Kurtz speaks on Annenberg papers, % of Clinton supporters unmoved by Obama unmoved, Biden classy/Biden childish
By LisaB on September 23, 2008 at 11:15 AM in Current Affairs
1)The WSJ has an article by Stanley Kurtz this morning about Annenberg, Ayers and Obama. Kurtz is the guy who finally got access to the Annenberg papers in Chicago. I’m hoping there will be more articles to come.
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama’s “recruitment” to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
Read the rest ->
Kurtz also tracks down some of the recipients of the money Obama’s committee funded. There’s a group we’ve seen before.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers’s radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with “external partners,” which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
Mr. Obama once conducted “leadership training” seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama’s early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC’s in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
CAC also funded programs designed to promote “leadership” among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children’s education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama’s alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda.
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The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC’s first year. He also served on the board’s governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its “operational role” at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC’s own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board’s reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers’s formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.
Simply more evidence the relationship between Obama and Ayers is not what has been stated. I also don’t like the cozy relationship between the grant program, Obama’s former community organizing buds and local politics.
I’m all for helping parents speak up and advocate for their children. I’m all for helping a downtrodden community help itself and get its due from local government. I’m all for helping schools and I even think some private/public partnerships can work – with proper oversight. But if this had been something to be proud of, wouldn’t we have heard all about it by now? All the time? Wall to wall coverage of the wonderful education work Obama did in the tough neighborhoods of Chicago and the wonderful results?
So, what’s the problem here? Ayers? Afrocentrism in schools? More political consciousness than math? Here’s what I’d like to know as a former educator. I’d like a list of what was funded and what was not. The whole list. Then I’d like to see what teachers have to say about that.
2) Obama didn’t “sell out” in Green Bay like McCain did a few days ago. Political Punch has the pics to prove it.
3) Newser has an AP poll saying Obama’s support among Hillary voters is not moving.
An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll shows that among adults who backed his rival during their bitter primary campaign, 58 percent now support Obama. That is the same percentage who said so in June, when Clinton ended her bid and urged her backers to line up behind the Democratic senator from Illinois.
The poll shows that while Obama has gained ground among Clinton’s supporters _ 69 percent view him favorably now, up 9 percentage points from June _ this has yet to translate into more of their support.In part, this is because their positive views of Republican presidential nominee John McCain have also improved during this period.
Those supporting McCain have also edged up from 21 percent to 28 percent, with the number of undecided staying constant, the survey showed.
————The problem that supporters of Clinton, the New York senator, have with Obama seems to flow from their measure of him as a candidate, not from issues. From establishing a timeline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to abortion to canceling tax cuts on the rich, their views of the importance of issues are virtually identical to Democrats in general.
Yet they find Obama less likable, honest, experienced and inspiring than Democrats overall do, and have a better view of McCain. And while majorities of Clinton supporters say Obama shares their values and understands ordinary Americans, they’re less likely to say so than Democrats overall.
4) The AP reports, at Newser, that Obama is realizing some of his spending proposals will have to wait.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the prospect of a massive government bailout of the financial industry means that he probably would have to delay the spending programs he has called for during his campaign.
I wonder what is so important Obama would push it anyway?
5) At Newser, even Biden didn’t like that terrible Obama “email ad” against McCain.
“I thought that was terrible, by the way,” Biden said.
Asked why it was done, he said: “I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we’d have never done it.”
Of course, he backtracked almost immediately.
Late Monday, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement from Biden. In it, Biden said he “was asked about an ad I’d never seen” and was “reacting merely to press reports.”
Biden said that, as he said in the interview, there was nothing “intentionally personal” in the criticism of McCain’s views.
“Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Sen. McCain’s ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize, especially when they continue to distort Barack’s votes on an issue as personal as keeping kids safe from sexual predators,” Biden said.
Biden should have just stuck with his first comment and not issued such a juvenile statement. The first was classy and the second just reminds me of kids trying to scream about “who started it.” While Biden’s people were, no doubt, trying not to let any points be scored on their guy by having him sound “weak,” they actually did the guy no favors in making him sound petulant. After all, who will remember this exchange and these stupid ads later?
Biden’s classy statement would have been remembered. But he had to follow it up with “but he hit me first!” Lame, lame, lame and stupid. Man up and stick with your first comment. Trying to amend it down just looks like sour grapes and petulance.
6) Realclearpolitics has an important piece about the growing chorus of pundits and writers who think that racism is the most important potential reason for an Obama loss.
Seven weeks before the 2008 presidential election, liberals are warning America that if Barack Obama loses, it is because Americans are racist. Of course, that this means that Democrats (and independents) are racist, since Republicans will vote Republican regardless of the race of the Democrat, is an irony apparently lost on the Democrats making these charges.
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And it could become a rage the likes of which America has not seen in a long time, if ever. It will first and foremost come from within black America. The deep emotional connection that nearly every black American has to an Obama victory is difficult for even empathetic non-blacks to measure. A major evangelical pastor told me that even evangelical black pastors who share every conservative value with white evangelical pastors, including pro-life views on abortion, will vote for Obama. They feel their very dignity is on the line.That is why the growing chorus — already nearing unanimity — of liberal commentators and politicians ascribing an Obama loss to American racism is so dangerous.
Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic: “White racism means that Obama needs more than a small but clear lead to win.”
Jack Cafferty of CNN: “The polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense … unless it’s race.”
Jacob Weisberg of Newsweek and Slate: “The reason Obama isn’t ahead right now is … the color of his skin. … If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth.”
Nicholas D. Kristof of New York Times: “Religious prejudice (against Obama) is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice.”
Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a speech to union workers: “Are you going to give up your house and your job and your children’s futures because he’s black?”
Similar comments have been made by Kansas’s Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, and by writers in Time magazine. And according to The Associated Press: “A poll conducted by The Associated Press and Yahoo News, in conjunction with Stanford University, revealed that a fairly significant percentage of Democrats and independents may not vote for Sen. Barack Obama because of his race.” If you read the poll, it does not in fact suggest this conclusion. The pollsters assert that any person with any negative view of black life means that the person is racist and means that he would not vote for Obama. Both conclusions are unwarranted. But “Obama will lose because of racism” is how the poll takers and the media spin it.
Clearly, these pundits haven’t bothered to think through the situation and to research any potential problems people may have with Obama as a candidate. The author goes on to ask why an Obama loss might be attributed only to white racism.
One reason is the liberal elite’s contempt for white Americans with less education — even if they are Democrats.
A second reason is that it is inconceivable to most liberals that an Obama loss — especially a narrow one — will be due to Obama’s liberal views or inexperience or to admiration for John McCain.
The author also says the left-wing echo chamber doesn’t allow for lefties to see or hear that other people have different opinions and they are always surprised to find Republicans and Independents in the mix.
If Obama loses, it will not be deemed plausible that Americans have again rejected a liberal candidate, indeed the one with the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Liberals will explain an Obama defeat as another nefarious Republican victory. Combining contempt for many rural and middle-class white Americans with a longstanding belief in the inevitability of a Democratic victory in 2008 (after all, everyone they talk to despises the Republicans and believes Republicans have led the country to ruin), there will be only one reason Obama did not win — white racism.
Yep, that’s what we’re seeing, all right.
Here’s the problem. It is impossible to prove a negative. How do you go about proving your vote for McCain or a third party candidate is NOT just a racist one? Actually, you can’t. So, the pundits are safe here – they can never be disproven. The only thing we can do is continue to pound the issues, the facts and treat this candidate like any other. That does NOT preclude the “rough and tumble” of campaign jabs, despite the efforts of Obama campaign officials trying to make any criticism a racist slur.
However, it is important to keep an eye on this and speak out. I don’t want Obama to be defeated because he is an Arab/African/Caucasian. I want him defeated because I don’t think he’s right for this job. Will I move away if Obama’s elected? Heavens, no. I’ll put up with it, just as I’ve put up with Bush’s 8 years. Sigh.
, 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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