While the Obama campaign and its surrogates have been trumpeting the fact that it is bringing in “new voters”, it seems to have forgotten a key component of the “old Democratic coalition” that it disparages.
“Old” voters. Literally.
The Clinton campaign consistently includes Hillary Clinton’s appeal to seniors when it discusses why she is the better choice to face off against John McCain – but the media seldom mentions older voters, choosing instead to concentrate on Clinton’s appeal to “white working class” voters to hype the race angle in the campaign.
The Obama campaign’s use of talking points involving “new voters” and a “new coalition” is sending a message to older voters – that “old” is worth a lot less to them than “new”, that young voters are more important than older voters, and that the “new coalition” means that the concerns of the “old coalition” members are no longer critical to the Party.
And all this is going on when the Republican Party will have a 71 year old as its nominee. Read more
If you were able to interview Obama on national TV, what questions would you like to ask him? Keep in mind, this would be with the idea of reaching a broad media platform and trying to change minds.
If you can post ASAP, would appreciate.
I personally think that his stance on “not taking money from lobbyists” is a good one to ask him about. It’s a misleading claim, and a perfect example of the type of hypocrisy that I view as standard practice for the Obama campaign.
Barack Obama knew better than to rely on the existing infrastructure, created by the blogosphere, to fight back against the Bush administration and the media. We are too stridently partisan to be messengers of a new kind of politics. He had to step around the gatekeepers of the blogosphere, much to their chagrin. Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishment is the organization that he created. He used our tools and his own message. And he won. He could not have won any other way. And that makes him both our greatest representative, and someone who doesn’t really need us at all. All of you should go join up on his website and meet your neighbors that are supporting him, and get organized. For presidential stuff, there is no reason to use the blogosphere at all. Use Obama’s own tools.
Dear God. I’ve held back on the Obama cult accusations for a while now; many of my friends and family support him. But Booman… wtf? I don’t even know where to begin with this. It is the Borg. No, wait, it’s the Heaven’s Gate cultists leaving behind their earthly bodies to merge with the higher consciousness.
Actually, I’ve got it! It’s like in the Matrix, where the humans created the machines and then after they fought it out the machines kept the humans alive as tiny generators, feeding them the liquified remains of their brethren.
Not because they had to. Not because we even deserved it, as strident and partisan as we were. But because they’re merciful!
So, come on, everyone. Leave your individual thoughts behind. Take the blue pill and relax. Ignorance is bliss!
Now: The problem with the DLC
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2008-05-03 21:45.
Is that it’s an institution that the Obama Movement doesn’t control. Period. That’s all it is. That’s why Kos has a problem with it too. http://www.correntewire.com/so_why_is_it…
And then:
DLC loses tax exempt status
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2006-09-16 20:09.
* DLC
It couldn’t happen to a nicer crowd of Bush enablers. Although silly Forbes still thinks the DLC are Democrats: Read more
Or Why Obama Supporters Want Super-Delegates To Think That One Person In Anchorage Is Worth More Than 36 In Akron
As far as Obama’s supporters are concerned, a voter in Ohio is worth only 1/23 of a voter in Alaska. In Alaska, 8,877 voters chose the state’s 13 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, or 683 voters per delegate. In Ohio, 2,194,851 voters chose that state’s 141 pledged delegate. That’s 15,566 voters per delegate. Read more
In the ongoing saga of WKJM, today’s edition tries to answer the question, why did Hillary win Ohio and does it have anything to do with why she’ll win Indiana and Kentucky? Not one to bury the lede, let me say that WKJM’s answer is that there are a whole bunch of racists in those states. Read more
There has been quite a bit of movement among automatic delegates in the last two days. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton picked up Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and Governor Easley of North Carolina. Obama picked up Richard Machacek of Iowa and Ben Chandler of Kentucky. Then this morning, Clinton announced the head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Obama announced Hill of Indiana and another Iowa representative (Braley). Then, Clinton announced a PR delegate (Chelsea picked up Cabanas on her visit to there). That was followed by Obama announcing Lois Capps of California endorsing him. (You can get the rundown from Marc Ambinder’s blog.) Read more
Mighty Corrente Building Manager Lambert brought something up in the comments to this post by bringiton that I thought deserved its own, entirely new thread. Maybe; it’s part of the “What To Do With The OFB” issue that I think is a fairly important matter.
It’s become a political cliché in this election season that Obama and his campaign have been largely about process issues (“politics, not policy”) and that there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that is surprisingly passionate about process issues and see in Obama a way to bring process issues to the fore. This attitude towards process issues stretches back to the Dean campaign. Whether this attitude is justified is another matter, but it’s becoming clear that it’s not an issue that is likely to win a general election, and that the Obama campaign’s focus on meta issues has been at the expense of issues that matter to another important voting bloc, and this might even cost him a nomination that for a time seemed to be practically his. Read more
Between late February and mid-April, voters in nine states that should/could be “Democratic” in the 2008 Presidential Election were exposed to a considerable amount of negative informative concerning both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The negative information had little impact on how Hillary Clinton was regarded when compared to John McCain. But it has had a major impact on their perception of Barack Obama, and on the perception of the relative merits of Obama and McCain.
Overall, the worst that can be said about Clinton is the negative press attention has resulted in more previously undecided voters in certain demographic categories expressing a preference for McCain rather than for Clinton. But Obama is not merely losing “undecided” voters in most demographic categories because of negative media coverage, a significant percentage of voters who had supported Obama over McCain have switched their preferences. Read more
AKA OBAMA’S SOUR ’APPLES TO APPLES’, PART THREE: INDEPENDENTS AND MODERATES
In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support in virtually every key demographic category when matched against John McCain, while Hillary Clinton has gained support. Perhaps most disturbing is Obama’s decline among Independent voters: Between late February and mid-April, in 9 key states for Democrats
· Obama lost an average 4.2% of his support among Independents
· While Obama was losing support among Independents to McCain, McCain was also picking up new support from previously undecided Independent voters, resulting in major decreases in Obama’s margins against McCain among Independents.
· In February, Obama led McCain among Independents in 5 of the 9 states, By mid-April, Obama was leading in only one state – by only 2%. Read more
In what is being heralded as one of the most momentous and politically astute moves of this extended primary campaign, Hillary Clinton’s Communication Director, Howard Wolfson, has signaled that the Clinton Campaign will be withdrawing from the North Carolina contest and focusing all of their efforts on the other May 6th primary in the state of Indiana. Read more
The question Democrats, both inside and outside the Obama campaign, should be asking themselves is this: now that the magic has dissipated, what is the campaign about? More generally, what are the Democrats for in this election?
That should be an easy question to answer. Democrats can justly portray themselves as the party of economic security, the party that created Social Security and Medicare and defended those programs against Republican attacks — and the party that can bring assured health coverage to all Americans.
They can also portray themselves as the party of prosperity: the contrast between the Clinton economy and the Bush economy is the best free advertisement that Democrats have had since Herbert Hoover. Read more
Alice Palmer and Obama’s first campaign, when he knocked out the politician who recruited and introduced him to fundraisers and others who could help him (like Ayers, etc) —
So everything seemed set. Palmer would move to Congress and Obama would take her place in the Illinois Senate.
But then Palmer lost the special congressional election. Suddenly, this well-liked community leader faced being out of office after four years in the state Legislature.
…
Palmer finally asked Obama to halt his legislative campaign so she could run for re-election.
In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support in virtually every key demographic category when matched against John McCain, while Hillary Clinton has gained support. Obama has lost support among men, women, White voters, “Independents”, and “Moderates”, while Clinton has gained support in all those categories.
Obama’s margins against McCain have fallen significantly in all of these categories, while Clinton is “holding her own” in these key categories as previously undecided voters make up their minds. Read more
Barack Obama is hemmorhaging support against John McCain in states where Democrats can/should win in November.
In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support, while Hillary Clinton has gained support, when matched against McCain. Much of Clinton’s additional support is from voters who were undecided in late February, and Clinton essentially “split” the “recent deciders” with McCain; as a result there is little change in her margins against McCain. But people who were undecided whether they preferred Obama or McCain are also making up their minds – and choosing McCain. As a result, Obama’s margins against McCain are looking much worse.
This is true among all major demographic categories that were available for comparison – if Obama improves in a category, Clinton has shown greater improvement in that category. And in categories where Clinton is not doing as well as she was in February, Obama is doing consistently worse. Read more
“By the way, when I get collect calls from prison and the like (I get wa-a-ay too many for the health of my phone bill), lately I always ask the guys who of the three candidates they prefer. Most (but not all), say Barack Obama.”
You see, last week I agreed to allow Part 4 of my “Sexism and Misogyny” series to be serialized at FDL. That was a mistake. Part 4 was really just one big fat footnote to the rest of the series, that explained a nice big chunk in the variance in the levels of evidence of sexism. The only reason it wasn’t a footnote is because it took too long to explain that while the variance was related to the percentage of black voters in the electorate, the cause of the variance was the “shift” in the white vote that occurs in conjunction with the increase in the percentage of the black vote.
Now, even my eyes glazed over while writing that last sentence, so I’m assuming that most of yours did too while reading it. Read more
all right and here are Michelle’s response to hubby
“ Because Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that. That before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.”
Someone remind me again what a giant wanker McCain is because Obama is trying my last nerve today. Via Talk Left:
Barack Obama said anti-abortion Democrats are backing him because they feel he respects their opinion on the issue despite disagreement on it. ….”It may be that those who have opposed abortion get a sense that I’m listening to them and respect their position even though where we finally come down may be different,” he told reporters at a news conference.
“The mistake that pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization so it has not always been the case, has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved in it,” he said. Read more
