Category: Barack Obama

Dodd to Endorse Obama Today

And he’ll be hitting the campaign trail with Obama.

After a prolonged silence through most of the primary season, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd is rejoining the presidential race on somebody else’s team — Sen. Barack Obama’s.

The Connecticut senator, whose own presidential campaign failed to draw enough attention to propel him past the first contest in Iowa, is expected to announce his endorsement of Obama this morning, according to a Democratic official close to Dodd. He’ll then campaign with Obama in Ohio.

Obama’s campaign hopes that the March 4 primaries in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island will be the victory that clinches the Democratic nomination for him. When he faces Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in another debate tonight — the last before these pending primaries — he’ll do it with Dodd in his corner.

It’s unclear what Dodd’s task will be with the campaign or whether he’ll be hitting those last two New England states still awaiting primaries next week. But if Obama eventually gets the nomination, Connecticut’s two senators will be in opposing campaigns. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is one of Republican Sen. John McCain’s staunchest allies.

What I find particularly interesting is that Dodd is first former Democratic presidential candidate to endorse. Biden, Richardson, Edwards, and Kucinich have all withheld their endorsement until now. In contrast, I think every Republican presidential candidate of note who dropped out of the primary, quickly endorsed another candidate.

Eric Kleefield of TPM Election Central says Dodd will be campaigning with Obama in Ohio.

Update:

The text of Dodd’s email to supporters is here. Obama’s speech accepting Dodd’s endorsement is here.

Obama Showing Dems How To Stand Up To Republicans

What Glenn said:

Perhaps (in part) because he wasn’t in Washington in 2002, Obama’s response here is the opposite of all of that. He’s not the slightest bit defensive. To the contrary, he went out of his way to raise numerous examples of why it is the flag-waving Republicans whose “patriotism” ought to be in doubt, if anyone’s should be. Without having to do so, Obama even went and raised the issue which Republicans currently think is their big, bad weapon — warrantless spying on Americans — and used it against them, to argue that spying on Americans is a profound violation of core American political principles, a far more substantive test of “patriotism” than what pretty accessories one wears with one’s clothes.

Obama’s approach illustrates the fundamental difference between these two types responses:

* Even though I am kind of against the war and a little bit against the new FISA bill for now, I love my country and want to protect Americans, too, just like the Republicans do — honest (the standard Democratic response); and, * If anyone’s patriotism should be considered suspect, it’s those who want to send Americans off to die in a worthless and destructive war and those who want to eviscerate our basic political values by torturing, detaining people with no rights, and spying on American citizens with no warrants (the gist of Obama’s response here).

Slimy accusations that one is “soft on the Terrorists” or “unpatriotic” will be effective if people see the accused, in response, nervously trying to deny the accusations, trying to run away from one’s own beliefs, defensively trying to comply with the demands of the accusers in order to make the accusations go away. By contrast, the accusations will be rendered worthless if the accused stands by one’s own principles and convictions and aggressively seeks out the debate, turning the accusations around on the accusers.

Shorter Karl Rove

Shorter Karl Rove: OH NOES! Barack Obama is really a liberal Democrat! Aaaaaiiiieeeeeeee!!!1!!

…Seriously, the whole op-ed consists of Rove telling the Wall Street Journal readership about how suddenly and not-suddenly Barack Obama revealed that he isn’t actually Joe Lieberman.

Also, don’t be shocked if you see a lot of pro-Clinton bloggers passing this Rove op-ed around today as some sort of evidence that Karl Rove won’t endorse Barack Obama in the general election or something.

100 vs 1,000,000

I’ve tried to stay out of the discussion of the pro-Hillary Clinton 527 that’s recent formed called American Leadership Project. I’m not really interested in accusations of illegal activities made by people who don’t practice in campaign finance law and think the ALP’s existence has the potential to lead to a lot of toxic commentary on the blogs, as we’ve already seen.

That said, I have to give big props to the Obama campaign’s internet department for taking this moment and trying to activate their email list against the big donor fundraising surrounding the ALP. Here’s the full email, sent from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:

Matthew —

Make a matching donationNews broke yesterday that a few wealthy Clinton supporters are gearing up for a massive spending campaign to boost her chances in the big upcoming contests in Texas and Ohio on March 4th.

The so-called “American Leadership Project” will take unlimited contributions from individuals and is organized the same way as the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

ABC News reports that this group is seeking 100 Clinton supporters to each give $100,000 to fund its $10 million effort to promote Senator Clinton and “contrast” her positions with Barack Obama’s.

That’s the opposite of how politics should work, and the opposite of how Barack Obama has run this campaign.

The same day this group’s activity was revealed, we announced that nearly 1 million individual people have donated to this campaign.

Stand up against politics-as-usual. Help reach the goal of 1 million donors calling out for change by encouraging a first-time donor to own a piece of this campaign.

If you give as part of our matching program, you will double the gift of a new donor. You can even choose to exchange a note with them about why you are part of this movement.

Make your matching donation now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/promise

Groups like this are forbidden from working primarily for the purpose of electing or defeating a candidate.

Yet here we have a committee that springs up on the eve of an election, promotes a specific candidate, and has no history or apparent purpose of lobbying specific issues outside the benefit to the candidate of these communications.

This raises a number of legal and ethical issues, but more than anything it reveals an attitude towards politics as a game that is played to win at all costs.

Americans are ready for change. We are tired of Swift Boat-style groups and smear campaigns.

Help reach the unprecedented goal of a million voices calling for a new kind of politics and a new kind of leadership.

Make a matching donation now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/promise

I’ll keep you updated as the situation with this group evolves.

Thank you for your support,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

I’m very curious to see the sort of response the Obama campaign gets from this email. The existence of the ALP is clearly an incarnation of DC politics as usual. Obama’s email list is primed against this sort of political campaigning and my guess is they will respond very strongly to being asked to be the counter-weight against 100 superdonors for Clinton. I particularly like that the Obama campaign has found a way to fit the push back against the ALP into their already existing effort to reach 1,000,000 unique donors. In this sense, they are asking their email list to reach two goals: the main ask is for them to hit 1,000,000 donors and, more subtly, they’re also telling their list that it will take $10,000,000 to counter the big money influence that’s helping the Clinton campaign.

This is a very smart strategy. I hope the Obama campaign releases the dollar totals raised from this pushback campaign against the big money that’s flowing towards Hillary Clinton.

Battle of the Bad Surrogates

The last 24 hours have brought an example of god-awful surrogate work for both Democratic campaigns. Of note are Lanny Davis for the Clinton campaign and Texas state senator Kirk Watson for the Obama campaign. I’ll let you decide which is worse.First, here’s Watson.

That’s about as unprepared as I’ve ever seen an official surrogate be for a TV interview. If I’m the Obama campaign, I draw up a one page sheet of legislative accomplishments (with senate ethics legislation at the top) and make sure everyone you’d ever even remotely consider putting on TV knows it forwards and backwards. The easiest way to stop the legislative record line of attack from the Clinton campaign (peddled here by Matthews) is to quickly answer the question.

Next, here’s Clinton surrogate Lanny Davis, who compares Hillary’s position in the campaign to Joe Lieberman’s after his primary defeat to Ned Lamont.

http://media.redlasso.com/xdrive/WEB/vidplayer_1b/redlasso_player_b1b_deploy.swf?swfv=02110803

Christopher Orr of The Plank writes:

(Unofficial) Clinton flack Lanny Davis just explained on Fox News that Barack Obama is like Ned Lamont (who, whatever you think of him, won that Democratic Senate primary), and Hillary Clinton is like Joe Lieberman (who, whatever you think of him, refused to abide by the primary result, ran and won as an independent with massive GOP support, and has subsequently endorsed John McCain). Lest anyone miss his meaning, Davis noted that he had been a devout Lieberman booster.

Now, I don’t know that there’s any scenario outside of Davis’s Lieberman-addled mind where Hillary Clinton loses the nomination and runs as an independent. The argument Davis is trying to make, I think, is that Clinton has general election appeal to Republicans and independents that Obama doesn’t have. Of course, based on what we’ve seen in open primaries, the opposite is true.

These surrogates are bad for different reasons. I doubt I would have posted either, but the combined weight of surrogate badness here just demanded attention. So – which do you think is worse?

More, Please

Obama on McCain:

“If you want the same as we’ve had in the last seven years,” Mr. Obama said, “then I think John McCain’s going to be a great choice.”

McCain needs to be consistently and persistently tied to George W. Bush. If you liked a failed war with Iraq, you’ll love a McCain war with Iran. If you liked fear-mongering and accusations of Dolchstosslegende under Bush, McCain will knock your socks off. If you liked youthful Supreme Court judges itching to roll back abortion rights, McCain will happily continue to young arch-conservatives to the highest court in the land.

It’s great to see Senator Obama using this line and I hope he continues to do it, even while the Democratic nomination remains undecided.

Presidential Politics and FISA

I want to take a moment to note that Senator Barack Obama was present and voting in favor of every amendment a majority of Democrats supported today. He did vote for the Specter-Whitehouse substitution amendment and the Feinstein “good faith” decision by the FISC, two amendments that arguably should have been opposed for their damage to the rule of law, but in the grand scheme of things his vote is acceptable.

Senator McCain was present and voting in lock-step with the Republican Party to defeat every amendment that would have improved the bill.

Senator Clinton was not present and did not vote on any amendments, nor cloture.

Today there are primary elections in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC. Senators Obama and McCain left the trail to vote in the Senate today. While I would have been happy if Mr. McCain had decided to continue to campaign, Senator Obama should be praised for coming to the Senate and vote on FISA legislation.

It would have been great to have Senator Obama use his microphone as a presidential candidate to bring attention to the legislative fight. He was not an outspoken critic of the FISA legislation, but he took time to vote the right way on a major primary election day. Good for him.

Update:

It should be noted that Senator Obama’s vote was, in the end, not critical to passing or stopping any of these amendments, as none of the amendments we wanted to pass passed and cloture was not stopped.

Update II:

Here’s Senator Obama’s statement on FISA today, via email.

“I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty. There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people – we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law.

We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties. That is why I am proud to cosponsor several amendments that protect our privacy while making sure we have the power to track down and take out terrorists.

This Administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don’t sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the Administration to join us in that effort.”

Fair enough. Again it was great to have Obama voting today, but it would have been better to have him as a vocal partner in the fight over the last four and a half months.

Update III:

It’s worth noting that Obama voted against cloture on the SSCI bill, but skipped the vote on final passage. The bill passed handily and the presence of both Clinton and Obama to vote on final passage would not have changed the outcome.

Count It

Matt Yglesias takes on Clinton campaign spin on what does and does not count for primary/caucus wins:

Back in October 2007, Clinton was beating Obama in Maine by a hilarious 47 to 10 margin, but it seems he’s carried the state today, once again by a large margin. My understanding, though, is that this doesn’t really count because it’s a small state, much as Utah doesn’t count because there aren’t many Democrats there, DC doesn’t count because there are too many black people, Washington doesn’t count because it’s a caucus, Illinois doesn’t count because Obama represents it in the Senate even though Hillary was born there, Hawaii won’t count because Obama was born there. I’m not sure why Delaware and Connecticut don’t count, but they definitely don’t.

Separate from the relative absurdity of how the campaigns spin the media and the public, it strikes me as obvious that the reason we have over 50 primaries and caucuses is because they all count.* No one win is inherently representative of more than itself until spin is added; that is, Obama won x delegates more than Clinton in Maine, a clear sign that he’s bringing himself closer to the total needed for the nomination. And he can win the Maine Democratic caucus.. At minimum, narratives following wins can’t realistically be crafted to suggest that a win is a sign of a loss. When the Clinton campaign casts wins as something other than that, they’re wading neck deep into absurd waters.

*Except for, you know, Michigan and Florida.

Money Race

The big news yesterday afternoon was a double negative story about the Clinton campaign’s money situation. First it came out that Hillary Clinton had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month. Then it came out that top staff on the Clinton campaign were foregoing pay, including the campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.

The Obama campaign followed with a fundraising email to his supporters asking them to try to raise $5 million online in small dollar donations to match Clinton’s loan. Sarah Lai Stirland reported late last night that Obama had already raised over $6.3 million online since Super Tuesday; checking the Obama fundraising widget on their blog this morning, the number is now approaching $6.9 million. And to top that off, the Clinton campaign has announced that they’ve raised over $3 million online in the last 24 hours. Clearly both campaigns are entering Ron Paul territory when it comes to rapid online giving from their supporters.

While I was still on the Dodd campaign, I remember having a conversation with a number of our more experienced and savvy staffers who’ve been around campaigns much longer than I have about how the race might shape up if it got down to just Clinton and Obama (trust me, campaign staffers are just as much political junkies as folks online). The consensus was that, if it were close, the race would go to the convention because neither candidate would have an incentive to drop out as long as they had money and the assumption was that these two would always have enough money to compete.

I think money is a factor that will be most instructive for how things proceed over the coming weeks. The Clinton campaign is clearly in a tight financial situation, but is certainly capable of raising enough in spurts online to do what they need to do. I don’t know whether the Obama campaign’s speculation that Clinton might sink up to another $15 million comes from, but both Bill and Hillary have had many big book deals, and the former President has cleaned up as a consultant and speaker. But if they can’t keep the funds flowing in online, then the Clinton campaign will be in trouble. Obama’s support isn’t shrinking, it’s growing at a rapid rate. He’s probably going to easily pass the $30+ million he raised last month in February and don’t be shocked if they’re able to hit $10 million later today.

As of now, I don’t think that either campaign will be forced into conceding because of money. But the Clinton campaign, while showing strength in some areas financially, is showing weakness in others and is certainly not looking like it can match Obama’s small dollar tsunami. We’ll see how the rest of this week shakes out and if Clinton can keep her smaller (though still incredibly impressive) wave of online donations coming in to buoy the campaign in the next few days.

Tie!

I’m with Steve Benen, last night was a draw and anyone who’s spinning hard one way or the other is just  spinning you. Both candidates had places where they had key victories. Both candidates lost in places they really would have been helped to win. Generally speaking, I think Obama closed ground and kept delegates out of Clinton’s hands in places like Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California with his late surge. I don’t think he could have realistically be expected to have won those states based on where the polls were two weeks ago. Obama kept Clinton from winning big in big states; but Clinton still won some of the biggest states yesterday.

So, no, Taylor, Obama should not give up. And no, Joe, the tide has not turned against Clinton.

The race is deadlocked and the primary contests moving forward are incredibly important. I hope we’ll be able to determine a winner based on delegates pledged from the outcomes of our primaries and caucuses, but it’s looking more likely that super delegates will decide the winner.