Obama
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Let Obama Be Obama
The Obama campaign is humming along, but not nearly the kind of operation one should expect from him and an incredibly talented group of advisors. Mike Lux offers a good take on it from someone outside of the Illinois
The great mystery of the Obama campaign so far is when they have such a unique and compelling candidate with such a fresh voice, why are they running such a conventional wisdom campaign? From their issue positions to their debate strategy to their day to day tactical positioning, they have run a campaign that keeps neatly within the lines of the campaign lane they’ve picked out to drive in. Every time he does a policy speech it fits within the outlines of Democracy policy establishment conventional wisdom. Every ad they do feels just like all of the usual political ads you see on TV. The strangest thing to me is that the kind of campaign they are running feels exactly like the others I’ve seen before.It’s the politics that is broken, upper middle income-oriented, tired of partisan bickering campaign that Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley all chose to run.
And that spells out my biggest disappointment. I backed or voted for all those guys and thought Obama had the talent to not run that kind of boring campaign.
Josh Marshall interviews Markos on Obama’s campaign and similar sentiments are expressed
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The campaign’s outreach online has been both incredible on the organizing level, and absolutely horrible in setting the agenda. IN terms of allowing supporters to go out and build up their own organizing efforts–doing what Dean thought he was doing and Karl Rove actually did do–the campaign has done things I don’t think much of the blogs understand fully. The discussion is below the radar of most of them because it isn’t the large bloggers pushing the conversation which I think is an innovation that is remarkable.
However, when blogs set the agenda and there isn’t the discussion being had there, it’s a problem. Josh Orton mentioned in the video left the campaign and largely blogger outreach is non-existent since then. Josh was very helpful and understood how to reach out to blogs and keep them up on what was going on. The story appears to be that Josh wanted to push online outreach more in that way while Rospars wants to concentrate on the organizing. The problem to me seems to be they aren’t mutually exclusive and keeping someone in the position Josh was filling was essential to a second part of what should be a balanced net operation that both innovated over the blogcentric strategy, but paid attention to the agenda setting on blogs
And tied to this is just the recent hire of a rapid response person which is exactly what such a blog outreach person effectively does. It’s the same kind of problem.
Some of the criticisms of Obama are a bit sillier than others. For example, the overstated expectations about him in debate weren’t born out by the 2004 race. He’s capable, but the short form answers don’t lend themselves to his strengths. In other cases, some claim he can simply change the debate by opening his mouth–that’s generally not as true as most think–remember he was talking about lead in toys long before the current problems and crickets were heard.
The argument over McClurkin and the Gospel Tour is a distraction–probably from the Clinton camp. Any Democratic candidate who has significant black minister support has people who say the same things. Many white preachers are the same. In fact, some of Clinton’s supporters believe similar things. Building bridges between communities takes dealing with differing view points, and certainly Obama doesn’t agree with McClurkin on the issue and attends a church that is welcoming to gays and lesbians himself.
The worst thing is the campaign has effectively neutered Obama with caution and
boriinnnggggg. There are several issues he should lead on–and ones that would take back the momentum with progressive base voters. He’s done well on voter suppression. He hasn’t done well on FISA where it took days to get a statement together that should have been easy to make for a Con Law Instructor. He’s still not entirely clear on telecom amnesty which should be a non-starter for any Democrat. He has taken agonizing time figuring out how he’d vote on various war related bills.
In 2004, that wasn’t Obama. He wasn’t some wild eyed progressive quote machine, but he took strong stands and did it forthrightly and quickly. Now, every pronouncement is awaiting a detailed policy response vetted to be bland and uninteresting.
Part of it appears to be an effort to discipline the message and another part is simply the painstaking inability to move quickly of a larger campaign operation. But message discipline shouldn’t hold hostage the basic campaign strategy which is to be the different kind of politics–that is one that should be off the cuff and honest–not the cautious, overly word smythed crap that is like the Clinton campaign.
When he has done best contrasting himself on issues, it has been on issues such as being willing to talk to anyone while Hillary tried to paint him as naive. It so happens that 60% of the Democratic Party agree with Barack yet the campaign seems to think that was a problem. It wasn’t a problem, it was an opportunity, and the type they haven’t taken enough advantage.
Bogging the campaign down in the traditional model of caution loses the appeal of Barack Obama. People like him because he talks to them plainly and understandably. His best commercial ever was still the introductory commercial in 2004 where he is standing leaning against a desk and says, “Hello, my name is Barack Obama…”
The effectiveness was he was a guy who was obviously smart and easy to understand. Pushing the language of Washington in carefully worded statements is exactly the playing field he should not be on.
Obama Puts Hold on von Spakovsky
You only have the power if you use it Senator Reid
And kudos for doing it publicly.
It Gets Better
From Talking Points Memo:
But don’t think this allusion to generations of stereotypes about black men was just some stray comment.
The RNC just shot off an email building on the slur. With the headline “Razzle Dazzle”, the email continues the theme that Obama is just another black fancy-pants with a slick smile and nice turn of phrase but either without the candle-power or stick-to-it-iveness to actually get things done.
“Chicago Star Obama Continues His All Show, No Substance Campaign With Event On Broadway,” the email begins.
What to expect next out of the RNC? Obama would be a better singer and tap dancer than president?
I have this vision of Harry Morgan when he played a General who was losing his marble son MASH (before he became the colonel) and during a court martial asks a black soldier to dance a jig.
Believe
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Take on the Predatory Lenders
Obama has a strong editorial today on the mortgage lending crisis:
Fine unscrupulous mortgage lenders
By Barack Obama
Published: August 29 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 29 2007 03:00
T he implosion of the subprime lending industry is more than a temporary blip in our econ-omic progress. It is a cancer that, given today’s integrated financial markets, threatens to spread with devastating impact to housing and to our economy as a whole, unless we act to contain it.
It is also a parable about howan excess of lobbying and influencecan defeat common sense rules ofthe road, placing both consumers and our nation’s economic well-beingat risk.
This all started as a good idea – helping people buy homes who previously could not afford to. But over time, lenders began pushing low-income buyers into homes they could not possibly afford, abusing the system by lowering their lending standards, making loans that required no money down and offering low, teaser interest rates that explode after the initial grace period. Some borrowers were also lying to get mortgages or engaging in irresponsible speculation.
Nearly everyone – from lenders to investors to borrowers – fooled themselves into thinking that what they were doing was low risk when it in fact involved a lot of risk.
But we also know that Washington played a role. At a time when non-bank lenders were offering new kinds of mortgage, the federal government should have made sure it was all being done on the level. Instead, our government failed to provide the regulatory scrutiny that could have preventedthis crisis.
There is a reason why this has happened. Over the past several years, while predatory lenders were driving low-income families into financial ruin, 10 of the country’s largest mortgage lenders were spending more than $185m (£92m) lobbying Washington to let them get away with it. So if we really want to make sure this never happens again, we need to end the lobbyist-driven politics that made it possible.
Today, as we weigh our options on how best to resolve this crisis, many argue that bailing out the borrowers and investors will just encourage them to engage in more of the same irresponsible practices.
But I think we also have to recognise what will happen if we reward the mortgage industry’s lobbying: they will keep using the same kinds of deceptive practices to make a quick buck, no matter what the consequences to home buyers and their communities. Rather than correct what they are doing wrong, these companies will knowthat if things go badly, they can always lobby Washington to let them offthe hook.
The real victims in this crisis are the millions of borrowers who followed the rules, whose only crime was taking out mortgages that lenders told them they could afford. Normally, these borrowers could avoid foreclosure by refinancing their mortgages or selling their homes. The problem today is that they cannot refinance because no one will lend to them, and they cannot sell because the housing market has fallen. With some arguing that the effects of the worst subprime loans will not be felt until 2008 and 2009, this may be just the beginning.
We need to help struggling borrowers to weather this storm. One way to protect innocent homeowners – at least until this crisis passes – is to establish a fund to help people refinance or sell to avoid foreclosure. We can partially pay for this fund by imposing penalties on lenders that acted irresponsibly or committed fraud.
But we have to do more than just deal with the present crisis. If we do not address the root of these problems, it is just a matter of time before we will be dealing with them again.
The rules currently governing mortgages were written in the 20th century to make borrowing easier to understand for borrowers. We need to update these rules for the 21st century and enact the regulatory and disclosure laws that the mortgage industry has been lobbying against.
That is why I have proposed a Home Score system that would create a simplified, standardised metric for home mortgages – rather like the annual percentage rate (APR), the effective interest rate a borrower ends up paying on a loan – allowing prospective homebuyers easily to compare variousmortgage products so they can find out whether they can afford to make the payments.
I have also introduced a bill in the US Senate called the Stop Fraud Act that would treat those who commit mortgage fraud as the criminalsthey are.
Owning a home represents a big part of the American dream and all Americans – no matter what their income level – should have the power to reach for that dream. But that is not going to happen until we stop the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low-income borrowers into taking on loans they cannot afford.
If we are serious about stopping this crisis and preventing much larger turmoil in US housing markets, Washington needs to stop acting like an industry advocate and start acting like a public advocate.
One of the things no one has been paying attention to is that many mortgage lenders in communities are calling for just this sort of thing because they, as decent human beings, take time to try and help people who are stuck in loans in which the lender lied to them or seriously oversold the product. In addition, reducing incentives for larger lenders to buy up these crappy loans would go along ways towards drying up the market for bad loans as it currently exists.
Of course, Forbes blogger calls it a desperate measure from a poopy campaign.
Hoping to prop up his poopy presidential primary campaign, Obama says we should round up “the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low-income borrowers into taking on loans they cannot afford” and treat them as “the criminals they are.”
It’s really not hard to understand if you look at the industry below the trading market level and see the amount of fraud that has occurred and the number of big lenders willing to buy up those loans. In one case fraud has been committed and in the other case new law is needed to discourage the enabling behavior.
What 45 Years of Experience Will Get You
A call to continue a failed policy for as long as it takes to be successful.
What great judgment Clinton has. I mean, it’s been 45 years, who know when it will finally succeed in driving Castro from power! Don’t quit now!
Up Close, It Isn’t the Moustache, it’s the Eyebrows
I’d sworn off making fun of Axelrod’s eyebrows until Yglesias brought up the moustache
Letting the Unwashed Matches in on the Discussion
Barack Obama’s shocking notion of what how we should communicate with the public (line towards the end)
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When The Hell Did Dr. Strangelove Take Over Foreign Policy?
Is General Ripper complaining about the water again too? Or was that just Ron Stephens again?
Obama (Ill.) was responding to a question by the Associated Press about whether there was any circumstance in which he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat terrorism and bin Laden.
“There’s been no discussion of using nuclear weapons, and that’s not a hypothetical that I’m going to discuss,” Obama said. When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did.
By the afternoon, Clinton (N.Y.) had responded with an implicit rebuke. “Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons,” she said, adding that she would not answer hypothetical questions about the use of nuclear force.
Bullshit. Carter gave very simple hypothetical where the US would use nuclear weapons:
This new policy is the administration’s first instruction to the Pentagon addressing the increasingly worrisome concern that a “rogue state” might turn biological or chemical weapons against U.S. troops. A senior Clinton advisor claims that the policy conforms with earlier White House statements and longstanding policy on nuclear weapons, including support for bombers, land- based missiles, and missile submarines, and reliance on nuclear weapons as a mainstay of national security.
The directive increases the list of possible potential targets that could be attacked in China, in the unlikely event of nuclear war with that country,but abandons the concept of a possible plan for a protracted, so-called”winnable” nuclear war.
Worries about full-scale nuclear war have been replaced by fears about use of chemical or biological weapons: the directive discusses responses that the U.S should have available in far greater detail than earlier directives.
It “requires a wide range of nuclear retaliatory options, from a limited strike to a more general nuclear exchange.” said a senior national security official.
In 1978 President Carter pledged that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, unless those states fought in concert with a nuclear power or defied the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was Iraq’s suspected violation of that treaty that allowed the Bush administration to threaten massive retaliation, if necessary, during the Gulf war.
And Bill Clinton reverified that policy. Hillary Clinton apparently is dangerously out of touch with US defense policy. And the press corps let her skate on it because the Obama is green story is too convenient. He got it right–and in fact, his quick mention of nukes not being considered was a bit of slip, but only to realign with actual US policy.
Now, on the one hand of those complaining about Barack’s stances in the last few days we have those that say he is crazy to attack a country harboring terrorists who have killed thousands of Americans, 3,000 of them in New York. On the other hand, it’s perfectly reasonable to nuke them. Sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here with Iraq.
The right war was against Al Qaeda and those who allow them to exist in their territories. The wrong war is Iraq. All Barack is doing is pointing out that this administration has been shamefully complicit in allowing Al Qaeda a safe haven and that US policy is and should continue to be that if you harbor those terrorists who attack Americans you are subject to attack. What’s the problem?.
It’s amazingly obtuse for those conservatives who claim that Al Qaeda in Iraq might get a sanctuary if we leave Iraq while the Sunnis are already fighting them, yet in Pakistan we see a negotiated policy with tribes that are protecting Al Qaeda to not bother them. Which is more dangerous?
On nuclear weapons, is the suggestion that we should utilize nukes to attack terrorist sites even if the government of that country are not actively promoting them? Are we going to nuke the tribal lands of Pakistan? Seriously? What are we going to nuke? Is there a glass shortage I’m unaware of? Because producing glass is about all it would do.
Samantha Powers writes a stirring defense of Obama’s points and it’s about time that someone takes on the DC mindset of how to run a foreign policy. I’ve been fighting this silly nonsense since the debates over how best to supply death squads in Central America in the 1980s. It’s about time someone pointed out the emperors of the foreign policy establishment are silly, silly people. It’s the same damned fearmongering that only gives our true enemies more power. You support El Salvadoran death squads, you strengthen the FMLN. You support the rape and torture of literacy workers in Nicaragua, you support the Sandinistas. You support monsters like rios Montt, you support the ability of actual communists to recruit people to their cause.
You support Dr. Strangelove like policy completely devoid of reality and debate when the use of nuclear weapons might be okay against a civilian population in the war on terror and you look like a bloodthirsty dumb ass that enables Al Qaeda recruiting. Same shit, different decade.
I bought into the silly arguments in the lead-up to the Iraq War, but the whining of the Washington elite over perceived inexperience of Obama whom has shown far better judgment than I or certainly them needs to end. I admitted I was stupid and wrong, you’d think the very serious people could.
Every once in a while I’ll see Obama slip and do something that makes me think he’s not as different as I perceive. He’s not perfect and I don’t expect it. That said, he is laying out an argument for foreign policy that is different and a break from the conventional wisdom of Washington that is far greater than any recent viable Presidential candidate.