Here is how the AAPOR defines the Bradley effect on page 53 of the report:

the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent.

And here is what their extensive and rigorous report found (pages 53-54):

Several compelling pieces of evidence suggest that the New Hampshire estimation errors were probably not caused by the “Bradley effect” – or the tendency for respondents to report a preference for a black candidate (Obama) but vote instead for a white opponent. A meta-analysis by Hopkins (2008) indicates that while the Bradley effect did undermine some state-level polls in previous decades, there is no evidence for such an effect in recent years. In the 2008 general election, the very accurate final poll estimates of Barack Obama’s fairly decisive victory over John McCain dispelled suspicion that the Bradley effect was at play during the final weeks of the fall contest. There is also a conspicuous lack of evidence for a Bradley effect in the primary contests outside of New Hampshire. Of the 81 polls conducted during the final 30 days of the Iowa, South Carolina, California, and Wisconsin contests, the vast majority (86%) over-estimated Clinton’s relative vote share, while just 14% over-estimated Obama’s relative vote share. This finding is based on the signed direction of A for each survey.26 Furthermore, as reported in Table 3, poll estimates of Obama’s vote share in New Hampshire were quite accurate – it was only Clinton’s share that was consistently underestimated.

Here is Table 3 (page 14):

In poll after poll Hillary Cinton’s support was undersampled while Obama’s support was correctly sampled. It was not that her supporters lied to pollsters; they were simply not contacted.

Pollster.com offers this summary of the report:

• Given the compressed caucus and primary calendar, polls conducted before the New Hampshire primary may have ended too early to capture late shifts in the electorate’s preferences there.
• Most commercial polling firms conducted interviews on the first or second call, but respondents who required more effort to contact were more likely to support Senator Clinton. Instead of continuing to call their initial samples to reach these hard‐to‐contact people, pollsters typically added new households to the sample, skewing the results toward the opinions of those who were easy to reach on the phone, and who more typically supported Senator Obama.
• Non‐response patterns, identified by comparing characteristics of the pre‐election samples with the exit poll samples, suggest that some groups who supported Senator Clinton–such as union members and those with less education–were under‐ represented in pre‐election polls, possibly because they were more difficult to reach.
• Variations in likely voter models could explain some of the estimation problems in individual polls. Application of the Gallup likely larger error than was present in the unadjusted data. The influx of first-time voters may have had adverse effects on likely voter models.

Hillary’s base of women, blue collar workers, union members, single mothers and the elderly were simply too difficult to contact, while young Obama supporters were always available by telephone. It was not racism or the Bradley Effect that enabled Hillary to win New Hampshire; it was that the pollsters never spoke to her base.

But the media and the Obama campaign had to accuse New Hampshire Democratic Primary voters of racism in order to minimize Hillary’s victory and racialize the race before the South Carolina primary, where the majority of Democratic voters are African-American.

Here is Mickey Kaus of Slate on January 9, 2008:

1. Bradley Effect: It seemed like a nice wonky little point when Polipundit speculated on the Reverse Bradley Effect–the idea that Iowa’s public caucuses led Dem voters to demonstrate their lack of prejudice by caucusing for Obama. Now this is the CW of the hour. Polipundit wrote:

I suspect that Obama may have scored better than he would have in a secret-ballot election, and benefited from a Reverse Bradley Effect.

New Hampshire, of course, is a secret ballot election. Voters might have told pollsters one thing but done another in private.** New Hampshirites I ran into Tuesday night mentioned that the state was very late ratifying the MLK Holiday.

Here is Andrew Kohut in the New York Times on January 10, 2008:

To my mind all these factors deserve further study. But another possible explanation cannot be ignored — the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.…

Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews….

In New Hampshire, the ballots are still warm, so it’s hard to pinpoint the exact cause for the primary poll flop. But given the dearth of obvious explanations, serious consideration has to be given to the difficulties that race and class present to survey methodology.

Here is David Kuo of the Huffington Post as votes were counted during the New Hampshire Primary:

Tonight, despite all the talk of how little race matters in this campaign, it is clear that race is still a big deal in bi-racial campaigns. And it has showed up for the first time, in a measurable way, in the 2008 presidential race.

It means that every poll — from exit polls to tracking polls — are absolutely suspect from here on out.

Here are excerpts from MSNBC on the night of the New Hampshire Primary:

ROBINSON: Well, I‘ll tell you what some people will suspect. Here you have polls, you know, the day before the primary showing Obama way ahead. And he finishes, you know, 15 points lower than that. A lot of people will suspect a “Bradley effect.”

You know, Tom Bradley…

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, Tom Bradley. You‘re…

(CROSSTALK)

ROBINSON: Not the Bill Bradley effect. We were talking about Bill Bradley‘s endorsement being, you know, not necessarily the greatest thing. I‘m talking about Tom Bradley, the mayor—African-American mayor of Los Angeles years ago, ran for governor of California. Polls showed him on election eve that he was going to cruise to victory and he lost. And Doug Wilder of—the first…

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait, wait, but are you really saying right now that the people of New Hampshire may have—I won‘t say, be racist, but are you saying that they did not want to go in that booth and vote for a black man? …

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: I was just going to say, I‘ve been listening to the panel. Number one, the “Bradley effect,” whether people are going to decide it was in effect in this case is very real and talked about among people in the political business. Let‘s not forget the Gantt race in North Carolina few years ago.…

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, look, you can only go back—you know, and I go back in recent history and you try to find races where you had these gigantic poll shifts, where the final pre-election polls differed so dramatically from the actual result.

And the one thing they all have in common is something that Eugene Robinson brought up earlier, and that is race.

It was Tom Bradley in California governor‘s race in 1982. The polls had him ahead—ahead by a fairly healthy margin over George Deukmejian. He ended up losing.

And Virginia governor, 1989, Doug Wilder had a double digit lead going into the final—in the final weekend. He won by a very narrow 1 point margin.

Harvey Gant, the 1990 Senate race with Jesse Helms—one of the most divisive races, frankly, that this country had on race. That was, again, pre-election polls had Gant ahead, Helms wins.

So you can‘t help but look at that—and particularly you‘ve got to wonder what this sends—the message that this could send to African-American Democrats, who may look at this and say, well, of course, that‘s what happened. You know, a lot of times when I‘ve noticed this and when you talk to African-American Democrats, they sat here and they‘ll see this race stuff a lot quicker than us in white America. And I think that this is—it‘s at least, you‘ve got to explore it. You‘ve got to look at it. History has taught us this—recent history—when it‘s come to dealing with African-American candidates.

Here is Carol Costello, Andrew Kohut and Professor Charles Ogletree on CNN’s Situation Room on January 11, 2008:

I’m Wolf Blitzer.

You’re in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Is the U.S. ready for an African-American president?

Senator Barack Obama’s strong showing so far in this campaign has many saying absolutely, yes. Others, though, say it’s too soon to tell.

Carol Costello has been looking into this story for us — you’ve been talking to a lot of people supposedly knowledgeable on this very sensitive subject.

What are they telling you?

COSTELLO: Well, it is a sensitive subject, isn’t it?

You know, most I talked with today say it is too soon to tell.

Obama seems to have transcended race, but can he in the long run?

Already, critics say Obama’s opponents are trying to create this subtle narrative of racial division. They deny it, but it illustrates how hard it is in this country to take race out of the equation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO (voice-over): The Iowa caucus created all kinds of excitement surrounding Barack Obama. His win in a predominantly white state and a strong showing in another seemingly proves it — Obama can transcend race. It’s something Obama has always believed could happen.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I am here to tell you yes, we can in ‘08.

COSTELLO: Maybe. But there are those who feel while Iowa and New Hampshire prove Obama can certainly get white votes, it doesn’t mean he can continue the trend — that Obama’s second place finish in New Hampshire, despite polls that had him coming in first, illustrates the undercurrent about race that exists in this country.

Andrew Kohut, in charge of Pew Research, has a theory. He says many of those inclined to vote for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire were poor, uneducated whites who don’t participate in polls and who often don’t vote for blacks.

ANDREW KOHUT, PRES., PEW RESEARCH CTR.: At least race should be considered because we know that the kinds of people drawn to Mrs. Clinton are always the kinds of people who turn down surveys at pretty high rates. We don’t know much about whether the people who we don’t get are like the people that we do get.

COSTELLO: Polls about race are notoriously difficult to analyze. Take this ABC/Washington Post poll conducted before the Iowa caucus. A whopping 88 percent of Americans said race would not matter in choosing a president. But pollsters say you have to take this result with a grain of salt. Few people are willing to tell a pollster they’re racist. It reflects the Bradley effect, after Tom Bradley, a black man who ran for governor in California in 1982. Most polls showed him leading but he lost to a white male candidate.

PROF. CHARLES OGLETREE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Ask Tom Bradley when he ran for governor in California. Black man, thought he could win, he didn’t. Ask Harvey Gant in North Carolina. Ask Harold Ford, Jr.

COSTELLO: Look at the stats. There is one black governor in the United States. They are nine women governors. They are 16 senators who are women. And one black man, Barack Obama.

Still, Barack Obama got plenty of votes in New Hampshire and in Iowa, which are both 95 percent white.

You could say that trumps the poll, but there are many more people yet to vote and racial under currents that are so hard to predict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And here is the Obama campaign as discussed in an article by Ryan Lizza in the January 21, 2008, edition of the New Yorker:

Did Obama experience a similar fate in New Hampshire? The evidence is murky, but his campaign believes the question is important enough to warrant study. When I asked a senior Obama adviser whether the Bradley effect was a possible explanation for the gap between the final poll numbers, which showed Obama leading by an average of eight points, and the ultimate outcome, he replied, “Definitely.” He added, “If so, then the question is: what’s different between Iowa and New Hampshire? It could be that the socially acceptable thing in front of your neighbor at a caucus could be different than what you do in a secret ballot. Obviously, that’s something we’re going to be trying to figure out as we go forward, primarily through polling. I know people are working on ways of asking questions about getting at people’s attitudes about race. We’re working on this.”

In other words, the Obama campaign cited the Bradley Effect in order to explain a loss, and the sycophantic media repeated the notion again and again and again. Apparently they received the memo from David Axelrod as votes were counted in New Hampshire. Too bad real analysis reveals that the Bradley Effect had no impact on the New Hampshire Primary.

Will CNN apologize? Will MSNBC apologize? Will the New York Times apologize? Will Slate apologize? And is it not a coincidence that after the Obama campaign decided race was the reason he lost the NH primary that the Clintons were accused of racism by the Obama campaign during the South Carolina primary? All of it was debunked in the report released today by the AAPOR. Will Obama and Axelrod apologize to Hillary and Bill Clinton?

I doubt anyone will apologize, for no one in the Obama administration or in the Obamamedia cares about facts. But at least all of us know that those of us who voted for Hillary during the New Hampshire primary and during the other primaries are not racist. Will they apologize to us?

Step aside, LD! We have the genius now:

The [New Yorker] article’s author, Ryan Lizza, would have expected to secure one of the 40 press places on Obama’s tour this week but was told no space was available.

Writing on the Huffington Post, media blogger Rachel Sklar said: “So it’s gonna be like that, is it? Retribution for unfavourable coverage is a chilling thing to contemplate.”

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and Hillary Clinton supporter, accused the Obama campaign of “engaging in a nasty little act of getting even”.

Journalist Ryan Tate, blogging on Gawker, said: “It’s hard to see the snub as anything other than payback. His people had to know what signal it would send to exclude the magazine so soon after the cover flap.”

We’ve written several more stories on the brouhaha over the New Yorker cover cartoon, including Larry Johnson’s “The New Yorker and the Hubris of Arrogance.”

 
We’re just guessing that it wasn’t just the cover that enraged the thin-skinned Obama, but also the first long, factual account ever to appear in the media on Obama’s ruthless ambition, lack of principle, association with unsavory types in Chicago politics, and his empty record, devoid of any leadership on any issue. Ryan Lizza, former Obamaton party-liner, is now receiving his punishment.

 
Next stop for the untraveled Obama: the Siegesaulle, the Victory Column built as a tribute to Prussian military might and discipline after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. In 1939, just before Hitler launched World War II, the Nazis added a gold layer to the monument and moved it to a long boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate. Initially, Obama demanded to speak before the Brandenburg Gate, an honor only extended to heads of state. The presumptive nominee crossed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Checkpoint Charlie, infuriating her with his presumption. With this incident the German chancellor got a little taste of how foreign policy would be conducted by an arrogant and inexperienced Obama.
 
After his absurd stumble, Obama picked another site for his photo-op in Berlin–the Siegesaulle. Clueless does not begin to describe Obama speaking at the monument to Prussian militarism. Not since Ronald Reagan blithered into the Bitburg cemetary, where he laid a wreath on the graves of SS soldiers, has an American figure so misunderstood and mangled German history.
 
The Berliners now, of course, use the Victory Column as a rallying point for the annual gay Love Parade. This is their way of satirizing their tragic heritage.
 
Obama’s message? He seems to have borrowed Sam Cooke’s lyrics: “Don’t know much about geography, don’t know much about history, I just know I love you.” Yeah, love you back, baby!
 
Except The New Yorker. Hate The New Yorker. Yes, The New Yorker.
 
Achtung, Obamatons! This fate is what awaits you if you so much as utter a critical word or attempt dreaded satire. Keep chanting slogans in unison! No thinking! Kein denken! Danger! Gefahr! Vorsicht!
 

For example, the overriding theme of the piece is Obama’s unbridled ambition. Early during his brief, three year tenure as a community organizer–whatever THAT job entailed—Obama openly discussed his long-term and very, very large political ambitions with even his newest acquaintances.

After connecting up with “king makers” like his employer, Allison Davis, and Annenberg Challenge associate, William Ayers, Obama found an opening when the Illinois state Senator from his neighborhood, Alice Palmer, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Ironically, the seat Palmer sought was open due to recently disclosed past corruption on the part of the person that had previously held it and she was beaten in the Democratic primary to fill the seat by (of all people) Jesse Jackson’s son.

When Palmer subsequently sought to retain her Illinois state Senate seat, she was shutout by the Obama forces. A great deal of the funding for Obama’s run came from political bag men like Tony Rezko.

But once Obama was elected to the Illinois senate and began to serve in Springfield, he became bored. Two years later Obama challenged another black incumbent (the former Black Panther—Bobby Rush) for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama was soundly defeated in this race. But he immediately began to work to have his state Senate district redrawn so that the could represent elements of both Chicago’s Southside and areas that would connect him to big money contributors from the city’s Gold Coast further north. Even in defeat, Obama was planning his next big initiative—a run for a U.S. Senate seat.

But Obama wasn’t in the U.S. Senate for even two years before he announced his decision to run for president. America’s only hope if Obama wins the presidency is that the victory will launch a run on his part for the office of United Nations Secretary-General within just a few months of his taking the oath of office as president.

“Factually Correct, Not Politically Correct”

“Senator Obama, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kennedy”

(NEW YORK) (July 17, 2008) One of the great lines in American political history is Senator Lloyd’s Bentsen’s 1988 retort to Senator Dan Quayle, “Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kenney.” Senator Barack Obama daydreams that he’s the “new Kennedy.” In your dreams.

The remnants of the Kennedy dynasty have pronounced Obama “the new Kennedy.” Defunct dynasties are like that. They still want to pretend the dynasty lives. But the entire Kennedy/Obama spectacle is farce and charade. Obama is a great actor and entertainer. Kennedy was neither. On the contrary, Kennedy had great personal charm and incredible grace. Obama is the spitting image of the fictional Sammy Glick, not the legendary John F. Kennedy.

I have learned a few lessons about grace along the way, and I vividly remember one lesson administered by Senator Charles Percy in 1978 on a snowy day at the Palmer House in Chicago. Senator Percy could not have been more gracious and more welcoming, and humorous, in introducing me to his audience.

As a talk radio host in Palm Beach, I often raised controversial topics. But callers always felt I was gracious and fair to even my harshest critics. I never screamed, never hung up the phone, never insulted anyone—all while raising the blood pressure of my audience with hot button topics. As so graciousness and gracefulness come with time and experience.

Let’s start with the obvious: The New Yorker cover was laughable. It was ridiculous. And it was funny. I know the East Side of New York well, and the West Side too; and in those neighborhoods where the New Yorker is targeted people would have laughed and moved on.

Obama made the story by bungling his response to the New Yorker.

I was in New York last Sunday and saw the new New Yorker issue at the newsstand where I buy the Washington Post. The newsstand editions a wrapper that obscured the full cover, so I missed a view of the outrageous NY cartoon.

Obama’s initial response to the cover cartoon was correct. He shrugged his shoulders. That’s what Kennedy would have done, and maybe tossed off a quip. End of story.

Obama’s handlers then issued a denunciation of the New Yorker cover, and the story exploded. Obama made the incident, not the New Yorker. Senator John McCain also chimed in, and he made the ruckus even louder. Good move, John; if that’s what you intended. Obama’s denunciation was all the talking heads on cable TV needed to create the gonsa megillah. As a result, Obama took what should have been a nothingburger and converted the cover cartoon into a media extravaganza.

Outrageous political cartoons have a long history in the United States. Thomas Nast’s cartoon attacks on corrupt New York City leaders a century and a half ago are part of American history. Richard Nixon endured biting attacks. Even President Franklin Roosevelt was targeted by conservative opponents. So the goofy New Yorker cover on Obama was nothing special.

Ironically, by reacting the way he did, Obama made something out of nothing. He showed that he lacked the grace and graciousness to “blow off” the New Yorker with a genuine Kennedyesque quip and maybe a roll of the eyes.

The bottom line: it’s not enough to daydream you are the “new Kennedy.” Dreamin’ ain’t bein’. I won’t take anything away from Barack Obama. He is intelligent, attractive and suave. He knows how to work the rope line. He is going to make mega millions after he leaves the senate.

But I knew Jack Kennedy. And Barry Obama is no Jack Kennedy.

Not now. Not ever. Not inshallah.

—————————————————————

Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of Contrarian Commentary. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2008. Martin covers regional, national and world events with over forty years of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law. His columns are also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com. Andy is the author of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, published in July 2008, via AndyMart20@aol.com.

Note about NoQuarter Radio’s interview of Andy Martin: An audio archive of the Friday interview of Andy Martin by Larry Johnson, which you can hear live at 11:00 a.m. ET via No Quarter Radio (NQR) will be available at NoQuarterUSA.net and at NQR immediately following the show.

With the collapse of IndyMac and Bear Stearns, mounting home foreclosures, a tanking economy and no end in sight in Iraq, we need someone far smarter and more knowledgeable than we are on matters of foreign and economic policy, national security, and our place in the global community. Someone who regards as sacrosanct the role of the President in upholding our Constitution. Someone who will stand up for what is right. FISA comes to mind. Senator Clinton kept her word and voted against giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity while Senator Obama blithely reneged on his, throwing the 4th amendment under the bus.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Senator Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, has done his level best to make you fear – not voting for his candidate. If you don’t vote for Obama, we will consider you a racist. If you don’t vote for him, they will overturn Roe v. Wade, they will nominate conservative Justices, they will keep us in Iraq for 100 years.

Most worrisome to me, however, is that whenever I speak to an Obama supporter, they can give me nothing to rest their hopes for change on. Their number one statement is: “He’ll surround himself with really great people.” This strikes me as code for ‘We are electing a symbol. We know he’s too inexperienced, but the old ‘pols’ will protect and help him.’ So perhaps their faith in his scintillating judgment is not as strong as they pretend.

Congressional approval is at an all time low. Nancy Pelosi, once elected Speaker, turned from a tiger into a pussycat, and with her pasty smile, said “impeachment is off the table.” Democrats have taken nary a bite out of Bush since they took back Congress, making their integrity suspect. Are these really the people you want whispering in Obama’s ear?

Now, apparently, we are not even allowed to poke fun at Senator Obama – so thin is his skin. Oh, let me not mention the word skin, lest that be taken the wrong way. What are his supporters so afraid of?

Do they secretly realize with all his policy flips flops, gross inexperience, and 20 years of nefarious, crooked and divisive associations that he is hanging on by a thin thread as it is?

This week, we saw more evidence of the thin-skinned Obama campaign.

The New Yorker cover featuring Barack and Michelle has everyone up in arms over the possibility that we are either offending or besmirching the chosen one. Regardless of whether one thinks this cartoon is great satire or misses the mark, if Senator Obama’s skin is that thin, what is he doing running for the highest and toughest office in the world?

Even the LA Times, and the NY Times’ otherwise inexcusable Maureen Dowd, both long on the Obama bandwagon, were making fun of the humorless Obama campaign.

What if Hillary Clinton had behaved this way, taking issue with every negative, smarmy or unfair depiction of her? She would never have had a moment to campaign, being too preoccupied fighting shadows. Only once did she come out swinging: when David Shuster of MSNBC piggishly asked if the Clintons were “pimping out their daughter Chelsea.”

Doesn’t it make anyone uncomfortable that Barack Obama has enjoyed political cover the likes of which have never been seen before? Hillary enjoyed no such advantage. In fact, it was exactly the opposite.

I don’t want to play tit for tat here. Honestly. But as disgusting as the disrespect and misogyny leveled at her was, and no matter how much her political rivals, aka, the “boys” piled on, no matter the Democratic Party elites stabbing her in the back for their own selfish gain – didn’t it make you feel better knowing that she could handle it?

She actually got taller and stronger the longer the campaign wore on.

The White House pressure cooker is a non-stop stress machine. The President has it coming from all sides, foreign and domestic, and must stand ready to take a pounding like the heavy bag at the gym. The honeymoon is over 20 minutes after the Inauguration, I can assure you. In fact, if the past couple of weeks are any indication, it looks like the bloom is already off the rose.

Are we really saying that Senator Obama does not have the intestinal fortitude to laugh off this magazine cover? That is preposterous. Or was this outrage merely feigned? Another tactic from the brain of Axelrod – get preoccupied about a cartoon, so that the damaging and/or unfavorable contents of the article itself would go largely ignored.

On Larry King Live, Senator Obama just commented The New Yorker cover was an insult to members of the Muslim community. Really? It seems the Muslim community was far more offended when two Muslim women, in traditional dress, were removed from sitting behind him at a photo op. Again, his comments are a diversion, more tactics of fear in order to protect and advantage himself. The only upset is the upset he is fomenting as another distraction from the real issue: him.

Watching how Senator Obama’s fans protect him and the party elites run political interference for him (remember Bush’s remarks at the Knesset), almost makes me feel like I’m at an Al-Anon meeting. We are not here to enable this man. He has to be ‘able’ without our help.

Do you really want to buy four years of this? How will you feel when your student loans keep you in indentured servitude and he has no plan to help but instead continues to be enamored of Reaganomics?

How will you feel when he keeps capitulating on the Constitutional protections this country is built on? How will you feel when women’s rights are further whittled away on Roe v. Wade because late term abortions should not be permitted when, as he so insensitively and cluelessly put it, a woman is “feeling blue”?

The fact that Hillary Clinton, out of the race for the past five weeks, is still polling better than Obama against John McCain should telescope something very significant here.

What will you do in the somewhat unlikely event that Senator Obama is elected? I promise, you will quickly tire of making excuses for him.

“Oh, he’s just running to the center.” The center of what? All his supposed political principles have been thrown out the window. Gun control, women’s rights, Iraq, FISA, the death penalty, NAFTA, and more.

Senator Clinton, as the true progressive in the bunch, evidenced once again with her FISA vote, would need to make no such adjustments. Whether or not you agreed with her on every point – her policy positions were straightforward from the beginning and she would require no waffling or fence-straddling now.

This is no time for a trainee. Fortunately, though the DNC would have you believe otherwise, this situation is not irreversible. There is a very clear path to the stronger candidate and if responsible Super Delegates have any courage, they will take it at the Convention.

Otherwise, please ask yourselves, how long can you protect someone who has shown he has no interest in protecting you?

Why, if a big huge stink is NOT made about the cover, people might actually read the ARTICLE inside! And they might, just might, see that this Emperor, just like George Bush, is wearing no clothes.

So instead, let’s just ratchet up the furor because heaven knows, NO other politician has EVER had a satirical cartoon done about them in the history of politics – ever! That’s why this one is so shocking! And no doubt, RACIST! Because they are making fun of Obama!!!!! How COULD they?!?! Don’t they know that this is unprecedented?? Oh, wait – it’s not.

You can go to this website, Political Humor, and see cartoons about all KINDS of politicians. The difference there is that the cartoons are mocking the actual people pictured, not the nebulous blogoshpere and its potential for rumor-mongering. (There are far more sites than this one – I just found this one first, and quite easily.)

But that wasn’t the point. Well, it is kinda the point with Obama – to blow something completely out of proportion and twist the message behind it.

We saw that time and time again during the primaries, like with the Bill Clinton remarks in SC that they twisted in an attempt to paint him as a racist. But the point in this particular instance was to distract Obama’s lemmings, I mean, followers – no, uh – SUPPORTERS from reading the article inside. Now, the material in there is not a surprise to those of us who are thinking – uh, informed voters, but it might well be to those bandwagoners in the Obama camp. It paints a picture of Obama different from his carefully crafted image as an outsider, a new voice, the reincarnation of JFK and MLK (gag me). Unlike the articles we have sought out to get all of the pieces of this puzzle, this magazine, a national, respected, magazine, puts it all together in one place (and honestly, went fairly easy on him from other sources I have seen, particularly those in Chicago). We can’t have that, can we?? Not according to the Obama camp.

What this article, “Making It“, makes clear was the calculated ascendancy of King Obama, the meticulous way he cultivated relationships to move him further along his path to what he wanted all along – the presidency. This was no accident, no fluke – Obama has been planning, scheming, and working for this day. It recounts just how he got this far, who helped him, and how; upon who’s backs he has climbed, and on who’s throats he has stepped. What is also clear is his opinion of himself, and it is mighty high indeed. Oh, yes – he knew he was going to be King, I mean PRESIDENT:

Almost as soon as he got to Springfield, he was planning another move. He was bored there—once, he appeared to doze off during a caucus meeting—and frustrated by the Republicans’ total control over the legislature. He seemed to believe, according to colleagues at the time, that he was destined for better things than being trapped in one of America’s more notoriously corrupt state capitals.

And he did not always get along with his colleagues in the State Senate. In fact, he had quite the acrimonious relationship with State Senator Hendon, and the two almost came to blows (here’s a surprise – Obama started it) on the floor of the IL senate. I bet you haven’t heard that before, right? Oh, no, he is always the consummate professional, isn’t he? No. No, he isn’t. Raise your hand if you are surprised at that!!! Yeah, I didn’t think so.

How about that Community Organizing experience he touts so much? The platform upon which all of his subsequent experience rests? Well, he had this to say about it:

…And for the most part I would say I wasn’t wildly successful. The victories that we achieved were extraordinarily modest: you know, getting a job-training site set up or getting an after-school program for young people put in place.

Wow – you can see why that experience, all 2 -3 years of it, are so foundational for the rest of his political life, and certainly for the presidency. I would go so far as to say he has already demonstrated some of his “extraordinarily modest” legislation since he got into the U.S. Senate, all two pieces of it (post office naming and helping out in Congo). Oh, it just gives me shivers to think what modest things he can accomplish as president!! I am sure the list is endless of the mediocrity he can bring…

Another aspect the article exposes it just how Obama came to be at Trinity United Church of Christ. You know he isn’t a native of Chicago (though one of the Obamabot talking points is how offensive it is that Hillary Clinton isn’t from NY yet is a senator from NY), and that was an issue. Where else to obtain your bona fides but your church, right? Well, certainly for the young Obama:

Obama seems to have been meticulous about constructing a political identity for himself. He visited churches on the South Side, considered the politics and reputations of each one, and received advice from older pastors. Before deciding on Trinity United Church of Christ, he asked the Reverend Wright about critics who complained that the church was too “upwardly mobile,” a place for buppies. Though he admired Judson Miner, he was similarly cautious about joining his law firm. Miner once told me that it took “a series of lunches” and hours of discussion before Obama made his decision. At the time, Obama was working on “Dreams from My Father.”

Notice anything missing about how he choose his church home? How about FAITH?? Or THEOLOGY? Um, no. No it was all about which church was going to help him the most politically. Theology and faith seemed to have little to do with his decision.

Apparently, the same was true of where he worked – it was what the church, and the firm, could do for HIM, not what he could do for THEM. JFK is rolling over in his grave, no doubt…

So, yes, if I was Obama, I imagine I would want a big huge smokescreen, too. A well orchestrated, “Look Over THERE!” By completely twisting the point of the political cartoon, he has made the issue the cover, so the issues raised within the covers are discredited at best, and ignored at worst. He has made the point the cartoonist, not his own history and his claw and nail climb to the top. Now, even if any of his army actually read the article, they would be able to dismiss any fact that was the least bit critical (or true) because of that darn cover. The one about the rumors. The one making fun of us out here, not the Obamas. It is clever, I’ll give him that. And is certainly in keeping with how he has run his campaign, and his political life. But it is also dishonest, manipulative, and insulting. If you actually read the article, though, you will see that is just SOP for Barack Obama.

Oh, one last thing – I got the following the humorist, Andy Borowitz, and thought he summed it up nicely:

Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself
Bid to Help Late Night Comics

Saying he is “sympathetic to late night comedians’ struggle to find jokes to make about me,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes.

The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows:

Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, “You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.” Barack Obama replies, “At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, “I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.” Barack Obama replies, “She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream.”

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” Barack Obama replies, “His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans.”

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?
Barack Obama: The New Yorker magazine, which should be embarrassed after publishing such a tasteless and offensive cover, which I reject and denounce.

A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.”

And there you have it. Jokes can still be made about Bill Clinton and Monica. Jokes can be made about McCain, including his time as a POW. We have seen the number of so-called jokes about Hillary Clinton. But Obama is off limits, people – except for these five jokes above. Got it, people??

The absolutely brilliant cover of this week’s New Yorker magazine has progressive Internet sites up in arms. (Check out Memeorandum.com’s tracking of the flood of blog posts.) For example, at dailykos.com over 1,400 comments have been made in less than two hours about the topic, “OMG and WTF, have you seen this?”

The cartoon shows Barack Obama giving a fist bump to Michelle Obama. He is dressed in Arab garb and she looks like Angela Davis with her ‘fro and an AK-47 strapped over her shoulder. Looking over the couple is a smiling portrait of Osama bin Laden. In the fireplace, an American flag is burning.

Shocking? Not really. In this cartoon the Obamas are standing in the oval office. This week’s issue of the New Yorker has a long, long article about Obama’s days in Chicago. The cartoon is an obvious caricature of the way Obama is seen by the ten percent of Americans who still think he is a Muslim.

But who are the low information voters now? Last night, at dailykos.com, it’s like the last day at Jonestown. The kool-aid has really gotten to these people.

But let’s destroy the New Yorker! You know, the people that employ Seymour Hersh and so forth.

For starters, he needs Bill Clinton to raise money. He also needs Bill Clinton to help calm the anger and resentment that Hillary supporters still harbor towards Barack.

But the apology road is rocky and painful. At a minimum Barack needs to walk backwards on the following charges.

He stood by silently while his backers accused the President of racism.

The Obama campaign’s “fairy tale” gambit was particularly transparent. Commenting on Obama’s explanation of why he is more against the war in Iraq than Hillary Clinton, and disturbed by the news media’s failure to report Obama’s actual voting record on Iraq in the Senate, the former president referred to what had become the conventional wisdom as a “fairy tale” concocted by Obama and his supporters. Time to play the race-baiter card! One of Obama’s most prominent backers, the mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, stretched Clinton’s remarks and implied that he had called Obama’s entire candidacy a fairy tale. (The mayor later coyly told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she had not intended to criticize Clinton: “Surely you don’t mean he’s the only one who can use the phrase ‘fairy tale,’” Franklin said, in a tone that the reporter described as “mock indignation.”) Appearing on CNN, one of its pundits, Donna Brazile, hurled the wild charge that Clinton had likened Obama to a child. “And I will tell you,” she concluded, “as an African American I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.” With those kinds of remarks–”as an African American”–the race card and the race-baiter card both came back into play. Although Brazile is formally not part of Obama’s campaign, her comments made their way to the South Carolina memo, offered as evidence that Clinton’s comment was racially insensitive.

And Barack trashed Bill Clinton’s legacy. Ryan Lizza, writing in The New Yorker, noted:

That is what offended Bill Clinton. “Hillary’s opponent, in his entire campaign, every two or three weeks has said for months and months and months, beginning in Nevada, that really there wasn’t much difference in how America did when I was President and how America’s done under President Bush,” he said in Lock Haven. “Now, if you believe that, you should probably vote for him, but you get a very bad grade in history.” In the closing days of the campaign, Obama gave at least three speeches criticizing the former President, who, ever vigilant of his legacy, defended himself at every stop. Few paid attention; Barack and Bill were like two boxers trying to have a fight but both getting pelted by a mysterious third force—the saturation gaffe coverage.

Well, guess what Barack? Bill Clinton has been elected twice as President. You are still a wannabee. And your boy, Jimmy Carter, could only win one term and hung the albatross of defeat on Democrats for the next 12 years. And whose ass are you kissing? Carter’s. Word to Barack–pucker up baby and get some chap stick. You have got some major Clinton ass to kiss. You should start by praising his legacy. Next you need to make it clear to your idiot followers, who persist in sullying the names of both Bill and Hillary with charges of racism, that both Clintons have been the best friends of the African Americans.

But despite the news reports that you are reaching out to Bill Clinton, you and I both know that is a crock. Your words are empty rhetoric. You remain a petulant, arrogant punk. You need to find the grace and humility to apologize for helping trash the legacy of Bill Clinton. You need to pick up the phone and do some groveling. I doubt you have it in you. But I am ready for you to prove me wrong. If you can repair the damage you did to Bill Clinton, you might have a chance to demonstrate you can do a better job of governing. But I don’t think you have what it takes. We will see.

The New Yorker this week profiles the not-so-special political commentator, Keith Olbermann. A few money quotes:

Olbermann, who is six feet three and a half, once bumped his head while leaping into a subway car; it permanently upset his equilibrium, which makes driving a trial. (He says he loses depth perception at speeds greater than fifteen miles per hour.)

I am sorry to hear that his equilibrium was upset by his own impetuous actions. But frankly, his perception is not any better sitting down and staying still. In fact, it may be worse. Equilibrium is not a word I have ever associated with Keith Olbermann. Slanted and off-balanced are. Now at least, we know why. As for trying, Olbermann tries our patience five nights a week and offends our sensibilities with every word he utters.

Olbermann’s tenure at ESPN was characteristically contentious. One of his co-anchors, Suzy Kolber, has said that Olbermann was sometimes so overbearing that she would lock herself in the bathroom and cry. Another colleague, Mike Soltys, has said that when Olbermann left the network, in 1997, “he didn’t burn bridges here—he napalmed them.”

Overbearing is apt and his misogyny is nothing new. If I were to cry, it would be over the fact that he is killing American journalism by pretending to be Edward R. Murrow, whom he is not. And in terms of the death of the US Democratic Party, Olbermann is simply Agent Orange, a defoliant that has stripped bare what was once a vibrant political party, now likely headed for death because of the toxicity of pundits like Mr. Olbermann.

Once again, Olbermann left a job unhappily, returning to sportscasting at Fox Sports. He was subsequently fired, and the remainder of his contract was paid off. (“I fired him,” Rupert Murdoch said recently. “He’s crazy.”)

It won’t be the last time he is fired. We are working on repeating on yet another pink slip for Mr. Olbermann.

The Olbermann-O’Reilly feud, which is wholly Olbermann’s creation, began with a wisecrack in 2003, the first year of “Countdown.” It evolved after Olbermann instituted a farcical segment called “The Worst Person in the World,” in which O’Reilly, depicted as a pompous buffoon, was regularly cited. O’Reilly, the biggest draw of the highest-rated cable-news network, could only lose by engaging with Olbermann, but he could not resist. Refusing to mention Olbermann by name, he sponsored a petition drive to have him replaced, and eventually began to aim on-air broadsides against NBC’s parent company, General Electric, and its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt. “If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt,” O’Reilly asserted in April, citing G.E.’s business relationship with Iran. (The company began phasing out its contracts there in 2005.) This only encouraged Olbermann, who subjected Bill-O (as Olbermann calls him) to near-daily barrages of acid caricature. Instead of using video clips of O’Reilly for his routines, Olbermann began voicing O’Reilly’s words himself, in a demonic mimicry of the Ted Baxter character on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Demonic is a good adjective to describe Mr. Olbermann. Asinine and pedantic are others.

Olbermann’s success, like O’Reilly’s, is evidence of viewer cocooning—the inclination to seek out programming that reinforces one’s own firmly held political views. “People want to identify,” Griffin says. “They want the shortcut. ‘Wow, that guy’s smart. I get him.’ In this crazy world of so much information, you look for places where you identify, or you see where you fit into the spectrum, because you get all this information all day long.”

In the end, all Keith Olbermann will have his DailyKos audience, hardly the most progressive element in the United States and inherently anti-democratic. Honestly, who encourages voters to disrupt the democratic process by encouraging Democrats to cross over and vote for Mitt Romney in the Michigan Republican Primary? Only the lunacy of the DailyKos. It is not a tactic I can ever support. It goes against the entire concept of democracy and strikes at one of the core values of Western Civilization, the rights of conscience inalienable.

Some might find Olbermann’s frequent invocation of Murrow, and, especially, his appropriation of Murrow’s sign-off, wildly presumptuous.

That and utterly delusional.

Asked about the prospect of an Olbermann reign at “CBS Evening News,” Sandy Socolow, Walter Cronkite’s final executive producer, responded emphatically. “Oh, no, no, no, he’s not a newsman,” Socolow said. “He’s not a reporter. I’ve never seen anything that he’s done that was original, in terms of the information. It’s all derivative. I like him, I agree with his perspective, and I think he’s very, very good on television. But he’s not a newsman.” Socolow added, “Ten years ago, if he had done at CBS what he does every day on the air at MSNBC, he would have been fired by the end of the day.”

Ditto.

As Russert put it to me shortly before his death, “Keith and I have each carved out our roles in this vast information spectrum.” He continued, “What cable emphasizes, more and more, is opinion, or even advocacy. Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann or Lou Dobbs, that’s what that particular platform or venue does. It’s not what I do. What I do is different. I try very, very hard not to come up and say to people, ‘This is what I believe,’ or ‘This is good,’ or ‘This is bad.’ But, rather, ‘This is what I’m learning in my reporting,’ or ‘This is what my analysis shows based on my reporting.’ And as long as I can do that I’m very, very comfortable. And nobody has asked me to do anything but that.”

Yes, it is opinion but it is being packaged as news and fact. That is not only disingenuous but immoral. And it has poisoned political discourse in the United States, radicalizing elements on both sides. As Fox News caters to the right, MSNBC caters to the left. Vice President Cheney requires that his hotel rooms have Fox on when he enters the room. How’s that for fair and balanced news sourcing? Look at the By The Fault blogroll, there are news sources from over 50 countries offering a wide perspective of news and events.

In cable news, the dominant personality puts an identifying stamp on the entire organization. The stamp at MSNBC is indisputably that of Keith Olbermann.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Olbermann says that he began the campaign season determined to remain neutral on the Democratic race, although he was plainly friendly with the Clintons. (During an interview with Bill Clinton in 2006, Olbermann handed the former President a personal donation to the Clinton Foundation.) Olbermann liked Obama, but he believed, at first, that he would not make a strong candidate. As the tide began to turn Obama’s way, Olbermann began to grow impatient with Clinton surrogates’ attacks on Obama, and, seemingly, with the persistence of the candidate herself. As Obama neared apparent assurance of the nomination, Olbermann began to raise questions about Clinton’s arithmetic on the popular vote, about her wanting to change the rules regarding the Florida and Michigan primaries, about why she didn’t just do the right thing and get out.

But attacks on Clinton, including overtly misogynistic comments on MSNBC, raised not but an eyebrow. Hypocrisy is hard to swallow.

Brokaw says he sometimes feels that he has been cast in the role of hall monitor at NBC News; if so, his charges have kept him busy. The day after the New Hampshire primary, Matthews asserted that Hillary Clinton owed her election as senator to public sympathy for her in light of her husband’s sexual peccadilloes. “It was completely out of line,” Brokaw says. “And Keith took it to another level” with his “shut the hell up” commentary.

If Brokaw is the hall monitor, then Olbermann is certainly the playground bully. But where’s the principal or at the very least an adult?

In March, after Geraldine Ferraro said that Obama would not be where he is if he were not a black man, Olbermann issued a Special Comment that was aimed expressly at Clinton’s advisers (and their countenancing of Ferraro’s “cheap, ignorant, vile racism”) but that struck Clinton nonetheless. “Voluntarily or inadvertently,” Olbermann said, addressing Clinton directly, “you are still awash in this filth.”

That moment would have marked the nadir of Olbermann’s career as a pundit but for the fact of what was still yet to come.

At MSNBC, Phil Griffin was worried, and with good reason. The average “Countdown” viewer is fifty-nine years old, and forty-five per cent of the viewers are women, presumably Democratic—a fair description of a Hillary Clinton supporter. Griffin believed that Olbermann was beginning to alienate his core audience, and asked him to ease up a bit on Clinton, and possibly even make some conciliatory gesture to the Clinton camp. Olbermann was offended by the suggestion. “I can’t do that!” he says, recalling that conversation. “Me doing a commentary against my own opinion is pandering. Black and white. And I’m not going to do it. Would I pull back a little bit, or think long and hard about whether or not I want to knowingly alienate part of the audience? Yeah. And I did. I mean, I held fire on Senator Clinton for quite a while after she began to really scare me, with some of these tactics.”

You are hardly believable any more. You are caricature, a parody of singular nothingness. An empty suit like your would be messiah.

For another not-so-complimentary view, check out

From my blog, By The Fault.

Is Roger Stone to be believed?

Obamabots, bewildered by their devastating streak of losses but hopeful of the delegate stealing yesterday, will no doubt label any reporting by Stone as more “Faux News.”

It should be noted, by the way, that although Stone is quixotic and hated by many, he was once partners with Lee Atwater, not a bad resume builder in the real world of Washington brawling.

It may have been Stone who broke the Eliot Spitzer prostitution story. In the June 2, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin goes into depth on how Stone first became privy that Spitzer was involved with a prostitute:

A sign inside the front door of Miami Velvet, a night club of sorts in a warehouse-style building a few minutes from the airport, states, “If sexual activity offends you in any way, do not enter the premises.”

It was at the Miami Velvet where Stone met a woman who hinted at liaisons with powerful men. Although this woman didn’t actually have a date with Spitzer herself, Stone’s political antenna knew instantly that he had hit pay-dirt:

“She told me she had a very high-end clientele—she kept using the word ‘high-end’—athletes, international businessmen, politicians,” Stone said.

“ ‘Like who?’ I asked her,” Stone went on. “She named a couple of sports guys… According to Stone, the woman told him that Spitzer had reached her through her escort service, which listed her as a brunette, but she had dyed her hair blond. So the agency referred the governor to a dark-haired colleague, the woman said, who met up with Spitzer in Miami.”

It may seem strange for Stone to be using a flame thrower against Obama; he is known to detest Hillary. However, in describing his political views and affinity for Nixon, Stone told Toobin:

“He never quit. His whole career was all built around his personal resentment of élitism. It was the poor-me syndrome. John F. Kennedy’s father bought him his House seat, his Senate seat, and the Presidency. No one bought Nixon anything. Nixon resented that. He was very class-conscious. He identified with the people who ate TV dinners, watched Lawrence Welk, and loved their country.”

Like many people, Stone has come to respect Hillary for her grit against the liberal media establishment:

Stone detests Hillary Clinton’s politics but admires her pugnacity. He wrote recently on his Web site, an erratically updated collection of observations called Stonezone.com, “I must admit she has demonstrated true grit and Nixonian-like tenacity in the face of adversity.” Stone particularly admires Clinton’s attempt to hang the “élitist” tag on Barack Obama. “It’s a good idea,” he said.

That hate for elitists might just be why this political insider is going after Obama. Although it’s unclear how much involvement Stone had in outing Spitzer, he clearly is corroborating what Larry Johnson has been reporting on for weeks:

This has little to do with the general election and a lot to do with why Hillary Clinton is staying in the race. Look, there is already a buzz in Washington at least seven news organizations have contacted me, wanting to know how to get their hands on this tape, giving me more information than I had after I had spoken to each one of them. I now believe the tape exists and I believe a network has it. If this pans to out to be true based on Michelle Obama’s previous comment that this is the first time she had been proud of her country which I think shows an attitude it is problematic.

And the corroboration for the “whitey” story continues…

Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

______________

I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.

His political repertoire has always included the repugnant stratagem of using connection with black audiences in exactly the same way Bill Clinton did—i.e., getting props both for emoting with the black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming “tough love” message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black communities. Because he’s able to claim racial insider standing, he actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made infamous.

It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.

The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain. This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate’s own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama’s case, the license taken not only underscores Obama’s more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley’s Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.

There is also something disturbingly ritualistic and superficial in the Obama camp’s young minions’ enthusiasm. Paul Krugman noted months ago that the Obamistas display a cultish quality in the sense that they treat others’ criticism or failure to support their icon as a character flaw or sin. The campaign even has a stock conversion narrative, which has been recycled in print by such normally clear-headed columnists as Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt: the middle-aged white woman’s report of not having paid much attention to Obama early on, but having been won over by the enthusiasm and energy of their adolescent or twenty-something daughters. (A colleague recently reported having heard this narrative from a friend, citing the latter’s conversion at the hands of her eighteen year old. I observed that three short years ago the daughter was likely acting the same way about Britney Spears.)

Princeton Professor Sean Wilentz, a Clinton supporter, noted that the Obama campaign advisers have tried to have it both ways on the race question. On the one hand, they present their candidate as a figure who transcends racial divisions and “brings us together”; on the other hand, they exhort us that we should support his candidacy because of the opportunity to “make history” (presumably by nominating and maybe electing a black candidate). Increasingly, Obama supporters have been disposed to cry foul and charge racism at nearly any criticism of him, in steadily more extravagant rhetoric.

The campaign’s accusation that the Clinton team made Obama look darker in a photo or video clip than he actually is—and what exactly are we to make of that as an accusation?—and the hysterically indignant reaction to Geraldine Ferraro’s statement that much of Obama’s success stems from the fact that “the country is caught up in the concept” of a black candidacy are no different from the campaign’s touting its “historic” character. Obama supporters fulsomely attacked even Clinton’s attempts to portray him as inexperienced, which is standard fare in political campaigns. They also charged that she was playing to racism. See most recently Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo’s characterization that she was “disrespecting” black people, a leftover canard from Jesse Jackson’s campaigns (which, lest amnesia overtake us, were also extolled as historic firsts).

The Jackson comparison points to one of Obama’s key contradictions: Like Jackson, he wants to appeal to blacks with the “it’s our time now” line, and to white liberals with that, as well as with the “I’m black in a different way from Jesse” qualifier and the religious conversion rhetoric. A friend said that Obama’s campaign, in stressing his appeal to rapturous children and liberal, glamorous yuppies, offers vicarious identification with these groups, as well as the chance to become sort of black in that ultra-safe and familiar theme park way.

I often tell my students that, even though Paul Wellstone was my good friend from college to his death and an individual for whom I always had great respect, no politician in this system is likely to be a person you’d want for your sister-in-law or brother-in-law. And, as many Progressive readers may know, I’m hardly a Clinton fan. I’m on record in last November’s issue as saying that I’d rather sit out the election entirely than vote for either her or Obama. At this point, though, I’ve decided that she’s the lesser evil in the Democratic race, for the following reasons: 1) Obama’s empty claims to being a candidate of progressive change and to embodying a “movement” that exists only as a brand will dissolve into disillusionment in either a failed campaign against McCain or an Obama Presidency that continues the politics he’s practiced his entire career; 2) his horribly opportunistic approach to the issues bearing on inequality—in which he tosses behaviorist rhetoric to the right and little more than calls to celebrate his success to blacks—stands to pollute debate about racial injustice whether he wins or loses the Presidency; 3) he can’t beat McCain in November.

Frankly, I suspect that Clinton can’t beat him either, but there’s no way that Obama will carry most of the states in November that he’s won in the primaries and caucuses. And, while it makes some liberals feel good to think that a majority of the American electorate could vote for a black Presidential candidate, we should keep in mind that the Republicans haven’t let one dog out of the kennel against him yet. The Jeremiah Wright contretemps is only the first bark.

Obama’s style of being all things to all people threatens to melt under the inescapable spotlight of a national campaign against a Republican. It’s like what brings on the downfall of really successful con artists: They get themselves onto a stage that’s so big that they can’t hide their contradictions anymore, and everyone finds out about the different stories they’ve told different people. And Obama’s belonging to Wright’s church in the first place was quite likely part of establishing a South Side bourgeois nationalist street cred because his political base was with Hyde Park/University of Chicago liberals and the foundation world.

For now, the Jeremiah Wright connection probably won’t hurt him too much, partly because the Republicans at this point mainly may want to keep him and Clinton bleeding each other as long as possible. And his Philadelphia compromise speech—a string of well-crafted and coordinated platitudes and hollow images worthy of an SUV commercial, grounded with the reassuring “acknowledgment” of blacks’ behavioral inadequacies—has gained him breathing room by holding out a vague promise of racial “reconciliation” that has appealed to centrist liberals ever since Booker T. Washington’s comparably eloquent 1895 accommodation to Southern white supremacy. Obama gets credit for “opening a conversation” on race, for “taking the matter on squarely.” But he doesn’t really speak to what we ought to be doing to address the injustices, past and present, that he mentions. Despite all the babble about Obama’s transcendence, Obama persists in portraying black Americans as a stereotypical monolith: blacks feel x; whites feel y. And the trope of black “anger” is a tired chestnut that neither explains nor characterizes political grievances or aspirations. (By the way, Obama’s casting Wright’s alleged “anger” as generational is entirely consistent with his earlier praise of Ronald Reagan for sensing Americans’ desire to undo the “excesses” of the 1960s and 1970s.)

Because he’s tried carefully to say enough of whatever the audiences he’s been speaking to at the time want to hear while leaving himself enough space later on to deny his intentions to leave that impression, his record represents precisely the “character” weakness the Republicans have exploited in every Democratic candidate since Dukakis: Another Dem trying to put things over on the American people.

Obama’s campaign has been very clever in carving out a strategy to amass Democratic delegate votes, but its momentum is in some ways a Potemkin construction—built largely on victories in states that no Democrat will win in November—that will fall apart under Republican pressure.

And then where will we be?

Correction: Adolph Reed Jr. apologizes to Katha Pollitt for stating that her daughter influenced her to support Obama. Her daughter did no such thing.

Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

::::::::::::::

Reprinted by permission of The Progressive. Reed’s article was part of a debate on Obama in the May issue that included an affirmative by Edwidge Danticat.

Sen Obama should drop out of the race. Having just seen the new attack ad that the GOP is showing in NC — condemning the state’s Democratic leadership for backing Obama, replete with Rev Wright cursing America — it is clear that Senator Obama is detrimental to the Democratic brand nationwide. As Jerome Armstrong wrote nearly one month ago, “That’s fall-out from Wright, not against just Obama, but also Clinton, and most likely against the Democratic Party in general. It’s branding of Democrats Obama, and Clinton, as anti-American.”

Obama earned his lead early on, prior to being vetted. After he lost Texas and Ohio, the Wright videos appeared, shocking the nation. Slowly, information about his relationship to Rezko, and his affiliation with William Ayers have also entered the mainstream.

He should quit while he’s ahead, so to speak, and give the Party a chance to win the General Election.

After the New York Times endorsed Senator Clinton as the choice of their editorial board, they have consistently published specious and demeaning pieces about her. With friends like these, who needs enemies? It wasn’t any specific attack by Hillary which the Times or anyone else can point to; it’s the sudden unraveling of the fantasy named Obama.

The New Yorker was so upset at debate moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson that they ran two articles this week denouncing the debate, going so far as to praise the Post’s Shales’ description of the debate as “despicable” without mentioning that it’s the same Washington Post that ran an article last year about Hillary’s cleavage.

We know who has truly been despicable: The pillars of the liberal establishment are lashing out at Hillary, at the debate moderators, and at the newest boogie man, poor white men, because Americans are finally learning the truth about their vacuous creation. It’s not the questions in the debate that are the problem; it’s the fact he cannot answer tough questions.

Barack Obama’s picture appeared on the front page of the Times the day Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary. That in itself goes a long way to explaining the lead editorial, “The Low Road to Victory.”

In fact, the Times is perpetuating the myth that Obama and the rest of the media are spinning: Clinton is negative, on the attack against Obama, and that she is more negative than Obama.

Obama demeans her character, lies about her policies, but the media says she is negative. There is not a negative trick in the book that Obama has failed to use. He unfairly attacked her health care plan. He has ridiculed her at a more personal level. He outspent her 4 to 1 or even 5 to 1 (and not 2 to 1). Still, he could not prevail. If Senator Clinton is focusing on the weaknesses of Obama’s candidacy, it’s because the media have failed to do their job. If you spend some time on the message boards of the New Progressive Sexists you’ll see where the negativity is coming from – the Obama campaign.

The Times piece was particularly bad because only days earlier they reported on Obama’s increasingly negative attacks against Hillary, “In Push Before Vote, Obama Sharpens Tone,” on April 21st. (Talk about selective memory.)

It is part of the ongoing sexism and misogyny in this primary that Hillary Clinton gets blamed for negativity. It’s the same old game: If a man makes a comment, then he’s being strong and powerful but, if a woman makes a similar statement, she’s being negative. (See Shakesville’s running list of sexist comments made about Hillary. She’s counted 75 so far).

In fact, in response to Obama’s Rovian tactics, the Clinton campaign sent around a quiz with negative statements about Hillary. All twelve came from the Obama campaign or Obama himself.

Negativity?

• Who said Hillary Clinton is “literally willing to do anything to win”
• Who said Hillary Clinton is attempting to “deceive the American people”
• Who claimed Hillary Clinton has a secret 20-year plan to become president
• Who called Hillary Clinton a calculating, poll-tested, divisive figure
• Who called Hillary Clinton “one of the most secretive politicians in America”
• Who said Hillary Clinton’s campaign is “playing politics with war”
• Who said John McCain is seen as more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton
• Who called Hillary Clinton dishonest
• Who referred to Hillary Clinton as “a monster”
• Who said Hillary Clinton is “not being straight with the American people”
• Who said of Hillary, “The American people are not going to elect a president that they do not trust”
• Who claimed Hillary Clinton “consistently” and “deliberately” misleads the American people

Obama has been shielded by his benefactors for over a year. His campaign has gotten away with these relentless attacks against Hillary, yet she is being accused of taking the low road. Americans are finally having their questions answered about Obama’s questionable friends, and Americans are turning off to this media-hyped creation.

One hopes the superdelegates are paying attention to Obama’s certain unraveling.

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Special thanks to Vet4Hill for providing the video of Terry McAuliffe discussing the out-of-bounds NYT editorial on April 23, 2008.

From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to “finagle” to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.) Health care is out of reach [she should know: she earns over $300,000 at her sinecure at The University of Chicago Hospitals] (”Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America”), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won’t be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. “You’re looking at a young couple that’s just a few years out of debt,” Obama said. “See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn’t have trust funds. I’m still waiting for Barack’s trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s’posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!” (emphasis added)

“Give us something here.”  Where does one begin with this exhortation:  with its unrestrained sense of entitlement; with its complete and utter lack of tact; with its repelling shrillness; with its rank hypocrisy?  The statement, I understand, has been uttered in at least three locations: a ballroom at The University of South Carolina; the Pee Dee Union, an Art Gallery in South Carolina; and the auditorium of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.  Michelle has no qualms begging strangers from all corners of this country for “something.”  But even worse, before Michelle Obama begs her audience to “give” her and her husband “something,” she insults them.  I quote the New Yorker profile:

Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. (emphasis added)

Michelle should view herself in the mirror, for she and not the ordinary Americans she berates is the sloth who has become complacent with begging  ”a nation of cynics, sloths and complacents” for a vaguely defined “something.”

I detest Michelle Obama’s sense of entitlement.  Here she is referring to Americans as complacent sloths, when she and her family enjoy luxuries unavailable to the majority of Americans.  When will she cease making her various demands?  What else does Michelle Obama need?  

Michelle and her family, according to various reports, enjoy a lifestyle only the wealthy can afford.

A Diet of Expensive, Fresh, Organic Food and Expensive Pediatricians

Then, having given thoughtful but boilerplate responses most of the morning, Obama suddenly departed from her script. It was the most animated I saw her on the campaign trail. “You know,” she said, “in my household, over the last year we have just shifted to organic for this very reason. I mean, I saw just a moment in my nine-year-old’s life–we have a good pediatrician, who is very focussed on childhood obesity, and there was a period where he was, like, `Mmm, she’s tipping the scale.’ So we started looking through our cabinets. . . . You know, you’ve got fast food on Saturday, a couple days a week you don’t get home. The leftovers, good, not the third day! . . . So that whole notion of cooking on Sunday is out. . . . And the notion of trying to think about a lunch every day! . . . So you grab the Lunchables, right? And the fruit-juice-box thing, and we think–we think–that’s juice. And you start reading the labels and you realize there’s high-fructose corn syrup in everything we’re eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything that’s in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don’t even know. . . . Now we’re keeping, like, a bowl of fresh fruit in the house. But you have to go to the fruit stand a couple of times a week to keep that fruit fresh enough that a six-year-old–she’s not gonna eat the pruney grape, you know. At that point it’s, like, `Eww!’ She’s not gonna eat the brown banana or the shrivelledy-up things. It’s got to be fresh for them to want it. Who’s got time to go to the fruit stand? Who can afford it, first of all?”

Yes, Michelle, who can afford expensive, fresh, organic food?  And who can afford a pediatrician who specializes in childhood obesity?  You should know this, Michelle.  After all, you served on the Board of TreeHouse Foods, a company that distributes canned and processed foods to superstores such as WAL-MART, for two years.  While you and other members of the Board of TreeHouse marketed and distributed food with little to no nutritional value to middle class families, your lucrative sinecure with the WAL-MART ally netted $51,200 in 2006.  You are also in possession of 2,266 shares of TreeHouse stock, stock whose whose value will only increase in value if more and more complacent sloths consume processed pickles, soups, infant food and non-dairy items.  But even worse, you were appointed to the Board of TreeHouse in 2005, just after your husband was elected to the US Senate, even though you lacked experience in the private sector.  I guess TreeHouse was obligated to “give you something.”

And you would also know about child obesity and nutrition.  After all, you are presently on leave from The University of Chicago Hospitals, where you were appointed to the position of Vice President for Community and External Affairs on 9 May 2005, four months after your husband was sworn into the US Senate.  Not coincidentally, your salary nearly tripled after your husband became a US Senator.  Was this a result of his willingness to submit earmark requests on your employer’s behalf?  ”Give me” a salary increase, the University of Chicago Hospitals, and my husband the US Senator will “give us something here.”  But no, we will not provide free health care to all the poor families on the South Side of Chicago whose children, some of whom are obese, only have access to food that lacks nutritional value.  In fact, if the parents of these children lack health insurance, we will overcharge them for any services we may provide.  Yes, we are ostensibly a not-for-profit hospital that has earned and continues to earn millions of dollars of profits, but I want my inflated salary.  ”Give us something here:” give us an earmark, a government handout, Barack; give us money, uninsured; give me a salary over $300,000.  ”Give me, give me, give me,” says corporate and government welfare queen Michelle Obama.

The Assistance of Those Who Work in the “Helping Industry”

Michelle Obama, according to the New Yorker, employs a full-time housekeeper and a personal trainer she visits four times every week.  She also employs a landscaper to maintain the yard of the home a man named Rezko helped finance.  ”Give me something” Michelle Obama is quite used to receiving the assistance of those who work in what she derisively called “the helping industry”.  In fact, she believes more citizens should join the industry whose services she regularly exploits, even though her sinecures at TreeHouse Foods and The University of Chicago Hospitals do not require physical exertion or, for that matter, any real effort.  While campaigning in economically depressed Zanesville, Ohio, Michelle Obama exhorted women to pursue jobs in the service industry.  Perhaps Austin Goolsbee, Obama’s NAFTA advocate, advised her on his goal to turn the United States into one grand service economy before she met Ohio voters.

“Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that.”

One wonders who comprises Michelle Obama’s “we.”  Does this “we” include the residents of Zanesville, Ohio, whose incomes average $37,192 per annum, or does it include the likes of Michelle Obama, who undertook a lucrative position as the Sidney Austin law firm, where she worked on corporate problems such as trademark and copyright cases.  Is only Michelle Obama allowed to enjoy the blandishments of corporate America?  Is only Michelle Obama, a woman who now enjoys access to government and corporate welfare after earning a high salary in the world of corporate law, entitled to the services of the “helping industry?”   Is only Michelle Obama entitled to enjoy a red-carpet lifestyle that also includes $10,000 a year for piano lessons and summer camps for her daughters, who are also sustained by the “helping industry” for which Michelle Obama is recruiting in rural areas such as Zanesville, Ohio?  Breathtaking is the audacity of a woman who exploits the position of role model to which she was appointed in order to exacerbate class stratification to the benefit of her and those who enjoy the services of the “helping industry.”  Michelle Obama to Zanesville, Ohio:  stay in the helping industry, take the income cut, and “GIVE US SOMETHING HERE.”

Rezko Cash and the Mansion Rezko Gave Her

Michelle needs the assistance of piano teachers, camp counselors, housekeepers, landscapers and other members of the “helping industry” in order to run her house.  She also needed the financial assistance of indicted slumlord and political fixer Antion “Tony” Rezko in order to purchase the stately mansion she, her husband and her two children inhabit:  Rezko purchased the yard of the home, thereby enabling the Obamas to purchase the mansion to which Rezko’s lot is attached, and Obama toured the mansion with Rezko, whose advice and financial assistance he sought.  Even though he most probably knew Rezko could not manage the various Rezmar properties he owned in Obama’s state Senate district, he enlisted Rezko’s financial support and real estate expertise nonetheless.  I quote:

Obama said in the interview Monday that he was unaware of the scope of properties owned by Rezmar or the problems surrounding them. He said none of the affected residents personally sought his help and that aides at his state Senate district office did not recall any inquiries. Still, he said it was “possible” that during his tenure in the legislature that a constituent may have written or called his office “saying, ‘We’re in a building, and we’re unhappy with the service here.’”

“Give us something here,” Rezko.  And give Rezko did.  In fact, Rezko gave over $250,000 to Obama for his various political races.  But “Give Me Something” Michelle Obama wanted more; she wanted a mansion she could not afford.  Besides, Rezko was already a part of the government welfare program Obama helped implement on Rezko’s behalf while working as a state Senator in Illinois.  

Now it was time for Rezko to reciprocate, for “Give Me Something” Michelle wanted a mansion she could not afford.  Barack did not have a trust fund, but he sure had Rezko.  So Rezko obliged and helped Michelle Obama buy her house, a house she could not run without the helping industry she hopes to expand in Zanesville, Ohio, and without Rezko’s cash.

Michelle, at least Hillary can afford her own house; Hillary did not have to enlist the support of a slumlord who cannot run heat in his houses in order to run and purchase her house.  And at least Hillary earned her status as a role model.  You were appointed to your positions, and role models do not rely on Rezko and on various forms of government welfare to purchase their homes.  Yes, you returned to your South Side roots when you enlisted Rezko’s support and the cash Rezko generated with the government welfare program your husband created for Rezko’s properties.  But those South Side roots are not fit for a First Lady, unless, of course, that First Lady views government as a welfare program that just “Gives Us Something Here.”  Go back to Rezko’s mansion and ask your full-time housekeeper to run your own house, Michelle.  For if you cannot run Rezko’s house, I do not know how you can run the White House.  Some role model you are, you corporate and government welfare queen.

I Am Only Proud of My Country If You Give Me Something

But “Give Me Something” Michelle is bent on obtaining the top prize of the White House, where she will preside over a whole country that will become her personal “helping industry.”  And with her arrogance, her insatiable appetite for power and her overblown sense of entitlement, she will do and say anything to secure the object of her desire.  I quote:

Michelle Obama proclaimed yesterday that for “the first time” in her adult life,” she was proud of America, as she spoke during a rally to support her husband’s presidential bid.

While Barack Obama spent yesterday deflecting accusations from Hillary Clinton’s campaign of “plagiarizing” part of a speech delivered in 2006 by Bay State Gov. Deval Patrick, Mrs. Obama made her own headlines.

“Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change,” she said during a rally in downtown Milwaukee.

Or perhaps you are hungry for yet another house you cannot afford.  And this time, it will be fully funded by government welfare: no Rezko cash will be necessary.  But you will denigrate the government on which you have relied and intend to rely in order to emotionally manipulate voters to place you and your husband in the White House.  Or perhaps it is not emotional manipulation; perhaps you are sincere when you claim you are only really proud of your country if and only if you have the chance to preside over it as the queen who possesses the grandest government handout of them all: the White House.   “Give us something here.”  Give us your vote.  Give it all to me, for I am Michelle Obama, the most arrogant woman who have ever graced this planet.  And if you do not “give me something here,” I will race bait and emotionally manipulate African-American voters to get what I want.  Besides, I really hate my country, and I plan to divide it.  But if you elect my husband, I can pretend to actually love it.  

And no, I will not support Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee.  I will also denigrate Bill Clinton and distort his words if he dares stand in my way as I climb the social ladder.  For this about me: ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME.  And no, Michelle, you are in no way similar to Bill Clinton, for he, unlike you, actually cares about people.  Bill, Michelle, actually cares about New Orleans: he helps others build houses, while you let them wallow in Rezko’s squalor as you pursue your Rezko mansion and the White House.  Bill, Michelle, has integrity.  All you have is shameless, unmitigated ambition.  I quote:

Chicago’s veteran political consultant and pundit Joe Novak agrees, saying: “She [Michelle] is now motivated more by personal gain than by social consciousness.

“She saw her opportunities, and she took them.”

“Give us something here,” or I will take it.  That is the story of Michelle Obama, an overfacilitated, supercilious woman who feels entitled to trample over children, hospital patients, occupants of lower income housing, the taxpayers of Chicago, consumers of processed food, members of the “helping industry,” working class voters, African-Americans, political fixers such a Antoin “Tony” Rezko and even Bill and Hillary Clinton in order to become the next First Lady.  Will all the status, prestige and services of the White House be enough for the upwardly mobile Michelle Obama?  I doubt it.  Nothing seems to satisfy the queen of government and corporate welfare who believes it is appropriate to scream “GIVE US SOMETHING HERE” when engaging with complete strangers.  Only one adjective describes “Give Me Something” Michelle Obama and her husband: arrogant.