Oh-eight (D): Here's Valerie Jarrett
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:05 AM by Mark Murray
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Democrats
BIDEN: Before Biden’s back-and-forths last night with Richardson at last night’s AARP forum, the Delaware senator’s campaign took issue with Richardson’s recent statement that he’s the only Democratic candidate with a concrete plan to end the war -- and pointed out that Richardson had not always been in favor of pulling out all US forces from Iraq. “Governor Richardson is right that he represents both experience and change -- he has a lot of experience changing his mind on matters both large and small,” Biden campaign manager Luis Navarro said in a statement.
CLINTON: “Norman Hsu, the Democratic fund-raiser with a habit of fleeing the law, confessed to F.B.I. agents last week that he had swindled investors in what the government describes as a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, and acknowledged pressuring at least some of them to contribute to political campaigns, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint unsealed yesterday,” the New York Times writes. “The complaint does not contend that Mr. Hsu confessed either to so vast a swindle or to reimbursing the donors. Nor does it specify which candidates received the illegal or coerced contributions, or who made them. But the authorities confirmed that one of the candidates was Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, whose presidential campaign has already said that it intends to return $850,000 to more than 200 people whose donations were bundled by Mr. Hsu.”
Nevertheless, the RNC informed First Read this morning that Hsu is still listed as a “Hillraiser” on Clinton’s Web site.
How about this New York Daily News headline: “Hillary Clinton: I'm not a lesbian”? In an interview with The Advocate, she responded to an editor’s question of whether or not she is a lesbian. “People say a lot of things about me, so I really don't pay any attention to it," she said. "It's not true, but it is something that I have no control over. People will say what they want to say."
DODD: Before last night’s forum, Dodd made some critical comments about Clinton’s health-care plan, “saying she had mismanaged her effort to reshape the health care system as first lady, resulting in a major policy debacle… ‘It should be far more than just a parable of personal growth and maturation. This was about an issue that was critically important to the county,’ Dodd said in an interview with The Associated Press. ‘It was a major effort that failed. There were a lot of reasons that it failed, not the least of which it was mismanaged terribly at the time.’”
OBAMA: The Obamas appear to be taking a bit more control of their campaign. Longtime friend, Valerie Jarrett, "the finance chair of Obama's 2004 Senate bid, will advise Obama on campaign strategy and possibly travel with him, campaign manager David Plouffe said in an interview Thursday. Plouffe said Jarrett's new role does not indicate a shake-up and instead was part of ‘all hands on deck time’ as the Illinois senator comes into the final stretch. Pete Rouse, the chief of staff of Obama's Senate office, also has been spending more time advising at the Chicago campaign headquarters."
There are have been whispers among some Obama folks -- read: people who can't be described as "close" advisers, but aren't simply "supporters" -- for weeks that the candidate hasn't been happy with the apparent stalling of his spring momentum. Will Jarrett start playing the role of bad cop with the other chief Obama advisers? This isn’t a shakeup like Team Edwards went through earlier this year (remember Joe Trippi wasn't on board at the start of the year). But make no mistake, this is an attempt by Obama to send a mild jolt to his campaign team.
The Chicago Tribune: “‘We are widening the circle and bringing all hands on deck as we come into the final months,' one Obama aide said.”
During a speech yesterday in Atlanta -- with an introduction from singer Usher -- Obama tied his position on the Jena Six controversy to the Scooter Libby commutation, NBC’s Abby Livingston notes. "People are coming out in part because they just, they want to move on from what they have seen over the last several years. And that's before you even start talking about Scooter. You remember Scooter Libby? My colleague Dick Durbin pointed out that 'Even Paris Hilton got some jail time, but not Scooter Libby.' And on this day when we are outraged over the disparities of treatment in the criminal justice system, at a time when in Jena we are puzzled by how it is that a schoolyard fight gets charged with attempted murder, we wonder how it is that Scooter Libby doesn't get any jail time. And you've got young men in a fight, getting charged with attempted murder.”
Obama later elaborated, "It's not to excuse that young men are in a fight or that they assaulted another young man. We understand that violence is not the answer to any problem. What people are asking for is simply that the system of justice is fair. That it's even handed. That it applies to everybody equally. "
Still, the absence of Barack Obama was noted at the rally for six black students convicted in Jena, LA yesterday. Jesse Jackson said that Obama and the other Democratic candidates had lost the opportunity to win black votes at Jena, while many black protestors also said that being there would have helped Obama capture the black vote.
NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli reports that former JFK adviser Ted Sorensen hit the campaign trail for the first time as a surrogate for Obama, telling New Hampshire voters yesterday that the Illinois senator represents the Democrats’ best chance to change Washington. Speaking to a group of mostly senior citizens at a Concord retirement community, Sorensen said that the United States is in greater danger now than it was during the Cold War, and that “the 2008 election is the single most important vote you will ever cast.” Any of the Democrats would “be a vast improvement over what we have now,” he said, but that Obama was uniquely positioned to reverse the damage he said President Bush had done to the country’s reputation abroad. “If Obama becomes president of the United States, the rest of the world will know that we have changed,” Sorensen said.
