YES WE DID! YES WE MUST:
Þ Protect him from harm both verbal & phyiscal
Þ Stay "FIRED UP" by staying active
Þ Work Bi-Partisan to bring "Change" together
Þ Don't just bitch, get active and stay engaged
Þ Start and join a local "Change" group
Þ Be philanthropic, serve your community, state and nation
Þ Stick by Obama, STOP smears on the Right & the Left!!!! Hold yourself responsible as you hold Barack!
Join the future of this movement!!
http://change.gov/joinus
http://www.communityorganize.com
http://www.ourpresidency.com
http://www.usaservice.org
http://www.whitehouse.gov
Barack's DNC 2004 Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0&feature=PlayList&p=B1939005B8A4D4ED&index=188
Barack's DNC 2008 Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ato7BtisXzE&feature=channel
Barack’s Election Acceptance Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wJ-2Zu_Iic&feature=channel
Barack’s Inauguration Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnygQ02aW4
I'm so incredibly proud of all of you on this website for helping the Obama campaign! YES WE DID!
Several have wondered why I haven't posted in a while...Well, in October I was fortunate enough to be offered a position as a deputy field organizer for the campaign in WA, for the final push of the campaign. I was incredibly busy, 24/7, with no time to tend to my blog here or to respond to group emails. Talk about exhaustion! But it was all SO worth it! Obama is now our President-Elect!
Thank you to everyone on this site for contributing to the success of the campaign!
YES WE DID!
Edie
Chun tells Obama supporters to volunteer...phone bank, canvass, raise funds or help to GOTV...it will make you feel even better if Obama wins!
Grab a Piece by Daniel Chun
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-chun/grab-a-piece_b_137155.html
Excerpts from Colin Powell's statement on NBC's Meet the Press:
"I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities -- and you have to take that into account -- as well as his substance -- he has both style and substance," Powell said. "He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."
Powell also spoke passionately against the insinuations by some Republicans that Obama is a Muslim.
"Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian," he said. "But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."
Read the full article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-endorses-oba_n_135895.html
The New York Times
Editorial: Barack Obama for President
Excerpt:
Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”
This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.
The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Full Article:
THREE weeks to Election Day and polls project a victory, possibly a big one, for Barack Obama.
Yet everywhere, anxious Democrats wring their hands. They’ve seen this Lucy-and-the-football routine before, and they’re just waiting for their ball to be snatched away, the foiled Charlie Browns again. Remember how the exit polls in 2004 predicted President Kerry?
The anxiety is more acute this year, because Senator Obama is the first African-American major-party presidential nominee. And even pollsters say they can’t be sure how accurately polls capture people’s feelings about race, or how forthcoming Americans are in talking about a black candidate.
In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome. He is, of course, about six points ahead in current polls. See? He’s going to lose.
If he does, it wouldn’t be the first time that polls have overstated support for an African-American candidate. Since 1982, people have talked about the Bradley effect, where even last-minute polls predict a wide margin of victory, yet the black candidate goes on to lose, or win in a squeaker. (In the case that lent the phenomenon its name, Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, lost his race for governor, the assumption being that voters lied to pollsters about their support for an African-American.)
But pollsters and political scientists say concern about a Bradley effect — some call it a Wilder effect or a Dinkins effect, and plenty call it a theory in search of data — is misplaced. It obscures what they argue is the more important point: there are plenty of ways that race complicates polling. Considered alone or in combination, these factors could produce an unforeseen Obama landslide with surprise victories in the South, a stunningly large Obama loss, or a recount-thin margin. In a year that has already turned expectations upside down, it is hard to completely reassure the fretters.
Among the non-Bradley factors at the intersection of race and polling is something called the reverse Bradley (perhaps more prevalent than the Bradley), in which polls understate support for a black candidate, particularly in regions where it is socially acceptable to express distrust of blacks. Then there are the voters not captured by polls. Research shows that those who refuse to participate in surveys tend to be less likely to vote for a black candidate. The race of the questioner, too, affects a poll — but no one is sure whether people give more or less accurate answers when they’re interviewed by someone of their own race.
“How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question,” said Andrew Kohut, the president of Pew Research Center. “I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And ‘maybe some’ could be crucial in a tight election.”
In 1982, exit polls had Mayor Bradley so likely to win that newspaper headlines called him the victor. Yet he lost, narrowly. There emerged what seemed like a pattern: a number of polls found more support than there actually was for Harold Washington in the 1983 Chicago mayoral race; for David N. Dinkins in the 1989 New York mayoral race; and for L. Douglas Wilder in the 1989 Virginia governor’s race.
Were people so afraid to appear bigoted that they lied to pollsters, thinking it more socially acceptable to support a black candidate? Pollsters and political scientists have long questioned that assumption because they do not believe people have an incentive to deceive unless they are explicitly asked, “Do you support the white guy or the black guy?”
“We have no evidence that people lie to us,” said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research, which conducts the exit polls the television networks use. He and others say that discrepancy in the polls has more to do with which people decline to participate, or say they are undecided.
Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at M.I.T. who has written about the “I don’t know” voters, points out that while polls overpredicted Mr. Dinkins’s support in 1989, they got it right in 1993, when he was running against the same opponent, Rudolph Giuliani. In 1989, Mr. Berinsky argues, people who feared being thought racist said “I don’t know.” By 1993, they could find things in Mr. Dinkins’s mayoral record to object to and so felt more free to express their opposition without fear of seeming racist.
Mr. Kohut conducted a study in 1997 looking at differences between people who readily agreed to be polled and those who agreed only after one or more callbacks. Reluctant participants were significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward blacks — 15 percent said they had a “very favorable” attitude toward them, as opposed to 24 percent of the ready respondents. “The kinds of people suspicious of surveys are also more intolerant,” Mr. Kohut said.
Scott Keeter, Pew’s director of survey research, said pollsters had a harder time reaching voters with lower levels of education. Less-educated whites are the kind Mr. Obama has had trouble winning over. Conversely, young people are more likely to answer surveys, and they tend to favor Mr. Obama.
There may be several factors at work: Michael Traugott, a University of Michigan professor who studies polling, argues that the Bradley effect was misnamed from the start; the problem with the polls in the 1982 race was not that they failed to capture latent racism but that they failed to account for the absentee ballots, which ultimately handed the election to the white Republican, George Deukmejian.
Whatever its causes, the Bradley gap seems to be disappearing.
In a new study, Daniel J. Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, considered 133 elections between 1989 and 2006 and found that blacks running for office before 1996 suffered a median Bradley effect of 3 percentage points. Blacks running after 1996, however, performed about 3 percentage points better than their polls predicted. Mr. Hopkins argues that the changes in the welfare laws in 1996 and the decline of violent crime took off the table issues that had aggravated racial animosity.
The Bradley effect in the 2006 vote was largely absent (and in some stances a reverse effect was seen by some pollsters). In Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., a black congressman, lost by six points. His pollster, Pete Brodnitz, said the campaign had been watching for a Bradley effect and screened carefully to make sure its own polls looked only at the people most likely to vote. Internal polls were largely correct, but some public polls, relying on a more general population, were wildly off. Mr. Brodnitz blamed bad polling, not lying.
In this year’s Democratic primaries, University of Washington researchers found a Bradley effect in three states, but a reverse Bradley effect in 12 (in the other 17, polls were within a seven-point margin of error).
The results tended to correlate with the black population in a state: blacks made up 15 percent or more of the population in almost all the states where the polls showed less support for Mr. Obama than there actually was; in the three states where polls showed more support than there was, less than 10 percent of the population is black.
The differences are too great to be explained by just high black turnout, said Anthony Greenwald, one of the researchers. Nor were people necessarily lying. Instead, he sees a cultural dynamic at work: the states where polls underpredicted support for Mr. Obama were generally in the Southeast, where the culture has more stubbornly favored whites, so the “right” answer there was to choose the white candidate. In the three states where polls in the study overpredicted support for Mr. Obama — Rhode Island, California and New Hampshire — “the desirable thing is to appear unbiased and unprejudiced,” Mr. Greenwald said. (Many polling experts also believe that Mr. Obama was benefiting from an Iowa bounce in the late New Hampshire polls, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had been ahead for months, and that therefore Mr. Obama’s loss there was not a true Bradley effect.)
The Bradley effect, Mr. Greenwald concluded, “has conceptually mutated.” “It’s not something that’s an absolute that we should generally expect, but something that will vary with the cultural context and the desirability of expressing pro-black attitudes.”
A further complication is the race of the person who asks the questions. Talking to a white interviewer, blacks or whites are more likely to say that they are supporting the white candidate; talking to a black interviewer, people are more likely to support the black candidate. This holds true whether the surveys are in person, or on the phone.
It could be that people worry about offending the interviewer by suggesting, “I wouldn’t vote for someone like you.” Or, researchers suggest, talking to a black polltaker who sounds energetic or professional might prime positive images of blacks, overwhelming any negative stereotypes.
The trouble is, “We don’t know that doing white-on-white interviews and black-on-black interviews would be more accurate,” said Jon Krosnick, a professor of psychology and political science at Stanford. “It is possible that right now the social norms within the African-American community are such that if you’re going to vote for McCain, it’s too embarrassing to admit, and if you’re not going to vote at all, it’s almost as embarrassing.”
The question of how race affects polling is of course different from the question of how it affects the vote. Many experts argue that race does not play a huge role in either this year, because the economy has emerged as such a dominant issue, and Mr. Obama is not primarily identified by his race.
But most of what they know, they know from polls. And even in the least complicated years, polling is a recipe with a good dash of “Who knows?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/weekinreview/12zernike.html
.... for horseshoes and hand grenades.
All,
Barack is winning over conservatives in greater numbers than usual.
Christopher Buckley, the son of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, said Friday he's decided to back Barack Obama's White House bid, the first time in his life he will vote Democrat.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/10/a-buckley-endorses-obama/
Barack delivered a very strong performance in the last debate.
McCain's V.P. pick of Palin marginalized his chances for the White House leaving the Republican ticket with only Two political tools left, character assassination of Obama and Biden and making promises you cannot keep.
Its time to press our advantage.
Lets seal the deal and deliver real change to the White House.
Lets re-double our efforts to win this race.
Please donate what you can afford Nwow on my fundraising page and I'll match it.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/UNITEDWECAN
Obama/Biden '08 ..... Hope and a new direction !
-Vince ;-}
A Veteran for Obama
Thanks for all you do for Barack, Michelle and Joe.
the guardian
Cif America
By Michelle Goldberg
Sarah Palin winks during the vice-presidential debate on Thursday in St Louis, Missouri. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate
Now that Barack Obama has all but locked up the presidency, it is a great time to reflect on his possible impact on the history of the country and the world, for he has a unique opportunity to transform events like few presidents have had a chance to do. Consider the following six impacts:
First, the balance between the consumer climate and the business climate. Democrats have been pushing social reforms for decades – welfare system, consumer protections, labor protections, investor protections, environmental protections, minimum wage, work-life-balance corporate policies, etc. They have done it primarily driven by social-justice concerns.
But today, we see clearly that business was made far stronger by these reforms, contrary to Republican concerns that this would cut into profitability and reduce incentives to risk capital in business ventures. Reforms to humanize the market have led to higher purchasing power (greater consumption), higher consumer confidence, happier and more motivated workers and executives who can then innovate more, greater environmental sustainability that allows growth to happen to begin with, etc.
Obama will be the first president who actually gets this new economic landscape. He has spoken and written about it extensively. As he fights for more reforms, he understands clearly that this is all about striking a better balance between giving business the incentives and conditions it needs to grow (business climate) and giving consumers the conditions they need to grow (consumer climate), because we now see that an economy needs both. Republicans tend not to get that. They see businesses hurt by every reform, when in fact businesses benefit, provided the reforms are handled well.
To the extent Obama drives home the point in the next eight years, he will change the debate for good, and everyone (including Republicans) will come to embrace this new way to develop an economy. Gone will be the knee-jerk class-based assumption that Democrats are out to hurt business or that Republicans are out to hurt people. It will be a new and historic consensus that will drive policy and lead to greater political and social harmony.
Second, the balance between individual achievement and responsibility on the one hand, and shared achievement and responsibility on the other. Even Democrats have traditionally missed this point, as they have focused disproportionately on the latter, while Republicans have focused disproportionately on the former. The fact is that America has been built on both pillars: our hunger to excel as individuals, and our instinct to help others in need – to be, as Obama reminds us often, our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper. Both are part of our psyche and culture. Yet, all too often we lose sight of our conscience in our relentless race to the top.
Here as well, the stakes are huge. This new realization will unleash a race to serve others, without hurting the race to excellence and achievement. Americans will discover that we’ve been doing both all along. And this will have a tremendous and lasting impact on our entire culture, from the inner city to corporate America to entertainment and the media.
Third, diversity. Obama is half white and half black. He was, in fact, raised a white kid with black skin in a diverse environment (Hawaii and Indonesia). And his black side is African from the continent, removed, as he has said, from the black anger of African-Americans that he only discovered as an adult in college. His white family traces its roots to countries around the world. His sister is half Indonesian.
As the United States transitions into a far more diverse nation in the coming decades, people, the media, businesses and politicians need to come to grips with the vast social implications of this. It will be New York City nationwide, and unless we get it right, the growing diversity can drive wedges of intolerance and social strife all over.
Obama is the only leader out there who can drive home the right message of diversity, a message of tolerance and celebration, a message of respect and embrace. Blacks need to drop their anger. Whites need to drop their overt and veiled racism, as well as their Hispanophobia. Hispanics need to feel like they belong. Asians need to become more integrated. Etc., etc.
Diversity can become an even bigger strength than it has been to date. When you look at every other developed country, the United States towers above them all in this regard, and Obama is the one leader who can guide us into that new world.
Fourth, what I call the coming Age of Peace. Diversity takes us right into foreign policy, because the foreign policy of the 21st century will be driven by the imperative to engage the world far more than ever before. Militarism and unilateralism will not get it done. With new powers arising and the world interlocked in a web of trade, treaties and mass-media communications that make it all seem so near, geopolitical diversity is the new name of the game.
To solve such issues as terrorism, Iran, North Korea, the resurgent Russia, human rights in a far more powerful China, global poverty and global warming, the U.S. president must have an instinctive feel for geopolitical diversity. He must have a gut understanding of the legitimate viewpoints and grievances of others, particularly those who dislike our policies abroad, not see them as enemies who don’t know what they’re saying and engage in confrontation and imposition, and much less bully our allies into seeing things our way or else.
The time has come to shed this knee-jerk arrogance of the Ugly American and adopt the same tolerance and respect of others abroad that we seek to embrace here at home. This will change the world. It will usher in a new Age of Peace that will prevent war among major powers for decades if not centuries to come and allow us to contain regional conflicts far better than the world has been able to do thus far.
It won’t be nirvana, to be sure. There will always be tyrants and terrorists out there who will simply not agree. But it will be an Age of Peace nonetheless, in the larger scheme of things. And Obama is the only president we could have who can lead the world in this direction. To sit with adversaries without preconditions is one way to do it, since preconditions stem from the arrogance of the Ugly American – the assumption that only we know what is right and that the other’s point of view is wrong and meaningless. And that’s only one aspect of this new world that Obama has right.
Sixth, common ground. This applies to foreign policy as well as the domestic scene. As Obama said in his acceptance speech in Denver, we can differ on abortion but unite in our common goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies, and we can agree that hunting and self-defense are game for guns but join hands in keeping AK-47s away from the hands of gangs and criminals.
His focus has always been on finding the common ground that allows us to move from contention to collaboration. The chapter on this subject in The Audacity of Hope is inspiring. To the extent he does this as president and gets the entire country to do it in small ways and large, he will change the country. To the extent he does it around the world, he will change history.
Finally, global warming. This is one issue that is defining the 21st century already, and we’re not even a full decade into it yet. The writing is ALL over the wall, and if the next president does not get it right, it might be too late for the next one. The world may only have one more chance. This is it, the ultimate game-changer. And without the right American leadership, it won’t get done, and God help us after that.
Obama gets this far more than McCain, who named a VP candidate who doesn’t even believe global warming is man-made!! Sure shows how deep his commitment is on this hugest of all issues. Obama has said many times that energy and climate change will be a top priority for him as he kicks off the next administration. This, too, will be history in the making.
I could go on. There are a few other issues that will make Obama a historic president. But these are the main ones. I’m just glad we’ll get to see him at work.
Recently, I had a very un-pleasent reminder that racism still lurks in our country.
I'm a second generation Italian American that lives and works in the Greater Boston Area ... a relatively progressive part of the country. I have proudly displayed my Veterans for Obama sticker on my vehicle for nearly a year. While driving to a store over this weekend with my Youngest (11 Year old) and Oldest (22 Year Old) daughters as passengers we reached a traffic jam. A White Cadillac behind us starts honking and at first I thought it was just someone being impatient ...then the driver of the White Cadillac starts screaming obscenities .... referring to Barack Obama with the dreaded N***** word. This went on for a couple of minutes and my oldest daughter was about to lose her cool, wanting to respond (Heck ...I wanted to respond).... then I told her not to respond ... that the driver a middle aged nordic looking fellow wanted attention and was trying to intimidate us. After Three minutes more of these obscenities ... the driver drove off.
I have had the rewarding experience of working along side Americans of every ethnicity and backgrounds in both my military and professional career.
It saddens me deeply that ignorance and racism still lurks in the country I love so much. After 35 years I still don't understand what motivates this kind of behavior ... especially from people who profess to be christians ?
We are all brothers and sisters .... it's time to Move our country forward. We must succeed in delivering new and progressive leadership in our country at all levels of government. Beyond sending Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the White House we need a democratic majority in both the House and Senate to secure a progressive agenda for all Americans.
Barack the Vote !
A Veteran for Obama.
Senator Joe Biden hit the ball out of the park in tonight's debate! He was the CLEAR WINNER!
THANK YOU JOE!
OBAMA-BIDEN 2008!
YES WE CAN!
My initial reaction to the Debate was to call it a draw ... I've never considered Obama to be a great debater. But, Barack held his own on Foreign Policy issues with John McCain. I believe Barack missed out on some major opportunities to press McCain on the failure of Trickle Down economics which has hurt the American Middle Class; However the Longer debate format gave Obama an opportunity to talk about the issues in substantial ways ... which is his strong suit.
According to Instant Polls after the debate ... viewers from MSNBC and CNN Obama won the debate 70% to McCain's 30%. Msnbc indicated that Barack Obama's Debate performance succeeded in winning over Two major demographics Indie Women and the elderly.
So why do the debate polls indicate Obama was the winner ?
If anything ... McCain lost this debate because he tried to distort both his and Obama's records on the issues. But worst of all John McCain never once had the courtesy to make eye contact with Mr. Obama that kind of body language indicates to me both contempt and dishonesty. The recent Financial Meltdown was in the back of everyone's mind and McCain's inconsistent message has created alot of mistrust among voters so when McCain talks about reforming Big government (The Bush Administration ?) most voters just don't believe him.
The McCain camp has No consistent message. Ten Days ago John McCain's positions on the U.S. economy was it is fundamentally sound then when the Financial Bailout proposal is announced he takes on the mantle of a reformer because the economy is bad... people aren't buying this marlakey....because its like a bad re-run of the last 8 years of Bush and Cheney.
We have alot to be proud of .... our candidate Barack Obama has shown the political establishment and pundits that a candidate can run a clean campaign by strictly focusing on the issues and do well.
Thanks to all of you ... for your incredible enthusiastic support for our candidate.
For the First time in a long time I feel truly optimistic that real change is coming.
BR,
-Vince ;-)
Barack / Biden '08 .... Real Change is coming.
The Huffington Post
Posted September 14, 2008 | 07:32 PM (EST)
You Can't Fool All the People All the Time
By Jared Bernstein
Truth appears to be on an extended holiday, but with about fifty days left in this election cycle, this isn't the time for handwringing.
What's the best strategy when your opponent lies? It's not a simple question. The obvious move is to call them on it, but analyses of viewers reveals that "he said, she said" arguments leave observers confused and apathetic. "There they go again," seems to be the reaction, and they tune out the substance of the debate. This hurts us a lot more than them, because we need the electorate to focus on substance; they need them to focus on nonsense.
It helps if there's a referee to cry foul when the lies are proffered, but the media has been inconsistent at best, compelled to feign "balance" even when doing so means implicitly endorsing the lies.
Like this Wednesday AM, when I made the mistake of turning on CNN, where I witnessed a series of intense arguments and interviews about lipstick-gate, including the clip from the speech in which Obama made the lipstick comment, with not a hint, of course, of what the speech was about.
Let's just pause for a moment here and look at this moment under a microscope. It is one of the best examples of Rovian politics I've ever witnessed. This is the sentence in question--the one that ended with the "lipstick on a pig" comment:
"John McCain says he's about change too. And so I guess his whole angle is: 'Watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington!'"
Now, it's clear that the McCain strategy has shifted from stressing "experience" and "country first"--both causalities of his choice of Palin for his running mate--to the old Rovian move of hitting your opponent where he's strongest, in this case co-opting Obama's message of change (re Kerry, they swift-boated his military cred, which should have been his critical advantage over GW Bush's chicken-hawk military "career").
Of course, the McCain agenda unequivocally contradicts their new message, which was Obama's point, but the opposition managed to completely avoid that part of the debate, while their dupes in the news media amplified their message by focusing exclusively on the lipstick smear. They took a potent attack on the hypocrisy of their agenda--McCain/Palin's plans on the war and the economy are, if anything, Bush on steroids (more war, no timetables, far more tax cuts for the wealthiest than even Bush has dared to propose)--and turned it to their advantage.
So how do you beat these folks? At times it seems like we're fighting the bad guys in a science fiction movie: "resistance is futile." But I don't think it is. In fact, I think they've exposed a weak flank, and while it's a race against time, the stakes are so high that we've got no choice but to devote all of our energies to establishing this simple meme:
They're telling lies, and liars make fatal leaders. I don't just mean fatal in terms of fiscal recklessness and more economic failure. I mean fatal in terms of decisions that could cost people their lives. Sound familiar?
It may also sound over the top, and there are caveats that I'll stress in a moment, but it's true. Krugman had this exactly right the other day:"...the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class..."
Palin didn't say "thanks, but no thanks" re the bridge to nowhere. Her state got and spent the federal money. On this point, the media's been pretty good, but she keeps repeating her mantra. Obama's tax plan provides a larger break to the middle class than McCain's--about $1,100 vs. $300--the polar opposite of what the McCain folks keep saying. Obama didn't promote sex-ed for kindergarteners. McCain's campaign is run by the very lobbyists he consistently inveighs against; Palin's aggressively and effectively pursued Congressional earmarks.
We all know presidential politics are a nasty business, but they've taken it to another level. The untruths we're used to are conceptual, fuzzier, more ambiguous, stuff you can't easily prove or disprove, like, "we'll pay for our tax cuts by cutting spending (and don't worry, we'll only cut the wasteful stuff that nobody outside of a few crooks really wants)." Or "by cutting taxes on the wealthy, we will free the invisible hand and unleash untold riches that will trickle down to all." Or the stuff about victory in Iraq, whatever that is.
The McCain squad touts this stuff too, of course, and we can and do have good arguments over their validity. But the lies they're telling now are different. As Krugman said, they're "making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again."
(The caveat I mentioned is that they're not all lying. Doug Holtz-Eakin, a leading McCain economic advisor and an acquaintance/fellow traveler for whom I've always had great respect, has a history of speaking truth to power. I suspect he's not too comfortable with a lot of the stuff he has to sell these days...see here for an example of what I mean.)
So why is resistance not futile? Because the lies could form their campaign and candidates' persona, and that could hurt them big-time. It's becoming a negative, mainstream theme. Jay Leno's making fun of it. The mainstream media is starting to come around. Obama's team is hitting back harder. You really can't fool all the people all the time.
The lying persona could become their 'Dukakis in the tank,' Papa Bush at the scanner, Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it"--the meme that defines a deep and fundamental weakness that reaches voters in their guts and just gives them a bad feeling about this ticket.
And given the last eight years, that may be enough to tip the scales. Not, of course, with the evangelicals allegedly charged up by the Palin pick, but with the independents in the swing states who will likely decide the outcome. They may be unfamiliar with someone like Obama, or too familiar with someone like Biden, or unable to sort through the fog of misinformation to assess with any clarity the campaigns' positions on the issues that matter to them. But if the truth about these naked lies is out there in a palatable way, they'll know they're being lied to, and they won't like it.
And then, they can honestly use that phrase that's been so misleading repeated over the last couple of weeks:
McCain/Palin? Thanks, But No Thanks.
Hey, that might be a neat bumper sticker, no?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/you-cant-fool-all-the-peo_b_126253.html
Frightened by McCain's Post-Convention Bounce? Three Things You Can Do Personally To Affect the Outcome of the Election
By Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post
Posted September 9, 2008 | 01:32 PM (EST)
Over the last couple of days I've received more calls and emails than I can count from people with fear in their voices. They want to know what to make of McCain's post- convention bounce in the polls. They want to know if Obama can still win. Most of all they want to know what they can do to help.
McCain's post-convention bounce resulted from two factors:
First, was three days of the Republican Convention, during which large numbers of viewers watched Republicans and fellow travelers like Joe Lieberman repeatedly deliver a carefully crafted message. They blasted Obama. They postured about change. Their kids looked adorable. Subject anyone to largely one-sided messaging for a week and some will be convinced. Some of that will stick; much will disappear as memories of that experience fades.
Second - and more importantly - McCain's pick of Sarah Palin moved a lot of white women. The Washington Post poll released today showed white women shifting from an eight-point pre-convention lead for Obama to a 12-point McCain advantage.
What does this mean for the outcome of the race?
The race today is about even, with McCain having a slight advantage in the popular vote, and Obama having an advantage in electoral votes. The effect of exposure to the convention itself will likely diminish over the next several weeks. In 2004, Bush moved to a nine-point lead after his convention and most of that gap disappeared within a few weeks.
The long-term effect of the Palin factor is less certain. Much depends on what all of us choose to do now.
There are about ten likely electoral vote scenarios that could develop in this race. In eight of them, Obama is the winner. The underlying desire for change, and the overall disgust with the Bush-Republican administration of the last eight years, is just as real as ever. The website www.Fivethirtyeight.com employs a sophisticated projection model to predict electoral outcomes, and it still gives 61.2% odds that Obama will win in November.
But this week's polling numbers have certainly given a wakeup call to lots of Progressives who might have become complacent in their views that Obama's victory was a lock.
What did we think - that the gang who has run this country for the last eight years would simply roll over and surrender without a fight? These guys are very good at running elections and they will bite and claw and gouge eyes to win.
Luckily, we don't have to just sit by and watch from the sidelines, and hope that someone else makes the right call or runs the right TV spots.
There are three steps that every one of us can take that will actually impact directly the ultimate outcome of this race.
1). Remember that you are Obama's best campaign commercial. Obama made a good deal of progress at his own convention in convincing swing voters he is not just an agent for change, but a 'safe' choice. But there are still a lot of voters who worry about Obama. They aren't really too worried if he is 'experienced' enough (though they may say so). The movement of white women to Sarah Palin should put an end to any thought that 'experience' is the main issue. They are worried if he will 'safely be on their side.'
The message that is most persuasive at convincing someone that Obama is 'safely on their side' is having someone who is like them talk to them about why they support Obama - and why they are against McCain-Palin. 'If Mary or Sarah likes Obama I guess he must be OK.'
If you want to help win this election, it means you might have to break the 'taboo's' about not talking about politics with your neighbor or your co-worker. It means you have to bring up the campaign over the lunch table or the backyard fence. It means you can't just go along when someone says something like 'Palin is such a breath of fresh air.' No, you must tell them, actually she's never been for 'reform' and she embraces all of the economic policies that allow big companies to make tons of money while incomes of people like us fall.Want to make calls to swing voters like you in swing states? The Obama campaign can hook you up with lists to call and get a report from you on the outcome through their website, www.MyBarackObama.com. And don't feel like the conversations you have are just a drop in the bucket. There will be hundreds of thousands of other volunteers around America who will be doing the same thing.
2). Don't unwittingly contribute to their narrative. Most swing voters aren't excessively focused on 'experience.' They think the gang with lots of experience has done a pretty crummy job, at least for them. They want someone who is 'on their side.' One reason that many white women like and identify with Palin - at least at first blush - is because they think she identifies with them.
When Progressives make 'elitist' attacks on Palin, they just reinforce the right wing narrative that the 'Elitist Eastern Establishment' is the problem. Don't patronize the very people we are trying to convince.
From most people's points of view, the problem with the McCain-Palin ticket isn't so much that Palin is from a small town in rural Alaska and hasn't got the experience to run the country. The arguement that is convincing to normal people is that neither McCain nor Palin are what they claim to be - reformers or agents of change. Their campaign is being run by lobbyists for the biggest corporate interests in America--the same people who ran the Bush campaign. And they are committed to the economic policies that make average people's incomes drop and reward the very rich.
McCain and Palin act as though they identify with the interests of the guys in the NASCAR grandstand and the women at the PTA - but they are doing the bidding of the guys from Wall Street and the women wearing $4,500 outfits like the one Cindy McCain donned for the Republican Convention.
Our assault on McCain and Palin must never be done from an elitist perspective, but from a populist perspective.
3). Take personal responsibility to win this election. More than any election in modern political history, this election will be decided by the work of millions of people who talk to their neighbors, make small donations on the internet and - most importantly - demand that every voter go out to vote.
And I mean demand that every voter go to the polls. To win, we need to change the electorate. In this election, friends don't let friends not vote. There is too much at stake. The damage of another four years of Bush-McCain economic and foreign policy would be catastrophic for the future of our children, and children all over the world.
The key point is this: don't just whine to your friends about what the campaign should do, or the party should do, or the candidate should do. Take personal responsibility to do the two things that will win: persuade swing voters, and mobilize voters who won't vote unless they are motivated to do so.
The Obama campaign has the best field operation in the history of presidential politics. Join it. Take an assignment. Make contributions on the Internet. Hold a fundraiser. Write a letter to the editor. Most important: don't sit on the sidelines.
The recent polls should provide a call to arms to everyone who wants change in America or believes in progressive values.
Don't think what you do is inconsequential or can't affect the outcome. My firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, ran the field operation for a wonderful congressional candidate in south Florida in 2000. We did a great job. We knocked on every door. We pulled out lots of votes. But we lost by 550 votes. It was the same 550 votes that beat Al Gore and gave us George Bush.
If we had just dragged out one more Democrat per precinct in the closing hours of that Election Day, America would have been spared the nightmare of the last eight years. Each of us could decide the outcome of this election, too.
In 2008, Progressives in America are presented with an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally change the direction of American politics. As I argued in my book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, we could be on the verge of a new progressive era in America. If we win, progressives will be able to take the offensive and reshape the political and economic structures of our society for the first time in four decades. We can come out of our defensive crouch and help shape a democratic society infused with progressive values, with the fundamental principle that 'we're all in this together' not 'all in this alone.'
But to have that opportunity we have to win - and winning requires that we all stand up now and take the future into our own hands. The game is on. Get out of the stands and onto the field, into the arena. The work we do over the next 56 days could be the most important that any of us will do in our lives. Let's not miss this precious opportunity to make history.
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/frightened-by-mccains-pos_b_125111.html
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