Barack Obama's Lost Years

by Stanley Kurtz
08/11/2008, Volume 013, Issue 45

The senator's tenure as a state legislator reveals him to be an old-fashioned, big government, race-conscious liberal.More...

Barack Obama's neighborhood newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald, has a longstanding tradition of opening its pages to elected officials-from Chicago aldermen to state legislators to U.S. senators. Obama himself, as a state senator, wrote more than 40 columns for the Herald, under the title "Springfield Report," between 1996 and 2004. Read in isolation, Obama's columns from the state capital tell us little. Placed in the context of political and policy battles then raging in Illinois, however, the young legislator's dispatches powerfully illuminate his political beliefs. Even more revealing are hundreds of articles chronicling Obama's early political and legislative activities in the pages not only of the Hyde Park Herald, but also of another South Side fixture, the Chicago Defender.

Obama moved to Chicago in order to place himself in what he understood to be the de facto "capital" of black America. For well over 100 years, the Chicago Defender has been the voice of that capital, and therefore a paper of national significance for African Americans. Early on in his political career, Obama complained of being slighted by major media, like the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Yet extensive and continuous coverage in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald presents a remarkable resource for understanding who Obama is. Reportage in these two papers is particularly significant because Obama's early political career-the time between his first campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 1995 and his race for U.S. Senate in 2004-can fairly be called the "lost years," the period Obama seems least eager to talk about, in contrast to his formative years in Hawaii, California, and New York or his days as a community organizer, both of which are recounted in his memoir, Dreams from My Father. The pages of the Hyde Park Herald and the Chicago Defender thus offer entrée into Obama's heretofore hidden world.

What they portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign. As details of Obama's early political career emerge into the light, his associations with such radical figures as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn look less like peculiar instances of personal misjudgment and more like intentional political partnerships. At his core, in other words, the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan. Elected president, this man would presumably shift the country sharply to the left on all the key issues of the day-culture-war issues included. It's no wonder Obama has passed over his Springfield years in relative silence.

THE CENTRALITY OF RACE

Any rounded treatment of Obama's early political career has got to give prominence to the issue of race. Obama has recently made efforts to preemptively blunt discussion of the race issue, warning that his critics will highlight the fact that he is African American. Yet the question of race plays so large a role in Obama's own thought and action that it is all but impossible to discuss his political trajectory without acknowledging the extent to which it engrosses him. Obama settled in Chicago with the declared intention of "organizing black folks." His first book is subtitled "A Story of Race and Inheritance," and his second book contains an important chapter on race. On his return to Chicago in 1991, Obama practiced civil rights law and for many years taught a seminar on racism and law at the University of Chicago. When he entered the Illinois senate, it was to represent the heavily (although not exclusively) minority 13th district on the South Side of Chicago. Indeed, race functions for Obama as a kind of master-category, pervading and organizing a wide array of issues that many Americans may not think of as racial at all. Understanding Obama's thinking on race, for example, is a prerequisite to grasping his views on spending and taxation. Thus, we have no alternative but to puzzle out the place of race in Obama's broader political outlook as well as in his legislative career.

When it comes to issues like affirmative action and set-asides, Obama is anything but the post-racial politician he's sometimes made out to be. Take set-asides. In 1998, Obama endorsed Democratic gubernatorial hopeful John Schmidt, stressing to the Defender Schmidt's past support for affirmative action and set-asides. Although Obama was generally pleased by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 acceptance of racial preferences at the University of Michigan, he underscored the danger that Republican-appointed justices might someday overturn the ruling. The day after the Michigan decision, Obama honored the passing of former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson Jr., eulogizing Jackson for creating model affirmative action and set-aside programs that spread across the nation.

In 2004, a U.S. District Court disallowed the ordinance under which Chicago required the use of at least 25 percent minority business enterprises and 5 percent women's business enterprises on city-funded projects. In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Obama and Jesse Jackson were among the prominent voices calling for a black leadership summit to plot strategy for a restoration of Chicago's construction quotas. Obama and his allies succeeded in bringing back race-based contracting.

Prominent among those allies were two of Obama's earliest and strongest political supporters, Hyde Park aldermen Toni Preckwinkle and Leslie Hairston. These two are known as fierce advocates of set-asides and key orchestrators of demonstrations and public-relations campaigns against businesses that question race-based contracting. When, in 2001, construction work was planned for South Lake Shore Drive, a major artery that connects Hyde Park to the rest of Chicago, Preckwinkle and Hairston seized the occasion to call for an extraordinary 70 percent minority quota on contracts for the project. They even demanded that, for the sake of race-based hiring, normal contractor eligibility requirements be waived. Then when work on South Lake Shore Drive was not awarded to minority contractors, a group consisting of Preckwinkle, Hairston, two neighboring aldermen, and numerous activists staged a surprise raid on the construction site, shutting it down and forcing the contractor to hire more blacks. A raid on a second construction site collapsed when several blacks were found already at work on the project. (The aldermen said these African-American laborers had been hired at the last minute to stymie their protest.)

Biographical treatments of Obama tend to stress the tenuous nature of his black identity-his upbringing by whites, his elite education, his home in Chicago's highly integrated Hyde Park, personal tensions with black legislators, and questions about whether Obama is "black enough" to represent African Americans. These concerns over Obama's racial identity are overblown. On race-related issues Obama has stood shoulder to shoulder with Chicago's African-American politicians for years.

Occasionally, Obama has even gotten out in front of them. In 1999, for example, he made news by calling on the governor to appoint a minority to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), a body that had previously attracted little notice among Chicago's blacks. In 2000, the Chicago Defender named Obama one of a number of "Vanguards for Change," citing him for "focusing on legislation in areas previously unexplored by the African-American community including his call that a person of color be appointed to the ICC." Obama did bring a somewhat different background and set of interests to the table. Yet the upshot was to expand the frontiers of race-based politics.

And the story doesn't end with Obama's support for set-asides. A Chicago Defender story of 1999 features a front-page picture of Obama beside the headline, "Obama: Illinois Black Caucus is broken." In the accompanying article, although Obama denies demanding that black legislators march in perfect lockstep, he expresses anger that black state senators have failed to unite for the purpose of placing a newly approved riverboat casino in a minority neighborhood. The failed casino vote, Obama argues, means that the black caucus "is broken and needs to unite for the common good of the African-American community." Obama continues, "The problem right now is that we don't have a unified agenda that's enforced back in the community and is clearly articulated. Everybody tends to be lone agents in these situations."

Speaking in reply to Obama was Mary E. Flowers, an African-American state senator who apparently broke black caucus discipline and voted to approve the casino's location in a nonminority area. Said Flowers: "The Black Caucus is from different tribes, different walks of life. I don't expect all of the whites to vote alike.  .  .  .  Why is it that all of us should walk alike, talk alike and vote alike?  .  .  .  I was chosen by my constituents to represent them, and that is what I try to do." Given Obama's supposedly post-racial politics, it is notable that he should be the one demanding enforcement of a black political agenda against "lone agents," while another black legislator appeals to Obama to leave her free to represent her constituents, black or white, as she sees fit.

Obama's fight to unify the black caucus on the casino vote was undertaken in partnership with state senator Donne Trotter. Yet nearly every biographical account of Obama lavishes attention on Trotter's claim that Obama was just a "white man in black face." The significance of that bit of campaign hype, offered while Trotter was running against Obama for Congress, has been exaggerated, perhaps because Trotter's epithet helps to defuse the notion that Obama himself practices race-based politics. Yet Obama does exactly that. His public legislative cooperation with Trotter, and with other black Illinois politicians, yields more insight into Obama's political plans than any electoral rhetoric or private intra-black-caucus backbiting. To the extent that Obama can be accused of having shaky "black credentials," that very accusation pushes him to practice race-conscious politics all the more energetically.

When the 2000 census revealed dramatic growth in Chicago's Hispanic and Asian populations alongside a decline in the number of African Americans, the Illinois black caucus was alarmed at the prospect that the number of blacks in the Illinois General Assembly might decline. At that point, Obama stepped to the forefront of the effort to preserve as many black seats as possible. The Defender quotes Obama as saying that, "while everyone agrees that the Hispanic population has grown, they cannot expand by taking African-American seats." As in the casino dispute, Obama stressed black unity, pushing a plan that would modestly increase the white, Hispanic, and Asian population in what would continue to be the same number of safe black districts. As Obama put it: "An incumbent African-American legislator with a 90 percent district may feel good about his reelection chances, but we as a community would probably be better off if we had two African-American legislators with 60 percent each."

Obama's intensely race-conscious approach may surprise Americans who know him primarily through his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention of 2004. When Obama so famously said, "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America-there's the United States of America," most Americans took him to be advocating a color-blind consciousness of the kind expressed in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that his children would one day be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Anyone who understood Obama's words that way should know that this is not the whole story. In an essay published in 1988 entitled "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City," Obama tried to make room for both "accommodation and militancy" in black political engagement. He wrote,

The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and board-room negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never been simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.

However his views may have evolved in the ensuing 20 years, Obama surely knew that the King-like rhetoric of his keynote address would be taken by most Americans as a repudiation of the kind of race-based politics he and his closest allies have consistently practiced throughout his electoral career. It's difficult to gauge the extent to which Obama may have consciously permitted this misunderstanding to take hold, or the extent to which he still believes that the opposition between "integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy" is a false one. Neither alternative is particularly encouraging.

LIBERALS AND RADICALS

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Obama has made a point of refusing the liberal label. While running for Congress against Bobby Rush in late 1999 and early 2000, however, Obama showed no such compunction. At a November 1999 candidate forum, the Hyde Park Herald reported that "there was little to distinguish" the candidates, who "struggled to differentiate themselves" ideologically. Acknowledged Obama, "[W]e're all on the liberal wing of the Democratic party." Indeed, the common political ideology of the candidates was a theme in Herald coverage throughout the race. Rush's background suggests what that ideology was: A Chicago icon and former Black Panther, Rush received a 90 percent rating in 2000, and a 100 percent rating in 1999, from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Both years the American Conservative Union rated him at zero percent.

So how exactly did these two liberal candidates "struggle to differentiate" themselves in debate? During a candidate forum, for example, when Rush bragged that since entering Congress, he hadn't voted to approve a single defense budget, Obama pounced, accusing Rush of having voted for the Star Wars missile defense system the previous year. Since that contest, Obama's liberalism hasn't exactly been a secret to the folks back home. In 2002, Obama himself could speak hopefully of plans "to move a progressive agenda" through the state legislature, and local observers commonly identified Obama as a "progressive." When it endorsed him for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the Chicago Defender proclaimed Obama "represents renewal of the liberal, humanitarian cause." The Defender went on to assure readers that Obama would support "progressive action" in Washington.

The most interesting characterization came from Obama himself, who laid out his U.S. Senate campaign strategy for the Defender in 2003: "[A]s you combine a strong African-American base with progressive white and Latino voters, I think it is a recipe for success in the primary and in the general election." Putting the point slightly differently, Obama added, "When you combine  .  .  .an energized African-American voter base and effective coalition-building with other progressive sectors of the population, we think we have a recipe for victory." Obama consciously constructed his election strategy on a foundation of leftist ideology and racial bloc voting.

The overwhelming majority of Obama's "Springfield Report" columns in the Hyde Park Herald deal with state or local issues. It's interesting, therefore, that one of the tiny handful of Obama columns explicitly dealing with national politics is a 2000 column pleading with readers to support Al Gore rather than Ralph Nader for president. Obama opens his column noting that he's heard many people complain that Al Gore and George Bush are beholden to the same "big money interests." In pressing his case for Gore-which hinges on Republican/Democrat differences on issues like Supreme Court appointments, abortion, affirmative action, the environment, and school vouchers-Obama makes a point of agreeing with some of Nader's criticisms of the major parties. Obama raises no objections to Nader's agenda and implicitly presents himself as someone who might support Nader, were it not for the danger of a wasted vote aiding the Republicans. It's also striking that so many of the policy considerations Obama counts as decisive are classic sixties-derived issues-precisely the sort of polarizing culture-war conflicts Obama nowadays claims to have transcended. In the end, Obama needn't have worried. Hyde Park voted 91 percent for Gore, 6 percent for Bush, and 3 percent for Nader.

Obama's strong liberalism is nowhere more evident than on the subject of crime. Throughout his Illinois State Senate career, crime was a top Obama concern. Crime is also a key contact-point between Obama and his most celebrated radical associate, William Ayers. We've heard a good deal of late about Ayers's Weatherman terrorism back in the 1960s and his lack of repentance. Ayers refuses to answer questions about his relationship with Obama, while Obama has dismissed Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." Yet several Obama-Ayers connections are known: Obama's 1995 political debut at the home of Ayers and his wife (and fellow former terrorist) Bernardine Dohrn, Obama's joint service with Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a couple of appearances with Ayers on academic panels, and what the New York Times called Obama's "rave review" (not actually a full review, but a warm endorsement) of Ayers's book on juvenile justice, which Obama dubbed "a searing and timely account" in the Chicago Tribune.

For all the attention, the actual content of Ayers's 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent, as well as the political context of Obama's interest in it, have so far passed unremarked. Obama supporters paint Ayers as having mellowed since his radical days, pointing to his wonkish interests. Yet Ayers's radicalism pervades his book on Chicago's juvenile court system. Founded in 1899 (long before juvenile murder rates shot off the charts), Chicago's juvenile court was the first in the world, intended to serve as "a kind and just parent" to offenders. Ayers's title, he explained in the book, is meant to "bristle with irony" as a commentary on an American "society out of control." Ayers expressed the same sentiment more bluntly in an interview published in the New York Times shortly after 9/11, when he not only dismissed the notion of the United States as a "just and fair and decent place," but said the claim "makes me want to puke." A Kind and Just Parent is a thoughtful, well-informed, and beautifully written book, which provides revealing and sometimes disturbing glimpses of life at a Chicago juvenile detention facility. The book also virtually defines the phrases "liberal guilt" and "soft on crime." Ayers agon-izes over a high school field trip years ago, on which he and other white students toured a juvenile court system largely populated by black boys. When recounting horrific crimes-and even his own mugging-Ayers focuses on the terrified insecurity of the perpetrators, rather than the harm they inflict. Testifying at the trial of a young felon he'd been tutoring, Ayers calls him "nervous, a little shy  .  .  .  eager to please." The prosecutor responds: "Would you call shooting someone eight times at close range 'eager to please?'" Actually, Ayers effectively does do this, opening his book with the claim that a young murderer had "slavishly followed the orders" of his gang leader, rather than acting of his own free will.

Ayers opposes trying even the most vicious juvenile murderers as adults. Beyond that, he'd like to see the prison system itself essentially abolished. Unsatisfied with mere reform, Ayers wants to address the deeper "structural problems of the system." Drawing explicitly on Michel Foucault, a French philosopher beloved of radical academics, Ayers argues that prisons artificially impose obedience and conformity on society, thereby creating a questionable distinction between the "normal" and the "deviant." The unfortunate result, says Ayers, is to leave the bulk of us feeling smugly superior to society's prisoners. Home detention, Ayers believes, might someday be able to replace the prison. Ayers also makes a point of comparing America's prison system to the mass-detention of a generation of young blacks under South African Apartheid. Ayers's tone may be different, but the echoes of Jeremiah Wright's anti-prison rants are plain.

Given his decision to recommend Ayers's book in the Tribune, it's fair to say that Obama is at least broadly sympathetic to this perspective. When Obama offers examples of ill-conceived legislation, he often points to building prisons: Instead of building another prison, why not expand health care entitlements? Biographer David Mendell cites Obama's irritation with fellow legislators who "grandstand" by passing tough-on-crime legislation, while letting bills designed to bring "structural change" languish. Debating Bobby Rush in 2000, Obama bragged that he had "consistently fought against the industrial prison complex." Obama's Hyde Park Herald column echoes these points.

The most intriguing thread linking Obama, Ayers, and crime, however, runs through Ayers's wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Dohrn founded the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, and along with her associates there, she regularly and energetically opposes "get tough" crime laws. Ayers draws on his wife's wisdom in A Kind and Just Parent, and Dohrn, like her husband, publicly presents her work on juvenile justice not as a repudiation of her youthful radicalism, but as a continuation of it.

The Ayers-Dohrn-Obama nexus was jolted into action in late 1997 and early 1998, when a major juvenile justice reform bill was introduced in the Illinois General Assembly. Written by prosecutors and sponsored by a Republican ex-prosecutor, the bill was neither simplistic nor partisan. Well aware of evidence that sending juveniles to adult prisons can backfire and actually raise recidivism rates, sponsors met rehabilitation-minded critics halfway. The proposed bill was an early example of "blended sentencing," in which juveniles who have committed serious crimes are given both a juvenile sentence and a parallel adult sentence. So long as the offender keeps his nose clean, doesn't violate parole, and participates in community-based rehabilitation, he never has to serve his adult sentence. But if the offender violates the provisions of his juvenile sentence, the adult punishment kicks in. That gives young offenders a powerful incentive to do right, and puts toughness at the service of offering kids a second chance.

Blended sentencing is generally viewed as an innovative compromise. To those on the far left, however, blended sentencing is just another mean-spirited "get tough" crime measure in disguise. That's why, when the Illinois blended sentencing bill was introduced in 1997, both Obama and Bernardine Dohrn were cited by the Chicago Sun-Times as key local critics of the bill. Steven A. Drizin, an associate of Dohrn's center (who is thanked in Ayers's book) was a member of the study commission that helped produce the bill, yet remained an energetic critic, not only of blended sentencing, but of nearly every other prosecutor-favored provision in the bill.

Meanwhile, Obama worked closely with the Illinois Black Legislative Caucus to slow the bill's progress, expressing skepticism about the blended sentencing provisions. While one report speaks of Obama negotiating with Cook County state's attorney Richard Devine for a compromise, there is good reason to believe that Obama's actual aim was to scuttle the entire bill. We have this on the authority of someone who may very well be Michelle Obama herself. Michelle Obama organized a University of Chicago panel about Bill Ayers's crime book in November 1997, just as the battle over the juvenile justice bill was heating up. That panel featured appearances by some of the key figures discussed in Ayers's book, along with Obama himself, who was identified in the press release as "working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system." In effect, then, this public event was a joint Obama-Ayers effort to sink the juvenile justice bill-Obama's decision to plug Ayers's book in the Chicago Tribune the following month was part of the same political effort.

In January 1998, a front-page headline in the Defender touted Obama's claim that the juvenile justice bill might be on the verge of failure. Obama hoped that black caucus opposition to the sentencing provisions might be matched by concerns among some Republicans that the bill could force expensive jail construction (based on the prospect that the deterrent effect of blended sentencing might fail, thereby forcing more juveniles into adult prisons). Obama's hopes were wildly off-base. In the end, the juvenile justice bill passed overwhelmingly. Given his ambitions for higher office, Obama was no doubt reluctant to vote against the final bill. A last-minute, minor and uncontroversial adjustment to the blended-sentencing provisions by the governor appears to have provided enough political cover for the bill's sharpest critics including Obama to come around and support it.

Also in 1998, according to the Hill, a Washington newspaper, Obama was one of only three Illinois state senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang. A year later, on a vote mandating adult prosecution for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, Obama voted "present," and reiterated his opposition to adult trials for even serious juvenile offenders. In short, when it comes to the issue of crime, Obama is on the far left of the political spectrum and very much in synch with his active political allies Ayers and Dohrn.

Obama's signature crime legislation was his effort to combat alleged racial discrimination by the Illinois police. In 2003, the Defender said Obama had "made a career" out of his annual battle for a bill against racial profiling. For years, profiling legislation was bottled up by the Illinois senate's Republican leader. When senate control shifted to the Democrats in 2003, Obama's racial profiling bill finally passed-just in time to give his drive for the U.S. Senate nomination a major boost. At the time, Obama touted his profiling bill as "a model for the nation." It's also said that Obama showed a willingness to listen to police during the negotiations that led to the final bill. With the Democrats in control, however, the police had little choice but to work with Obama. As Obama himself made clear at the time, the police never abandoned their opposition to the bill.

Police doubts were entirely justified. Obama's bill is a deeply flawed example of precisely the sort of grievance-driven race-based politics that fuels legislation on affirmative action and minority set-asides. All of these "remedies" falsely leap from statistical evidence of racial disparities to claims of discrimination. In the case of racial profiling, disproportionate police stops of black or Hispanic motorists in no way prove discrimination.

In her path-breaking 2001 study, "The Myth of Racial Profiling," Heather Mac Donald assembled the evidence. It showed that racially disparate patterns of drug-interdiction stops in New Jersey, one of the first states supposedly proven to have practiced racial profiling, in fact reflected racial differences in the transport of drugs. Drug trafficking is not evenly spread across the population (as profiling activists improperly assume), and for the most part New Jersey police were simply going where the drugs were. Wrote Mac Donald, "When white club owners, along with Israelis and Russians, dominated the Ecstasy trade, that's whom the cops were arresting." When the big shipments shifted to minority neighborhoods, arrests followed. That's good crime intelligence, not racism. The reason virtually every major law-enforcement organization opposes racial-profiling legislation is that these bills invariably fail to provide benchmarks based on actual group-based variations in crime rates. Without such benchmarks, there is no basis for leaping from statistical disparities in traffic-stops to accusations of police racism.

Obama's February 16, 2000, Hyde Park Herald column was a textbook example of the racial-profiling fallacies Mac Donald exposed. Arguing for legislation to require the collection of traffic-stop data by race, Obama made the bogus leap from disproportionate traffic-stops and searches to accusations of racism using the same, baseline-free ACLU-supplied statistics Mac Donald critiqued. Obama then made a still greater leap: "Racial profiling may explain why incarceration rates are so high among young African Americans-law enforcement officials may be targeting blacks and other minorities as potential criminals and are using the Vehicle Code as a tool to stop and search them." The notion that the high black incarceration rates are due to racist traffic stops is utterly fanciful. (Mac Donald lays out the evidence not only in her profiling piece, but also in a second important study, published this year, "Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?") Obama's column takes a leaf right out of Jeremiah Wright's playbook, stoking the worst sort of race-based conspiracy theories.

Indeed, Obama's racial profiling crusade shows his political alliance with Wright, Pfleger, and Meeks in action. We know from Obama's 1988 "Why Organize?" essay that a long-term goal of his was to politically organize "liberationist" black churches:

Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership, and-most important-values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago.

We also know from a 1995 profile that Obama viewed his legislative role as an extension of his grass-roots organizing career. So it's unsurprising to see in the Hyde Park Herald of February 28, 2001, that Obama's "grass-roots lobbying effort" for racial profiling legislation is to feature not only the ACLU and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, but also appearances by Meeks and Pfleger. The Chicago Defender notes the additional presence of Reverend Michael Sykes, an associate pastor of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ. So Obama's drive for racial profiling legislation brought to fruition his long-time goal of politically organizing Chicago's most liberationist black churches. Of course Wright, Meeks, and Pfleger are known for their demagogic accusations of white racism. Obama's racial profiling bill fit squarely in that tradition. As with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, it's evident that the liberationist preachers were also his valued political allies.

Like other racial-profiling activists, Obama frequently cites New Jersey's experience as proof of his case. A little-noticed 2007 study by University of Chicago professor Paul Heaton sheds some fascinating light on the profiling crusade in that state. Heaton found that as a result of anti-profiling reforms, annual arrests of minorities for motor vehicle theft in New Jersey declined by 20-40 percent. Unfortunately, during the same period, motor vehicle theft increased in minority areas. Heaton concluded: "It appears that official and public scrutiny of profiling behavior by police can lead to substantial reductions in arrests of minorities, although this enforcement reduction may carry the unintended consequence of encouraging crime in minority areas." In other words, Heaton's work tends to corroborate Heather Mac Donald's analysis-not Barack Obama's. Disproportionate traffic stops are largely a response to disproportionate crime, while using simplistic statistics to falsely accuse police of racism yields more crime, not less.

A NEW WAR ON POVERTY

Important though it is to Obama, the crime issue runs a distant second to his deepest passion: social welfare legislation. "Big government liberal," "redistributionist"-call him what you like, Obama's fondest hope is to lead America into another war on poverty. Everything in his state-legislative career points in this direction, and Obama calls for a renewal of expensive national anti-poverty programs in his book The Audacity of Hope. True, Obama's promotion of government partnerships with private-sector housing contractors (like Antoin "Tony" Rezko) was supposed to open up novel, post-Great Society solutions to the problem of poverty. Yet, as a devastating Boston Globe report on Obama's Illinois housing policy recently showed, the results of Obama's new war on poverty are just as counterproductive as those of the old war on poverty. Neighborhoods supposedly renovated now lie deserted by the private developers who took Obama's government handouts and ran-quickly building or renovating housing units, but failing to maintain them.

Race and crime issues excepted, Obama's Illinois legislative career as covered in the newspapers essentially boils down to a list of spending measures. Many of Obama's proposed expenditures were tough to oppose. Because he was working under a Republican majority for the bulk of his time in the Illinois State Senate, Obama became a master of incrementalism. His pattern was to find the smallest, most appealing spending proposal possible, pass it, then build toward more spending on the same issue. An Obama bill exempting juvenile prisoners from paying for nonemergency medical or dental services isn't something you'd want to vote against. Obama's small, targeted spending measures tended to pass and to be followed by more: Obama called for a $30 million youth crime prevention package; Obama requested additional funds to expand the regulation of electrical utilities; Obama asked for $50 million over five years to overcome the "digital divide"; Obama proposed to fund anger management classes for children age 5-13; Obama ran for Congress promising to restore federal block grants to pre-Republican levels, and so on.

In a 2007 speech to Al Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN), Obama touted his Illinois legislative experience and challenged members of Sharpton's group to find a candidate with a better record of supporting the issues they cared about. (Incidentally, Sharpton named Jeremiah Wright's daughter Jeri Wright, publisher-editor of Wright's Trumpet Newsmagazine, to head NAN's new Chicago chapter in 2007. He named Wright's successor, Reverend Otis Moss III, its vice president.) Intrigued by Obama's challenge to Sharpton's group, Randolph Burnside, a professor of political science, and Kami Whitehurst, a doctoral candidate, both at the Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, decided to put Obama's Illinois record to the test. The two scholars made a study of bills sponsored and cosponsored by Obama during his Illinois State Senate career.

Published in the Journal of Black Studies, the results are striking. Burnside and Whitehurst produced two bar graphs, one representing bills of which Obama was the main sponsor, arranged by subject, and a second displaying bills Obama joined as a cosponsor. In the chart depicting bills of which Obama was the main sponsor, the bar for "social welfare" legislation towers over every other category. In the chart of Obama's cosponsored bills, social welfare legislation continues to far exceed all other categories, although now crime-related bills are visibly present in second place, with regulation and tax bills close behind. According to Burnside and Whitehurst, other than social welfare and a bit of government regulation, "Obama devoted very little time to most policy areas."

This brings us to what is perhaps the most striking result of our tour through Obama's Springfield days. Conventional wisdom has it that John McCain holds a political advantage over Obama on war and foreign policy issues, while Obama is favored to handle the economy. Yet Obama's economic experience is largely limited to social welfare spending. Indeed, precisely because of his penchant for spending, Obama's fingerprints are all over Illinois's burgeoning fiscal crisis.

The Illinois state budget has been in an ever-widening crisis since 2001. In an April 2007 report, a committee of top Chicago business leaders warned that the state was "headed toward fiscal implosion." Illinois's unfunded pension debt is the highest in the nation, while Illinois is sixth in the nation in per capita tax-supported debt. Yet the Illinois General Assembly-now controlled by Obama's Democratic allies-churns out at will exactly the sort of spending programs Obama pushed for, with only partial success, under the Republicans. The result is a fast-growing gap between revenues and expenditures (unimpeded by the statutory requirement of a balanced budget), rising fears of fiscal meltdown, finger-pointing, and political gridlock.

A watershed moment in Illinois's fiscal decline came in 2002, when crashing receipts and Democratic reluctance to enact spending cuts forced Republican governor George Ryan to call a special legislative session. While Ryan railed at legislators for refusing to rein in an out-of-control budget, the Chicago Tribune spoke ominously of an "all-consuming state budget crisis." Unwilling to cut back on social welfare spending, Obama's chief partner and political mentor, senate Democratic leader Emil Jones, came up with the idea of borrowing against the proceeds of a windfall tobacco lawsuit settlement due to the state.

This idea sent the editorial pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune into a tizzy. Editorialists hammered cut-averse legislators for "chickening out," for making use of "tricked-up numbers," for a "cowardly abdication of responsibility," and for sacrificing the state's bond rating to "short-term political gains." As critics repeatedly pointed out, borrowing against a onetime tobacco settlement-instead of balancing the budget with regular revenues-would be a recipe for long-term fiscal disaster.

What was Obama doing while all this was going on? He was promoting the tobacco securitization plan in his Hyde Park Herald column, railing against the governor in the Defender for balancing the budget "on the back of the poor," and voting to override cuts in treasured programs like bilingual education. Actually, far from "balancing the budget on the backs of the poor," the governor had trimmed evenly across all the state's most expensive programs. In the end, Ryan did force a number of cuts, yet the resistance of Obama and his allies took a toll. When, just a year later, Democrats added control of the governorship and state senate to their existing control of the house, they revealed that the state deficit had reached $5 billion-far larger than most had feared. Since then it's been a swift downhill tumble toward fiscal implosion for Illinois. Now ruling, the Democrats have continued their profligate ways, pushing the state's budget woes to new heights.

Illinois's fate may foreshadow the nation's. Obama's small and carefully targeted spending bills were expressly designed to win passage by a Republican-controlled state senate. But if Obama takes the presidency with a Democratic Congress at his back, we'll likely see a grand-scale version of the fiscal mayhem Obama and his colleagues brought to Illinois.

Obama's overarching political program can be described as "incremental radicalism." On health care, for example, his long-term strategy in Illinois was no secret. He repeatedly proposed a state constitutional amendment mandating universal health care. Prior to the 2002 budget crisis, Obama's plan was to use the windfall tobacco settlement to finance the transition to the new system. That would have effectively hidden the huge cost of universal care from the taxpayer until it was too late. Yet Obama touted his many tiny expansions of government-funded health care as baby steps along the path to his goal. The same strategy will likely be practiced-if more subtly-on other issues. Obama takes baby-steps when he has to, but in a favorable legislative environment, Obama's redistributionist impulses will have free rein, and a budget-busting war on poverty (not to mention entitlement spending) will surely rise again.

Obama's vaunted reputation for bipartisanship is less than meets the eye. The Illinois legislature has long been home to a number of moderate Republicans, less fiscally conservative than their colleagues, many from districts where the parties are closely balanced. It was easy enough to get a few of these Republicans to sign onto small, carefully tailored spending bills directed toward particularly sympathetic recipients. The trouble with Obama's bipartisanship is that it was largely a one-way street. Overcoming initial opposition from Catholic groups, for instance, Obama cosponsored an incremental bill on abortion, requiring hospitals to inform rape victims of morning-after pills. Yet rejecting compromise with the other side, Obama voted against bills that would have curbed partial-birth abortions. In other words, Obama is bipartisan so long as that means asking Republicans to take incremental steps toward his own broader goals. When it comes to compromising with the other side, however, Obama says "take a hike." Obama voted against a bill that would have allowed people in possession of a court order protecting them from some specific individual to carry a concealed weapon in self-defense. The bill failed on a 29-27 vote. Bipartisanship for thee, but not for me: That's how Obama ended up with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate.

The real Obama? You see him in those charts. Fundamentally, he is a big-government redistributionist who wants above all to aid the poor, particularly the African-American poor. Obama is eager to do so both through race-specific programs and through broad-based social-welfare legislation. "Living wage" legislation may be economically counterproductive, and Obama-backed housing experiments may have ended disastrously, yet Obama is committed to large-scale government solutions to the problem of poverty. Obama's early campaigns are filled with declarations of his sense of mission-a mission rooted in his community organizing days and manifest in his early legislative battles. Recent political back flips notwithstanding, Barack Obama does have an ideological core, and it's no mystery at all to any faithful reader of the Chicago Defender or the Hyde Park Herald.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Obama backs away from McCain's debate challenge

Douglass K. Daniel

Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances, agreeing only to the standard three debates in the fall.More...

In May, when a McCain adviser proposed a series of pre-convention appearances at town hall meetings, Obama said, "I think that's a great idea." In summer stumping on the campaign trail, McCain has often noted that Obama had not followed through and joined him in any events.

Obama's reversal on town hall debates is part of a play-it-safe strategy he's adopted since claiming the nomination and grabbing a lead in national polls. Advisers to the Illinois senator, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss strategy, say Obama is reluctant to take chances or give McCain a high-profile stage now that Obama's the front-runner.

On Saturday, in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the short period between the last political convention and the first proposed debate made it likely that the commission-sponsored debates would be the only ones.

"We've committed to the three debates on the table," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday in an interview. "It's likely they will be the three appearances by the candidates this fall."

Asked by The Associated Press if that meant Obama would not agree to any other debates, Psaki said, "We're not saying that." She said the McCain campaign had rejected Obama's proposal for two joint town hall meetings.

McCain's campaign disparaged Obama for backing off. McCain has not yet formally agreed to the commission-sponsored debates, but the McCain campaign says he plans to.

"We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he'll reconsider," spokesman Brian Rogers said.

The first debate planned by the commission is set for Sept. 26 in Oxford, Miss., three weeks after the Republican National Convention concludes Sept. 4. The Democratic convention is scheduled for Aug. 25-28.

The other presidential debates are set for Oct. 7 and Oct. 15 and the vice presidential debate for Oct. 2.

A day after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in early June, McCain challenged Obama to a series of 10 town hall meetings. The candidates' campaigns began negotiations, telling reporters that they agreed in spirit to joint appearances.

When the idea first came up from the McCain campaign that May, Obama was still battling Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Obama said then: "Obviously, we would have to think through the logistics on that, but ... if I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain, that's something that I am going to welcome."

In June, Plouffe had suggested Obama-McCain meetings more along the lines of the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates. During Abraham Lincoln's Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas in 1858, the candidates met seven times across Illinois. One spoke for an hour, the other for an hour and a half, and the first was allowed a half-hour rebuttal.

Plouffe said Saturday that Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois will be Obama's representative in further discussions with the commission.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, established in 1987, sponsors and produces debates featuring the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the major parties. The nonprofit and nonpartisan organization has sponsored all the presidential debates since 1988.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Glover in Orlando, Fla., and Ron Fournier in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

This Sunday, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows the race still very close with Obama attracting 44% of the vote while McCain earns 43%. When "leaners" are included, it’s Obama 47% and McCain 46%.More...

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters have seen or heard news coverage of McCain’s ad including Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Just 22% believe the ad was racist. But, most say Obama’s comment about not looking like other Presidents on the dollar bill was racist.

The number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats fell two percentage points in July. Obama’s party still enjoys a big advantage over the GOP, but the gap between the parties is the smallest it has been since January.

While much has been made of McCain’s struggles with his party’s conservative base, 33% of the uncommitted voters are Democrats while only 19% are Republicans.

McCain is currently viewed favorably by 56% of voters, Obama by 54%. McCain earns positive reviews from 85% of Republicans while Obama does the same from 83% of Democrats. Among unaffiliated voters, 61% have a favorable opinion of McCain. For Obama, that number is 47% (see other recent demographic highlights).

Cindy McCain is viewed favorably by 50% of American voters, Michelle Obama by 46%. Other key stats of Election 2008 are updated daily at Obama-McCain: By the Numbers

Another thing Bush and Obama have in common...

WASHINGTON (AP) — People would rather barbecue burgers with Barack than munch meats with McCain.

While many are still deciding which should be president, by 52 percent to 45 percent they would prefer having Barack Obama than John McCain to their summer cookout, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Wednesday.More...

Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11 percentage points. Whites prefer McCain, minorities Obama. And Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.

Having Obama to a barbecue would be like a relaxed family gathering, while inviting McCain "would be more like a retirement party than something fun," said Wesley Welbourne, 38, a systems engineer from Washington, D.C.

Party label means a lot, with three-quarters of Democrats picking the Democrat Obama and the same number of Republicans picking McCain, a Republican. Independents are about evenly split.

"John and I would probably have a lot to talk about," said Republican Michael Mullen, 53, of Merrimac, Mass., like McCain a Navy veteran.

One in six people saying they'd vote for McCain prefer Obama as their barbecue guest; just one in 20 Obama backers would invite McCain.

The AP-Yahoo! News survey of 1,759 adults was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from June 13-23 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for subgroups was larger.

— Polling site: http://news.yahoo.com/polls

*A MUST READ* The Big "D" Democrat

by: regency
Sat Aug 02, 2008 at 23:00:10 PM EDT

I have been a Democrat all my life. I admit that life is only 18 years old, but you have to admit these last two decades have been a couple for the record books. I've lived to see an illegitimate president run the country right into the ground as he cleared brush from his Texas ranch 154 days out of the year. I watched a decade of prosperity and peace crash down in unholy flames in the middle of New York when I was just 10 years old. I watched the fraudulent Commander-in-Chief trick the country into a war it didn't need against a people that didn't deserve it when I was 11. I watched that same huckster be told by the historic first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, that "impeachment [was] off the table" when I was 16. A man who had facilitated unprecedented war crimes had gotten off scot-free. And it had been my party that let it happen.More...

I lived in this country during the 1990s. I knew the Clintons. I grew up worshipping Bill Clinton, that Bubba from a place called Hope with an affinity for Big Macs and a little bit of "soul" in his soul. Always having been precocious, I knew what he had done-and I didn't like it. I didn't forgive him for it and I don't to this day, but that isn't my job and never has been. Bill Clinton never needed redemption from me; he got it from the only people who had any right to offer it to him. Chelsea and Hillary Rodham Clinton evidently did just that and I stand by 'em for it. If I had any reason at all to be upset, he was absolved by the good work he had done throughout his years in Office. Millions of new jobs created throughout this country. Millions raised from poverty to hallowed middle-class status. Even with the battles he couldn't win-like the Defense of Marriage Act, which he abhorred but that prevented the passage of a Federal Gay-Marriage Ban; like Don't Ask, Don't Tell that as best it could prevented an outright ban of gays and lesbians in the military-things were a little better, positive steps in positive directions had been taken. In that decade, it was good to be alive in America. And it was my party that had made it so.

I don't know where that Party is today. I can't find the path to the Third Way anymore. I remember that Way. It was innovative and new, and compassionate. It made sense in a time very different from when the last Democrat reigned. "The Third Way works to build inclusive, multiethnic societies based on common allegiance to democratic values." It made sense, doing great things the democratically. I don't just remember the Way, I remember the man who led it.
I remember the man who cried as those around him struggled and deigned to share their struggles with him. I remember the President who apologized for the Tuskegee Experiment and asked that those still standing in its wake found it in their battered hearts to forgive a nation whose morality once stood so terribly bigoted. I remember the man who helped to re-enact the March on Selma because it meant so much to him. I remember a President who walked into Office on day one ready to lead, only to be stabbed in the back by the very people that brought him-but he soldiered on. That was the Way I was a part of, the Way that "embraces 'tolerant traditionalism,' honoring traditional moral and family values while resisting attempts to impose them on others." There was no battle too small to undertake, no cause unworthy of effort or tears, nobody left behind. Anybody who "worked hard and played by the rules" got ahead, because no way was William Jefferson Clinton going to leave them in the dust. There it goes again, my party. Don't know where that is now.

I think I was born a Democrat. I was brought up wrinkling my nose and gagging at the word "Republican," so I know I wasn't one of those. I didn't really understand what an Independent was so chances are good I wasn't that either. All that was left in my head was Democrat. Bill Clinton was a Democrat and I liked him, so I picked that. When it came time for me to vote, I still picked that. What I didn't know when I came up to bat was how far from the ideal the rest of the body had fallen. I'd been spoiled for eight years-and tormented for another seven. I was blind to it until I started to listen; then I found that my President filled with soul wasn't the rule but the exception to the rule. My life, which was so bettered by his presence in the White House, didn't really matter at all. My vote, which moved to send him back there at the behest of his frankly brilliant and wonkish wife, didn't really matter either. What I wanted-what I needed, the Third Way, was really just a movement of a few devoted people who desired to change the world. I hadn't known that the letter D they carried after their names signified an organization of men and women devoted to doing the very opposite-not changing a thing. And to accomplish their mission, they would destroy my ideal; they would destroy my hero. Can you believe it? That was my party.

They did the impossible. They sapped the "soul" out of the man from Hope. They quieted his raucous laugh. They besmirched his empathetic tears. They made a fool out of the Third Way-and, by extension, a fool of me. I had never been called a fool before of all the insults that have been leveled at me in life. I had never been belittled for my gender as much as the color my skin. I had never been called stupid for having the audacity to believe. I've been called cynical and racist for doing what anyone with a third of the self-awareness could do: I voted! My life's philosophy and love of people has been referred to as Republican chicanery. I have lived here all along and yet suddenly, in my own party, I am the intruder; I am the interloper. I'm the one who doesn't belong.

It didn't take an insult to lose me. It hurt, don't misunderstand, but such is life. Sticks and stones can cut me, but words can only make me cry. I could only cry for so long before the hurt became fury. I wanted answers, I wanted accountability. I got a lie for question and laughter for my effort. I couldn't live in a place like that. That was the Democratic Party, suddenly, a place where those who'd given their hard-earned dollars and their time were of no consequence. It should've been obvious. If the only two-term Democratic President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was fair game to be scorned, I should've battened down the hatches at first dawn. I hadn't learned the right lesson yet. I get it now.

Hope is merchandise to be sold, not a place, or a man to be believed in. Hope is the not the look in the eyes of a woman with the answers. It's the speech on a teleprompter of a man without them. Change was not the peaceful transition from the last Democratic decade of the 20th century to the first Democratic decade of the 21st century. It's the silent strained pretend of a meeting on May 31st set to derail the course of history-and not for the good. Change isn't watching relief come in the form of a woman with roots everywhere she sets foot raising her right hand to accept the hardest job in the world. It's watching more of the same thing we've always had.

I've come to realize that being a Democrat nowadays means accepting these realities with no complaint. I can no longer do that and sleep at night. I can no longer spy echoes of the Third Way without a wistful sigh. I can no longer be quiet while we pretend that the best days gone by weren't the best at all. I haven't lived long, but I've lived smart. I still believe in the truth, a principle long since abandoned by progressives. What I want to see is the truth spoken out loud again and not treated like a scandal, even if it is scandalous. I want History to stop being a four-letter word. I want respect to be a necessity again, not a luxury. But most of all, I want the Third Way back.

Happiness, which the Democrats seem to have come into the business of supplying, is not a political platform. One can't govern for the sake of happiness. This isn't a "Brave New World." It can't be, not when so many people have reason to be afraid. They're at risk everyday of losing the things they love. They may lose their home, their car, their job, even their life. This is the world they live in, not the good old days when the Third Way ruled the roost. This is the reality the new Democratic Party chose; it wasn't brave at all.

I don't know who these men and women are, that masquerade about, pretending they are allies of working folks while selling their jobs over the farthest sea. I recognize the duplicity, but not the perpetrators. The Democrats cannot govern as simply another variation on corrupt. It's time to remember people like me who've worked their hearts out, people like me who always will. If they choose to forget us they will have become every bit the thing they purport to despise: Republicans.

They've lost sight of the path that led to prosperity for all, themselves included. They've forgotten that the ballots that decide their fates don't stand alone, but are connected and bound to people who are counting on them to sweat and bleed for a better day in America. They've chosen the glamorous path and eschewed compassion entirely. They threw the baby out with the bathwater; the future out with the past; and the "little people" out with the Big Dawg.

I don't know what's left huddling under the Big Tent that used to be my home. The political trail I've lived my life by doesn't lead there anymore. More and more, I find my old friends blazing the trail with me, but they're a little lost too. They still remember the Third Way paved with silver quickly turning to gold. They still remember a place called Hope, and they want to go back; if only they could remember how.

Who better to guide us than the man who hails from there himself? Somebody, somewhere unzip the tent and let the man out! He's got work to do in this country he lifted; we've fallen to all new lows since he's been gone. Time to clear the brush on the path less traveled by powerful men and take it again-with a woman this time. He'll be there to point out landmarks and relics left behind, sure; he'll kick the weeds from the overgrown roads with those size 13s, because it's easy and he can; then, he'll step aside for the new leader and it'll be her turn to lead the Way going forward. While she's in the White House reintroducing the country to prosperity, I hope, and easier days, Bill Clinton will be there on the sidelines to remind us that when we work hard and lift each other, the only way left to travel is up. Just like that, history stops being a four-letter word.

And it could be my party that does it.

MUST SEE Video on Hillary!

Here is the video where Hillary explains that it would help unify the party if her name was put into nomination - and that she wants her supporters and delegates to be recognized and heard: Hillary and the Ballot!

Also view the 300 Delegates and The Audacity Of Democracy videos while you're at it!

Presidential V.P. Choices - who has best record on Women's Issues?

The National Organization of Women reports that all of Obama's potential VP nominees (with the exception of Hillary--it's clear she's out) have bad track records with women's rights. McCain isn't better, but he isn't much worse (although he's a lot worse on GLBT issues). Sit out the presidential election. Make the parties recognize that you control your vote. Vote down-ticket, but don't give Obama your vote because you feel you have no choice. You do!

Now@now.org

Democrats anxious for Obama to widen lead

Many Democrats fear that time is running out for Mr Obama.... The numbers back up the concern. Although Mr Obama has a good shot at winning traditional Republican states such as Colorado, Virginia and even North Carolina, he cannot capture the White House if he loses more than one of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan – the more traditional, blue-collar swing states, which Mrs Clinton won by huge margins in the primary contests. Polls suggest these states are too close to call.More...

By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: August 1 2008 20:08 | Last updated: August 1 2008 20:08

In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked voters whether they felt better off than four years earlier. He went on to defeat Jimmy Carter a few weeks later. On Friday Barack Obama raised the same question: “Do you think that you are better off now than you were four years ago or eight years ago?” he asked voters in Florida. “And if you don’t . . . do you think you can afford another four years of the same failed economic policies that we’ve had under George W. Bush?”

With unemployment on Friday jumping by 51,000 to take this year’s job losses to almost half a million, Mr Obama is mining a potentially rich seam. But a number of Democrats, including advisers to the Obama campaign, are worried that the Democratic party’s overall electoral advantage this year has not yet translated into comfortable leads for Mr Obama. On Friday Gallup showed Mr Obama just one point ahead of John McCain – a significant tightening in the past two weeks.

Mr McCain’s improving fortunes have coincided with a strikingly negative turn in his campaign’s tactics, with the launch last weekend of an advertisement criticising Mr Obama for failing to visit wounded soldiers when he was in Germany because the Pentagon refused to permit the media to accompany him. That allegation has since been debunked.

But the signs are that Mr McCain’s continuing attacks – most recently in a commercial that portrayed Mr Obama as a vapid celebrity against images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears – may be striking a chord with the white working class voters who shunned Mr Obama so emphatically in many of his primary contests with Hillary Clinton.

With just one month to go before Labour Day – the traditional beginning of the general election – and only three weeks before the Democratic convention, many Democrats fear that time is running out for Mr Obama to overcome the suspicions of this key swing vote.

mccain v obama 01aug08“We have got to move away from these beautifully choreographed speeches which appeal to groups of voters who are unassailably in the Obama camp already,” said a non-staff adviser to Mr Obama. “What plays well with the educated liberal voter sometimes grates with the blue-collar folk, whom we need on our side if we are going to win.”

The numbers back up the concern. Although Mr Obama has a good shot at winning traditional Republican states such as Colorado, Virginia and even North Carolina, he cannot capture the White House if he loses more than one of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Michigan – the more traditional, blue-collar swing states, which Mrs Clinton won by huge margins in the primary contests. Polls suggest these states are too close to call.

At this stage in the 1988 presidential race, Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate, had a 17 percentage point lead over George H.W. Bush, who went on to win the election. John Kerry emerged from the 2004 Democratic convention with a strong lead over George W. Bush only to lose the election as well. In 2008, conventional wisdom says Mr McCain is running a much less effective campaign than either of the Bushes.

That only reinforces disquiet about Mr Obama’s inability so far to take a decisive lead. “Even on his worst day, Bill Clinton was able to signal that he understood voters’ concerns and that he felt their pain,” said Douglas Schoen, a Democratic consultant. “Obama has no trouble with the campaign stagecraft. But this isn’t Harvard, it’s the beer hall. He has to talk in language that people understand.”

Conventional wisdom also suggests Mr McCain’s campaign overstepped the mark by moving on to direct negative attacks on Mr Obama’s character. But Mr Obama has also kept up a stream of material for them to exploit. At a meeting with Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday, he said he represented the world’s hopes for America. “This is the moment the world is waiting for,” he said when asked about his overseas trip. “I have become a symbol of restoring America to its best traditions.”

The Obama campaign says the remarks were taken out of context. But reports such as this can still play badly in communities that pay little attention to foreign policy and are looking for empathy with their economic situation, say analysts. “Look, Obama has pulled off a good tour of Europe and it was probably necessary,” says a Democratic consultant who backed Mr Obama against Mrs Clinton. “What we need now is campaign events in hospital emergency rooms and in unemployment offices and small town diners. These people have a vote.”

Given the McCain campaign’s barely concealed contempt for Mr Obama and Mr Obama’s occasional tendency to present his candidacy in soaring, epochal terms, many believe the pattern of negative attacks is now here to stay.

“Obama obviously thinks very highly of himself,” says Juleanna Glover, an adviser to Mr McCain.

“Not everybody shares that view.”

So What are the democrats doing wrong?

Saturday, August 02, 2008

During July, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats fell two percentage points to 39.2%. That's the first time since January that the number of Democrats has fallen below 41%. Could these be predominantly Hillary Clinton supporters that have left the party?

Click here for the history since 2004.More...

During July, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats fell two percentage points to 39.2%. That’s the first time since January that the number of Democrats has fallen below 41% (see history from January 2004 to present).

While the number of Democrats declined, there was virtually no change in the number of Republicans. In July, 31.6% said they were Republicans, the fourth straight month that number has been below 31.4% and 31.6%.

The Democrats now have a 7.6 percentage point advantage over the Republicans, down from a 9.5 percentage point advantage in June and 10.1 percentage points in May.

Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based upon telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002.

Among men, 34% are Democrats, 33% Republican. Forty-four percent (44%) of women are Democrats, and just 30% claim the GOP as their party.

Forty-one percent (41%) of government employees are Democrats while 31% are Republicans. Among entrepreneurs, 36% are Republican, 34% Democrat. Those who work for someone else in the private sector lean Democratic by a 38% to 31% margin.

In January and February, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in the early stages of the battle for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, the number of Americans who considered themselves to be Democrats surged to record highs.

In 2004, the Democrats began the year with a 2.3 percentage point edge over the GOP. That grew to 4.0 points by March before moving in the Republican direction for the rest of the year. By Election Day in 2004, the edge for Democrats was a mere 1.6 percentage points.

In 2006, the Democrats began the year with just a 1.6 percentage point advantage. That grew to 6.1 percentage points by November.

These results are based upon tracking surveys of 15,000 adults per month. The margin of sampling error for the sample is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence. Please keep in mind that figures reported in this article are for all adults, not Likely Voters.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Barack Obama with a modest advantage in the race for the White House. The same is true when you look at the Electoral College. Democrats continue to have a significant advantage on ten key issues tracked by Rasmussen Reports and lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Obama's solution to The Oil Problem

Watch the video: Sen. Barack Obama's answer to meeting energy demands

Shoot, why didn't Hillary think of this? Oh right, because it's false... (I love that the audience is completely silent).

The cartoon on the right is from the Albuquerque Journal

Obama Shifts, Says He May Back Offshore Drilling

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 1, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that's what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.

Calling All Women and Minority Media Owners (But Not Too Loudly)

by Kristal Brent Zook
August 1, 2008

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/080108.html

Summary: The prevalence of sexism in the media may stem from the lack of women and minority media owners. In the latest WMC Exclusive, author Kristal Brent Zook reports on the recent Federal Communications Commission event, the "Access of Capital Conference." The event focused on minority media ownership and sought to connect investors to minority and women entrepreneurs. Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Copps spoke about "the shameful state of minority ownership." Zook found that women rarely own stations individually. Of the two women television station owners Zook interviewed, one stated, "Traditionally, women are not welcome in this business."More...

Calling All Women and Minority Media Owners (But Not Too Loudly)
by Kristal Brent Zook
August 1, 2008

"This is a bit more civilized than usual," one attendee could be heard saying upon entering the auditorium for the Federal Communications Commission event in New York City on Tuesday. Unlike the emotional collection of media activists, protestors, concerned citizens and artists (some of whom directed hisses and sneers at FCC Chair Kevin Martin) who attended any one of the public hearings held by the commission over the past year, this one featured mostly suits and ties, all of whom coolly assembled without fanfare at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

The "Access to Capital Conference" (or "hearing" depending on your position) was a rare appearance made by all five commissioners, and the realization of a promise made by the FCC last winter.

While Republican commissioners emphasized that the meeting's primary purpose was to introduce investors to minorities and women entrepreneurs-Commissioner Robert McDowell even noted that he'd "like to hear the sound of checks being written"-Democrats had reform in mind, and a desire to highlight ongoing federal barriers to accessing capital and media licenses.

Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Copps began in his usual straightforward way, thanking everyone for gathering to look at "the shameful state of minority ownership." "Let's tell it like it is," he added. "It's been bad - very bad, for minorities."

"Do you know of any women who own a station, or have tried to own a station?" I asked Amy B. Lotz, managing director of the American Women in Radio & Television, as I trolled through the auditorium's lobby, looking for real faces.

"Well, I know mostly women who've tried and failed," she said with a wry smile.

"Are you an owner?" I asked Barbara Lawrence, whose nametag identified her with KMCC-TV in Las Vegas.

Jackpot.

Lawrence told me that she was co-owner of several television stations, including KHIZ-TV in Los Angeles and KTRG in San Antonio, in addition to the Las Vegas holding. She happened to be in New York, she said, and came to the hearing mostly "to see old friends."

"Traditionally, women are not welcome in this business," she explained when asked why there was a need for this conference.

So how did she do it?

"It's complicated," she said, looking suddenly tired and perhaps, a little sad. "It's not something I can explain in five minutes."

The short version was this: While attending Fordham University in New York she was able to meet William Paley. This was around 1980, she said, when CBS was launching its cable channel. She was given the opportunity to buy stations. Later, a religious group-whose name she didn't care to share-helped her to get a foot in the door as an owner.

Today it's virtually impossible for an individual woman to buy a full power television station, said Lawrence. The sentiment was echoed by others. Unless one inherits a station, the only real possibilities are in low-power television, and even then, mostly in small and medium sized markets.

"It takes tens of billions of dollars to own a station," said Lawrence. "There are FCC issues, legal issues, engineering issues, financial issues. It takes a lifetime of work."

Diane Sutton of ShootingStar Broadcasting said that she was able to become an owner because she had two things, information and access. Sutton, who now does training for potential media owners, says that it's important to know "how to write a business plan, how to secure equity, and how to get to know the brokers and bankers before you need the money."

She also spoke about the virtues of the tax certificate, a federal policy incentive that was repealed in 1995 despite the fact that it increased minority ownership by fivefold during its 17 years of existence. Part of a larger Minority Ownership Policy instituted by an innovative young FCC attorney, Frank Washington, it rewarded radio or TV station owners by allowing them to defer capital gains tax if they sold stations to minority members.

Not only should the tax certificate have been preserved, argued Diane Sutton, but it should have also been expanded to include women "which, surprisingly, it did not."

###

About the Author: Kristal Brent Zook is an associate professor of journalism at Hofstra University in New York, and the author of I See Black People: The Rise and Fall of African American-Owned Television and Radio (Nation Books, March 2008). She can be reached at www.kristalbrentzook.com.

WMC Reprint & Credit Requirements: The Women's Media Center grants permission to reprint free-of-charge with the understanding that media outlets credit the author of the piece and the Women's Media Center, as in: "by [author's name] for the Women's Media Center (www.womensmediacenter.com)." If the format allows it, please note at the end: "This article was originally posted by The Women's Media Center at www.womensmediacenter.com. The WMC is a non-profit organization founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan, dedicated to making the female half of the world visible and powerful in the media."

About us:
The Women's Media Center strives to make women visible and powerful in the media. From our founding in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem to our advocacy and media relations work today, we are part of a strong feminist tradition that seeks to hold the media accountable for presenting the world as we know it. Our mission is to ensure that women and women's experiences are reflected in the media just as women are present everywhere in the real world; that women are represented as local, national, and global sources for and subjects of the media; and that women media professionals have equal opportunities for employment and advancement. In addition to the WMC founders, current board members include Loreen Arbus, Cristina Azocar, Jodie Evans, Gloria Feldt, Carol Jenkins, Teresa McBride, Pat Mitchell, Jessica Neuwirth, Rossana Rosado, and Helen Zia. For more information, please visit www.womensmediacenter.com.

Check-in Location in Denver - 18 Million Voices

Hi Everyone,

We have a room reservation at the Broker Restaurant in downtown Denver. It's a very classy place, and a wonderful Angel Donor in Washington State paid for the entire cost of the reservation. The times and dates are:

Sunday August 24th, 6 to 8 pm
Monday August 25th, 9 to 11 am
Tuesday August 26th, 9 to 11 am

We will use this site to distribute 18 Million voices information and events (both political and social), as well as any other events submitted to us from other groups under the Just Say No Deal Coalition.

The "Angel Donor" is a part of our meetup! THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU ARE AN ANGEL!

Rise Hillary Rise!

Laura

Rasmussen Polls Friday August 1, 2008

Montana:
McCain Pulls Even in Montana.In fact he's gained six points on Barack
Obama over the past month.

Texas: McCain Leads by Nine for Second Straight Month

Kentucky: Kentucky: McCain Leads 49% to 39%

UPDATE: Misleading Article titled "Hillary Clinton asks not to be nominated at Democratic National Convention"

The Just Say No Deal Coalition responds to recent New York Daily News article entitled “Hillary Clinton Asks Not To Be Nominated At Democratic National Convention.” In their piece, Michael Saul and Thomas M. Defrank cited a “source close to the campaign,” when they reported that Clinton asked not to be nominated. Just Say No Deal asks, “Why didn’t you quote Senator Clinton instead?”

Please view the following video shot July 31 in California at an event, where Clinton was asked if she would accept her name being placed into nomination at
the Democratic National Convention later this month. Click here to see the video.

Below is the referenced article:More...

By Michael Saul
Daily News Political Correspondent

Thursday, July 31st 2008, 10:35 PM

Hillary Clinton has decided against being nominated for President at the Democrats' Denver convention, but many of her more die-hard partisans may vote for her anyway.

A source close to the New York senator confirmed she won't file a formal request to the convention asking to be nominated along with Barack Obama, who eked out the victory in their fierce primary slugfest.
"She is not going to submit the signed request," the insider told the Daily News. "People are still circulating petitions on her behalf, but this is a done deal."

Party rules stipulate that Clinton must ask in writing to be nominated herself and also submit a petition signed by 300 to 600 delegates. Without her signed request, petitions of support are meaningless.

Her nomination would be window dressing because Obama's nomination is assured. But many of Clinton's most ardent boosters believe it's symbolically important to certify her glass ceiling-shattering candidacy with a formal nomination.

Nevertheless, delegates can vote for whomever they want during the roll call of the states. Personally and through surrogates, Clinton has counseled her 1,886 delegates to vote for Obama. A source familiar with discussions inside the Clinton camp told The News she may release those delegates when she speaks to the convention on Aug. 26.

"Depending on the dynamics, hundreds of delegates might decide to demonstrate their support and affection," a Clinton source speculated.

If so, that could be read as a dis to Obama from female Democrats still bruised by Clinton's defeat and resisting her pleas for party unity.

Other Clinton backers, however, worry that she could be embarrassed by a roll call because many of her delegates already have switched to Obama.

"Hillary Clinton is 100% committed to helping Barack Obama become the next President of the United States and realizes there are passionate feelings that remain among many of her supporters," said Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand. "No decisions have been made at this time.

Great News regarding Hillary - JUST IN!!

This just in from someone who met with Hillary today in San Francisco:

"She talked about her name being put into nomination and she said that she wanted her voters to be heard and for her delegates to have the experience of what a real convention is. She said that by doing this and by having a roll call that it would help unify the party."

FREE NOBAMA Stickers

Spalding Group founder responds to MoveOn.Org Obama bumper sticker giveaway – will give away up to a million “NOBAMA” bumper stickers. Go to: http://www.mccainstore.com/nobama_pr.htm

18 Million Voices Denver Check-in Information/ Administrative Details

Upon your arrival in Denver, please stop by and "check-in" with us!!!

Get connected with other Hillary supporters and find out about all of the various events going on in Denver to support Senator Clinton.

At check-in, we will provide you with a packet of information containing:More...

AN EVENT SCHEDULE: detailing all the events taking place in Denver in support of Senator Hillary Clinton

A LIST OF MEET AND GREET LOCATIONS: places where we will all meet, socialize, and break bread with fellow supporters of Senator Clinton

PRACTICAL DENVER INFORMATION: other useful "practical information" for your use during your stay.

The Broker Restaurant
821 17th Street
Denver, CO

We will be in the Library Room.

Map and directions can be found here.

The times and dates for "check-in" center operation are:

Sunday August 24th, 6 to 8 pm
Monday August 25th, 9 to 11 am
Tuesday August 26th, 9 to 11 am

Thanks,
RiseHillaryRise
Organizer
18 Million Voices Rise Hillary Rise
18millionvoices.blogspot.com

48th District Democrats - Events and Announcements

Here's Your opportunity to meet other candidates and democrats in your area and persuade them to support Hillary!

Upcoming Events More...

Friends of Peter Goldmark Fundraising Event
WHAT: Watch the Blue Angels Air Show from the shores of Lake Washington and meet Peter Goldmark, Candidate for Land Commissioner, at this fun election fundraising event!

WHEN: Saturday August 2, noon -2pm (air show starts at 12:45)

WHERE: Ellis residence, 7625 Overlake Drive West, Medina (West Bellevue)

Pool's open! Bring kids, swim suits and towels
Park at Medina School if Overlake Drive is posted "No Parking" (Ellis driveway can hold approximately 20 cars)
I-90 will close for the air show so be sure to arrive early

HOW: Choose a donation level:
· Friend: $50
· Family: $125
· Fantastic!: $250

RSVP: cellis@nwlink.com, www.petergoldmark.com or leave a message at (425) 443-6303.


Event to Benefit Darcy Burner - Saturday, August 2nd

Here's a message from Keri Andrews, regarding a private party at Tost in Fremont, to benefit Darcy Burner:

As you may have seen in the news, Darcy's house burned down a couple of weeks ago. The best thing we can do for her right now is to raise money for her campaign for Congress, so that she can focus on her family instead of having to worry about fundraising. I've booked a band, so I expect you all to show up and bring your friends! Maybe we can even get Darcy to show us a few moves on the dance floor :o)

The event is from 7-9pm. The band goes on at 8.
Tost (in Fremont)
513 N. 36th St.
Seattle, WA 98103
21 and over only, please.
RSVP to: keri@keriandrews.com. Cell phone: 206-228-5437

There is a minimum suggested donation of $50 (check or credit card only!) Please donate as much as you can afford. If you can't make it to the party, you can still help by donating at:

http://www.darcyburner.com/page/outreach/view/main/keri


Summer Meeting

The 48th LD held our Summer meeting/BBQ on July 23rd, 2008. At the meeting, we voted to endorse the following candidates:

Jason Osgood - Candidate for Secretary of State
Nic Corning - Candidate for King County Superior Court
Rebeccah Graham - Candidate for King County Superior Court

We voted to *not* endorse a candidate in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Additional information regarding the meeting can be found at our website: www.48thdems.org


Resolution/Platform Positions:

The National Democratic Party has solicited feedback from all State, County and Legislative District organizations, regarding the National Democratic Platform. If you wish to submit a resolution, please email your comments to Becky Lewis (rebeccie@comcast.net). Becky is a member of the WA State Delegation to the DNC Convention, and she will make sure that the WA State Platform Committee gets a copy of all resolutions in time for their August 9th meeting in Pittsburg.

New Meeting for 18 Million Voices Washington State!

Announcing a new meeting for 18 Million Voices/Rise Hillary Rise of WA State!

When: August 7, 2008 7:00 PM

Where: Click here to find out! Please RSVP either way.

We will be discussing Denver and our local events. There are several new developments!

We are well on our way to helping Hillary Rise!

I look forward to seeing all of you!

Thanks
Laura
Reply to: women-1143@meetup.com

I Own My Vote Organization Asks for Platform Input

Now that Obama has hijacked, stolen and paid for the party and installed his thugs and threatened many of the decent people of the party into silence, and now that we know they don't give a shit about Hillary's 18Million voters, we have to start at the bottom. Obama is sending emails around to voters in the party saying he wants to hear from you about the platform, so i own my own vote intelligently put together something where all of us could speak from one unified source.

Please use the check boxes for what you would like to ad to the platform. (Click on platform)

Please fill it out, it'll only take a minute or so. If 1,000's sign it, maybe the new brownshirts DNC party will pretend they're doing something for the people by maybe incorporating one of the things we care about. Thanks!

McCain narrows Obama's lead in key states

McCain narrows Obama's lead in key states
Posted: 11:21 AM ET

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
McCain has narrowed Obama's lead in three key states.

(CNN) — Barack Obama and John McCain are statistically tied in Florida and Ohio while Obama holds a clear advantage in Pennsylvania, new Quinnipiac polls out of those crucial battleground states Thursday show.

But in what could be a warning sign for Obama as voters begin to turn their attention to the general election race, Obama's lead appears to have dwindled, or barely remained steady, in all three states, even as the Democratic presidential candidate has enjoyed a wave of intense media coverage surrounding his trip abroad.More...

CNN Election Center: View the latest state polls

In Florida, Obama now holds a statistically insignificant 2-point lead over McCain, 46-44 percent. In a similar poll taken one month ago, Obama held a wider, and statistically significant, 47-43 percent advantage over the Arizona senator there. The difference appears to be a shift among independent voters, who now support McCain in Florida by a 5-point margin. In the June poll, Obama held the advantage among the same group of voters by a 10-percent advantage.

CNN's Electoral Map: Check out the lay of the land

In Ohio, the battleground state where a weak economy should give Democrats an advantage, Obama is ahead by a 2-point margin, 46-44 percent. That lead, also statistically insignificant, is down from the 6-point advantage the Illinois senator held there one month ago.

Obama's lead has also narrowed in Pennsylvania, though he still enjoys a clear edge there. Obama now leads McCain by a 7-point advantage, 49-42 percent, down from the 11 point advantage he had in June.

The poll was conducted from July 23-29, in the midst of Obama's trip abroad, and carries a margin of error of just under 3 points in each state.

Females in Comeback Runs Are Breaking Records

Run Date: 07/31/08
By Allison Stevens
Washington Bureau Chief

Women's eNews: Sixteen women who lost congressional races in 2006 are giving it another go. That's a record number of female comeback bids and a tide-turning moment for women who often fade away after a failed campaign.More...

BETHESDA, Md. (WOMENSENEWS)--Donna Edwards' June election to the U.S. House of Representatives was neither fast nor easy.

In 2006, Edwards tried to unseat Democratic Rep. Albert Wynn of Maryland, but she lost by fewer than 3,000 votes. "When I lost, I wanted to crawl under my bed," Edwards said earlier this month at the annual conference of the Washington-based National Organization for Women held in Bethesda, Md. "But I woke up."

Wynn, an African American who voted in 2002 to authorize the president to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, was too moderate for the heavily Democratic district in suburbs east of Washington, D.C., Edwards asserted.

Ousting him, she said, deserved a second try.

So Edwards, a lawyer and anti-domestic violence activist, staged a repeat performance of her 2006 campaign. Voters responded enthusiastically, giving her a 22-point victory over Wynn the second time around.

Wynn resigned in June, triggering a special election for the seat. Edwards won with 80 percent of the vote and now serves in Congress.

Edwards' persistence is unusual for female candidates, who tend to shut down the campaign office and return to pre-race routines after losing political contests, according to Gilda Morales, a researcher at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick.

"Women kind of disappear after they lose," Morales said.
Long Road to Victory

After losing once, running a second race in the same district or state for the same office may seem futile. But often, a political loss is the first leg on a longer road to victory, an axiom well understood by male candidates ranging from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan. Indeed, repeat candidates often benefit from higher name recognition, established fundraising networks and experience gained from rookie mistakes.

"No question there's an advantage because you know what you did right and what you did wrong the last time," said Jonathan Parker, political director of EMILY's List, a leading political action committee in Washington that backs pro-choice Democratic women.

It's a lesson Edwards said needs to be learned by women. "For so many women who run for political office and lose, you may never see that person again. That needs to change."

Edwards' message appears to be catching on.

Sixteen women who lost congressional races in 2006 are running again in 2008, a record number of female comeback bids for congressional office that could mark a new era in the evolution of the female political candidate, Morales said.

Historically, women have sought political office after the death, resignation or retirement of husbands or male relatives, as was the case with presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton. That pattern began to change in recent decades, and today, many of the 88 women currently serving in Congress established political careers without following in the footsteps of male relatives.

Now women are running on their own initiative, sometimes for a second or third time.
New Outlook, Repeat Candidates

Several of the women who ran in 2006 have a better shot this time around, Parker said. He pointed to two women, both endorsed by EMILY's List, who are running for the same seat they lost before but under more favorable circumstances this time.

In 2006, Linda Stender of New Jersey and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio ran against GOP incumbents, both of whom are retiring this year. Because Stender and Kilroy have already run, they enjoy the edge in name recognition, fundraising and experience.

As of mid-July, Stender had $1.2 million in the bank, far more than the $81,000 reported by her GOP rival, state Sen. Leonard Lance. Kilroy also had $1.2 million on hand; her opponent, state Sen. Steve Stivers, had $880,000, according to CQ Politics, an online political journal.

Several other women are mounting rematches against the same incumbents they fought in 2006, but under more favorable conditions this time around, Parker said.

In Washington state, Democrat Darcy Burner is running again against Republican Dave Reichert, to whom she lost in 2006. Burner has a better shot this year because she can ride on the coattails of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who is expected to carry Washington state, Parker said.

And in New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen is running a second time for the United States Senate against GOP Sen. John Sununu, whom she lost to six years ago. This time, she hopes to capitalize on a Democratic tide that swept the state in 2006, when Democrats took control of both houses of the state Legislature for the first time since 1874.

All four races are considered too close to call by Charlie Cook, author of the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan publication that tracks congressional races.

"There are real reasons these women candidates are running again," Parker said. "They're not just running to run."
Playing the Odds to Win

Other female Democrats also hope to take advantage of a more favorable national political climate.

Daily tracking polls of registered voters across the country conducted during the month of July by Gallup give Obama a 1- to 9-point lead over GOP nominee John McCain.

And 51 percent of registered voters surveyed in a national poll conducted July 25-27 by Research 2000 said they would favor a Democratic candidate for Congress, while only 37 percent said they would back a generic Republican candidate.

Female Democrats like Victoria Wulsin of Ohio and Sharon Renier of Michigan hope to capitalize on that trend. Wulsin is taking on GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt and Renier wants to oust Republican Tim Walberg.

Both women came close to victory in 2006, although none more so than Christine Jennings, a Florida Democrat who came within 373 votes of beating Republican Vern Buchanan. In that race, more than 18,000 ballots were not counted due to voter machine malfunction, giving Jennings hope that she will win this time around.

Meanwhile, two Republican women--Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania and Anne Northup of Kentucky--who lost their seats in the 2006 midterm elections are running to reclaim them now.

All of these races are considered competitive by Cook.

Other women are running longer-shot repeat campaigns, including Republicans Sydney Hay of Arizona, Deborah Honeycutt of Georgia and Charel Winston of California, and Democrats Judy Feder of Virginia, Diane Benson of Alaska, Nikki Tinker of Tennessee and Cristina Avalos of California.

Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief at Women's eNews.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

Black women given short shrift by CNN

Avis Jones-DeWeever | Posted July 31, 2008 1:53 AM

CNN did all of America a grave disservice with its over-simplistic, decontextualized, and obsessively-hyped documentary on the Black American experience. Upon the umpteenth showing of the special it finally hit me--the only additional image needed to really bring it home would have been a soft-shoe dancin', white-glove wearin', big grin sportin' minstrel interlude. At least with such a display, it would have become graphically clear that the Black America emphasized in the series was more caricature than fact-based groundbreaking analysis. More...

Take for example, the especially disappointing focus on Black women. To hear CNN tell it, Black women would be fine, if only they would get out of the baby-making business and just get married--preferably, to a white guy. With those bases covered, all would be right with the world...right? WRONG! It's frankly insulting to insinuate that the range of the Black woman's experience in America boils down to whether or not she said, "I do." Instead, it would have been far more groundbreaking to report that Black women have the highest labor force participation rate of all women in America. Yet, despite their work effort, Black women earn only 63 cents for every dollar earned by white men, suffering both a gender and race pay gap. And even worse, they find themselves tied with Native American women as the most likely to be poor. Even with all of their hard work, Black women's poverty more than doubles that of white women, notably outpaces that of Latinas, and even exceeds that of Black men.

I have a news flash for CNN. The biggest problem facing Black women isn't the lack of a wedding ring, it's the lack of access to jobs that pay livable wages and that are inclusive of benefits that most middle-class Americans take for granted, such as paid sick days, employer-provided health insurance, and access to retirement plans.

It's important also to note that not all news about Black women is doom and gloom. We make up the majority of African Americans earning Associates, Bachelor's and Master's Degrees. We are entering and excelling in non-traditional fields, earning some 14,800 Doctorates in science and engineering. And in less than a 10-year span between 1997 and 2006, Black women's entrepreneurship exploded, growing 147 percent compared to an overall rate of growth among privately-owned businesses of a comparatively paltry 24%.

Yet, the powers that be at CNN apparently thought this and other information not important enough for inclusion. Choosing instead to focus on images that have been around as long as Ronald Reagan's mythical "welfare queen." To CNN, the issue that deserved the primary focus with respect to Black women was the issue of single-parenthood. And even that issue was given short-shrift, based much more in stereotype and moral proselytizing, than fact-based, contextualized, reality.

It's no accident that CNN chose to highlight a never-married woman with five kids to drive their point home, when according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical Black woman-headed family has only 1.78 kids (well let's be generous and round it up to two). It's no accident that the great solution put forth was Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, complete with dancing grooms, with no mention of the fact that the so-called "marriage solution" is being funded primarily from TANF dollars--money meant to help poor families survive. And while aid to struggling families have received cut after cut in recent years in a variety of critical areas such as child care assistance, housing assistance, job-training specifically for women, and even child-support enforcement, it's no accident that marriage promotion dollars have been free-flowing.

So what's wrong with this reprioritization of funds? Perhaps what's most disturbing is that the let them eat wedding cake solution just doesn't add up. It's been estimated that there are three available African American women for every one available African American man who has the means to lift a family out of poverty. You don't have to hold a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand what's wrong with that picture. There just ain't enough brothers to go around. Now CNN would have Black women expand the pool beyond the Black male option. Problem is, for most, they either lack the desire or the opportunity to do so.

Black women are in fact the demographic group that is the least likely to marry outside of their race. In contrast, Black men are among the most likely. In fact, research suggests that as Black men's income, education, and job prestige increases, so too do their likelihood to marry interracially. So to suggest to the sistas in the 'hood that all they need do is wait for their Black Knight to come and rescue them and their children from a life of poverty is disingenuous at best. Make no mistake about it, those sistas will have a long wait. And for some, that day will never come, especially since many of the men who are best equipped to "save" them are not looking in the 'hood when they're looking for a wife.

The marriage solution is no solution at all. Instead, it's just a diversion from the much more critical task of creating and implementing a truly substantive anti-poverty plan. When the disproportionate poverty problem is adequately addressed within the Black community, the marriage issue will take care of itself.

The problem isn't that Black people don't value marriage. Quite the opposite is true. Surveys and studies confirm that if anything, many Blacks may in fact value marriage too much. They hold it in such high regard that they want everything to be "just right" before walking down the aisle. They want a good job. They want financial stability. They want to own a home and they fear that delaying childbearing until each of these pieces of the puzzle are in place would lead to fertility difficulties down the road. The real tragedy is that for many, those very basic desires may never be achieved.

So what do Black girls and young women need to avoid the fate of impoverished single motherhood? They need access to a quality education from Pre-K up to and including adult education. And as a nation, we need to come to grips with the fact that we still have very separate and very unequal public education systems. If anything, our educational institutions are getting worse in this regard and not better as time goes by. Supreme Court rulings in recent years have continually chipped away at the never fully enforced Brown v. Board of Education decision. As a result, schools today are more segregated than they were in 1990 and in fact, more segregated in the North than in the South. This educational dilemma needs to be addressed in a much more meaningful and comprehensive way than the "solution" advanced in the documentary of providing $250 cash subsidies to a small subsection of students.

Also critical is the need to expand access to higher education. Although more Black women than men are enrolled in college, when compared to other women, Black women have comparatively low college enrollment. That is a huge problem. College is especially critical for Black women since they need a Bachelor's degree just to be roughly on par with the earnings of white men with a GED. Finally, Black women need jobs, good quality jobs, located within their own communities. These jobs need to provide good wages, benefits, and opportunities for long-term career advancement.

The problem isn't that CNN didn't understand these issues. I told them. The much more disturbing problem is that they chose to leave those perspectives on the cutting room floor.

Avis Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D., is the Director of the Research Public Policy and Information Center for African American Women at the National Council of Negro Women.

30% of Conservative Democrats Say They’ll Vote for McCain

Thirty percent (30%) of conservative Democrats say they're voting for John McCain.Rasmussen Reports data also shows the Republican hopeful picking up support from 19% of White Democrats and 15% of Democrats over the age of 50. These results are from national telephone survey interviews conducted with 14,000 Likely Voters during the two weeks ending July 24. The sample includes 5,074 Democratic voters.

More Voters than Ever Say They Would Vote for Black Candidate, Still Not Sure About Friends.