Tag: Fox News

Barack Obama discussed the controversy over comments in sermons by his spiritual advisor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with Anderson Cooper of CNN:

“In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates”…

Obama declined to speculate on whether the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons may damage him politically, but said his campaign does best when it doesn’t follow the “textbook.”

“If I was just running the textbook campaign — doing the conventional thing — I probably wasn’t going to win because Sen. [Hillary] Clinton was going to be much more capable of doing that than I would be,” he said.

But then Obama said this:

“We had tremendous success, and I think we were starting to get a little comfortable and conventional right before Texas and Ohio.”

Apparently no one told Obama that no one is allowed to criticize Obama.

These new numbers from Gallup are from March 14 to 18, and so may reflect negative reactions among Democrats to the controversial sermons of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but not positive reactions to Obama’s speech on race and racism on March 18:
McCain leads Obama 47 percent to 43 percent and is statistically tied with Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent.

The [poll] gave Clinton, a New York senator, a 49 percent to 42 percent edge over Obama, an Illinois senator. The poll has an error margin of 3 percentage points.

Gallup said it was the first statistically significant lead for Clinton since a tracking poll conducted February 7-9, just after the Super Tuesday primaries.

McCain still comes out ahead of both Democrats in the national head-to-head:

[McCain is] leading Obama 47 percent to 43 percent in … the general election. The general election survey has an error margin of 2 percentage points. The Arizona senator also edged Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent but Gallup said the lead was not statistically significant.

As my colleague Trish reported yesterday, Obama’s national lead over Clinton had a double-digit drop in a Reuters/Zogby nationwide poll taken March 13 and 14, at the height of the Wright controversy and well ahead of Obama’s March 18 speech.

It looks like the relentless dissing from Clinton, coupled with the rightwing media’s endless loop on Obama’s pastor is having is having their shared desired effect.

Democrat Barack Obama’s big national lead over Hillary Clinton has all but evaporated in the U.S. presidential race, and both Democrats trail Republican John McCain, according a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

The poll showed Obama had only a statistically insignificant lead of 47 percent to 44 percent over Clinton, down sharply from a 14 point edge he held over her in February when he was riding the tide of 10 straight victories…

The poll showed Arizona Sen. McCain, who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, is benefiting from the lengthy campaign battle between Obama and Clinton, who are now battling to win Pennsylvania on April 22.

McCain leads 46 percent to 40 percent in a hypothetical matchup against Obama in the November presidential election, according to the poll.

That is a sharp turnaround from the Reuters/Zogby poll from last month, which showed in a head-to-head matchup that Obama would beat McCain 47 percent to 40 percent.

“The last couple of weeks have taken a toll on Obama and in a general election match-up, on both Democrats,” said pollster John Zogby.

Matched up against Clinton, McCain leads 48 percent to 40 percent, narrower than his 50 to 38 percent advantage over her in February.

Maybe Clinton is hoping McCain will ask her to be his vice president. Maybe she is just so eaten up with cut-throat ambition that she doesn’t care who she takes down on the way to Obama, including the entire Democratic party.

The poll was released Wednesday but it was taken March 13 and 14. What effect Obama’s speech had on the Elephant in the Room (racism) is still not known.

Washington Post:

Sen. Barack Obama will deliver a major speech about race in Philadelphia tomorrow that he said would explore his relationship with Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright and the wave of controversy it has stirred in his presidential bid.

“I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks,” Obama told reporters after a town hall meeting here. According to aides, he was up until 3 a.m. Monday working on his remarks.

Wright, who recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side, was Obama’s spiritual guide when he became a practicing Christian during his 20s. He presided over Obama’s marriage to Michelle and baptized both Obama daughters. But Wright, a fiery preacher, has come under heavy media scrutiny for a series of racially charged remarks he has made from the pulpit, and Obama has played defense on the issue since Friday.

The controversy over Wright’s comments, which includes video of Wright saying that blacks should say “God damn, America” and that the 9/11 attacks were America’s chickens coming home to roost, will be ideal fodder for Republican attack ads in the general election, so Obama needs to tamp this down right now.

Giving an address on race and religion at this particular moment is a smart move. It plays into Obama’s strengths — he is indisputably a great speaker. (His performance will undoubtedly make a mockery of Mitt Romney’s silly, robotic presentation on Mormonism in Texas last year.) And if the speech is effective it could accomplish two things: It might cauterize the issue of Wright’s comments in the general election, and it could ramp up his support in Pennsylvania, thus staving off going negative against Hillary Clinton for another week, at least.

So “now what?

The Florida Democratic Party said this afternoon it won’t pursue a do-over of its contested primary, putting the dispute squarely in the lap of the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee next month.

Florida officials had floated the idea last week of a mail-in vote, but questions quickly arose about its logistics and fairness. The consensus from thousands of Democrats is against a revote, Representative Karen L. Thurman, the state party’s chairwoman, says in a letter to Democrats.

“A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it’s simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the Party were to pay for it,” Thurman writes.

I think the same thing that happened in Iowa on Saturday — Obama taking the delegates originally won by John Edwards, plus a few more that have grown disenchanted with Clinton — would happen if Florida Democrats were to mail it in.

The Iowa primary (as distinguished from the caucuses held first) showed how things have changed since January.

Obama’s gains at Saturday’s county conventions came from successfully wooing Iowa Democratic Party activists who had previously backed former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., as well as picking up the support of some Iowans who had backed Clinton during the Jan. 3rd precinct caucuses.

As a result of Saturday’s county conventions, Obama gained nine delegates, Clinton lost one, and Edwards lost eight delegates. Moving up by nine while Clinton moved down by one gave Obama a net gain of 10 over his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Florida Democrats, if anyone still remembers, went for Clinton at 50 percent, Obama, 33 percent, Edwards, 14 percent, and everybody else, 1 percent. I can’t see Edwards voters (like me) going over to Clinton in any great number but I can see former Clinton-neutrals falling into the Clinton-ick category. I can also see some Clinton supportors becoming Clinton never-minders. Hillary is trying so hard to preserve the January Florida vote because she thinks the same thing.

And Iowa’s primary results don’t help her.

To highlight the significance of Obama netting 10 delegates at Saturday’s low-profile Iowa county conventions, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe issued a statement juxtaposing it with Clinton’s high-profile win earlier this month in Ohio’s primary.

“With all of the results in,” said Plouffe in a statement whose accuracy was confirmed by the Iowa Democratic Party, “Sen. Obama earned 25 delegates, while Sen. Clinton earned 14. Sen. Obama netted 10 delegates tonight.”

“For comparison purposes,” he added, “Sen. Clinton netted nine delegates in Ohio” by winning that state’s primary on March 4.

So, with Iowa, the latest delegate count is:

A total of 2,025 delegates is needed for the nomination to avoid a brokered convention (one where superdelegates would have to step in).

At least I would hope so. Clinton’s refusal to cut Geraldine Ferraro loose from her campaign in the wake of racist comments is outrageous.

In an interview with ABC News affiliate WHTM, Clinton, D-N.Y. ignored calls from the Obama campaign to remove Ferraro from her campaign, saying, “Well, I don’t agree with that and I think it’s important that we try to stay focused on issues that matter to the American people.”

In a relatively mild response, Clinton continued, “And both of us have had supporters and staff members who’ve gone over the line and we have to reign them in and try to keep this on the issues. There are big differences between us on the issues — let’s stay focused on that.”

You wish. Let’s take a moment and recall what Geraldine said.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Ferraro told a local California newspaper last week.

“And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept,” Ferraro said.

Maybe Ferraro has been talking to Peggy Noonan, who recently gave a back-handed compliment to Michelle Obama for successfully strategizing when to be black.

[Michelle Obama is] black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful…

Cut back to Clinton, who just last week was focused on more than “the issues” when an Obama aide called her a monster.

“Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign,” [said Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser Samantha Power]. “And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

Power’s statement came scarcely an hour after congressional supporters of Clinton demanded that Obama fire Power for the remarks.

In a conference call organized by the Clinton campaign, Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey and Gregory Meeks of New York, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, decried the remarks made in The Scotsman by Power, 37, a Pulitzer-Prize winning professor at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.

“This is an important test for Senator Obama, ” said Lowey. “It’s really a test of character … You really wonder how Sen. Obama can have a person like that, as bright as she might be, advising his campaign.”

Yeah, you wonder. You wonder how Hillary Clinton became such a driven asshole.