Dear John McCain,
I am honored and priveliged to be able to say that I personally know John Lewis.
Yes, imagine that -- me, a 27-year-old white woman. I know him. I consider him a friend and I sit at his feet every chance I get, which isn't nearly often enough, trying to soak up every detail of the essence of his story, his committment to equality and his message of Hope.
I know John Lewis. And you, sir, are no John Lewis.
In fact, how dare you appear in public, on Emund Pettus Bridge, and try to equate yourself with Rep. Lewis' record on human rights, while simultaneously slamming Obama for political delusion?!
Congressman Lewis is a gentle, profound, considerate man who actually understands the economy. Dedicated to non-violence, he voted against the war you are so vehemently supporting. To even attempt to compare yourself to him is not only laughable, it's downright disrespectful. I am so blown away by your complete audacity that my fingers are shaking trying to type this.
I would thank you to refrain from making such morally-bankrupt, exploitive comparisons for the remainder of the general election campaign..... although, who am I kidding? You're the GOP.
Just want to say kudos to David Axelrod for a great showing on Meet the Press yesterday -- he made me nod along to what he was saying and even made me laugh out loud when he got well-deserved digs in on Geoff Garin (Mark Penn 2.0).
But I was disappointed in David Gregory on Friday for his responses to Tim Russert on a different program. He criticized Obama for not defiantly disassociating himself from Rev. Wright, for not publicly crucifying himself in light of Bittergate, and various other notions that prove Obama is a human. It made me want to smack my forehead, because he just doesn't get it! I mean, basically, Gregory is saying, "Well, how dare he have personal nuances?! How dare he not be a cookie-cutter cut-out of a person?! How dare he not pander?! THAT is what a politician is and always has been! THAT is what the American people expect! We WANT to be pandered to!!!"
Um, sorry David, but I prefer my politicians to actually have a backbone. Thanks.
The campaign event I planned tomorrow in Laurel, MD has grown beyond my expectations, to the point where I had to secure some outdoor space as well as indoor -- but it's supposed to thunderstorm all day!!!!! This isn't a rally, this is a call/postcard-writing party -- rain simply will not do! There is no way 30 people will fit inside the venue without spilling out onto the patio!
Please, if you read this, send a prayer, do an anti-rain-dance, anything you can to plead with the skies not to dump on us!!!
The Obama campaign has invited us to share our stories. This is my mother's.
My mother, Marilyn, defied her parents by actually applying to college. They would only pay for secretary school, so she worked her own way through SUNY Fredonia. She met my father, a simple man with a Master's Degree in Agronomy who just wanted to farm. She became a social worker, then secured a great job as a Board Member of United Cerebal Palsy. Then they had me.
At age two, I called the day care provider "Mommy". My mother quit her job the next day, determined to build a close family unit.
Farming in general is hard, farming in the 80's was extremely hard, and farming in upstate New York when you didn't already own a huge successful acerage was impossible. My father, like so many educated men in the Buffalo area, found himself taking minimum wage jobs -- gas station clerk, feed store cashier, etc. He was laid off from each one.
Finally, we were forced to move in with my widdowed grandmother, in suburban Maryland. I can only imagine how hard that was on my parents, my father especially, to admit to himself, his wife, his children, and his (very judgemental) mother that, at age 33, he could not support his family. He took a job as a carpenter, working long hours and side jobs.
My mother, in the meantime, was pregnant with my brother, who is now a Marine. We had no health insurance, and she was forced to seek prenatal care at a free clinic run by the county. To this day, she says the experience was one of the most humiliating in her life.
She tells me, "The consensus of the staff was, if you're here, you're poor, if you're poor, you're stupid, and if you're stupid, we don't have to treat you with respect."
She goes on, "I ended up almost losing Kevin because the care was so bad -- I was classified as a high-risk pregnancy, which meant they were more reluctant to help me. I could only be seen by certain doctors, who never seemed to be available. I began to miscarry. Bed rest was almost out of the question, because I had two other little ones to take care of. Through some sort of miracle, the placenta reattached and I didn't lose your brother -- but it wasn't based on the care I received." She hid these stresses from us, afraid to scare her family by showing vulnerability where there really wasn't room for any.
As I go through my first pregnancy, I'm realizing just how daunting an experience it can be. I can't imagine going through this experience without the trained ear of a caring professional to answer my questions. Granted, this is the first time in my life I've had health insurance either, and I'm used to the shoddy care at free clinics just like my mother, but that was before I got married and became pregnant. I just chalked it up to a result of being young. But for some, it's a reality that lasts one's whole life.
My mother was not a drug addict, an illegal immigrant, a runaway pregnant teenager, or a woman merely having children to co-opt the welfare system. She was only guilty of being a stay-at-home-mother with no health insurance for her or her children. She did not deserve to be treated like an imbecile merely for being poor and pregnant, nor does any woman.
I'm hoping that if Senator Obama is elected, his leadership will bring back an air of compassion for and towards our fellow citizens. Like he said, this country will never be perfect, but it can always be perfected. That is why I'm supporting Senator Obama.
http://www.northstarwriters.com/dc163.htm
Please digg this!
Only 8 days to go until the campaign event I planned goes down!
This is such an amazing feeling -- I acutally planned a campaign event! Me, just little old pregnant me, who always paid attention to politics but never got this deeply involved, especially in a primary, I planned a real, live campaign EVENT. From start to finish. 30 people have signed up to come and more might wander in. I had to limit the attendance because 30 is the maximum capacity of the venue. Imagine if I hadn't?! It is so amazing!
I am so, so proud to say that I am part of the grassroots Obama movement. Yeah, I canvassed (at 7 months pregnant, LOL!) And yes, I've been phone-banking. Both of those experiences were AMAZING! But this is an event that. I. planned. Like, as the kids would say, FOR REALS. It makes my heart beat faster. It makes my eyes light up. I feel like a kid at Christmastime! It's so cool!!!
YES WE CAN!!!
I've seen some really cute Obama onesies somewhere but can't remember where (I have pregnancy brain-drain!) I looked in the store but couldn't find them. I know I could order one from cafepress or something like that, but I'd rather it be official merchandise because it's a) made in the USA and b) all proceeds go to the campaign.
Anyone know where I could find one? Preferably in a 3-6 month size? My daughter's not even born yet. (I do have a great political onesie for her that has Bush's face on it and says, "Makes me spit up!" LOL!)
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr. Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies. Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
Then this:
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop). Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."
We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did. My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.
Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html ) Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back
I'm sinking.
CNN's ticker is now saying Hillary Clinton holds a national lead in polls over Obama. I feel like it's all slipping away, all that we've worked for and strived for and hoped for.... it's impossible to pin blame on any one thing or one person but it IS possible to feel a little hopeless and disillusioned.
Can anyone help me regain my sparkle? I'm 9 months pregnant and this campaign has been such a rollercoaster, such a source of both joy and pain to me...... but the last couple of days have been especially painful. I'm tired. I just want some good news.
I just read a Politico article about how many blue-collar and ethnic European whites in Northeast PA are vehemently turned OFF by Obama's brilliant speech on race. They say they were undecided before, and now they are supporting Clinton.
Part of me says, "Fine, go ahead, we don't need you."
But really, with Pennsylvania being such a key state, we do. We do.
I'm trying so hard not to lose faith and to still believe we can overcome in PA!
I just have to write this to let as many people as I can know how impressed I am with the level of personal service, pride and care that the campaign volunteers and staffers have demonstrated to me over the course of this campaign. I couldn't be more touched or more inspired, given the interactions I've had with them so far.
As a volunteer myself, I know the excitement is infectious. I never thought I could cold-call or canvass with such a genuine smile on my face. And hanging out at the campaign office was so much fun -- getting to know and meet so many other supporters was absolutely fantastic. But the recent conversations I've had with campaign staff have truly exceeded my expectations.
I needed help getting call lists for a call party I'm planning that I nearly had to cancel due to lack of wi-fi service. I had no idea what to do. I called the Obama HQ hotline and an acutal person answered the phone! The volunteer listened, told a few others the problem I was having, they pow-wowed and determined I should email webhelp@barackobama.com.
I emailed the webmasters and, lo and behold, an actual person emailed me back within 24 hours, answering all of my questions and telling me how they could help. It was fantastic! It was so touching! I didn't feel like a tiny particle of dust trying to have a conversation with a wall or a machine like it does so much nowadays.
This is just one more reason I am so psyched to be supporting Obama -- if the man can hire the right people to run such a smooth operation, with such outstanding, personal levels of service, he is truly the person to take over in Washington.
YES WE CAN!! YES WE CAN!! Thank you, Obama campaign help! You Ba-rack!
(CNN) -- Ask any boxing trainer and they'll tell you that you can walk into the ring with a well-designed plan to beat your opponent, but as the fight progresses, you might have to alter your plans.
After losing 11 straight races to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton was faced with a tough scenario: Continue on the same path and keep losing, or shake up your fight plan to keep battling another day.
She accepted the "resignation" of her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, brought in Maggie Williams; paid more attention to her campaign finances, especially online fundraising; focused intently on her economic message; and went after Obama with a different line of attack that some have described as negative.
Frankly, the "3 a.m." ad that questioned his qualifications as commander-in-chief -- without overtly saying it -- should only be seen as negative based on the tone and tenor of this campaign. But it will pale in comparison to the ads we will see in November.
That folks, is just smart politics.
So she wins three out of four states, staves off defeat, and now has a little pep in her step heading into the Wyoming caucus, Mississippi primary, and the big contest on April 22, the Pennsylvania primary.
More importantly, she has forced Obama to question his campaign plan, and put the onus on him to go to his corner to get instructions from his trainer in order to win the next round.
Obama faces a tougher task because of his denunciation of the politics of old, which have sort of tied his hands. He is expected to be Mr. Positive on the campaign trail, and not go negative against Clinton. Yet there are ways in which he can better define Clinton that will not only not be seen as negative, but also better reposition him leading into the final contests.
For one, the Clinton campaign has successfully sold the media on the idea that the next important contest is Pennsylvania. The day after her wins Tuesday, nearly every show was talking about what needs to happen April 22, as if the Wyoming and Mississippi races were afterthoughts.
Obama must hit Clinton hard on being a "Big D" Democrat who doesn't really care about the "Little D" Democrats. Remember how she essentially brushed aside Obama's wins in Utah, Idaho, Washington state and other places as nothing but red states they have no way of capturing in the fall?
Her argument is that Democrats must win the big states -- California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida and Ohio. This plays to her advantage since she won them (Sorry, I don't include Michigan and Florida, and you already know why). This falls in line with her "50-plus-1" strategy: Just win the same states as Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and then you flip Ohio or Florida to win the White House.
But Obama's thinking is more in line with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean: Create a 50-state strategy to establish Democratic dominance on the federal level -- more of a supermajority -- but also on the state level. By changing the discourse by suggesting she will only care about Democrats in large states, Obama will be able to speak to the hearts and minds of those small states, and more importantly, rally those superdelegates who felt put off by Clinton's dismissive comments.
A key argument for Obama to make is that redistricting is two years away, and Democrats need control of governorships and state legislatures. Only through targeting those places will that become a reality.
Second, jump right in her face on the foreign policy front. She claims she was integrally involved in the release of Kosovo refugees and the Irish peace talks. Fine. So demand to know why if she was so involved in foreign policy, the Clinton administration failed in Rwanda and had a horrible plan on Somalia? There were clear international failures during the eight years of President Bill Clinton, and she needs to be forced to say what she did and didn't do. Obama has used the cherry picking argument, but has been weak in selling it. Nail it to try to nail her.
Finally, Professor Obama has to return. One of the reasons he did so well in the Los Angeles, California, debate is that he chose to go head-to-head with her on policy. Everyone said that's her strength, but he held his own. He needs to make a more convincing argument when it comes to the economy. The economic plans they have are not overwhelmingly different. What he has to do is come out of the podium and make it plain. Speak to voters in Mississippi about the tragedy of the Gulf Coast; tell voters there and in Wyoming why he will help their kids go to college; present his urban and rural economic renewal programs to the voters in Pennsylvania. Don't concede any ground to her on these points.
Is this fight over? Absolutely not. But Obama can't afford to look at his lead among pledged delegates and think he will maintain that and go to Denver and the superdelegates will fall behind him. In Las Vegas, Nevada, every boxer is told to win it in the ring, and not depend on the judges.
This is now a 15-round heavyweight match instead of 12 rounds. Clinton has no choice but to brawl. It worked Tuesday, so why stop doing it?
Obama? He is sort of the boxer who is technically proficient and wants to showcase those skills. But you can't dance all night. Sometimes you've got to slug it out in the middle of the ring. That doesn't mean being nasty or trashing your opponent. But it does mean fighting hard until the bell rings in the final round and never letting your guard down.
Obama, you let your guard down before Tuesday. Don't do it again or you might just get knocked out of the nomination.
WaPo is reporting that the Clinton campaign has raised $4 million since Tuesday: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030601570.html?hpid=topnews
This is disheartening, to see her shoddy, negative campaign garner so much strength. But let's not let them rock our boat or cut into our lead on fundraising!
Please donate! I've set a fundraising goal of $500.00 on my personal page, you can view it here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/samsmomma
Whether you contribut to the Obama campaign via my page or another place on the site, please, just DONATE!!!
We're all stretched thin at this point but surely we can find a couple more dollars for our cause!
From a Mom's Website I belong to:
This is for all to read but Obama Mamas from the Michigan area please read carefully. Our govenor wants to seat the delegates from the previous primary AS IS. Remember that these delegates were stripped as punishment for moving the primary dates up. This is an outrage. None of Obama's supporters have had their voices heard. If they seat the delegates as is, they will be bending the rules for Hillary Clinton and she will as sure as there is day and night be the democratic nominee. We cannot let this happen, something has to be done. Please lend any suggestions that we can pass on to our govenor.
Contact the Michigan Secretary of State and Board of Elections and tell them that is voter disenfrachisement, since Obama's, Edward's, Richardson's and every other name except CLINTON were not on the ballot! Governor Jennifer Granholm: http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-21995---,00.htmlMI Sec. of State Terri Lynn Land:http://www.mi.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-13162-25634--,00.htmlContact Michigan Senators in Washington: Carl Levin: http://levin.senate.gov/Debbie Stabenow: http://stabenow.senate.gov/If you live in Michigan, contact your state senator and representative:http://senate.michigan.gov/http://house.michigan.gov/DO NOT LET THIS ISSUE GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT!!!!!!! If votes are to be counted, they should be fair votes!!!
Guess who else was a one-term federal legislator when he ran for President and won?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Dean and staff,
I am writing with an urgent heart. Myself and many of my friends are quite worried about the state of this primary season -- which I'm sure is no surprise to you.
However, I want to offer some insight into my stance on the primaries. Two things mainly concern me:
1. I am 28 years old. I was born in 1980. Mr. Dean, do you realize that there has been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, either as President or Vice President, every year that I have been alive? I'll be 30 in two years. That is a very long time to have two families, and two specific types of leaders, in power.
2. Mr. Dean, I can assure you -- from the standpoint of someone who is young enough to not be jaded but old enough to be teetering on the brink -- we cannot afford to put the excitement that has been generated by Senator Obama on the back burner for eight years. He has brought a new sense of life, a new sense of urgency to politics that has created, in itself, almost a brand-new constituency. Young people, independents, even Republicans are voting for him in record numbers.
Mr. Dean, this momentum cannot be bottled and then brought out again 8 years from now under expectations of the same results. The young people getting involved in the process now will not do so eight years from now if they feel they have been "had" this year. Senator Clinton eking out a win in this primary season by pressuring superdelegates will only serve to shatter our party and disillusion the majority of this new rallying force. It will ensure not only victory for the GOP in November, but possibly for many more elections to come.
Mr. Dean, I have nothing against Hillary Clinton. It's true that I support Obama but my words come not from a place of vitriol against her. It's merely common sense. We cannot allow this to go on for several more months while the GOP coalesces to defeat us. There have been reports of Republican voters crossing party lines to vote for both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama -- but for different reasons. The Obama voters are voting because they believe in him and actually want him to be President. The Clinton voters are voting for her because she will be an "easier target" to beat in November -- and in November they will switch back to John McCain.
I know that you have little hand in determining how the superdelegates vote. You can't force them to vote one way or the other any more than I could, but it is possible that you could explain these situations to them. If they are true Democratic Party loyalists, I doubt they'd want to see their party splintered at such a crucial moment in history.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message, Mr. Dean. I may be a little scared of the current prospects, but I'm also confident that together we can unite the party behind Senator Obama and ensure a win for the Democrats in November.
Sincerely,
Jessica Sharp
