Happening now in politics.
You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 21, 2008.
(Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.)
The Los Angeles Times: “Campaign sources indicate Obama hopes to roll out a series of such
endorsements and announcements during the long run-up to the
Pennsylvania primary April 22 to create a sense of momentum. There’s
still former Sen. John Edwards out there and, of course, former senator, former vice president and former presidential candidate Al Gore, who’s not always had the closest relationship with his ex-boss’s wife.”
Tags: obama
(Via The Huffington Post | Full News Feed.)
Ever since Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton started running for president, her team has argued that she is more electable than Senator Barack Obama: more experience, as first lady and senator; more spine, after years fighting Republicans; and more popular with key voter blocs, like women, Hispanics and the elderly….
Mrs. Clinton, of New York, sidestepped reporters’ questions on Thursday about Mr. Wright and electability. At one point, she turned from a reporter, pursed her lips and shook her head no. A spokesman said later she was unaware of anyone involved in the campaign pushing the Wright issue with superdelegates.
As a matter of strategy, top Clinton allies and advisers said Thursday they were treading carefully when it came to talking about Mr. Wright with superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders whose votes could determine the Democratic nomination. They said they were aware of the potential repercussions of pressing the issue too directly but were convinced this was going to be a key factor in superdelegates’ making a judgment on Mr. Obama’s electability.
Tags: clinton
(Via Balloon Juice.)
Nobody who pays the faintest attention thinks that Shiite Iran has or wants anything to do with the Sunni radicals in al Qaeda. For one thing bin Laden’s Iraq branch spends more energy slaughtering Shiites than it does attacking us. Sounds like a great program for Shiite Ayatollah Khamenei to promote, doesn’t it? Yeesh. Thinking that the two have some mutually supportive relationship is like proving your baseball knowledge by arguing that the Dolphins should start David Beckham. It makes a person hard to take seriously.
John McCain says crap like this every day. Joe Lieberman corrects him (twice) and McCain keeps saying it anyway. By any reasonable measure McCain’s crayon-book understanding of the mideast ought to be his candidacy’s most prominent weakness, a shameful sore point that he avoids talking about at all costs; his Chalabi if you will. Yet through some weird oversight that hasn’t happened.
Maybe the media has leaned to expect the GOP to field drooling morons. In fairness it has become about as unusual as spring robin poop on curb-parked cars. Nonetheless one can only look at a case like this, when young men doddering old cranks are being failed by a system that refuses to hold them accountable, and shake one’s head at the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Tags: mccain
(Via Balloon Juice.)
Looks like Hillary was snooped, too:
Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file was breached three times since January, the State Department said.
The revelation came shortly after Rice said she hed apologized to Clinton’s Democratic presidential rival Sen. Barack Obama for the unauthorized viewing of his passport file by contractors working for the State Department.
While the chattering classes all look for nefarious reasons for these invasions, I will simply restate what I said last night- the real scandal is that our government has this much information stored about us. And yes, I am aware that private corporations have much the same information, and no, I am not happy about that, either.
*** Update ***
According to the talking heads on my television, McCain was snooped, too.
Tags: clinton, mccain, obama, passports, state department
(Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.)
Sen. John McCain “has taken a step towards accepting public financing in the general election — a move that would provide an $84 million infusion for his presidential campaign, but also limit its spending and potentially put him at a steep disadvantage to a better-funded Democratic opponent,” according to The Politico.
This month, “he filed papers with the Federal Election Commission creating a separate campaign account that would enable him to make the public money go further.”
Tags: mccain
(Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.)
While Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign advertisements “have boasted that she is best prepared for a 3 a.m. crisis phone call, her recently released first lady schedules contain no evidence that Clinton was at the table during major national security decisions,” the Washington Post reports.
“They do not list her as attending National Security Council meetings or joining briefings in the Situation Room. She did not have a national security clearance. And the documents make clear that at moments of major crisis, Clinton was often busy with her own agenda.”
Tags: clinton
(Via MyDD.)
Richardson will appear with Obama at a rally at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon, at 9:30 AM western. That should be pretty big– tickets are actually being scalped to the event.
I’m pretty surprised by this endorsement. It makes you wonder if this is the ticket in the works. There are no primaries left that have a large block of Latino voters (OR has a small population), that was in Texas [ah, Puerto Rico]. Richardson could have really helped push Obama over in Texas, and that might have been enough to change the dynamics of the contest. Probably not, since Clinton won Ohio so decisively, but maybe.
Richardson’s endorsement does knock a big story and narrative that’s been building against Obama over the past two weeks off the front page. And Richardson did signal, before the 3/3 contests, that he was ready to get behind Obama. For one reason or another, it waited to happen. Among the ‘08 contenders, only Edwards endorsement is bigger. We’ll see if Richardson has any SD coattails before the April 22nd contest in PA.
Tags: bill richardson, obama
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