"Some members of Congress now consider themselves 'immune' to public opinion"

Clinton emphasizes the importance of Democrats and Republicans sharing the future. | AP Photo

Josh Boak (Politico):

At Georgetown on Friday, Gene Sperling, who was director of the National Economic Council for Clinton and now for Obama, said the shutdown eventually led to cooperation because GOP leaders did not want to be seen as the problem.

“The public responded by essentially punishing the party they thought was most recalcitrant,” Sperling said. “What was at least nice about the time then was that people seemed to actually care about public opinion.”

Some members of Congress now consider themselves “immune” to public opinion, he continued, adding the best way to move forward is for leaders of both parties and both chambers to reach an agreement.

“It doesn’t always work, as you saw over the summer” with the debt ceiling debate, Sperling said. “But it’s the only chance you have.” MORE...

Howie P.S.: I guess nowadays when you want dismiss what most people think or believe (as reflected in polling) you can call it "public opinion." Or you can also set out to change it, with lies and money.

Bill Clinton on Obama: "when he’s got a real opponent ...we’ll be in a different world politically.” (with video)

MEDIAite with video (02:47)from CBS' Face the Nation:

Former president Bill Clinton argued on Face the Nation today that President Obama has, in essence, made himself his primary opponent leading up to the 2012 presidential election, and emphasized the role of compromise in contemporary politics.

Host Bob Schieffer asked Clinton if he agreed with James Carville (a former Clinton advisor) in saying that now is the time for President Obama’s team to panic and shake up their entire reelection strategy. Clinton did not take this view, but rather gave Obama credit for his jobs speech last week, which the former president thought was a good first step in taking care of the debt problem.

Clinton looked at President Obama’s struggle right now as a powerful political one. MORE...

Reich: "Why Obama Isn’t Fighting the Budget Battle"

Robert Reich:

Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democratic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires.

Most importantly, they’re worried the President’s absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year – large enough to imperil the fragile recovery.

But Obama won’t actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail.

Shortly after the Democrats’ “shellacking” last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. “It’s 1994 all over again,” he said. “Now we move to the center.”

The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That’s partly because so many of President Barack Obama’s current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton’s own shellacking in 1994. It’s also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012.

From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton’s campaign script — distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama — or so it’s supposed.

The superficial logic that so often passes for thought in Washington typically sees causation where there’s only correlation. In fact, there’s no reason to believe that Clinton’s lurch rightward at the start of 1995 is what won him re-election the following November. He was re-elected because of the strength of the economic recovery. MORE...

Robert Reich on Barack, Bill and The Tax Cuts

Robert Reich:

If the Democratic Party has stood for anything over the years it is to maintain and restore upward mobility for the majority of working Americans, ensure that the playing field isn't tilted in the direction of the privileged, and limit the power of the richest among us to entrench themselves and their heirs into a semi-permanent plutocracy.

Continuing the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, including a sharp cut in the estate tax, violates these core principles. Doing so in the midst of an economic emergency that demands bold measures to rescue America's vast middle and working class adds further insult. For President Obama and former President Clinton to tell America there's "no other choice" or that "this is the best we can do" -- when Democrats remain putatively in control of the House, Senate, and the presidency -- is misleading.

I admire Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. I advised the former and worked for the latter. They are good men. But they have either been outwitted by the privileged and powerful of America, or seduced by those on Wall Street and the executive suites of America into believing that the Republican nostrums are necessary, or succumbed Democratic advisors who think in terms of small-bore tactics rather than large and principled strategies. MORE...

"Bill Clinton's Message to Young Voters in Washington" (video)

pattymurrayforsenate, video (04:06):

President Bill Clinton talks about why students and young voters should support Patty Murray.

Robert Scheer: "Married to the Clinton Mob"

Robert Scheer:

Out of respect for privacy, even concerning famous people, I wasn’t going to write about the marriage of Chelsea Clinton to a Goldman Sachs alum and budding hedge-fund hustler with the resources to buy a $4 million loft so soon after graduating from Stanford. Hopefully Marc Mezvinsky won’t follow in the footsteps of his financier father, “Fast-Talkin’ Eddie,” as they called him back in Iowa, a former Democratic House member who just completed a five-year federal sentence for dozens of fraud felonies.

Anyway, Chelsea also worked at a hedge fund, her mother dabbled in banking shenanigans in her Whitewater days and father Bill’s radical deregulation made it a lot easier for financial plunderers to stay on the right side of the law. So the Clintons and the Mezvinskys have a lot in common. I hope their children will do better, and I was going to simply wish them well until I read Tina Brown’s paean to power, “Why America Needed Chelsea’s Wedding,” in the trend-chasing Daily Beast, which she edits. MORE...

Howie P.S.: I'm know I'm going to anger some friends I respect by posting this.

"Barack Obama fails to rally support for energy bill"

Guardian (UK):

Barack Obama's hopes of leveraging public anger at the Gulf oil spill into political support for his clean energy agenda fell flat today after he failed to rally a group of Democratic and Republican senators around broad energy and climate change law.

The standoff suggests the Senate would formally give up on climate change law, and recast energy reform as a Gulf oil spill response, that would roll in far more limited proposals such as a green investment bank, or a measure to limit greenhouse gas emissions that would apply only to electricity companies. MORE...

Howie P.S.: In the race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, another disappointment for Obama:"Bill Clinton Bucks Obama in Colo. Senate Race."

Breaking: "Bill Clinton Heralds Blogs, Answers Heckler"

Ari Melber (The Nation):

Pittsburgh, PA

9:42pm 8/13/2009 President Clinton just took the stage at Netroots Nation, opening with a joke about how many Republicans think President Obama was born in the United States, teeing off earlier remarks by Rep. Brad Miller. Then he turned serious, crediting the netroots for playing a constructive role in American politics.

"I'd like to thank you for what you do and the contribution you have made to dramatically elevating of our public discourse and the base level of knowledge of people [in politics]," he said at the top of his speech. "I keep a file with me on economics and a file on energy," Clinton continued, "I was looking it through it the other day and was stunned at the number of articles that came from blog sites."

Clinton also credited bloggers for being candid about their policy and partisan preferences. Bloggers takes sides, he told the crowd, and "you don't have to pretend you're not [taking sides]."

The former president turned to a few general issues, saying he hoped to provide "grist" for the mills of the netroots. "It matters whether this Congress passes a comprehensive health care reform bill for this President to sign," Clinton said, to applause, and he later said he has always favored a public option for health care reform.

Clinton declared that the new era of progressive politics could last 30 to 40 years "if we do it right." He reminisced about his time working for Sen. William Fulbright, and noted that after 1968 Republicans managed to build a long-term coalition based on cultural division and corporate economics. Then, taking a page out of the Fox News playbook, Clinton jokingly hurled the c-word at one opponent, arguing that President Nixon looked like a "communist" compared to later, more conservative Republicans.

Then, ticking through recent politics, Clinton credited his successor, George W. Bush, for tapping a new mood in the country by promising compassionate conservatism and a more open, tolerant stance towards immigrants. (Clinton also took a moment to knock Bush v. Gore as "one of the five worst decisions" ever handed down by the Supreme Court.) "America is a different place today," Clinton continued, stressing that "the culture" is now with progressives, based on racial progress and global interdependence. The U.S. will have no "majority race" by 2050, Clinton added.

About 20 minutes into his address, Clinton was briefly interrupted by blogger Lane Hudson asking about a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." First Clinton joked that the interruption sounded more like a health care town hall. Then he turned serious, answering the question by noting that at the time, Congress built a "veto-proof" majority that would reverse any attempt to admit gays in the military by executive order. The crowd interrupted several times to applaud Clinton's defense. Continuing the multi-point defense, Clinton pointed to the conversion of Gen. John Shalikashvili, who opposed gays in the military at the time, and has since reversed his position. Stressing the complexity of the issue, Clinton said he "hated" what happened and regretted that gays remain excluded from open service in the military.

"While we're at it," the former president continued, "let me say one thing about DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]." Clinton defended the bill as a means to avoid an anti-gay constitutional amendment that, he argued, would have been worse for gay rights.

Turning back to his prepared remarks, Clinton urged attendees to continue their work on health care. He returned to discussing the blog posts he read, suggesting that some health care posts may be too technical to win over the general public. The former president emphasized that President Obama needed help to win the larger argument and moral imperative of health care reform, and that activists should be careful not to bog down in specifics. Clinton also credited the President for doing a great job at his New Hampshire town hall, and he touched on some of the conservative misinformation that has been percolating about health care reform. Finally, Clinton predicted that even if the public wavers on reform now, once a bill passes, it will draw significant public approval.

9:30pm 8/13/2009

The Big Dog is running late.

Organizers at Netroots Nation already pushed their first night schedule back to accommodate the late addition of President Bill Clinton, but now he's late for that, too. In the packed ballroom here, which is dotted with the most recent annual report from Clinton's foundation, people don't seem restless.

Attendees are cheering on Rep. Brad Miller, a dry speaker who still manages to be a netroots favorite. He just told the crowd that bipartisanship should not be prioritized in the Democrats' health care strategy, a gentle but clear rebuke to President Obama's tack, and is also knocking Republicans for comparing the President to Hitler. "I can't reach them all," he says, "you have to."

11:10am 8/13/2009

Netroots Nation, the official convention of the progressive blogosphere, kicked off its fourth annual gathering on Thursday, welcoming a slew of bloggers, activists, politicians and one former President to this industrial capital.

Bill Clinton is scheduled to give the keynote address on Thursday night. It is the first time that a former president has addressed the convention, which has previously featured Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Harry Reid, (then-Senator) Barack Obama and (then-Senator) Hillary Clinton.

On Friday, local politics will take center stage, as Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak are appearing to make their case to attendees. Specter, a recent convert to the Democratic Party, is fighting off a primary challenge from Sestak, who has drawn support from the netroots. Both politicians, however, hold positions that are largely to the right of the progressive blogosphere.

I am co-moderating their appearances on Friday -- along with Susie Madrak, a former reporter who blogs at Suburban Guerrilla -- and I'll be posting updates from the convention to this blog post. If you have question ideas, the conference is hosting a portal for people to submit and vote on questions for both candidates.

Update: Nation reader Mask replies: "Mr Melber, while you and the Technophiles are fighting it out in the 'blogosphere'... the real fight, for good or ill, is in town hall meetings."

I hear that, and Sen. Specter definitely held a lively town hall meeting this week. To be clear, though, this forum is also an in-person, town-hall style gathering -- though hopefully more civil than what went down in Lebanon, PA -- so it will be more physical than digital.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

AP:

Democratic officials said Thursday that Clinton will give a speech on the third night of the convention, before an address by the as-yet-to-be-named running mate for Barack Obama, the party's likely presidential nominee. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity before the details were formally announced.

Howie P.S.: Hey I'm just a blogger on his laptop, don't ask me "what does this mean"?

Barack Obama

"The Clintons Release Tax Info" (video)

VOTERSTHINKdotORG, video (08:28):

April 04, 2008 MSNBC HARDBALL.

"Bill Clinton Stumps in Houston for Hillary Clinton" (video)

KPRC, video (01:14), via WaPo:

Reminding voters of the high-stakes Texas and Ohio primaries next week, former President Bill Clinton touted his wife's experience, and education, energy, health care and jobs plan during a campaign sweep of 4 rallies in Houston on Wednesday. KPRC's Phil Archer reports.

Howie P.S.: TIME has "In Texas, Bill v. Barack."

"Candidates' spouses to visit Spokane Friday"

KXLY:

SPOKANE -- Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama will be campaigning in Spokane on Friday.

The Barack Obama campaign says that Michelle Obama will campaign for her husband in Spokane on Friday, and the Spokane County Democrats confirm that Bill Clinton will be in town the same day.

The annoucement comes the day after Super Tuesday - the closest thing the U.S. has to a national primary - but one in which the democratic candidates still found themselves neck-and-neck after all the votes had been counted.

Obama claimed a "big victory" in Tuesday's voting after winning 13 states. However, Clinton took home the top two prizes - New York and California - leaving her with a slight overall delegate lead.

Partially due to the fact that the democratic party splits delegates proportionally within a state, neither candidate was able to garner enough votes on Super Tuesday to pull ahead of the other candidate by a statistically significant margin.

While Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama will be in Spokane Friday, the candidates themselves are also expected to visit Washington. Barack Obama has already announced a campaign stop in Seattle for the end of the week, and Hillary Clinton is expected to make a similar appearance.

Washington - often a political afterthought considering that the nomination can be all but sewn up with the results of Super Tuesday - suddenly finds itself as a key nomination state. Louisiana and Nebraska will also hold democratic candidate voting on Saturday, however Washington is expected to be the most aggressively courted as it has 97 delegates at stake, by far the most among the three states.

As of noon Wednesday, no times or locations have been released for Michelle Obama or Bill Clinton's stops in Spokane. However, the Obama campaign did note that Michelle's appearance will be free and open to the public, and it is expected that Clinton's visit will be the same.

Barack Obama

"The Accompanists" (with video and slideshow)

WaPo, with slide show:

Both are confident and funny, opinionated and very smart. Both are Ivy League lawyers with working-class roots. Both have formidable identities independent of their formidable partners. Both are history-making spouses of history-making presidential candidates.

It is fascinating enough that Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are playing on the same field as their partners duel for the Democratic nomination. More intriguing still is her effectiveness, hardly a given for a recent campaign recruit matched against a two-term president.

Clinton, 61, earned his reputation as one of the most gifted national politicians in modern times while Obama was still a young lawyer trying to find herself. Obama, 44, kept her political forays to a minimum while building a career on community outreach in Chicago, yet more than a few enchanted voters have said after watching her that she should be the one in public office.

They share an ability to please a crowd, although in styles as different as a piano and a saxophone. Her riffs are typically smooth and tart, usually understated, always controlled; his are showy and wide-ranging, often roaming exuberantly through complex material.

On the campaign trail, as one staff member put it, Bill Clinton is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief validator. He zips around the country -- this week in states from Illinois to Georgia to Missouri to Colorado -- reassuring Democrats, above all, that she is ready but he has her back. Michelle Obama's role is more of a portraitist. She jetted to both coasts this week to deepen the picture of the self-described skinny black guy with a funny name, and to argue that a divided nation needs him now.

The Clintons and the Obamas are crossing rhetorical paths more frequently these days.

Leading up to the South Carolina primary, the voluble former president assumed the role of antagonist in chief. He called Barack Obama's assertion of consistent opposition to the Iraq war a "fairy tale" and suggested that Obama was way too admiring of Ronald Reagan. He told one audience that "people tell me that Hillary doesn't have a chance to win here" because the state's voters care so deeply about race and gender.

Michelle Obama, who rarely talks explicitly about her husband's Democratic opponents, had something to say about all of that.

"Another candidate's spouse has been getting an awful lot of attention," understandably, she wrote in a fundraising e-mail last week. "What we didn't expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we've seen recently. We didn't expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack's record."

The day before the primary, she and Bill Clinton campaigned within an hour's drive of each other.

"My fear," Obama told a rapt mid-morning audience at Central Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Hilton Head, "is that we don't know what truth looks like anymore.

"I desperately want change, personally," Obama said. "A change in tone, a change in the tone that creates division and separates us, that makes us live in isolation from one another. Sometimes our politics uses that division as a tool and a crutch. We think we can mend it all up after all the dirt has been thrown, but we can't."

Hours later, no dirt surfaced as Clinton addressed an enthusiastic throng on nearby St. Helena Island. He stayed on his very best behavior, developing the approach he has used in this week's run-up to Super Tuesday. More than an hour late, he skipped the pleasantries and charged right into his pitch.

Within three minutes, he was describing a brewing economic calamity. Within four, he was offering a three-point plan to deal with the mortgage crisis. Within five, he was rattling off his version of life in America seven years after the end of his presidency:

"Median family income after inflation's about a thousand dollars lower today than it was the day I left office. But the cost of health care has about doubled, the cost of a college education is up, the cost of energy is up, the cost of housing is up. Last year, food costs grew at twice the rate of inflation. . . . In our eight years, we had 22.7 million jobs and almost 8 million people move from poverty into the middle class."

On he went for more than an hour, firing off policies and programs as if it were a State of the Union address. Pell grants, health-care reform, stem-cell research, green-collar jobs, veterans, Medicare, the Geneva Conventions, Iran, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the tax code. He said, at one point, "Let me be very specific about this."

Hillary Clinton may be the presidential candidate, but much of the future Bill Clinton sketches on the stump is about putting the band back together. Watching him engage the crowd is a little like going to a Beach Boys concert, 20 years on. He knows all the old tunes and delivers them reliably. The crowd, mostly middle-aged and older, laughs and cheers in satisfied bursts, remembering the good times.

Clinton's talk is neither personal nor emotional. He does less to humanize his wife, which is often the designated role of political spouse, than to recite her credentials and bolster her argument that she is more ready for the White House than Obama. He mentions her often -- "The third thing she says we have to do"; "she will never tolerate that"; "finally, she believes . . . " -- but the narrative often veers into Clintons, plural, or Bill Clinton, singular.

"I tell people all the time," he said at one point, "this war is costing $120 billion a year."

Near then end, Clinton called his wife "the most qualified, best candidate I've had a chance to support for president in 40 years as a voter. You know, a lot of mean things have been said about Hillary over the years, mostly because she had the misfortune to be my wife and they were being mean to me. And they were mean to me because I won twice. It wasn't too complicated!"

The crowd loved it -- and received the intended message.

"If you vote for Hillary and she wins, you get two for the price of one," gushed Lynn Sutherland, 61, a part-time decorator, as Clinton 42 shook dozens of hands before racing to Charleston to introduce the aspiring Clinton 44. "There's an enormous amount of things he can do that will be unbelievably helpful to the country."

Beaufort resident Kevin Mears, 40, considered the former president's earlier criticism of Obama "a bit of a distortion. It's a bit of a no-no. But he's walking a line that others have never walked before. We should cut him a little slack."

Michelle Obama had a different challenge when she spoke to audiences of 200 or more in Hilton Head and rural Estill. She, too, talked of her spouse's readiness, but in different terms and tones, less a policy seminar than a plea delivered around a kitchen table. She pointed to his community organizing and his four terms in the Illinois senate.

Always the more pointed of the two Obamas, she wastes no words and takes her time with the ones she uses.

"Everywhere I go, people are saying, 'Barack is not detailed enough.' . . . You see, the truth of this matter is that this isn't rocket science," Obama said to row upon row of supporters in an Estill storefront, explaining that she has seen countless models of first-rate schools, early childhood education programs and senior centers. "That's what leadership means. It's someone who can touch our souls in a way we haven't seen and can inspire us to be better to one another and to ourselves. That is the difference in this race."

The Iraq war is an issue she addressed directly.

"Well, let me tell you something, I live with the man," Obama said, employing a mix of authority and incredulity. "He was always opposed to the war and he spoke out publicly against it at a time when that wasn't convenient for him. What his opponents won't tell you is he was in the middle of his own tough race for the U.S. Senate."

In etching the themes of transformation -- the core of the Obama campaign narrative -- she uses language that echoes conversations about values and propriety in the late '90s.

"It isn't just about hope and inspiration. It is about character, quite frankly," Obama said. "I am here, away from my kids, talking like this all over the country because Barack is different. It is about character."

Obama is often asked how she and her husband are handling the rough-and-tumble of the campaign. She swears she finds none of it surprising.

"Power," said Michelle Obama, "concedes nothing without a struggle."

Howie P.S.: Michelle is interviewed on CNN, video (08:23).
Barack Obama

About Billary and their friends

From Ari Melber (The Nation):
"CLINTON SURROGATE COMPARES OBAMA AD TO NAZI MARCH [UPDATED]" (with an apology).

Hillary Clinton made a point of stressing respect for Obama at Thursday night's debate. It is a shame that she is actually running a campaign that repeatedly smears him and disrespects the voters' ability to see through the facade.

From Joe Conason:
"Step Back, Mr. Clinton":

The most likely motive for Bill Clinton’s reckless political performance in recent weeks, ironically and sadly, is to redress the terrible humiliations he inflicted on his wife in years past. But unless he quickly regains control of himself, the most likely result will be to inflict irreparable damage on the presidential aspirations of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From The Caucus, NY Times political blog, "The Week That Keeps On Going":

Well, another passion of Senator Kennedy’s life — or at least another legislative mission — has been the No Child Left Behind Act which he championed alongside Republicans and President Bush.

And out comes the supposedly newly muzzled former president-spouse, after a host of controversial remarks in South Carolina, California and Nevada that many believe hurt his wife’s campaign, at an appearance as he criss-crosses the country these next several days on behalf of his wife:

From MSNBC’s First Read, Mr. Clinton today called that legislation a “train wreck,” and invoked Senator Kennedy’s name. Now, much criticism has been heaped on that education initiative for being under-financed, based on teaching-to-the-test and just a mess of regulations that aren’t all-inspiring for the children, for the next-generation.

Now, he concedes mistakes were made on both sides. But invoking Senator Kennedy specifically by name? Accident? Uh, probably not.

Howie P.S.: "Oops, they did it again."---It is sad and painful to watch the Clintons as they struggle though a tough campaign stretch.
Barack Obama

"Clintons come calling: Time to repay favors"

Joel Connelly (Seattle P-I):

Hillary and Bill Clinton are calling in 15 years' worth of political IOUs and asking old friends for help as they try to head off Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in Washington's Feb. 9 Democratic precinct caucuses.

"The loyalty goes back a long ways," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., noted Wednesday as she endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Murray put parameters on the endorsement, saying she was acting out of "personal loyalty and friendship." Murray, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, will not participate in the caucuses.

She was pointed about which Clinton she is embracing.

"I told Hillary that finding her own voice was absolutely critical," she said. "My support is for Hillary and the Hillary I knew before she went to the Senate and with whom I have served in the Senate."

Asked about recent days, in which ex-President Clinton attacked Obama and overshadowed his candidate wife, Murray posed a question asked by many Democrats across the country: "Who controls him?"

Gov. Chris Gregoire said she will endorse a candidate next week before the caucuses. Two close colleagues, Govs. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, have come out for Obama.

Gregoire was not tipping her hand, but acknowledged that the Obama-Clinton choice is much tougher than she expected.

"I will admit to you that I have vacillated," the governor said. "Where I was two months ago is not where I am today. I love the message of hope that he sends. But I really admire her experience."

Asked who is lobbying her, Gregoire replied: "Oh boy! Bill Clinton is trying to connect with me. Obama is trying to get hold of me." She has heard Clinton pitches from ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Townsend.

Gregoire gave a succinct answer to why she is being courted. "I think this state is absolutely in play," she said.

Withdrawal by John Edwards on Wednesday reduced the Democratic field to a two-person choice, pitting the first African-American to mount a viable bid for the presidency against the first woman with a clear shot at the White House.

"With Edwards out, my choice is Obama," Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin said after a breakfast with Madrona neighbors.

The Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., will campaign Friday in Seattle for Obama.

And Obama is coming back to the Northwest on Saturday. He will rally Democrats in Idaho, one of the nation's "reddest" states. Idaho holds its presidential caucuses on Super Tuesday.

Obama has been in the Seattle area four times. He drew big crowds to 2006 events at Garfield High School and Bellevue Community College, and packed Benaroya Hall for a lecture on his book "The Audacity of Hope."

The two visits of Obama's presidential campaign have combined inexpensive events -- a rally and a rock concert -- with pricey private fundraisers.

The Clintons have adopted a pay-per-view policy since the last big Pike Place Market rally of the 1996 presidential campaign. Bill Clinton has hawked books. He has collected $100,000-plus speaking fees in British Columbia. He has solicited local billionaires to help launch his foundation.

Hillary Clinton talked at a state Democrats awards ceremony in October, but squeezed no fewer than three private $2,300-a-person fundraisers into a 15-hour visit. She raised money for Sen. Maria Cantwell's 2006 re-election, but also took in $100,000 at a reception for her own Senate campaign.

The Clintons have done favors for which they can call in chits.

Cantwell, who endorsed Hillary Clinton early this month, has cited the Clintons' help in retiring her 2000 campaign debt. Bill Clinton raised $330,000 in a Seattle visit. Hillary Clinton opened her Embassy Row mansion in Washington, D.C., for a Cantwell fundraiser.

Hillary Clinton did a 1998 fundraiser for House candidate Jay Inslee at Dale Chihuly's glass sculpture studio. Bill Clinton wrote the foreword to Inslee's recent book "Apollo's Fire."

Inslee is a co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in Washington.

Both Clintons campaigned here for Cantwell in 2006. Bill Clinton did a fundraiser to benefit Rep. Jim McDermott's legal defense fund. McDermott fought a decadelong legal battle with Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, over the leak of an illegally taped conversation between House Republican leaders.

Hillary Clinton has been soliciting McDermott's support in a battle for the hearts and minds of Seattle liberals.

She has twice been the keynote speaker at Murray's annual Golden Tennis Shoes awards ceremony and fundraising lunch.

Murray praised Clinton's "steeliness and courage" in the face of a hostile crowd turned out by right-wing radio hosts in 1994 when the first lady launched a "Health Care Caravan" in Seattle.

The health care rally was one of two jolts that Clinton has experienced in coming to Seattle. The other was a mild earthquake that shook Seattle shortly before one of Murray's luncheons.

A joke ran across the ballroom, namely that the phrase "The earth moved!" was usually associated with Bill Clinton.

ENDORSEMENTS

Prominent Washingtonians who have endorsed presidential candidates in the '08 race:

Hillary Clinton: Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell; King County Executive Ron Sims; Rep. Jay Inslee; former Gov. Gary Locke.

Barack Obama: Rep. Adam Smith; Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin; former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice.

John McCain: Attorney General Rob McKenna; former Gov. Dan Evans; former Sen. Slade Gorton.

Barack Obama

"The Billary Road to Republican Victory"

Frank Rich (NY Times):

IN the wake of George W. Bush, even a miracle might not be enough for the Republicans to hold on to the White House in 2008. But what about two miracles? The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory.

Amazingly, neither party seems to fully recognize the contours of the road map. In the Democrats’ case, the full-throttle emergence of Billary, the joint Clinton candidacy, is measured mainly within the narrow confines of the short-term horse race: Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate?

Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan.

What has gone unspoken is this: Up until this moment, Hillary has successfully deflected rough questions about Bill by saying, “I’m running on my own” or, as she snapped at Barack Obama in the last debate, “Well, I’m here; he’s not.” This sleight of hand became officially inoperative once her husband became a co-candidate, even to the point of taking over entirely when she vacated South Carolina last week. With “two for the price of one” back as the unabashed modus operandi, both Clintons are in play.

For the Republicans, that means not just a double dose of the one steroid, Clinton hatred, that might yet restore their party’s unity but also two fat targets. Mrs. Clinton repeatedly talks of how she’s been “vetted” and that “there are no surprises” left to be mined by her opponents. On the “Today” show Friday, she joked that the Republican attacks “are just so old.” So far. Now that Mr. Clinton is ubiquitous, not only is his past back on the table but his post-presidency must be vetted as well. To get a taste of what surprises may be in store, you need merely revisit the Bill Clinton questions that Hillary Clinton has avoided to date.

Asked by Tim Russert at a September debate whether the Clinton presidential library and foundation would disclose the identities of its donors during the campaign, Mrs. Clinton said it wasn’t up to her. “What’s your recommendation?” Mr. Russert countered. Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to consider that.”

Not so happy, as it turns out. The names still have not been made public.

Just before the holidays, investigative reporters at both The Washington Post and The New York Times tried to find out why, with no help from the Clintons. The Post uncovered a plethora of foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia. The Times found an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clinton campaign donors, some of whom might have an agenda with a new Clinton administration. (Much as one early library supporter, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had an agenda with the last one.) “The vast scale of these secret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat whose legislation to force disclosure passed overwhelmingly in the House but remains stalled in the Senate.

The Post and Times reporters couldn’t unlock all the secrets. The unanswered questions could keep them and their competitors busy until Nov. 4. Mr. Clinton’s increased centrality to the campaign will also give The Wall Street Journal a greater news peg to continue its reportorial forays into the unraveling financial partnership between Mr. Clinton and the swashbuckling billionaire Ron Burkle.

At “Little Rock’s Fort Knox,” as the Clinton library has been nicknamed by frustrated researchers, it’s not merely the heavy-hitting contributors who are under wraps. Even by the glacial processing standards of the National Archives, the Clintons’ White House papers have emerged slowly, in part because Bill Clinton exercised his right to insist that all communications between him and his wife be “considered for withholding” until 2012.

When Mrs. Clinton was asked by Mr. Russert at an October debate if she would lift that restriction, she again escaped by passing the buck to her husband: “Well, that’s not my decision to make.” Well, if her candidacy is to be as completely vetted as she guarantees, the time for the other half of Billary to make that decision is here.

The credibility of a major Clinton campaign plank, health care, depends on it. In that same debate, Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Russert that “all of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care” are “already available.” As Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported weeks later, this is a bit off; he found that 3,022,030 health care documents were still held hostage. Whatever the pace of the processing, the gatekeeper charged with approving each document’s release is the longtime Clinton loyalist Bruce Lindsey.

People don’t change. Bill Clinton, having always lived on the edge, is back on the precipice. When he repeatedly complains that the press has given Mr. Obama a free ride and over-investigated the Clintons, he seems to be tempting the fates, given all the reporting still to be done on his post-presidential business. When he says, as he did on Monday, that “whatever I do should be totally transparent,” it’s almost as if he’s setting himself up for a fall. There’s little more transparency at “Little Rock’s Fort Knox” than there is at Giuliani Partners.

“The Republicans are not going to have any compunctions about asking anybody anything,” Mrs. Clinton lectured Mr. Obama. Maybe so, but Republicans are smart enough not to start asking until after she has secured the nomination.

Not all Republicans are smart enough, however, to recognize the value of John McCain should Mrs. Clinton emerge as the nominee. He’s a bazooka aimed at most every rationale she’s offered for her candidacy.

In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again. Mrs. Clinton’s spiel about being “tested” by her “35 years of experience” won’t fly either. The moment she attempts it, Mr. McCain will run an ad about how he was being tested when those 35 years began, in 1973. It was that spring when he emerged from five-plus years of incarceration at the Hanoi Hilton while Billary was still bivouacked at Yale Law School. And can Mrs. Clinton presume to sell herself as best equipped to be commander in chief “on Day One” when opposing an actual commander and war hero? I don’t think so.

Foreign policy issue No. 1, withdrawal from Iraq, should be a slam-dunk for any Democrat. Even the audience at Thursday’s G.O.P. debate in Boca Raton cheered Ron Paul’s antiwar sentiments. But Mrs. Clinton’s case is undermined by her record. She voted for the war, just as Mr. McCain did, in 2002 and was still defending it in February 2005, when she announced from the Green Zone that much of Iraq was “functioning quite well. ” Only in November 2005 did she express the serious misgivings long pervasive in her own party. When Mr. McCain accuses her of now advocating “surrender” out of political expediency, her flip-flopping will back him up.

Billary can’t even run against the vast right-wing conspiracy if Mr. McCain is the opponent. Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay hate Mr. McCain as much as they hate the Clintons. And they hate him for the same reasons Mr. McCain wins over independents and occasional Democrats: his sporadic (and often mild) departures from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and campaign finance reform, torture, tax cuts, climate change and the godliness of Pat Robertson. Since Mr. McCain doesn’t kick reporters like dogs, as the Clintons do, he will no doubt continue to enjoy an advantage, however unfair, with the press pack on the Straight Talk Express.

Even so, Mr. McCain hasn’t yet won a clear majority of Republican voters in any G.O.P. contest. He’s depended on the kindness of independent voters. Tuesday’s Florida primary, which is open exclusively to Republicans, is his crucial test. If he fails, his party remains in chaos and Mitt Romney could still inherit the earth.

That would be a miracle for the Democrats, but they can hardly count on it. If Mr. Obama has not met an unexpected Waterloo in South Carolina — this column went to press before Saturday’s vote — the party needs him to stop whining about the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, he would unambiguously represent change in a race with any Republican. If he vanquishes Billary, he’ll have an even stronger argument to take into battle against a warrior like Mr. McCain.

If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may at least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Democrat who seriously thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomination — let alone that the Clintons will escape being fully vetted — is a Democrat who, as the man said, believes in fairy tales.

Barack Obama

"Video: Ed Schultz Says Bill Clinton Is Flat Out Lying about Barack Obama’s Record" (with video)

Think On These Things, with video (00:53):

Hey Ed, I was also thinking about “he’s picking on the one candidate whose judgment could have saved over 3000 American soldiers from dying in Iraq and 2 trillion dollars spent in an unnecessary war.” I’d hope every American would be thinking about it.

Barack Obama

"Hillary's campaign: High road or Bill's?" (UPDATED)

UPDATE: This analysis by Tim Dickinson about Obama’s alleged “slumlord” connection indicates that Hillary can navigate to "Billaryland" all by herself.

Joel Connelly (Seattle P-I):

JUST AS OUR country stands at a fork in the political road, between continued polarization and a renewal of common purpose, a similar choice faces the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The mostly female loyalists of "Hillaryland," who've worked for her in the Senate and earlier in the White House, have taken up a mantra that says: "Go, Girl! Just be yourself!"

Then there is "Billaryland," symbolized by the negative and increasingly nasty behavior of former President Clinton in his role as chief surrogate.

"Billaryland" is a land of scare tactics, of sly innuendo, of clever distortion of Sen. Barack Obama's record, of pushing and shoving, of smash and grab and anything to win.

Each faction can argue that its road is the path to the White House.

"Hillaryland" saw a grim campaign come to life in the last days of the Iowa caucus campaign and in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton began taking questions from voters, interacting with normal people, and showing that she knows her stuff.

The candidate stayed sure-footed in Nevada, displaying command of a key local issue -- the Department of Energy's nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain -- and an ability to spontaneously connect with Latino voters.

And Hillary Clinton was able to recite, on a menu of issues, how she has worked in the Senate with her philosophical opposites. She cited a seminal trip to Alaska, revealing effects of global warming, taken in 2005 with Sen. John McCain.

Meantime, the dark side of the Clinton campaign did a job on the first person of color with a viable shot at the presidency.

A hustling, elbowing Bill Clinton worked successfully to knock Obama off his high horse, continuing to question the honesty of Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war.

The candidate's surrogate deployed a variety of gambits to maneuver Obama into being identified by voters as the "black" candidate. He used baseless charges of intimidation against the pro-Obama leadership of the Culinary Workers Union. (Hillary Clinton won seven of the nine "casino caucuses" held at Las Vegas Strip hotels.)

Dirty tactics can yield key tactical victories. They can, however, do long-term damage.

In Hillary's case, there is a widespread, just-under-the-surface apprehension about a Clinton restoration.

Sure, the Clinton administration produced 22.7 million new jobs in eight years and actually paid down the national debt three years running. Its foreign policy, at times maladroit, did not yield years-long foreign wars.

But there's a down side: Deep, valid doubts remain with ordinary voters and opinion leaders. They were summed up Tuesday by The State, South Carolina's largest newspaper, in an editorial endorsing Obama.

"The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare.

"That is not all Bill and Hillary Clinton's fault -- but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored.

"Hillary Clinton doesn't pretend that it won't happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons' joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication."

The paper went on to argue that Obama offers "a more unifying style of leadership" that does not demean or demonize the opposition. "He's not neglecting his core values," said the editorial. "But for him, American unity -- transcending party -- is a core value in itself."

The prospect of renewed political blood sport, and an ongoing soap opera at the White House, gives Republicans just about their only hope of winning the 2008 election ... especially if the GOP picks an adult, McCain, as its standard bearer.

Democrats have rebuilt a party decimated during the Clinton presidency. The grass roots are again growing. Promising new talent (e.g., Sens. Jim Webb in Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana) has come out of "red" states.

Republicans are certain to resurrect Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" line and his claim that Obama is "a roll of the dice" if the Illinois senator is nominated.

Signals of concern have come in the form of prominent Democrats' endorsements. Three senators and an able governor (Janet Napolitano of Arizona), who have won in pro-GOP "red" states, have endorsed Obama in recent days.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, another Obama backer, busted Bill Clinton in the chops Tuesday.

"I think it's not presidential; it's not in keeping with the image of a former president, and I'm frankly surprised that he is taking this approach," Daschle said.

It's tough to be an uplifting, unifying candidate if your partner in life and politics is slinging the mud.

Barack Obama

"Zip It, Bill!"

Karen Russell (Huffington Post):

Senator Obama nailed it during the South Carolina debate when he mentioned Bill Clinton, "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

Don't get me wrong. I love Bill Clinton. I always have. I hope I always will. But lately, not so much.

In the 90's President Clinton's slickness was just sad and creepy. I remember "slick" Clinton when he fibbed that he "didn't inhale". I cringed when Clinton wagged his finger at America insisting that he did not "have sexual relations with that woman." I was downright embarrassed when, with a straight-face, Clinton declared "that depends on the definition of what "is" is.

Well, "slick" Clinton is back. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

Before Iowa, "Hillary the Inevitable" had the numbers, the machine and the name on her side in this race. Despite being the clear and unequivocal underdog, Obama built a grassroots campaign, brought in independents and got disillusioned Republicans to cross the aisle.

Obama starting gaining ground and closing the gap. That's when the "fun" started. That's when Hillary told reporters about her plans to attack Obama.

For months, we saw "the inevitable frontrunner" running a tight and disciplined campaign. Then as Obama rose in the polls, suddenly Hillary and her surrogates started dropping a series of "misunderstood" slurs. They fit a familiar pattern, "smear, play dumb, own up and apologize". Rinse, lather and repeat.

We are supposed to believe that as Obama gained ground on Clinton that it's just mere coincidence that Clinton surrogates painted Obama as a risky "shucking and jiving", "roll of the dice", "cocaine-loving", "drug-dealing", "Reagan-loving", "closet-Muslim" , "fairytale-living", "establishment", "less black than President Clinton" "rookie"?

We are supposed to believe that these are isolated "mistakes". Remember these are the people who went after Senator Obama's kindergarten record and then tried play it off as a joke.

Now it appears that "Trasher-in-Chief" Bill is in charge of keeping the "fun" going. Apparently, the Clinton campaign figured out that having Hillary taking the cheap shots at her opponents made her less "likable".

It started with Clinton trashing Obama on the war. When a red-faced and angry Clinton twisted Obama's anti-war record calling it a "fairytale". However, according to the New York Times, " a review of Mr. Obama's statements on Iraq since 2002 shows that he has opposed the war against Saddam Hussein consistently, calling it ''dumb'' and ''rash.'' "

All of the Clinton's huffing and puffing won't change the fact that Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that Obama has always been against it.

Then in Nevada, Clinton claimed that Obama was running ads "telling Republicans that they ought to just register as Democrats for a day so they can beat Hillary and go out and be Republicans next week and vote in the primary. Doesn't sound like the new politics to me."

This simply isn't true. Those ads don't exist. To many, the idea of getting Republicans to cross the aisle and become "Obama Republicans" is appealing. Remind me again, what is wrong with trying to woo independents and Republicans? Taylor Marsh seems to think there's something wrong with that.

Ms. Marsh, also ran with the Clinton exaggeration of voter intimidation, "New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign had a story it wanted to tell this week, so it turned to a friendly blogger. Taylor Marsh, who in the past has been paid by a union now backing Clinton, quickly ran with the story: Members of the Culinary Union were being intimidated to vote for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, whom the union endorsed last week. Under scrutiny, the story didn't exactly pan out. But no matter."

President Clinton went on to claim Obama said Republicans had all the good ideas, "Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas...I can't imagine any Democrat seeking the presidency would say they were the party of new ideas for the last 15 years. But it sounded good in Reno I guess...So now it turns out you can choose between somebody who thinks our ideas or better or the Republicans had all the good ideas."

The Clinton assertion that Obama said Republicans had "all the good ideas" just isn't true. Obama said the Republican challenged "conventional wisdom" and moved the country in a fundamentally different direction and that we Democrats can learn from that strategy. That people wanted optimism, clarity and to talk differently about issues and values. Obama pointed out that the unfortunately the Republican ideas promoted by this strategy were bad and wrong.

When Obama was asked how his being the nominee would help other Democrats get elected he said,

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating and he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, people wanted clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamic and entrepreneurship that had been missing, alright? I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times. I think we're in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren't working. We're bogged down in the same arguments that we've been having, and they're not useful. And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they're being debated among the Presidential candidates and it's all tax cuts. Well, you know, we've done that, we tried it. That's not really going to solve our energy problems, for example. So, some of it's the times. And some of it's, I think, there's maybe a generation element to this, partly. In the sense that there's a, I didn't did come of age in the battles of the 60s. I'm not as invested in them. And so I think I talk differently about issues. And I think I talk differently about values. And that's why, I think we've been resonating with the American people."

Senator Clinton continued "the twist" of Obama's words during the debate. Why is Team Billary twisting the facts on Senator Obama? They are playing to win, truth be damned. Campaigning for his wife is one thing but continuing to trash Obama with misrepresentations is frankly disappointing. Daddy Bush didn't trash John McCain when McCain was running against Shrub. Clinton needs to rein it in. If Hillary can't control Bill or her surrogates, why do we believe she's ready to lead on day one?

Think about how the Clinton campaign responded to Bob Johnson's smear. When she was caught between a rock and a big donor, look how she responded.

First, they denied it was a smear and "took him on his word". Yeah, right. Unlike less powerful surrogates, they couldn't get Johnson to walk the plank. Finally, after Johnson was rightfully shamed into apologizing, Clinton conveniently flip-flopped claiming Johnson was "out of bounds". Hillary was for the smear before she was against it. It's familiar territory for her.

And, if it's true that Hillary is not campaigning in South Carolina, this is just the Clintons lowering expectations.

That despite Clinton LEADING in South Carolina for months, if she loses there, it is no big whoop because she stopped campaigning there and lots and lots of those voters are black! Lots!

Well, as recently as October, African-Americans favored Clinton over Obama 57 percent to 33 percent. Now, only after months of campaigning against "Hillary the Inevitable" and proving that he is electable, Obama has flipped those numbers.

I do have to hand it to the Clintons, they are the masters of lowering expectations.

Howie P.S.: In case you don't know, Karen Russell lives in Seattle and is the daughter of basketball great Bill Russell.
Barack Obama

"Obama faces off against both Clintons"

Politico:

ATLANTA – Illinois Sen. Barack Obama launched Sunday what his top aides described as a more aggressive bid to challenge “unbelievable falsehoods” pressed last week in Nevada by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.

With Obama’s new strategy, the Democratic nomination fight took on a new contour: It’s Obama versus two Clintons, not just one. And the line of attack emerging from his second consecutive primary loss appears to be this: The Clintons are a couple whose words cannot always be trusted.

“You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling,” Obama told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview taped Sunday and set to air Monday. “He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts — whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. This has become a habit, and one of the things that we're gonna have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate.”

The Clinton campaign response to Obama? Get used to President Clinton, described by the campaign as a “huge asset” who “will continue talking to the American people to press the case for Sen. Clinton.”

“Of course Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama are the candidates on the ballot and she is winning because she is giving voice to the Americans who will provide real solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives,” said her campaign’s statement, which stood by the Clintons' comments in Nevada as "facts."

Obama began to challenge the Clintons late in the Nevada campaign — a delay that David Axelrod, Obama’s chief media strategist, described Sunday as a mistake.

“I would concede that I think we were not fast enough in Nevada in terms of hitting back,” Axelrod said. “We need to be even more aggressive in calling out what are shameless falsehoods and distortions.”

Aides would not detail the more forceful approach, other than to say that Obama and surrogates would make the case directly.

Obama, who portrays his candidacy as the embodiment of a less divisive style of politics, runs the risk of losing credibility as he descends into more direct combat with the Clintons.

“People have heard a lot of things that just aren’t true from the mouth of the First Lady, from the mouth of the former president, from the mouth of the campaign," said Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications director. "There is no question we will make sure that doesn’t happen.”

But Gibbs added: “We made the decision that we weren’t going to get stuck in the mud.”

Obama foreshadowed the strategy Sunday morning from the pulpit of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late Martin Luther King Jr. once served as a pastor.

The Democratic primary unfolds to the north next Saturday, in South Carolina. But the Ebenezer Baptist Church service, with a sermon celebrating King, gave Obama a platform to address the black voters moving to the forefront of the presidential campaign.

Obama struck a chord of unity – political and racial harmony, but also compassion for gays, immigrants and people of different faiths. He praised King’s legacy and portrayed his candidacy as a vehicle to fulfill the work that King started. He offered uplifting rhetoric, but also tough love, acknowledging that “none of our hands are clean” when it comes to healing divisions.

“We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate,” Obama told 2,000 worshippers at one of the nation’s most prominent black congregations. “It is the poison that we must purge from our politics, the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.”

Obama also made a sly reference to efforts by Clinton campaign surrogates to raise his youthful drug use as an issue.

“I got in trouble when I was a teenager, did some things, folks now like to talk about it,” Obama said. “I needed some hope to get here.”

He remained on the offensive at a rally Sunday night in Columbia, S.C., running through cases in which he believes his record has been distorted. (At one event in Reno, Nev., last week, Obama spent half his speech trying to correct the record.)

This time, he delved deeply into his praise last week of Ronald Reagan.

“What I said was Ronald Reagan, back in the 1980s, was able to tap into the discontent of the American people,” Obama said. “There were Reagan Democrats. So what I said is we need to tap into the discontent of Republicans. I want some Obama Republicans. I want ‘Obamacans.’”

“So when I see Sen. Clinton, President Clinton distort my own words, saying Republicans are the only ones who had good ideas since the 1980s — that is not a way to move the debate forward,” Obama said.

Howie P.S.: Elvis is a politician who goes for his opponents strong point, like Rove did with John Kerry's war record. Booman Tribune says "Obama is Undefeated" and "Reporting the truth about the delegate race would change the national narrative, and not in Clinton's favor."
Barack Obama