivity in every aspect of his campaign.
Besides, after the Clinton campaign has impugned Obama's patriotism, tossed out racial and religious smears, and said that John McCain would make a better president than Obama would, they're expecting Obama to go ballistic. Kill the Clintons with kindness - and, since Hillary Clinton is running on the false pretense that she was also president during Bill's years in the White House, offer calm reminders of how there were a lot of things about the 1990s that weren't so great after all.
Remember losing control of Congress in the 1990s, Democrats? Remember losing Democratic control of governorships across the country? Remember all the useless psychodramas, remember losing all chance to further any kind of political agenda for the last two years of Bill Clinton's last term because of his personal problems? Say it like that, and the voters will remember. Even if they don't want to.
-- Let your surrogates be nastier than you are - up to a point. Really, there's so much to be nasty about with this couple that it's important to remind voters only of the issues that are germane to the race. Obama should have a couple of his supporters who worked in the Clinton White House remind people that Hillary Clinton has no experience with foreign-policy crises, no experience with economic policy, and that her one experience with health care was a disaster from start to finish. Pound Clinton on the "experience" meme, and it will quickly become apparent how thin her resume really is.
-- Get on the bus. Town hall meetings in endless succession. Photo ops with his sleeves rolled up while in conference with working-class voters about their fears and wishes. Walk door-to-door talking to people about their health care and explain to them why he's the best person to actually get it done. You get the picture: Obama's got to show the skittish undecideds that he works as hard as Clinton does.
Now, for the rest of us, his supporters:
-- Chill out. I went in to see my acupuncturist a few days ago, and he asked why I was so stressed. "I won't vote for Hillary!" I yelled. "I won't!"
He looked at me impassively for a moment, then said, "I won't either. Half the country won't. But, umm, it's a long time till November, and how often do you want to be on this table?"
Caille Millner is a Chronicle editorial writer. You can e-mail her at cmillner@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle
PART II: THE B.S. CONTINUES...
SPEAKING OF POLITICAL DESPERATION BY BILLARY, INC. check out the following article in the today's Boston Globe that exposes how the Clinton Machine is even desperate to buy off Obama just like they do everyone else. TIME FOR BARACK TO PUT OUT THE "I'M NOT FOR SALE 'CAUSE SLAVERY IS OVER M.....F......" SIGNS. While he's at it he should probably also mass produce some T-shirts with this slogan emblazoned on it in BIG BRIGHT RED, BLACK, AND GREEN LETTERS. I'm absolutely sure they would sell like hotcakes all over the country and especially among his massive African American base--I'd buy one in a heartbeat...
Kofi
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/10/clintons_push_obama_as_a_running_mate/
Clintons push Obama as a running mate
Joint ticket 'premature,' Ill. senator says
By Thomas Ferraro
Reuters / March 10, 2008
WASHINGTON - Hillary and Bill Clinton have been talking up the idea that Barack Obama, whom they have called too inexperienced to be president, would make a strong running mate on a ticket headed by the New York senator.
Campaigning in Mississippi over the weekend, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama could form "an almost unstoppable force."
After winning the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island last week, Senator Clinton suggested that she and Obama might end up on the same ticket, with her at the top of it.
Obama won the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, and the latest polls show him leading in tomorrow's primary in Mississippi. He is ahead of Clinton in pledged delegates, but neither candidate is expected to obtain the 2,025 needed for the nomination in the remaining state contests.
As of last night, Obama had 1,578 delegates and Clinton had 1,468. Democratic leaders worry about the damage that could be done if neither Clinton nor Obama has a clear lead by the August nominating convention.
In hailing Obama as a possible vice president, the Clintons are reaching out to him and, perhaps more important, to his backers, whose support she would need to defeat John McCain in the November election.
"The Clintons are in a difficult position," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa, who has tracked the presidential race.
"If she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she would need Obama's supporters. But she needs to be careful. If this talk of him on the ticket is seen as a cynical maneuver, it could backfire and hurt her," Goldford said.
The Clintons have charged that the charismatic senator from Illinois lacks the experience to handle an international crisis as president. But since Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries, she and her husband have repeatedly touted Obama as a possible running mate.
When asked about the possibility last week, Obama said he was focused on winning the nomination.
"I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket," he said.
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who has endorsed Obama, derided the Clintons' suggestion.
"The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?" Kerry said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president," Kerry said.
Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota also mocked the idea.
"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who has sought to rally support for Clinton in his state's April 22 primary, backed the idea of Clinton and Obama teaming up.
"It would be a great ticket," Rendell said yesterday on the NBC program.
Pennsylvania, the biggest remaining state in the race for the nomination, should be a safe win for Clinton, but analysts say there are pockets of vulnerability for Obama to exploit - and plenty of time to do it.
"If the election were held today it would probably be Senator Clinton by 10 points, but seven weeks in this crazy race, anything can happen," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
A win in Pennsylvania could be crucial to Clinton's hopes of gaining support from "superdelegates" - elected officials and party insiders who can vote at the convention as they choose.
Mark Nevins, communications director for Clinton's campaign in Pennsylvania, said the state was "a proving ground."
"You can't really expect to win the general election if you can't win Pennsylvania," he said.
"Pennsylvania has more Catholics, more union members, more older voters, and fewer African-Americans," said Terry Madonna, politics professor at Franklin & Marshall College. "This is pretty much a Clinton state. It's hers to lose."
The demographics are similar to those of Ohio, which Clinton won by 54 percent to 44 percent. Madonna said Clinton also can play the "hometown" card because her father was born in Scranton.
Clinton will focus on healthcare and the economy to target the large population of seniors and union members, which is higher than the national average, Nevins said.
Sean Smith, a spokesman for Obama, contends that the demographics claimed as friendly by the Clinton campaign had helped Obama win Wisconsin and could do so again.
"We did extremely well in Wisconsin with the same types of voters," he said, pointing to older voters who were "absolutely open" to Obama's message of hope and change and "bringing the country together to solve our problems."
Richards of Quinnipiac said Obama must do three things to have a chance of winning: boost turnout among black voters, which is historically low in primaries; motivate students at the state's numerous universities and colleges; and win over affluent voters in the Philadelphia suburbs where Clinton is vulnerable.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
The following article from today's San Francisco Chronicle contains some excellent political advice for Obama. I suggest he take it because contrary to popular belief in many circles BILLARY, INC. is still running scared...So my message for Barack is simply this: Stay on point and on message brother and DO NOT TOSS THOSE DOGS A BONE...
Kofi
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/EDKOVG4R9.DTL
A plan for Barack Obama
Caille Millner
Monday, March 10, 2008
It's been a rough week for Sen. Barack Obama, and an even rougher week for his supporters. He took his eye off the ball for a minute to attack Sen. John McCain - and Sen. Hillary Clinton pounced, throwing the kitchen sink at him. Meanwhile, the thin-skinned media, falling prey to her campaign's whining about how much "tougher" they've been on her than on him, allowed her to set the tone for the entire news cycle during the last week before the elections in Ohio and Texas. (You can fill my in-box all you want, Clinton fans, but the media has been sweeter to Clinton than you know. There's been scant mention of Monica, Whitewater, Marc Rich, cattle futures ... oh, did I just say all that)
Those of us who admire the senator, meanwhile, are feeling wrung out and exhausted. Obama's got to bounce back. I think that he will - but he'll have to do it smartly, because for him, the race has entered its most precarious phase. If he attacks the Clintons using gutter politics, he'll lose - those are the tactics that they excel at, and he can't beat them at their own game. More importantly, he risks losing his message and his base by stooping to their level. Here's my advice for him and his supporters.
-- Ignore John McCain for now. The split results in Ohio and Texas offered Obama one advantage - it confused his eventual opponent, John McCain. McCain had started to attack Obama, but now he's got to sit tight and watch how this plays out. Putting the Republican nominee on the sidelines right now probably isn't the best thing for the Democrats in the fall - the Republican National Committee has taken advantage of the calm to outraise the Democratic National Committee by tens of millions of dollars so far - but we'll have to deal with that later. For now, Obama can - and must - focus on the battle in front of him. If he wants to mention how much stronger a president he'll be than McCain, that's cool, but only after he's reminded voters how much stronger he'll be than Clinton.
-- Be an iron fist in a velvet glove. There's no need to be impolite to Clinton. Unlike some observers, I don't think it was weak at all for him to accept Samantha Power's resignation after she called Clinton a "monster." It showed that Obama keeps his staff on a tight leash - unlike Clinton - and emphasizes positivity in every aspect of his campaign.
Besides, after the Clinton campaign has impugned Obama's patriotism, tossed out racial and religious smears, and said that John McCain would make a better president than Obama would, they're expecting Obama to go ballistic. Kill the Clintons with kindness - and, since Hillary Clinton is running on the false pretense that she was also president during Bill's years in the White House, offer calm reminders of how there were a lot of things about the 1990s that weren't so great after all.
Remember losing control of Congress in the 1990s, Democrats? Remember losing Democratic control of governorships across the country? Remember all the useless psychodramas, remember losing all chance to further any kind of political agenda for the last two years of Bill Clinton's last term because of his personal problems? Say it like that, and the voters will remember. Even if they don't want to.
-- Let your surrogates be nastier than you are - up to a point. Really, there's so much to be nasty about with this couple that it's important to remind voters only of the issues that are germane to the race. Obama should have a couple of his supporters who worked in the Clinton White House remind people that Hillary Clinton has no experience with foreign-policy crises, no experience with economic policy, and that her one experience with health care was a disaster from start to finish. Pound Clinton on the "experience" meme, and it will quickly become apparent how thin her resume really is.
-- Get on the bus. Town hall meetings in endless succession. Photo ops with his sleeves rolled up while in conference with working-class voters about their fears and wishes. Walk door-to-door talking to people about their health care and explain to them why he's the best person to actually get it done. You get the picture: Obama's got to show the skittish undecideds that he works as hard as Clinton does.
Now, for the rest of us, his supporters:
-- Chill out. I went in to see my acupuncturist a few days ago, and he asked why I was so stressed. "I won't vote for Hillary!" I yelled. "I won't!"
He looked at me impassively for a moment, then said, "I won't either. Half the country won't. But, umm, it's a long time till November, and how often do you want to be on this table?"
Caille Millner is a Chronicle editorial writer. You can e-mail her at cmillner@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle
PART II: THE B.S. CONTINUES...
SPEAKING OF POLITICAL DESPERATION BY BILLARY, INC. check out the following article in the today's Boston Globe that exposes how the Clinton Machine is even desperate to buy off Obama just like they do everyone else. TIME FOR BARACK TO PUT OUT THE "I'M NOT FOR SALE 'CAUSE SLAVERY IS OVER M.....F......" SIGNS. While he's at it he should probably also mass produce some T-shirts with this slogan emblazoned on it in BIG BRIGHT RED, BLACK, AND GREEN LETTERS. I'm absolutely sure they would sell like hotcakes all over the country and especially among his massive African American base--I'd buy one in a heartbeat...
Kofi
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/10/clintons_push_obama_as_a_running_mate/
Clintons push Obama as a running mate
Joint ticket 'premature,' Ill. senator says
By Thomas Ferraro
Reuters / March 10, 2008
WASHINGTON - Hillary and Bill Clinton have been talking up the idea that Barack Obama, whom they have called too inexperienced to be president, would make a strong running mate on a ticket headed by the New York senator.
Campaigning in Mississippi over the weekend, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama could form "an almost unstoppable force."
After winning the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island last week, Senator Clinton suggested that she and Obama might end up on the same ticket, with her at the top of it.
Obama won the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, and the latest polls show him leading in tomorrow's primary in Mississippi. He is ahead of Clinton in pledged delegates, but neither candidate is expected to obtain the 2,025 needed for the nomination in the remaining state contests.
As of last night, Obama had 1,578 delegates and Clinton had 1,468. Democratic leaders worry about the damage that could be done if neither Clinton nor Obama has a clear lead by the August nominating convention.
In hailing Obama as a possible vice president, the Clintons are reaching out to him and, perhaps more important, to his backers, whose support she would need to defeat John McCain in the November election.
"The Clintons are in a difficult position," said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa, who has tracked the presidential race.
"If she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she would need Obama's supporters. But she needs to be careful. If this talk of him on the ticket is seen as a cynical maneuver, it could backfire and hurt her," Goldford said.
The Clintons have charged that the charismatic senator from Illinois lacks the experience to handle an international crisis as president. But since Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries, she and her husband have repeatedly touted Obama as a possible running mate.
When asked about the possibility last week, Obama said he was focused on winning the nomination.
"I think it is very premature to start talking about a joint ticket," he said.
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who has endorsed Obama, derided the Clintons' suggestion.
"The first threshold question about a vice president is, are you prepared to be president?" Kerry said yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"So on the one end, they are saying he's not prepared to be president. On the other hand, they're saying maybe he ought to be vice president," Kerry said.
Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota also mocked the idea.
"It may be the first time in history that the person who is running number two would offer the person running number one the number two position," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who has sought to rally support for Clinton in his state's April 22 primary, backed the idea of Clinton and Obama teaming up.
"It would be a great ticket," Rendell said yesterday on the NBC program.
Pennsylvania, the biggest remaining state in the race for the nomination, should be a safe win for Clinton, but analysts say there are pockets of vulnerability for Obama to exploit - and plenty of time to do it.
"If the election were held today it would probably be Senator Clinton by 10 points, but seven weeks in this crazy race, anything can happen," said Clay Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
A win in Pennsylvania could be crucial to Clinton's hopes of gaining support from "superdelegates" - elected officials and party insiders who can vote at the convention as they choose.
Mark Nevins, communications director for Clinton's campaign in Pennsylvania, said the state was "a proving ground."
"You can't really expect to win the general election if you can't win Pennsylvania," he said.
"Pennsylvania has more Catholics, more union members, more older voters, and fewer African-Americans," said Terry Madonna, politics professor at Franklin & Marshall College. "This is pretty much a Clinton state. It's hers to lose."
The demographics are similar to those of Ohio, which Clinton won by 54 percent to 44 percent. Madonna said Clinton also can play the "hometown" card because her father was born in Scranton.
Clinton will focus on healthcare and the economy to target the large population of seniors and union members, which is higher than the national average, Nevins said.
Sean Smith, a spokesman for Obama, contends that the demographics claimed as friendly by the Clinton campaign had helped Obama win Wisconsin and could do so again.
"We did extremely well in Wisconsin with the same types of voters," he said, pointing to older voters who were "absolutely open" to Obama's message of hope and change and "bringing the country together to solve our problems."
Richards of Quinnipiac said Obama must do three things to have a chance of winning: boost turnout among black voters, which is historically low in primaries; motivate students at the state's numerous universities and colleges; and win over affluent voters in the Philadelphia suburbs where Clinton is vulnerable.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.