I started posting on HowieinSeattle in 11/04, following progressive American politics in the spirit of Howard Dean's effort to "Take Our Country Back." I decided to follow my heart and posted on seattleforbarackobama from 2/07 to 11/08.--"Howie Martin is the Abe Linkin' of progressive Seattle."--Michael Hood.
With Senator Barack Obama vowing to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on her home turf, the Democratic presidential primary in New York on Feb. 5 is shaping up as the state’s most competitive since 1992, when Bill Clinton took up a rival’s mantra of change to all but cinch the nomination.
Mrs. Clinton was re-elected a little more than a year ago by better than two to one. Before the Iowa caucuses, she had so dominated opinion polls and endorsements by elected officials and powerful unions that many considered her home state impregnable to political interlopers.
But if Mr. Obama wins the South Carolina primary in two weeks, he could develop enough grass-roots support among young people, liberals and black voters in New York to pose a serious threat to her claim to the state’s rich delegate lode, allies of both candidates say.
“The expectation is that Hillary should win in New York,” said Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV of Harlem, an Obama supporter. “As you know, expectations don’t always translate into votes, and so we’re going to fight in New York.”
While Mrs. Clinton’s supporters say they are certain she will win the state and, with it, the bulk of its 281 delegates, they acknowledge that to keep Mr. Obama from running even a close second, she may have to invest more precious time and money here. Twenty-one other states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, also hold primaries on Feb. 5.
“Clearly they’re going to make a humongous effort to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem, an Obama supporter.
'Emotion and racial pride' “We’re not taking anything for granted,” said Blake Zeff, the Clinton campaign’s communications director in New York. Representative Charles B. Rangel of Harlem, one of Mrs. Clinton’s earliest supporters, predicted that she would do “extremely well — after all, she’s our ‘favorite daughter.’ She’s better known and she’s earned the right to our support.”
But, Mr. Rangel acknowledged, “Obama’s electric campaign will stimulate a big turnout.”
“Even though there’s no question in my mind that Hillary can do a better job, we’re dealing with a lot of emotion and racial pride, and he’s proven himself to be a credible candidate already,” Mr. Rangel said.
Measured by volunteers, phone banks, offices and other tangible signs statewide, the Clinton campaign appears better organized. She has the support of many members of Congress and the Legislature, as well as the backing of unions that are adept at turning out voters, including those representing teachers, building service workers and municipal employees.
Mr. Obama has been endorsed by a number of black elected officials in Harlem, southeast Queens and central Brooklyn, all bastions of Democratic voters. And in a particularly revealing gauge of his organizational strength, Mr. Obama is the only Democrat other than Mrs. Clinton to have full delegate slates in each of the state’s 29 Congressional districts, suggesting he may be competitive in areas outside New York City.
In the 2004 primary, nearly half the Democrats who voted were in New York City. Manhattan alone accounted for nearly one in five.
Even before his victory in Iowa, Mr. Obama had an impressive fund-raising record in New York, receiving significant support from Wall Street, the entertainment industry and lawyers. Through Sept. 30, he reported raising more from New York donors than any other Democrat except Mrs. Clinton and was not far behind former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mrs. Clinton reported raising more than $18 million in all from New Yorkers, compared to Mr. Obama’s nearly $8 million, but a large chunk of Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising is reserved for the general election. New York contributors who donated for the primaries gave $13 million to Mrs. Clinton through Sept. 30 and $7 million to Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa and his second-place finish in New Hampshire have put a number of black leaders in the awkward position of opposing a black candidate for president.
Many black elected officials in New York have already endorsed Mrs. Clinton, but they may find that their followers, who constitute as much as 25 percent of New York’s primary electorate, are flocking to Mr. Obama if he wins South Carolina, political analysts said.
A few prominent black leaders remain on the fence. Among those leaders is the Rev. Al Sharpton. On Friday, in one sign of how vigorously he is being courted, Bill Clinton called into Mr. Sharpton’s nationally syndicated radio talk show to explain his use of the phrase “fairy tale” in a critique of the Obama campaign this week. The description angered many blacks, but Mr. Clinton said he was referring only to Mr. Obama’s position on Iraq, not his candidacy.
Neither campaign has made firm decisions yet about television advertising and public appearances in the state, which has 5.3 million enrolled Democrats.
Their ranks could be swollen by last-minute registration efforts. Unregistered New Yorkers had until Friday to enroll in order to be eligible to vote Feb. 5.
The New York City Board of Elections said more than 13,000 forms had been filed in the last week alone. In New Hampshire, Mr. Obama fared better among first-time primary voters.
Clinton camp energized On primary day, 232 of New York’s 281 convention delegates will be in play, 151 of them elected by Congressional district and allotted in proportion to the candidate’s total. Some delegate slots are reserved for public officials and party leaders, and others are assigned by party officials. Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Clinton supporter who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, said the campaign dynamics have energized the Clinton camp, too.
“It’s now clear that her home state is going to play an important role in making her president,” he said. “People are more excited about that than concerned.”
He said he had not discerned any shift to Mr. Obama among Clinton supporters.
At least one has shifted the other way. Neil Barsky, a Manhattan hedge-fund manager who raised money last year for Mr. Obama, said he now favored Mrs. Clinton. “I believe Hillary, while potentially less of a transformational candidate, would make an excellent president and is our best chance of winning,” he said.
New York’s presidential primaries have usually been held too late to make much difference, although in June 1972 George S. McGovern’s near sweep in New York virtually sealed his nomination.
Two other New York primaries were pivotal, though.
In April 1988, Michael S. Dukakis won a bruising primary campaign in New York over Al Gore and Jesse Jackson, who polled an impressive 37 percent.
In April 1992, New York Democrats squelched the presidential aspirations of Paul E. Tsongas and Edmund G. Brown Jr., who had run as an anti-establishment candidate, and all but virtually sealed Bill Clinton’s presidential nomination.
In his victory speech, Mr. Clinton declared, “Tonight, every person who voted in the Democratic primary voted for change.”
WaPo: Former president Bill Clinton worked yesterday to smooth over comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign and its allies that have raised hackles in the African American community, a week before Democrats will vote in the South Carolina primary, their first test involving a heavily black electorate.
The comments have come from Clinton (D-N.Y.) and several of her most prominent surrogates, including New Hampshire ally Billy Shaheen, who made insinuations about Sen. Barack Obama's admission of past drug use, and Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, who appeared to dismissively describe the campaign platform of hope and change offered by the strongest black presidential contender in history as the "biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
Publicly, Obama's campaign has so far only echoed the concerns expressed by others, without directly accusing the Clintons of trying to inject race into their primary showdown. But other Democrats have spoken out. "I think it was an unfortunate set of words that really set off a firestorm," said Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore in 2000. The remarks by the former president, Brazile said, are particularly troubling.
"It struck us, coming from a president that has stood by and championed so many issues that African Americans cared about -- at first blush it really did hit you the wrong way," Brazile said last night.
Bill Clinton spent much of the day trying to explain his remarks and regain the confidence of a community that historically has provided some of the Clintons' strongest support. In a call-in interview on Al Sharpton's radio show, Clinton said he had meant only that Obama's statements about his position on the Iraq war are a "fairy tale," because Obama (D-Ill.) had voted to fund the war upon arriving in the Senate after saying he opposed the invasion.
In a July 2004 interview with the New York Times, Obama said of the war vote: "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."
"I stand by what I said," Bill Clinton said. But, he continued: "I was addressing a specific argument that had never been brought up in the debates." He went on to say that, in 15 debates, Obama has never been asked to explain the comment in which he said he did not know how he would have voted had he actually been in the Senate for the war vote. Obama has otherwise consistently said he would have opposed the war, as he did at the time, when he was running for the Senate.
"So, 'That story is a fairy tale' -- now, that doesn't have anything to do with my respect for him as a person or as a political figure in this campaign," Clinton told Sharpton. "He's put together a great campaign. It's clearly not a fairy tale. It's real."
Acknowledging the closeness of the race after the first two nominating contests, Clinton also said: "I have given hundreds of speeches on Hillary's behalf in this campaign. I don't believe I've given a single one where I did not applaud Senator Obama and his candidacy. It's not a fairy tale: He might win."
A memo surfaced yesterday that listed allegedly racially tinged remarks made by Clinton and her surrogates, including a comment from New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo that Obama would have to do more than "shuck and jive" his way through a news conference to get elected, and remarks that Clinton herself incorporated into her stump speech that some read as a slight on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Obama campaign did not take responsibility for the memo, and campaign officials went to great lengths to avoid the appearance of fanning the flames of the debate. "People have to decide for themselves," Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said, without specifying what it is people have to decide. "It's not our focus."
In a statement issued yesterday evening, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, an African American representing South Carolina, said: "I encourage the candidates to be sensitive about the words they use. This is an historic race for America to have such strong, diverse candidates vying for the Democratic nomination."
One Clinton supporter suggested that Obama is trying to use allegations of racism to help boost his campaign after narrowly losing the New Hampshire primary to Clinton. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), a Clinton supporter, described the Obama allegation as "a tactic to diminish their support in the African American community."
The Obama campaign's goal, she said, is to "nick at you and come up with something that may well stick."
"And I personally was offended that they would think the African American community is going to be blinded by their allegations," she said.
For months, African American voters have struggled to pick sides between the wife of a beloved former president and the first black candidate with a realistic shot at winning the White House. Now, as the South Carolina contest approaches, and as primaries in other states with large black populations loom on Feb. 5, when 22 states will vote, Obama may be narrowing the edge Clinton once held among black voters.
A new survey by the polling arm of the Alabama Education Association, the Capital Survey Research Center, shows Obama gaining ground on Clinton in Alabama, a Feb. 5 state where blacks are expected to make up more than a third of Democratic primary voters. The two are locked in a statistical dead heat, with Obama at 36 percent and Clinton at 34 percent. Last month, the same poll showed Clinton leading Obama, 40 percent to 25 percent.
How He Recast the Language of Black Liberation Theology into a Winning Creed for Middle-of-the-Road White Voters--At the University of Chicago Law School, famous for its faculty of conservative jurists, like Antonin Scalia, now a Supreme Court justice, Barack Obama, senior lecturer in constitutional law, is still listed as being on leave of absence. Six miles from the university, down Interstate 84, on Chicago's far south side, in the nondescript, low-rent, mostly low-rise neighborhood of Brainerd, is the Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attends and where his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., apostle of black liberation theology, delivers magnificently cranky sermons on how the "African diaspora" struggles under the yoke of the "white supremacists" who run the "American empire."
Obama's membership of both institutions, the radical black church and the conservative law school, is a measure of the chasm that this latest candidate of hopes and dreams, uplift and national reconciliation, is trying to span. It's also a measure of his political and intellectual agility that the senior lecturer in law has managed to recast the language of black liberation theology into an acceptable—even, conceivably, a winning—creed for middle-of-the road white voters.
Obama is cagey, in a lawyerly way, about the supernatural claims of religion. Recounting a conversation about death that he had with one of his two young daughters, he wrote, "I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn't sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang." So I think we can take it that he doesn't believe—or at least doesn't exactly believe—in the afterlife or the creation. His conversion to Pastor Wright's brand of Christianity was "a choice and not an epiphany," born of his admiration for "communities of faith" and the shape and purpose they give to the lives of their congregants. "Americans want a narrative arc to their lives. They are looking to relieve a chronic loneliness," along with the reassurance that "they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness." As for himself, and his enlistment at Trinity United, "Without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone." It's typical of Obama that such a cautiously footnoted profession of faith rings sympathetically to both the atheist and the true believer.
To become a virtual congregant at Trinity United (via www.tucc.org) is to enter a sleight-of-hand world of metaphor, in which the manifold trials of the Children of Israel at the hands of emperors and kings are transformed by Jeremiah Wright into the self-same sufferings of African Americans today. As Obama, describing his own moment of conversion in Wright's church, when, as a community organizer in Chicago, he was still a virtual stranger to black culture, put it: "At the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story." (Whatever private comfort Obama found in his membership of the church, it helped to give him both credibility and a political base inside the black community, which even now harbors the suspicion that he is "too white.")
In a Christmas sermon on the theme of "Good News in Bad Times," the Reverend Wright marvelously fuses Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar Augustus, and George W. Bush into a single being, and the American occupation of Iraq, the Babylonian occupation of Jerusalem, and the Roman occupation of Galilee into one event. Under a universal tyranny of "corporate greed and rampant racism," AIDS flourishes ("it runs through our community like castor oil"), so do gang-bangs, murders, injustices of every kind. Slavery is here and now, and fifth columnists, traitors to their own kind, are all about us—like the black Republican Alan Keyes and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. On the issue of affirmative action, recently visited by the court, "Uncle Remus—I mean Justice Thomas—nodded his Babylonian head in agreement before pulling off his Babylonian robe and going back home to climb into bed beside his Babylonian wife." (Thomas's wife is white.) Bad times. "But right now ain't always," and "Great joy is coming in the morning." Wright abruptly shifts gear, from a giddy tour of 2,500 years of oppression and tribulation, to the good news, bringing his congregation to near-rapture as he launches on a rapid-fire, high-decibel riff on the salvation to come:
The good news that's coming is for all people! Not white people—all people. Not black people—all people. Not rich people—all people. Not poor people—all people. I know you'll hate this... not straight people—all people! Not gay people—all people. Not American people—all people. ...God's good news isn't just for Americans, it's for all people. Say "all people"! Jesus came for Iraqis and Afghanis. Jesus was sent for Iranians and Ukrainians. All people! Jesus is God's gift to the brothers in jail and the sisters in jeopardy. All people! The Lord left his royal courts on high to come for all those that you love, yes, but he also came for all those folk that you can't stand. All people!
It's a piece of rhetorical wizardry, this conjuring of hope from the grounds of despair, the oldest trick in the preacher's book, but Wright carries it off with exhilarating command, and one sees immediately how much Obama has learned from him.
The title of Obama's book The Audacity of Hope is an explicit salute to a sermon by Wright called "The Audacity to Hope," and his speeches are peppered with Wrightisms, like his repeated claim that "There are more young black men in prison than there are in college," but his debt to the preacher goes much deeper. While Wright works his magic on enormous congregations, with the basic message of liberation theology, that we are everywhere in chains, but assured of deliverance by the living Christ, Obama, when on form, can entrance largely white audiences with the same essential story, told in secular terms and stripped of its references to specifically black experience. When Wright says "white racists," Obama says "corporate lobbyists"; when Wright speaks of blacks, Obama says "hard-working Americans," or "Americans without health care"; when Wright talks in folksy Ebonics, of "hos" and "mojo," Obama talks in refined Ivy League. But the essential design of the piece follows the same pattern as a Wright sermon, in its nicely timed transition from present injustice and oppression to the great joy coming in the morning.
The speech that brought Obama into the national limelight, his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, is a fascinating exercise in translation, in which he tailors the rhetoric of Trinity United to fit the needs of America at large. First, the bad times: the Constitution abused, the nation despised around the world, joblessness, homelessness, crippling medical bills, a failing education system, veterans returning home with missing limbs, young people sunk in "violence and despair." Then, the good news: "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America—there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America—there's the United States of America...." The voice of Jeremiah Wright haunts both the sentiment and the metrical phrasing of the speech as Obama comes to a climax with his unveiling of "the politics of hope":
I'm not talking about blind optimism here... I'm talking about something more substantial... The hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores... The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope! In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.
God gets the obligatory mention, and Obama smuggles in a near quotation from Hebrews 11:1, but the true divinity here is America itself, a mystical entity that holds out the same promise of miraculous liberation as Jesus does in Wright's sermon.
That address, received with rapt applause at the convention, remains the template for Obama's grand set pieces on the stump, where his adaptation of "Good News in Bad Times" continues to play to packed houses. When he has the stage to himself, and turns his audience into a congregation, he can be an inspiring preacher, but he shrinks when lined up alongside his fellow candidates in televised debates, where he's often looked more like an embattled PhD student defending his thesis in an oral exam. He's far better taking questions in town meetings, where he listens gravely, thinks out loud, and comes up with answers that are at once complex and lucid, sometimes a shade too professorial, but always seemingly unrehearsed, and lit with occasional shafts of irony.
Barack Obama's transparent intellect, his grasp of legislative detail, the fine points of his health-care plan as against Hillary Clinton's, or his views on early childhood education, are not what draw the big crowds to his events (and if crowds were votes, he'd win the nomination in a landslide). Rather, it's the promise of the "narrative arc" that Obama credited churches with bringing to the lives of American blacks. People want The Sermon, not Obama's well-turned thoughts on foreign or economic policy. What the crowds crave from this scrupulous agnostic is his proven capacity to deliver the ecstatic consolation of old-time religion—a vision of America that transcends differences of race, class, and party, and restores harmony to a land riven under the oppressive rule of a government alien to its founding principles.
Watching the tail ends of these events on C-SPAN, one often sees people drifting away with boredom and disappointment on their faces: They came for the evangelist, and got the competent politician. It's a problem for his campaign that there are several Obamas now running. There's the charismatic preacher, loved by all (or nearly all). There's Obama the adroit and well-briefed policy wonk. There's the lean, black-suited, somewhat aloof figure, so engrossed in his reflections that he seems to be talking as much to himself as to his audience, a moody Hamlet brooding on the state of Denmark. There's also the man who can look far younger than his age (he's 46), like a boy with sticking-out ears, the Obama whom Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, labeled "the child prodigy." For this last Obama, one suffers—especially in debates—as one suffers for one's own offspring on the night of the school play, desperately crossing one's fingers that she won't screw up in her star part. Sometimes Obama bombs.
You never know which of these personae will be on show at any one event, which is probably why Michelle Obama, now barnstorming the country for her husband, has rather over-egged the pudding in her attempt to ground him in everyday domestic reality. From Michelle, we've learned that Obama snores, has "stinky" morning breath, is incapable of returning the butter to the fridge, and is "just a man"—an assurance hardly required of any other candidate, but necessary in Obama's case because the line between demigods and demagogues in American politics is dangerously fine, and Obama, on a religiose roll, can seem, like snake oil, more than a little too good to be true.
What seems entirely genuine in his candidacy came out unexpectedly in a recent televised debate, when the moderator asked Obama why, since he claimed to represent "change," so many of his advisers were drawn from Bill Clinton's two administrations. Good question. Hillary Clinton immediately interjected, "Oh, I want to hear that!" and gave vent to her forced jackal laugh, which was echoing in the rafters of the hall when Obama replied, "Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well." The audience laughter that met this return of service nearly drowned Obama's next remark, which went unreported, but was, "I want to gather up talent from everywhere."
The point where Obama's lofty secular theology and his skills as a practical politician meet and merge is in the likely face of an Obama administration. If Hillary Clinton were to win both the nomination and the general election, it's depressingly probable that her cabinet would look a lot like Margaret Thatcher's team of sworn loyalists, purged of dissenting "wets." Were Obama to become president, one could fairly look forward to the third branch of government becoming more ecumenical than it's been in living memory, an administration of all the talents, drawn from the ranks of political opponents as well as party allies. Jeremiah Wright says that Jesus comes for the folk you love, yes, and the folk you can't stand. Obama, in 2004, put the same thought another way:
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
In Obama's sacralized version of the "United States of America," folk sit down with folk they thought they couldn't stand, whether Republicans with Democrats or Americans with Iranians and Syrians. He's managed to articulate this so persuasively that poll after poll shows his support mounting among registered Republicans (the few Republicans I know personally have rejected their own candidates in favor of Obama), despite the fact that all his declared policies—like those he championed, to impressive effect, in the Illinois State Senate—are far to the left of those of the present Republican party. In a speech in Iowa on December 27, he announced that he was out to "heal a nation and repair the world." It says a lot about the grievously damaged state of America now that even lifelong Republicans hunger to take Obama—on his good days—seriously.
WELLESLEY, Mass. -- The two students walked on the same paths across campus here this week, past the dormitory where Hillary Rodham lived for four years, past two dozen framed portraits of groundbreaking women in Alumnae Hall, past the banners on the quad proclaiming "Wellesley: Women Who Will." But Katie Chanpong and Aubre Carreon Aguilar -- feminists and political activists -- arrived at contradictory conclusions.
"If you're a woman, you vote for Hillary because of what it means to women everywhere," said Chanpong, a sophomore.
Carreon Aguilar, a senior, said: "If I'm supposed to vote for Hillary just because I'm a woman, that's kind of sexist."
Even here at Wellesley College, Hillary Rodham Clinton's alma mater and a historic bedrock of progressive feminist thought, support for the senator from New York hardly registers as unanimous. Instead, the election has inspired a debate at this women-only liberal arts college about what it means to be a feminist. Do you vote for a woman to shatter the glass ceiling and further the cause? Or do you make an empowered, individual decision that is not confined by gender?
How women across the country answer that question over the next month could largely determine the winner of the Democratic nomination. In Iowa, women -- particularly young women -- overwhelmingly supported Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and helped him win the caucuses. Five days later in New Hampshire, Clinton won 45 percent of the female vote compared with 36 for Obama, forging her comeback.
Election debates take on a particular fervor here on the suburban Boston campus where Clinton lived from 1965 to 1969. On the worn sofas in the lobby of Pendleton Hall, about 30 students gather each Sunday evening to organize Wellesley support for Clinton, surrounded by remnants of her time here. Next to the Pendleton lounge is the office of professor Alan Schechter, who advised Clinton on her senior thesis 40 years ago. An autographed photo of Clinton hangs on a door. A button attached to a nearby bulletin board reads "It used to be a man's world."
For about an hour every week, the students brainstorm ways to help Clinton -- their Wellesley sister, they sometimes call her -- win the nomination. The Students for Hillary group set up a phone bank at school for making cold calls to voters and arranged more than 20 road trips to knock on doors in New Hampshire. "We feel tied to her, like she's one of us since she went here," said Chanpong, the group's communications director. "We'd try anything to help."
Hours after the Clinton meetings, a Students for Obama group occupies the same couches in Pendleton. Led by Carreon Aguilar and another Wellesley senior, the 10 members also shuttled back and forth to New Hampshire on weekends this fall. They visited dorm rooms and distributed Obama '08 brochures and signs, one of which now hangs on a door down the hall from Clinton's old room. "We tried to make sure it wasn't all Clinton, all the time," Carreon Aguilar said.
Ona Keller, the co-president of Wellesley College Democrats, spent time with both the Obama and Clinton groups for almost a year, but few classmates doubted her ultimate conviction. Keller often wears her mom's hand-me-down T-shirts from the women's rights movement in the 1960s, with the text of the Equal Rights Amendment printed across the chest. She calls younger classmates first-years instead of freshmen, because none of them are men.
Keller tells friends she is "hard-core Wellesley": proud to attend a school that has never had a male president; proud to walk through the same halls as former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the former first lady of China.
"Everybody who knows me thinks of me as a feminist," Keller said. "Nobody imagined I wouldn't vote for Clinton."
Three weeks ago, Keller changed her online Facebook profile to announce her support for Obama. She likes his rhetoric and his stance on the war, she said, and she considers his effort to become the first black president as historic as Clinton's bid. Within a few days, a handful of Wellesley friends had called or e-mailed to teasingly call her a traitor.
"It's like I'm ruining this great opportunity for women by not voting for her, but honestly I'm not too worried about that," Keller said. "I don't think gender is a good enough reason on its own to vote for or against anybody. I'm sure there are going to be other women in my generation, soon, who are able to run for president. This isn't like our only chance."
Her stance is what some professors on campus refer to as an "inevitability attitude," and they say it marks a generational divide. Women who experienced Wellesley in the 1950s and '60s, such as Clinton, enrolled at a time when some Ivy League schools still refused to admit women. They believed, intrinsically, that they would have to scrap and claw for every opportunity in an unfair world. Wellesley functioned as their cocoon, a place for camaraderie and support before they were sent off as graduates to break barriers and challenge stereotypes. As feminists, they were linked by a cause.
The women of that generation now vote resoundingly for Clinton, poll numbers show, as if still bound by the urgency instilled 40 years ago. It's an urgency that their daughters, products of a less-sexist time, sometimes lack.
A woman for president ?
"I'm sure there are a lot of women my age who are kind of moving up the ranks, doing whatever they're doing politically and could maybe be president," Carreon Aguilar said. "The way I look at it with Obama is that both candidates are really minorities. Both would be huge firsts, so that sort of takes away the reason to vote just because of somebody being a woman or being black."
A woman for president ?
"That has an unbelievable 'Wow!' factor for those of us who have been around for a while and who have delved in the academics of this," said Linda Carli, a Wellesley psychology professor who co-wrote a book on gender and politics. "Some students believe all gender issues are already solved and this remarkable progress will just come, and that's overly optimistic. There's this sense that there's been a massive social change and everything is resolved. That's a very naive point of view."
Senior Kirstin Neff set a self-imposed deadline, the end of the 2007 spring semester, for aligning herself with a candidate. The co-president of Wellesley College Democrats, Neff badly wanted a summer internship with Clinton or Obama. But she felt torn between the two candidates . . . between two generations of feminists . . . between optimism that a woman will one day win and the feeling that it needs to happen now.
When Neff traveled home to Arizona for spring break, her deadline approaching, she confessed to her mother that she had started to lean toward supporting Obama. A five-minute conversation changed her mind.
"My mom didn't like hearing me talk about Obama much at all," Neff said. "She started telling me about how our generation takes for granted a lot of advances that women have made. She told me what it was like in the '70s and '80s and, you know, the general feeling that you were never as good or as important as your brothers or the men who you worked with. She talked about how women's stakes are so tied up in Hillary's candidacy, and how it could change what it means to be a woman and what all these little girls will think is possible in their own lives.
"So I just kind of started thinking about it like that, and it was like, 'Hmm. Okay. Do I really want to step in front of all of that?' "
I have been supporting Edwards since 2006 for a variety of reasons. He's a good man, with a good message, and good policies. I would gladly have him as my commander in chief, and I hope he remains in American political life.
However, I've been struggling of late with the question of my proper role as a Democratic voter in the primary. I believe I have an obligation to have my beliefs expressed through my vote. I believe I also have an obligation to express what I believe is best for the party, and the nation, through the ballot box. Crassly, sometimes these latter points might be reduced to "nominatability" or "electability" but in turn, it's also partly a process of myself listening to what other voters are saying about why they are choosing a particular candidate.
Oddly, it was in consideration of my reaction to Clinton's media bounce and a thoughtful self-consideration of why I have been opposed to her candidacy, and the re-consideration of the three major candidates' positions that made me decide, finally, that I am indeed going to jump from Edwards to Obama, and cast my vote in the February 5th California primary (absentee, soon) accordingly. More explanation/rationalizations on the flip, and your opportunity to express your reaction, of course.
There's a lot going on here, bear with me.
(1) Policy - Record
I believe policy positions and the record of the candidate supporting those policies are important criteria, but not exclusively so. I'm not going to do a checklist here: Edwards is closest to my position list, Obama's not that far off. I don't think this is as important as some of the more hardcore position activists do.
One reason I downgrade this slightly is that any Democrat (at least in this cycle) is going to be preferable to any Republican, and in turn I cannot hold a party nominee accountable to any single issue I'm interested in, since no matter the nominee the party's consensus positions and the national interest and that person's judgement are going to ultimately determine what happens on a given issue, not my greatly-filtered and masked specific policy positions.
I do buy the criteria that matching a candidate's positions on paper to one's own is a valuable exercise. In point of fact, Kucinich always comes up tops on that list when I'm just doing checkboxes, and that's a perfect example of why using policy positions as the sole determinant of a vote is flawed. I believe Kucinich would be a lousy chief executive because of many of the other personal qualities he has, intellectual, political, and historical. The devil's in the details. Executives don't necessarily lead through checklists of positions; they lead via heuristics and working towards goals.
Let's use Iraq as an example in seeing how policy turns into record.
Obama was against the war from the get-go, but that was easy to do from the State Senate, so I give him only partial credit. I understand the pressures that Edwards and Clinton had to vote for the authorization at the time. Much to Edwards' credit, he has unequivocally renounced his vote, much in contrast to the continued mixed messages Clinton has given about her stance on the war. So I don't hold his original vote against him, either.
Yet all three of them, really and truly for practical purposes, have the same position despite differences in stated policy on the stump. The position is 'we need to get out of Iraq, we should do it expeditiously, but we're not going to pull out tomorrow and precipitously'. (Honestly, only Kucinich and Bill Richardson had significantly different positions on Iraq, which were, they're leaving tomorrow, screw the consequences.)
I could go down a list of positions and issues, and the ordered priority of what might be most important might be arguable, but I actually trust all three of these candidates to try to do the right thing here. I trust Clinton a bit less because of her history of a politics of convenience, which I think is actually masking a bit of innate hawkishness. But we're now veering into a non-policy, non-record equation, which will be discussed a bit more below.
For that reason, while I have a slight preference for Edwards' overall positions vis a vis Obama, and a bit more still over Clinton, I am not counting this as a heavy weight per se.
(2) Executive Ability
I consider this a combination of factors - evidence of an analytical decision-making process, willingness to consider all the factors, decisiveness, management skills, consistency, flexibility in the face of a change in situation, an ability to prioritize, an ability to know what fight to pick when. In short, getting things done.
The record of experience comes in handy here, as does the person's life story. The three major candidates actually have quite different stories in this area, and I'm not saying that as a negative on any of them. They're unlike the more traditional profiles the Republican candidates are projecting in terms of executive or military experience, and it's something that will be a weakness for our nominee in the fall on paper.
There are personal qualities which support the perception of executive ability, but I'll deal with that separately.
Clinton frankly has the inside track on the record here, in that whether or not she chooses to claim this explicitly as experience -- and in many ways I wish she would -- being the President's spouse is a unique pipeline into what is required on the job. She has not chosen to be explicit about this since there are oddly practical issues with how to express this, but it's been implicit everytime she claims "experience".
I don't consider experience in traditional executive roles to be the determining criterion here. Many great leaders have come out of milieus that are not classic leadership roles.
The bottom line for this discussion was that this was never what I considered to be a strength for Edwards in the first place, and as such it's not a qualifier among the three candidates at this point, for me.
(3) Political Ability
I don't doubt that Clinton has mastered the art of the insider in the back room. That's what I'd call the art of the deal, and it's a key element in getting things done. It's just not what I would consider to be the truly important political ability.
I look, oddly enough, at FDR and Reagan as examples of different types of political ability in building popular support. The common thread to them was they were able to communicate effectively not just with people who supported them, but with people who didn't support them.
Persuasion is one great aspect to the political art. Inspiration is another part. Compromise is another. I believe Clinton has the ability to work a compromise, and occasionally persuade, but in part because of who she is and the baggage -- fair or not -- she carries, persuasion is not her strong point. Edwards inspires me, but he's running on a platform of confrontation, not compromise. I understand it, but I haven't agreed with this approach. I believe Obama has all three abilities, in lesser doses individually perhaps than the other candidates, but it's a nifty package. And both he and Clinton are clearly quite inspirational to different sets of voters; I personally find Obama more inspirational.
All that said, I am being a bit calculating here, in that I am trying to judge an ability here, not my own emotional reactions to each candidate. This is the one area where I've been convinced by the campaign itself that Obama has more ability than Edwards. Part of this has been his success, but part of it has been in his ability to engage. As much as I personally like Edwards, I've been disappointed in his ability to read the tea leaves correctly and make his own personal adjustments to his message and presentation. Those are fine points in a mature political animal that are essential for the political aspects of leadership in a President. It makes me kind of wish Edwards had stayed in the Senate, in that his passion and commitment may actually have taken him far higher there than in pursuit of the White House (ditto, frankly, Clinton).
(4) Personal Characteristics
Much of this is going to be a bit subjective, but I have to be honest with myself in my own reaction in trying to sort out what it is I'm experiencing.
There are some obvious things you'd like in a President.
A strong work ethic -- no laziness. Check on all three candidates.
Honesty. Check on all three, with a slight downtick for Clinton for her equivocation on many issues in the past. I give Obama a lot of cred here for his book, which is really something. Edwards has hit his stride more in 208 than 2004 in coming across as authentic, although I've never doubted his honesty (and I can't quite say that about Clinton.)
Intellectual capability. God, we are in an embarrassment of riches with all three of them. No dummies in this lot, not something I could say about the Reds this time around.
Empathy (ability to listen, place oneself in the other guy's shoes). All three candidates have different degrees of empathetic and sympathetic ability. This is a tough issue in a President, because at some point they're going to be asked to do something awful, like fire missiles at somebody or cut a program that will put people in the streets because there's some other priority in the budget. As a party we're generally much better than the other party. Individually you can see this as a sort of tradeoff (false, perhaps) between "tough choices" and "feeling your pain". This is why I value empathy over sympathy, in an elliptical way. I note this is as much about understanding your opponents, and your enemy's, mode of thought as much as anything else. And this is where Obama's oddly centrist and simultaneously far-out life story really does come into play. The guy had lived on a farm and in a big city. He's lived, if you will, in a white world and in a black one. He's lived in America and he's lived abroad. I have a great deal of respect for Clinton's achievements in an age where women have come into their own in politics, but she's had a steady and ready path of opportunity in this world. Edwards has a more classic rags-to-riches story, and I believe there's a strong reason why poor white guys from the South have had resonance in the electorate as a whole, since they embody simultaneously a mainstream experience and a recognition of adversity. But I think Obama's story rather uniquely trumps Edwards' this time around.
Don't get me wrong -- Edwards passionate and obvious connection to the people of this country, first and foremost, is what drew me to him in the first place. I don't see that wavering at all. How that translates into the practical sphere of national and world politics for him is an open question. This is a second major area where I've been persuaded Obama is the right guy at this particular time, where I started out thinking that Edwards, as being a safe figure in a way, was the person. I see the reaction to his candidacy around the world, and I marvel at it. I'm hungry to have that reaction again as an American. An exemplar, the avatar of the real American dream, of Martin Luther King's vision and Langston Hughes' vision and Horatio Alger and a host of others. I have come to see Obama as having a real shot at having some unique personal characteristics -- of who he is, of how he came to where he is. If only Nixon can go to China, to quote the Klingon proverb, then maybe only a half-black, half-white, half-Kansan, half-Kenyan born in a majority Asian state who spent half his early years in a half-muslim country can bring America and the World back into synch, and for that matter America back into harmony with itself.
(5) Being Practical
This is the item I've really struggled with in the past weeks and months, and it's a valid question. You can phrase it as "electability" if you like, but I think that may be a false way of looking at it. I think it was a perceived set of "electability" criteria in Iowa in '04 that propelled Kerry to the win there, and ultimately the nomination, that were falsely-framed in terms of a couple of facts of his biography (his war record). The Clinton camp tries to phrase this in a rather, IMHO, immature way of saying that, well, Obama hasn't been tested by the Republican attack machine the way she has, which of course can also be articulated as saying he doesn't have Clinton's inherent negatives (deserved or not) to overcome.
At this point in the decision-making, I believe all three candidates are electable. I think Clinton will have a much harder time because of the (rather unfair, but not 100% so - mabe only 98% so) way she's been depicted by the right. The reality of electability is the flavor of the month often has more appeal to the electorate. From that sense, I'd rate Clinton and Edwards as about equal for different reasons, but they're both tired-out figures in national elections. Obama retains the flavor of the month feel, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
What this has come down to me is the fact that Edwards hasn't gained traction, and having taken matching funds, even if he regains it in the polls, he's just not able to go the distance with money as deeply as Clinton and Obama. The idealist in me may say, 'hey, money shouldn't drive the process' but the pragmatist in me is reminded again of the old saw from Mark Hanna 'there are two important things in politics -- the first is money and I forget what the other one is.' Money, for better or worse, is a practical articulation of peoples' willingness to articulate their belief. I may take some wrath on this, but it's in some ways more democratic than the primary process. We all have a chance to vote with our pocketbooks before the primary season gets started. I voted early, in this sense, for Edwards. But I wasn't joined the way Clinton and Obama were.
Here's where I get down to brass tacks in the differences between the three. I won't flog a dead horse here, but there's a huge difference in the type of money Clinton and Obama have raised. I find more hope in Obama's spread of donor base than in Clinton's same old party machinery. This is the difference between a DLC establishment candidate and somebody with genuine grassroots appeal.
Why didn't Edwards get this? Hard to say. You can point at a number of factors, maybe the fact that despite the fact his dad worked in a mill (dunno if you heard about that) he is, in the end, a rich white guy who made his money as a trial lawyer. I don't demonize him for that. It's just a hard story to make into a man-of-the-people story. And I think that in the end Edwards' profile as a southern white protestant from poor roots, insofar as it was a successful formula in American politics from Andrew Jackson to LBJ to Jimmy Carter, may have finally run its course in what America wants to dream about itself. And honestly, the demographics of this country no longer center as much on that profile of a person.
Money, traction, engagement -- these are not just horse race elements. They're indicators of potential. I may not like it, but I think Edwards has disqualified himself from the race in the fall in part because he didn't find the right track to run on in the primaries. Functionally, it's impossible for him to win the nomination without some odd political lightning striking, ala Tom Eagleton's mental health record coming to light, or (please excuse the reminder here, painful as it is) RFK's assassination in mid-primary season.
For that reason, I don't begrudge Edwards' decision to stay in the race, but neither do I think that's a reason to keep supporting him.
And in realpolitik, I just don't buy at this point that I'm not helping Clinton by voting for Edwards, since my second choice, where my vote would go if Edwards were formally out of the race, is Obama, and I have a clear preference for Obama over Clinton.
THE BOTTOM LINE FOR ME
Some may accuse me of rationalizing a decision here, but I made my decision on two factors, ultimately.
The first is the last point I made above: in practical terms I think this has been reduced to a two-person race. This has nothing to do with the media or the skewed process in Iowa and NH per se. It has everything to do with the national mood and our place in the world and how money gets translated into votes, and my bottom line here is I want a winner in the fall, and I'll take the best kind of winner I can get. I no longer see Edwards as a potential winner. Call me a craven reactionary to the media story if you will, but I think there's truth to this.
The second is genuine persuasion. I stepped back a bit and thought about how I would feel the day after the election if Obama, Edwards, or Clinton were the winner in November. I want the kind of America that can vote for an Obama. I want the kind of respect back in the world if we had him in office. I want that kind of presence and drive and freshness on the scene. I want to challenge ourselves to "Let America be America again" as Langston Hughes put it.
If executive ability, policies, and so forth are a wash, and I see both a vision for the Presidency -- it not this nation, at least putting the office back into a position of respect and credibility -- and a markedly different political ability to persuade -- then I have to admit to myself, Obama is the guy I'd be thrilled to wake up and see in the oval office.
Senator Edwards, if you ever read this, I want to thank you whole-heartedl for personally engaging me, for articulating the issues about poverty and the class chasm in this country, for never forgetting that we formed this country for a more perfect union and to promote the general welfare, not to serve specific interests. You are a class guy. I'm not without regret at having come to this decision. You may rest assured that I am making this for positive reasons and not as an indictment on you or your fitness for office. You would've been a great President, and may still be.
Senator Clinton, I have not been your most ardent fan. But in recent days I have thought deeply about this and I have gained some more respect for you. I think you also would be a good President, but you must forgive me if I don't think you'd be the best among our three major candidates.
When I decided to run for Senate, I did so because I deeply believed that the citizens of Connecticut were yearning to see fundamental changes in our politics - changes that would make government work for them again.
Today, with our Presidential primary in Connecticut less than a month away, I am announcing my support of Barack Obama for President because I am convinced that his forward-looking, progressive vision provides the best chance to enact meaningful reforms in the way Washington works.
Sen. Obama has the tone and temperament to bring out the best in our people and our nation, and to bring new coalitions together in support of the progressive policies we all want to see enacted. His campaign has already reflected this, not only by bringing hundreds of thousands of new voters of all ages to the polls, but by inspiring so many who are new to politics to become activists as well. Ned Lamont's diary:: ::
Making healthcare affordable for all Americans, rebuilding our aging infrastructure, and ending our dependence on foreign oil are all problems that require more than a tax credit here or an earmark there. Barack is the candidate best able to enact these big changes necessary to getting our country moving again.
We have seen that Sen. Obama has the wisdom and judgment to get the big decisions right - as he did on Iraq more than five years ago. And when President Obama steps out of Air Force One in countries around the world, he will represent a fresh start with friends and allies. He will end the war in Iraq, work for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, and start investing in America again - and we will be safer and stronger for it.
We Democrats are fortunate to have had many strong candidates running for President.
As you may know, I was proud to work hard for Chris Dodd during his campaign. I have the deepest respect and admiration for Sen. Dodd - especially for his powerful calls to defend our constitutional freedoms by restoring habeas corpus, closing Guantanamo, and living up to the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. I know that Sen. Obama, a former professor of Constitutional Law, has been and will continue to be Chris' ally in fighting to protect our Constitution.
As Barack often says on the campaign trail these days, "with the challenges we face at this moment, the real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."
Despite the different outcomes for his campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, Barack Obama won among young voters in both states--and more important, he drew them to the polls in unprecedented numbers. People under 30 made up a third of his support in Iowa--four times the margin of victory--and their turnout was up 19 percentage points from 2004 in New Hampshire. Obama has inspired them, just as Howard Dean did last cycle, but the Chicago organizer's campaign excelled by using technology that mobilized new and young voters to actually show up and be counted.
In Iowa, Obama's aides systematically used the popular social networking site Facebook for targeting and organizing. Allison York, a 20-year-old Obama supporter and student at Iowa's Drake University, spent six hours of her winter break driving from her parents' Wichita home to Des Moines to a caucus location she found through Facebook. Another student launched a Facebook challenge that recruited more than a million supporters for Obama across the country. And one field organizer created a group for Iowans pledging to caucus for Obama--the first web version of the famous "supporter cards" that candidates urge voters to sign--drawing more than 1,000 people who were not in the party database. "We try to just go where the people are," explained Obama's online organizer in Iowa. "Facebook, because of its size, is where the people are, which is why we've taken it so seriously as a campaign."
Obama's official Facebook profile has about 200,000 "friends"--more than triple Hillary Clinton's network and six times John Edwards's yield. Clinton's top strategists once mocked those numbers, telling reporters, "Our people look like caucus-goers [and Obama's] look like Facebook." But after Clinton placed third in Iowa, they hastily tried to catch up. She toured New Hampshire with students, held "roundtables with young undecided voters," talked up a new idea for a "government blogging team" and launched an "Ask Hillary" Facebook feature on the day of the New Hampshire debate (which was co-sponsored by Facebook and ABC News). Those efforts paid off, giving her a boost among young people above her Iowa showing, but it's probably too late for her to overtake Obama in organic online support. Beyond Facebook, Obama has the most friends on MySpace and BlackPlanet--about 630,000 combined--and the most traffic by far on YouTube, where people can watch him sans media filter. (After Obama's stirring Iowa victory speech was uploaded, his official channel alone spiked by more than 1.5 million views.) Obama is also remarkably popular on apolitical Internet terrain. He regularly ranks atop Eventful, an entertainment site that helps fans join forces to request local concerts by their favorite bands. He netted appearance requests from eighty towns in Iowa and has held his own against rock stars across the country, currently ranking third behind the rap group Wu-Tang Clan.
Obama's aides have not simply been riding a wave of hit websites; they also built their own social networking portal to connect and empower activists. Chris Hughes, a 24-year-old co-founder of Facebook, joined the Obama campaign to build MyBO, which invites users to network, blog and promote grassroots events. Unlike many campaigns that treat web politics as a separate silo, Obama's field program is tightly integrated with MyBO. Iowa organizers were required to post all their events on the site and encouraged to write MyBO blog posts, vetted by the campaign, about local efforts. And the campaign trusts supporters to post whatever they want, from house parties to fundraising ideas to blog commentaries. More than 350,000 people have already created MyBO accounts, posting more than 10,000 grassroots events offline, including 1,000 gatherings where supporters simply wear Obama buttons and do community service in their neighborhoods. No other campaign has a decentralized program like it. While young participants are active, the majority of users, according to the site's administrator, appear to be middle-aged women.
Cheryl Kimmel, 48, is a self-declared "Deaniac" who first learned about Obama when Dean fundraised for Obama's 2004 Senate primary. This month, Kimmel used MyBO to announce a house party for undecided voters. "It's a good way to reach out to people that may be interested but that aren't in the fold," she explained. MyBO is not just for Deaniacs. Frank Dickerson voted for Bush's re-election, but the 59-year-old "recovering Republican" has used it for the past four months to organize events and phone banks at his North Carolina home. His MyBO invitation after Obama's Iowa victory recruited seven new people in a single day, he said, and he is coordinating volunteer trips to South Carolina for the upcoming primary. It's the first time he has ever been politically active.
This kind of self-starting activism could be crucial on February 5, the largest Super Tuesday ever, with primaries in twenty-two states. It is impossible to visit or buy advertising in every state. "Twenty states and all you've got is the candidate on a tarmac--frankly there's not a whole lot that paid media can do," predicts Joe Trippi, who ran Dean's Internet strategy and now works for Edwards. "The traditional old-style top-down centralized campaign structure doesn't work [for this schedule]," he adds, so the key is "to decentralize."
On the night of the Iowa caucuses, Obama's organizers blasted thousands of cellphone text messages to the supporters they had meticulously identified. Younger voters were offered rides. Precinct captains got turnout projections in real time, so they could show undecided caucus attendees that there was statewide momentum. The campaign mobilized others by texting a classic Obama quote, the kind of simple declaration that can sound vague or inspiring, depending on how much idealism you have left: "'In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it'--Barack. One hour until Caucus starts! Be there by 6:30pm & bring 3 friends!" Hours later, more texts went out by cellphone. One urged tens of thousands of supporters across the country to watch the victory speech on television, while a local message announced victory to exhausted volunteers across Iowa, many of whom were still at their caucus sites. The text replies poured in swiftly. "I have tears of joy in my eyes!" wrote one volunteer at 9:14 pm, and another banged out an exhilarating revelation: "I am so happy & excited for the usa! I can not believe it is about politics! Obama for President!"
The presidential campaign moved to Nevada on Wednesday, as Democratic operatives rushed to the state, money flowed to TV stations for advertising, and staff and volunteers fanned out in search of votes for the Jan. 19 caucus.
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton arrives in Nevada today to rally supporters; details of the visit weren't immediately available.
U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley endorsed Clinton on Wednesday. But the day offered a bigger lift to the campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who received the endorsement of the Culinary Workers Local 226, a 60,000-strong union of Strip casino workers who could well decide the winner of the Nevada caucus. With the endorsement came voters, organizational muscle and new strength among Latinos, who make up a large portion of the union's membership.
Obama arrives Friday to accept the endorsement.
The infusion of good news for Obama follows his surprising defeat by Clinton in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. Her victory left her resurgent heading into the Nevada caucus.
Clinton is now the protagonist in a new national narrative. Although it's not clear why so many New Hampshire voters turned to Clinton, obliterating Obama's double-digit lead in the polls, what is known is that in the final 48 hours, she revealed new emotion and fire and openness to the press and public. She also created a contrast, accurate or not, with Obama: He's a talker, I'm a doer.
That story, of Clinton peeling off her mask, and landing jabs on the Obama resume, will be told and told again in the coming days. Observers also will also dissect Obama's failure to win votes in New Hampshire with the working-class corps of the Democratic Party.
Still, the Culinary endorsement could be decisive for Obama.
Here's why:
Although the union is coy about how many of its members are registered to vote, the endorsement is expected to give Obama at least 10,000 supporters in the caucus, in a contest whose turnout estimates have ranged from 28,000 to 100,000.
In a caucus, supporters of a candidate literally stand together on one side of the room, demonstrating to everyone who is supporting whom. Many Strip shift workers, Culinary workers, will be voting at so-called "at-large" caucus sites on the Strip. This means Culinary members, for whom unity is a creed, will be able to enforce discipline. Clinton can no longer expect to win many delegates at those at-large sites.
The infusion of locked-down voters is only the most obvious benefit, however.
The caucus process requires participants to show up at 11:30 on the appointed morning and at the correct precinct location, which means organizations must identify supporters and ensure they show up. The Culinary is known as the most politically active and organized union in the state and one of the most active in the country. Political observers in Nevada have long assumed the union would provide the kind of organization that could deliver victory.
The Obama campaign, which has been working to win Latino voters with a sophisticated effort to woo them in their workplaces, can now do so with Culinary support and encouragement. A significant though ultimately unknown portion of Culinary membership is Latino, and the endorsement could have a prairie fire effect, spreading from workplaces to Latino homes and communities.
Finally, Culinary leadership, including Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor and political director Pilar Weiss, are two of the most politically savvy - and feared - players in Nevada Democratic politics. State legislators and others are wary of crossing them.
In 2006, for example, the Culinary placed Lynette Boggs, then a Clark County commissioner the union opposed, under surveillance to prove she was not living in her district. Her opponent, with the help of Culinary volunteers walking the district, beat Boggs in a landslide.
Taylor is revered by his membership for negotiating impressive wage and benefit gains in 2002 and again last year. His mild manner disappears when he takes the stage in front of the members, when he becomes a passionate, red-faced advocate for labor and progressive values.
Clinton has advantages of her own, including a massive organization, a slew of political endorsements and momentum. Also, President Clinton won Nevada twice, and the couple is beloved by rank-and-file Democrats here.
This sudden parity between Obama and Clinton in Nevada comes after nearly a year of Clinton appearing to be the dominant force in Nevada, leading in polls and racking up political endorsements.
The early Clinton dominance was always somewhat misleading, however.
The polling has never been considered reliable because Nevada has never conducted an early presidential caucus, and so it's largely unknown who will show up. And, it has always been assumed that the numbers would shift considerably with a victory by Obama in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Moreover, although Clinton's political endorsements can't be discounted, they include many from backbench state legislators whose support has never been particularly meaningful.
So now Nevada comes down to this: Who can identify supporters and get them to the caucus? Which supporters have wavered in the face of an Iowa defeat for Clinton, and a New Hampshire defeat for Obama? Will Obama capture the imagination of voters here as he did in Iowa, and, to a lesser extent, New Hampshire? Or will voters choose the longer resume of Clinton and her eight years of White House partnership? Will the presidency of Bill Clinton be a benefit, a pleasant reminder of a more prosperous and peaceful time, or a distraction from Sen. Clinton's promise of a better future and a reminder of her status as a veteran of the Washington establishment?
One wild card in the coming week will be a debate among Democratic candidates Tuesday in Las Vegas. A debate three days before the New Hampshire vote may have helped change the dynamic there in Clinton's favor.
Although Clinton and Obama are largely in agreement on most important issues, including universal health care, energy independence and finding a way out of Iraq, Clinton is considered both more centrist and more partisan.
A final question is what role John Edwards will play. The former senator from North Carolina placed a distant third in New Hampshire, but he's an effective campaigner and has a sizable group of supporters, a big Nevada staff and the endorsement of the 12,500-member carpenters union. He has hammered Clinton in recent months as the candidate of the status quo, but his message of change could take votes from Obama, who is driving the same theme.
All of this is unfolding as a race that appeared a week ago to be a mixed martial arts brawl - fast, furious and decisive - has turned instead into a lengthy chess match of state-by-state contests.
With the Culinary endorsement, the Obama team surely sees victory in its grasp here. It would then have momentum going into South Carolina on Jan. 26, where half the voters are black and in the past week have moved quickly into the Obama column. If Obama racked up two victories, he would have momentum going into Feb. 5, when 22 states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, will hold primaries. He'd also have money and political support.
The Clinton team, before Tuesday's surprise, had been urging reporters to look ahead to Feb. 5, which it thought would deliver national victory to Clinton.
Now, with a New Hampshire victory, Clinton will no doubt want to continue her momentum here and in South Carolina to finish off Obama before then.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for the White House Thursday in a timely slap at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as his own vice presidential running mate.
Quoting a black American hero in endorsing the man who hopes to be the first black president, Kerry told a cheering crowd, "Martin Luther King said the time is always right to do what is right." Now is the time, Kerry said, to declare "that Barack Obama can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States."
Kerry delivered his endorsement in South Carolina at a time, two weeks before that state's primary, when Clinton is riding a wave of enthusiasm following her victory over Obama in the New Hampshire primary.
Kerry said there were other candidates in the race whom he also had worked with and respected.
"But I believe more than anyone else, Barack Obama can help our country turn the page and get America moving by uniting and ending the division we have faced," Kerry said.
Kerry dismissed Obama critics who say the Illinois senator lacks the experience to be president. And he took a swipe at Clinton, saying, "Some have suggested in this campaign that Barack is guilty of raising 'false hopes.' ... My friends, the only charge that rings false is the one that tells you not to hope for a better tomorrow."
In last Saturday's debate in New Hampshire, Clinton said in comparing her ability and Obama's to fulfill pledges to bring about change: "I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I've already made."
Returning to the subject, Obama said when he took the microphone from Kerry: "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the third contender in the Democratic presidential race, was Kerry's vice presidential running mate in 2004. Despite their political alliance, the two men were not close personally and differed behind the scenes on campaign strategy in a race that President Bush won.
Edwards responded to word of the endorsement with a diplomatic statement: "Our country and our party are stronger because of John's service, and I respect his decision. When we were running against each other and on the same ticket, John and I agreed on many issues."
Kerry was Obama's political benefactor once before, selecting the relatively unknown Illinois senatorial candidate to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. It was Obama's first turn in the national spotlight and helped launch him on a remarkable ascent that has made him one of two leading contenders for the party's presidential nomination only four years later.
The Massachusetts senator lost the South Carolina Democratic primary in 2004 to Edwards.
Kerry and Edwards had their differences during the 2004 campaign over strategy and spending, and Edwards has said he would have been more aggressive in challenging the unsubstantiated allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth questioning Kerry's military record.
Kerry's endorsement also was a jab at Clinton, the New York Democrat who won the New Hampshire primary after a loss to Obama in the Iowa caucuses.
Kerry had withheld his endorsement, hoping to have an impact on the race and avoid the fate of fellow Democrat Al Gore, the 2000 nominee who endorsed Howard Dean in 2004 shortly before the former Vermont governor's campaign imploded. Gore has made no endorsement so far this year.
While Kerry has been close to Clinton's husband, the former president, he was incensed in 2006 when she chided him after Kerry suggested that people who don't go to school "get stuck in Iraq." Aides said Kerry meant to jab at Bush and say "get us stuck in Iraq," and that he didn't appreciate Clinton piling onto the criticism he was already getting for the remark.
The Republican National Committee pounced on the endorsement to brand Kerry and Obama "liberal soul mates."
Kerry himself had considered running for president in 2008, but that plan fizzled with the botched remark. For many Democrats, his words revived bitter memories of his missteps in 2004, when he lost to Bush.
As for Obama, Kerry gave the young Illinois state senator his first turn in the national spotlight when he chose him to deliver the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Later that year, Obama won election as a U.S. senator.
Since announcing a year ago he would not make the run, Kerry has prodded Democrats to take a stronger anti-war stance, pushing for troop withdrawal deadlines. In another area, he has backed environmental causes, writing a book with his wife on the issue.
Kerry should be able to provide some organizational and fundraising muscle to Obama.
Since losing the 2004 race, Kerry has kept a national network of supporters intact. He has an e-mail network of 3 million supporters, according to aides. He also has traveled extensively raising millions of dollars for Democratic candidates nationwide.
Keith Olbermann talked with Craig Crawford today on Countdown about the polling nightmare surrounding yesterday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary. Crawford proposes that it wasn’t the polls or the polling itself, it was the reporting and interpretation of them that led to the fiasco. The pundits got lazy and chose not to fully dig through the nuts and bolts of the numbers which resulted in highly skewed predictions.
In terms of the actual polling data, many of the polls hit the vote percentage for Obama very close to his actual tally. The one issue that was overlooked was the undecided vote — the majority of which, went for Clinton. Add to that, Chris Matthews’ three ring circus, FOXNews attacks and outright lies surrounding the New Hampshire primary and it made for the perfect storm…
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton face a long, bitter battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, complicating their need to project themselves as leaders who can unite the party and inspire the nation.
It will be a tough balancing act for the two U.S. senators, who have each won one contest. Coming out of a victory in New Hampshire this week, Clinton has to avoid exacerbating her high negative ratings. Obama must fight back while maintaining his image as being above partisan politics.
``The biggest challenge is trying to fly through all the negative turbulence at a time when you're trying to lift the country and deliver a positive message of change,'' said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. ``We certainly are not going to be potted plants if we're attacked.''
The campaign became more personal in New Hampshire as former President Bill Clinton criticized Obama's claim that he has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton, 60, derided her opponent for what she suggested was an effort to liken himself to President John F. Kennedy.
The tactic may have worked: Clinton won a surprise victory in the state five days after losing to Obama in the Iowa caucuses.
New Calendar
Intensifying the normal dynamics of a hard-fought race this year is the unprecedented election calendar. On Feb. 5, voters in more than 20 states -- including New York, Illinois and California -- will go to the polls, which will strain the resources of every candidate.
To win, Clinton and Obama, 46, plan to amplify their messages on the national stage. Aides said Clinton, of New York, will continue hammering home the contrast between Obama's promise of change and her lengthier record on issues -- a difference her campaign calls ``talk versus action.''
``We now have two front-runners that need to act like underdogs,'' said Stephanie Cutter, an unaligned Democratic strategist who worked on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. ``Both candidates need to find a way to continue to embody those successful elements of their campaign while also offering some sharp contrasts.''
Iraq War
Clinton and her husband are trying to chip away at Obama's advantage among people who consider the war in Iraq a top issue. Exit polls in New Hampshire showed that Clinton has an edge among people who consider the economy most important, while Obama, of Illinois, wins among those who cite Iraq.
The increasing bitterness in the race became apparent when Bill Clinton criticized Obama's campaign for giving negative information to reporters about the Clintons. ``Scouring me, scathing criticism, over my financial reports,'' Clinton said.
He also questioned Obama's claim of having better judgment on the war, which Obama opposed from the start. Clinton said his wife and Obama have the same voting records on the issue in the Senate. ``This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen,'' he told an audience at Dartmouth College.
The Clintons are responding to a perception among Americans that Obama is more likeable: A Nov. 30-Dec. 2 USA Today/Gallup poll found that 50 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton, compared with 33 percent for Obama.
Message of Change
Obama is relying on his message of change while emphasizing his own experience in the U.S. Senate, as an Illinois state senator and as a community organizer.
``We have to make sure that I'm making an argument about the kind of experience I bring,'' Obama said on NBC television's ``Today'' show yesterday.
As they make their arguments, the candidates don't want to do anything to alienate the other's base of supporters and jeopardize the excitement among Democrats, said Tad Devine, a top strategist on Kerry's 2004 campaign.
``Obama doesn't want to lose this by changing the tone and character of his campaign, and the Clinton people don't want to lose this by going after Obama in the wrong way,'' Devine said. ``We're trying to avoid a nomination process that splits the party in a fundamental way.''
In an e-mail to supporters yesterday, Obama fell back on his lofty rhetoric while seeking donations. ``We can overcome the division and distraction that have clouded Washington,'' he said.
Hauling In Cash
Such appeals allowed Obama to bring in more than $22.5 million for the primary elections in the fourth quarter, out- raising Clinton for the year. He may head into next month's primaries with a cash advantage, though it's not likely to be nearly as big after Clinton's New Hampshire victory. Obama's campaign said it raised an additional $8 million since Jan. 1.
The money started flowing in after Obama's victory in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Fund-raiser James Torrey arrived home from Asia early the next day to find his Blackberry full.
``There are 100 messages on there, and half of them are people who have turned me down for money,'' said Torrey, 60, chief executive officer of the New York-based fund of funds, Torrey Associates LLC. ``They basically said, `I'm in.'''
The campaigns will need that money as they enter a phase of heavy advertising trying to get their messages out.
`Every Penny'
``It's literally every penny you can raise,'' said Tobe Berkovitz, the interim dean of Boston University's communications school who has advised campaigns in the past. ``It's not just television and radio and cable, it's also telephone and field offices and copy machines and gasoline.''
A campaign just trying to cover California with advertising might have to spend between $2 million and $4 million a week, said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of Arlington, Virginia-based TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis. A candidate probably needs $15 million to $30 million in cash for ads to have ``some successful coverage'' on Feb. 5, he said.
Clinton's win should give her a bump; she brought in $1.1 million after winning New Hampshire and had $25 million in the bank this week after raising about $110 million last year, campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe said.
``The road ahead looks to be hotly contested,'' said Mike Feldman, who was a senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore during his 2000 presidential campaign and isn't working for a candidate this year. ``They clearly both have the resources to wage what is essentially now moving into a national campaign.''
John Edwards returned to South Carolina today from another distant third-place finish, this one among the chilled, leafless trees of New Hampshire. It was a lot warmer as he stepped off the charter plane into the balminess of Liberty, S.C.
His staff -- not to mention The Times' Seema Mehta -- seemed rejuvenated in the warm weather as they headed off on a lighter campaign schedule than the typically jammed one he'd been following in recent weeks with half a dozen events crammed in morning till night, not to mention the 36-hour bus tours.
His first couple of days back in the South would be more relaxed. Today, the former North Carolina senator, who was born in South Carolina and handily won the 2004 primaries there, had two “homecoming rallies” on Wednesday. The first came at noon at Clemson University, which Edwards attended for one year and where he was a walk-on on the football team. Then, he had an evening event at a high school in Columbia.
The noon rally had 1,000 people attending in a brick plaza on the university’s sprawling campus under robin’s-egg-blue skies. Everyone who traveled from New Hampshire was in a jovial mood, meandering around the university’s gentle lawns. But the evening rally was insane, truly a homecoming. An amazing drum line from Dreher High School warmed up the overflow crowd of more than 500 ardent supporters.
The Bon Jovi song “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” was playing as Edwards bounded onto an elevated stage in the school’s cafeteria.
“Man, it’s good to be back in South Carolina,” he told the roaring crowd.
This was the most intense, excited Edwards event Mehta has seen with him on the trail. His 17-minute speech, highlights of his routine stump remarks, came to a halt at least a dozen times, stopped by cheering supporters who made his remarks inaudible. And this is a man who speaks so loudly into a microphone, you rarely have to worry about your tape recorder not catching his remarks.
“One thing I learned growing up in mill towns and mill villages in the south," Edwards said, "including right here in South Carolina, is something all of you learned, which is … you’ve got to be willing to fight for your survival. That’s what this is about.
“You need a president who takes this cause personally, not someone who reads it in book. What’s happening here in South Carolina, not someone who has somebody explain to them what’s happening with mills closing, jobs leaving; what’s happening with the school system in South Carolina. You need somebody who understands personally and who takes this battle and this fight personally. I want you to know I was taught from the time I was this big that you never start a fight, but you never walk away from a fight. And we have a fight in front of us!”
South Carolina native Arletta Wilson had never attended a political event before, and was moved to tears by Edwards’ speech, particularly the references to American jobs being moved overseas and the 47 million people in the U.S. who don’t have health insurance.
The 46-year-old Eastover resident belonged to a union, but was laid off and now works at Wal-Mart with her husband Larry, 45. Larry was raised by his grandmother who toiled in a mill, and identified with Edwards’ invoking his father's and grandparents’ work in mills.
“Everything he said is the truth,” Larry Wilson said. “Everybody else is more worried about getting elected than what actually matters. He cares about what matters.”
So it was a good day back in the South for the former senator.
Barack Obama
