Feminist Pitch by a Democrat Named Obama

Obama Gets Direct: Why Vote for Me?

Thursday August 23, 2007 7:31 PM

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

BEDFORD, N.H. (AP) - The voters who were gathered to question Barack Obama had their hands thrust in the air hoping to be called on. Instead, the Democratic presidential candidate decided to wrap things up by addressing the unmentioned elephant in the room.

``This last question I will prompt myself, and that's, 'Why you instead of Hillary?''' Obama said during a supporter's house party this week. ``That's in the back of minds of a lot of people.''

That direct approach was part of a new Obama campaign style during his visit to the nation's first primary state, where he has stalled in the polls behind Hillary Rodham Clinton. He still talked about the politics of hope and the need for change, but he also was eager to address whatever concerns might be keeping voters from signing on.

- Does he have the experience and judgment to be commander in chief after less than three years in the Senate and eight years in the Illinois Legislature? Obama argued that experience doesn't equate with great leadership, pointing out that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had long resumes but led the country into Iraq.

- Is he tough enough to beat Clinton in the primary and the Republicans in the general election? Obama said even though he stands for unity and the end of personal attack politics, he will swiftly and strongly defend himself from his critics.

- Can he win a nationwide election? While some have expressed doubts about whether the country is ready for a black president, Obama argued that his race would be an asset because it would increase black voter turnout enough to give a Democratic victory in reliably Republican Southern states.

He also said young voter participation would leap. ``I think I can bring cool back to the federal government,'' he said in Concord, the last of five events Monday.

``My biggest weakness in the general election,'' Obama offered, ``is the same as in the primary election, which is: Hasn't been on the national stage that long. We're not sure if he's tough enough.

``Let me tell you, if I beat the Clintons, folks aren't going to ask whether I'm tough enough,'' he said to laughter and clapping from the crowd. But it didn't end the skepticism.

``I would agree with you that experience doesn't affect wisdom - we do know that,'' responded a woman who was among about 75 squeezed into a home. ``But by any stretch of the imagination, it would be a leap of faith to vote for you just because of the lack of years of experience.''

She asked how he would choose the staff and advisers who would help him make decisions. Obama answered that he would surround himself with competent people with integrity and independence - like Abraham Lincoln, he said. He pointed out that Lincoln also was a former Illinois legislator who faced great skepticism about his experience. ``I guess that was a leap of faith, too,'' Obama said.

Obama has less than four months to persuade skeptical voters to make that jump. His campaign says part of the challenge is getting those who know a lot about Clinton to learn more about Obama.

In New Hampshire, the campaign has set up book clubs to read Obama's autobiographies and three-on-three basketball tournaments - the candidate's favorite sport. He is meeting personally with voters who have yet to make up their minds.

Kate Hanna, an attorney who hosted the Bedford party on her front lawn, said her instructions were to recruit the undecideds and keep the gathering intimate. She had to turn away many supporters, including her own mother.

``I think they asked me to have it at my house because they knew I would rule with an iron fist to make sure that we didn't just have a rah-rah lovefest for Barack Obama here,'' she said.

``I think the people that I've talked to over the last several months have some concern about the experience of Senator Obama, but that has seemed to have been allayed by their reading about his life experience and their meeting him and hearing his thoughtful answers about any number of areas of expertise,'' Hanna said. ``It's very characteristic of Barack Obama to come back and meet it head on and discuss it and give his response to any issue that he thinks may be of concern to voters.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6871546,00.html

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On the Net:

http://www.barackobama.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6876166,00.html

Obama Names Republicans He'll Work With

Sunday August 26, 2007 2:31 AM


By BRENDAN FARRINGTON

Associated Press Writer

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama often says he will be a candidate that will bring both parties together and Saturday he named a few of the Republicans he would reach out to if elected.

``There are some very capable Republicans who I have a great deal of respect for,'' Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``The opportunities are there to create a more effective relationship between parties.''

Among the Republicans he would seek help from are Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, John Warner of Virginia and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Obama said.

``On foreign policy I've worked very closely with Dick Lugar,'' Obama said. ``I consider him one of my best friends in the Senate. He's someone I would actively seek counsel and advice from when it came to foreign policy.''

``Senator Warner is another example of somebody with great wisdom, although I don't always agree with him on every issue,'' Obama said. ``I would also seek out people like Tom Coburn, who is probably the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate. He has become a friend of mine.''

Part of Washington's problem is that President Bush has created a partisan atmosphere, he said.

``The Bush-Cheney administration has perfected the perpetual campaign, what I call the 50-plus-one election strategy, where you just presume half the country is red and half the country is blue,'' Obama said.

Later in Miami, Obama reiterated his call for Cuban-American families to be able to have more contact with their relatives in Cuba.

To rousing applause at the same Little Havana auditorium where Republican Ronald Reagan once campaigned, Obama said: ``Just 90 miles from here there is a country where justice and freedom are out of reach. That's why my policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: Liberty.''

He said there are no better ambassadors for change on the communist island than the Cuban Americans who send money to relatives.

``It can help make their families less dependent on Fidel Castro. That's the way to bring about real change in Cuba,'' Obama said. ``It's time we had a president who realized that.''

Obama addressed a crowd of more than 1,000 four days after he published an opinion piece to The Miami Herald that said restrictions that limit how often Cuban Americans can travel to Cuba to visit family and how much money they can send relatives should be loosened.

The Cuban-exile vote is considered key to winning Florida, and top presidential candidates have generally followed the recommendations of the community's most hard-line and vocal leaders, who support a full embargo against Castro's government.

But many in the large Cuban American community want to be able to visit and help family and support the idea of looser restrictions.

Obama said he wouldn't lift the current trade embargo, and said his offer to normalize relations in a post-Castro Cuba would be made after the country opened up to democratic change.

``Until there's justice in Cuba, there's no justice anywhere,'' Obama said. ``We will talk to our enemies as well as our friends and both to our enemies and to our friends, we will tell them the truth and tell them what we stand for.''

Obama was in Florida at the same time the Democratic National Committee voted to strip Florida of all its presidential delegates if the state party sticks to a plan for a Jan. 29 primary. He said, however, that Florida will still be large player in the general election and that he will seek to remain competitive here.

``The national party has a difficult task, which is to try to create some order out of chaos,'' Obama said. ``My job is really not to speculate on how to make it all work. I'm a candidate, I'm like a player on the field. I shouldn't be setting up the rules.''

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Associated Press Writer Laura Wides-Munoz contributed to this report from Miami.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/politics/26obama.html?em&ex=1188273600&en=319317dd15002d2f&ei=5087%0A

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 — On the cusp of the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Senator Barack Obama will present a plan on Sunday aimed at hastening the rebuilding of New Orleans and restructuring how the federal government responds to future catastrophes in America.

The Gulf Coast restoration, Mr. Obama said, has been weighed down by red tape that has kept billions of dollars from reaching Louisiana communities. As president, he said, he would streamline the bureaucracy, strengthen law enforcement to curb a rise in crime and immediately close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in order to restore wetlands to protect against storms.

Mr. Obama also said that he would seek to lessen the influence of politics in the Federal Emergency Management Agency by giving its director a fixed term, similar to the structure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FEMA director would serve a six-year term, under Mr. Obama's plan, and report directly to the president.

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and several presidential hopefuls are scheduled to arrive in Louisiana this week to highlight how New Orleans has — and has not — recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Democrats have sought to use the city as an example of what they believe was among the Bush administration's greatest domestic failures.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who announced his presidential candidacy in the city's devastated Lower Ninth Ward, is set to return to New Orleans on Monday and to appear with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York at a summit dedicated to rebuilding the Gulf Coast. For Democrats and Republicans alike, a plan for New Orleans is a new element of the 2008 campaign.

Mr. Obama, according to details provided by his campaign, said he would appoint a chief coordinating officer to "cut through bureaucratic obstacles" and a chief financial officer "to minimize waste and abuse." Only about 40 percent of the money allocated by FEMA to rebuild schools, hospitals and other infrastructure has reached Louisiana communities, he said, which could be improved upon with better coordination.

"Let New Orleans be the place where we strengthen those bonds of trust, where a city rises up on a new foundation that can be broken by no storm," Mr. Obama is planning to say Sunday, according to remarks provided by his aides. "Let New Orleans become the example of what America can do when we come together, not a symbol for what we couldn't do."

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would establish a Drug Enforcement Agency office in New Orleans that would be dedicated to stopping drug gangs across the region. He also would create a "COPS for Katrina" program, which would allow communities affected by the storm to hire more police officers and prosecutors to fight crime.

The city's recovery has been crippled by a shortage of doctors and the closures of hospitals and medical centers. Mr. Obama said he would create a program to forgive medical school loans in exchange for doctors agreeing to practice in New Orleans.

In his plan, Mr. Obama will call for creating a National Catastrophe Insurance Reserve, which would be paid for by private insurers contributing a portion of the premiums they collect from policy holders. Working with the industry before a disaster, he said, would create a "backstop" to protect homeowners and business owners against catastrophic loss.

Mr. Obama will also propose overhauling the levee and pumping system in New Orleans by 2011 to protect the city against a 100-year storm. To restore wetlands, marshes and barrier islands to help protect the city from a future storm, he pledges to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, an old navigation channel that many scientists say destroyed wetlands and contributed to a funnel effect that increased damage from the storm.

Before Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, Mr. Obama had never been to New Orleans. After the storm, he visited evacuees in Houston (alongside Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton); his first trip to the city was last summer.

After outlining his plan during a morning speech at First Emanuel Baptist Church on Sunday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to take a walking tour of a city neighborhood. The procession of politicians, particularly Democrats, who are set to pass through New Orleans this week are eager to use the city as an example of why Americans need their government and the challenges facing the next president.

My Five Bucks

With five bucks I could buy a sandwich
But right now I don't want to eat

With five bucks I could buy a paper

Not sure I want reality

My five bucks helps me take the subway
Back and forth from work each day

Maybe a day off, a sweet escape?
Five bucks, one tank…can't run away…

With five bucks I could help just one

He's lying on his concrete bed

With five bucks I could buy aspirin
Cause all of this just hurts my head

OR I can stop being complacent
My five bucks could do so much more

Use my five bucks to put my foot down
I want to fight a different war

They'll scowl and laugh, but I will smile
Because I've heard it all before

I'll use my change to make a change


My five bucks WILL help change the world


The Movement for change is on the go. Think of what you could do with five bucks-
Obama for change 08

My Five Bucks
Sara Haile-Mariam
Shm259@nyu.edu

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/millionstrong

 

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/5bucks

Please follow this link and donate just five bucks. The fundraising deadline is September 30th, five bucks, five days. Don't be a spectator- this is our future, let's make this campaign ours.

Students For Barack Obama
students.barackobama.com

Here is the link to The Best Speeches of Barack Obama, a 515-page
e-book, available free on-line for a limited time (in order to get the word
out about their print copy for sale):

http://www.freeobamabook.com/Best-Speeches-Of-Barack-Obama.pdf

 "Read it. Sign it. Pass it on." That's it.  That's all you have to do to be a part of one of the most ingenious grass roots efforts to take place during a campaign. The Obama Book Project is a decentralized way of spreading the word about Senator Obama.  The creator, Alex Gunter, is a graduate student at the University of Texas, and is currently interning in Washington D.C.  When asked about the project, Gunter said, "By reading it, someone gets a feel of who he is, by reading his words. By signing it, they become part of something. By giving it to someone else to read, they share that enthusiasm, the hope."

Here's what you do: You get a copy of Obama's Audacity of Hope, read it if you have not, and sign your name on the front flap.  Then, you give it to someone else.  It does not matter who it is, Republican or Democrat, friend or complete stranger, just pass it and tell them the website so they can learn what to do next.

The website has received thousands of hits, and Alex thinks 100 or so books are being circulated.  I think with the active supporters that visit this site, and the sheer brilliance of the idea, we can easily increase that number in the upcoming weeks.  Alex also requests that if you do participate in "The Project", go to the website and write in the guestbook about your experience.

And to further this idea, Alex has two ideas to help spread the word:

1. Giving out flyers at Obama rallies and events, and spreading the word at meetups and Obama house parties, have Obama book clubs.
2. Encouraging bloggers to participate and write about their experience as a way to motive others to do the same.

This project was not thought up by a think tank, or a professional political firm, but rather a college student who "came up with the idea while sitting at a restaurant near the university campus, reading a newspaper."  This is just one of many examples where a young, gifted individual decided that they wanted to be pro-active in the fight for change.

If you can, head over to Alex's website and read the experiences that have been detailed in the guestbook, or make an experience of your own.  This pass-it-on idea shows just how creative you guys are, and how you can take something simple like a book, and create a wonderful plan of active campaigning.  I look forward to reading about your adventures with "The Project" on their website, and will write about my own.

  

 

It is not that Obama necessarily underperforms as a candidate, though he was flat during the Democrats' opening-gun debate in South Carolina late last month and at a rally in Charleston the next day. But while Obama can dominate a room or a stage, his style is pure 21st century. Win or lose, Barack Obama is the Democrats' first post-Clinton politician.

The appeal of Obama is undeniable -- he drew more than 1,000 people to a Sunday rally in Conway, a town in which only 3,000 voters turned out last November. During the question session, a woman stood up in the middle of the high school gym to complain about the near-impossibility of living on her $800-a-month Social Security disability check. In response, Obama launched into a reasoned dissertation on the Social Security issue, talking about how George W. Bush exaggerated the funding crisis to sell his privatization scheme and declaring, "We have to stop borrowing from Social Security to pay for the war in Iraq."

Only after he spoke for nearly two minutes did Obama begin to acknowledge the person and the pain behind the question. "It's also true that disability payments sometimes are not sufficient," he said, "and I would have to know exactly what your situation is to determine the category you fall in." Finally Obama uttered the sentence that would have leapt instantly to almost any other candidate's lips: "I know how tough it is to live on Social Security."

A little later in the questioning, a man announced that his son was a paratrooper headed to Iraq and denounced the congressional Democrats for backing down on a timetable for withdrawal. (Obama, like all his Democratic rivals in Congress, save Joe Biden, were part of the minority opposing continued unrestricted funding of the war.) In his lengthy response, Obama talked about how he "struggled" with his Senate vote and understood why "my colleagues had a hard time with it." But Obama, the only leading Democratic presidential contender to oppose launching the Iraq war, went on to say, "I couldn't in good conscience continue on a course that wasn't working."

There was only one thing that was surprising about Obama's answer -- he never once acknowledged that he was talking to the father of a soldier headed into a brutal war zone, a parent who feared that his son might die in a conflict that has lost any rationale or larger meaning.

This is not to argue in any way that Obama is unfeeling, but rather to stress that his campaign style avoids many of the commonplace rituals of political life. Obama also seems reluctant to play the populist card that has been a staple of Democratic rhetoric for decades. Previewing his plan for universal healthcare coverage at an ice-cream party in a downtown park in Berlin, N.H., Sunday night, Obama went out of his way to declare, "I'm not somebody who will run down the insurance companies and the drug companies just for the sake of it."

Drug companies and insurance companies have long been a favored target of Democratic presidential candidates. They were directly in the firing line when Al Gore built his 2000 campaign around -- not global warming or the environment -- the mock populism of "the people vs. the powerful." Neither Edwards nor Hillary Clinton is apt to miss many opportunities to go after the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. But there was Obama, speaking to a largely Democratic audience in an old pulp-and-paper town, promising not to take any cheap shots at these corporate villains.

Tuesday morning in Iowa, Obama unveiled his long anticipated healthcare plan -- joining Edwards, the initial policy pacesetter, and Hillary Clinton, who once claimed this as her signature issue in a competition to provide universal coverage for the 45 million uninsured Americans. The Obama proposal, which was estimated to cost between $50 billion and $65 billion a year, would both create a new national healthcare plan for those without coverage and launch a new federal watchdog agency to set standards for (and police) the insurance marketplace.

With another Democratic debate slated for Sunday night, it is possible that the campaign may pivot for a while on the details of the rival healthcare plans. This was the terrain of the 2000 battle between Al Gore and Bill Bradley. More likely, the model will be the 2004 campaign in which all the Democratic contenders announced their healthcare plans with great fanfare -- and then watched the race revolve around the war in Iraq.

Obama over the weekend was accompanied on the campaign trail by both his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters. (If the race ever narrows down to Obama vs. Edwards, they could have an entire debate revolve around who has the cuter children.) Watching the Obamas as a political couple, it seemed evident that Michelle had been given responsibility for public shows of empathy.

Sunday night, as the sun was setting in Berlin, Obama agreed to take a final question. A 22-year-old woman stood up, leaning on a cane, and spoke movingly about the disabilities that have ravaged her life. (Her symptoms are somewhat analogous to those of multiple sclerosis.) "I want to go to college, " she declared. "I want to work, I want to do those things that some people with healthy bodies take for granted." She then asked the candidate whether he would restore funds for programs for the disabled that the Bush administration had cut.

This time Obama acknowledged the woman directly: "You have made a powerful presentation, so I know that you will go far. It's extraordinary. The main thing I'm going to do is to listen to you and those like you." He then began criticizing recent federal court decisions restricting the Americans With Disabilities Act. But Obama did not stay with the dry dissertation of policy for long and turned back to the woman, fighting to stand erect with the help of her cane. Looking out at her through gathering gloom, he said, "This is something that we understand pretty well -- Michelle can talk to you later -- because Michelle's father had M.S."

Afterward, Michelle Obama raced over to the young woman -- a blogger who goes by the screen name of "Megan Wilson," who asked that her real name not be published -- and embraced her. Megan began sobbing, saying, "I know I'm courageous, but my body doesn't like me." Michelle Obama held her for a long time and promised to bring over her husband. When Obama arrived, five minutes later, he said, "You spoke so well, we're proud of you." And then added, "You'll head our disabilities agenda." But he left the hugs to his wife.

There is a risk in drawing firm conclusions from these small moments on the campaign trail. But with the traditional intimacy of the primary warm-up season virtually stripped from the current presidential campaign, these glimpses of something approaching reality are how we come to understand a candidate as a person rather than as a set of position papers or as a walking résumé.

So here is a working theory, subject to many modifications as the campaign unfolds: Barack Obama is simultaneously both aware of the power of cheap rhetoric and easy emotion -- and intellectually contemptuous of it. He is a candidate in quiet rebellion against the banalities that too often govern political discourse. It is questionable whether he can maintain this high-minded stance through the debates and the primaries. But for the moment, Obama is running for president on his own terms, and succeeding.