Organizing for America | Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

The Democratic Party in Northeast Indiana is clearly the minority, but that doesn't mean the area is devoid of Barack Obama supporters. In this group, supporters of the superstar junior Senator from Illinois to show their fervent support for his 2008 bid for the presidency. This group is for anyone who would like to see the political landscape America changed into one of respect for one another, intelligent exchanges or ideas and a sense of cooperation as our great nation tackles the problems of the present and the future. (Group image courtesy of Fort Wayne artist Aaron Minier.)

Obama over Hillary -- Part 4

By that guy - Mar 20th, 2007 at 3:21 pm EDT

Also listed in: 5 groups

In the wake of the "Big Brother" Apple-turned-Obama ad somebody left on Youtube recently, it is probably appropriate to write yet another Obama vs. Hillary entry on here.
At the outset I just want to say that I'm not sure that the Youtube piece represented the best of what this campaign could offer from the standpoint that it compares Hillary the head of a totalitarian dystopian state, which probably falls under what Barack would call the "smallness of our politics."
On the other hand, it does capture and illustrate one critical aspect of the Obama campaign -- he is an upstart. This primary was supposed to be all about Hillary's face up on the big screen at the convention, spouting exactly what she wants to spout about the country and its future as she led the party into the general election. And Obama is exactly what you see in the ad -- the runner flinging the hammer or whatever it is into the screen to break the spell and, in essence, say, "Wake up! There is a better way! A freer way! A way that does not depend on our every idea coming from her, no matter how many times she utters the phrase 'have a conversation.'"
When he appeared on Larry King last night, Senator Obama himself stayed clear of the messiness of this ad's message by commenting on the special effects, which he says his campaign could never have pulled off. Fair enough.
But it doesn't change that dynamic, what could be described in a most cliched fashion as a "David and Goliath" scenario. Obama is smashing that screen. He is gumming up those plans that Hillary has been drawing up since she was five by charging into the process on his own and starting to make a difference.
And isn't that what makes democracy great? A grassroots first-timer with new ideas.
America -- and the Democratic party -- is about the upstarts.
And maybe that's the biggest problem Hillary has in the midst of this. She is not the upstart. She is comfortably couched as the establishment candidate. She is the gigantic sterile blue face on the big screen. And that is sad, because any candidate -- especially a Clinton -- is better as an upstart. In 1992, Bill was an obscure southern governor nobody had ever heard of, and he beat out the party establishment and unseated a Republican president.
A friend of mine once said that Hillary should have run in 2004 when she had the chance, when the best the party could do was John Kerry, when nobody had ever heard of Barack Obama, when challenging the incumbent George W. Bush would have made her -- even established as she was -- the upstart.
That same friend said he would have voted for her then and that he thinks she would make a good president. But when asked about this election, he said no, Hillary had missed her chance and that he was supporting Obama.
(PS -- I find it funny that the Youtube ad said 2008 would not be like 1984. As far as presidential elections go, 1984 was the biggest win the Republicans ever had. Perhaps the ad designers were also saying that, if the Democrats nominate Hillary, it will just be a big win for Republicans, but that Obama could win it. Oddly enough, the polls in this week's Time Magazine say the same thing.)

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Obama over Hillary -- Part 3

By that guy - Mar 17th, 2007 at 12:03 am EDT

Also listed in: 5 groups

As both Senators Obama and Clinton were recently pressed to express their views on the morality of homosexuality, some would suggest that my next comparative blog entry on these two candidates should look at all things "natural and "unnatural."
First, Obama's answer was way less safe (i.e. less sorry) than Hillary's, which immediately makes him the better choice. He'll tell you exactly what he thinks rather than let himself get stifled by the calculations of the focus groups. Hillary, on the other hand, is overly cautious. To the point of unnatural. Obama, fireball and utter smoothie that he is, is a total natural.
And people realize that. They sense it. They know it -- like it or not.
One of my favorite recent political cartoons is of a worried-looking Hillary Clinton saying, "It just seems like everyone's getting swept up in his charisma, Bill." But Bill isn't there. He's out in the front yard, excitedly hammering in an ELECT OBAMA 2008" sign.
This says it all. You get the sense that, while Bill's loyalties -- at least politically -- lie with Hillary, in his heart, he would love to support a guy like Obama. We should give him that chance by making Obama the nominee rather than Hillary..
Another unnatural aspect of a Hillary candidacy is what it does to Bill. For instance, whenever both Clintons are at an event, great pains are taken to ensure that Bill does not outshine Hillary. Their speeches are never back to back. When he's onstage with her, he's always in the background, never at the podium. He keeps his gestures small. He doesn't turn on the energy or the charm.
He, in effect, stops being Bill Clinton.
And how natural is that? Something is wrong with the Clinton campaign when, even to function properly, it has to stifle one of its greatest strengths -- the personal charisma of President Bill Clinton.
It's like a person who has to shoot himself in the foot in order to walk properly. That's not right. It's as stiff and unnatural as the focus-group-dominated candidacies of Al Gore, John Kerry and other doomed Democratic efforts of the last decade. The Clintons should take the hint.
On the other hand, if Bill Clinton were backing Obama, the potential would be limitless. Bill could be as raucous, as high-energy, as over-the-top rock and roll and charismatic as he wanted to be because he would be in no danger of outshining Mr. Cool, Mr. Personality himself, Barack Obama.
Just imagine if you will the energy of those two together on the same convention stage right after Obama's nomination. The crowd is going nuts, and those two are utterly loving, totally in their element ... and an octogenarian Jimmy Carter smiles amiably from the side of the stage because it was just the right thing to do put three presidents on the stage together while they had the chance. It's an awesome image, one that needs to come true.
Almost as much as the image of Obama being sworn in by a slightly stunned looking John Roberts on Jan. 20, 2009, with a scowling George W. Bush in the background.
But I digress.
Another natural/unnatural thing that Hillary Clinton needs to see going for her is her career in the Senate. She's a natural. She's a good Senator. She has made history by becoming the first former first lady to be elected to the U.S. Senate. She needs to bring that victory to full flower, not bite off more than she can chew.
Her cautious, detail-oriented, policy-driven deliberateness works in the Senate. But even in the video of her campaign announcement, her talk of "having a conversation" rings hollow, like you know that, even if you do talk to Hillary Clinton, she has long since figured out her answers for herself and that, no matter what you say, she already knows what's best and will do it her way anyway in the end. I don't know if it's natural or not, but we don't need more of it in the White House.
Obama, on the other hand, comes across as the real deal when he calls for a new kind of politics that is about working together to solve our problems. Like I said, he's a natural.
A natural consensus-builder. A natural thinker. A natural leader.
And so I reiterate my appeal to the Clinton camp -- please realize that nostalgia is a sickness, that, especially after looping back for eight years of Bush, we cannot afford to delve back into the ghosts of an earlier administration and hope it will lead us to some utopian ideal.
No, the way of the future is to go in a new direction, to work with people where they are and come to a consensus that is civil and based in reality. I am still convinced that the person to do this is Barack Obama.

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The First Wives Club

By that guy - Mar 15th, 2007 at 2:08 pm EDT

Also listed in: America 4 Obama | Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

This post is a little stale, but the ideas are still worth kicking around.
A week or two ago, both Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich took steps to -- as some put it -- defuse campaign controversey by admitting to some skeletons left over from their pasts. Of course, that is where the similarities ended. Obama had 17-year-old parking tickets from his law school days, which he finally paid in full along with late fees. (Some have noted that Obama's managing to find a place to park -- legal or not -- in the area where he got the tickets is an example of exactly the sort of ingenuity we need in the White House).
Gingrich, on the other hand, revealed that he had been having an affair during that exact time in the late 1990s when he happened to be pushing for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. After revealing this, he said his actions were not hypocritical because he was merely upholding the law regarding the notion of a president perjuring himself. He also tried to play the whole affair as a story of redemption to endear him to the Evangelical base with talk of praying and feeling he was falling short of God's standards.
Gingrich is currently married to his third wife, I believe the woman with whom he was having the 90s affair. Giuliani too is with his third, McCain his second -- bringing the grand total for the top 3 polling '08 Republicans up to eight.
And the media has had a grand time pointing out that the fourth one in the polls -- Mitt Romney -- is with his first wife and is also a Mormon. Irony...
I don't write this to pass judgment on these individuals. Their private lives aren't what it's all about. They are probably just reflective of the times. Sure, Ronald Reagan made a bit of a splash being the first president to have divorced and remarried, but before we know it, that will be such a passing thing, we will have four presidents with those credentials and not bat a proverbial eyelash.
And really we shouldn't. After all, history shows us that there is a fascinating inverse proportion of sorts between the quality of a president's marriage and the quality of that president's administration.
In other words, happily married men have traditionally made mediocre to poor presidents. Men with horrible marriages, on the other hand, have made some of our greatest presidents.
Seriously, let's look at the top three:
George Washington -- I once heard it said that you could say he married Martha for her money, but that would be unfair. He also married her for her property, slaves, societal status ... And it's no accident that Washington never produced any offspring. He once said in a letter to a friend that there was never much "fire beneath their blankets."
Abraham Lincoln -- Mary Todd Lincoln was borderline psychotic by many accounts, a verbally and mentally abusive woman who caused old Abe more than his share of angst and depression. I would have devoted all of my time and efforts to winning the Civil War if I were married to that too.
FDR -- After an early infidelity on his part, Franklin and Eleanor, rather than getting a divorce, opted to stay married for the sake of the family and his career, but would never share a bed again. The marriage was a professional partnership, a business arangement. He continued to have dalliances here and there with a mistress -- who was actually with him when he died. She, on the other hand, carried on a longterm committed relationship with another woman.
Other examples...
JFK -- The envoy of 60s Camelot idealism is more than notorious for his side excursions, most memorably with Marilyn Monroe.
Thomas Jefferson -- A widower, sure, but let's not forget Sally Hemmings.
Bill Clinton -- By the time this Bush is done, history will judge his presidency very kindly.
And on the other side...
Ulysses S. Grant, the great Civil War general, was so devoted to his wife and kids that he spent his dying days struggling to complete the epic memoirs that would support his family once he was gone. History consistently ranks him among our lower echelon presidents.
The Nixons, by all accounts, had a great marriage.
The Carters have a strong marriage.
George W. Bush is a devoted husband and a wonderful father.
There are, of course, exceptions...
James Buchanan, the only president never to marry, was one of our very worst presidents.
James K. Polk, who enjoyed a strong marriage, is also one of our stronger, if underrated presidents.
Amid all of this, we can now look to the '08 field, and what do we know of Senator Obama's marriage to his wife, Michelle? Only what they tell us.
Obama is usually the first to admit that his political ambitions and career put a strain on his marriage. He admits that he tests his wife's patience and is grateful that she has patience. I think this sets him apart from other politicians only in his honesty.
He struggles to make his marriage work. It's not perfect, which means he might just make a pretty good president. He's honest. He's real. He admits when he's wrong or struggling. These are admirable qualities that, like the ability to find that elusive parking space, we could really use in our chief executive about now.

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middle name fury

By that guy - Mar 5th, 2007 at 3:50 pm EST

Also listed in: Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

This week in '08 election land, we saw GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney celebrate a mixed victory. No sooner had he started to gain some ground in polls among conservative voters, finally putting to rest fears that he remains too liberal, he is endorsed by commentator Ann Coulter in the same speech where she referred to John Edwards as slay word for gays that shall leave as "f-word, two syllables."
So, now Romney's association goes from being too gay-friendly to the fear of Coulter's bigotry rubbing off on him. (What is interesting is that Edwards has since used this episode for fundraising purposed on his Web site, while he himself recently had to let two bloggers go from that same Web site for making remarks that had been construed as anti-Catholic. Surprised the right hasn't nabbed that one.)
But I digress.
Among Coulter's slanders and slurs, less attention went to her moniker for the man for whom this blog even exists, the man she calls "B. Hussein Obama."
Those of you who have been following coverage of Obama for some time now should understand the underlying irritation I have with this.
She is not the first, nor probably the last to go out of her way to include Senator Obama's middle name in public usage, a tactic that has been taken almost exclusively by conservative commentators -- Cal Thomas comes to mind as a recent example.
For reasons that are initially difficult to describe, I can't help but assert that this usage is a brilliantly petty example of exactly what Senator Obama means by "smallness" in politics.
Okay, when all of us first heard his name, we had a fleeting "whoa -- Middle East much?" moment. In "The Audacity of Hope," Senator Obama even recounts a story of how, just after 9-11, his political future looked very questionable due to the Obama-Osama closeness. (As it turned out, this was just a case of "B.S.")
But now to just conspicuously throw out the Senator's middle name -- Hussein -- and to just happen to be a right-of-center political commentator?
Give me a break! How stupid do you think we are?
First, do you think we are so stupid that we can't recognize a cheap political ploy, attempting to undermine one of American politics' rising stars with something so arbitrary as him name? I would think that the Right -- with character assassination being one of its specialties -- could do better than that.
And second, how stupid -- and bigoted, and scared -- do you think your base is that you would play on the prejudiced worst inclinations and fears of Americans everywhere by waving Senator Obama's middle name in their faces as if it (gasp) means something?
This is the same tactic that drew fire from Republicans back in '04 when, at the third debate, John Kerry mentioned that Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian -- as if Bush's voting base was so homophobic that this revelation (which they probably already knew) would send them running to Kerry for cover. Nice try, John.
But at least Cheney's daughter really is a lesbian. Barack Obama isn't even ... whatever undisclosed thing it is the Right is suggesting about him when they use his name in this way. It goes hand in hand with the story FOX News fabricated about his schooling in Indonesia, which they then tried to attribute to the Clinton camp.
And in the end, it doesn't change the face that names are, once again, rather arbitrary.
In this case, the use of Hussein comes straight from his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan college professor. Pretty cut and dry.
As for the name Hussein being a taboo, we forget that this isn't always the case. Back when King Hussein of Jordan was alive, our government and media went out of its way to use the name "Saddam" when referring to the then-dictator of Iraq, because King Hussein was our friend, and we didn't want to offend him. We went out of our way to ensure that the name "Hussein" retained a positive connotation.
How soon we forget.
If we really want to get into middle name semantics, in the run-up to the 2000 election, liberal pundits everywhere should have been throwing around the name "George Walker Bush" left and right.
Walker, huh...?
As in a ... Texas ranger? As in a guy who believes that he alone is the law and who will roam freely without constraints of pesky bureaucrats and treaties and who will dispense his form of justice as he sees fit to anyone who gets in the way of his view of right and wrong, no matter how far removed from common decency and reality, thereby stirring up chaos, destruction and international turmoil of unprecedented size and scope?
Wow -- pretty dead on.
But that's not the point. The point is that Senator Barack Hussein Obama has a pretty exotic-sounding name that doesn't immediately fit alongside what we used to hearing in president: John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, William Jefferson Clinton.
And so not only should he not change it -- not only would that look bad, it's a part of who he is -- we Obama supporters should start sporting it with pride.
After all, it was a man with such a doggedly patriotic-sounding name like George Walker Bush who created the current mess by dispensing his "ugly American" approach to the rest of the world. Perhaps it will take a man with an exotic and internationalized feel to heal those same wounds.
I'd just like to thank Willard Mitt Romney for standing so patiently by as the media and the rest of us rained on his moment of glory to make this and other points.

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a lament to Vilsack

By that guy - Feb 27th, 2007 at 11:32 am EST

Also listed in: Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

(This post is late in coming as former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack dropped out of the race several days back, but it's still worth addressing.)
Tom, oh Tom
You looked so sad in the newspring, announcing your early withdrawl from an even earlier race.
You had dared to be the underdog. You embodied that quite doggedly American ideal, that dream we like to think is still alive, that anyone can do it.
Even an obcsure governor from the Great Plains whose face never really screamed "president" and whose name prompted off-color jokes like, "President Vilsack? Do we really want to go from the bush to the sack?"
So maybe you weren't a casting director's dream to play the president, but you believed, and you had Iowa going for you. And as a moderate Democrat from a Republican state, you probably represented something of the future.
But when people haven't really heard of you and can't see you or your name in the White House, and they have much bigger, flashier toys like Obama and Clinton and Edwards, they don't spend a lot of time or money on you.
And that maybe is the saddest part, that you couldn't keep chasing the dream because it cost too much money. That is the part that just takes the American Dream and roughs it up a little. Sure, you can be president, but you won't get even two feet out of the starting gate if you don't have tens of millions of dollars. (sigh)
And you believed in the dream, Tom. You could have stayed where you were, doing a good job, popular, making a difference as the governor of Iowa. But you opted against a third term, saw another Democrat elected in your place and moved on because you thought you could make a difference on a much larger scale.
And now it's suddently over because it costs too much money.
God bless you, Tom. It's a shame that everybody waits till after you've dropped out of the race to say these nice things about you. You're safe now, declawed, not even a hope of an upset.
I like your spirit, Tom, and I liked that slick 'V' logo your campaign was using. Props on that.
The story isn't over for you, Tom Vilsack. A public servant of your quality will find an outlet for his services, be it a high-level cabinet position in an Obama administration or a Senate seat.
Congrats on your short, but spirited campaign for the White House, Tom Vilsack. You get an 'A' for your American Dream-laden effort, though we know you would have preferred the 'V' for victory.

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Obama over Hillary -- Part 2

By that guy - Feb 27th, 2007 at 11:11 am EST

Also listed in: Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

Well, the campaign is unfolding, and Senators Obama and Clinton have traded some early barbs, most notably with former Clinton supporter and record mogul David Geffen throwing his support behind Barack and then saying what he said about the Clinton camp.
And while what he said was hurtful to the Clintons -- he basically accused them of being so good at lying it was scary -- he made a really good point on the issue of Hillary's divisiveness.
In fact, that may be reason number 1 why Obama is the better candidate and why, as mentioned by Senator Joe Biden in Part 1 on this post, Hillary's lead over Obama isn't stronger even though she is miles ahead in funds, name recognition, etc.
She's just too divisive.
And divisive, while sometimes necessary to do what is right, would be downright toxic to our country during this trying time.
We currently have a president who ran as a "compassionate conservative" (a pledge that disappeared almost immediately after Gore's concession) and "a unifier not a divider." With the exception of the glow of national pride and unity in the wake of 9-11, George W. Bush has divided our country to an obscene extent, as Garrison Keillor put it, using Old Glory as a weapon to batter the Democrats about the head.
I recently read an article that said that, compared to Bush, Nixon in Vietnam was a dovish consensus builder. And while I was not even born during the Vietnam era, I believe this. Our politics have grown amazingly acrimonious and "small" over the past 6 years, 12 if you count the Republican Congress before Bush.
And part of the reason that Congress was so vehement, so ruthless, was that they hated the Clintons -- who were in power at the time -- and everything they stood for.
Therefore, I shudder to think how the political process in our country will sound and feel with the Republicans reeling from a Hillary Clinton Administration.
Seriously, the shrieking will be constant, and no matter what Hillary does, no matter how much civility she works into it, no matter how much of a moderate she tries to be, the core of the Republican base will never accept her. And as long as that happens our country will not be united.
And continued lack of unity, after Bush, is something we really shouldn't try.
As a Midwesterner, I understand just how deeply the right detests Senator Clinton. They are convinced that there is something inherently evil about her, and even if she plays as a moderate, the only she'll do then is piss off the liberal base.
The ultimate example fueling this argument is the conservative Christian leader who said no candidate on Earth would galvanize the Republican base into action like Hillary.
Why do we want to give them that sort of focus, that sort of power?
Barack Obama, on the other hand, they don't know what to do with. He tries not to play the petty policial game. Unlike Hillary, he sounds like he means it when he talks of involving people from all across the political spectrum in the discussion of our country's future.
He's new. He doesn't have the baggage, the traumatic memories and association.
He has the oratory skills to whip a crowd into a "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" kind of awe.
How do you run against a guy like this?
By saying he doesn't have the experience? Maybe so, but then he really will want to include other people in the process and work together with Democrats and Republicans to find solutions -- unlike Hillary, who has had her solutions worked out for years, or Bush, who simply borrowed his solutions from Uncle Dick and Uncle Don.
But I digress.
Barack Obama promises a politics of healing, a time when the issues get worked out just because our issues with each other get worked out. A divisive figure is not the way to go with a country as torn and wounded as our own.
Do we really want to be stuck yet again in a cycle of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton?
No, we took a step back into the past by going with Bush 6 years ago. Let's focus instead on the future, a future with Barack Obama.

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would-have-been candidates and the unreality of it all

By that guy - Feb 16th, 2007 at 10:23 am EST

Also listed in: Northeast Indiana backs Barack Obama

Sitting here, writing a blog on Senator Obama's official '08 Web site is a little surreal from the standpoint that, a short time ago, it seemed that this just wasn't going to happen.
Going into 2006, Obama's stated position on the '08 race was an unambiguous "I will not run."
And so frustrated young voters wedged somewhere between "un-Republican" and "un-Hillary" began looking for feasible options for '08.
Two rays of hope emerged very quickly.
The first was then-Governor Mark Warner of Virginia. He had a presidential name. He was a winning Democrat from what was thought to be a solidly Republican state. He couldn't seek another term due to Virginia's unique state constitution, so he'd need something to do in a couple years. He had a sort of rugged charm. He was an independently-wealthy, pro-business moderate. Talk about new and different.
The other candidate who was clearly exploring a run was Evan Bayh, the junior Senator from Indiana. Bayh had that same Democrat-in-a-Republican-state track record. He was photogenic, genial, well spoken, a moderate, son of a former Senator.
Okay, so Warner was a little funny looking and Bayh was a little bland, but these were candidates you could get excited about ... of course, mostly because the "dream candidate" the one we really wanted to run, Barack Obama, was not going to run.
And then the most bizarre of things happened.
Mark Warner -- with little warning and very early in the game -- dropped out. He wouldn't do it. He was the presumed anti-Hillary frontrunner, and he wasn't going to do it.
This was confusing, and maybe, just maybe, it got Senator Obama thinking a little more seriously about his chances of running a successful campaign.
And then we started to hear the reports that Obama was still "undecided." Wait a minute -- undecided? When was he undecided? He wasn't going to run -- now he's undecided.
He was moving toward a run.
The swirl of publicity that surrounded this idea was enough to convince Evan Bayh that running in '08 just wasn't feasible, and suddenly, the new and different candidates were gone.
And in their place is the real dream candidate, the one we were holding out for all along, Barack Obama.
A bizarre turn of events, to be sure.

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