Obama to DOJ: Block terrorist ad

Barack Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project." Photo: AP

By BEN SMITH from Politico

(see Related post "The 527’s Reply to Obama’s Efforts to Quash Ayers Ad" )

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.

Obama has also launched his own response ad, directly addressing Simmons' attempt to link him to domestic terror. More...

The project is “a knowing and willful attempt to violate the strictures of federal election law,” Obama general counsel Bob Bauer wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney last week in a letter provided to Politico. Bauer argued that by advocating Obama’s defeat, the ad should be subject to the contribution limits of federal campaign law, not the anything-goes regime of issue advocacy.

Bauer’s letter called on the Justice Department to open “an investigation of the American Issues Project; its officers and directors; and its anonymous donors, whoever they may be.”

“This is a sad ploy to circumvent the First Amendment by a campaign who has no arguments with the merits of our ad. It’s the classic maneuver: If you can’t win on the merits, file a lawsuit,” said a spokesman for the American Issues Project, Christian Pinkston, who said his group's non-profit status allowed it to participate in elections as long as it does a majority of policy work, which it plans to do.
A spokeswoman for Keeney, Laura Sweeney, declined to comment on Bauer’s letter.

The Obama campaign plans to punish the stations that air the ad financially, an Obama aide said, organizing his supporters to target the stations that air it and their advertisers.

But the ad continues to air widely. Evan Tracey, who tracks campaign advertising at TNS Media Intelligence, said it has been broadcast 150 times in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Michigan. Federal Election Commission reports indicate that Simmons has spent more than $2.8 million buying ads.

Obama’s campaign has written a pair of letters to station managers carrying the ads.

The letter calls the ad’s attempt to link Obama to terrorism “an appalling lie, a disgraceful smear of the lowest kind on the senator’s patriotism and commitment to the rule of law.”

Airing the ad “is inconsistent with your station’s obligations under Federal Communications Commission regulations,” the letter continues, saying Simmons’ group lacks formal incorporation.

One large group of network affiliates, the Sinclair Broadcast Group — which aired an documentary attacking John Kerry in 2004 — has been running the ads, Obama aides said. The campaign has launched a special effort to pressure Sinclair.

“Obama supporters have now sent more than 93,000 e-mails to the Sinclair stations that have decided to run the ad,” said Obama’s spokesman Tommy Vietor. “Other stations that follow Sinclair’s lead should expect a similar response from people who don’t want the political discourse cheapened with these false, negative attacks.”

Spokesmen for Sinclair, CNN and Fox didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The ad focuses on Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a Hyde Park acquaintance at whose home Obama attended a gathering early in his political career. Ayers is a complicated figure: professor and adviser to the mayor of Chicago despite not having repented his past as a domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground.

"How much do your really know about Barack Obama? What does he really believe?" asks the ad, which also uses imagery from the Al-Qaeda terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?" asks the ad’s narrator.

Its financier, Simmons, who made his first fortune in chain pharmacies, was a major donor to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that damaged Kerry in 2004 by questioning his patriotism. He has raised more than $50,000 for Obama's rival, Sen. John McCain, though there’s no evidence that his anti-Obama effort has McCain’s explicit blessing.

Obama has launched a response ad, which addresses McCain directly, and will air in Ohio, Tracey said. "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" says Obama’s ad. "McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."

McCain’s camp, meanwhile, appears to welcome the controversy.

“The fact that [Obama] is launching his own convention by defending his long association with a man who says he didn't bomb enough U.S. targets tells us more about Barack Obama than any of tonight's speeches will,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Why Obama looks vulnerable

By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times


The Democratic party will whip up some euphoria in Denver this week. But a dark cloud of anxiety hovers over the party convention. More...

The Democratic party will whip up some euphoria in Denver this week. But a dark cloud of anxiety hovers over the party convention.

A horrible truth is beginning to dawn on the Democrats. Barack Obama is not the “once in a generation” political genius they thought they had discovered. On the contrary, he is a weak candidate for the presidency.

With a feeble economy, an unpopular war and the Republicans in disarray, the Democrats should win the presidential election in a canter. But Mr Obama, the Democratic nominee, is neck and neck with John McCain, his Republican rival. For sure, Mr Obama has some real assets – intelligence, grace, good looks, star quality. But history suggests that he is a very risky candidate.

Since 1968, the Democrats have won just three out of 10 presidential races. Their two successful candidates – Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – were both white, centrist governors from the southern US. Whenever the Democrats nominated a liberal from outside the South – George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry – they lost.

Mr Obama is a northerner. He is a liberal. He is a former college professor. And he is black. A bold choice, under the circumstances.

Mr Obama’s unusual personal history – the son of a black Kenyan and a white American, brought up partly in Indonesia – allowed him to write a fascinating, introspective autobiography, Dreams from My Father. But his life story may seem a little exotic to most American voters. Mr McCain’s early life could easily be made into a Hollywood movie.Mr Obama’s youth is more of an off-Broadway play.
Mr McCain can tell tales of heroism as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Mr Obama was a student at elite universities on a voyage of self-discovery. He writes: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists . . . We discussed neo-colonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy.” Even allowing for the self-mocking tone, this is not exactly mainstream America.

It is clear that Mr Obama lacks experience. But that, in itself, need not be a bar to the White House. The same was true of other Democrats who won the presidency – John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton.

Race, however, is a bigger problem. So far, the fact that Mr Obama is an African-American may actually have helped him. As Shelby Steele, an academic, writes: “When you can credibly run for the presidency only two years out of the Illinois state legislature . . . then something in the society is drawing you forward.”

But Democratic primaries – with a high proportion of black and white liberal voters – are one thing. A general election is quite another matter. And notoriously, even in the Democratic contest, Mr Obama struggled to pick up the votes of the white working class in key states such as Pennsylvania. A recent New York Times poll hinted at just how high a barrier Mr Obama may have to hurdle. Whilst only 5 per cent of American voters said they would not vote for a black candidate, 27 per cent said they thought the US was not yet ready for a black president.

Mr Obama has campaigned as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as a black candidate. In doing so, he has offered white voters the reassurance that he is not one of those African-Americans who talks endlessly about race and tries to make them feel bad. On the contrary, voting for Mr Obama can make you feel good about yourself and about race relations in America.

So there was a certain, cynical brilliance in the McCain campaign’s accusation that it is Mr Obama who is “playing the race card”. This challenged the idea that Mr Obama is a “post-racial” candidate – and it played to white resentments about what some regard as special treatment for black people. The New York Times poll showed that 26 per cent of American whites believe they have been the victim of discrimination.

The special sensitivity of the racial issue places the Obama campaign in a dilemma when it comes to responding to attacks. It is conventional wisdom among Democrats that previous candidates – in particular, Mr Dukakis and Mr Kerry – lost because they were too slow to respond to negative campaigning by the Republicans.

But if the Obama campaign suspects the Republicans of appealing to racism, they will have to think twice about levelling the accusation. Any such charge will be leapt upon by a controversy-hungry media – placing race at the centre of the election campaign. And that can only help the McCain campaign.

Of course, Mr McCain has his own vulnerabilities. He is about to turn 72 – and some opinion polls suggest that voters are even more reluctant to vote for a pensioner than they are to vote for a black person. His inability to remember how many houses he owns suggests that he is either extraordinarily rich or slightly senile – neither idea is helpful to his cause.

The structural factors that the Democrats think favour them this year certainly exist. Americans are in a morose mood about the economy and the country in general. The unpopularity of President George W. Bush will act as a drag on Republicans. Mr Obama has raised an awful lot of money, run a skilful campaign that beat the formidable Clinton machine and has an army of highly enthusiastic supporters.
But he is still a very vulnerable candidate. Can he lose? Yes he can.

gideon.rachman@ft.com
Post and read comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog

The Hillary Hold-ons: Causing Trouble in Denver and Beyond?

From Mother Jones Blog poste here to share:

Former Congressman Harold Ford Jr., the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, was standing outside a Walgreen's on 16th Street in downtown Denver yesterday. It was a beautiful afternoon, and scores of his fellow Democrats who had arrived for their party's conventions were strolling up and down the 16th Street Mall, past high-end chain stores and restaurants. It felt like something of a block party. Ford, an African-American who lost a 2006 Senate bid after his foes ran an ad featuring a young white woman noting that Ford had attended a Playboy mansion party and asking him for a date, joyously greeted members of Congress, political operatives, and reporters who happened to pass by. But he did have a worry. A worry regarding Hillary Clinton. Not the Senator herself. But her die-hard supporters. Ford said that he feared that Clinton supporters who had come to Denver to demand Clinton receive the party's presidential nomination--and who were planning demonstrations and events during the week--could cause trouble. More...

Two blocks away, two of those Clinton supporters were hoping--and planning--exactly for that. Nancy Kirlen, a middle-aged woman from San Diego, and Kathy Skerl, also middle-aged and from Asheville, North Carolina, stood at the entrance to the Sheraton Hotel, where media credentials were being distributed, and enthusiastically told reporters of their intentions to derail the convention.
With Senator Barack Obama recognized by the vast majority of Democrats as the presumptive nominee, with Senator Joe Biden tapped as his running-mate, with no major debates under way about the party platform, the convention appears to be short on news, suspense and conflict. With the exception of one possible plot-line: the revenge of the Hillaryites. Reporters looking for a story have focused on the possible clash between this band of activists and the party.

Their goal--to get Clinton nominated by persuading superdelegates to ditch Obama for her--is certainly far-fetched. The question is, can they create enough sound and fury--amplified or not by the mainstream media--to make it appear that there is significant dissension within the ranks? Outside the Sheraton, Kirlen said she expected thousands of Hillary-backers to take to Denver's streets for a Tuesday march. Skerl lowered expectations, saying the crowd might number in the hundreds. In addition to the march, several other rallies for Hillary are planned before the roll call vote at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday night.

Kirlen and Skerl were quick to note that Clinton is not encouraging these efforts. "It's not about Hillary," Kirlen said. "It's about how she was treated by the press. The Democratic Party did not stand up for her." She also blasted the nominating process for having given caucuses, where Obama tended to do well, too much influence. She repeated the Clinton campaign's old arguments that Clinton won more votes overall than Obama (if you count the disputed contests in Florida and Michigan in a manner favorable to Clinton).

Both women were visibly angry. They spent months volunteering for Clinton, and they feel deeply wronged. But why can't they come to the same terms with the results as Hillary Clinton has? What does it say about their efforts that Clinton is not with them? Is that not disappointing to them--and a sign they shouldn't bother? No, they assert. "That says that she is a class act," comments Kirlen, "and wants to remain a force in the Democratic Party and get reelected to the Senate." It does not strike them as strange that they are standing up for a politician who won't stand with them. "She's playing nice," Kirlen adds. "But we don't have to." Both vowed to vote for John McCain over Obama in November. Kirlen cited McCain's experience and the number of women in senior positions in his campaign. Asked about his vote against Democratic-backed legislation that would undo a recent Supreme Court decision that makes it harder for a woman to sue an employer for pay discrimination, Kirlen changed the subject and criticized Democrats for having voted for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. This is not about policy issues.

The Hillary Hold-ons are mostly an outside-the-hall group. Bob Mulholland, a leader of the California delegation to the convention, said that among Democrats from the Golden State there are not many former Hillary backers who are upset enough to cause any difficulty. A senior member of the Maryland delegation noted that there are some "whiners and gripers" within that delegation but no signs they want to see any scuffling at the convention over Clinton. Harold Ford did note that the news that the Obama did not vet Clinton as a possible veep choice or speak to her about it "could fire up the fringe."
Delegates are party activists, and party activists tend to rally when called upon to rally. The bigger issue is whether the resentment shared by Kirlen and Skerl extends within the larger electorate. (A recent CNN poll showed that the percentage of Hillary Clinton voters who say they will vote for McCain in the fall has increased in recent weeks.) And if that resentment is hanging on and perhaps spreading, will any noise that is created in Denver by the Hillary Troublemakers, no matter how small their numbers, reverberate among women voters elsewhere? After all, it only takes a few loud dissenters to make a good media story. ("Fox News is giving us a lot of coverage," Kirlen noted.) So while Kirlen, Skerl, and their compatriots have about zero chance to alter the outcome in Denver, they may have to settle for the next best thing: keeping alive the narrative of the Hilllaryites for McCain.

Photo by flickr user Angela Radulescu used under a Creative Commons license.

Obama's Misfire

By Peter Wehner from "the Corner" on National Review

I want to echo what Yuval says, as well as Jennifer Rubin over at Contentions. Senator Obama’s new ad, trying to explain his association with the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, may rank as among the worst tactical mistakes of the campaign. It puts into play an issue that has been largely ignored by the MSM. It will drive at least some responsible members of the press to cover the truth about Obama’s association with Ayers, which is certainly enough to seriously harm Obama. And it once again raises the problem of Obama’s other troubling associations over the years, including (but not exclusive to) the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

For weeks it has been clear that Obama is, for the first time in his national political career, on the defensive. He and his campaign look increasingly rattled. They seem unsure what strategy to pursue and what the new rationale for an Obama presidency ought to be. They seem to be shifting back and forth, from trying to recapture the old magic, now long gone, to using a two-by-four against Senator McCain. And now they have made what strikes me as a major misstep. Many people who never knew who Bill Ayers is, what he has done, and what Obama’s relationship with him has been, are about to find out. And for a presidential candidate who is still a mystery to many people, and about whom they persistent and growing questions, it cannot be a good thing to be linked to Ayers.

The Obama campaign, which was running an almost flawless campaign for months, had begun to crack under the pressure of a presidential campaign. That pressure has now created a break. It is one I suspect they will come to regret.

The Mess in Mississippi, Redux: The Joe Biden Connection?

Posted by Dan Slater from the WSJ

As the media and the GOP begin their inevitable scrutiny of Joe Biden, the newly-named running-mate of Barack Obama, he’ll undoubtedly find himself answering questions about his past. Among those questions could be one that falls squarely within LB jurisdiction: Biden’s connection to famed plaintiffs lawyer Dickie Scruggs and others in Mississippi’s legal community.
Last month, as we did clean-up on the Scruggs story, a couple things happened: Dickie, who pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to bribe a state-court judge, discovered he would serve out his five-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. Meanwhile, Judge Neal Biggers surprised Dickie’s son, Zach, who pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of misprision — knowing, concealing and failing to tell — by hitting him with a 14-month sentence. More...

Meanwhile, Joe Biden spent part of July paying down his campaign debt, which entailed giving back campaign donations from both Dickie and Zach.

First, some background: When the Scruggs news broke in December, the LB reported that Steve Patterson (pictured, left) and Tim Balducci (pictured, right), who were both charged alongside Scruggs (pictured, below), had grand ambitions to turn their firm, Patterson Balducci in New Albany, Miss., into a Democratic lobbying shop and law firm. Patterson (not a lawyer) and Balducci (a lawyer) had opened an office in D.C. and lured a number of influential Mississippi Democrats to affiliate with their firm.

Balducci and Patterson, as we’ve noted, once had high hopes for Biden. According to people familiar with their thinking, their bet on Biden (Syracuse law) was that he wouldn’t win the presidency but would become Secretary of State under a Hillary Clinton administration. In August, Balducci, Patterson, Scruggs and others hosted an Oxford. Miss., fundraising event for Biden. By December, employees of Patterson Balducci had contributed about $26,000 to the Biden campaign, according to fundraising records. According to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Patterson, Balducci, Dickie and Zach had contributed $2,300 each to Biden’s campaign.

Last week, the L.A. Times Top of the Ticket blog reported that in July Biden slashed his campaign debt to $173,999 from $1.15 million the previous month, according to Federal Election Commission records. (Biden spent $13.8 million on his candidacy and dropped out of the race after a poor showing in Iowa.) His July expenses included giving refunds of $2,300 to both Dickie and Zach.

UPDATE: In an August 25 WSJ story entitled “Scrutiny of Biden Focuses on Lobbyist Ties, Family,” a Biden spokesman tells the WSJ that all contributions from anyone implicated in the Mississippi bribery case were donated to a charity.

AT&T Throws Party to Support Dems Who Voted to Grant Telecoms Immunity for Illegal Domestic Wiretapping

Democracy Now! goes from the streets to the suites to try and cover one of the first of over 1,200 parties during the Democratic National Convention—this one thrown by AT&T to support Democrats who voted to grant the company immunity for illegal wiretapping of Americans. We also get analysis from Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com. [includes rush transcript]. Click HERE to read the full story.

MBNA paid Biden son at critical time for bill

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 45 minutes ago
 

WASHINGTON - A son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

Barack Obama's presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the measure, which is now law and makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts. More...

MBNA's consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by The New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

Obama opposed the bankruptcy law, enacted in 2005, while Biden supported it.

David Wade, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said that "after working in the Clinton administration in the Department of Commerce on Internet privacy and online commerce issues, Hunter consulted for five years as an expert on these very same issues at a time of enormous expansion in online banking."

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

"He was not a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing," said Wade.

Resurrecting Biden's role in the bankruptcy legislation could undercut one of the Obama campaign's lines of attack: That his Republican opponent, John McCain, is insensitive to the financial woes of middle-class Americans.

Consumer and civil rights groups and unions, as well as Democratic opponents, had argued that the bankruptcy legislation was unfair to low-income working people, single mothers, minorities and the elderly, and would remove a safety net for those who have lost their jobs or face mounting medical bills.

The financial services industry made the case that bankruptcy frequently is a refuge of gamblers, impulsive shoppers, divorced or separated fathers avoiding child support, and multimillionaires who buy mansions in states with liberal exemptions to shelter assets from creditors.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill early in 2005, Biden, Dianne Feinstein of California and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin were the only Democrats to vote with the Republican majority. Biden also voted for the bill on final passage in the Senate, while Obama voted against it.

MBNA employees have poured more than $200,000 into Biden's Senate campaigns over the past two decades, making donors working for the credit card company the senator's largest source of campaign money.

On the bankruptcy bill, the senator "took plenty of knocks from the largest employer in his state because he demanded changes," said Wade, the Obama campaign spokesman. "Sen. Biden improved the bill for low-income workers, women, and children. There were times when he believed amendments on both sides would have blown up a bipartisan compromise backed by three quarters of the Senate. At those moments, Sen. Biden had to make the tough calls and he voted to pass a bill."

In a separate matter in which Hunter Biden's lobbying activities were referenced, he and Biden's brother Jim have been sued for allegedly defrauding an ex-business partner.

In the lawsuit filed last year in state court in New York, Anthony Lotito says that he got a call from Jim Biden in early 2006 saying that Sen. Biden was concerned with the impact that Hunter's lobbying activities might have on the senator's expected campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

According to the lawsuit, Jim Biden said his brother had asked him to seek Lotito's assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity.

The lawsuit says that Lotito later was cut out of a business arrangement with Jim and Hunter Biden to purchase a Wall Street hedge fund.

Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer for the Bidens, said that Lotito's claim that Sen. Biden told his brother that he was concerned about his son's lobbying activities is completely baseless.

"There is absolutely no connection between Joe Biden and this lawsuit. The case is without merit and it will be dismissed," said Gravante, a partner at the firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner.

HILLARY WATCH: CLINTON DELEGATES TO GET SPECIAL ROOM

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

Posted: 2:46 pm
August 25, 2008

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team has set up a room for her pledged delegates to spend time in during the leadup to the roll call on Wednesday night.

The room at the Colorado Convention Center was closed to press when The Post went to visit, but some Clinton staffers were seen popping in and out.

Some people who spent time there said it was used at some points today for meetings with whips and chairs from different states, amid negotiations between the Clinton camp and Team Obama about how the roll call will play .

Hillary Clinton calls for unity

Biden Hits the Fan

Just in time for the Democratic Convention: the Obiden ticket of Change comes complete with fresh lawsuits against Joe Biden's brother and lobbyist son, alleging a steaming heap of corrupt lobbying (it's such a good thing that Biden was a well-connected senator for 36 years isn't it?) and defrauding investors in a hedge fund out of millions of dollars.

 

From a shiny new post-partisan politics of hope and change up until May, to this grotesque spectacle right before the national convention  -- via a series of sell-outs, policy shifts and flip-flops the latest blow resulted from the Oborg's hubristically putting the ultimate Washington insider and patron of lobbyists -- Joe Biden -- on a ticket that was supposed to be all about "change".

Has anyone seen a brand dissolve so quickly? This will be one for the schoolbooks.

Here's hoping the delegates come to their senses and quickly. This is all starting to feel like a repeat of the worst parts of 1972 and 1988 all over again.

Gallup Daily: Race Tied as Democratic Convention Starts

PRINCETON, NJ -- The last Gallup Poll Daily tracking polling conducted before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention shows Barack Obama and John McCain tied at 45%.

The latest update includes two days of interviewing following Obama's selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, and neither day showed an improved performance for Obama. Thus, Obama does not appear to have gotten the same type of immediate "vice presidential bounce" as have presidential candidates in recent years. That could reflect a somewhat muted national response to the Biden selection, or competition for the nation's attention with the Olympics. (The candidates who got vice presidential bounces in 1996, 2000, and 2004 announced their choices before or after the Olympics took place in those years.) More...

In fact, today's results, using Aug. 22-24 interviews, show both candidates getting precisely the same number of votes when more than 2,600 national registered voters were asked who they would vote for "if the presidential election were held today."

The race has clearly tightened over the past two weeks, after Obama held a modest advantage (averaging three percentage points) from the time he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in early June through mid-August. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)
The Democratic convention, scheduled in late August to avoid a conflict with the Olympics, gets underway today. Michelle Obama serves as the keynote speaker this evening. -- Jeff Jones

Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.

Electoral Match up (NO toss up states): Barack Obama 273, John McCain 265 - The gap is still closing

Electoral Match up with no toss up states grows even closer:  Barack Obama 273,   John McCain 265    Click here to see the map.

The Inconvenient Obama

By Andrew Breitbart, from Real Clear Politics

Sen. Barack Obama has a problem. And it lives in a hut.

His name is George Hussein Onyango Obama, and he is the 26-year-old half brother of Mr. Obama, the multimillionaire autobiographer who neglected to write that his paternal sibling lives on less than a dollar a month in the outer slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

They have met twice. More...

Unearthed by Italian Vanity Fair and virtually ignored by the American press, the inconvenient George Obama could emerge as a compelling character in the freshman senator's carefully edited road-to-the-White-House narrative - especially now that his campaign has unleashed a personal attack on Sen. John McCain's station in life.

 

The Obama hit job on Mr. McCain seizes on his clumsiness in answering a reporter's question about how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. "I think - I'll have my staff get to you," Mr. McCain fumbled. In a well-funded nationally televised ad spot titled "Seven," Mr. Obama's messenger twice repeats the correct answer as the words on the screen reinforce the meme of class warfare.

"Seven. Worth $13 million."

The Sunday morning shows parroted Mr. Obama's shocking discovery that the McCain family is well-off. Smarting Obamaniacs campaigning for their messiah are now scripted to ask voters in battleground states how many houses they own and participate in an official campaign contest, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: McCain Edition." Winners receive hope, change and fist bumps - spoils of the "new kind of politics."

Someone who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a mansion that a mobster helped pay for should not be throwing stones. When Mr. Obama's flesh-and-blood lives in squalor, raising the standard of living of his opponent's extended family is probably not a smart idea.

It's scary to think that this could be a preview of an Obama presidency in which attacking the rich is all the rage, and the rich in the news media pretend it's OK. Hugo Chavez is having a helluva run bringing down his formerly prosperous nation of Venezuela with that formula.

Mr. McCain, of course, would be publicly eviscerated if he funded an ad campaign called "12" - as in the amount of dollars a year Mr. Obama's half-brother subsists on. The message also could accurately point out that Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, have consistently fallen short of the national average in charitable contributions since they entered the highest income bracket - despite their ballyhooed "progressive" religious faith that touts "economic equality."

It would also be fair game now to point out that preaching "social justice" pays better than being a United States senator. The Trinity United Church of Christ is building a mansion for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that includes an elevator, a butler's pantry, a bar, a rubberized exercise room - and the 10,000-square-foot estate backs up to the Odyssey Country Club. (Memo to wealthy Caucasian Republican members of the golf club: "Fore!")

Attached to Mr. Wright's church-funded property is a peculiar $10 million line of credit - presumably, none of which will be given to George Obama.

Mr. McCain's ad also could highlight that Michelle Obama is on leave from her $317,000-a-year job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, which is now under scrutiny - along with Obama campaign chief David Axelrod and two other staffers - for a scheme that, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "steers patients who don't have private insurance - primarily poor, black people - to other health care facilities."

"The medical professionals who have come to me are accusing the university of dumping patients on its neighboring institutions," Toni Preckwinkle, alderman for the 4th Ward, told the paper.
 Patient-dumping poor blacks may be interesting, but not quite as newsworthy as John McCain marrying a beer heiress 28 years ago.

Does anyone think if Mr. McCain had a sibling living in a trailer park making minimum wage (892 times more than Mr. Obama's half brother's yearly income) that the mainstream media and the Obama campaign wouldn't notice?

In fact, last week National Public Radio ran a piece titled, "Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden," highlighting that Mr. McCain's wife's half sister was left out of her father's will. The piece was duly filed under the publicly funded network's "conservative compassion deficit" media template.
Yet Mr. Obama has a half brother who lives in Africa on three cents a day, and the story breaks in an Italian magazine and is picked up by a London newspaper and a few others in Australia. Perhaps the story would be carried widely in America if they could figure out how to blame President Bush. But as Bob Geldof pointed out, he "has done more [for Africa] than any other president," and of the press harshly judged, "You guys didn't pay attention."

Nor will they pay attention that the McCains have adopted a poor Bangladeshi child and done untold amounts of humanitarian and charity work.

What makes this story newsworthy for Italians, Brits and Aussies, but not Americans, is that the U.S. free press is free to ignore stories that could take down their preordained president. And after the Internet and talk radio-driven "Swift Boat" story unexpectedly sank their last guy, the mainstream American press is taking extra precautions this time around.

If for some inexplicable reason the media are forced by their online and talk radio betters to run with this outrageous and creepy story, key Obama supporter Oprah Winfrey can come to the rescue at the Democratic National Convention. On Night 3, the billionaire television hostess can synthesize her two best show archetypes: the heart-wrenching family reunion and "Oprah's Favorite Things," the giveaway of material goods.

Imagine the emotional fireworks when 75,000 Obama supporters at Invesco Field witness Barack Obama reconnecting with his destitute half brother as is he lavished with Kai Body Butter & Buffer, Perfect Endings Cupcakes by Williams-Sonoma, Hand-Blown Crystal Champagne Glasses by Deborah Ehrlich and a Pure Simplicity Pumpkin Purifying Mask.

Controversy averted. Because Democrats care more.

Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon - the Case Against Celebrity."

McCain camp echoes Ayers attack

FROM BEN SMITH'S BLOG:

The McCain campaign welcomes an opportunity, raised by its independent ally, to argue about Bill Ayers.

"The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could. And the fact that he's launching his own Convention by defending his long association with a man who says he didn't bomb enough U.S. targets tells us more about Barack Obama than any of tonight's speeches will," says spokesman Brian Rogers. More...

The Ayers attacks cite my story on him and Obama, and the notion that Obama "chose to launch his political career" at Ayers' home is an overstatement, but not without any basis in reality. Alice Palmer, his predecessor in the State Senate, did convene one early, and important, meeting to introduce Obama to new constituents there, however.

As one attendee described it:

“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.... They were launching him — introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”

Articles and Blogs Monday, August 25

(UPDATED Throughout Monday, August 25)

Some Democrats are Worried, Howard Fineman of Newsweek

Obama to DOJ: Block Terrorist Ad by Ben Smith, Politico

The 527’s Reply to Obama’s Efforts to Quash Ayers Ad, NoQuarter

Conversation With Cindy Schwartz, Washington State Delegate, NoQuarter

Clinton Advisers to Skip Obama Speech By Matthew Mosk from The Trail

AT&T Throws Party to Support Dems Who Voted to Grant Telecoms Immunity for Illegal Domestic Wiretapping from Democracy Now

Clintonism Lives - Mark Penn, the Politico

The Inconvenient Obama' - Andrew Breitbart, Washington Times

Should Dems Be Feeling Buyer's Remorse? - Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call

Obama-Clinton Camp Tensions Boil By JOHN F. HARRIS & MIKE ALLEN, Politico

Some HRC Backers Left Frustrated By AMY CHOZICK, WSJ

In Denver, Deep Doubts About Obama By Byron York, National Review ONLINE

Biden's Plagiarism Should Not Be Forgotten - David Greenberg, Slate

Democrats Field a Liberal Dream Team - Fred Barnes, Wall Street Journal

Over Half of Clinton Backers Not Sold on Obama - Susan Page, USA Today

Rendell: MSNBC "Embarrassing" By Michael Calderone, Politico

State Polls

• Ohio (Columbus Dis.): McCain +1
• Michigan (Detroit News): Obama+2
• Colorado (Suffolk): Obama +5

ALL ABOUT HILLARY

DENVER

IT'S Hillary's convention. Not in the way she imagined it when the primary battle began - she's not the nominee making history and bidding to end the dread Bush years. That role has been usurped by Barack Obama.

But the convention narrative revolves around her in important ways.

It's not just because so much drama attaches to the question of how she and embittered husband Bill regard Obama, and not just because she and Bill are getting so much air time. Obama has two major challenges this week - and both are Hillary-centric.

First, Obama has to win over Hillary's voters from the primaries, only 52 percent of whom are now supporting him, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. More...

Second, he has to occupy the space on the political spectrum that Hillary carved out in the primaries - identifying himself with mainstream American values, demonstrating a toughness on foreign affairs and connecting with the working class with his economic policies. (If he's at a loss how to do any of it, perhaps Hillary can explain it over a shot and beer chaser.)

That Obama is still performing so poorly among Hillary voters makes the prominence he's given the Clintons look less like an abject capitulation and more like a strategic necessity. If the Clintons can deliver Hillary's voters, every minute devoted to them will have been worth it.

The Clintons, of course, are profoundly conflicted. They've long thought Obama will lose, but they can't betray that belief lest - should Obama actually fail in the fall - they get blamed, engendering the bitterness of half the party.

Yet, no matter how enthusiastic they are (or seem), there's only so much the Clintons can do to deliver Hillary's voters. Some of these people are simply angry that she lost, and can be placated by seeing her treated well. But others were attracted by her characteristics - that she was tougher and more experienced than Obama. That group will be harder to reach.

Obama's pick of Joe Biden as his running mate is an attempt to play for these voters. Problem is, Biden's experience isn't transferable. It doesn't matter that Biden has spent 35 years in the Senate; Obama still has spent less than four.

The Georgia crisis helped tip Obama toward foreign-policy maven Biden as his VP choice. But, as Saturday's rally rolling out the ticket showed, Biden's value is as much his working-class roots as his work on arms control or Iraq (most of which has been terribly misconceived).

Obama portrayed Biden as a politician who came from the working class and never left it - the champion of, as Mark Penn put it in one of his campaign memos for Hillary, the "invisible Americans." Here, too, Biden's utility is probably limited. Most voters will look at him and not see the scrappy kid from Scranton, Pa., but a senator whose love affair with hearing himself talk is ardent even by the self-exalting standards of the breed.

So neither the Clintons nor Biden will be able to make the sale for Obama: He'll have to make it himself - and the convention is one of his best chances to do it.

He'll need to express sympathy with the morés of the middle of the country and blunt the sharp edges of his party's social liberalism, something Clinton did during the primaries in emphasizing her Midwestern roots and with her caution when addressing hot-button social issues. He'll have to sound tougher on foreign affairs, something Hillary did with some well-placed bluster about "obliterating" Iran.

And he'll have to make the connection between his domestic policies - from taxes to health care to energy policy - and the interests of the middle class, a centerpiece of Hillary's campaign.

Assailing John McCain, which will be a favored sport here, doesn't substitute for any of this. In the end, the election is essentially about Obama, and whether he can connect with average voters and meet the standard of commander-in-chief. And the way Obama should go about it is all about Hillary.