Tag: 2008 (page 10)

This is a follow-up to my post last night on why I think the Obama campaign is floating Tim Kaine as a smokescreen in the Veepstakes and the frontrunner is Kathleen Sebelius.

Here's the latest veep sweepstakes numbers from 538.com. Law Prof Michael Froomkin at Discourse.Net says the Bayh numbers may be misleading. Froomkin thinks, as do I, that Sebelius may get the nod from Obama.

Why does Obama need Kaine as a smokescreen? To make Sebelius more palatable to Hillary supporters who will be more than a bit upset at his choosing a woman other than Hillary. [More...]:

The group Vote Both is shutting down:

The two former Clinton staffers who started the group Vote Both say Obama's decision to offer Clinton a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic Party nominating convention and other signals suggest Obama will not chose her.

"Because it seems that Senator Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party's chances of winning in November," Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora wrote in an e-mail they planned to send Thursday to the 40,000-plus supporters who signed onto their online petition.

Hillary is likely to speak on the second night of the convention, August 26, which is the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment giving the women the right to vote. Here's my recap of what it was when she spoke at the 2004 convention in Boston.

Obama's acceptance speech is on August 28, which is the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" Speech, which by the way, included this line:

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Update: Lanny Davis makes a final pitch for Hillary -- like a last chance college try. Too late I think.

When Sen. Barack Obama accepts the Democratic Party nomination for President at Invesco Field in Denver, 75,000 will be in attendance. Who are they and what can they do for Obama? He's got it all planned out and it's very clever. If it works, the Republicans may not know what hit them in November.

The campaign recognizes that people who live in battleground states will be more effective at persuading their neighbors than the traditional advertising campaigns, which is why it's important to send the masses who will be in Denver out with instructions and training to bring in votes.

....Enter the 75,000 people who will have to come hours early for Obama's acceptance speech to get through security, most carrying cell phones. As they settle in their seats, campaign aides will be on stage asking them to text message their friends and use call sheets to get people to register. "There will be a lot of idle time. We put idle people to work," Hildebrand said.

Now consider how one gets to be one of the 75,000 in attendance, considering only 5,000 are delegates and the press accounts for another 15,000, leaving 55,000 seats. [More...]

The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune's Swamp are saying the same thing: Obama's veep vetting is focusing most heavily on Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, and Sen. Evan Bayh.

Problem: If Joe Biden is the nominee, count me out. I couldn't even clap for the ticket.

Other reasons: His saying we may need to rethink the military draft. His inability to cure rampant injustices in his own state, where one of every four prisoners who died in prison since 2000 died of AIDS-related diseases and the states' prisons suffer from an atrocious lack of medical care.

I'm just warming up. I so hope Obama doesn't pick Biden. He is the antithesis of change and the embodiment of your father's Oldsmobile. [More...]

John McCain takes a shot at Sen. Barack Obama and his Berlin speech today:

While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a 'citizen of the world,' John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it."

More...

James Leo Bishop was executed in Mississippi last night. His last words included an apology to his victims and a request for people to vote for Sen. Barack Obama:

Before he died Wednesday evening, death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop apologized to his victim's family, thanked America and urged people to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice," Bishop said.

There's no question Sen. Barack Obama is more attuned to the racial disparity in the application of the death penalty and plight of the wrongly convicted than John McCain. However, he's not a death penalty opponent.

Nonetheless, Mr. Bishop makes the right call between McCain and Obama. May he rest in peace. [More...]

I've been in court and missed Obama's speech in Berlin today. 200,000 people turned out to hear him. Here's the transcript. He told the assembled crowd he speaks to them as a citizen of the world.

One message: Tear down the walls.

The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

The German paper says it was clearly taken from Ronald Reagan:

Obama's speech was a clear echo of former US president Ronald Reagan's call to then Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev in Berlin in 1987 to "tear down this wall," before the fall of communism.

A big theme was the war on terror: [More...]

For months, John McCain and Barack Obama have been unable to agree on town hall forum debates. Today, however, they agreed on their first joint appearance -- at a megachurch.

The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch.

....He said that both had readily agreed, perhaps reflecting how each candidate is courting the evangelical audience to whom Mr. Warren ministers.

Warren says he is friends with both candidates and there will be "no gotcha" questions.

As far as I'm concerned, I've heard more than enough already about the candidates' faith and religion. [More...]

Reading the LA Times blog, one would think Hillary is raising money for a 2012 presidential run. She's not. As the article it quotes from the New York Observer makes clear, and as was anticipated in this June, 2008 CBS News article, she's under a 60 day deadline and is asking donors to allow her to transfer the money to her 2012 Senate campaign rather than requiring her to refund it.

Chris Dodd did the same thing. His situation may be iffy because he agreed to public financing which Hillary did not. He's waiting for a ruling from the FEC.

The point is Hillary only has 60 days from the end of her campaign to either refund the money donated to her general campaign or get permission to redesignate it to another campaign. I don't see this as an indicator she's planning another Presidential run.

Sen. Barack Obama was on Larry King Live tonight. I only got to hear a few minutes. Here's what I heard:

• Osama bin Laden: He'll go after him and the U.S. will either kill him or bring him back for a trial and if it's a trial, the death penalty is appropriate. If he's in Pakistan, we'll ask Pakistan to help. We'll go get him if we have to.

• VP Stakes: He will pick someone who shares his vision and will bring a new kind of politics to Washington.

Did I miss anything?

Addressing the NAACP last night, Sen. Barack Obama said he will continue to stress his theme that black voters must take accountability for bettering their own lives.

Obama got a standing ovation at the annual NAACP convention here, presenting himself as a symbol of the political power that earlier black leaders had won. Touting the sacrifice of these activists, Obama said their courage had allowed him to "stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America."

But Obama, in diagnosing conditions in the black community, made it clear that he was prepared to break with the generation of black leadership represented by Jackson. He said that government and business alone couldn't be blamed for the pain suffusing some black neighborhoods, but that black parents needed to show more maturity and demand more from their children.

Obama's advice to parents: [More...]

Via Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money who has some thoughts of his own, Kathy G at the G Spot gives a rundown and her rankings of possible vice-presidential candidates for Sen. Barack Obama. Her longer post with her reasoning is here.

Kathy's top three: Sherrod Brown, John Edwards and Kathleen Sebelius.

Scott likes Sebelius and Edwards.

My thoughts right now: The only ones that create any sense of enthusiasm are Hillary and John Edwards. My past thinking on Sebelius is here.