When I checked Friday evening, my.BarackObama.com had pulled the plug on the Neighbor to Neighbor feature that printed walk lists. Without walk lists, we would be pretty much flying blind. Sorry for the short notice, but I had hoped the feature might be available again Saturday morning but it's not.
I wanted to provide a nearby event in the neighborhood this weekend people could go to. As it is, the closest canvass staging area at this point is 222 West Broad Street, Richmond, VA where shifts will be running all day Saturday and Sunday. Call the Richmond Obama HQ for more details. You can also find plenty of things to do in the closing days of the campaign at my.BarackObama.com/actioncenter.
Thanks to all the volunteers who participated in the Byrd Park Canvass for Change. Since it began as a weekly event in August, we've knocked on hundreds of doors and covered much of the area. Sorry we're ending, not with a bang, but a whimper, but thanks for your support.
By Peter Dreier
September 15, 2008
Peter Dreier's 11-year-old twin daughters, Amelia and Sarah, are volunteering for the Obama Campaign.
Twenty-year-old Tobin Van Ostern finished his sophomore year last spring at George Washington University, but this fall he's enrolled in the Barack Obama campaign as a full-time organizer. The Richmond, Virginia, native started Students for Obama on his campus last year as a Facebook group. It now has chapters on 800 campuses, Van Ostern said, and the campaign has recruited thousands of college students and recent graduates to work as both paid staffers and unpaid volunteers through the November election.
Democratic Party strategists believe that in key swing states, a dramatic increase in turnout among young voters--and African-Americans--can be the key to victory for both Obama and the party's candidates for Congress. Campus activists, meanwhile, view the Obama campaign as a means to catalyze a new progressive youth movement among the Millennial (18- to 29-year-old) generation that they hope, unlike the political crusades of the 1960s youth rebellion, will be part of a broader, multigenerational coalition.
Ever since 18-year-olds won the right to vote in 1971, their elders have been disappointed by their level of voter turnout, which has typically been about half the rate of other voters. But after steady declines in turnout since 1972, young voters reversed the trend in the 2004 presidential and 2006 mid-term elections. This year, however, is likely to see a particularly significant increase in voting among Millennials.
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By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
Published: August 29, 2008
DENVER, Aug. 29 -- Mushtaq Sheikh, M.D., an Elmira, N.Y., internist, started out as a Hillary Clinton supporter and considers Republican Sen. John McCain's stance on liability reform to be attractive. But in the end, said the alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention, party loyalty came first. He is a firm backer of Barack Obama for president. "Emotionally, it was a little difficult for me because we had been supporters of Clinton for a long time," Dr. Sheikh said in an interview with MedPage Today. "But this is the same party, and according to the rules, he won the most delegates."
For the 63-year-old internist, Obama's plan to expand healthcare coverage to those who need it carried the day. "I see so many people who don't have insurance, or they have inadequate insurance and I feel so bad about them," said Dr. Sheikh. He said he often reduces prices, or gives free treatment or drug samples to uninsured and underinsured patients.
"First, they've got to cover the 47 million Americans who don't have insurance," Dr. Sheikh said. "And then I think they need to overhaul the whole system."
He added, "Obama's plan is going to be covering everyone. It will be fair to the people who don't have insurance. [Healthcare] should not be a privilege, it should be a right."
By Emily P. Walker
Washington Correspondent, MedPage Today
DENVER, Aug. 29 -- Margaret Hurley, D.O., a solo family practitioner in rural Woodstown, N.J., was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention who came to cheer long and hard for Barack Obama. She recalls getting chills when she first heard Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and she still gets them every time she hears him speak. When he entered the race for president last year she visited his Web site and realized she agreed with many of his policies. "He's an amazing leader and visionary and what this country needs right now," Dr. Hurley said in an interview with MedPage Today.
Away from the glamour and glitz of the party conventions, a fierce battle for votes is already being waged on doorsteps across America. Thad Williamson reports on Obama efforts to capture the traditional red state of Virginia.
Link
The New Statesman is an English political magazine. Thad Williamson is a political scientist and an assistant professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond.
So I'm sitting in the Carytown, Richmond, VA Starbucks today reading a New York Times article, "Decades later, John Kennedy's 'New Frontier' speech echoes." Synchronistically, the woman across the table resembles Jackie Kennedy, albeit she's using a MacBook. Suddenly, it percolates through my brain that the woman in the photograph on the front page depicting the floor of the Democratic National Convention is none other than "June Van Ostern."
When I first met Jane in Carytown last year, she had just gotten back from Iowa after a stint on the campaign trail and we were gathering signatures to put Barack Obama on the ballot in Virginia. I gave her a copy of The New York Times magazine with Obama on the cover, not realizing she would wind up getting the front page treatment herself. She even achieved a higher media profile than her son, who was profiled inside the A-section of The Washington Post for his Facebook evangelism for Barack. She would go on to become the grassroots co-coordinator for Virginia and Greater Richmond for Obama. I once suggested she should run the Democratic Party of Virginia. Maybe one day she will.
In any case, it just goes to show that when the train leaves the station, sometimes you don't know what the destination will be. I hope this won't the last time we see her in The New York Times and that she won't forget the little people who made her what she is today. (I keed.)
Grass roots organizing is a foundation of the Obama campaign, and if there's anything Byrd Park in Richmond, VA has, it's lots of grass, not to mention trees and water. With the election less than three months away, people in Byrd Park are organizing for change. Those who live in the area are invited to join the group, Byrd Park Neighborhood for Obama, at
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/ByrdParkneighborhoodforObama
Even if you don't live immediately in the area, you're still invited to the Byrd Park Neighborhood for Obama canvass every Monday from 7:00-8:00 p.m., meeting at the entrance to the Round House on Lakeview Avenue between Swan and Fountain lakes at the top of the hill near the Columbus statue, conveniently near the Fan and Carytown neighborhoods. We supply the walk lists and literature. You supply the footpower.
The Byrd Park neighborhood is located in and surrounding William Byrd Park in Richmond, VA. The neighborhood is north and east of its namesake and its three lakes; Boat, Swan and Shields. Homes include row houses built in the 1920s, two-story frame bungalows, brick Colonials, Cape Cods, tri-levels, ranchers and American Four Squares mostly built in the 1930s and 1940s. Westover Road hosts a number of large lakefront Spanish, Georgian and Colonial Revival mansions. Fountain Lake features upscale condos. The neighborhood is bounded by the Boulevard, Idlewood Avenue, Meadow Street, and Amelia Avenue to Spottswood Road.
By Earnest Harris
With all the media and campaign talk about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supposedly having a problem attracting white folks to his campaign, it is easy to overlook something that’s evident in the American social dynamic: Blacks and others, including some whites and the media, need to give credit to whites for proving that, for many, race does not play as important a role in our society as it once did. I am afraid that the intense focus on group politics and the inability of Obama to attract large numbers of supporters in places such as West Virginia, South Dakota and other bastions of so-called “hard-working ... white Americans” will cause many people to completely ignore the fact that, if this primary campaign season has proved anything, it is that whites can look beyond the color of a candidate’s skin. Look at the images of the unbelievable crowd of an estimated 75,000 people who filled a waterside park in Oregon recently. Or the crowd at the Corn Palace in South Dakota. You will find very few nonwhite faces in those throngs, packed in to listen to and support an African-American, biracial man who is now the presumptive nominee for a major political party. Also examine the many voters in Montana, Iowa, Wisconsin and any number of other states and communities who have helped Obama clinch the Democratic nomination. African-Americans make up only about 11 percent of the U.S. population. Even if Obama had received 100 percent of that vote — and he came close to that — it would have been impossible for him to become the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer were it not for whites and others who looked past his race and decided he was the best person for the job.
By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has done poorly in the Democratic primaries with women, Catholics and others who will be pivotal in this fall's presidential election. Yet early polling shows that with several of these groups, he's competitive when matched against Republican John McCain.
A look at voters who have been closely contested in recent presidential elections — or veered from one party to the other, making them true swing groups — shows a significant number have leaned toward Obama's rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the primaries. Besides women and Catholics, these include the elderly, the less educated and suburbanites, leading Clinton to argue that this makes her the Democrats' stronger candidate for the fall campaign.
Yet Obama's performance with these voters in the primaries doesn't necessarily mean he'd do poorly with them in the general election, assuming he nails down the last few convention delegates he needs to win the nomination.
So Barack Obama is back. The results on Tuesday did not provide the "game changer" Hillary Clinton so desperately needed. Instead, Obama built on his leads in delegates and the popular vote. His aides pointed to May 20 as the day when he will clinch a majority of elected delegates, essentially becoming the party's presumptive nominee. And that's not all.
In Indiana, Obama improved his support across several key demographics, despite a bruising month of attacks on his pastor, patriotism and populism. Compared to Ohio and Pennsylvania, he generally drew more votes from white women, Catholics, gun owners, households earning under $50,000 annually, voters prioritizing the economy, and voters without a college degree. A Democratic field operative sent in this graph of the progress:
Her handling of health care and Whitewater showed poor judgment
by WILLIAM H. CHAFE
Special to the Observer
...No two actions had more impact on the Clinton presidency. If the Whitewater papers had been given to the Post, the Clintons would have been cleared. There would have been no special prosecutor, no Kenneth Starr, no request from Starr that his mandate be extended to the Monica Lewinsky affair, and no report to Congress seeking the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Similarly, if a compromise bipartisan health care plan had been enacted, Clinton could have secured a base from which to proceed to other reforms. Neither happened. And the person responsible in both cases was Hillary Clinton.
Why did the president not take charge? As Gergen indicates, the months when Whitewater and health care dominated the news were also the months when Paula Jones alleged sexual improprieties on the part of Bill Clinton. The president was in no position to overrule his wife. "Like a bouncing golden retriever who has pooped on the living room rug," Gergen writes, "[Clinton] curled up and looked baleful for days." Unable to say no to Hillary, even if the decisions on Whitewater and health care threatened the fate of his presidency, he ceded final authority to his wife.
Yes, experience does count. And much that Hillary Clinton brings to this campaign buttresses her credentials for election. But in these two instances, experience does not speak well for her judgment.
The catalogue goes back to Bailey Smith, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Speaking at a 1980 religious convention that was also addressed by Ronald Reagan, Smith declared that "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."
Reagan later asserted that he thought Jewish prayers were answered, but he was less than definitive. "Everyone can make his own interpretation of the Bible," the Gipper said, "and many individuals have been making differing interpretations for a long time."
Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Jerry Falwell, appearing on Pat Robertson's "700 Club," declared: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
by Morton Krondacke, Roll Call
May 1, 2008
Unless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has caused him more damage than is evident, it's impossible to see how Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) can lose the popular vote, the delegate race or the Democratic nomination to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).
Specifically, I've calculated the possible popular vote in eight of the nine remaining primaries (excluding Guam), giving Clinton the benefit of every doubt, and can't see how she gains more than 150,000 votes on Obama -- not enough to catch him except in the most extreme circumstances.
by Carrie Budoff Brown
After Sen. Barack Obama's third major primary loss and endless media coverage dedicated to dissecting the apparent weaknesses of his candidacy, one of the most striking elements of his campaign this week was what's missing: any hint of internal upheaval.
At Obama headquarters in Chicago, hundreds of miles removed from the Beltway bubble, advisers held steadfast in their adherence to The Plan, a blueprint devised 15 months ago by the same inner circle that runs the campaign today, supported by the candidate and carried out by a tight-knit staff.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's operation could not be more dissimilar. Her campaign, ensconced in a Washington suburb, has experienced two major staff shakeups fueled by high-level staff rivalries, shifting strategies and an unusual degree of finger-pointing.
The Pennsylvania Primary was Hillary Clinton's last chance to deliver a game changing blow to Obama's campaign for the nomination. She failed to deliver.
Pennsylvania provided her with her final real opportunity to knock the wheels off the Obama campaign. She needed a crushing victory of 18% to 25% to have any real chance of altering the math or the psychology. Demographically, Pennsylvania was made for Hillary: the second oldest state in the nation, heavily blue collar, Catholic and rural -- Hillary's voter profile. She started with a lead of almost 20 points. But her final margin -- which the Pennsylvania Secretary of State says was only 9.2% -- fell far short of what was needed to stop Obama's nomination. Here's why:
Roger Simon Thu Apr 24, 6:05 AM ET
Run, Hillary, run.
Run in Guam, run in North Carolina, run in Indiana. Run in each and every one of the nine contests that are left.
Then make some states do their contests over.
Should Barack Obama's victory in Vermont really count? I don't think Vermont is actually a state. I think it is technically a socialist republic. Have somebody check this out.
And Obama's victory in Alaska? Are you kidding me? They let caribou vote in Alaska.
And do some other stuff that levels the playing field: Raise the voting age to 65 in all the remaining contests, for instance.
By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent Fri Apr 18, 6:35 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Time is running out on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the long-ago front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination who now trails Barack Obama in delegates, states won and popular votes
Compounding Clinton's woes, Obama appears on track to finish the primary campaign fewer than 100 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to win.
Clinton argues to Democratic officialdom that other factors should count, an unprovable assertion that she's more electable chief among them. But she undercut her own claim in Wednesday night's debate, answering "yes, yes, yes" when asked whether her rival could win the White House.
There's little if any public evidence the party's elite, the superdelegates who will attend the convention, are buying her argument anyway.
There was a myth at the center of the Clinton campaign, the idea that she and her husband, the former president, had a nationwide organization ready to knock on every door in America. Not so. The Clintons had many friends, but no organization. Bill and Hillary were always top-down, media candidates. Obama's manager, David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, did build a national knock-on-any-door campaign, an old-fashioned Chicago-style campaign -- and it worked.
It is hard not to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. She expected her campaign to be a walkover, and there she was like a deer in the headlights when the Obama Express came roaring down the tracks. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is not a new thing in presidential politics. In my experience, the new guys, new managers, usually win. And Axelrod was the new guy, as Karl Rove was the new guy in 2000, and before him there was James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, Lee Atwater, Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell.
The new guys win because they have to learn the rules from scratch. The old guys play by old rules, run the same old campaigns that worked before -- and it is often too late for them when they realize the game has changed. Poor Hillary and her strategist Mark Penn just didn't get it.
By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 14, 9:10 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's problem is not his character. It's about his caricature.
Nearly every candidate suffers — and feeds — a caricature, the wild exaggeration of a person's defects, a grain of truth blown out of proportion.
• George H.W. Bush was "out of touch."
• Bill Clinton was "Slick Willy."
• George W. Bush, a lightweight.
• Al Gore, a serial exaggerator.
• John Kerry, a flip-flopper.
And now this: Obama is an elitist who patronizes working-class voters. Like the rest, Obama's caricature is a gross exaggeration of an actual flaw.
He is once-in-a-generation political talent who tapped into the public's desire for change and built a stunningly successful campaign around the new communities and new technologies that his rivals fail to grasp. He is charming and smart, and he began his career on the streets of Chicago, helping those with less opportunity than he was given.
But he also is coolly self-confident and self-impressed. And he doesn't hide it well.
