Barack Obama Weathering The Hillary Clinton Storm In Pennsylvania

My initial thoughts over the comments made recently by Barack Obama, and blown way the heck out of proportion by everyone else, have proved thus far to be correct.  The public is not being swayed by the negative attempts by Hillary Clinton and right-wing radio stations to twist and distort the words spoken by Obama.

The latest Quinnipiac Poll shows no dip in polling numbers for Obama in Pennsylvania, where the state’s primary will be held next Tuesday.   While Obama is still behind in the state, and where it is widely expected that Clinton wins (though still being far behind in delegates) the important thing is that the public is seeing through the campaign style of his opponent, and not letting it register.

There was no noticeable change in the matchup in polling April 12 – 13, following widespread media reports on Sen. Obama’s ‘bitter’ comments.

In theSurveyUSA poll there was again signs that Obama has weathered the worst of the storm.

56% say they did not find the comments to be offensive; 40% say they did find them offensive.53% of conservatives say they were personally offended by the remarks; 52% of Republicans say they were not offended. By nearly 2:1, Democrats say they did not find the remarks offensive.

And of course Obama continues his lead nationally over Hillary Clinton, the latest Gallup numbers being 50%-40%.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Democrats, Election08, PennsylvaniaPrimary

 

Barack Obama “Bitter” Statement Reflects Reality, And Will Help Him With Superdelegates

I am not writing about this matter as a Barack Obama supporter, as much as I am over the fact this story has been so bastardized by those who wish to either win the nomination (Hillary Clinton) or fear him in the fall campaign (Republicans) they therefore need to distort his original intent.

The actual words that Barack Obama said are important to read…..in their entirety.  They are important to read as they are true.  They reflect reality.  There is no way that anyone can get a sense of elitism or any other such tone from these remakes when read fully.  Instead Obama is talking directly to the issues and facts that confront many Americans as the economy suffers, and to the political promises of the past that did nothing to resolve the underlying needs.

America, I strongly suspect, gets the message that Obama was making; they know that there is a dreadful disparity between the economic reality in the small towns, while bailouts on Wall Street are easily and quickly done.  And sure voters are bitter.  Because they have the right to be.

Obama has the ability to use this story to his advantage.  He has proved very capable as a campaigner for the White House.  Even though this story might truly hurt any other candidate given how it is being spread and misused by opponents, Obama has the skills to turn this back to his good.  And I predict that when he does it will yet again make a  huge impact on superdelegates.  Hillary Clinton gets pounded by her own efforts with dirty campaigning….again.  Superdelegates that have not committed are looking for a winner, and every step of the way Obama has proved he is best prepared not only to lead the nation, but also to win in the general election.  This controversy will in the end help him.

The full statement that Barack Obama made is here to read. 

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today – kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Elections,

 

Barack Obama And John McCain Coffee Blends Made To Drink

This seems highly appropriate for a blog called Caffeinated Politics!

I would suspect that coffee might be a drink of choice often on the campaign trail, if not for the candidates themselves, then surely for the campaign staffers.  Now there is word that blends of coffees have been made for the candidates…..well most of them.

They’re roasting presidential candidates on Bill Hill, which is not nearly the same as grilling them.

Ashlawn Farm Coffee has introduced an Obama Blend, a “sweet, balanced” combination of “dark and light roasted coffees from Kenya, Java and the Americas,” and American Hero Coffee, “a light-roasted, highly caffeinated” brew that’s “edgy, strong,” made from beans grown in Vietnam. The latter’s redolent, you might say, of Sen. John McCain.

But what about a Hillary Brew?

That, says Carol Dahlke, Ashlawn co-owner and roaster, is … uh … in development.

“She doesn’t really lend herself to her own coffee blend,” Dahlke says of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who trails Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination. “If she’s still in it after Pennsylvania (site of an April 22 primary), we’ll have to come up with something. … I’ve had no divine inspiration.”

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Democrats, JohnMcCain, Republicans, Election08, , Coffee

Time Magazine’s “Raising Obama” A Great (Must) Read

How Barack Obama’s mother made him who he is will make for a great read for Democrats who support him, and Republicans who need to know more about the next President of the United States.  Time Magazine presents a well-written piece.  Anyone who knows the story of Obama as a child, or cares about the impact that his mom had on his life, will find reading this time well spent.  A portion is here below.

“When I think about my mother,” Obama told me recently, “I think that there was a certain combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something. She wasn’t comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box.”

Obama’s mother was a dreamer. She made risky bets that paid off only some of the time, choices that her children had to live with. She fell in love—twice—with fellow students from distant countries she knew nothing about. Both marriages failed, and she leaned on her parents and friends to help raise her two children.

“She cried a lot,” says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, “if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie—or if she felt like she wasn’t being understood in a conversation.” And yet she was fearless, says Soetoro-Ng. “She was very capable. She went out on the back of a motorcycle and did rigorous fieldwork. Her research was responsible and penetrating. She saw the heart of a problem, and she knew whom to hold accountable.”

Today Obama is partly a product of what his mother was not. Whereas she swept her children off to unfamiliar lands and even lived apart from her son when he was a teenager, Obama has tried to ground his children in the Midwest. “We’ve created stability for our kids in a way that my mom didn’t do for us,” he says. “My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing.”

Ironically, the person who mattered most in Obama’s life is the one we know the least about—maybe because being partly African in America is still seen as being simply black and color is still a preoccupation above almost all else. There is not enough room in the conversation for the rest of a man’s story.

But Obama is his mother’s son. In his wide-open rhetoric about what can be instead of what was, you see a hint of his mother’s credulity. When Obama gets donations from people who have never believed in politics before, they’re responding to his ability—passed down from his mother—to make a powerful argument (that happens to be very liberal) without using a trace of ideology. On a good day, when he figures out how to move a crowd of thousands of people very different from himself, it has something to do with having had a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems.

It turns out that Obama’s nascent career peddling hope is a family business. He inherited it. And while it is true that he has not been profoundly tested, he was raised by someone who was.

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, Time, Election08, Democrats, Republicans,

John McCain’s Iraq Speech Interrupted By Green Zone Bombing On MSNBC

No one can make this stuff up.

 

Technorati Tags: JohnMcCain, Election08, IraqWar, MiddleEast, Republicans, Conservatives,