Hollywood’s Noblesse Oblige to us little guys, Race card in KS, Define Sleaziest, Chicago “Change” means more of the same and Dem platform member switches to McCain
By LisaB on September 17, 2008 at 2:55 PM in Current Affairs
1)Today, Reuters noted Obama’s latest mega fund raiser in Hollywood.
It starts like this:
So what does Barack Obama do after a hard day of defending the common man during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?
Throw a $28,500-a-head fundraising dinner, of course.
Followed by a $2,500-a-head reception featuring Barbra Streisand singing a song or two.
I certainly hope Obama didn’t tell the Hollywood crowd that the rest of us wanted THEM to help save us all . . .
Read the rest ->
WSJ added this:
Hollywood A-listers paid big bucks to see Sen. Barack Obama at a Beverly Hills dinner on Tuesday night, where Obama focused his remarks on easing Democrats’ jitters about the close race ahead. Obama spoke for around 15 minutes in an outdoor courtyard at the Greystone Estate, a Tudor-style mansion on 16 acres overlooking Los Angeles. Attendees at the $28,500-per person dinner included Will Ferrell, Chris Rock, Tobey McGuire, Leonardo diCaprio and Jodi Foster.
“A lot of you, just in conversations while we were in the photo lines, had all sorts of suggestions,” Obama said. “…And a lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. Why is this as close as it is? And what’s going on?” The Illinois senator said that the race was always going to be a hard-fought contest because he represented a “leap” for voters, especially when running against John McCain, a “genuine hero” with a “compelling biography.” Obama said that there was “enormous resistance … because people have been fed cynicism for a long time” but he said that he remained “confident about winning because I’ve looked at John McCain, I’ve looked at Sarah Palin, I’ve looked at their agenda, and they don’t have one.”
Despite the lavish setting, the gourmet meal (filet [sic] of beef and asparagus), and the exclusive crowd, Obama said his campaign was being fought for people who would “never see the inside of a building like this and don’t resent the success that’s represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.”
Ruh Roh. Playing the “noblesse oblige” card, eh? I’m sure the little people will appreciate the concern and care about as much as $18 cds, $60 basic cable bills and $11 movie tickets.
2)Playing the race card, part uh, uh oh to heck with it. HotAir has comments by KS Gov. Sebelius where she invokes that which can only be considered a Democratic talking point now – Obama’s “race.” And I use quotation marks because Sebelius gets it WRONG. HotAir gets its entry from a Miami Herald story.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans on Tuesday of injecting race into the presidential campaign, arguing that they are using “code language” to convince Midwesterners that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them.
“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked with sarcasm. “(Republicans) are not going to go lightly into the darkness.”
HotAir had this to say:
There is nothing more dishonorable in politics than calling opponents “racists” without evidence. It not only smears people who have tried to keep race out of the election, it is a McCarthyite tactic to silence critics. It reveals in another fashion Obama’s Nixonian tendencies in reacting to any sort of criticism at all — shouting it down, smearing journalists doing their jobs, and branding any dissent from the One’s revealed wisdom as based on hate rather than genuine opposition to statist policies.
Kathleen Sebelius has decided to enable that kind of McCarthyism and mudslinging, without having the courage to provide an iota of evidence for it. Perhaps Obama should have chosen her for a running mate; they appear to have the same perspective and philosophy, as well as sharing an ethical standard so low as to be invisible to the naked eye.
Let me add this. Aside from HotAir’s complaints about Sebelius’ comments, I’d like to add the fact that Obama is NOT AA. As many AA NQ readers continue to remind the rest of us, Obama is actually Arab/African/White. I guess Sebelius hasn’t read BO’s books, or she would know that. Of course, given the race-baiting by his campaign and his claim to a “Selma” pedigree, Obama might just go back and claim his dad was from Kenya Heights, in some inner city. Better hold on to those Obama first editions before the “updated” version comes out.
3)While the Obama campaign has trotted out the line about its opponent’s campaign being the “sleaziest” ever, Politico says not so fast.
Yet presidential historians and political scientists interviewed by Politico scoffed at the notion, suggesting McCain’s approach is no harsher than those used in previous modern campaigns and certainly not by comparison to many historic campaigns.
“The idea that this campaign is the sleaziest ever is absurd,” said David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers who has written books on Presidents Coolidge and Nixon. “In fact, there’s been very little that’s below the belt, and aides have been fired on all sides when they’ve gotten near, let alone crossed, the lines. There’s nothing at all to rival the Swift-boating of Kerry in 2004, the imputations of un-Americanness to Dukakis in 1988, the anti-Catholic stuff against Al Smith in 1928 and the regular resort to slander and character assassination of so many 19th-century campaigns.”
——————“We have long a history of negative campaigning; this hardly comes close to the most negative,” Long said. “Voters say that they don’t like negative campaigns, and they don’t. But that said, we know that negative campaign ads are the most effective. … if you just run campaign ads that are purely positive, it tends not to move any voters.”
Apparently the Obama campaign has done more whining about “unfair ads,” so this article focuses on their complaints. Still, a good example of old-style political reporting and worth a sigh of “those were the days.”
4)Realclearpolitics has a bucket of ice water for those still thinking Obama is about change.
For those of you who still cling to the fantasy that Barack Obama is “about change,” you should note how he, or his minions, want nothing to do with reforming politics in Illinois, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union.
“Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest government,” proclaims his campaign Web site. Apparently, no longer. When the Democratic presidential candidate–now his party’s industrial-strength voice for our deliverance from political corruption everywhere–was asked by a reformer if he would help get his political mentor back home to get off the dime and move the most minimal of state ethics legislation toward passage, the Obama campaign sent word back that amounted to a “no.”
State Sen. Emil Jones (D-Chicago) is the Chicago machine politician who might have been most instrumental in jump-starting Obama’s political career. Now, as Illinois Senate president, Jones is the one sitting on the reform legislation, refusing to call it for an expected favorable vote before it officially dies of neglect.
The author goes on to say the governor of IL, Blagojevich, a crony of Jones, is not going to do anything about reform either. Specifically, that means NOT calling the state legislature to Springfield to work on the matter.
So, along comes Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, thinking that now might be a good time for Obama to parlay his friendship with Jones to do a good deed: Won’t you intervene with Jones and try to get him to call the Senate back into session to get this law passed? “[T]his is a place [Obama] could come in and quickly clean up some of the damage and serve his state,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. After all, her group and Obama worked together during those halcyon days when he actually supported reform in Illinois, so maybe he’ll be receptive to a plea to intervene on behalf of Illinois folks who have been getting gouged for years by the likes of Jones. “A 30-second phone call to the Illinois Senate president could yield huge dividends to this state,” she said.
In response, Obama’s campaign issued an oozy statement reaffirming Obama’s alleged commitment to reform, while getting no more specific than urging everyone to get together and love one another right now. What Canary was asking Obama for wasn’t all that much. Maybe a 30-second phone call to back up his usual pap of, “Look, ah, I’ve, ah, always been for, ah, reform.” For most people, the reform that we’re talking about is so basic that they might ask, “You mean it’s not illegal already?”
The legislation would make illegal the widespread abuse called pay-to-play politics, by which companies doing business with the state contribute to the state official in charge of ladling out contracts.
————–
Jones now is the only one standing in the way of the reform, with Obama abetting.
———-Cutting his ties with the corrupt Chicago machine is one bridge you will not see Obama burn. Not now, not ever.
Think THIS will get covered? Not likely. Certainly not if the MSM is able to “discuss” Palin’s makeup, as one NPR guest called her “someone I might buy MaryKay from.”
Now THAT’s a female to female SLAM!
5)Today’s NYT has a story that claims US values have shifted leftward. You’d think it was interesting to read until you see the italics at the bottom:
Mark Mellman is a Democratic pollster whose clients include the majority leaders of the House and Senate. He polled for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
Don’t forget, planting op-ed pieces in papers is something all campaigns do to try and convince you their view of things is right. It is also useful to use such op-eds as either trial balloons or deliberately dull rollouts of problematic issues for campaigns.
Next!
6)The NY Observer has a piece about Obama starting to hit McCain more directly on a number of issues. While it focuses on Obama’s message, I think it is a fair story – one of the best I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s worth reading simply to remember what political reportage should be.
However, I also noticed something interesting:
Perhaps predictably, Mr. Obama still doesn’t appear entirely comfortable in the role of chicken-in-every-pot Clintonian populist.
At the Sept. 16 event, Mr. Obama ran through a laundry list of proposals for government oversight, regulating financial institutions, investigating rating agencies, streamlining regulatory agencies and preventing market manipulation, and attacked Mr. McCain for being out of touch and clueless about the dire state of the economy. But unlike Bill Clinton, who spoke about technical solutions to social ills with a relish that made it seem like he was up at the podium reading love poems to the working people in the crowd, Mr. Obama’s delivery of the newly retooled message this week was clearly a slog—right down to the fact that he read his addresses off of teleprompters.
——————
On the fundamentals, Mr. Obama, sometimes a great orator, is not a great communicator.
NQ also had a great piece on teleprompter stump speeches yesterday.
Obama has brought his teleprompter to stump speeches. That’s interesting. We all know he does a better job with one. Without it, he devolves into “uh” land. But it is also interesting because a stump speech is supposed to be a casual affair – you know – where a candidate steps up on a tree stump and talks to the people around him. Talking with the people, among the people kind of thing. But that whole atmosphere is deliberately changed with teleprompters. Now the candidate has to stand in place. Instead of meeting the eyes of voters, he reads the words.
To me, this is both the Obama campaign’s effort to put the candidate’s best face forward but is also a way to shield or remove the candidate from those he is talking to. Given the elitist tag hung so often on Obama, you might think putting him at a podium between teleprompters isn’t a good idea. But the campaign must have figured the odds were better this way. To me that’s an admission of a serious problem.
And even more proof that he would never have done the town hall meetings McCain advocated for.
7) And, as the Washington Times notes in a tiny piece, another huge Clinton donor is switching her efforts to McCain.
John McCain’s campaign says the Republican is picking up the support of a top Hillary Clinton fundraiser and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild has said she thinks Democratic nominee Barack Obama is arrogant and has a problem connecting with average Americans.
Notice that? Ms Forester de Rothschild is a member of the platform committee. I’d call that the inner circle, and a break there is pretty significant, if you ask me.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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