AFP4Obama

Former Mississippi governor talks up Obama campaign in Waynesboro

Chris Graham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:24:32 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

It was a midday Thursday event in Waynesboro featuring a former Mississippi governor stumping for Barack Obama. You wouldn’t expect to see more than a handful of people on hand, right? So then when 55 people show up to see Ray Mabus talk about what Obama wants to do to help cities like Waynesboro compete in the 21st century economy, you have to figure that there might be something going on out here in the hinterlands, wouldn’t you?

“I think Democrats in the past, not all of them, but some of them, have ignored small-town America and Rural America, to their detriment. And the values that we have, and the things that we’re talking about, ought to resonate in Rural America and small-town America. And I think it’s going to make a difference in the election in a lot of places. Republicans cannot count on this vote anymore,” said Mabus, who served as governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992 and later served as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, after the town-hall meeting at the Rosenwald Community Center on Port Republic Road Thursday afternoon.

Mabus is on a 15-state general-election swing through Rural America for the Obama campaign, after stumping in 20 states during the nomination contest that ended in June. He hears a lot of the same as far as message from the small groups that he gets to interact with on an almost daily basis. “People are hurting,” Mabus said. “It’s like I said about gas prices - people in Rural America are more affected by gas prices than anybody else. Because you don’t have an option. You don’t have choices for how you get around. If you live in Acona, Miss., you’re going to have to get in your vehicle. If you live in Waynesboro, you’re going to have to live in your vehicle.”

Mabus heard a lot of that from the participants in the Waynesboro town hall - from concerns about Medicare and Social Security to high gas prices and more general trends in the macroeconomy. “Twice as many Virginians are unemployed as when George Bush took office. And Virginia still has a pretty low unemployment rate, but it’s almost doubled in the last eighr years,” Mabus said of the Virginia economy, which though relatively strong compared to the rest of the nation is also going through a bit of a bumpy stretch right now. “You’re seeing a lot of jobs - almost 80,000 manufacturing jobs have left. And if you’re not moving toward a new economy, something like renewnable energy, green-collar jobs that you can do in Rural Virginia and Rural Mississippi and Rural America, if you’re simply sticking with the status quo, people are worried, and after this last week, they’ve got a real reason to be worried.”

Obama has made reaching out to Rural America a priority in his campaign - advocating for improved broadband and cell-phone access in rural areas so that rural citizens don’t get passed by on the superhighway of today, in addition to pushing for tax credits for new and existing small businesses in small-town America and raising the rates of reimbursements for health-care providers in Rural America so that care is not compromised for rural dwellers.

“I think overall the fact that his campaign is spending this much time in small-town America and Rural America and talking about agriculture policy, and the fact that he voted for the agriculture bill, and John McCain didn’t, and McCain denigrates agricultural research, and voted against the making Medicare reimbursement formula more fair. The fact that Barack Obama has spent as much energy and resources shows that he’s not going to forget Rural America, and we’re the people he’ll be beholden to when he becomes president,” Mabus said.

That’s why Virginia is in play, Mabus said. Because Obama has made it a point to listen and learn, and because as a person Obama is more like the average Virginian than you might think if you watch Fox News all day long and half the night.

“He’s a different kind of candidate. For one thing, he’s run a grassroots-up campaign. He’s had people out talking to folks. He’s drawn on his career as a community organizer to do it from the grassroots up instead of from the top down. And giving people an opportunity to get involved, and giving them a reason to help, and a way to help,” Mabus said. “But I also think the things he’s talking about, the things he cares about, his personality and his character, what he has done with his life, raised by a single mother and grandparents, getting through college on student loans and scholarships, he’s the most normal person I’ve seen run for president in a while. And he hasn’t been in Washington so long that he’s lost that, that he’s lost touch with what average people go through every day.”

Webcast: Michelle Obama rallies Virginia

Chris Graham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:22:53 EDT

Michelle Obama was in Charlottesville on Wednesday to talk up her husband’s campaign for the White House. Hear Obama address the rally at the University of Virginia in this webcast.

Show Length: 14:33

Listen to “The Augusta Free Press Show.”

Photos from Michelle Obama Cville event

Chris Graham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:21:23 EDT

Photos by Crystal Graham
freepress@ntelos.net

Michelle Obama and Jill Biden are all smiles.

The rally drew an estimated 2,500 people.

Astronaut Kathryn Thornton led the Pledge of Allegiance.

Michelle Obama greets the rally.

Augusta Dem Lee Godfrey (wearing sunglasses) is fired up.

Augusta Dem Barbara Lee is watching from above.

Michelle Obama stumps in Obamaville

Chris Graham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:20:03 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

It’s time for new solutions, Michelle Obama told a rally of 2,500 people on Grounds at the University of Virginia Wednesday afternoon, “because we know that the old ways just won’t do.”

Obama, the wife of Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama, and Jill Biden, the wife of Delaware senator and Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden, were in Charlottesville as part of their Women for the Change We Need tour. They were joined by Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama woman who fought Goodyear over a pay-discrimination issue that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and is now the focus of congressional legislation that has been backed by Obama-Biden and opposed by Arizona senator and Republican Party presidential nominee John McCain. Ledbetter endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket at the rally, and said her choice was actually an easy one to make. “There is only one candidate who has stood up for women like me, who has consistently fought to help women who are working hard every day for our families and aren’t being paid fairly,” Ledbetter said.

The dignitaries also included astronaut Kathryn Thornton, who led the assemblage in the Pledge of Allegiance, and UVa. student Emily Blakesmore, the campus coordinator for the Obama campaign, who told the University students in attendance that the campaign will need their help over the next 48 days to “change the country.”

“We have come a long way, but we are not done yet. Since August, we have registered thousands of new voters, knocked on hundreds of doors. But all of this is not enough. We need to keep going. We need to push on,” Blakesmore said.

Charlottesville community organizer - yes, community organizer - Kristin Szakos was also on hand to rally the troops. “I hope that what you hear today will inspire you and get you fired up,” said Szakos, a volunteer who has been working full time with the Obama campaign since February, and who comes from a family of Obama supporters - including a grandmother who when she turned 100 turned down a birthday card from President Bush. “She said she would wait for the next president, thank you very much,” said Szakos, whose grandmother received a handwritten birthday card from Obama last week on the occasion of her 104th birthday, and whose mother hosted her first Obama house party in Charlottesville in March 2007.

“We’re working because this candidate has made us believe that it is time for ordinary Americans from all walks of life to come together and reclaim the heritage of this nation - the idea that all people are created equal, that we should be guided by our principles, not our fears, that our nation can be a beacon to the world, for justice and integrity,” Szakos said.

Michelle Obama paid tribute to women like Szakos who “have shaped this campaign with their ideas and their strategies and their energy, women who have come to rallies like this who have brought their young daughters and their nieces and putting their babies on their shoulders so that they could witness this time in history.” “There’s one thing that I know for certain. It’s that women, children, students, workers, all of us, we need an advocate in the White House now more than ever,” said Obama, a lawyer and mother of two.

“The policies that affect our families aren’t just political issues. This isn’t just politics. This is personal,” Obama said. “The people in Washington have been talking about these issues for a long time - health care, education, the economy. They’ve been talking a lot, but it’s been hard to see where we’ve been making a whole lot of progress around these issues, and we are all feeling the effects of the lack of movement on these issues.

“We feel it when we go to shop for groceries. We feel it when we go to put gas in our tanks. We feel it when we think about how we’re going to pay for our kids’ college educations. And we think about it and worry about it and feel it when we think about paying back these student loans. We think about it when we think about getting that mammogram that we’ve been putting off, but we put it off because we look at those copays, and we realize that they just keep getting higher and higher and higher. And that’s if you have insurance. That’s true,” Obama said.
“Everywhere that I go, everywhere that Barack goes in this country, we hear stories of people doing everything that is asked of them, and more, and still finding it harder and harder to get ahead,” Obama said.

“This is such an exciting moment in our nation’s history. You know that. When we have the chance to change the face of this nation for a long time to come. We can build a better future for our families, for our communities, for our entire country. We can do that. What we decide on Nov. 4 is going to change the world. You do realize that? And I’m here today because there’s no more powerful force for change than all of you,” Obama said.

We have met the enemy, and it is us

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:32:50 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

You listen to Republicans, and you’d think that the only thing we need to do to address our current fuel and energy crisis is drill, drill, drill and drill some more - even if the Department of Energy, the Bush administration’s Department of Energy, that is, has done its part to throw serious doubt into the idea that drilling would do much of anything to alleviate the pain that we’re all feeling right now anytime soon and into the foreseeable future.

You listen to Democrats, then, and you’d think that the thing that we need to do is invest in alternative energies, and that will solve all of our problems - and though they might be right on that, eventually, their eventually isn’t necessarily any sooner in terms of coming to fruition than what the Republicans are trying to get us to buy on their side.

To me, the answer is plainly obvious. We should’ve done something about this 25 years ago, and we wouldn’t be facing $4-a-gallon prices at the pump and electric and winter-heating bills that are figuratively and literally through the roof. But since we can’t go back in time and make it all better retroactively, we have to ask ourselves the hard question. Of course, it would be nice if we could all agree on what that hard question is.

“I believe that anyone who says that we can achieve energy independence in this country without more nuclear power, without more offshore drilling, without more clean coal, that individual either doesn’t have the experience to understand the problem that we’re faced with or isn’t being straightforward with the American people,” Seventh District Republican Congressman Eric Cantor said in a conference call arranged by the John McCain Republican presidential campaign last week, not surprisingly not straying too far from the McCain line on energy, given that Cantor is being talked about as being on the short list of possible McCain vice-presidential nominees.

If only McCain himself would push this more comprehensive approach in his stump speeches and TV and radio ads. You go to the McCain website and you’ll actually see something that resembles an across-the-board energy plan that includes new onshore and offshore domestic drilling, investments in new alternative energies and conservation measures aimed at promoting energy efficiency. Which is to say, not much in the way of difference between the McCain platform and the one being advocated by Democrat Barack Obama, who has come under fire from McCain backers because his vision of a comprehensive energy strategy doesn’t include strenuous enough shilling for new drilling for their liking.

And maybe that’s the issue here in this most nuanced of debates where we all seem to agree on the big picture that we need to do something different than what we’re doing now, but can’t seem to agree on how we can bridge from where we are now with $4-a-gallon gas and energy bills spiking 20 percent to that magical date far off into the future where we have things figured out.

“Clearly we need to do a whole lot more, and what we’ve seen is fairly typical from Washington, which is that the Republicans blame environmentalists, and the Democrats blame oil executives, and nothing gets done,” Fifth District Democratic Party congressional nominee Tom Perriello told me last week. “Both of those are issues that we’ve got to deal with. Speculation, the weak U.S. dollar because we don’t balance the budget, and supply and demand. We’ve got to do the whole thing.”

“Complex issues require complex solutions,” Sixth District Democratic Party nominee Sam Rasoul told me. “Fossil fuels and oil make up a vast majority of our energy resources right now, so the solution is going to have to include fossil fuels for decades to come. The question is, where do we want to be putting our future dollars, and where do we want to be investing? What we want to be doing is taking away the tax breaks that we’re giving to Big Oil, the most profitable industry in the world, and putting that into firms that want to invest in alternative energy, so that we can have a diverse portfolio of alternative energies that cannot only help to boost our economy, create jobs, but it this also, in my opinion, a matter of national security.”

You’d never hear Sixth District Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte come across that strongly on sticking it to Big Oil, but Goodlatte did feel compelled to offer a hedge on his support of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a talk with local Republicans over the weekend in Staunton. “This is not in any way to neglect the prospect of moving to new technologies and addressing the environmental issues that we want to have addressed,” Goodlatte said. “Alternate forms of energy are very important. We have companies right here in this congressional district - wind turbines down in Salem, a company in Roanoke is producing new technology to help people conserve energy in their businesses and their homes by managing their electricity better. The nuclear-power industry is huge in Lynchburg - more than 5,000 jobs there related to that. That’s something that this legislation also promotes.”

Think about that. If I hadn’t told you that it was Goodlatte who had said those words, I could’ve attributed them to Rasoul and you probably wouldn’t have known the difference. And that to me is what is most interesting about where we are in this national discussion of our energy future right now. We seem to agree on even the fine points, and yet for some reason we think that there’s some sort of huge divide on what to do next to get things moving in the direction of a solution.

Perhaps we could get out of our own way. There’s a new idea. I dunno if I see it happening in the middle of a campaign season, but it might be worth a try.

Obama candidacy is history in the making for African-Americans

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:31:52 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Barbara Lee was 15 years old when she stepped off a bus and saw history unfold before her eyes.

It was a hot summer day in 1963 in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of thousands of Americans had gathered for the March on Washington to address the nation’s leaders on the subject of civil rights.

What Lee remembers first and foremost about the day was how quiet it was when Martin Luther King Jr. began talking about his dream for a better tomorrow.

Fast forward 45 years, and Lee will be traveling from Staunton to Denver, Colo., to serve as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention for presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama, and in so doing will become a witness to history once again, the King speech and Obama nomination serving as bookends for her own journey as an African-American.

“It means we’ve come a long way, and we have a ways to go. But if he goes into that Oval Office, it will change the way American people think,” Lee said.

The Obama candidacy is certainly changing the way even politically active African-Americans are thinking about politics. Lee, for example, has been political since her teen years. “I was at the March on Washington because I was always involved in civil-rights issues, ” she said. Neither is Mary Baldwin College professor Amy Tillerson a stranger to the political scene, though Tillerson admits to being particularly energized by the Obama candidacy. “This is something that I never expected would happen in my lifetime,” said Tillerson, an African-American who is volunteering the limited amount of spare time that she has in her teaching schedule and her schedule as a new mother locally for the Obama campaign.

“A lot of this on my part has to do with how hard it was to obtain the vote, especially for African-Americans and for women. I tell my students and family members that people actually died for the right to vote. And because people gave their life for it, and it is part of connecting with ourselves and our nation, then we have to do it. I feel compelled to do it because of the historical turmoil that the path to voting has taken for African-Americans and women over the course of the past two centuries,” Tillerson said.

Downtown Waynesboro business owner Stacey Strawn has had an Obama ‘08 sign in her front store window since early in the 2008 election cycle. “I’m definitely enthused that Barack Obama is a black man. All of my family and my friends are very excited that Obama is a black man. It’s like being proud of one of your own,” said Strawn, the co-owner of Blue Moon Galleries. “It’s an important step for my nation, it’s an important step for my race, and I’m thrilled to death that finally a black candidate is being taken seriously, and not just taken seriously, but people are excited,” Strawn said.

The excitement of Strawn, Tillerson, Lee and others in the African-American community is evident in polling data that have support for Obama running in the low to mid 90s among African-American voters. The fact that Obama has held a slight but steady lead in the national polls for several weeks - today’s polling by Rasmussen has Obama ahead of McCain by a 45 percent-to-43 percent margin, and Gallup has Obama in the lead by a 47 percent-to-42 percent gap - is only adding to that.

“We do see that our nation is making formidable changes for the better, and we’re happy for that. But with the historic happenings, everything that has gone on that has been particularly discriminatory or racist, and then in 2008 to have an African-American candidate who can actually land the presidency is just phenomenal,” Tillerson said.

“I remember being this excited about one other candidate in my adult life, and that was Bill Clinton, and he’s certainly not black, but I remember people having that same feeling of energy and the air is sort of charged about a person who is personable and well-liked but yet brilliant. And that’s what Obama is, and the fact that he’s black makes it all the better for me,” Strawn said.

What Kaine was said to have said, and what he actually said

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:30:52 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

To hear John McCain’s Virginia campaign co-chair, Staunton Republican Del. Chris Saxman, tell it, Tim Kaine all but sold presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama down the river this week in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“We are glad Gov. Kaine is following John McCain’s leadership and has come to agree with John McCain and those military commanders who pushed for the troop surge and change in strategy to reduce violence in Iraq. We are also pleased to see him move away from Barack Obama’s Inflate Your Tires Comprehensive Energy Plan, and instead, move decidedly toward Sen. McCain’s All of the Above’ energy policy. With this shift, it appears Gov. Kaine is now campaigning to be John McCain’s vice president,” Saxman said in a statement released by the McCain campaign yesterday.

The next line in the press release from the McCain camp quoted Kaine in his Wednesday appearance on Blitzer’s “Situation Room” as saying in response to a question from Blitzer on the Iraq surge that “(t)he notion that more troops would mean more order, I think, is not a particularly controversial one,” the implication there being that Kaine stands in line with McCain and President Bush on the surge that has been roundly criticized by Democrats. The release then quoted Kaine responding to another question from Blitzer on offshore drilling as saying flatly, “I’m open to the exploration,” hinting that Kaine is breaking with Obama by pushing offshore drilling as a primary solution to the current energy crisis.

The transcript of the interview gives more detail to Kaine’s answers to both that puts to light the partisan politics behind the release.

***

Question from Blitzer: “Does John McCain deserve credit for pushing for that increase in U.S. troops a year or so ago that enabled the reduction in violence right now?”

Answer from Kaine: “Well, I don’t know if he deserves credit. I mean, the notion that more troops might lead to more stability, I don’t think, is a controversial one - or it shouldn’t have been.

“The thing that, you know, I’m struck by was how the generals, who at the beginning of the war told the Bush administration that more troops would needed to be do the job and maintain stability, they were busted back for saying that. And it seems like the Bush administration has woken up late to the notion that more troops might be more helpful.

“Look, our troops do a great job over there. That doesn’t change the fact that the rationale we were given is wrong and that we need to have a plausible strategy for withdrawing from Iraq. And I think that’s something that the prime minister, Al-Maliki, has recently said. And that is a - that’s what we need to be focused on, what is the strategy for American withdrawal.”

Blitzer asked a followup: “But a lot of people believe - and you know this - that if it had not been for that 30,000 or 40,000 increase in troops, the relative quiet or stability that’s developed in the Al-Anbar Province elsewhere in Iraq might not necessarily have taken place and that McCain was out on a limb pushing for that.”

Kaine’s answer: “Well, Wolf, again, I’ll just go back to it. The notion that more presence - more military presence - might lead to more order is not a controversial notion. I think the real question is, at the beginning of the war, when those who knew the military leaders were saying we needed more troops, they weren’t only turned down, but in some instances they were basically ridiculed or disciplined, told they were wrong, much like the estimates about the financial cost of the war. Oh, it’s not going to be that expensive. It will be $30 billion. We’re at $700 billion and climbing.

“This is a sad instance of the civilian leadership making poor decisions while our men and women on the front lines have been performing excellent in the service that they give when they’re there.”

A second followup from Blitzer on the subject: “What McCain says is he can guarantee that if you end this war the way he wants it to end, without a time line, to just get the job done, to win, the U.S. will never have to go back to Iraq. But he says if you do it like Senator Obama is recommending, a hard and fast 16-month time line, you never know what’s going to happen and the U.S. might, down the road, have to go back in.”

Kaine’s answer: “Well, you know, the problem, I think, Wolf, with the senator’s position is he says do it my way - no time, line let’s just have victory. He hasn’t been able to tell the American people what victory looks like. Is it being there for three years, five years, 10 years, being there for 100 years, as was suggested earlier this year?

“I think the virtues of a time line is you start to look at facts on the ground, what might change that will lead to an appropriate strategy for withdrawal. Now you have the Bush administration itself talking about the need to have a time horizon for withdrawal. You have the prime minister, Al-Maliki, basically saying that something similar to Senator Obama’s proposal is right. And then Senator Obama’s proposal coincides generally with the notion of the provincial elections that are held this fall and national elections next year.

“But Senator McCain hasn’t given a timeline, he hasn’t given a strategy, hasn’t defined what victory is. And I think that’s something that the American people - and especially men and women in service - are entitled to.”

What Kaine had to say here is hardly an example of Kaine “following John McCain’s leadership,” as Saxman intimated. Kaine is intensely critical of McCain and his allies in the Bush administration both for getting it wrong early in the Iraq war and for failing to agree with the Iraqi leadership today on the need for a timeline for withdrawal.

***

Issue #2 involves the discussion of offshore drilling.

Question from Blitzer: “McCain says it’s an important issue right now, the U.S. should be doing it. Senator Obama is not so sure, maybe as part of a comprehensive compromise he might go along with it.

Where do you stand personally on offshore oil drilling off the coast of Virginia?”

Answer from Kaine: “In Virginia, we’ve taken a position - both me as the governor and my legislature - that we would like to explore natural gas reserves 50 miles off the coast, not yet for drilling or production, but for - to explore, to determine the size of the reserve.

“The federal moratorium against offshore drilling on the Atlantic Coast was the federal government’s judgment that the costs outweighed the benefits. I think it’s time to reassess, to look at the benefits again. We need to determine the size of the Reserve. And then on the costs or consequences, how would it affect the environment, how would naval operations, which are so critical off the Virginia coast, be affected by significant drilling.

“But my position is I think you need to do the exploratory drilling to determine what we have.”
Blitzer said that it sounded to him that Kaine was in agreement more with John McCain than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Kaine objected to that assertion, and reiterated his openness to offshore drilling in Virginia.

Kaine: “I’m open to the exploration. We can only make a decision, I believe, about whether the federal - the Congressional moratorium should stay in place by doing a new assessment of both the costs and benefits and weighing them. And in order to do that, you need to look at consequences, but you also need to look at the size of the Reserve.

“Now, Senator Obama’s position is pretty clear. Yes, as part of a comprehensive plan, drilling could be considered as part of it. But first let’s drill in the nearly 70 million acres of land that has already been leased to oil companies for drilling. They have acreages leased already that could do significant good where they are not drilling. Before we wholesale hand over other acreages to them, let’s make them in the areas they currently have permission.”

Once again, this is hardly Kaine following McCain’s leadership, nor is it moving toward what Saxman characterized as McCain’s “All of the Above” energy policy.

(Rhetorical question - If McCain’s strategy is “All of the Above,” why doesn’t he talk about more than drilling anywhere but on his campaign website?)

***

I want to note here that I have a lot of respect for Chris Saxman, a middle-of-the-road Republican in the mold of the old John McCain, actually. I wish he hadn’t played this kind of politics with the Tim Kaine CNN interview, even as I understand that this is a political season, and that all is supposed to be fair in love and politics and the rest.

If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t have press statements made on quotes from interviews taken blatantly out of context. Who won and who lost would come down to hard work presenting a candidate and a series of messages to voters, and may the best person win.

We can still dream there.

Why Kaine is your go-to guy

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:30:06 EDT

Special Commentary by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

NBC News political director Chuck Todd broke it down for us last night on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”

Assigning leaners in the Electoral College to the candidates that it appears that they will support, the 2008 presidential race comes down to four states - Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia - in which Barack Obama will need 10 electoral votes.

Colorado brings nine electoral votes, so a win there still has to be coupled with another win elsewhere. Ditto for New Mexico, which brings five electoral votes.

We’re down to two states, then, that can tip the scales to Obama - Ohio and its 20 electoral votes, and Virginia and its 13.

Ohio has been reliably red of late, and was in fact the key to George W. Bush’s re-election victory in 2004.

Virginia has been red since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but Democrats have had their eyes on the Commonwealth since back in 2000, when Al Gore was able to win Hampton Roads, signaling a change in party affiliation that has since come to fruition with the election victories of Mark Warner, Tim Kaine and Jim Webb.

“They’re looking at ‘04 as an anamoly,” Christopher Newport University political-science professor Quentin Kidd told me today.

Which explains, then, the 28 campaign offices that the Obama campaign has opened across the Commonwealth, including here in the reddest part of once-red Virginia, in Harrisonburg and Staunton, with a Waynesboro-office opening also possibly in the works for the coming weeks.

It took me this long to get to my point today. I’ve been saying for a couple of weeks that I think Tim Kaine is Barack Obama’s choice to run for vice president. It’s not a gut instinct; I think it comes down to simple data analysis.

Obama needs Virginia, and Kaine, whose favorability ratings in Virginia approach those of the uberpopular Mark Warner, could help push the Obama effort over the top.

Obama is already leading Virginia in three of the four polls done by national polling organizations, albeit by a small one- to two-point margin. A Kaine presence on the ticket could add a bounce of another point or two or three, which in a race that is this razorclose could be significant.

And as I say this, I have been beginning to wonder in recent days what would happen in Virginia were Kaine not to get the nod. I’m asking that rhetorical question in light of the rampant discussion of Kaine’s presence on Obama’s VP short list that seems to have had an energizing effect among Democrats and independents who are among Kaine’s biggest supporters in the Old Dominion.

I wouldn’t want to overstate the case, but it seems to me that there could be a Kaineless negative bounce of a point or two or three or more just the same as there could be a positive bounce in the other direction.

Given the stakes of the race in Virginia and the deciding role that we seem to be playing in this year’s election, I think what is about to happen is clear.

The Obama people didn’t target Virginia and Tim Kaine for nothing.

The Economy, Stupid, Version 2008.0

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:29:26 EDT

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

John McCain took some time away from his ongoing effort to make Britney Spears and Paris Hilton into ‘08 campaign issues to talk about the economy today, releasing his plan for helping small businesses through the economic slowdown, though looking at it might make one wonder if Republicans are that out of touch with what it means to be a small-business owner.

The first line in the plan announces to the world that McCain thinks it is a top priority in the effort to protect small business that the top income-tax rate be maintained at 35 percent, that the capital-gains rate be left at 15 percent and that the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax that dooms so many of us in the small-business world so loathe would be phased out.

“Small businesses are the heart of job growth,” reads the item in the McCain campaign press release on this issue sent out earlier today. “Raising taxes on them hurts every worker.”

Tone deaf to the fiscal realities out here in the heartland as this might be, at least the McCain side seems to be recognizing that the issue that will drive the ‘08 presidential race has to do with the economy, stupid. Democratic candidates tend to do better in tough economic times - think Bill Clinton in 1992 - ” because they offer a lot of government help, a lot of active government help, to solve the day-to-day problems that voters are suffering from, and Republicans tend to take a laissez-faire approach, let the problem work itself through the economy, and the economy will be better off in the long run, that sort of thing,” Christopher Newport University political-science professor Quentin Kidd said.

“So what you end up getting is a slightly clearer message from the Democratic candidate saying, This is what we want to do. And you get a confused message from the Republican candidate, because on the one hand, they want to say to the voters, We understand, and we’re here to help, and on the other hand, what they want to do is let the economy sort of go, let the economy work itself out. That’s usually to the advantage of the Democrats, and I don’t see that changing this year,” Kidd said.

I think we’re seeing that trend play itself out at this early, early stage in the ‘08 general-election campaign. McCain clearly wants to be seen as offering something on the economic front, even if the effect of what he has actually had to offer is more of the same that we’ve been seeing for generations from Republicans. And Obama is focusing on the government-help aspect of Kidd’s construction, talking up his ideas for another economic-stimulus package to give the macroeconomy another jumpstart.

Taking what the two candidates are saying on the economy in full consideration, I don’t know that I disagree with University of Mary Washington professor Stephen Farnsworth when he says that he doesn’t think that either campaign “has been effective on the economic question yet.” “This is the single biggest unanswered question in this campaign, it seems to me,” Farnsworth said. “There’s a clear sentiment in the polls that people are hurting. They’re hurting because of the cost of gasoline, they’re frustrated about the economic insecurity, they’re very discouraged about the uncertainty over their pensions and their job prospects.”

But that said, I don’t know that McCain is going to be able to escape the shadow of the economic issue in November. As Farnsworth points out, “Forty years of political-science research demonstrates that people within the president’s party are hurt when the economy is performing poorly even when the president is not on the ballot. So McCain has to work twice as hard to get half as far on the economy. And all indications are that this election is going to be won or lost on the economy,” Farnsworth said.

A quick look at the poll numbers bears this out. Even as McCain has pulled back to within three points in today’s Gallup tracking polls, a solid majority of voters are telling pollsters that they think Barack Obama would do a better job managing the economy, one, and two, a slightly smaller majority gives Obama the nod on the tax issue, perhaps surprisingly.

It’s going to take more than continuing Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy and disguising them as a small-business plan to turn things around for McCain to that end. In other words, it’s going to take some of the old McCain, who voted against the Bush tax cuts and seemed to have some economic common sense before he handed the keys to his campaign to the Bushies, to steer himself back into contention on the issue that will decide the day come Nov. 4.

The Trash Talk Express

Chris Graham — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:28:53 EDT

Analysis by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

I expected more out of John McCain. A lot more.

I remember thinking a few years ago, circa 2000, that the Arizona senator might make a pretty good president. I bought into the whole Straight Talk deal that he was selling, supported his efforts to clean up campaigns through McCain-Feingold, told myself to overlook his lapdog fawning for George W. Bush in 2004 as evidence that he could be a team player, and wanted to believe him this year when he promised to campaign for the White House on the issues.

I don’t know what happened to that John McCain, but he might want to get in touch with the one who’s out on the campaign trail right now and tell him that he’s ruining his reputation, if there’s any of it left to salvage at this point in time.

“All I can is that we are proud of that commercial. We think Americans need to know that I believe that we should base this campaign on what we can do for Americans here at home and how we can make America safe and prosperous and that’s the theme of our campaign,” McCain said, referring to “that commercial” to the commercial entitled “Celeb” that pigeonholes Democratic Party opponent Barack Obama as a celebrity candidate light on the issues and the substance.

It’s not quite Willie Horton, but it is a low point nonetheless for a self-styled straight shooter now reduced of his own accord to attacking his rival as being the political equivalent of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

“It wasn’t too long ago that Sen. McCain and his campaign were talking about straight talk and civility and pledging to run a respectful campaign based solely on the issues. Sadly, each and every day, each and every hour, they seem to take a turn in what the St. Pete Times said today in an editorial that the Straight Talk Express has taken a turn into the gutter. It seems like we hit a new low note every day with this campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

“We’ve got people struggling with high gas prices, with wage stagnation, rising health-care costs. We’ve got growing security concerns in Afghanistan. This is an election and moment of great consequence, and John McCain, unfortunately, seems to have made a strategic decision to rather than engage as the focus of his campaign on these substantive issues character assaults and negative advertisements. And this is not the John McCain the voters thought they were going to see in this presidential campaign,” Plouffe said.

What strikes me is that the McCain campaign has decided to go this negative this early. Today is Aug. 1, which has us still three months and change out from Election Day. I have to wonder why the McCain strategists have felt it necessary to spend the summer months that are usually reserved for quiet fundraising and issues-based initiatives aimed at getting the wonks lined up on your side and TV spots playing up your candidate’s biography and ability to pat dogs on the head to get them to smile with this garbage, and I apologize for not being able to think of a better word to call it than that.

Forget my disillusionment with Mr. Straight Talk going Lee Atwater. If you’re going to do Atwater, wouldn’t it at least make sense to do it in October, when it’s harder for your opponent to counterpunch? As it is, the Obama campaign has been able to seize the moral high ground, launching on Thursday a new website, The Low Road Express, that Plouffe said will be used to “correct mistruths that are put out by the McCain campaign.” “And unfortunately it’s probably going to be something that we’re updating with great frequency every day,” Plouffe said.

Obama is also gaining some traction on the campaign trail by playing up what I think is the problem with the McCain campaign that it is exposing with its trash talk. “Given the magnitude of our challenges when it comes to energy and health care and jobs and our foreign policy, you’d think that we’d be having a serious debate. But so far, all we’ve been hearing about is Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. I mean I do - I do have to ask my opponent, is that the best you can come up with? Is that really what this election’s about? Is that what is worthy of the American people?” Obama said.

“I’m not interested in getting into a tit for tat, these negative ads, these negative attacks, spending all this time talking about me and instead of talking about what he’s going to do. That’s not going to lower your gas prices, that’s not going to help you stay in your home if you’re falling behind on the mortgage. That’s not going to help you find a job if it’s been shipped overseas. It doesn’t do a single thing to help the American people. It’s politics as a game. But the time for game playing is over, that’s why I’m running for president of the United States,” Obama said.

The response from the McCain campaign - not McCain himself, mind you; he was much more muted in what he had to say - has been revelatory in its meanspiritedness. “I would say that is it beyond dispute that he has become the biggest celebrity in the world. It’s a statement of fact. It’s backed up by the reality of his tour around the world. He has many fans. The question that we are posing to the American people is this, is he ready to lead yet? And the answer to the question that we will offer to the American people is no that he is not,” senior campaign advisor Steve Schmidt said.

“The point we are making, if it hasn’t escaped anybody, is that, you know, these images of celebrity status and the way he has conducted his campaign to date both in the kinds of events that he has and what he says at these events owe more to the development of an international celebrity status than it does to a traditional campaign for president,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said. “Maybe that’s what the Obama campaign has intended, and we think it is worthy of some attention by our campaign. In the early aspects of the ad, we have images of other celebrities that demonstrate that the focus of the Obama campaign has been as much to create that celebrity status of his as it is to discuss the hard issues that the American public are forced to debate during the course of this campaign.”

Since they’re dressing “Celeb” up as an attempt to engage on substantive campaign issues, let’s take them at their word. The ad excoriates Obama for opposing offshore drilling, which of course doesn’t come close to telling the whole story of Obama’s position, which significantly includes support for requirements to U.S. oil companies to use more than 68 million acres of land leases that they currently hold domestically that could produce an estimated 4.8 million barrels of oil each day, and focuses first and foremost on efforts to curb the ability of futures traders to push oil prices artificially upward by using the Enron loophole and trading on unregulated foreign exchanges, issues on which McCain has been curiously silent. The ad also blasts Obama for supporting higher taxes on electricity, an interesting gambit considering the controversy that McCain himself stirred up among conservatives with his comment to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that tax increases would be on the table for him as president in his efforts to balance the federal budget.

You might have missed on that nuance, of course, since the message in “Celeb,” such as there is a message in the ad, is wrapped up in the fluff that is Britney and Paris and the cheering throngs from Germany and the rest.

I want to be mad at John McCain, but it’s hard conjuring up too much in terms of angry feelings at the guy. I mean, after all, the Straight Talk guy has to still be in there somewhere, right?

“I would add my voice to those who believe that Sen. McCain can’t possibly mean this, because he has been a great public servant and a real genuine American hero. I suspect that he is under pressure to take steps like this, because he is showing in many ways that the Republican Party, and he doesn’t mean to do this, but that it is a party that is running out of ideas,” said Susan Eisenhower, the president of the Eisenhower Group consulting firm and the granddaughter of the former president, on the Thursday conference call arranged by the Obama campaign.

“What America really needs is the right kind of campaign at this critical moment in American history,” Eisenhower said. “I say this as a lifelong Republican. I say this as a foreign-affairs expert. I think that few would doubt the fact that we’ve got multiple crises unfolding, including a financial crisis, an energy crisis and a health-care crisis, not to mention the grave situation that we find ourselves in in Afghanistan and the lives that are being lost in Iraq. And I don’t think that these kinds of comments and innuendos have any place in a presidential campaign of this importance.”

Does Kaine make sense on the Obama ticket?

Chris Graham — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:27:34 EDT

Analysis by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

The talk about Tim Kaine being on Barack Obama’s VP short list is no accident. Just look at the timing. That’s what has Christopher Newport University political-science professor Quentin Kidd thinking there’s more to the firestorm of coverage on this short-list news than maybe meets the eye.

“There are two reasons you pick a vice-presidential candidate. One is to correct a weakness, and the other is to strengthen a perceived strength,” Kidd told me this morning. “I would imagine that if Tim Kaine is picked, it’s because Barack Obama is pursuing a strengthen-my-strengths route as opposed to a cover-my-weaknesses path. Barack Obama represents a new, fresh, not-of-Washington perspective, and if Obama is going to push that message, if he feels confident enough to go forward with that message, Tim Kaine strengthens that message.”

University of Mary Washington political-science professor Stephen Farnsworth agrees with Kidd on the point about the timing of what appears to be a generated media speculation on an Obama-Kaine alliance. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Obama team hadn’t made a key internal decision.

“The timing of this is interesting coming on the heels of his trip last week,” Farnsworth said, referring to Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe that gave him a substantial if brief boost in the national polls, and seemed to answer the question that had been vexing the Yes, We Can! effort regarding his national-security bona fides. To be floating Kaine’s name out into the mainstream media for discussion is a likely indicator that the Obama inner circle feels that it won’t have to shore up the national-security flank by selecting, say, Sam Nunn or Bill Richardson or Joe Biden as a running mate.

“With Tim Kaine, we’re talking about somebody who really represents what Obama is saying in terms of a break from the Washington politics of the past. This is someone who has been mayor, lieutenant governor and governor, and has been very connected to hands-on issues in local and state governments. That is a big advantage, it seems to me,” Farnsworth said.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t critics of a Kaine selection out there. I’ve seen and heard comments from Republican friends in the past couple of days that indicate that they think the John McCain campaign could try to spin the Washington-outsider approach of Obama to heighten the focus on the Washington inexperience of Obama, who has served in the United States Senate for three and a half years after serving in the Illinois state legislature for eight years, and Kaine, who has held state office in Virginia for six years after eight years on Richmond City Council.

And then there are the questions that could be raised by Democrats themselves about Kaine’s low profile outside of Virginia, where recent public-opinion polls at least have been registering his popularity as being on a par with the wildly popular former governor and ‘08 U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner.

“Kaine isn’t a national figure. He’s known in Virginia, but not really anywhere else. I would say that he lacks the national identity that a lot of vice-presidential candidates have had in the past,” Farnsworth said. Kidd counters, though, by pointing out that being a relative unknown isn’t necessarily an automatic negative in this instance. “There are two sides to being relatively unknown. One side is voters saying, Well, we don’t know anything about him, how could he pick somebody like that? The other side to that is, Boy, we don’t know about him, I’m really interested, I’m really curious, and things that I’m reading today are interesting, and I want to know more,” Kidd said.

In that context, then, one could consider Kaine an open tableau waiting for his closeup on the national stage. And you have to assume that he’s being viewed favorably by Virginia voters for a reason, right?

“I can’t think of anything negative that people could say about Tim Kaine,” Kidd said. “He’s a middle-class kid who is smart, he’s a religious person, committed several years of his life to missionary work, has a strong social-consciousness streak, has not been caught up, as far as I know, in any big scandals. So by picking somebody like Tim Kaine, Barack Obama might also have the opportunity to introduce Tim Kaine to the nation in a way that’s very positive and in a way that reinforces the Obama message, which is change, which is optimism.”

Bottom line - Farnsworth sees Obama going in one of two directions, neither involving Kaine. Farnsworth thinks the favorites for the second spot on the Obama ticket are Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who would bone up the ticket’s foreign-policy credentials, or Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a friend of Obama nomination rival Hillary Clinton who could play a key role in vote-rich Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Kidd is there with me in thinking that a Kaine selection seems to be making the most sense right now.

“Several months ago, I would have said that of the three names that we kept hearing about from Virginia - Jim Webb, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine - that Tim Kaine was probably third on that list. But I’ve had a conversion here. The more I think about Tim Kaine, the more I realize that Tim Kaine is a really good pick for Barack Obama,” Kidd said.

Team Obama-Waynesboro

Chris Graham — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:00:35 EDT

It was like we were trying to see how many people we could fit in a Volkswagen.

"More people?" I said to my wife, Crystal, who was guarding the door downstairs, as I tried to find more chairs to accommodate the overflow crowd upstairs.

We'd only made contact with the local Obama field office the previous Friday. "Would you be able to host a small organizing event next week?" field organizer Chris Nelson asked, and we were into something I couldn't imagine would get started with the bang that it did just a few days later.

By the next Tuesday - what? three days and change later? - Chris and the staff up in Harrisonburg had made dozens of phone calls to Waynesboro Democrats and wrangled up 20 local Dems who wanted to be part of the local Obama campaign organizing effort.

To put this into perspective, when I took over as the local party chair here in Waynesboro two months ago, it took all we could do to get a quorum of 10 people to the meeting that elected me chairman. And since then, well, we've had local Democratic Party committee meetings with my wife, one other person and me.

We're doing business as Dems in a part of the state that is definitely bluer than it was even two years ago, but there's still this feeling among even the most Democratic of people here that "I'm the only Democrat here." It's my job, I decided upon seeking the local committee chairmanship, to change that prevailing attitude, which is of course easier said than done.

Which brings us back to the 20 people in my living room. It's obvious that Barack Obama has touched a nerve with America when he can get 20 people in Waynesboro, Va., to give up a Tuesday evening to sit in my living room for the purpose of committing much of their free time for the next four months to this campaign for change.

And what an eclectic group we'll have here in Waynesboro to lead this local effort. A college professor, a Ph.D. student, an architect, a retired physicist, a working-class single mother going back to college, a fitness coach, a journalist - a variety of backgrounds, a variety of perspectives, with one thing in common.

We believe.