Independents for Obama

Tonight's Speech

Link: Inside the Clinton Shake-Up

"                 Obama's Best Speech Yet                
                                                      

It's been a week or so since I've heard Obama's stump speech, so maybe this is old news.  But -- wow -- he is really going after John McCain.  And he's doing a damn fine job of it.

He started by honoring McCain's service, with all apparent sincerity, and then pivoted quickly to this line: "John McCain has the wrong priorities -- because they are bound to the policies of the past." He then promised "a clear choice," tying McCain to the Bush tax cuts and, in particular, the war in Iraq: "John McCain won't be able to say I ever supported this war in Iraq, because I opposed it from the start. Senator McCain said the other day we mght be mired for a hundred years in iraq. A hundred years -- which is reason enough not to give him four years in the White House."**

The rest of the speech was Obama at its best: Compared to his early speeches, he's far more deft at weaving policy into his promises of movement-building. As I said previously, where he used to talk about change for change's sake, now he talks about specific changes -- and how he intends to build a popular mandate for those changes.

He's also doing a nice job of mixing the old Clintonian theme of rights and responsibliity.  Talking about his proposals for college tuition assistance, coupled with national service, he promsied, "We'll invest in you, you invest in your country, together we'll move forward, that's what we dream of."

Towards the end of the speech, he returned to his theme of "yes we can" -- but in a way different than I hard heard before. (Again, maybe he's been doing this lately and I just missed it.)  He tied that theme to all the great movements in American history -- the revolutionaries who fought the British for independence, the abolitionists who crusaded against slavery, the Greatest Generation who served in World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and so on.  Not only did this cloak his ideas in the mantle of patriotism, which is always a good thing, but linked them -- once again -- to tangible, pivotal changes in American life, which is precisely what his campaign needs to be promising."

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Video Obamadent

What is the real Hillary like....

It was touch and go about Hillary a few weeks ago for me - Then came Billary and I decided that going backwards was not an option for me.  I am a huge Hillary fan in  2012 if she does not run the primary in 2008.  But until then, she is just running on her relationship with Bill, and their record together in the 90s.

A great column about how she is, and what we get from her as a President is in David Brooks column from this week.  Enjoy.

Great Column in the NT Times

Interesting column   

Interesting column in the NY Times about experience vs. change.  Here is an extract:

well-educated young people are the distilled version of Mr. Obama’s supporters, and it’s a fact that younger people in the U.S. have had it with the bitterness, divisiveness and ineffectiveness that make government and politics in their eyes seem so unsavory.

They are in a better place than their elders on race. They are not shouldering the resentments of years and decades past. They are not parsing the differences between the Clinton and Obama health proposals, or obsessing over who would do better against John McCain.

They are just fed up with the status quo, and they want change. And they’ve found a rock star who embodies their desire.

The advantage in this race is still substantially with Senator Clinton. The realists are not crazy, after all. But neither are the dreamers. Winds change. If you’re sailing against the wind today, it may be different tomorrow. And there are few things more powerful than the winds of history.

Rumors - Confirm or deny at BarackObama.com

There seems to be many rumors making the way around the internet and the conversations about Obama.  I have found this site to be helpful in determining what is rumor and what is truth.

QuickPost | TypePad

California's 3 million unaffiliated voters account for about 19 percent of the state's total registered. In New Jersey, some 2.8 million are unaffiliated -- well over half. Kansas and Massachusetts, two other Super Tuesday states with flexible primary rules, have 447,634 (27 percent) and 2 million (50 percent) unaffiliated voters, respectively.

Independents are beginning to influence more and more state and national elections - 15 of the Super Tuesday elections are "Open Primaries" where independents can request and vote in one or more of the democratic or republican primaries.

California Independents for Obama

Check out this group's endorsement for Obama:

January 30, 2008

LARGEST INDEPENDENT VOTER ORGANIZATION IN CALIFORNIA ENDORSES OBAMA

LOS ANGELES – IndependentVoice.org, California’s largest organization of independent voters, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President in the open Democratic primary on February 5.  The endorsement of the 200,000 member organization could impact significantly on the outcome of the primary, with close to 20% of Democratic primary voters expected to be decline-to-state independents.

Obama has racked up double-digit leads among independents in the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.  In South Carolina, 23% of Democratic primary voters were independents and Obama won 42% of their vote, almost twice as many votes as received by Hillary Clinton.

Media outlets and political analysts agree that independents will determine the outcome of the California and New Jersey primaries.  Fifteen out of the twenty-four Democratic Party contests on Tsunami Tuesday are “open,” allowing independents to participate.

“We are independents because we are making a statement against the insider culture, against the old political paradigm and against partisanship,” stated Jim Mangia, Chair of IndependentVoice.Org.  “That is why we independents feel so close to the ideas and vision expressed by Barack Obama.  He is a change agent who understands that real change, real transformation comes from the people, not the politicians!”

So you want Bill Clinton back in the White House?

So Bill is getting crazy in his old age - No, I think this is a planned calculation against hope by the way of F.U.D.  Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt.  The King is back at the helm, and is making a calculated play to move our focus away from the concept of change and back to the Clinton campaign tactics of old :

THERE'S A METHOD TO CRAFTY BILL'S MADNESS

By DICK MORRIS    Published in the New York Post on January 22, 2008. Why is Bill Clinton courting such intense publicity, inevitably much of it negative? Is he crazy? Crazy like a fox. He has two goals and is achieving them both spectacularly. First, he wants to be the same kind of lightning rod for Hillary that she was for him during his run for the presidency. As the 1992 Republican convention approached, Hillary ratcheted up her comments and profile precisely to attract GOP fire so that they would leave Bill alone. He and I discussed the plan. Hillary's comment, for example, about "baking cookies and serving tea" put her squarely in the Republican Party's sights as the convention approached. The Republicans fell for the lure big time and spent their entire convention going after Hillary. Bill was scarcely hit. And the 1992 GOP convention is one of the few that afforded its party no bounce at all. Now Bill is returning the favor. In the days before Iowa and leading up to New Hampshire, Hillary was the prime topic of political discussion. She took shots for misusing Bill's record and trying to adopt it as her own, for minimizing King's contribution to civil rights, for crying, for attacking her opponents, and for changing her campaign style to become more likeable. Now, she rarely gets hit anymore. They're hitting Bill instead. Like a red cape, he is attracting the attention of the bull so his wife the matador escapes unharmed. The other method behind his madness is that Bill wants to suck up all the oxygen in the room and dominate the coverage of the Democratic contest. By doing so, he cuts Obama out of the news, pushes him off the front page, and usurps the headlines. Of course, he also crowds out Hillary, but that's OK, given her large leads in the national polls and in all the big states whose primaries are coming up. If there were a newspaper and television blackout, Hillary would cruise to an easy win, so Bill, by injecting himself into the coverage and hogging it, is accomplishing the same goal. His tactics now are reminiscent of those he used to black out John Kerry during the lead-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. By scheduling book signings and speeches in Boston, he effectively took the coverage away from the prospective Democratic nominee, a man who would have eclipsed Hillary's presidential ambitions had he won the election. Ultimately, the Clintons are playing a game of jujitsu with Obama, using his own strength against him. By challenging Obama for the black vote - by promising to go door to door in South Carolina in minority neighborhoods, for example - Bill is highlighting the question: Will Obama carry the black vote? Of course, he will. He leads, 4 to 1, among African-Americans now. But by making that the central question, Obama's South Carolina victory will be hailed as proof that he won the African-American vote. Such block voting will trigger the white backlash Sen. Clinton needs to win. Once whites see blacks voting en masse for a black man, they will figure that it is a racial game and line up for Hillary. Already, she carries white voters by 2 to 1. The Clintons can well afford to lose South Carolina as long as the election is not seen as a bellwether of how the South will vote but as an indication of how African-Americans will go. It's a small price to pay for the racial polarization they need to win. So to seize the limelight, take Hillary out of the line of fire, and to call attention to his head-to-head battle with Obama for the loyalty of America's blacks, Bill Clinton is seeking all the coverage he can get, positive, negative or neutral.

Join California for a Call Bank this Saturday

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Welcome - Let's see what we can do together in the primaries to have the chance to vote for Obama in the general election!