In Tampa today, Obama rallied 15,000 Floridians and directly confronted John McCain on lobbyists...
Now, we need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich friends and high-priced lobbyists, but as the defender of fairness and opportunity for every American. And let me be fair about this. Now, John McCain has agreed with me on some of the steps we need to make our government more ethical and accountable. Almost a decade ago, he offered a bill that, in his words, would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists. Let me repeat that. This -- ten years ago, John McCain offered a bill that said he would ban a candidate from paying registered lobbyists. And he did this because he said that having lobbyists on your campaign was a conflict of interest. This is what he said ten years ago.
Barack continued...
Well, I’ll tell you that John McCain then would be pretty disappointed with John McCain now, because he hired some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington to run his campaign. And when he was called on it, his top lobbyists actually had the nerve to say, ‘The American people won't care about this.’ Well, I think the American people do care about it and I know they have a clear choice in this election: we can either have a election in which we are taking on the root causes of special interests dominated politics in Washington or we can ignore the problem and we can wake up four years from now and still be talking about an energy crisis and still be talking about a health care crisis and still be talking about a tax code that's not fair to you. I don't want to wake up that way, neither do you. That’s a choice we’ve got in this election. We’re going to change how politics is done in Washington.
Watch the video...
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DEMOCRACY? Well, sorry if my comment offends some of you. I've just heard Clinton's speach in Florida and I am, again, outraged. By any international standard on democratic elections: - One can't qualify as "democratic" an election with only one of the two contenders on the ballot (if fact one generally qualify such as stalinistic elections), - One can't qualify as "democratic" an election without an electoral campaign allowing the voters to make a fully informed choice, - One can't qualify as "democratic" an election for wich the seat allocation formula is changed AFTER the election is held. One can agree with Clinton that democratic voters in Michigan and Florida should not be punished for what the state legislatures have decided. They deserve to be heard, and there is only one democratic way to enfranchise them: HOLD NEW, GENIUNE AND LEGITIMATE PRIMARIES with: 1) A PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN, 2) CLEAR RULES, 3) TWO CONTENDERS ON THE BALLOT. Too expansive? Maybe, but indeed geniune democracy is expansive... There is no other way to ensure that none of the two sides is cheated (which would destroy the party's chance for re-unification). Refusing to seat the current Michigan and Florida delegation would indeed disenfranchise millions of voters. But seating delegates that have been elected with no campaign and (in the case of Michigan) with only one contender on the ballot is an insult to basic democratic principles. I don't understand why Obama supporters in these two states are not making their voice heard more loudly...
