Tag: Barack Obama

Grown-ups on the stage

Tonight’s debate is remarkably civil and substantive. CNN’s Bill Schneider, who’s live-blogging it, calls it a “grown-up debate,” especially compared to the Republicans last night. He’s right. But doesn’t Obama, who’s behind in the polls in many states, need to throw a haymaker?

My guess is that Obama, not having any particularly good choices (check out these poll numbers), has decided that he has to hope voters are looking for a reason to vote against Clinton — and that, by coming off as presidential, he’ll give it to them.

The one-on-one format gives this an entirely different feel — it’s actually approaching a conversation about policy rather than a mindless recitation of soundbites. So far, no sign of Borat.

It looks like they’re going to close with Iraq. Obama just criticized “the mindset that got us into Iraq in the first place,” so we could get some heat.

The Clintons’ Kazakhstan problem

The New York Times fronts an absolutely brutal story today about Bill Clinton’s dubious dealings on behalf of a Canadian mining mogul.

According to the article, by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., the mogul, Frank Giustra, unexpectedly won a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan after Clinton flew to that country with him in 2005 and schmoozed the human-rights-abusing dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra then turned around and donated $31 million to Clinton’s charitable foundation, with a pledge to give $100 million more.

There’s also an account of Bill Clinton’s and Giustra’s somehow not able to remember meeting with the head of Kazakhstan’s state-controlled uranium agency, Kazatomprom, at the Clintons’ home, in Chappaqua, N.Y., until confronted with evidence. Here’s a lowlight:

“You are correct that I asked the president to meet with the head of Kazatomprom,” Mr. Giustra said. “Mr. Dzhakishev [the head of the uranium agency] asked me in February 2007 to set up a meeting with former President Clinton to discuss the future of the nuclear energy industry.” Mr. Giustra said the meeting “escaped my memory until you raised it.”

That’s perfectly understandable, of course. I mean, any of us could forget about meeting with a former U.S. president and the guy who was about to make us many millions of dollars richer, right? Admit it: You probably can’t remember what you had for breakfast this morning.

The story raises the question of how happy Hillary Clinton is with this, as she has been an outspoken critic of Nazarbayev. But she certainly can’t distance herself from her husband’s shenanigans given that she’s ultimately responsible for unleashing him to attack Barack Obama during the past few weeks. It is the Clintons who’ve created the impression that they’re running for co-president, so his baggage is now hers as well. (Not that it ever wasn’t.)

But there’s an additional point of interest here, and that involves timing. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate story, and the Times deserves a lot of credit for ferreting it out. Tonight we’ll see the most crucial debate of the campaign, as Clinton and Obama go at it one-on-one on CNN at 8 p.m. I suspect that this story will be a big part of the debate. And from there, it could dominate coverage right through Super Tuesday.

As we know, the Times has already endorsed Hillary Clinton. Today’s story may have far more of an effect on the outcome. Whether by accident or design, the news side has sent a clear message that it’s more relevant and more important than the paper’s opinionmongers.

Break glass in case of emergency

File this away. The Globe’s Alex Beam has a terrific column on Barack Obama’s minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who’s “controversial” for reasons that are not entirely clear. If Obama keeps doing well, Wright will no doubt be depicted as a cross between Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Not that I like Wright’s views regarding Israel. But, as Beam notes, they are no different from those of some mainline Protestant denominations.

Speaking of Farrakhan: John Doherty offers some information I wish I’d known and that I wish Beam had told us.

The Kennedys and the Clintons

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would base his or her vote on what a Kennedy says. (Especially this one!) Still, it’s pretty interesting that both Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama on the same weekend.

Caroline Kennedy’s choice, which she reveals in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, is all the more impressive because she submitted it before last night’s South Carolina blowout. For all she knew, her op-ed was going to appear on a very good day for Hillary Clinton — that is, the day after a narrow loss in South Carolina and bulging leads in most other states. Whatever the opposite is of inevitable, that’s how Obama was starting to look, and Kennedy endorsed him anyway. As it turns out, she looks prescient.

As for Ted Kennedy, I have to assume his endorsement has been in the works for some time, and that he’s been waiting for the moment when it would have maximum effect. With Super Tuesday coming up on Feb. 5, and with Massachusetts being a part of it, now’s the time. I’m surprised by Kennedy’s choice. The Clintons have always been wildly popular here, and Kennedy seemed to have enjoyed a good relationship with them. Did something happen? Or does he simply find Obama too impressive not to support?

With Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick also supporting Obama, that’s the trifecta for the state’s top three elected officials. House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s endorsement of Clinton isn’t looking all that significant right now.

Predictions, always futile, have been especially so this year. But I can confidently predict this: The next few days are going to be the roughest of Clinton’s campaign, regardless of whether she has a happy Super Tuesday or not.

Photo (cc) by toastiest. Some rights reserved.

More Clinton-bashing on MSNBC

As Hillary Clinton was about to begin her speech, Joe Scarborough and Margaret Carlson started tut-tutting that Clinton would not congratulate Barack Obama for his victory, that the Clintons somehow don’t play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, they were really getting into it, all venomous smiles.

Naturally, one of the first things Clinton did was congratulate Obama.

Obama’s best speech yet?

As we all know, he always gives a great speech. But it strikes me that, tonight, he’s being unusually effective in putting some flesh on the bones of his “change” message. No, he’s not being much more specific than usual. But he’s at least making a thematic case that old-fashioned partisanship is holding back progress on issues from health care to the high cost of a college education.

Yet another big surprise

On CNN, Carl Bernstein just supplied the story line for at least the next few days: “Bill Clinton is a huge loser in this.” Wow. Barack Obama, 54 percent; Hillary Clinton, 27 percent. The Clinton camp was reportedly prepared to declare moral victory if they could find a way to lose by less than 10 percent percentage points [Thanks, Mike_B1]. Instead, Obama beat her by two to one.

Could you imagine what people would be saying if the polls in South Carolina had been this wrong in Clinton’s favor? And will someone (i.e., Obama) finally get some momentum out of a primary victory during this weird election year?

An ugly Democratic split

My former Boston Phoenix colleague Al Giordano, on leave from the Narco News Bulletin, has been blogging the presidential campaign this winter. He’s got a particularly detailed and perceptive post on the Nevada Democratic caucuses, in which he offers some thoughts — backed up by first-hand reporting — on the increasingly ugly split between pro-Obama African-Americans and pro-Clinton Latinos. Giordano writes:

Now, I’m a connoisseur of ugliness in all its forms, I find it mostly entertaining, but the part of yesterday’s caucus that was so ugly as to be distressing was to see the Hispanic and black communities so polarized: The Clinton caucusers were predominantly Hispanic-American and the Obama caucusers were predominantly African-American — most on both sides were women — and they shouted and taunted each other with boos, cat-calls, hisses, thumbs down, and at one point one man on the Obama side began chanting, “I did not have sex with that woman!”

He concludes: “Frankly, unless events conspire during this 2008 Democratic primary process to reverse those truly ugly developments, any Democrat that thinks that November is already won is a fool that is not to be taken seriously from here on out.” (Thanks to Media Nation reader C.M.)

Last word on the Bradley effect?

If you haven’t read John Judis’ analysis at The New Republic yet, you should. Judis has looked at the numbers from New Hampshire and found that 57 percent of those voting in the Democratic primary were women — substantially more than the 53 percent that had been predicted. Change that assumption, and you’d have had poll numbers within the margin of error. Quod erat demonstrandum.