Rove: Obama should be ‘way ahead’

By Klaus Marre and Walter Alarkon
Posted: 08/10/08 12:40 PM [ET]

Republican strategist Karl Rove said Sunday the fact that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama does not have a large lead in the race shows that there are “grave doubts” about the Illinois senator.

“With a restive electorate, with an economy that's sort of chugging around, with a war in the background, at the end of eight years of Republican rule in the White House, Obama should be way ahead,” Rove, who engineered President Bush’s two election victories and whose name is synonymous with tough campaigning, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” More...

Meantime, Sen. McCain’s (Ariz.) campaign manager Rick Davis stated that, even though the Republican presidential candidate is an underdog to Obama, the campaign is happy with its current position in polls.

“‘John McCain is an underdog’ may be the understatement of the decade,” said Davis on “Fox News Sunday,” echoing Rove’s thoughts. “The mood of the country is very sour about the current administration. People don’t like the party as much as they did four years ago.”

Davis added that “if someone had told me a year ago when we started the real quest for the primary that we could wind up dead even with the Democratic nominee in this kind of a political environment just before our convention, that would have been fantastic to me.”

With Democrats increasingly claiming that McCain is using “Karl Rove-type” tactics,” Rove said while the Arizona senator was right to criticize Obama in recent weeks, the GOP candidate has to do some positive things to be able to prevail in November.

“One is he needs to use the 12 weeks that are left to lay out a bold agenda for domestic reform, and he also needs to talk more about his character,” Rove said.

The strategist added that McCain also “needs to recognize that every election is about the future. And he needs to describe who he is.”

Rove noted that Obama had “wisely” sought to portray a McCain candidacy as a continuation of the policies of President Bush, noting that the GOP candidate has “responded badly to that.”

“Rather than saying, ‘You know what? Here’s who I am and here’s what I'm about,’ he’s responded by saying, ‘No, I’m not,’ which is the wrong answer,” Rove argued. “If the question is, ‘Who is not George Bush?’, Barack Obama is the answer. If the question is, ‘Who are you? And do you have a vision for the future?’, the answer can be Sen. McCain.”

Davis sought to distance McCain from President Bush’s record just as Obama’s campaign has begun running ads trying to tie the two together. A new Democratic ad features a video clip of McCain saying that he voted for legislation backed by Bush more than 90 percent of the time.

“Who was the biggest irritant to this administration for the last 10 years or last eight years? John McCain,” Davis said. “He sided with Democrats when he thought they were doing the right thing for the country, and sided with the Republicans when he thought they were doing the right thing for the country.”

ACTION! ALASKA DELEGATES UP FOR GRAB!

REPOSTED here from the ClintonDems Website:

During my research on caucus fraud I discovered the little known fact that Alaska will send five delegates to the convention UNPLEDGED. “In addition to officially allocating 13 national delegates, the state convention also decided five delegates that will attend the national convention as officially unpledged - although all but one has endorsed Obama. Here are the names of these officially unpledged Alaska Delegates. Maybe we could contact them.... More...

Here are their names:

John Davies, DNC
Patti Higgins. DNC Clinton
Blake Johnson, DNC
Cindy Spanyers, DNC
Tony Knowles

History Lessons For Eggheads

As Always - a GREAT post from Hillary is 44

Lots of substance going on (besides the Friday swamp of lies from the Edwards familiy and campaign which attacked Hillary’s character during the primaries).

Before we begin our brief history lesson we must note that the tires on the fake unity wagon are deflating. Speeches and speech nights are not enough. The rickety unity wagon is lying by the side of the road, not moving, stalled in Chicago mud. More...

Stories and videos on pro-Hillary websites posted days, if not weeks ago, are finally reported by Big Media as if they are fresh news. NObama, NOvember is getting Noticed.

We Hillary supporters are demanding a roll call vote. If Obama/Dean/Brazile/Pelosi waterboard Hillary into rejecting Hillary’s very own, clearly stated, desire to have a roll call vote that will still not prevent Hillary delegates from voting for her. An Iron Curtain Dictators type vote by acclamation to select Obama will be seen as the deceptive fake unity it is. Every Hillary vote will therefore be a profile in courage and a major embarrassment to Obama/Dean/Brazile/Pelosi and their rikety fake unity mirage.

In the next few days we will attempt to catalog (please send information to admin@HillaryIs44.org) pro-Hillary, NObama events taking place during the next several weeks. There are many events and efforts being organized now in battleground states and in Denver which need assistance if they are to come to fruition. At the same time we will continue our Herculean efforts to keep track of the major Obama gaffes and major Obama flip-flops and major Obama flim-flams.

Briefly, we will note the efforts by To Get Her 4 Us .org (they have a petition, please consider signing the petition) and the heroic Ricki Lieberman. Ricki Lieberman works with Together4us.org and also authors the invaluable Electability Watch newsletter. To receive Ricki’s newsletter email Ricki at rrlieberma@gmail.com.

Please help Ricki with her efforts contacting delegates. Recall when certain websites were laughing at Ricki and insisting that Hillary was repudiating Ricki and her efforts? The ridiculous headlines on these websites was Clinton Distances Herself From Anti-Obama Hillraiser. We defended Ricki then and laughed at her detractors. Today, Ricki has a good laugh at her detractors’ expense:

This evening at a “thank you, Hillraisers” event, Senator Clinton told me how honored she is by the people who are working to have her name put into nomination and appreciative of those signing the petition. So, like the proverbial laser, I am focusing on getting Hillary’s name in nomination and nominated in Denver. This means zooming in on the decision makers and the opinion makers with thoughtful, persuasive communications. Please help in any way you can!

On to our History Lessons For Eggheads.

* * *

In the summer of 2001, a few weeks before the 9/11 disaster, George W. Bush was on another of his all too frequent vacations. Ned Lamont went on vacation to Maine after winning the Connecticut Democratic primary for Senate from Joe Lieberman. Bush was vacationing instead of preparing against Bin Laden; Ned Lamont was vacationing instead of campaigning; Joe Lieberman won. Today Obama follows once again the George W. Bush/Lamont template and goes on vacation to Hawaii and tries to avoid the Edwards swamp.

Hillary and John McCain remain hard at work.

With polls showing him neck-and-neck with John McCain at a stage at which many Democrats expected he would be in the clear lead, they worry about the kind of stray image that helped to defeat John Kerry in 2004.

In a piece of footage endlessly recycled to mock his supposed elitism and even foreignness, Mr Kerry was caught on camera windsurfing off Massachusetts. Since Mr Obama is taking his holiday at a private beach house in Hawaii, surrounded by the secret service, campaign officials worry less about his exposure to the paparazzi. Besides, they say, most Americans will be tuned into the Olympics.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are on the job. Obama is hiding behind security walls and Olympic coverage. Obama’s grandmother is still struggling under the bus. Obama supporter John Edwards displays his lack of judgement. Superdelegates are in denial.

* * *

Donna Brazile: A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.

David Axelrod: The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.

The rantings above by Brazile and Axelrod are inspired by theories espoused by Jude Judis and Ruy Teixeira about the emerging Democratic majority. The basic premise is that African-Americans and young voters and liberals are the new Democratic majority. The old FDR coaltion is, for these strategists, too old and too out of fashion.

The Creative Class, as the nutroots flatteringly call themselves, love the snakeoil of an emerging Democratic majority that does not have to bother with the majority of the country - white and particularly white working class voters. The dream of the nutroots, er, excuse us, the Creative Class is that Democrats can’t win white working class voters and other groups so just chuck them out of the way and come up with some new formula to win. In other words stop competing and get a gimmick. Gypsy Rose Lee would be proud.

The Creative Class buys fully into these quack ‘avoid the voters’ schemes. Judis and Teixeira are smart good guys but their analysis is flawed and is employed by mindless Obama incense burners to justify their ‘destroy the winning FDR coalition’ nonsense. Teixeira and Judis published The Emerging Democratic Majority just as September 11, 2001 approached. Democrats have been waiting for the emerging majority for a long time. Like a losing baseball team sloganeers, “wait till next year“. Like end of the world evangelists the goal posts move when victory did not come in 2004.

There are many flaws in the Judis/Texeira analysis. There is also the PINO/DINO problem. What would a Democratic majority mean if Democrats are the ones who approve FISA and John Roberts and oil drilling and no gun control, and run away from pro-choice advocates?

Yesterday, the senior United States Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, was interviewed by Politico.

Schumer argues in a new preface to his book that Americans’ economic insecurity could make 2008 a re-aligning landslide.

“This election has the potential to effect the kind of paradigm-shifting change that occurs once in a generation,” he writes, comparing the vote to Franklin Roosevelt’s rise in 1932 and Ronald Reagan’s in 1980. “If it’s decided by issue and policy offerings, this election might just be the one that creates a political majority for a generation.”

Senator Schumer is someone we generally strongly agree with (sometimes strongly disagree with too). Chuck Schumer is generally one of the good guys. No elected official wanted Hillary Clinton elected President more than Chuck (O.K. some of the reasons were a bit self-interested, but we forgive him).

The senior senator from New York is right that the 2008 election could be a “paradigm-shifting” election. But that is true only if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee.

The key clause in the Chuck Schumer analysis: “If it’s decided by issue and policy offerings“. With Hillary Clinton as the nominee the election will be decided by issue and policy offerings. Truly universal health care and passionate policy positions are Hillary’s forte. Hillary also does not run away from white working class voters.

With Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee Democrats could finally heal the breach caused by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and create a true coaltion of FDR’s white working class voters and Lyndon Johnson’s African-American voters as well as bring in a permanently aligned with Democrats Latino community - and women. {We wrote about healing the breach HERE.]

Obama though is selling his fictional biography as a reason for the nomination and election. Fictional biographies can blow up in your face - ask John Edwards (the confession is HERE). Ask Milli-Vanilli.

No doubt Obama with his broth of faked celebrity biographical offerings easily wins the battle for pasting his face on magazine covers. Idolatry is the Obama ideology. Internet temples of Obama worship, incense thickly perfuming the chant filled air, praise Obama, not his policy. The Kerry’s and the Sullivans and the rest of the all male priesthood worship Obama’s face.

But Democrats have taken the Obama path before. Think of the wonderful Adlai Stevenson - who lost big.

Although Stevenson’s eloquent oratory and thoughtful, stylish demeanor thrilled many intellectuals and members of the nation’s academic community, the Republicans and some working-class Democrats ridiculed what they perceived as his indecisive, aristocratic air. During the 1952 campaign Stewart Alsop, a powerful Connecticut Republican and the brother of newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop, labeled Stevenson an “egghead“, based on his baldness and intellectual air. Alsop used the word in a column describing Stevenson’s problems in wooing working-class voters and the nickname stuck. His running mate was Senator John Sparkman of Alabama. In the 1952 presidential election against Dwight D. Eisenhower, Stevenson lost heavily outside the Solid South; he won only nine states and lost the Electoral College vote 442 to 89.

Does that not sound familiar, Superdelegates?

How about this familiar sounding disaster, Superdelegates:

Stevenson again won the nomination at the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, aided by strong support from younger delegates, who were said to form the core of the “New Politics” movement.

We are in no way attacking Adlai Stevenson. We respect him but Adlai lost. He lost. That loss had consequences for poor Americans.

The Eggheads unfortunately are at it again. In 2008 they call themselves the Creative Class. There is nothing funny about the damage these self-infatuated Eggheads have wrought through the years. There are Eggheads in both parties. But in the Democratic Party the Eggheads are the harbringers of doom. When the Eggheads solidify for a candidate - watch out.

Adlai Stevenson to his credit recognized the Egghead, er, Creative Class of yesteryear was not enough to win. The Eggheads supporting Obama, their enablers, and the Superdelegates should remember Democrats need a majority to win.

Stevenson’s wit was legendary. During one of Stevenson’s presidential campaigns, allegedly, a supporter told him that he was sure to “get the vote of every thinking man” in the U.S., to which Stevenson is said to have replied, “Thank you, but I need a majority to win.”

Hillary Clinton's Image still Largely Intact

FROM JUNE 4, 2008 Gallup Poll More...


Gallup Poll

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Hillary Clinton is emerging from the bitterly contested Democratic primary campaign with her public image among Democrats largely intact. More than three-quarters of Democrats (74%) still view her favorably, identical to national Democratic views of Barack Obama.

For most of 2007, 80% or more of national Democrats said they had a favorable view of Clinton. Positive views of her dipped below 80% in January and February of this year, rebounded to 85% in March, but have since been in the mid- to high 70s. Over the same period, Obama's favorability rose by 12 points, from 62% last February to 74% today. This was as Obama became better known nationally, and more people were able to rate him.

While Clinton's favorable rating among Democrats is slightly lower today than it once was, it has remained nearly flat among political independents. Also, after about a year of receiving minimal favorable ratings from Republicans (ranging from 12% to 19%), she is now viewed favorably by a slightly more robust 24% of Republicans, similar to the 21% to 28% seen in February and March 2007.

Now ready for prime time: Michelle Obama

NOTE: PRESIDENT CLINTON IS SPEAKING WEDNESDAY NIGHT, NORMALLY RESERVED FOR THE VP, CAUSING *SOME* TO SPECULATE HE WILL ANNOUNCE HILLARY...

That's the word from the organizers of the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. They've just sent a news release announcing that she'll be the "headline prime-time speaker" on Monday, Aug. 25 -- the opening night of the Democrats' quadrennial funfest that will formally nominate her husband as the party's candidate for president of the United States. More...

Tuesday's headliner is Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom the release described as "a champion for working families and one of the most effective and empathetic voices in the country today." (Not surprisingly, there's no mention of the bitter primary contest between Clinton and Obama, or of the nearly 18 million votes she racked up between Jan. 3 and June 3.)

The vice presidential pick gets his/her turn in the convention spotlight Wednesday night. And Thursday, of course, is the Illinois senator's acceptance speech in front of more than 70,000 cheering fans at Invesco Field at Mile High, the home of the Denver Broncos. (The others have to make do with speaking before an in-person audience of 4,400 delegates and 15,000 members of the media at the Pepsi Center, where the NBA's Denver Nuggets play.)

While nominees' wives have addressed the convention in previous years (Hillary Clinton in 1996, Tipper Gore in 2000 and Teresa Heinz Kerry in 2004), this appears to be the first time that such a speech will be featured so prominently.

As this week progresses, convention organizers will be rolling out the names of other orators, perhaps making it easier to read the currently murky tea leaves on the #2 slot on the ticket. Stay tuned.

-- Leslie Hoffecker

Photo credit: Cheryl Senter/Associated Press

NO SPEND DAY!

Join us on Saturday August 16th, 2008, for a day of NO SPENDING to evidence that we are serious in our demand of fair practices for women candidates. We won’t spend a DIME for 24 hours. NO SPENDING (cash or credit) on: internet purchases, gas for the car, cups of coffee, TV shopping, movies, dining, grocery or clothes. Plan a day of R&R, read a book or clean your closet BUT hold onto your money AND no commercial TV or Radio which has supported biased media.

A day of no spending as a coalition will demonstrate that we are a LARGE number of voters who can impact the economy as well as the election.

The British Description of Sexism in America

This is an older article. I thought it worthy of posting now as a view sexism in America from the British Perspective.

Hating Hillary
from the Newstatesman
By Andrew Stephen
Published 22 May 2008

Gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins.
More...

History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins. The chief victim has been Senator Hillary Clinton, but the ramifications could be hugely harmful for America and the world.

I am no particular fan of Clinton. Nor, I think, would friends and colleagues accuse me of being racist. But it is quite inconceivable that any leading male presidential candidate would be treated with such hatred and scorn as Clinton has been. What other senator and serious White House contender would be likened by National Public Radio's political editor, Ken Rudin, to the demoniac, knife-wielding stalker played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or described as "a fucking whore" by Randi Rhodes, one of the foremost personalities of the supposedly liberal Air America? Could anybody have envisaged that a website set up specifically to oppose any other candidate would be called Citizens United Not Timid? (We do not need an acronym for that.)

I will come to the reasons why I fear such unabashed misogyny in the US media could lead, ironically, to dreadful racial unrest. "All men are created equal," Thomas Jefferson famously proclaimed in 1776. That equality, though, was not extended to women, who did not even get the vote until 1920, two years after (some) British women. The US still has less gender equality in politics than Britain, too. Just 16 of America's 100 US senators are women and the ratio in the House (71 out of 435) is much the same. It is nonetheless pointless to argue whether sexism or racism is the greater evil: America has a peculiarly wicked record of racist subjugation, which has resulted in its racism being driven deep underground. It festers there, ready to explode again in some unpredictable way.

To compensate meantime, I suspect, sexism has been allowed to take its place as a form of discrimination that is now openly acceptable. "How do we beat the bitch?" a woman asked Senator John McCain, this year's Republican presidential nominee, at a Republican rally last November. To his shame, McCain did not rebuke the questioner but joined in the laughter. Had his supporter asked "How do we beat the nigger?" and McCain reacted in the same way, however, his presidential hopes would deservedly have gone up in smoke. "Iron my shirt," is considered amusing heckling of Clinton. "Shine my shoes," rightly, would be hideously unacceptable if yelled at Obama.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, American men like to delude themselves that they are the most macho in the world. It is simply unthinkable, therefore, for most of them to face the prospect of having a woman as their leader. The massed ranks of male pundits gleefully pronounced that Clinton had lost the battle with Obama immediately after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, despite past precedents that strong second-place candidates (like Ronald Reagan in his first, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 1976; like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown) continue their campaigns until the end of the primary season and, in most cases, all the way to the party convention.

None of these male candidates had a premature political obituary written in the way that Hillary Clinton's has been, or was subjected to such righteous outrage over refusing to quiesce and withdraw obediently from what, in this case, has always been a knife-edge race. Nor was any of them anything like as close to his rivals as Clinton now is to Obama.

The media, of course, are just reflecting America's would-be macho culture. I cannot think of any television network or major newspaper that is not guilty of blatant sexism - the British media, naturally, reflexively follow their American counterparts - but probably the worst offender is the NBC/MSNBC network, which has what one prominent Clinton activist describes as "its nightly horror shows". Tim Russert, the network's chief political sage, was dancing on Clinton's political grave before the votes in North Carolina and Indiana had even been fully counted - let alone those of the six contests to come, the undeclared super-delegates, or the disputed states of Florida and Michigan.

The unashamed sexism of this giant network alone is stupendous. Its superstar commentator Chris Matthews referred to Clinton as a "she-devil". His colleague Tucker Carlson casually observed that Clinton "feels castrating, overbearing and scary . . . When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs." This and similar abuse, I need hardly point out, says far more about the men involved than their target.

Knives out

But never before have the US media taken it upon themselves to proclaim the victor before the primary contests are over or the choice of all the super-delegates is known, and the result was that the media's tidal wave of sexism became self-fulfilling: Americans like to back winners, and polls immediately showed dramatic surges of support for Obama. A few brave souls had foreseen the merciless media campaign: "The press will savage her no matter what," predicted the Washington Post's national political correspondent, Dana Milbank, last December. "They really have their knives out for her, there's no question about it."

Polling organisations such as Gallup told us months ago that Americans will more readily accept a black male president than a female one, and a more recent CNN/Essence magazine/ Opinion Research poll found last month that 76 per cent think America is ready for a black man as president, but only 63 per cent believe the same of a woman.

"The image of charismatic leadership at the top has been and continues to be a man," says Ruth Mandel of Rutgers University. "We don't have an image, we don't have a historical memory of a woman who has achieved that feat."

Studies here have repeatedly shown that women are seen as ambitious and capable, or likeable - but rarely both. "Gender stereotypes trump race stereotypes in every social science test," says Alice Eagley, a psychology professor at Northwestern University. A distinguished academic undertaking a major study of coverage of the 2008 election, Professor Marion Just of Wellesley College - one of the "seven sisters" colleges founded because women were barred from the Ivy Leagues and which, coincidentally, Hillary Clinton herself attended - tells me that what is most striking to her is that the most repeated description of Senator Clinton is "cool and calculating".

This, she says, would never be said of a male candidate - because any politician making a serious bid for the White House has, by definition, to be cool and calculating. Hillary Clinton, a successful senator for New York who was re-elected for a second term by a wide margin in 2006 - and who has been a political activist since she campaigned against the Vietnam War and served as a lawyer on the congressional staff seeking to impeach President Nixon - has been treated throughout the 2008 campaign as a mere appendage of her husband, never as a heavyweight politician whose career trajectory (as an accomplished lawyer and professional advocate for equality among children, for example) is markedly more impressive than those of the typical middle-aged male senator.

Rarely is she depicted as an intellectually formidable politician in her own right (is that what terrifies oafs like Matthews and Carlson?). Rather, she is the junior member of "Billary", the derisive nickname coined by the media for herself and her husband. Obama's opponent is thus not one of the two US senators for New York, but some amorphous creature called "the Clintons", an aphorism that stands for amorality and sleaze. Open season has been declared on Bill Clinton, who is now reviled by the media every bit as much as Nixon ever was.

Here we come to the crunch. Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.

"What's particularly saddening," says Paul Krugman, professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton and a rare dissenting voice from the left as a columnist in the New York Times, "is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the . . . way pundits and some news organisations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent." Despite widespread reporting to the contrary, Krugman believes that most of the "venom" in the campaign "is coming from supporters of Obama".

But Obama himself prepared the ground by making the first gratuitous personal attack of the campaign during the televised Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate in South Carolina on 21 January, although virtually every follower of the media coverage now assumes that it was Clinton who started the negative attacks. Following routine political sniping from her about supposedly admiring comments Obama had made about Ronald Reagan, Obama suddenly turned on Clinton and stared intimidatingly at her. "While I was working in the streets," he scolded her, ". . . you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart." Then, cleverly linking her inextricably in the public consciousness with her husband, he added: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

One of his female staff then distributed a confidential memo to carefully selected journalists which alleged that a vaguely clumsy comment Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King ("Dr King's dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964") and a reference her husband had made in passing to Nelson Mandela ("I've been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years . . . but if I had to pick one person whom I know would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions . . . I would pick Hillary") were deliberate racial taunts.

Another female staffer, Candice Tolliver - whose job it is to promote Obama to African Americans - then weighed in publicly, claiming that "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements" and saying: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?" That was game, set and match: the Clintons were racists, an impression sealed when Bill Clinton later compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 (even though Jackson himself, an Obama supporter, subsequently declared Clinton's remarks to be entirely inoffensive).

The pincer movement, in fact, could have come straight from a textbook on how to wreck a woman's presi dential election campaign: smear her whole persona first, and then link her with her angry, red-faced husband. The public Obama, characteristically, pronounced himself "unhappy" with the vilification carried out so methodically by his staff, but it worked like magic: Hillary Clinton's approval ratings among African Americans plummeted from above 80 per cent to barely 7 per cent in a matter of days, and have hovered there since.

I suspect that, as a result, she will never be able entirely to shake off the "racist" tag. "African-American super-delegates [who are supporting Clinton] are being targeted, harassed and threatened," says one of them, Representative Emanuel Cleaver. "This is the politics of the 1950s." Obama and Axelrod have achieved their objectives: to belittle Hillary Clinton and to manoeuvre the ever-pliant media into depicting every political criticism she makes against Obama as racist in intent.

The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka "Hildebeast" and "Hitlery") from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever. But that creeping realisation has probably come too late, and many of the Democratic super-delegates now fear there would be widespread outrage and increased racial tension if they thwart the first biracial presidential hopeful in US history.

But will Obama live up to the hype? That, I fear, may not happen: he is a deeply flawed candidate. Rampant sexism may have triumphed only to make way for racism to rear its gruesome head in America yet again. By election day on 4 November, I suspect, the US media and their would-be-macho commentators may have a lot of soul-searching to do.

In this comment piece on sexist language in the US media in relation to Hillary Clinton Andrew Stephen suggested that Carl Bernstein had publicly declared his disgust for Hillary Clinton's thick ankles. We are informed that Carl Bernstein intended, in his biography of Hillary Clinton, to refer to comments made by others about her when she was at high school. We are happy to accept that Carl Bernstein was not motivated by sexism, and we are sorry for any embarrassment caused.

Obama receives illegal funds from 'terrorist hotbed'

According to Federal Election Commission filings, Barack Obama has received illegal donations from Palestinians living in Gaza, a hotbed of Hamas terrorists.

Obama received more than $24,000 in campaign contributions over a period of two months last fall from three Palestinian brothers from the "Edwan" family in Rafah, Gaza, which is a Hamas stronghold along the border with Egypt. The story was uncovered by Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog. (see Federal Election Commission report) More...

Attorney and conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel notes foreign nationals are barred from making contributions in connection with any election -- federal, state, or local -- and an individual is allowed to give only $2,300 per election to a federal candidate or the candidate's campaign committee.

"The donations are basically through and through illegal -- that's number one. And number two is how the Obama campaign tried to conceal it," Schlussel Terrorist with hostagechides. "They listed the campaign contributions as coming from Rafah, Georgia. They used the 'GA' from Gaza so it makes it look like it's legal; and then for the zip code it says '972,' which is actually the area code to dial over to Gaza," she contends.

The attorney comments that if the Obama campaign is willing to "accept thousands of dollars beyond the legal limit and they're also going to flout [Federal Election Commission] restrictions...that's very indicative of what kind of president [Obama] is going to be."

"They're not going to be worried about the details and they won't mind if they break the law to get to the final result that they want," adds Schlussel. She believes it is a "major news story when a presidential candidate receives money from 'a bastion of Islamic terrorism.' And Schlussel argues that the media is "bending over backwards to help Barack Obama and cover up any negative news about him."

Schlussel says Pamela Geller will likely file a Federal Election Commission complaint against the Obama campaign for violating restrictions and limits on campaign contributions.

You may view Matt Friedeman's video commentary on this story by clicking here.

Clinton supporters at Democratic meeting fail in bid to end caucus system

So much for the candidate that wants to "hear from the people" and "represent the voters". The party's platform committee, now controlled by Obama and his supporters, set aside the caucus amendment, saying the rules committee will deal with it. The new draft party platform is a mixed bag.

By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 10, 2008
PITTSBURGH -- Hillary Rodham Clinton loyalists tried Saturday to kill off the caucus system that proved so damaging to her presidential bid, but were beaten back by a Democratic Party leadership firmly under the command of her former rival, Barack Obama. More...



Democrats who supported the New York senator's candidacy pushed to amend the new party platform so that caucuses would be banned in future presidential contests.

But the party's platform committee refused to allow a vote on the amendment or even a discussion. Co-chair Patricia Madrid, a former New Mexico attorney general, said the matter would instead be taken up at a later date by the party's rules committee.

That left Clinton supporters disappointed. They say that if the party were serious about enfranchising more voters, it would take a clear position against a system that makes participation difficult for shift workers, the disabled and overseas members of the military. In traditional primaries, people have all day to vote. But a caucus may last just a few hours.

During the Democratic race, Obama outmaneuvered Clinton in Iowa and many other states that held caucuses, turning out far more supporters and racking up enough delegates to give him an insurmountable lead.

"My feeling is the issue should have been aired and people should have had the opportunity to speak and vote it up or down," Bob Remer, a delegate for Clinton from Chicago, said in an interview Saturday. Remer, who is a member of the platform committee, had put forward the amendment that was shelved. "The caucus system is the exact opposite of everything I've been fighting for in terms of maximizing democratic input."

The 186-member committee voted to recommend adoption of a new Democratic platform, the party's formal statement of policies and principles. Final approval will come at the party's national convention Aug. 25-28 in Denver.

Clinton supporters were hoping to influence the draft in ways that reflect her interests. For its own sake, the Obama campaign would like to accommodate Clinton forces where it can; with Republican John McCain keeping the general election contest close, according to recent polls, Obama needs to unify voters behind him.

So the platform is a mixed bag. In a section devoted to expanding opportunities for women, the document says that Democrats are proud "that we have put 18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling," a respectful reference to Clinton's vote total in the primary and a phrase she used in her concession speech.

But Obama, now in control of the Democratic Party machinery, clearly enjoys the greatest influence over the document. The platform reflects many of his policy goals and borrows language from his stump speech. "Our planet is in peril," reads the preamble.

One of the defining policy differences the Illinois senator had with Clinton involved healthcare. She wanted a requirement that people carry health insurance; he did not.

The platform has no mention of a health insurance mandate. But it does include language that acknowledges "there are different approaches within the Democratic Party about how best to achieve the commitment of universal coverage."

Platform committee leaders insisted that Clinton was given a role in shaping the document. At some point, party officials said, the future of the caucus system will be decided, but inserting a paragraph in the platform is not the best way to settle the matter.

Madrid, the committee co-chair who set aside the caucus amendment, said the platform "wasn't effectively controlled by Obama, although his people certainly had a hand in it. He's the candidate and he will have to run on this platform. That's not unreasonable. The issue of the caucuses won't be resolved here at the platform. It will be resolved on the DNC level, and they will have their full day in court, I guarantee you."

Tensions between Obama and Clinton forces were evident at the Convention Center here, where the meeting took place. Clinton's supporters sat together in the audience, wearing campaign buttons and T-shirts bearing her name. One person hissed when Obama's name was mentioned.

Among the activists serving on the committee, there were also signs of a split.

Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the head of a private holding company and a member of the committee, took the microphone after the caucus amendment was defeated to register a protest.

After the meeting, she said she still hadn't made up her mind about whether to vote for Obama because she didn't "understand how a person comes to the U.S. Senate and -- before they've done one thing there -- decides they can be president."

"I have serious questions about Barack Obama and what the Democratic Party is doing," she said. "I have serious issues with Barack Obama."

peter.nicholas@latimes.com