Obama: 'Most liberal?'
Posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:27 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
2008, Obama
The NYT looks at the National Journal rating of Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate and the fallout it could cause. "In many ways, the Obama campaign is challenging the fundamental political premise that has prevailed in Washington for more than a generation: that any majority coalition must be carefully centrist, if not center-right. Bill Clinton ran in 1992 as a candidate willing to break with liberal orthodoxy on many issues, including crime and welfare, and eager to move the party -- which had lost five of the six previous presidential elections -- to the middle. Mr. Clinton’s New Democrats assumed a certain level of conservatism among voters.
Mr. Obama and his allies are basing his campaign on a different bet: that the right-leaning political landscape Mr. Clinton confronted has changed. Several major Democratic strategists, and outside analysts as well, argue that the country has shifted to the left because of the Iraq war, the economy and seven-plus years of President Bush, and that it has become open to a new progressive majority."
McClatchy does a fact-check of sorts on Obama's senate record vs. his presidential rhetoric. "Obama says if he were president, he'd take politically courageous stands while forging the consensus needed to enact universal healthcare, immigration revisions, global warming legislation and a withdrawal from Iraq. His three-year record in the Senate, however, offers little evidence that he can do what he's promising. His party was in the minority for his first two years, and in the third he began campaigning for president and missed lots of time on Capitol Hill. He was absent from or only partly involved in some key bipartisan efforts to head off stalemates on judicial nominations, immigration and Iraq war policy."
In an interview with Carroll County, Iowa, columnist Doug Burns of the Iowa Independent, ex-Iowa Dem Chair/Obama Iowa co-chair Gordon Fischer says his hit on Pres. Clinton on the blue dress comment was wrong. "It was stupid, idiotic," Fischer said. "I deserve all the venom."
“In a phone interview, Fischer explained that anger with what he believed to be President Clinton's challenge to Obama's patriotism motivated the post on his blog and a challenging if not hostile comment on Facebook. The swirl of media attention has so far centered on the post on Fisher's personal blog in which he references Monica Lewinsky's infamous blue dress.
More Fischer: “He has removed the controversial post from his personal blog, iowatrueblue.com, but the Facebook comment is alive and readable. When asked if the "you are now on notice" line was a warning shot before the blog post or a threat of some other action, Fischer, a Des Moines employment lawyer who chaired the IDP from 2002 to 2004, said it was meant in a more general sense for both Obama and Clinton supporters whom he believes are engaging in damaging internacine warfare. ‘The feeling I had was that some folks in both camps need to rein in the excesses,’ Fischer said. ‘I myself need to be reined in.’”
“The Obama campaign has sought to downplay Fischer's role with the Illinois senator, which nearly three months after the Iowa caucuses isn't that high-level now. But in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses the Obama campaign played up the Fischer endorsement, suggesting that it carried significant weight in what was then a three-candidate toss up between Obama, Hillary Clinton and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. Tonight, Fischer said he was never a co-chairman for Obama in Iowa, but rather a ‘volunteer’ -- and now a very ‘humble’ one.”
Obama plans to be on “The View” Friday. “Gabbing with Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd is one way for Obama to make inroads with female voters,” the AP writes. “His rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has held the edge with women, capturing 51 percent of the female vote to 45 percent for Obama, according to exit polls for The Associated Press of the competitive Democratic primaries.”
The AP went to the Virgin Islands to check in on Obama’s family vacation. A little paparazzi-like… “Obama was keeping such a low profile that his presidential campaign would not say where he is staying. Local officials also were mum. An official at Government House in the capital, Charlotte Amalie, would only confirm that Obama was in St. Thomas, the most populated of the islands. Tourists said they saw him relaxing on the beach Sunday at a resort hotel there.”
A little politics… “Last month, the territory gave him three delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination. Rival Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win a delegate at the caucuses. Six superdelegates will go to the August national convention; four back Clinton and two favor Obama.”
