Top 10 Reasons Obama Defeated Clinton for the Democratic Nomination
by Robert Creamer
Now that the outcome of the battle for the Democratic nomination has been settled beyond a reasonable doubt, it's worth looking systematically at the major factors that gave victory to Obama. After all, fifteen months ago, conventional wisdom viewed Obama as an audacious long shot. The very idea of a first-term African American senator with a name like Barack Obama defeating the vaunted Clinton machine seemed preposterous.
Here are my Top Ten reasons why lightning struck in the contest for the 2008 Democratic nomination (apologies to David Letterman ):
#10. Great Team. Obama assembled a great team that could work together. He stayed away from lobbyist insiders like Clinton's Mark Penn or McCain's Charlie Black, and choose political professionals who are committed to progressive values like David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes. From the first he insisted on one key rule: no drama. There was little of the infighting and division in the Obama operation that ate away at the Clinton campaign. Clinton had many capable staffers and consultants, but Penn's divisive leadership style and failures as a strategist doomed the campaign organization to dysfunction. When the brilliant Geoff Garin was tapped to succeed Penn as Chief Strategist in April, it was simply too late.
#9. All-State Strategy. Mark Penn was convinced that Clinton could sew up the nomination by Super Tuesday focusing only on the big states. In fact, some have reported that he mistakenly believed that California had a "winner take all" primary. Obama's team hunted for delegates in every nook and cranny of America - especially in the caucus states that Clinton really didn't contest. Obama ran an active, on-the-ground campaign in every contest, from California to Guam. As a consequence, as one anonymous Clinton insider reports, Clinton lost the nomination in February after Obama ran the table in 11 straight states.
#8. No Plan B. The Clinton campaign had no fall-back plan when it failed to capture the nomination on February 5. There was no money, no organization and no plan to contest the states that lie in the land beyond Super Tuesday.
#7. Excellence in Execution: Great Field. Obama ran the best field operation in American political history -- particularly in the all important Iowa Caucuses. His campaign left no stone unturned, or a vote on the table, in any state. It opened offices everywhere, hired and trained great staff, and managed through simple, streamlined structures. It would have been easy for Obama to squander the massive influx of volunteers who were mobilized through his inspirational message. But the campaign developed structures to integrate and effectively use volunteers, both on the ground and through the Internet. In particular, it developed highly sophisticated new Internet tools to allow volunteers around the country to participate meaningfully in voter ID and get out the vote operations.
#6. Explosive Obama Fundraising. Obama's ability to compete everywhere, to build great field structures and to out-communicate Clinton in the paid media rested squarely on the massive fundraising operation. Obama's traditional fundraising program ended up matching the vaunted Clinton fundraising machine. But the newly developed Internet operation provided a massive advantage. So far Obama has recruited over one-and-a-half-million donors. In other words, by the time the primary season ends, almost one of every ten Obama primary voters (so far there have been 16.3 million) will have made a financial contribution to his campaign. That is beyond unprecedented.
#5. Obama Out-Communicated Clinton Using One Consistent Message. Obama's message has been consistent from Day One. Clinton lurched from "experienced insider" to "populist outsider" from Margaret Thatcher-like "Iron Lady" to a "victim being bullied." And of course, Obama's huge small-donor-driven fundraising advantage gave him the ability to out-communicate her in the paid media - often by a factor of two-to-one.
#4. Hope and Inspiration trumped Fear and Anger. A core element of that Obama message has always been hope and inspiration. Early on, John Edwards hit an important cord of populist anger that is critical to any successful Democratic campaign. Right now especially, people want their leaders to be populist outsiders not "competent" insiders. But Edwards was unable to resolve that anger into hope. Obama touched the anger but also held out possibility. When Hillary "found her voice" as the fighting populist at the end of the campaign, she tapped into anger as well. She didn't hesitate to play the fear card -- both when it came to foreign policy, and by channeling the Republican frame that "elitist professional types" are trying to destroy your way of life. But she never managed to inspire and resolve that fear into hope.
Inspiration is the one political message that simultaneously persuades swing voters and motivates mobilizable voters who rarely come to the polls. The North Carolina landslide provided a striking example of how inspiration can generate massive mobilization at the same time it appeals to independent swing voters.
#3. Unity Trumped Division. Obama showed that appeals to division - whether from elements that stirred up fear that a "black candidate couldn't win" - or from his former pastor - could be overcome by America's overwhelming hunger for unity. Americans - and particularly young Americans - are sick of Republican appeals based on the things that divide us, particularly race. It isn't 1988 anymore. A whole generation has passed from the scene and been replaced by young people who simply don't get the passions that allowed the fear of "Willie Horton" to decide the 1988 presidential race.
#2. Change Trumped Experience. Clinton Chief Strategist Mark Penn's fundamental strategic error was to position Clinton as the "Experience" candidate, when America desperately wanted change. Eighty percent of the voters think America is on the wrong track. They want change in general - and most importantly, they want change in the way special interests dominate Washington. Mark Penn, the consummate lobbyist-insider himself embodied the very thing people believe is wrong in Washington. It's no wonder he made this catastrophic strategic blunder.
#1. Obama is an Extraordinary Candidate. Inspirational, articulate, brilliant, funny, attractive and naturally empathetic - his history as a community organizer, his experience abroad, his beautiful family, accomplished wife, and adorable kids: Obama is the kind of candidate any campaign manager would want in any year. But he is perfect for this year. While the Clintons represented the Bridge to the 21st Century, Obama is the 21st century. His own, multi-cultural story is the future of America. As the campaign tested him, he showed he was cool, deliberate and effective under fire.
In the end, people vote for people. Campaigns are ultimately about the qualities of candidates --about whether or not people want them to be their leaders. Potentially, Barack Obama could become an historic, transformational leader. But John McCain has many qualities that are attractive to swing voters as well. Nothing is preordained. Now it will be up to every Democrat, every Progressive, to take advantage of this historic opportunity to make Barack Obama the American President who leads the world into a new progressive era of unprecedented possibility.
Robert Creamer is a long time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on amazon.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/top-10-reasons-obama-defe_b_101307.html
Arianna Huffington is Correct: McCain Has Changed
Frank Schaeffer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/arianna-huffington-is-cor_b_101223.html
When I add my voice to Arianna Huffington's to say that Senator McCain has changed -- for the worse -- my perspective isn't that of your traditional lefty making some sort of knee-jerk response against just anyone running as a Republican candidate. I went for to bat for McCain in 2000 (in my small way) and later McCain was kind enough to write a glowing endorsement of one of my books on the military. While it was a dual between McCain and Romney I even contributed to McCain's 2008 presidential run. This was at the same time as I was also contributing to Obama's campaign. Talk about being conflicted! I had been out of the right-wing Evangelical fundamentalist subculture for more than 20 years so I was surprised when Religious Right leader Gary Bauer called me. This was in the heat of the 2000 election. Gary had a favor to ask.
"Frank, I know we haven't talked for many years but will you help me stop George W. Bush from winning the Republican nomination? There are still a lot of evangelicals out there who remember your dad and you from your pro-life work in the seventies and I think the Schaeffer name could help stop the Bush/Rove smear machine from taking McCain down."
Gary had heard that I was a McCain fan. But I had to think long and hard before I agreed to argue for McCain and against Bush on various radio shows, including such right wing staples as Ollie North's program and on a dozen or so big Christian stations. The idea of having to relive my past activism even briefly, was abhorrent. When I'd left the evangelical movement, let alone the hard right, I'd felt as if I'd escaped a living death, the death of a thousand cuts by terminal stupidity and meanness.
I agreed to go on shows Gary booked because I wanted W to lose even more than I wanted McCain to win. You see my family knew the Bush tribe personally, given that my dad had been a welcome evangelical leader in top Republican circles for many years. And everyone close to the Bush family knew that W was the least fit member of that dynasty to elect for dog catcher, let alone president.
A large station in Los Angeles organized a debate between Bush-booster Ralph Reed and me. When Ralph found out who his opponent was going to be he backed out. According to the producer; "Ralph says that he won't debate you. He said he'll debate anybody but you." I knew why Ralph didn't want to go up against me. In his circles the Schaeffer name was still huge. Reed, Robertson, Dobson, et al. could not have existed (as Republican activists) combining theology and militant (even anti-American) politics without my dad's work paving the way for them. And back in the day I'd been a pretty big deal on the fundamentalist circuit too.
I had been off the "circuit" for years but was still remembered as my father -- evangelist Francis Schaeffer's - sidekick. In the mid eighties I'd fled the religious side of evangelicalism, as well as the political side. I made four terrible Hollywood movies then wrote novels that were well received and started a new life. Blessedly, I fell off the evangelical radar screen.
Then in 2006 I wrote several opinion pieces supporting James Webb against the same Republican attack machine that had tried to take down McCain in 2000. The Rove slime apparatus had called McCain the father of an illegitimate black child. This time Rove and Co. were calling Webb a "pornographer" because of some sexually explicit passages in a few of his Vietnam novels.
I was so disgusted that I re-registered as an independent voter and said so in an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News. Soon after that my anti-Religious Right memoir Crazy for God was published.
My old buddies in the Religious Right (most of whom had long since forgotten I existed) took note and began attacking me. (Depending on which right wing blogs you read these days, I'm now a "heretic," have broken various biblical commandments about "honoring" your parents, never was a "real Christian" and even the fact that my son was a Marine and fought in Bush's wars, still gives me "no right to criticize the President" for his misbegotten war etc., etc.)
I feel genuinely sad observing that McCain is now the most dangerous man in America. He is. He has becomes the enemy of our future. Here's why:
Both Republicans and Democrats have their versions of a lunatic fringe. The Democrats include people who think they're making a contribution to the country by picketing recruiters' offices in Berkeley or rooting for total pacifism -- whatever. There are plenty of wacky left-wingers running around who don't do much for the Democrats' image with mainstream America but ... the wacky left does not control the heart of the Democratic Party, as the tremendous success of the eminently sane, balanced and thoughtful Senator Obama proves.
The problem is that you can't run for president as a Republican these days without appeasing the insanely bellicose, Republican fringe. As such McCain has had to endorse Bush's war and suck up to the most vile elements to his right.
Today McCain is a man who's thinking has also been so twisted by his quest for power in the shadow of the Republican's "base" and their opposition to him over the years, that he has lied about his real feelings about Bush's Iraq war. McCain knows that we should never have gone to war. He knows his vote for the war was a terrible mistake, He knows that Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until we opened the door. He knows we're losing in Afghanistan because we're in Iraq. He knows Bush is literally a fool. (He has said so to plenty of people I know well personally.) But McCain wants to be president enough to lie about all this.
Now that McCain has adjusted his thinking to continue (and praise) the Bush policies he can't turn back. He hasn't exactly made a bargain with the devil, more like a pact with the village idiot. As Bush's new lickspittle McCain is now so bent on eternal war, and has gone so far in betraying himself to support Bush, that he's even been agitating against Senator James Webb's new GI Bill, which would (at long last!) improve college benefits for soldiers. The Pentagon says that the new bill is too generous, and would entice young men and women to go to college instead of serving for repeated tours of combat. (These benefits would include McCain's Marine son, but then again if you've got a wife with 100 million dollars who needs college benefits for your military son?)McCain has also climbed into bed with the Ralph Reed-type scum he once called "agents of intolerance" and who smeared him not only in 2000, but worked this year to defeat him while supporting Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. The only question is: has McCain changed his mind? Does he really believe in the Religious Right's BS, or is he just lying for convenience sake? Either way, forget the old "straight talk maverick."
A vote for McCain is a vote against a viable Republican Party. It's a vote for the poisonous lunatic fringe that's taken over the heart of the Republican Party and driven people like Arianna Huffington and me, and tens of thousands others, out. A vote for McCain is a vote to kill American service men and women, deprive those that survive our failed imperial conquest of benefits and condemn the rest of us to terrorist attacks as Afghanistan--where the real war on terror is--is lost due to our foolish involvement in Iraq.
As Huffington points out in Right is Wrong, the Republican fringe includes an unholy alliance of warmonger neoconservatives, evangelical fundamentalist leaders, and just plain old ignorant haters. This fringe has made the Republican Party into a reactionary, know-nothing habitat for racists, pro-torture sadists, advocates of eternal war and the instigators of a skyrocketing debt for the sake of-and caused by-failed imperial "glory."
McCain's base is putrid. Worse; it's stupid. And the rot has spread to the man trying to appease and "lead" it. But leadership means elevating people, not pandering. And that is what McCain has become: the panderer in chief.
Our job -- whatever party we are in -- is to stop McCain. W can't afford another 4 years of Bush. We need a president, not a panderer. It is also the biggest favor we can do for the Republican Party.The Republicans need a time out. They need to purge their party of the idiots who gave us Bush II, not be ruled by them once again. I'm not a Republican any more, but if I were I'd be praying for defeat this year for the good of the party, for the good of America. As it is, I thank God that in Senator Obama we have the most inspiring and thoughtful candidate to run for president in my lifetime.
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"
Dear Mr. Herbert,
Susan Martin
The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)
But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/opinion/10herbert.html
By Lori Hansen Riegle
Hillary Clinton now wants to count the popular vote from Michigan in her campaign's efforts to change the rules of the nomination race. It's a fraudulent argument as the Michigan primary ballot did not offer Democrats real candidate choices.
Here is what actually happened. The four top tier Democratic candidates -- Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Clinton -- all pledged to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) they would not campaign in Michigan, after the DNC ruled that Michigan's delegates would not be seated at the national convention because Michigan changed its primary date from February 26 to January 15.
Obama, Edwards and Richardson kept their pledge and removed their names from the ballot. At the last minute, Clinton left her name on the ballot, with the full knowledge that the results would not count. Obama, Edwards and Richardson complied with the rules, while Clinton did not keep her pledge.
Although there was no other viable candidate's name on the primary ballot, only 55 percent voted for Clinton. Instead --
Michigan primary history had previously established a precedent for the 2008 situation. During the contested presidential primary of 1980, the DNC ruled that Michigan delegates would not be seated at the convention because the state was holding an open primary not recognized at that time by party rules. President Jimmy Carter and his challenger, Senator Edward Kennedy both kept their names off the ballot -- they honored the rules.
Clinton did not follow the precedent set by Carter and Kennedy. Instead, the Clinton campaign tried to claim Michigan delegates that were not earned competitively. When that gambit failed, Clinton began counting the popular vote in Michigan as part of her national total.
The facts associated with the Michigan Democratic primary make it clear that Michigan voters were disenfranchised by the election. As a result, the primary vote cannot be considered an honest and valid measurement of the support for any Democratic candidate in Michigan.
Perhaps a fitting postscript can be found in a recent Michigan poll by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA. In that highly respected poll, Obama led McCain 43-41 percent, while McCain led Clinton 46-37 percent. Obama was running a full 11 percentage points better than Clinton in Michigan -- when matched against McCain.
If Michigan had not moved up its original primary date of February 26, a vigorous and fair democratic primary election campaign in Michigan could have taken place. Then the real voice of Michigan Democratic voters would have been heard. Anll the current evidence indicates that the voters' choice would have been Barack Obama -- not Hillary Clinton.
POSTCARD PARTY CONTINUES MEN INCLUDED (Women for Obama House Party)MANY OF YOU HAVE ASKED WHY THE DATE IS MAY 26TH. That is the last date you can mail your postcards to the Ohio office so they can get them out to the last Primary for June 3 - Montana & South Dakota.
4/23/08 - Just spoke to TaLisa and the final count was 60,000 Postcards that were sent to PA.
As a result of the response this project will go on throughout the primary campaign. We want to reach voters for the primary and set the stage for the Generals.
For those who do not like phone banking this is the event for you. Obama Supporters across the USA are writing postcards explaining why they support Obama. This is an inexpensive way to help our candidate win the other states.
On thing TaLisa requested was that you DO NOT put a date on your postcard or any state.
Write as many postcards (10 or more) as you would like and place postcard stamps on them. 4x6 postcards = $.26 stamp. Any postcard larger than this is $.41 stamp.
Once you attend this event I will e-mail you the instructions. If you would like the instructions in a word document, then please e-mail me at lynn4obama@yahoo.com.
ARE YOU FIRED UP AND READY TO GO? I KNOW I AM!
Yes We Can! And We Can’t Wait!
Sign up here:http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/4338
DEADLINE FOR INDIANA: MONDAY, APRIL 28TH
Here's the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/this-good-friday-let-us-_b_92645.html
Here's the text:
Senator Obama has a problem: the hardening of the American heart, the closing of the American mind, the shriveling of our souls, the shrinking capacity of our imaginations, our jaded senses, the seen-it-all attitude that makes us into sneering voyeurs too mean spirited to save ourselves.
I was a guest on a PRI radio show the day after Obama delivered is historic speech on race. I was a guest along with a person that the host introduced as "most responsible" for making Obama's minister's charged comments into a political football. According to the host's introduction, Republican activist Ronald Kessler used his website to turn Obama's minister's words into the story the media jumped on. Kessler had just heard Obama's March 18 speech on race too. He said it left him unmoved. He was in a sneering mood bristling with ever-so-reasonable middle class certitude of his conservative righteousness. To Kessler the speech was just politics, nothing more. The idea of it's truth was of no consequence. To him it was all about tactics. That night I was listening to Laura Ingraham (a show that I was on several times and where Laura repeatedly called me a "great American" because, as the father of a Marine, I'd written Keeping Faith and then Faith of Our Sons, books that praised and explained the military family.) Laura was sneering at Obama's speech. Her candidate had been Mitt Romney. As Romney's self-described "conservative-conservative" Ingraham had also been routinely mocking McCain. And she hates Clinton. Now she hates Obama more...Bitterness as a way of life marches forward on the left as well as the right. I read the responses from Clinton supporters (on various websites) also damning Obama's speech as "just words." Some of the Clinton people sounded even more cynical than Kessler and Ingraham.Obama is the chef who opens a new restaurant and serves honest good and beautifully prepared food made of the most wholesome ingredients only to have the food critic pan his offerings as "all too ordinary." "Where," asks the seen-it-all jaded bored critic, "are the calf's brains marinated in truffle-soaked baby duck's testicles?"Obama offers civility in the midst of a drunken national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.
By providence or blind luck, we are being given a second chance. In Obama our founders appear once again stepping from the mists of time to offer a wayward great, great grandchild an opportunity for redemption. But everything is turned on its head. Good is called bad. The greatest things about Obama are used against him, decency and transparency are mocked.
Obama stands in the tradition of our founders, a citizen running for office, not a "professional" striver. But the cry goes up, "He doesn't have the experience!" Experience? At what? Playing games with our country's soul while the only real game in our nation's capitol is hanging on to power, enriching oneself at the political trough through connections, taking us to war after war, making us hated throughout the world by catering to our insatiable, unreasoning fears.
Obama is the man who reaches out to help a dying passerby and the passerby snarls, "What do you really want?" Obama came to us on March, 18 with one of the most generous and brilliant speeches that has been delivered on American soil. He spoke honestly of things all other American leaders have been too timid and self-serving to even mention. Standing behind him were the sprits of countless murdered, enslaved, tortured, lost black Americans. Their blood cries out for revenge and yet Obama offered forgiveness, perspective and understanding.
Obama is not Jesus. Obama makes mistakes. He is rightly self-deprecating. Nevertheless, imperfect as he is, Obama is offering America a fresh start. There is more decent intelligent authenticity in his little finger than the Clintons will ever know. There is more kind wisdom in Obama than in all our sneering bloodsucking moronic media combined. But we have imbibed detritus for so long that when clean food is offered we can't taste it.This isn't about politics. I'm a fifty-five year old white man who has been a conservative all my life. I've been a right wing Republican activist. I'm a big fan of the military. If Obama can reach out to me he can reach out to anyone. He can win in November. What I'm saying here will lose me friends. For instance the Bush family gave one of my recent military-related books a ringing endorsement. After Laura Bush read an excerpt out on Meet The Press sales skyrocketed. I probably won't get too many more of those sorts of endorsements. But the chips are down and the presidential choices this year are too important not to not fight for.As I see it our choice is between a good and heroic old man whose time has past and who will perpetuate failed policy, a jaded woman of the establishment, who will do anything to perpetuate her family's dynastic "claim" to power, and a brilliant, openhearted new founding father the likes of which America has not seen. Obama comes to us from outside the system that has produced our present multiple crises of wars of choice and a failing economy. He does what all truly great leaders do: he speaks to the soul in plain self-revealing words of hope.If we squander this undeserved reprieve and choose business-as-usual, if we don't elevate ourselves out of our self-made mire, we will step into a future of steep and steady decline and war without end. It won't matter if you are right or left. It won't matter if the Republicans or the Democratic Party wins. We will all lose.I think there is reason to hope. There are decent people out there who have refused to go along with the smear-by-association campaign. Mike Huckabee defended Obama. McCain said we can't blame Obama for his minister's words. Not everyone on the right is stooping as low as the Clintons and the right-wing media scavengers. Obama is worth fighting for. He is worth losing old friends for. History has thrown America an unlikely lifeline. Do we have the decency, the sense, the last glimmer of sanity needed to open our hearts to change?
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
Iformation for Texas Delegates:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/tx_countyconventions
From the Dallas Morning News:
"
Then, it's incumbent on the candidates to make sure the delegates chosen to represent them actually show up at the county conventions. If those delegates don't show up, they don't count.
At those conventions, held across the state on the same day, the credentialing committees appointed by the respective county parties will certify and approve the delegates – checking IDs, and making sure that they voted in the Democratic primary and that they actually caucused on Tuesday night.
Once the delegates are counted, the county conventions will choose the state delegates in much the same way county delegates were chosen Tuesday: A count for each candidate will be taken, and delegates to June's state convention will be given according to the percentage who showed up for them.
The process will be repeated in June at the state convention in Austin. When that convention is done, that's when the 67 delegates will be awarded – some to Mr. Obama, some to Mrs. Clinton"
My name is Susan & I live in Grand Prairie, TX. I'm in District 9, Precinct 4525. In the caucus, I was chosen as a delegate & actually the Delegate Chair (??) for the county convention on March 29. I'm just wondering if you have any info on if/how we're getting organized as delegates? Just hoping for any info you might have. Thanks for your time!
Yes, We Can!susana.k.a. Hope in Texas
