The questions that hang over Barack Obama

By Irwin Stelzer
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/08/2008

Pundits here are struggling to understand one thing about the presidential elections. They know that President Bush is massively unpopular.

They know that the vast majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, engaged in an unpopular war, and headed towards recession.

They know that polls of "generic" preferences show that voters, by a very substantial majority, say they prefer Democrats to the Republicans.

And they know that Barack Obama's opulently funded campaign has been a study in precision and efficiency, while John McCain has scrambled for funds, stumbled on television, and been forced once again to reorganise his staff.

So why isn't Obama running so far ahead that the election is a mere formality? Yes, the Illinois senator is behaving very presidentially - addressing massed Germans in Berlin, for a while having a faux presidential seal fronting his podium, moving confidently from one adoring audience to another. More...

But the polls suggest that the candidates are in a dead heat.

Some put this down to race. But race cuts both ways in this election.

Ignore the fact that only five per cent of Americans say they would not vote for a black presidential candidate. More important is the 19 per cent who say that most of the people they know - not including themselves, of course - would not vote for such a candidate.

On the other side of the ledger is the massive increase in registration and participation of black and pro-Obama Hispanic voters, white voters eager to demonstrate their lack of prejudice by voting for a black candidate, and folks who believe that the mere fact that Obama is black means that the world will think better of America if its electorate relocates Obama from the Senate to the Oval Office.

In sum, it is difficult to tell just how much race might be affecting the polls, or would affect them if respondents felt unembarrassed to tell the truth, and in which direction.

Other equally knowledgeable observers put Obama's failure to run away with the election down to his exotic background.

Long-time Democratic strategist Mark Penn, in an e-mail he thought was private but fell into the hands of The Atlantic's Joshua Green, said of Obama: "His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited." That troubles Americans, who contrast Obama with the straight-talking war hero John McCain.

But that is not all. Obama has always been something of an aloof loner. In the Illinois state senate, he remained uncommitted on most issues.

At the University of Chicago Law School, he did not participate in faculty discussions about the school's future. In the US Senate, he seems to have made few close friends, at least until the vice-presidency became within his gift. He is, says NYT columnist David Brooks, a "sojourner… Obama lives apart… He absorbed things from those diverse places [in which he lived and worked], but was not fully of them."

As a result, voters "find him hard to place". He carries "cool" to the point of aloofness. He is seen more as a Chablis-sipping intellectual than someone Joe Sixpack would want to go bowling with.

Combine his initial refusal to wear an American-flag lapel pin, pictures of Obama declining to salute the flag and his failure to visit injured soldiers at their Berlin hospital, with his unusual background, and it is not difficult to understand why voters are nervous at the prospect of this elegant, eloquent politician becoming commander-in-chief of the world's only superpower.

Less fun to talk about, but equally important, are questions of policy. Obama won the nomination in part because he opposed Iraq from the start, and because he promised that his first act as president would be to order his generals to withdraw all troops within 16 months.

Well, not all troops: some would remain to train Iraqis and cope with any upsurge of terrorists attacks. And not necessarily in 16 months.

He said he would sit down with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with no preconditions. Well, no preconditions, but with a lot of advance preparation.

He promised to oppose all drilling for oil offshore. Well, not all drilling, only environmentally unacceptable drilling, a retreat made necessary by the fact that the majority of Americans, groaning under the burden of $4 petrol, are demanding that the government allow rapid development of domestic oil reserves.

Perhaps most important, Obama presented himself as a post-racial candidate, and then played the race card, by accusing McCain of trying to frighten voters by pointing out that Obama does not look like the presidents on their currency. Which McCain would never do and did not do.

McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, summed up the situation last Sunday. "The mood of the country is very sour… People don't like the [Republican] Party… If someone had told me a year ago … we could wind up dead-even with the Democratic nominee in this kind of political environment just before our convention, that would have been fantastic to me."

But Davis knows that his candidate has a long way to go. McCain's economic message has been incoherent.

He is for free markets, but attacks oil company profits as obscene. He wants to get Americans to use less petrol, but proposed to lower petrol taxes - and encourage consumption - during the driving season. He says he is against all tax increases, but then says he is willing to consider raising payroll taxes.

On Monday, Obama, speaking from his holiday retreat in Hawaii, managed to come up with a tougher reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia than did McCain. Eager to show that he is tough enough to be commander-in-chief, Obama suggested that Russia's application for membership in the World Trade Organisation be turned down, while McCain contented himself with head-shaking disapproval.

Soon the real campaign will start; both parties will have their conventions. Obama will have 10 weeks to persuade voters he is one of them, and McCain to convince them that a conservative Republican can feel their economic pain. There is all to play for: in 2000, more than 60 per cent of Americans made up their minds at or after the conventions.

Obama's problem with white, male voters

By David Paul Kuhn | The Boston Globe

THE MOST remarkable fact of the 2008 presidential election is that it remains a close race. Democrats have not known such favorable political terrain since 1932, yet what should be a blowout is looking like a blanket finish.

The fundamental reason is white men. Like Al Gore in the summer of 2000, Barack Obama is roughly splitting white women. But only 34 to 37 percent of white men support Obama, according to the Gallup Poll's latest weekly index of 6,000 voters. More...

In fairness to Obama, he inherited the problem. Not since 1976, when Democrats last achieved a majority, has a Democrat won more than 38 of every 100 white, male voters. That Obama is nearly at par with Democrats' poor performance is hardly good.

Obama remains narrowly ahead because of black, Hispanic, and youth support. Those strengths may prove brittle. Large black populations are mostly in states Obama will surely win, across the Northeast, and states he will surely lose, the Deep South. Hispanics are a nonfactor in Heartland swing states like Ohio. Young voters are notoriously unreliable.

On Election Day, high youth and black turnout will matter in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada. But as Hillary Clinton demonstrated, Obama's strengths may not matter enough.

Obama's one clear gain with white men, over Gore and John Kerry, is with those under age 30. But those gains are undercut by a poor showing with older white men, according to Pew Research Center summer polling. The same effect, though more mild, is also true for white women.

Pundits will be tempted to blame racism. Yet Colin Powell would have won white men and likely defeated Bill Clinton in 1996. Liberals have long placed white guys atop their ticket. Look where that got them. Democrats have won three of the past 10 presidential elections.

Many Democrats explain their failures in a respect that reaffirms their self image; the good fight for black equality caused a racially motivated "Southern flip." In the Deep South, that was true. But nationally, political white flight occurred in the South and the North. It also reached its crescendo with Ronald Reagan's election - not during the peak of civil rights debates.

This impulse to cite the color of the issue as the issue was recently applied to Obama's Appalachia difficulty. Race did matter, and will matter. But if Obama were white, would we have expected him to win rural voters? Like Gary Hart or Paul Tsongas, Obama was not Appalachia's kind of Democrat.

That weakness is neither inalterable nor politically fatal. His unique personal attributes may, amid the near implosion of the Republican Party, galvanize enough minorities and young voters to squeeze out a win. But a majority coalition, that does not make.

In search of that coalition liberal analysts tend to subscribe to the "Emerging Democratic Majority," a plan to wait out demographic shifts - more Hispanics, more young voters, more educated whites. In short: "Why should I change, let America." That strategy failed George McGovern. Give it a couple more decades. The portion of white, male voters remains about five times the size of all Hispanic voters. And a college education has not led more white men to vote Democratic.

Latinos are increasingly vital to Democratic ambitions in Florida and key western states. Yet electoral math ultimately concerns the sum. Minority groups can more easily tip vital states for Obama if aided by gains with far larger blocs of the electorate, none more than white men.

In the end new majorities do not merely "emerge," even for Richard Nixon. It takes proactive efforts. For Democrats, the potential reward is massive.

White men make up the largest portion of independents. More than one in three voters who will choose the next president remains white and male. And McCain's support is soft with these men, compared to George W. Bush's bids.

Yet for too long, some progressives have viewed seeking these men as antithetical to liberalism. Rebutting that intellectual vice would truly change Democratic politics. It would also expand the electoral map. Therefore, whether he knows it or not, Obama has tied the audacity of his promise to the white men his party has lost.

David Paul Kuhn, a senior political writer with Politico.com, is author of "The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma."

RUSH: We Could See a McCain Landslide

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: See, the liberals have to blame this Russian attack on Georgia on Bush, and then, by association, McCain, otherwise Obama has no chance. I don't think he has much of a chance, and I think the dirty little secret is that McCain could win this in a landslide. I actually do. More...I think there is so much huff and puffery here about Obama, and the bloom has long ago gone off that rose. It happened during the Democrat primaries. Thomas Sowell has a great column. He once attended a course taught by John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted liberal economist, and he came in and did his first lecture to the class, and it was so good they all stood up and applauded, but every other lecture was just more and more generalities on the first lecture, and as the course went on, the class kept dwindling in size and finally people stopped showing up because there was no substance. That's exactly what's happened to Obama. His first speech, his first series of appearances: "Oh, man, new, unique, messiah, change, hope, future." But now there's no substance. You can revive the old Fritz Mondale question of Gary Hart(pence), "Where's the beef?" And it's happening, folks. I'm telling you, it's happening. There are all kinds of doubts throughout the Democrat Party about this guy, 143 days in the Senate, for crying out loud. He's a neighborhood activist; he's a street activist that they have nominated. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, the Georgian Security Council today says it has filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice for alleged ethnic cleansing against Russia. Well, there you go. Right alongside the House Democrats' suit of OPEC for selling us oil in the first place. Man, oh, man, the libs get exactly what they want here, take every one of these things to court?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go to Aston, Pennsylvania. This is David. You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: (silence)

RUSH: (drumming fingers) Dee-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo. David in Aston, Pennsylvania, are you there?

CALLER: Yes, Rush, how are you?

RUSH: Fine, sir. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Good. Thank you very much. Listen, this kind of has to do with Obama and the Georgian conflict and all these things. My question was, if we were on his energy plan of we're not allowed to drill for oil, we can't do anything at all, how would we ever wage a military campaign against Russia? Would we be having like destroyers running on sunflower oil?

RUSH: Let me see --

CALLER: How can we do that?

RUSH: You miss the point. We wouldn't need to wage military campaigns because with Obama there wouldn't be any more.

CALLER: Oh!

RUSH: He would talk everybody out of them.

CALLER: Of course.

RUSH: Like according to Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia, Obama is the one who got the ceasefire in Georgia and South Ossetia because he asked the Russians to stop it, and Tim Kaine said he's happy that the Russians listened to Obama, so... I mean, that's what the Obama camp is saying.

CALLER: Do you understand where I'm coming from? I mean, how can he possibly think this?

RUSH: It's called the audacity --

CALLER: I have no idea what he's talking about.

RUSH: It's called the audacity of audacity. And what it is is Tim Kaine, who's trying to be selected as Obama's veep. He's just groveling.

CALLER: Humph.
RUSH: But, no, your rhetorical question is just right on the money. If we're not going to have our own independent sources of energy, how in the world are we going to maintain our status as a superpower? See, this is the problem. We've been in a jocular mood for much of the day today, but I'll tell you, I made a speech last night in Aspen, Colorado, which is why I was not here yesterday. I had to fly out there in the afternoon to get there in time for the speech, and I spoke about what we face here. There's a war going on in our country for the definition of our country and its structure in the future. On one side of the war is us, and we want to preserve this nation as it was founded.

On the other side are people like Obama and the leftists, who don't like this country as it was founded. They have a problem with too much individual liberty and freedom. They want bigger governments, higher taxes and more individual control over as much of the way people live as they can get. It's very, very serious, and our legislators on our side, we do not have any elected leadership in Washington. Our legislators do not understand that we're in a war. It's like this Gang of Ten thing that happened last week. The Republican senators in that deal do not understand how they just almost took away the one winning issue Senator McCain has and that we have over the Democrats, because they believe -- mistakenly so -- that what the American people want is for Republicans and Democrats to get along. As I told Senator Chambliss last week: That's not what the American people want.

What the Republicans, what conservatives in this country want is to mop the floor with Democrats! We are tired of accepting their premises and then going along with them to show that somehow we're not the bad guys. We are the good guys. We just don't have any elected leadership. So this is going to be a grassroots, a series of grassroots operations that build conservatism back. For example, this is not a big deal, but it was announced today that three Republicans have decided to endorse Obama. They are former Iowa Republican Congressman Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, and lawyer and former White House intelligence advisor Rita Hauser. Now, Obama is out there, and the Democrats are saying, "Woo! Wow! We've got three Republicans endorsing Obama."

But come on, Jim Leach? Chafee stopped being a Republican a long time ago. Jim Leach was never a Republican, he was a moderate; and this Hauser babe, nobody ever heard of. The dirty little secret about this, the way I see it, is these are exactly the kind of moderate Republicans in Name Only that, McCain courted all these years. Jim Leach, Lincoln Chafee, Rita Hauser, why, they ought to be the first to be endorsing...McCain! That's the exact kind of Republican he's going after. And look, they've signed up with Obama. It's pathetic, but it's funny at the same time. So, we're in this war for what kind of country we're going to have and what kind of future people's children and grandchildren are going to have. We are a nation, a great nation, at great risk in a dangerous world, with a bunch of sophists who want control.

The Democrat Party has actually nominated a neighborhood activist, a street activist, as its presidential candidate who is clueless. The man doesn't think. He simply is able to reiterate what he had been taught, and if you look at the people he's hung around and the people who have taught him, it's all the Blame America Crowd that you find in academia. You've got Jeremiah Wright poisoning his mind. He's got his wife. He hangs around with his wife, and she's mad every day of the week, too; and then you've got this lunatic Father Pfleger, and then you've got this terrorist guy Bill Ayers. That's why these people's associations matter. It's why their character matters. If you look at who apparently has structured the Obama character, it's...

How else do you explain this guy telling a 7-year-old kid who wants to know why he wants to be president, because my country is "not what it once was"? Where in the hell...? When has it been better? When has it been worse? When's it been better, either way? He's just mouthing these things because that's what he thinks people want to hear, he thinks people are like him. This is the arrogance and the condescension. He thinks most people look at their country and find immediate fault with it. But I'm just telling you: All these people that did not vote for him in these late state primaries, these blue-collar white traditional Democrat voters? I'm going to tell you something, folks. They're not being interviewed on television; the Drive-Bys around talking about them.

But these people, I don't care if they're Republicans or Democrats or whatever. They do not want to see a rookie presidential candidate in Berlin or anywhere else in the world run down their country, especially a Democrat presidential candidate who ought to be thanking God that he is an American, that he lives in this country, and that it has provided him and his wife such a wonderful life and a great opportunity. He's running for president, for crying out loud, and he still sees fit to criticize this country! I'm just going to tell you: All of these blue-collar white Democrats, Pennsylvania, Ohio, you name it -- wherever Obama was unable to close this thing against Hillary -- they heard it, they saw it, and they don't like it. They may not tell a pollster that, but when they get a chance to vote, I guarantee you, it is not going to be for The Messiah.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...
• Real Clear Politics: Obama and the Galbraith Effect - Thomas Sowell

Defiant Clinton Women Refuse To Support Obama

High-Class Hillraisers Still Irate About Barack: ‘She Will Be Nominee’

 By Jason Horowitz | August 12, 2008

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild doesn’t look like a radical.

Surrounded by bike paths, ponds and the Atlantic Ocean in her Martha’s Vineyard farmhouse, not far from where Bill and Hillary Clinton usually summer, the lifelong Democrat and Clinton fund-raiser opened a laptop to her “Together4Us” Web site, an online petition that features Hillary Clinton looking luminous above a series of demands made of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. More...

Ms. de Rothschild, 54, dressed in matching blue pants and sweater, blond hair tucked behind her ears, said she plans to send copies of the more than 6,000 signatures she has collected to superdelegates, Mr. Obama, his top officials, Howard Dean and officials at the Democratic National Committee, on Aug. 18—the Monday before the Democratic convention.

And she’ll be there, at the convention, to help press those demands, she said, especially including a dramatic overhaul of the nominating process by which Mr. Obama won the primary. She said she was well aware of Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to get Mr. Obama elected, as well as the efforts of the Obama campaign staffers, whom she said she liked, to appease Mrs. Clinton’s supporters. Despite it all, Ms. de Rothschild does not plan to vote for him.

“I think it’s difficult for him to fix it because of the judgments he’s made in the past and his lack of experience,” she said, adding that there was really nothing Mrs. Clinton could do about it. “If we are dissatisfied with Obama as a potential president, Hillary cannot be expected to change our minds.”

A phenomenon born from the debris of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign has taken on a life of its own.

The mostly female collection of activists who continue to rally around the cause of a decommissioned White House bid can’t exactly be described as an organized movement. There are the wealthy donors who work within official party channels and talk calmly about reforming the party’s nominating process or protecting against gender bias in future elections. Their level of hostility toward the Obama campaign varies. And then there are the outright rejectionists: the raucous bloggers and founders of groups like PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) who plan to disrupt the convention and have declared all-out war against Mr. Obama and his supporters, who they accuse of making death threats and leaving dead bunny rabbits on doorsteps in the middle of the night.

What they share, without exception, is a profound disappointment at the way the primary turned out, and a revulsion at the way they perceive Mrs. Clinton to have been treated.

That has been enough to establish a de facto echo chamber that has proven to be a headache for Mr. Obama as his campaign tries to project Democratic unity ahead of the convention during the last week of August.

“There’s an unbelievable camaraderie and yet in some cases we have nothing in common,” said Diane Mantouvalos, a leader in the JustSayNoDeal anti-Obama coalition, who plans to attend the Denver convention and work in a loft rented out for pro-Hillary bloggers from around the country. “There is an element of venting, but also, if you thought you were alone, you were wrong.”

The best-established group of Clinton ’08 loyalists consists of influential Democratic bundlers like Ms. de Rothschild, Jill Iscol and Susie Tompkins Buell.

Recently, several of them met privately with Senator Chuck Schumer, who runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. According to a number of attendees and sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, their purpose was to lobby Mr. Schumer about introducing a new code of conduct for Democratic candidates that would officially declare gender bias as offensive as racism, and to encourage him to make it the official position of the party not to deal with media outlets perceived to be trafficking in misogyny.

“It was productive,” said one attendee.

(Mr. Schumer’s office said the senator was traveling abroad and could not be reached for comment.)

Ms. Buell plans to attend the convention only on Aug. 26, and will attend with the former first lady a discussion about gender bias held by the political action committee Women Count, before Mrs. Clinton delivers her prime-time speech. She says she will vote for Mr. Obama, but instead of raising money for him, she will concentrate on Congressional races this cycle.

“We can’t let this happen again,” she said.

Ms. Iscol, too, has arrived at compromise somewhere short of full support for the nominee.

She considers herself a devoted friend to Mrs. Clinton, whom she first met at her Vineyard home in 1997, and for whom she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars during her presidential campaign. She said she likes Mr. Obama, whom she first met at a dinner on the Vineyard in 2004, and described herself as committed to party unity. She plans to vote for Mr. Obama—he called her after the primaries to ask for her support—but she said she is waiting to see if Mrs. Clinton is put on the ticket before she decides whether to raise money for Mr. Obama.

Ms. de Rothschild, on the other hand, doesn’t see herself even voting for Mr. Obama.

She said the Obama campaign has addressed her demands to give Mrs. Clinton a prime-time platform during the convention and adopt some of her language into the party platform, but she still has grievances. She thinks the bitter primary exposed the nominating process’ system of caucuses and proportionally weighted delegates as fundamentally undemocratic, and she wants Mr. Obama and Mr. Dean to address the fact that it needs to be fixed. And she has a problem with the way the Clintons were treated.

“If this party turns its back on Bill Clinton, it’s not a party that deserves our loyalty,” she said.

She also said she still has serious reservations about Mr. Obama’s principles and experience and thinks the questions raised during the primaries about his unsavory associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko remain appropriate issues.

“That’s not Swift-boating,” she said.

In that regard, at least, Ms. de Rothschild has something in common with the anti-Obama bloggers and organizers, about 60 of whom gathered at the Country Inn hotel near Dulles airport in Washington on Aug. 9 and 10 for a leadership meeting to coordinate strategy for protesting the Democratic convention. (The meeting was closed to the press, organizers said, to avoid infiltration by Obama sympathizers.)

The attendees came from the ranks of the creators of PUMA and dozens of Web sites, including HillaryClintonforum, pumaparty, AlwaysForHillary, the Denver Group—which plans to run anti-Obama commercials during the convention—and a blog radio show called No Quarter (featuring a “Reading Rezko” edition). Many of the sites feature videos of pumas baring their teeth in the wild.

In this parallel universe, Mr. Obama, or NObama, as he is often called, is a misogynistic fraud. The DNC and other Democratic officials were in on it, too, conspiring against Mrs. Clinton to advance their own political agenda.

In one typical video, Howard Dean is juxtaposed with images of Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; Donna Brazile is compared to Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid; and Nancy Pelosi morphs into Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmations.

(Asked for a response, Obama campaign spokesman Nick Shapiro said, “At the Democratic convention, we will ensure that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected and our party will be fully unified heading into the November election.”)

Long-term, the fringe groups are talking about purging the Democratic Party of Obama supporters or even starting their own third party. Short-term, they are focused on ruining the convention.

“Hi everybody. I hope that the Denver convention will be turned into the American equivalent of Tiananmen Square,” wrote a commenter named “johninca” on a Web site announcing PUMA’s 2008 “convention” in Washington.

In an interview, Darragh Murphy, the founder of PUMAPac, called the meeting crucial to counteract Mr. Obama’s aggressive and prolific online supporters.

“I started saying this was more than my candidate versus your candidate,” she said. “We need to become a movement, too.”

Murphy filed papers with the F.C.C. to start PUMAPac on June 3 and claims it has since grown to 10,000 members and has raised $50,000. The PAC is funding a loft for bloggers in Denver, organizing delegate outreach and financing an anti-Obama movie, The Audacity of Democracy.

Ms. Murphy, a mother of three who lives outside Boston, believes that the only way to save the Democratic Party at this point is to destroy it. Mr. Obama must lose, and his supporters must be purged.

She said that Obama supporters have harassed her and her followers by banging on their windows with pots and pans in the middle of the night, making phone threats and leaving dead rabbits on their doorsteps.

“If this guy wins, that style of campaigning will become the de facto method,” said Ms. Murphy.

(On mybarackobama.com, one blogger accused Ms. Murphy, who voted for Mr. McCain in the 2000 Massachusetts primary, of being a McCain plant and called her a “Republican Astro-Turfer.” She denies being a plant.)

At the D.C. meeting with Ms. Murphy was Will Bower, the founder of PUMA08. A former administrator of Hillary Clinton’s Facebook group, “Hillary Clinton for President; One Million Strong,” he participated in the conference call on the night Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign. That original 5 p.m. strategy call has now become a weekly event dubbed the “puma prowl,” during which rank and file members get their marching orders about what DNC switchboard to paralyze by mass-calling or which superdelegates to bombard with e-mail.

Superdelegates, of course, became irrelevant to the national political discourse the day Mrs. Clinton dropped out of the race. But for the most committed Clinton loyalists, they are still seen as the key to victory. And no one is as focused on lobbying them as Ricki Lieberman.

A former Hillraiser—a Clinton bundler who has raised at least $100,000—Ms. Lieberman, 61, drafts her “Electability Watch” newsletter every night in a cavernous apartment on Manhattan’s West End Avenue, which has played host to Governor David Paterson among other New York officials.

Part pep talk, part clip job, part poll update and part superdelegate call list, the “EW,” as it is known, is blasted out to hundreds of the Clinton supporters nightly. An Aug. 6 edition began, “This evening at a ‘thank you, Hillraisers’ event, Senator Clinton told me how honored she is by the people who are working to have her name put into nomination and appreciative of those signing the petition.”

On Aug. 7, Ms. Lieberman sat in a dining room decorated with menorahs and family photos, shooing her cat away from a bowl of cherries in the middle of the table. She wore a blue shirt with large orange beads and explained how she provides each recipient with the names and numbers of 18 superdelegates (symbolizing, she said, the 18 million voters who supported Mrs. Clinton in the primaries).

“It takes me an enormous amount of time,” she said.

Ms. Lieberman, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who has served as campaign treasurer for Representative Jerry Nadler, thinks she is helping the party by vetting Mr. Obama. She dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s calls for her followers to get behind Mr. Obama as a “mixed message” and lit up when the subject of a video of Mrs. Clinton speaking at a San Francisco fund-raiser came up.

In the video, Mrs. Clinton appeared to agree with the suggestion that her name be included on a roll call in Denver, to help with the process of emotional “catharsis” for her followers. Like many of the diehard Clinton loyalists fighting to get Mrs. Clinton’s name onto the roll call during the nomination, Ms. Lieberman took the senator’s remarks as a green light to continue.

“I really believe she will be the nominee—I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t,” said Ms. Lieberman, who met Mr. Obama once on the campaign trail. (“He didn’t pay a bit of attention to me,” she said. “He’s tall and looked around for someone more important.”)

When asked if anything, barring Mrs. Clinton’s nomination, would make her happy at the convention, she said, “I’m not sure there’s a happy ending.”

jhorowitz@observer.com

Potential Obama VP Tim Kaine Explains how Russia Complies With "The One"

On Fox this morning, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine explained how Obama saved Georgia:

“It was a bad crisis for the world. It required tough words but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in. And I’m very, very happy that the Senator's request for a ceasefire has been complied with by President Medvedev.” Click here to watch the video.

Of course the Russians complied with his request. They've also started inflating their tires in order to reduce domestic demand and free up oil for export markets. It's like we don't even need to elect Obama to the White House--he can stop the rise of the seas, heal the planet, and bring us peace in our time just by issuing press releases from the comfort of his Hawaiian retreat. More...

Here's the official press story: "TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia's president has told a news conference that he agrees to plan to end the fighting with Russia over breakaway regions in Georgia.

Mikhail Saakashvili told reporters after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that "there should be a cease-fire."

The plan was negotiated by Sarkozy and has also been agreed to by Russia's president. It calls for both Russian and Georgian troops to move back to their original positions.

Some sticking points remain, including the status of Russian peacekeepers in Georgia's breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia."

Mark Warner Will Deliver Keynote Speech on Tuesday - NOT HILLARY!

On Tuesday, August 26th, which happens to be Women's Equality Day, and the anniversary of women first obtaining the right to vote in the United States, Mark Warner will deliver the keynote address, not Hillary. Makes perfect sense, right? Unbelievable - and it get's worse on Wednesday.... More...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_democratic_convention_speakers.html

HONOLULU -- Senate candidate and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner is scheduled to deliver the Tuesday night keynote address at this year's Democratic National Convention - the same role that launched Barack Obama to national prominence four years ago.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival during the Democratic presidential primaries, is also scheduled to speak that night, Aug. 26. But Warner is being given the plum position, according to an e-mail that Obama campaign adviser Mike Henry sent to Virginia supporters late Tuesday.

Henry's e-mail, which was provided to The Associated Press, included a quote from campaign manager David Plouffe.

"Mark Warner is not afraid to challenge the status quo to bring people together and get things moving," Plouffe's statement read. "It's that kind of spirit and innovation that resulted in his selection as keynote speaker on a night when the convention program will focus on renewing America's economy."

Clyburn (the guy who smeared the Clinton's as racist) gets Wednesday's plum spot.

http://www.thestate.com/local/story/488309.html

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a Columbia Democrat, is scheduled to speak Aug. 27 at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, a prime Wednesday speaking spot.

Clyburn said Tuesday he hasn’t prepared his speech yet but will keep with the theme of the day, national security.

It’s a coveted spot on the convention calendar, which includes a keynote address that evening from the yet-to-be-named vice-presidential candidate.

Other speakers who have been named so far include Michelle Obama, wife of presumptive nominee U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who ended her presidential bid in June.

The third most powerful member of Congress, Clyburn is responsible for securing South Carolina’s “First in the South” primary in January. In the primary, Obama secured 55 percent of the vote, a landslide victory.

Clyburn said it’s possible for Obama to build on the primary win and take South Carolina during the November general election.

Meanwhile, Republicans and some Democrats are predicting South Carolina will remain a red state.

On Tuesday, Clyburn also shrugged off his ongoing rift with former President Bill Clinton. Last week during a media interview, Clinton described Clyburn as a former friend and said Clyburn had a hand in turning Clinton’s comments about Obama into racial incidents.

“I never said anything that ... was unkind,” said Clyburn. “All I said was Bill needs to chill.”

Clyburn said he only used the term “chill” because he was cold while doing the interview outside in Myrtle Beach.

“It was just a take on the weather,” he said.

— Gina Smith


And Michelle "never proud of my country" gets Monday, along with 9% Nancy.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/08/10/2008-08-10_michelle_obama_to_shine_as_star_of_conve.html

"WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton may have landed a plum keynote slot at the Democratic National Convention, but she'll be playing second fiddle to Michelle Obama - who will speak on opening night.

Convention planners announced Sunday that Barack Obama's wife will anchor the prime-time schedule on Monday, Aug. 25, to open the four-day Denver convention. Hillary Clinton had already accepted Obama's invitation to deliver the keynote on the second night.

A Democratic press release Sunday called her "a champion for working families and one of the most effective and empathetic voices in the country today."

Obama's vice presidential nominee will be Wednesday's prime-time headliner. As previously announced, Obama will deliver his acceptance speech on Thursday night from Invesco Field before more than 65,000 onlookers.

The Clintons can hardly complain about getting short shrift in Denver - Bill Clinton speaks Wednesday night, though not in prime time, and Chelsea Clinton will introduce her mother's Tuesday night talk. Even so, Obama's closest Senate pal suggested yesterday that Bill Clinton is still sulking over his wife's loss to Obama.

"I think Bill Clinton is hurting, I'll be honest with you," Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin told "Fox News Sunday."

But Durbin predicted the ex-President will pull out of his funk before long."

So yeah, pretty much a big f*ck you to the Clinton's.

Thank you so much for your courage and integrity!

Thank you for having such courage and integrity in making this long over due historic event happen! I am so thankful we have delegates like you who signed the petition so all delegates can vote for their candidate.

You are so very brave!

All of America will be watching the televised historic occasion of the 88th Anniversary of women's right to vote, commemorated in the speech of Senator Hillary Clinton on August 26th, 2008. The whole world will be listening as the rightful co-presumptive nominee Senator Hillary Clinton's name is read as the first still viable women presidential candidate ever to be on the roll call for all delegates to vote on at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. More...

This great milestone in the history of women speaks not only to the progress of the stature of women in the US, but also serves as a beacon of light and hope for women and thereby for all people worldwide. Never before has the American public demonstrated its commitment to women's rights being equal to human rights more fully than by casting 18 million popular votes for a woman candidate - proving without question that the citizen voters of our country have equal faith in a woman to guide our country as our nation's leader, the President of the United States.

Remember this is already 36 years after Shirley Chisholm declared her goal of becoming the "real, viable candidate", as a woman for President of the united states, Hillary Clinton has finally achieved that dream, not only in earning the title of first "real, viable candidate", but going far further, she is not only viable but has earned the right to be considered one of two possible nominees, she has demonstrated that a woman not only can, but if nominated, will win the white house for the Democratic Party.

The path to the White house for women has happened in struggles and quantum leaps forward. Embedded in the path's milestones along the way, are other firsts. Echoing the media bias that forced Senator Clinton to suspend her campaign, were the calls of the media and power elite 36 years ago, for Shirley Chisholm to give way so that Al Sharpton, a man who although a well known figure had comparatively little qualifications. Justly, and to her credit Shirley Chisholm refused to give way, and while she did not achieve her ultimate goal she did place her name on the roll-call and thereby irrevocably made another step forward on the path to the white House for woman, which could never be erased from history. Humphrey, the candidate who won the popular vote in the democratic primaries, but lost the nomination to McGovern on technicalities, graciously released his African American delegates to allow them to vote for Ms. Chisholm as an African American Democratic candidate for President of the United States however history has no mention of the gesture supporting the fact that she was also a woman.

This historic event is seen as crucial to the positive image of the Democratic Party. Party delegates represent 18 million constituents who voted their conscience in primaries and caucuses for Senator Clinton. Many party members, delegates, and their constituents view this year's convention as a golden opportunity to demonstrate that democratic principles are the cornerstone of the party, through an open and honest convention and nomination process.

Again thank you so much for making this possible!


Roger@DemocraticPartyNSC.org
www.DemocraticPartyNSC.org
We the people sentinels for
our endowed inalienable rights

Obama’s Dual Citizenship Disaster: an Overview [Update]

Posted on NOQUARTER By TexasDarling
Email: susanunpc@gmail.com
Site: http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com

Update: This post consists of theories based on extensive research. It would be nice if the candidate himself answered some straightforward questions about his background, and produced a valid birth certificate.

Since the story broke late Saturday that Barack Obama’s real Birth Certificate, now in Republican hands, has the name Barry Soetoro and not Barack Obama, as we predicted a couple of weeks ago, I notice that many people are still confused about the implications of dual citizenship for Obama.

The matter is somewhat complex, so I’ve decided to try to provide a summary, with the help of resident expert “Judah Benjamin.” More...

Indonesian Connection

Soetoro is the name on Obama’s Birth Certificate (BC) because a new BC was issued when he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, his step-father. His original BC, which we assume was issued for Barack Hussein Obama at birth, would have been sealed at the time of the adoption.

Barry Soetoro probably acquired Indonesian citizenship in approximately 1965-1966, and may still hold it. He possibly changed his legal name back to Barack Hussein Obama as an older child, teenager, or adult, possibly never did — but even if he did, this procedure would not result in a change to the BC. (If he never legally changed his name back, I imagine his current name on the Presidential ballot would be invalid.)

The Birth Certificate published by Obama on his campaign website (still there, by the way) and distributed to the media was forged because the real BC on file is in the name Soetoro, an identity he apparently wanted to hide from the American people.

I am getting reports from different sources that Obama traveled to Pakistan in ‘81 with an Indonesian passport.

Prior to 2007 (and possibly earlier), Indonesian law did not permit dual citizenship. Thus, if Obama actively kept his Indonesian citizenship, his US citizenship could be challenged.

I suspect that Obama may have dumped his Indonesian citizenship at some point along the way, to advance his political career. But I would not be shocked if he still holds it. This question, however, should not overshadow the serious problem of hiding his Indonesian identity from the electorate.

Kenyan Citizenship

I personally doubt that Obama holds Kenyan citizenship. If he did, he could be stripped of his US citizenship under US law.

Barack Hussein Obama probably was a citizen of the British Crown (first two years of his life) and, effective 1963, a citizen of Kenya by virtue of his father’s nationality.

Under the Constitution of Kenya, he would have automatically forfeited his citizenship at the age of 21 unless he affirmatively “claimed” it. If he took some action to keep his citizenship, that’s a big problem because 1) Kenya prohibits dual citizenship and 2) the US does not recognize dual citizenship with Kenya. Further under the Kenyan Constitution, given his circumstances, he could only have kept Kenyan Citizenship, if he had it, by means of a Ministerial, Prime Ministerial, or Presidential Decree. (Of course, Raila Odinga is Prime Minister of Kenya and Odinga’s father, Oginga Odinga, was Vice President of Kenya and Barack Hussein Obama, Sr, was a close ally of the older Odinga.)

If Obama retained his Kenyan citizenship and helped campaign for his cousin Odinga, that is especially problematic under Title 8 of the U.S. Code, the relevant language of which is:

a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality—

(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years…

Again, I don’t think that Obama has Kenyan citizenship. I think that the Rocky Mountain report and Andy Martin’s work are poorly sourced on this point. I sometimes get the impression that Kenya serves as a diversion from the REAL PROBLEM, which is his Indonesian connection. It would be shocking to get actual confirmation of current Kenyan citizenship.
Electability & Eligibility Issues

These revelations raise several troubling issues for Obama’s electability and eligibility.

Foremost, there is the concerted attempt to cover up his Indonesian background and dual citizenship/identity from the electorate.

Secondly, there is a potential Constitutional problem with a POTUS having held dual citizenship, and Obama knows it; thus, the deception.

The “natural-born” clause of Article II is commonly understood to relate to the place of birth, but more accurately relates to loyalty to country as Commander in Chief. That was the original intent of the founding fathers. In McCain’s case, there is no question because of his circumstances (born on military base to 2 US citizens, later joined the military, never had anything to do with Panama, etc.). In Obama’s case, it’s not nearly so clear, especially given his travels, relatives, and associations in some of these other countries.

In my mind, however, the biggest problem is that Sen. Obama has intentionally concealed his background, Indonesian identity, citizenship, and the fact that he was at one time Muslim.

What else is he hiding?
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Credit must be given to Judah Benjamin, historian and former journalist, who has provided ground-breaking research on the factual and legal issues related to Obama’s Indonesian connection and dual citizenship; to Polarik for breaking the story of the COLB forgery; to Techdude for his analysis (currently incomplete); to Dr. Kate for her tireless research efforts; to Michele, for bringing us a new COLB; to JimJ for his courage; to the No Quarter team for endless support; and to all the other writers and readers dedicated to the truth.
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READ these previous stories for more background information (in reverse chronological order):

Letter to New York Secretary of State by Michtell Langbert

ACT NOW: Contact Hawaii Attorney General by TexasDarlin

Eligibility Challenge, State-by-State: ACT NOW by Dr. Kate

Obama: The Forged COLB and a New Mystery by Judah Benjamin

Obama: A Disaster Waiting to Happen, Legal Challenges Imminent? by Judah Benjamin

Obama Hides Indonesian Identity, Fake Birth Certificate Explained by TexasDarlin

Birth Certificate: Obama, Soetoro, or Dunham by TexasDarlin

The Paper Trail: Obama’s Indonesia Background by Judah Benjamin

Obama the Indonesian: ‘Citizen of the World’? by TexasDarlin

Divided Loyalties: Obama’s Eligibility Problem, Part 2 by Judah Benjamin

Divided Loyalties: Obama’s Eligibility Problem, Part 1 by Judah Benjamin

Obama’s Birth — Questions Remain by TexasDarlin

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DISCLAIMER/COPYRIGHT: This article presents draft and preliminary opinions, viewpoints and information, all of which is subject to change. It is intended to be strictly theoretical and hypothetical, in an effort to examine and vet the background, qualifications, and eligibility for U.S. President of a serious candidate and public figure who is standing for that office. The assertions made herein are believed to be true by the author based on good-faith efforts to research the facts related to a public figure running for public office. In the event that documentation deemed to be reliable by the author comes to the author’s attention disproving one or more of the assertions made herein, corrections will be published.

Nothing herein should be quoted, cited, copied, or otherwise used or shared in whole or part without providing a link to the original source on the No Quarter or TexasDarlin blog, and acknowledging the author, TexasDarlin, which is a pseudonym. Nothing in this article should be used in a way that misrepresents the author’s meanings.

Cross posted from my blog, TexasDarlin

Voter Registration Is the New Battleground

By COREY DADE and JOHN D. MCKINNON
August 12, 2008; Page A4

As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants' eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.

Republicans are moving to examine surges in voter registrations in some states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law over the weekend that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud. More...

Republicans said they are particularly worried about prospects for fraud in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and are beginning to comb thousands of new registrations in those states for ineligible applicants. In some cases the huge numbers threaten to swamp their efforts -- and those of state and local governments to verify and process applications.

Election officials in Virginia and other states say there is no evidence of widespread fraud so far. Numerous studies have found fraud and other voting irregularities in past elections to be infrequent and generally not prevalent enough to influence the outcomes of most contests. Some Republican lawyers say that despite the huge numbers of new registrations in some areas, this year's problems could be fewer compared to prior years, because of improved procedures and tougher rules.

Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer last Tuesday said in a memorandum to campaign supporters that their own voter legal defense operation is under way, earlier than those of previous Democratic campaigns, including legal counsel on the ground in 50 states. The campaign is working closely with the Democratic Party, which said it has spent three years building a voter-protection program that includes more than 18 paid staff and 7,000 lawyers. The personnel deployed Aug. 1 and are dealing directly with local elections officials.

In just about every election, understaffed polling sites, malfunctioning voting machines and outdated voter data are reported. Such bureaucratic problems often are rolled into the divide between Democrats and Republicans over who should vote and how -- a battle that has become more intense since the 2000 Florida recount.

Traditionally, Democrats favor fewer checks on verification and greater access to voting to encourage larger turnouts, particularly among lower-income and minority voters, who tend to favor Democrats. Republicans usually push for closer monitoring, in such forms as laws with strict requirements for voters to present identification, which can result in lower turnout.

The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, which monitors elections, projects registrations this year will surpass the total from any previous single election year, building on momentum from the record 20 million registrations for the combined election cycles of 2004 and 2006. Newcomers helped drive turnouts for the Democratic primaries, which drew roughly 19.5 million more voters than in 2004, according to the Democratic National Committee.

"State elections systems have shown signs of stress, and there's a serious concern that they won't be able to handle the number of voters," said Wendy Weiser at the Brennan Center.

In Pennsylvania, where improper registrations have been a problem in past elections, state officials say rolls have increased by about 230,000, to 8.4 million, since the 2006 midterm elections. Some observers believe the large increase could invite more potential for voter-fraud problems, said Lawrence Tabas, general counsel of the state Republican Party. "When you get so many new registrations like that at record numbers...it's very difficult for people to monitor the validity of it," he said.

The Republican secretary of state in Alabama has asked the Justice Department to investigate claims and monitor polling sites on Election Day. On the Republican National Committee's Web site, an interactive U.S. map is used to track recent fraud allegations, proven or not, in a number of states. An RNC official said the Web page was launched in August 2007 and is compiled using news articles.

The efforts are on a collision course with those of Sen. Obama, whose strategy hinges on the success of efforts to boost the number of first-time voters, particularly among African-Americans, and people under the age of 30.

Other efforts are aimed at registering new voters around the country. In the largest effort, Project Vote and Acorn, a community organizing group, are teaming up with the aim of registering 1.2 million people nationally by Labor Day.

Project Vote's executive director, Michael Slater, acknowledged occasional problems with voter registrations, but said that many are the result of poor record keeping. He said a greater risk comes from Republicans' efforts to police the rolls. "We don't have a real history in the last 10 to 15 years of large-scale voter fraud," he said. "What we do have a problem with is getting everyone on the rolls and making sure their votes are counted."

Sen. McCain's campaign is keeping distance from rank-and-file Republicans' efforts to police the new registrations. "State and local parties have the primary responsibility for monitoring local voter registration and identifying problems," Trevor Potter, the campaign's general counsel, said in a written statement provided to The Wall Street Journal in response to questions. But, he added, "Our view is that advance monitoring of legal developments can avoid real legal problems later on -- especially on Election Day."

The St. Louis weekend training session, held annually by the National Republican Lawyers Association, featured a session on voter fraud and possible Republican responses. The panel included Sen. McCain's Election Day coordinator, Michael Roman, as well as Foley & Lardner lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a vocal critic of Democratic-allied groups' efforts to fight what many Republicans regard as necessary ballot-integrity safeguards.

Ms. Mitchell warned about what she regards as a long pattern of abuses in registration by groups such as Acorn and their Democratic allies. "We're all for getting people involved in the process...and getting them to the polls," she said in an interview later. "What we're not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It's a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry."

She urged lawyers working on behalf of state and local party groups and campaigns to monitor new registrations. She also pointed out that Sen. Obama himself -- in his past life as a community organizer -- was "involved" with some of the groups that have been responsible for abuses in recent years.

Obama campaign spokesman Corey Ealons said, "Then, as now with his national campaign for the president, Barack Obama has always worked to inspire individuals to exercise their right to vote. He sees that as a key to his victory this fall."

Years before he took elected office in Chicago, Sen. Obama ran Project Vote's operation there. This year Acorn's political action committee, which the organization said is entirely separate from its voter-registration operation, has endorsed Sen. Obama's campaign. The Obama campaign has said it doesn't accept financial contributions from the PACs of interest groups that both register voters and endorse candidates.

Write to Corey Dade at corey.dade@wsj.com and John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com

Will Obama Fight the Health Care Fight?

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON -- Before the energy-price crisis, before the mortgage crisis, before the credit crisis and the banking crisis, there was the crisis in health insurance that is in reality a crisis in care.

This crisis has deepened in recent years as the number of uninsured has climbed and out-of-pocket costs for those still with insurance have soared. It has become common knowledge that a serious illness -- even among those with insurance -- can plunge families into bankruptcy. Though "problems paying for gas" topped the financial challenges people listed in the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll, "problems paying for health care and health insurance" ranked third -- just behind job concerns but well ahead of paying for food, dealing with credit card debt and paying the mortgage. More...

So it is downright shocking that there was a tussle over what the 2008 Democratic platform would say about the party's generations-long, bedrock commitment to health care for all Americans. In short, presumptive nominee Barack Obama did not draft a statement keeping that pledge. He presented instead his plan as one that would provide "access to" affordable and comprehensive health care. A coalition of liberal activists and Hillary Clinton supporters managed to negotiate a change so that the platform says the party is "united behind a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care." Inclusion of the word "guaranteed" was the crucial point.

On the surface, this may look like a victory for Clinton supporters or even for the far larger group -- that is, millions of Democrats -- who have long believed that the promise of guaranteed, universal health care is a fundamental principle of their party. I am less certain, and it's not because I know that politicians can discard party platforms faster than they rid themselves of scandal-tainted donors.

It is because Obama did not campaign during the primaries on a plan that would achieve universal coverage, and indeed, excoriated Clinton for her proposal to mandate that everyone have it. In fact, even some of those involved in achieving the small health-care victory take little solace from it. "I'm not sure that Obama will actually pursue the same kind of idea that we had inserted in the platform," says Donna Smith, who lobbied the platform panel as a member of Progressive Democrats of America. "I think we will have to pursue our congressional representatives to bring legislation forward."

Smith is not a Clinton delegate, or even a convention delegate. She and her husband Larry were featured in the Michael Moore film "Sicko" because they were forced into bankruptcy and lost their home trying to pay the out-of-pocket costs stemming from her treatment for uterine cancer and his for heart disease. "Our purpose was not to attack the party," says Smith, who says she wants Obama to be elected and describes herself and her husband as "good and loyal Democrats." But certain lines have to be drawn.

"To say you're going to provide affordable coverage to people is not the same as giving them health care," she says. "Just because you have insurance coverage does not guarantee you access to the care that you and your doctor decide you need. And people with insurance understand that."

Most Democrats do, too.

In 1992, the party's platform said everyone should have "universal" access to health care "not as a privilege, but as a right." In 1996, a party chastened after the collapse of President Bill Clinton's health care initiative nonetheless committed itself to "ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, high-quality health care." In 2000, the platform noted that "for 50 years, the Democratic Party has been engaged in a battle to provide the kind of health care a great nation owes its people." In 2004, the platform said this: "We believe that health care is a right and not a privilege."

Securing that right is as important now as it was four, or even 50, years ago. When gas prices recede, when the housing market stabilizes and fears of imminent job losses ebb, there will still be an unconscionable gap between the glory of American medical science and the ability of millions of people to get the most basic care.

Obama avoided an intra-party brawl over the health platform. The unanswerable question is whether he will be as determined, as president, to take on the much larger -- and excruciatingly harder -- health-care fight.
mariecocco@washpost.com

By the way, here's McCain's healthcare plan: "We want a system of health care in which everyone can afford and acquire the treatment and preventative care they need. Health care should be available to all and not limited by where you work or how much you make. Families should be in charge of their health care dollars and have more control over care." Sound similar?

Democratic Party Collapses into “stiff-arm” politics

**************************************************************
One Patriot wrote the letter below to the governor – please follow suit then gently very gently Please encourage the delegates, (email within) to have the courage to stand up for democracy! We now have the opportunity – we caught the Dem’s red handed strong arming these delegates– and we should take this to the press. Please take this information and go viral with it NOW! Be gentle with these Delegates they have been strong and need our appreciation and our support !!!!!! More...

These are not superdelegates these are the elected delegates committed to Hillary. They are being pressured not to sign a petition allowing Hillary to have her name placed in nomination during roll call just as many before her have in the past! We need 300 and could easily fall short. Rendell is trying to stop the Democratic process in PA! Tell Rendell this is wrong and support the Delegates for standing strong
**************************************************************

From: “Rachel A. Moore” <rachel@padems.com>

To: akessler@wolfblock.com ; barbzs@yahoo.com ; bcooper@wcupa.edu ; bdonahower@yahoo.com ; bradkop@yahoo.com ; burnsjb@co.washington.pa.us ; butkovitz1118@msn.com ; cacooke42@gmail.com ; carolf126@comcast.net ; cgeorge@pahouse.net ; cod3699@cup.edu ; colleen@burketts.org ; connie.slye@gmail.com ; cottage82@gmail.com ; cparker@pahouse.net ; d.fillman@afscme13.org ; d.kinross@verizon.net ; Dan.Onorato@alleghenycounty.us ; DauphinDemsDiane@comcast.net ; dbarnes@montcopa.org ; debra4303@comcast.net ; dfrankel@pahouse.net ; dhart@bacweb.org ; dscott@dc47.org ; dtive@tivelobbying.com ; edsdc85@yahoo.com ; erafalkomcnulty@comcast.net ; glawrence@lowey.com ; gnealh@gmail.com ; greg.scott2@gmail.com ; gregoryhold12@hotmail.com ; guridy@aol.com ; guys@bedford.net ; hendrce8@yahoo.com ; herrlk@embarqmail.com ; hizzonr@msn.com ; hkinser@wojdak.com ; hratner@verizon.net ; igolfwt@aol.com ; infosundaysun@yahoo.com ; j.tait@afscme13.org ; jamesrsheppard@gmail.com ; jardini@alltel.net ; jjordan@pft.org ; jjsnyder@windstream.net ; jlynch@mercyhurst.edu ; jmhoeffel@comcast.net ; joeknox@comcast.net ; jsellers@lu19.com ; jsinnott@erie.pa.us ; jtarka1293@aol.com ; jtesterman@psea.org ; kkcampbell@local108rwdsu.org ; klborski@comcast.net ; lam@millesq.com ; leslie.k.carter@phila.gov ; lfarinella1421@hotmail.com ; litz@mbcomp.com ; lmcleaish@psea.org ; lorrib433@aol.com ; maa@hangley.com ; mal@ekmelaw.com ; maria.q.sanchez@phila.gov ; mariaciuf22@aol.com ; marjorie@sas.upenn.edu ; mbtasco@aol.com ; mbuflaw@netzero.com ; mcdermo427@aol.com ; mcrossey@psea.org ; mdivecchio@eriecountygov.org ; mibbutters@yahoo.com ; michelebortner@comcast.net ; mxg2@psu.edu ; nicknewe12@aol.com ; npmills@comcast.net ; pastorquann@bbcforchrist.org ; peggygrove@comcast.net ; pgiding@philaflcio.org ; psjanvey@aol.com ; rjsestak@sestakforcongress.com ; rlw@patreasury.org ; Rob@robhop.com ; roie929@aol.com ; rovnerr@dial-law.com ; rubyehusband@verizon.net; chw307@comcast.net; hratner@verizon.net







Dear Clinton Delegates,



Please see the following memo from Mary Isenhour, Executive Director. Should you have questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact us at the number below.



Thank you,



Rachel Moore



Rachel A. Moore, Office Director

Pennsylvania Democratic Party

300 North 2nd Street, 8th Floor

Harrisburg, PA 17101

ofc. 717.920.8470 / fax 717.901.7829



TO: All Clinton Delegates

FROM: Mary Isenhour Executive Director

DATE: August 11, 2008

RE: Nomination

If anyone approaches you about signing a petition to place Senator Clinton’s name in nomination at the Democratic National Convention, the Governor has asked me to ask you to refrain from signing such a petition until we know what Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have worked out. As always, please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

**************************************************************
Governor Rendell,

I am very disappointed in you and the position you’ve taken to squelch the democratic process that our forefathers fought so hard to establish. Your action to ask democratic delegates to suppress the support for the presidential candidate they were elected to support is regrettable. I don’t understand why the Democratic Party wouldn’t let the process work and insist on nomination prior to finalization of the process. The Democratic national convention was established to nominate a presidential candidate through the voice of the people, the people of this great nation. I certainly hope it was not established to “stiff-arm” people to nominate a candidate, not of their choice or the choice of the people. Otherwise, we’ve become like so many other nations in the world that pretend to have democratic process, but the choices are made by the elite few. And the process sometimes ends in acts of violence to make sure their candidate of choice is elected, as in the recent past in Pakistan.



It’s good that John Adams, Jefferson Davis and Benjamin Franklin didn’t follow the party line; otherwise we would still be under the rule of the Queen of England. But then they were leaders not followers and thank goodness for that. You should have insisted that this nominating process continue to finalization at the Democratic National Convention, instead of bending to the party line.



I personally am frustrated with this entire process of counting some peoples votes and not others, popular vote in some states and caucus’ in others, six months of primary campaigns and when its your turn to vote only two candidates remain in the pool, and now “arm twisting” at the Democratic National Convention. I thought America was an example to the world in free elections and just electoral processes, but maybe I am mistaken.



Thanks,

David

PA Voter Related to a Delegate

Backers want Clinton nominated at convention

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Tuesday, August 12, 2008

(08-11) 21:08 PDT --

A determined crowd of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's delegates - preparing to head to the Democratic Party's national convention in Denver - have begun gathering signatures to ensure her name is placed into nomination, insisting their effort won't take spotlight off presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama. More...

Many of those involved in the campaign, which they say is a matter of respect and acknowledgement of 18 million voters who backed Clinton, argue that the nomination of the New York senator is a matter of historic and political precedent at such party conventions. And they're chafing at reports that the campaign of the Illinois senator is resisting the efforts - and even hoping to avoid a roll-call vote.

"Since 1884, we've had a roll-call vote. ... It's a nominating convention, not a coronation," said Garry Mauro, the four-term Texas land commissioner and past gubernatorial candidate who ran against George W. Bush - and who will go to his 10th Democratic national convention this month as a Clinton delegate.

With less than two weeks until Aug. 25, when Democrats open their nominating convention in Denver, the sentiment is typical of many Clinton delegates who say the nomination of the New York senator from the floor of the convention doesn't endanger Obama's presidential campaign - and could serve his cause.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on the story, but many supporters of the presumed Democratic nominee suggest that Clinton will get more than her share of high-profile face time and respect at the convention.

She is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Aug. 26 - reportedly to be introduced by her daughter, Chelsea - and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is delivering the prime-time address on the following night, when the vice presidential candidate is nominated.

Moving on

Still, "I don't think there's any harm in nominating Sen. Clinton at the convention," said David Serrano Sewell of San Francisco, one of the delegates at the forefront of the signature-gathering movement. "It will acknowledge the success we had, and it will give an opportunity for people to express themselves and get behind Obama and win in November."

Already, he said, Clinton delegates have more than half of the 300 signatures needed to put Clinton's name into nomination - and they fully expect to get more than enough by the time the convention begins in Denver.

"It's a simple thing to do, and it's the biggest sign of party unity," said Laura Spanjian, a San Francisco Clinton delegate who also supports the move. "If we do that one thing, the Hillary people can get past it - and move on."

Clay Dougherty, another San Francisco delegate for Clinton, said that "if the situation were reversed, the Obama people would feel the same."

"For the first time in a generation, it's been a close election ... and this was such a unique situation," he said, in which the first major African American presidential candidate competed with the first major female presidential candidate. "We need to honor both candidates," he said.

And many Democrats suggest that the move to accommodate Clinton's supporters may be politically smart.

"Sen. Clinton is going to do everything she can to make sure Sen. Obama is the next president - and that will include how the convention is handled and the role she plays," says Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, who was a Clinton supporter and a past White House spokesman for Bill Clinton.

But "polls out there show that older women are the potential swing demographic in this election," he said. "It helps Obama and the party ... to have her play a prominent role in the convention."

Under the rules of the Democratic National Committee, 300 valid delegate signatures are needed in order to place a candidate's name on the ballot - if the candidate agrees to it.

Bob Mulholland, an undecided California superdelegate, said that means "if a candidate's got delegates, then both names can be placed in nomination" - and the losing candidate, in this case Clinton, can declare, " 'Let's make it unanimous.' "

Or Clinton can be nominated and a surrogate speaking on her behalf can say, "The senator has declined, but let's vote on Obama," he noted.

A third option is that she won't allow her name to be nominated at all, he said.

Organized resistance

Mauro said that because it was such a closely contested election, he is mystified as to why the Obama campaign is resisting and even balking at a roll-call vote, according to some reports.

"Are these folks so new to politics, are they so arrogant, that they think he's different from every other nominee we've ever had?" he asks.

Serrano Sewell says one reason for the resistance may be that some Democratic officials have apparently mistakenly associated the delegates' activities with those of an independent group of Clinton supporters who call themselves PUMAs (which stands for "Party Unity My Ass"), who have pledged that they will protest outside the Denver convention.

He says there's no connection.

"We're not trying to drag Obama down," he said. "We're Democrats. We're precinct captains. We're fundraisers. We're the kind of Democrats Obama will need to win in November."

Dougherty says he's now waiting for a signal from Clinton herself about what might happen next in Denver.

"If she releases us for the sake of party unity, fine," he said. "But she hasn't done that. The campaigns are talking - and I respect they need to come to an agreement that makes both sides happy."

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.

NPR interviews PUMAs Darragh Murphy and Pamela Merritt

Now first off, I am just plain glad this happened. Any discussion of roll call at Denver in the wider mediasphere is good. Specially NPR is even a better place, it is listeners of this demographic that really need to do a lot of soul searching. And they can have an effect if they put their mind to it.

Both Darragh and Pamela were excellent. They were composed, lively, quick, and happy sounding. The last was important since the host Michel Martin (Click here to see the NPR story and hear the audio) kept pushing the angry Hillary voter agenda. Both lady pumas did well on that score. All in all a good show, but the host let her slip show, I think.

Please advise all your friends to post these links in their blogs.

Barack Obama Needs to Carefully Handle Hillary Clinton's Supporters

August 11, 2008 10:24 AM ET | Bonnie Erbe

One media outlet described the release of the draft Democratic platform as a "compilation of Obama stump speeches," with just a nod to former candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards.

But a close Clinton ally tells me the Clinton camp is quite happy with the platform's inclusion of language to the effect that Clinton placed 18 million "cracks" in the glass ceiling (an allusion to her winning 18 million votes during the primaries).

That said, there are heated discussions ongoing "as we speak" between Clinton's representatives and the now Obama-controlled Democratic National Committee over Clinton's role at the convention. The big question is whether or how to acknowledge her win of almost 1,900 delegates (1,896) to Obama's 2,229. More...

One would think with his nomination now secure, Obama's people would be happy to take the high road and acknowledge Clinton's accomplishments. Particularly since a new poll shows some 24 percent of her former supporters say they will either vote for rival Sen. John McCain or not vote at all.

Not so, says my source. With the Democratic Convention just weeks away, it is still unclear whether Hillary Clinton's name will be placed in nomination or included in the roll call at the event. At a recent event, Clinton encouraged her supporters to yell and scream at the convention, but to then unify the party.

In the video, she says, "I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views were respected. I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified. Because I know from just what I'm hearing that there's this incredible pent-up desire. And I think that people want to feel like OK, it's a catharsis,we're here, we did it, and then everybody get behind Senator Obama. That is what most people believe is the best way to go. No decisions have been made. And so we are trying to work all this through with the DNC and with the Obama campaign."

Clinton and Obama released a joint statement earlier this week affirming they'll work together. Yet my source tells me "togetherness" is not the tone used to describe negotiations between the camps. The Clinton people want to employ some method used at a prior convention. It was suggested to me, for example, that the roll call could be announced, but before the voting started, Clinton could come to the podium and tell all her delegates to cast votes for Obama. Diane Mantouvalos is cofounder of the website JustSayNoDeal.com. She told me by phone from Boston this week that many Clinton supporters won't be satisfied if the Obama camp denies Clinton delegates an opportunity to be seen and heard at the convention: "Democracy isn't something you negotiate. It is only fair for her delegates to cast her vote."

Ellen Moran is the executive director of Emily's List, which endorses pro-choice female Democratic candidates for office. The group backed Clinton before she ended her campaign in June. Now Emily's List won't endorse but is supporting Obama. She told me in person this week:

"What I think we'll see at the convention is Senator Clinton and Senator Obama working together and many of our supporters working together to show real unity...to elect Obama and to elect Democrats up and down the ticket this November," she said. "You might say that women voters hold this election in the palm of their hands. And certainly every Democrat running—and Obama is no exception—will have to continue to work to win those women over. "

Mantouvalos told me that without Clinton supporters behind him, Obama cannot beat McCain: "We contend [that lack of unity is] the reason Senator Obama is in a dead heat with a 71-year-old Republican, and—no disrespect for Senator McCain, but age is a factor to many voters. He represents the incumbent party, [which] most of the American people are unhappy with. Why is it that they are tied right now?"

Mantouvalos believes it is because a large chunk of Clinton's 18 million supporters are upset the Obama campaign has not been more gracious toward Senator Clinton and has done little to reach out to her former supporters.

Eeny-Meeny, Chile Beany, the Spirits are about to Speak!

Posted on August 11, 2008 by riverdaughter and reposted here to share. Click to read More...

It was two months ago when I wrote the first couple of posts on the PUMA movement. In one of those posts, I wrote about how they were going to frame us:

Like adolescents, they insist on making their own decisions and yet expect us to get them out of a jam later. They hate us because of who we are and yet they need us in order for them to get what they want. And the superdelegates are the too permissive parents who are giving in to them because they can’t handle the screaming and guilt trips that will follow if they don’t.

This is where we come in, PUMAs. We will fill the role that the superdelegates have abrogated. It is our job to say “no”. We do not want to lose in 2008. We do not want another four years of Republican rule. We want 4 years of intelligence, competence and courage in a time of what will surely be a very critical time in our nation’s history. Terrorism is still out there. There are two wars going on. Our military is stretched so thinly that our national security is compromised. We have an energy crisis and many families are hurting. Our financial institutions got themselves over their heads. And there is a serious environmental catastrophe at hand in global warming.

Now is not the time to put a love object in office, a weakling who will be entirely dependent on his power elite enablers. Or worse, he may be a dissembler who has barely disguised his contempt for the voters.

There will be a lot of calls for “Unity!”. But let us acknowledge what this really is. “Unity” is a weapon that the party is going to use against us. It is the emotional blackmail of the teenager. “If you don’t let me have my way, it will be all YOUR fault if something bad happens!” “If you don’t get in line, it will be YOUR fault if we lose.

Of course, the old political blogosphere, especially the Big Orange Cheeto, has been foaming at the mouth for about a month now about how we are going to lose the election for Obama and it will be all our fault if McCain wins. We now have the pundits making this same case. Listen to Diane Mantavoulos and Susan Estrich debating the matter on To The Point today (Click on the Hillary tab at the bottom). As Susan spins it, our movement is going to end up electing McCain and it’s better to give a show of quiet unity at the convention, no matter what. She waxes nostalgic about how she was a young’un in 1980 when she worked to get Ted Kennedy the nomination. “Ahh, yes, those were the days. We were all babes in the woods and had no idea what we were doing” stuff.

Please, Susan. Kennedy had about 600 delegates tops. He was so far behind Carter it wasn’t funny. There was no possibility of overturning the will of so many *pledged* delegates. You weren’t suffering from youthful inexperience. You were suffering from stupidity.

This convention is a completely different animal. Hillary is well within striking distance, the superdelegates are going to decide it regardless of the nominee and once the credentials committee gets around to acting on Obama’s letter asking for MI and FL to be restored to full strength, he won’t have enough delegates to be the presumptive nominee anymore. (I suspect the Credentials Committee will meet at around 11:55pm on the day before the convention so he can ride this baby all the way to the end and make Hillary look like an usurper if she unsuspends her campaign. Yeah, we’ve got your number, Axelrod.)

What Susan seems to be missing, but what she oddly catches onto just before the segment ends, is that you can not fake unity. You can put Hillary’s delegates on mute. You can threaten and intimidate them until they are afraid of their own shadows, You can lie to them so they have no idea if they are supposed to vote for Hillary or Obama or Julius Caesar. It can certainly be made to *look* like 3400 pledged delegates voted in unison for The One while they all held hands and sang “I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” But the voters don’t give a flying f%&* When you have 36,300,000 million voters in your party and you choose to ignore a little more than half of them, all you end up with is frustration, not unity. You take away the voters right to influence at the convention. Remember “self-determination”? Yeah, we used to broadcast all around the world urging citizens of other countries to insist on it and accept no substitutes. But in this country, in this election year, it is perfectly OK to squelch the self-determination of half of your party for a predetermined outcome. That may be a very satisfying short term goal. Sort of like an orgasm with 75,000 of your closest friends in a football stadium. But when it’s over, the party is going to find that it screwed over the wrong people.

Hey, if the DNC and Obama and all his supporters want to go this route and bully, swagger, cheat, steal and suppress the party because they simply must have their way, well, there isn’t much we can do to stop them. THAT is the superdelegates’ job. If the superdelegates just go along to get along and nominate a guy who is over his head and unelectable, that’s their fault when he loses. We tried to talk some sense into them.

We are just voters who wanted to nominate the best person for the job. We may be shut out now, but come November 4th, we are going to have a chance to exercise our constitutional rights and tell the DNC exactly how we feel about being given a choice between a rock and a hard place.

Enjoy the afterglow while it lasts, guys.

***********************

You can find more on the subject at US News and World Report in an article by Bonnie Erbe: Barack Obama Needs to Carefully Handle Hillary Clinton’s Supporters.

A Third Palestinian Brother and the FEC Says “Hi” To Barack Obama

From NOQUARTER reposted here:

The The Real Barack Obama has a hot follow-up story I just couldn’t resist stealing.

Last week we saw where Monir and Hosam Edwan, two brothers from a Hamas Compound, who claimed to be lving in the non-existent town of “Rafah, Georgia,” contributed between $24,000 and $33,500 ( moving-target sum) to the Obama campaign. More...

Initially, the two jihadists brothers claimed that they bought T-Shirts from Obama’s website.

Then the Obama campaign claimed they returned the money to the Edwan brothers and forgot to report it to the FEC due to a technicality.

Then the Hamas-Sycophants Edwan brothers declared that they never received any refund from the Obama campaign at all.

As skunky as that all sounded, there is yet more.

It seems there is a third brother, Osama Edwan, who contributed to Obama’s campaign as well. He also disclosed that he is from the non-existent town of “Rafah, Georgia”.

Click here to see brother Osama Edwan’s donation to Barack Obama. Hamas sure is busy helping to make sure their Wink-Wink endorsement of Barack Obama sticks.

There’s still more to this story. I would say that the FEC wasn’t asleep over the donations of Monir and Hosam Edwan. So I don’t imagine an inquiry into Osama Edwan can be far behind. No doubt the Obama campaign will say they ‘refunded’ the contributions but “forgot” to report the entire affair to the FEC due to a “glitch”. After all, that’s what they claimed happened with Monir and Hosam Edwan’s contributions.

That Obama “technical glitch” sure seems to be an ongoing problem. It appears that the “technical glitch” the Obama campaign claims kept them from reporting that they “refunded” these illegal donations to the FEC occurred not once, but twice. The campaign didn’t report the “refunds” in their end of year report. But they also had a second formal oppotunity to correct their “glitch” via a response to a direct FEC inquiry–and they failed to do so.

Today, the Obama Report writes that Pamela Geller, who provides copies of the documents at Atlas Shrugs, discovered that

“… the FEC had sent two letters to the Obama campaign seeking additional information regarding contributions it received that appeared to exceed the $2300 legal limit.

Among those questionable contributions, were donations from Monir and Hosam Edwan.The Obama campaign responded to the first letter in May 2008, but apparently the FEC was not satisfied with its response and sent out a second letter to the Obama campaign on July 30,2008 requesting additional information for sixteen pages of questionable contributions, including several of Monir Edwan’s contributions.

So apparently, the Obama campaign failed to tell the FEC about the refunded money both in its original FEC report and in its response to the FEC’s letter in May of 2008 (5 months after they allegedly returned the money). Otherwise, the FEC would have had no reason to further question them about these donations in its follow up letter (in July) - which makes the Obama campaign’s claim - that it returned their donations in December - all the more difficult to swallow.

You can see the two FEC letters to the Obama campaign here and here. You certainly won’t get to see them on MSNBC or CNN.

So what about these contributions, Barky? I mean they are illegal and you know it. So if you “refunded” this money, how come you didn’t say so in writing to the FEC. Just asking. We’re also looking forward to reading your August 29th deadline response to the second FEC inquiry. I mean, when two terrorist sympathizers in Palestine start to look more honest that you look, it doesn’t bode well for a man who wants to be the President of the United States. You know what they say about three strikes, right?

I also suspect that the next question the FEC will ask is where exactly on the Georgia USA map is “Rafah”. But hey, I could be wrong