Thread: US Presidential Campaign 2008

Barack Obama said in a statement Thursday he has “reached out” and offered his personal apology to the two Muslim women who said they were refused seats behind the Democratic candidate at a Detroit rally because they were wearing head scarves.

The two women were given different explanations for why they were refused seats at the Monday rally, according to an article in The Politico, but Obama volunteers said it had to do with the hijabs they were wearing.

One of the women, Hebba Aref, said a volunteer told the group she was with she could not sit behind the podium — in full view of TV cameras — because of “a sensitive political climate.”

Obama’s campaign apologized in a statement Wednesday and said the volunteers’ actions were “not the policy of the campaign.”

Obama repeated in his statement Thursday that “the actions of these volunteers were unacceptable and in no way reflect any policy of my campaign.”

He said was able to speak with Shimaa Abdelfadeel, the other woman denied a seat behind the podium, and “expressed my deepest apologies for the incident that occurred with volunteers at the event in Detroit.”

Obama Apologizes to Muslim Women Refused Seats at Rally - America’s Election HQ

Not surprising really- one would expect the Presidential nominee to be smarter than his campaign volunteers. Well, Dem's anyway.

No disrespect to dubya.

Like I said, opportunity missed. Obama knows that. Maybe he'll get back the sought after Hamas endorsement.

Originally Posted by Bugs

Obama opts out of public campaign finance system

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday he'll bypass the federal public financing system in the general election, abandoning an earlier commitment to take the money if his Republican rival did as well.

Ya, I heard his campaign video. He suddenly doesn't think the public funding is fair -- all lobbyists' millions. FO, why not just say "I have enough from grassroots support (oh ya and from some big corporations but only thru their CEOS, hush hush).

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Bugs

commitment

commitment?

He's been saying he is committed to public campaign funding for months (it's the fair and democratic way...). Keep up with the program, rc.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Bugs

commitment

commitment?

He's been saying he is committed to public campaign funding for months (it's the fair and democratic way...). Keep up with the program, rc.

show me a single quote where obama ever said he was committed to public campaign funding.

just one quote. for someone who tells others to keep up with the program, that should be quite easy.

good luck.

btw, the sour grapes and hand wringing on this issue from alleged conservatives who continually rail against big government is quite amusing.

No hand wringing here. Just common sense.

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Bugs

commitment

commitment?

He's been saying he is committed to public campaign funding for months (it's the fair and democratic way...). Keep up with the program, rc.

show me a single quote where obama ever said he was committed to public campaign funding.

just one quote. for someone who tells others to keep up with the program, that should be quite easy.

good luck.

^ Here you go, babycakes, seein as how you missed the many Obama quotes on it:

"Obama pledged in March 2007 to pursue an agreement with the Republicans to participate in the public-financing system, which is designed to limit the influence of big money."

Bloomberg.com: News

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Obama pledged in March 2007 to pursue an agreement

nice try, but you've fallen short....again.

as your quote states, he pledged to pursue an agreement.....he never committed to public financing.

keep searching!

perhaps if the mccain campaign had been straightforward and kept things above board, an agreement could have been reached....alas, they just couldn't do it, so now they have to live with the consequences.

^ I heard Obama announce it many times; I'll wait for McCain's group to dig it all up for you, rc.
Where was McCain not straightforward? How about Obama and all his contributions from corporations hidden behind the skirts of their CEOs?

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

I heard Obama announce it many times

of course you did.

but let's pretend for a minute that you did....then it should be quite simple for your to find a quote. just a single quote where he commits to public financing.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

I'll wait for McCain's group to dig it all up for you, rc.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Where was McCain not straightforward?

i'll wait for obama's campaign to dig it all up for you.

Originally Posted by raycarey

and considering that you're an ardent backer of conservative republican causes (you know, 'the red team' ) one would think that you would support a candidate not using tax dollars for his campaign.

and surely you'd agree that the public financing system is broken, right? so obama is in fact the 'candidate for change' because he will be the first candidate in over 30 years to turn down public financing.

this is all just sour grapes from mccain and his lackeys.

I don't know if I would call myself an ardent backer of conservative or Republican causes. From a fiscal point of view I generally agree with the red team, but there are plenty of other issues that I don't see eye to eye with them on - abortion and religion to name a couple of big ones.

Tax dollars? I though it was contributions from folks checking the "go ahead and keep my $3 bucks for public financing" box on one's tax form.

System broken? Maybe, but is the solution to a broken system to walk away from it, or to fix it. I sure hope the solution Obama offers to some other broken US systems ain't to walk away rather than try to fix them.

Candidate for change? Sure I would have agreed if Obama had came out initially and said no way am I going to go down the public financing path for the general election. But he didn't, instead he gave a commitment in writting no less, and then made a filing with the Federal Election Commission (more on this later) to keep that door open. IMHO the only change from Obama on this issue is to change his opinion because he has the edge - otherwise known as politics as usual.

Sour grapes - hardly. Usually it is the blue team crying about funding/ financing issues (still some of that now days because of the big RNC coffers, and red team 527 power), but on this issue the blue team now has the edge and they are going to act no different in controling that edge than the red team has (ie no change). In order for real change to take place it generally has to come from those with the power and this is just another case of politics as usual.

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Bugs

commitment

commitment?

he filled out a questionnaire last year.

Yes, I would call putting it in writing a commitment. Hell, I would say making a writen commitment is more valid than making a verbal commitment. And not only did Obama make his commitment in writing (in the questionaire), and followed it up by having his lawyers make a filing with the Federal Election Commission to which the FEC gave him a unanimouse ruling in favor of his filing.

What was the filing?
Obama would raise money for the general election and if he wins the nomination, he and the Republican nominee would return general election funds and decide to participate in public financing (based upon mutual agreement for both parties to accept public financing).

McCain has said he would agree to do it, and now Obama has said, ah, um, well, thanks, but no thanks. Now that I (Obama) have the power I kind of like politics as usual.

I few links in regard to the filing and public financing:
Democracy21 - appluding Obama and McCain for pledging to accept public financing if nominated and their opponent agrees to do the same.
Democracy 21 -- Just Say Yes: Take the Pledge

NY Times artical about McCain joining Obama in promising to accept a novel fund-raising truce if each man wins his party's nomination.
The New York Times > Log In


Politico artical basically slaming the other candidates for not taking Obama and McCain's lead to accept public financing should they get the nomination.
McCain Ups the Ante Over Campaign Finance - Kenneth P. Vogel - Politico.com

Edit in:

Forgot this one from the Washington Post where Obama basically says the system is broken and the only way to save it is for both nominiees elect to receive public funding.
Can This System Be Saved? - washingtonpost.com

Thanks for doing the research, Bugs. I guess it was politically expedient for Obama to say that public financing is corrupt with lobbyist funds (how can public financing be corrupt?) instead of just saying he gets enough from grassroots support (and the big companies who are sliding him cash through executive frontmen). Oh, I'm too good for public funding?

Originally Posted by Bugs

Tax dollars? I though it was contributions from folks checking the "go ahead and keep my $3 bucks for public financing" box on one's tax form.

It isn't really a personal contribution. It doesn't change your tax owed or refund. I've checked hell no for 26 years running. Let 'em raise their own money.

Could the blue team take it if something like this were to happen again in '08:

Obama could win vote, lose election - Yahoo! News

Obama could win vote, lose election

Until 2000, it hadn’t happened in more than 100 years, but plugged-in observers from both parties see a distinct possibility of Barack Obama winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College — and with it the presidency — to John McCain.

Here’s the scenario: Obama racks up huge margins among the increasingly affluent, highly educated and liberal coastal states, while a significant increase in turnout among black voters allows him to compete — but not to win — in the South. Meanwhile, McCain wins solidly Republican states such as Texas and Georgia by significantly smaller margins than Bush’s in 2004 and ekes out narrow victories in places such as North Carolina, which Bush won by 12 points but Rasmussen presently shows as a tossup, and Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points but McCain presently leads by just 11.

One possible result: Even as the national mood moves left, the 2004 map largely holds. Obama’s 32 new electoral votes from Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia are offset by 21 new electoral votes for McCain in Michigan and New Hampshire — and despite a 2- or 3-point popular vote victory for Obama, America wakes up on Jan. 20 to a President McCain.

According to Tad Devine, who served as the chief political consultant for Al Gore in 2000 and as a senior adviser to John F. Kerry in 2004, “it certainly is a possibility. Not a likelihood, but it is a real possibility.”

Some observers, such as Joseph Mercurio, a political consultant and pollster who worked on Sen. Joe Biden’s Democratic primary bid, see this as unlikely given the dramatic increase in Democratic Party enrollment and President Bush’s near record-low approval rating. Also skeptical is Nate Silver, a political cult-favorite blogger whose statistical model — which factors in population change since electoral votes were last allocated in the 2000 census — shows McCain as more likely than Obama to lose the Electoral College while winning the popular vote.

But others, pointing to the competitiveness of the past two elections, predict that this will be another such tight race. If they’re proven correct, this would be the fourth in the past five elections, making for the most closely contested run of presidential contests since those spanning the popular vote-Electoral College splits of 1876 and 1888.

Hank Sheinkopf, president of Sheinkopf Communications and an adviser to Bill Clinton in 1996, warns that such a split “is anything but impossible.” While he gives Obama a slight edge in the general election “because he doesn’t have George Bush riding with him,” he predicts that “Obama’s going to get big votes for a Democrat in the Southern states but not enough to win any new electoral votes. So it’s a distinct possibility that he could lose the entire South, split the Midwest” and end up not as president but rather as the second coming of Al Gore. When asked the odds of this playing out, he offers “50-50.”

Devine points out that Bush’s strategy in 2004 “was predicated on massive base turnout” that pushed up margins in safe states. He doesn’t “expect the McCain campaign to be directed the same way — using issues like gay marriage on the ballot to get the base to the polls — so McCain won’t have the same forces at play to drive out the popular vote.”

Recalling the impact of Ralph Nader’s third-party run in 2000, Devine also wonders if Bob Barr’s Libertarian run might play out differently, costing McCain popular — but not electoral — votes, while producing another popular-electoral split.

Lloyd M. Green, who served as research counsel to George Bush in 1988, also rates Obama a slight favorite and predicts that, if the Democrat does win, he’ll do so with “even larger margins in New York and California than in the last several elections [in 2004, Kerry won the two states by a combined margin of a little more than 2.5 million votes], and yet with all that margin run-up in safe states, this will end up a tight general election.”

In a sentiment also expressed by Sheinkopf and Green, Devine sees little chance of this happening if Obama wins the popular vote by more than 4 points. “But if he gets it by 2 or 3 points, it is plausible," he said. "Absolutely.”

Green, who sees “about a 20 percent chance” of Obama winning the popular vote while losing the Electoral College, doesn’t expect anything resembling a blowout: “Given that the only clear and clean majorities [since 1992] were in 1996 and 2004, ... this election will have the ferocity of all recent elections.” It’s a tough trend to buck, he argued, noting that “Americans traditionally change their religious affiliations more often than their party affiliations.”

^Bugs, that's an interesting perspective. And, I've heard various permutations of it framed in a number of different ways, including the comparisons to Adlai Stevenson and his two failed Presidential runs. Adlai and Obama have been compared alike in many respects. Both have (had) clearly superior intellectual abilities. Both supported liberal causes. Both had a keen wit and are affable. Both smoked.

Obama has to be careful on many fronts now. Floating concrete ideas about taxation now will polarize the voting public, and especially the higher income upper middle class 'non-landed' taxpayers. He should get more mushy about this; equivocate as politicians do. His campaign just announced that May was their lowest fund raising month to date. This is not good news, and means he needs to adjust his campaign messages.

I suspect he is a smart enough cookie to do so.

Ross Perot is back. He has launched a new web site and wants to focus on his charts and graphs again - national debt, yearly deficit, and fiscal responsibility.

CNN - Ross is back:
Ross Perot wants more focus on national debt - CNN.com

Ross's web site:
Perot Charts » Charting Government Fiscal Irresponsibility

Even though the red team tends to try and smear the blue team the part of tax and spend without fiscal responsibility, I think Perot's return will have a negative impact for McCain as opposed to Obama.

I would certainly agree that attempting to reign in the deficit and tackle the national debt are something that needs to be done. But I am not sure that as long as the US is in Iraq that either candidate can run the country without a deficit.

One little tid bit that I heard on CNN (sorry no link).

Seems the age difference between Obama and McCain is the largest ever.

What is the second largest?

Bad news for the red team - the second largest difference was between Dole and Clinton, and we all know how that turned out.

Originally Posted by Bugs

But I am not sure that as long as the US is in Iraq that either candidate can run the country without a deficit.

Or a huge tax increase which neither candidate is prepared to propose.

David Brooks, in a NY Times editorial-

"All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics."

Op-Ed Columnist - The Two Obamas - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

I agree with him.

^ Good article, MM. As I receive the Obama e-letters, I often wondered who "another sponsor" is that would match every one of my donations. Obviously, some heavyweights. Sho nuff, it's probably one of these guys, as quoted from the NY Times article:

"He’s got an army of small donors and a phalanx of big money bundlers, including, according to The Washington Post, Kenneth Griffin of the Citadel Investment Group; Kirk Wager, a Florida trial lawyer; James Crown, a director of General Dynamics; and Neil Bluhm, a hotel, office and casino developer."

Yep, he's a fast Eddiie alright.

I read the article by David Brooks yesterday. I found the term "fast Eddie" very silly and foolish. Just another biased op-ed article. Almost everyone has a bias. Brooks is not very insightful on anything, IMO.

He's not anti-Obama really, he's just pointing out that these 'Obama is naive' accusations are plain wrong- he's a smart politician, through and through.