I Love that Man
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What, did Harry Belafonte say something?”
— Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), asked at a presser, “I was wondering if you could react to…”, 2/1
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Obama
Hey Tim
So, to be clear, from now on the standard at NBC is that if someone has a supporter who ‘corresponds’ with a Senator, the Senator or Member of Congress or Executive office operative or President or campaign official has to answer questions about something the supporter says.
IOW, every social conservative Republican has to start answering all sorts of questions about James Dodson’s statements every time he says something…this is going to be fun.
Hey Tim
Was it okay for William Ligue to attack Tom Gamboa?
Was it appropriate for a bond trader to attack Randy Myers? How do you feel about that?
Was it appropriate for all those people to beat up on poor defenseless disco records?
Obama: Bad Ratings in One Location!
I had wondered where this bit in Washington Whispers had come from:
Is Washington already bored with new Senate star Barack Obama ? In his two Sunday talk show appearances this month, the programs finished dead last in the all important Washington market. “He’s Sunday poison,” says a TV exec. But Obama’s office says national TV viewing figures show that his appearances helped This Week and Face the Nation gain a second-place finish to NBC’s Meet the Press. And his September 11 This Week appearance turned out to have had the show’s second-best audience, next to a February interview of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “The national numbers speak for themselves,” says Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. “This is proof that the so-called skinny kid with the funny name from Chicago’s South Side can go toe to toe with the bodybuilding governor of the Golden State, and that was when Arnold was popular!”
Besides being typical Washington centric BS from inside the beltway, it turns out there are some fingerprints all over it:
In fact, there’s actually only one network who pushes D.C. market numbers to the exclusion of all others: that would be Fox’s D.C. spokesman Paul Schur, who most Mondays quickly sends around the overnight ratings for the local market (where Fox does very well) and ignores the larger national ratings (where Fox does pretty poorly).
Given that background, dollars to donuts, that “Washington Whispers” column came out of lunch the two Pauls had together at Chef Geoff’s last Wednesday. So then we’re left with this thought: Pushing an item about how a Democratic Senator is “Sunday poison” isn’t really the job of a network spokesperson.
Why is Fox doing the job of Bill Frist’s press secretary? There’s a thin line between network sour grapes and politically-motivated backstabbing.
There’s another oddity in the whole thing–why would anyone expect one Senator to carry the ratings? It seems to me the whole thing points out that Obama is attracting an audience in places that matter most–where voters are.
The Economic Advantage of Safety Nets
One of the fascinating things about Barack Obama is his ability to boil down complex, but important issues to good soundbites. It is a skill he shares with Clinton and that too many damn Democrats can’t figure out–you don’t need a forty point policy paper to defend social security or unemployment or other issues, you need a simple statement that points to values and how the issue affects it. Lynn Sweet picked out one statement that is especially strong in a recent column on social security (my emphasis):
Obama talked about the origins of Social Security as a safety net for retirees who had nothing. It was intended to be the minimum, not the maximum, and never to take the place of regular savings and other investments. It was a way, said Obama, for people to share — and minimize — risk.
“Since Social Security was first signed in to law, almost 70 years ago, by James’ grandfather, at a time when FDR’s opponents were calling it a hoax that would never work and that some likened to communism,” said Obama, “there has been movement, there has been movement after movement, to get rid of the program for purely ideological reasons.
“Because some still believe that we can’t solve the problems we face as one American community, they think this country works better when we’re left to face fate by ourselves.”
The irony, said Obama, of this “all-out assault against every existing form of social insurance is that these safety nets are exactly what encourages each of us to be risk-takers, what encourages entrepreneurship, what allows us to pursue our individual ambitions.’‘
What’s funny about the quote is that the odious and statistically incompetent Charles Murray makes nearly the same point in defending unemployment insurance in his book Losing Ground. Two people could not be much further apart.
Obama comments on it over at his official blog