By Dick Morris - Real Clear Politics - July 30, 2008
If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest. Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain and a disinclination to support Obama.
According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama's 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary.
The problem is that older women don't like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in their 40s feel the same way, and only 52 percent of those over 50 see him favorably.
For a Democrat to be losing among women over 40 is without precedent in the past 20 years.
In fact, the gap between male and female voting preference in this election is far lower than it normally is. Among people under 40, men back Obama by eight points and women support him by 13. Among those in their 40s, men back McCain by 11 points and women support him by four. And for those over 50, men vote for the Republican by a nine-point margin while women prefer him by three points.
Usually, the gender gap runs at least 10 points in each age group and, more usually, averages a 15-point differential. The lower gap in this race does not indicate any special popularity for McCain or negatives on Obama among men. Men are voting the way they usually do. It's women who are making the big difference and keeping this race tied.
Part of the problem may stem from Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary drew her strongest support from older women who still remembered the sexism of their youth and their struggles to pierce the glass ceiling. For younger women, sexism has much less personal relevance and they were less drawn to her candidacy.
But a bigger problem may be a cultural alienation older white women feel toward Obama. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright may linger as a worry in their increasingly gray heads as they contemplate an Obama presidency. This fear of the unknown and the gap they seem to feel with Obama is so strong that it is overcoming their normal proclivity to back Democrats.
Of course, McCain is a uniquely attractive candidate to the Democratic and independent base. Long regarded as a maverick Republican, he attracts these swing voters and is ideally positioned to exploit the estrangement between older women and Barack Obama.
Would choosing Hillary as a running mate assuage the concerns of older white women? It might.
They could get enthusiastic, one would think, about seeing a woman sitting a few feet away from the president in the Oval Office (again!).
But Hillary would bring with her a different set of problems. Her candidacy would invite scrutiny of Bill's financial dealings, most recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal's coverage of the incredible corruption of his buddy the president of Kazakhstan.
The problem is Obama. And it can only be solved by Obama, not by his running mate. For his part, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.
The current favorite, Mitt Romney, does him no earthly good with these folks, and his Mormonism is likely to be a big turnoff. But McCain could choose Condi Rice or any number of other Republican women (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator) and attract these dissident women.
Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of “Outrage.”
To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.
Read more in REAL CLEAR POLITICS
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Contentious Conventions Sometimes Give Us the Strongest Presidents
Cllick on Image to enlarge.
Advertisment ran in the Congressional Quarterly Daily July 17th, 2008 targeting Hill Democrats and other major DC players.
Read more on the Denver Group website.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Many political scientists contend that, with exceptions in Virginia and Florida, the Democrats' deficit in the South is too big for Obama to overcome
By Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta - Washington Post Staff Writers - Monday, July 28, 2008
MACON, Ga. -- Amanda Bass, a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, had already tried once to get Wilmer Gray to register to vote. But when she glimpsed him in a black T-shirt and White Sox cap again on a recent weekday at the main bus stop here, she was determined to give it another try.
This time, Gray, 21, agreed -- but his bus pulled up before he could fill out the form. Bass jumped onboard and persuaded the driver to wait.
"He was someone I'd worked hard to get," said Bass, 19. "I couldn't let him go, not after seeing how far he'd come."
At the heart of the Obama campaign's strategy is a national effort to increase registration and turnout among the millions of Democratic-inclined Americans who have not been voting, particularly younger people and African Americans. The push began during the primaries but expanded this month to a nationwide registration drive led by 3,000 volunteers dispatched around the country.
Gaining greater African American support could well put Obama over the top in states where Democrats have come close in the past two elections, and could also help him retain the big swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
If 95 percent of black voters support Obama in November, in line with a recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, he can win Florida if he increases black turnout by 23 percent over 2004, assuming he performs at the same levels that Democratic candidate John F. Kerry did with other voters that year.
Obama can win Nevada if he increases black turnout by 8 percent. Ohio was so close in 2004 that if Obama wins 95 percent of the black vote, more than Kerry did, he will win the state without a single extra voter. But an increase in overall black turnout could help offset a poorer performance among other voters.
The push has also raised Democrats' hopes of reclaiming Southern states with large black populations, such as Georgia and North Carolina, where low turnout among voters of all races has left much more untapped potential than in traditionally competitive states such as Ohio. Obama, who himself led a huge voter-registration drive in Chicago in 1992, has said he could compete in states such as Mississippi by increasing black turnout by 30 percent.
A Post analysis suggests it will take more than that to win across the South. If Obama matches Kerry's performance among white voters and increases Democrats' share of black voters to 95 percent, he will still need to increase black turnout in Georgia by 64 percent and in Mississippi by 51 percent to win. Virginia and North Carolina would be in closer reach, requiring increases of 30 and 36 percent, respectively.
The drive is unprecedented in scale and exemplifies Obama's call for government that works "from the bottom up." But as Bass's efforts in Georgia show, the undertaking is laden with challenges, raising questions about the kind of return the campaign will get on its big investment of manpower.
Black turnout overall does not lag behind the national average by much, and Obama's rise already inspired many blacks to get involved for the first time during the primaries.
That means that in seeking to further drive up black turnout, the campaign is in many places reaching out to a disconnected segment of the population that long ago gave up hope in politics.
For many of these disengaged people, racial solidarity with Obama does not automatically trump apathy or despair. Even if volunteers manage to get them registered, it will require intensive follow-up to make sure they know where to vote, have the necessary identification and then turn out. So as Bass, a black Amherst College sophomore from the Chicago suburbs, worked in 93-degree heat to canvass the bus stop in Macon -- which sits in front of a defunct railroad station that still has the words "Colored Waiting Room" etched above an archway -- she had to deploy a full range of tools. She linked the election to local issues such as rising bus fares. She chatted up people even after they said no, hoping to establish a connection for later. She deftly turned the flirtations of young men back to the task at hand.
Latasha Edwards, 20, a college student in lime flip-flops, flatly said that her vote would not make a difference. "There are a million other people on Earth," she said.
But Bass won her over by stressing an inequity in Macon that she said Obama will address: the gap in quality between public schools and the private schools where many white families send their children.
Lorrie Miller, 25, a mother of four who works in the mailroom of the local newspaper, was mostly uninformed about voting, saying she had last voted in the seventh grade, confusing a mock election held in school with the real thing.
Several others averted Bass's gaze, gave her a cold stare when she approached or signaled with a curt "I can't vote" that they are felons, who under Georgia law are not allowed to cast ballots. Bass reminded them that they can register after they finish probation.
She asked Dontrell Rozier, 20, who signed up the week before, how his efforts to register his friends were going. Not well. "Most of my people believe their votes don't count," he said, citing the 2000 election recount in Florida.
Bass's last sign-up of the afternoon was Anthony Harris, 40, a beer deliveryman who said he has never voted because "I'm a religious type. My god can make a positive change for mankind, but I've never seen a politician make a positive change. There's still starvation; there's still war." It took five minutes before he relented.
In three hours, Bass collected 20 registrations -- a good haul. After a month, she and two other volunteers have collected more than 700.
In the area around Macon, an estimated 40,000 African Americans are eligible to vote but are not on the rolls, out of about 600,000 black people in the state who are eligible but unregistered. The campaign's goal is to sign up at least 4,000 in Macon.
With months to go before the Oct. 6 registration deadline, there was an increase of 367 black registered voters in Macon's congressional district in June, compared with 24 white voters. Statewide, the rate of registered African American voters is 28.1 percent, up from 27.2 percent in January.
Bass is aware of the hurdles ahead in turning the registrations into votes, though the campaign has signed up 300 Macon volunteers to assist with that. "It's a monumental challenge," she said. "You see how mentally shackled and jaded people are, because they've seen politicians let them down in the past."
Many political scientists contend that, with exceptions in Virginia and Florida, the Democrats' deficit in the South is too big for Obama to overcome even with a huge increase in black turnout, unless he can also improve on the performance of past Democrats among white Southerners. While Obama is likely to do well among younger whites, they say, the prospect of a surge in black turnout may stoke higher turnout among whites for Sen. John McCain, his Republican rival.
MACON, Ga. -- Amanda Bass, a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, had already tried once to get Wilmer Gray to register to vote. But when she glimpsed him in a black T-shirt and White Sox cap again on a recent weekday at the main bus stop here, she was determined to give it another try.
This time, Gray, 21, agreed -- but his bus pulled up before he could fill out the form. Bass jumped onboard and persuaded the driver to wait.
"He was someone I'd worked hard to get," said Bass, 19. "I couldn't let him go, not after seeing how far he'd come."
At the heart of the Obama campaign's strategy is a national effort to increase registration and turnout among the millions of Democratic-inclined Americans who have not been voting, particularly younger people and African Americans. The push began during the primaries but expanded this month to a nationwide registration drive led by 3,000 volunteers dispatched around the country.
Gaining greater African American support could well put Obama over the top in states where Democrats have come close in the past two elections, and could also help him retain the big swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
If 95 percent of black voters support Obama in November, in line with a recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, he can win Florida if he increases black turnout by 23 percent over 2004, assuming he performs at the same levels that Democratic candidate John F. Kerry did with other voters that year.
Obama can win Nevada if he increases black turnout by 8 percent. Ohio was so close in 2004 that if Obama wins 95 percent of the black vote, more than Kerry did, he will win the state without a single extra voter. But an increase in overall black turnout could help offset a poorer performance among other voters.
The push has also raised Democrats' hopes of reclaiming Southern states with large black populations, such as Georgia and North Carolina, where low turnout among voters of all races has left much more untapped potential than in traditionally competitive states such as Ohio. Obama, who himself led a huge voter-registration drive in Chicago in 1992, has said he could compete in states such as Mississippi by increasing black turnout by 30 percent.
A Post analysis suggests it will take more than that to win across the South. If Obama matches Kerry's performance among white voters and increases Democrats' share of black voters to 95 percent, he will still need to increase black turnout in Georgia by 64 percent and in Mississippi by 51 percent to win. Virginia and North Carolina would be in closer reach, requiring increases of 30 and 36 percent, respectively.
The drive is unprecedented in scale and exemplifies Obama's call for government that works "from the bottom up." But as Bass's efforts in Georgia show, the undertaking is laden with challenges, raising questions about the kind of return the campaign will get on its big investment of manpower.
Black turnout overall does not lag behind the national average by much, and Obama's rise already inspired many blacks to get involved for the first time during the primaries.
That means that in seeking to further drive up black turnout, the campaign is in many places reaching out to a disconnected segment of the population that long ago gave up hope in politics.
For many of these disengaged people, racial solidarity with Obama does not automatically trump apathy or despair. Even if volunteers manage to get them registered, it will require intensive follow-up to make sure they know where to vote, have the necessary identification and then turn out. So as Bass, a black Amherst College sophomore from the Chicago suburbs, worked in 93-degree heat to canvass the bus stop in Macon -- which sits in front of a defunct railroad station that still has the words "Colored Waiting Room" etched above an archway -- she had to deploy a full range of tools. She linked the election to local issues such as rising bus fares. She chatted up people even after they said no, hoping to establish a connection for later. She deftly turned the flirtations of young men back to the task at hand.
Latasha Edwards, 20, a college student in lime flip-flops, flatly said that her vote would not make a difference. "There are a million other people on Earth," she said.
But Bass won her over by stressing an inequity in Macon that she said Obama will address: the gap in quality between public schools and the private schools where many white families send their children.
Lorrie Miller, 25, a mother of four who works in the mailroom of the local newspaper, was mostly uninformed about voting, saying she had last voted in the seventh grade, confusing a mock election held in school with the real thing.
Several others averted Bass's gaze, gave her a cold stare when she approached or signaled with a curt "I can't vote" that they are felons, who under Georgia law are not allowed to cast ballots. Bass reminded them that they can register after they finish probation.
She asked Dontrell Rozier, 20, who signed up the week before, how his efforts to register his friends were going. Not well. "Most of my people believe their votes don't count," he said, citing the 2000 election recount in Florida.
Bass's last sign-up of the afternoon was Anthony Harris, 40, a beer deliveryman who said he has never voted because "I'm a religious type. My god can make a positive change for mankind, but I've never seen a politician make a positive change. There's still starvation; there's still war." It took five minutes before he relented.
In three hours, Bass collected 20 registrations -- a good haul. After a month, she and two other volunteers have collected more than 700.
In the area around Macon, an estimated 40,000 African Americans are eligible to vote but are not on the rolls, out of about 600,000 black people in the state who are eligible but unregistered. The campaign's goal is to sign up at least 4,000 in Macon.
With months to go before the Oct. 6 registration deadline, there was an increase of 367 black registered voters in Macon's congressional district in June, compared with 24 white voters. Statewide, the rate of registered African American voters is 28.1 percent, up from 27.2 percent in January.
Bass is aware of the hurdles ahead in turning the registrations into votes, though the campaign has signed up 300 Macon volunteers to assist with that. "It's a monumental challenge," she said. "You see how mentally shackled and jaded people are, because they've seen politicians let them down in the past."
Many political scientists contend that, with exceptions in Virginia and Florida, the Democrats' deficit in the South is too big for Obama to overcome even with a huge increase in black turnout, unless he can also improve on the performance of past Democrats among white Southerners. While Obama is likely to do well among younger whites, they say, the prospect of a surge in black turnout may stoke higher turnout among whites for Sen. John McCain, his Republican rival.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
On the Money Trail, Twice the Challenge
By Anne E. Kornblut and Matthew Mosk - Washington Post Staff Writers - Sunday, July 27, 2008
Most of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign advisers have returned to their old lives, taken extended vacations or moved on to something new. But not Jonathan Mantz.
COUNTDOWN: A Time to Gain, a Time to Lose
Mantz is still Clinton's national finance director, a once-illustrious job that now carries the responsibility for a grab bag of thankless chores. He must help retire $25 million in campaign debt, and is piecing together a schedule of fundraising events -- no picnic in the best of times -- for a candidate who has lost but who needs new donors because so many of her earlier contributors gave the legal limit.
And he is in charge of persuading cranky Clinton donors, many of them still bitter about the way she lost, to open their checkbooks for Sen. Barack Obama, while he endures the doubts of Obama supporters suspicious of how much Clinton is doing for herself rather than for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Mantz's agenda is in some ways a reflection of the challenges Clinton faces as she eases back into the public eye and prepares for her next chapter. Moving on is not possible with a debt to pay off and a sensitive merger between her fundraising operation and Obama's incomplete.
Clinton raised $500,000 for Obama over the course of two days in mid-July, and she has held about a dozen conference calls, with as many as 4,000 people listening in at a given time as she urged them to write checks to Obama. And aides said Clinton is putting together an aggressive fundraising schedule, to be ramped up this fall, as she travels for her own coffer and on behalf of congressional candidates and Obama.
Top Clinton supporters have formed new alliances to help the Obama campaign: The group Lawyers for Hillary, which raised $2 million for Clinton during the primaries and advised her campaign on legal issues, has recast itself as the Obama Lawyers Unity Fund, with nearly 75 members helping Obama raise money. (The group is working with, but distinct from, the Lawyers for Obama committee, which has been part of the Obama organization from the start).
On Wednesday night, two prominent Clinton supporters in Florida held a fundraiser for Obama featuring his wife, Michelle, that raised between $500,000 and $600,0000, aides said.
All together, Mantz said, Clinton has raised an unspecified but large amount -- "I would think it's several million already, and millions to go," he said -- and his counterpart, Obama finance director Julianna Smoot, agreed.
"She's been great," Smoot said in an interview, listing the joint events in which Clinton has participated.
An analysis by The Washington Post found that more than 2,200 Clinton donors became first-time Obama donors in June, giving him $1.8 million of the $52 million he raised last month. Of those, 355 contributed at least $2,000, for a total of $1 million. That leaves a long way to go for Clinton and her contributors to be considered a prime source of cash, but it represents what Obama advisers believe is the beginning of a real rapprochement.
Though a few election cycles have passed since former rivals had to help each other in this way, there are historical examples of the kind of partnership Clinton and Obama are trying to develop: Former president Jimmy Carter and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy helped each other retire debt after the 1980 presidential race, as did Sens. Gary Hart and Walter F. Mondale after the 1984 contest.
This year, the level of cooperation between the two campaigns' donors has varied, in part based on geography. In such places as New England, Georgia and Florida, top fundraisers for Clinton and Obama had relationships that predated the campaign, and they reported finding it relatively easy to unite after the primary race.
The Florida event with Michelle Obama on Wednesday night was an example of comity: held at the South Beach home of Abigail and F.J. Pollack -- who were once top-dollar bundlers for Clinton, with Abigail Pollack estimated to have raised more than $1 million for Clinton during the primaries -- the party pulled in more than Clinton herself did during her stops in New York earlier in the month.
Beforehand, Chris Korge, a national finance chairman for Clinton, and others held a $100-per-person event for Obama that was aimed at women and was modeled on the women's events Clinton's campaign held. About 900 people attended, raising another $100,000 for Obama.
"We have a track record together," Korge said of working with Obama's people, whom he has known for years. Still, he said: "A lot of our donors, we have a long way to go with them. They really need Hillary to come in here." Clinton, he said, "has been pushing for more" fundraising for Obama and is expected to return to Florida in August.
In New York and California, though, tensions have simmered longer. One top California finance consultant described hearing from a number of major Clinton donors who were upset that they had not received phone calls from the Obama campaign.
An Obama fundraiser on the East Coast said he had faced strong resistance from top contributors when it came to giving money to Clinton, in part because of an erroneous belief that the money would go into Clinton's own pockets (Clinton has said she is working to retire the $13 million or so that she owes vendors, rather than the remaining $12 million or so she lent herself).
Robert Zimmerman, a longtime Clinton supporter in New York, said the mutual suspiciousness has diminished in recent weeks, in part because Obama has shown interest in helping Clinton.
"He's stepped up his calls and his outreach," Zimmerman said. Referring to Obama's finance chairwoman, he added: "Barack Obama, Penny Pritzker and his campaign have made a very personal effort to bring in the Clinton campaign. And frankly, it has come quicker than in past Democratic campaigns."
Read more in the Washington Post
Most of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign advisers have returned to their old lives, taken extended vacations or moved on to something new. But not Jonathan Mantz.
COUNTDOWN: A Time to Gain, a Time to Lose
Mantz is still Clinton's national finance director, a once-illustrious job that now carries the responsibility for a grab bag of thankless chores. He must help retire $25 million in campaign debt, and is piecing together a schedule of fundraising events -- no picnic in the best of times -- for a candidate who has lost but who needs new donors because so many of her earlier contributors gave the legal limit.
And he is in charge of persuading cranky Clinton donors, many of them still bitter about the way she lost, to open their checkbooks for Sen. Barack Obama, while he endures the doubts of Obama supporters suspicious of how much Clinton is doing for herself rather than for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Mantz's agenda is in some ways a reflection of the challenges Clinton faces as she eases back into the public eye and prepares for her next chapter. Moving on is not possible with a debt to pay off and a sensitive merger between her fundraising operation and Obama's incomplete.
Clinton raised $500,000 for Obama over the course of two days in mid-July, and she has held about a dozen conference calls, with as many as 4,000 people listening in at a given time as she urged them to write checks to Obama. And aides said Clinton is putting together an aggressive fundraising schedule, to be ramped up this fall, as she travels for her own coffer and on behalf of congressional candidates and Obama.
Top Clinton supporters have formed new alliances to help the Obama campaign: The group Lawyers for Hillary, which raised $2 million for Clinton during the primaries and advised her campaign on legal issues, has recast itself as the Obama Lawyers Unity Fund, with nearly 75 members helping Obama raise money. (The group is working with, but distinct from, the Lawyers for Obama committee, which has been part of the Obama organization from the start).
On Wednesday night, two prominent Clinton supporters in Florida held a fundraiser for Obama featuring his wife, Michelle, that raised between $500,000 and $600,0000, aides said.
All together, Mantz said, Clinton has raised an unspecified but large amount -- "I would think it's several million already, and millions to go," he said -- and his counterpart, Obama finance director Julianna Smoot, agreed.
"She's been great," Smoot said in an interview, listing the joint events in which Clinton has participated.
An analysis by The Washington Post found that more than 2,200 Clinton donors became first-time Obama donors in June, giving him $1.8 million of the $52 million he raised last month. Of those, 355 contributed at least $2,000, for a total of $1 million. That leaves a long way to go for Clinton and her contributors to be considered a prime source of cash, but it represents what Obama advisers believe is the beginning of a real rapprochement.
Though a few election cycles have passed since former rivals had to help each other in this way, there are historical examples of the kind of partnership Clinton and Obama are trying to develop: Former president Jimmy Carter and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy helped each other retire debt after the 1980 presidential race, as did Sens. Gary Hart and Walter F. Mondale after the 1984 contest.
This year, the level of cooperation between the two campaigns' donors has varied, in part based on geography. In such places as New England, Georgia and Florida, top fundraisers for Clinton and Obama had relationships that predated the campaign, and they reported finding it relatively easy to unite after the primary race.
The Florida event with Michelle Obama on Wednesday night was an example of comity: held at the South Beach home of Abigail and F.J. Pollack -- who were once top-dollar bundlers for Clinton, with Abigail Pollack estimated to have raised more than $1 million for Clinton during the primaries -- the party pulled in more than Clinton herself did during her stops in New York earlier in the month.
Beforehand, Chris Korge, a national finance chairman for Clinton, and others held a $100-per-person event for Obama that was aimed at women and was modeled on the women's events Clinton's campaign held. About 900 people attended, raising another $100,000 for Obama.
"We have a track record together," Korge said of working with Obama's people, whom he has known for years. Still, he said: "A lot of our donors, we have a long way to go with them. They really need Hillary to come in here." Clinton, he said, "has been pushing for more" fundraising for Obama and is expected to return to Florida in August.
In New York and California, though, tensions have simmered longer. One top California finance consultant described hearing from a number of major Clinton donors who were upset that they had not received phone calls from the Obama campaign.
An Obama fundraiser on the East Coast said he had faced strong resistance from top contributors when it came to giving money to Clinton, in part because of an erroneous belief that the money would go into Clinton's own pockets (Clinton has said she is working to retire the $13 million or so that she owes vendors, rather than the remaining $12 million or so she lent herself).
Robert Zimmerman, a longtime Clinton supporter in New York, said the mutual suspiciousness has diminished in recent weeks, in part because Obama has shown interest in helping Clinton.
"He's stepped up his calls and his outreach," Zimmerman said. Referring to Obama's finance chairwoman, he added: "Barack Obama, Penny Pritzker and his campaign have made a very personal effort to bring in the Clinton campaign. And frankly, it has come quicker than in past Democratic campaigns."
Read more in the Washington Post
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Obama reneages on raising money for Texas Democrats
Time may keep Obama from honoring pledge
By GROMER JEFFERS JR. - The Dallas Morning News - Saturday, July 19, 2008
Long before he clinched the presidential nomination, Barack Obama promised Texas Democrats that he would return to help them raise money for state and local races.
That, state party officials say privately, meant appearing at at least one fundraiser in Texas.
Mr. Obama will be in Houston for a July 31 fundraiser, his campaign told The Dallas Morning News on Friday. But it's for his national campaign, not the Texas party.
Dallas Democrats are also expecting Mr. Obama to make a visit here, perhaps on the same date or in early August.
Texas Democrats have been long annoyed by national party leaders who turn the state into a giant ATM, taking money to campaign elsewhere while leaving local candidates to scrap for the remaining resources.
Mr. Obama campaigned in Texas before the March 4 primary and attended a fundraiser for the state party in February. He's already promised to send staffers to Texas and help down-ballot candidates get elected. But he hasn't said when he'll return to raise money.
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, Mr. Obama's point-man in Texas, said he was aware of the agreement but didn't know how it would be honored.
Mr. Kirk said the realities of running for president have trumped all other endeavors.
"Our first priority is making sure he has the resources for his campaign," Mr. Kirk said.
Read more in the Dallas Morning News
By GROMER JEFFERS JR. - The Dallas Morning News - Saturday, July 19, 2008
Long before he clinched the presidential nomination, Barack Obama promised Texas Democrats that he would return to help them raise money for state and local races.
That, state party officials say privately, meant appearing at at least one fundraiser in Texas.
Mr. Obama will be in Houston for a July 31 fundraiser, his campaign told The Dallas Morning News on Friday. But it's for his national campaign, not the Texas party.
Dallas Democrats are also expecting Mr. Obama to make a visit here, perhaps on the same date or in early August.
Texas Democrats have been long annoyed by national party leaders who turn the state into a giant ATM, taking money to campaign elsewhere while leaving local candidates to scrap for the remaining resources.
Mr. Obama campaigned in Texas before the March 4 primary and attended a fundraiser for the state party in February. He's already promised to send staffers to Texas and help down-ballot candidates get elected. But he hasn't said when he'll return to raise money.
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, Mr. Obama's point-man in Texas, said he was aware of the agreement but didn't know how it would be honored.
Mr. Kirk said the realities of running for president have trumped all other endeavors.
"Our first priority is making sure he has the resources for his campaign," Mr. Kirk said.
Read more in the Dallas Morning News
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Poll Finds Obama’s Run Isn’t Closing Divide on Race
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE - The New York Times - July 16, 2008
Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama’s candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.
After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans’ perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.
Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.
The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics — Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years.
Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called “How Race Is Lived in America.”
As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.
Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)
And when asked whether blacks or whites had a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society, 64 percent of black respondents said that whites did. That figure was slightly higher even than the 57 percent of blacks who said so in a 2000 poll by The Times. And the number of blacks who described racial conditions as generally bad in this survey was almost identical to poll responses in 2000 and 1990.
“Basically it’s the same old problem, the desire for power,” Macie Mitchell, a Pennsylvania Democrat from Erie County, who is black, said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “People get so obsessed with power and don’t want to share it. There are people who are not used to blacks being on top.”
White perceptions, by contrast, improved markedly from 1990 to 2000, but have remained steady since. This month’s poll found that 55 percent of whites said race relations were good, almost double the figure for blacks.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted July 7-14 with 1,796 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. In an effort to measure views of different races, the survey included larger-than-usual minority samples — 297 blacks and 246 Hispanics — with a margin of sampling error of six percentage points for each subgroup.
Black and white Americans agree that America is ready to elect a black president, but disagree on almost every other question about race in the poll.
Black voters were far more likely than whites to say that Mr. Obama cares about the needs and problems of people like them, and more likely to describe him as patriotic. Whites were more likely than blacks to say that Mr. Obama says what he thinks people want to hear, rather than what he truly believes. And about half of black voters said race relations would improve in an Obama administration, compared with 29 percent of whites.
About 40 percent of blacks said that Mr. McCain, if elected president, would favor whites over blacks should he win the election.
There was even racial dissension over Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle: She was viewed favorably by 58 percent of black voters, compared with 24 percent of white voters
Among black voters, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, Mr. Obama draws support from 89 percent, compared with 2 percent for Mr. McCain. Among whites, Mr. Obama has 37 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for Mr. McCain.
After a Democratic primary season in which Mr. Obama had difficulty competing for Hispanic votes against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain among Hispanic voters in the likely general election matchup by 62 to 23 percent. Mr. Obama is viewed favorably by more than half of Hispanic Americans, compared with Mr. McCain, whose favorability rating is just under one-quarter. By significant margins, these voters believe that Mr. Obama will do a better job of dealing with immigration; Mr. McCain has been trying to distance himself from Republicans who have advocated a tough policy on permitting illegal immigrants to stay in the country.
Over all, Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain among all registered voters by 45 percent to 39 percent.
White voters, much more so than black voters, are divided in their political loyalties. Mr. Obama draws significant support among white Democrats. Yet still, among just Democrats, blacks were more apt than whites in the poll to express positive views of Mr. Obama across a range of questions. For example, black Democrats were 24 points more likely than white Democrats to have a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama.
“I don’t like some of his policies, like on energy,” said Bob Beidelman, 69, a white Democrat from York, Pa., about Mr. Obama. “Also I don’t like statements his wife made. She seems like a spoiled brat to me.”
He added: “I’m one of those white people who clings to guns and the Bible, and those things that Barack said kind of turned me off,” he said. “This isn’t a black and white thing. If a conservative African-American like former Congressman J. C. Watts was running, I’d have bumper stickers plastered all over my car supporting him.”
The survey found extensive excitement among African-Americans about the prospect of Mr. Obama’s candidacy, a factor that could prove important in pushing voter turnout. The poll found that 72 percent of black voters said they expected Mr. Obama to win.
The high levels of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama among black Americans suggested that there was less of a divide among them about his candidacy than suggested by occasional tension among black leaders. Last week, Mr. Obama was criticized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as “talking down to black people” by going before black audiences and urging parents to take more responsibility for their children.
“He’s got all these enthusiastic young people working for him,” said James Wilson, 75, a property manager from Philadelphia who is black. “I’m a person who would never give money and they called on the phone and got me to give.”
The poll found that Mr. McCain is yoked to the legacy of President Bush — majorities believe that Mr. McCain, as president, would continue Mr. Bush’s policies in Iraq and on the economy. Mr. Bush’s approval rating on the economy is as low as it has been in his presidency, 20 percent; and even while there has been an increase in the number of Americans who think the war is going well, there has been no change in the significantly large number of people who think it was a mistake to have invaded.
Kevin Sack, Dalia Sussman and Marina Stefan contributed reporting.
Read more in The New York Times
Americans are sharply divided by race heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Senator Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The results of the poll, conducted against the backdrop of a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggested that Mr. Obama’s candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.
After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics is partisan. But Americans’ perceptions of the fall presidential election between Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also underlined the racial discord that the poll found. More than 80 percent of black voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama; about 30 percent of white voters said they had a favorable opinion of him.
Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said race relations were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Four in 10 blacks say that there has been no progress in recent years in eliminating racial discrimination; fewer than 2 in 10 whites say the same thing. And about one-quarter of white respondents said they thought that too much had been made of racial barriers facing black people, while one-half of black respondents said not enough had been made of racial impediments faced by blacks.
The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics — Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years.
Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called “How Race Is Lived in America.”
As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.
Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)
And when asked whether blacks or whites had a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society, 64 percent of black respondents said that whites did. That figure was slightly higher even than the 57 percent of blacks who said so in a 2000 poll by The Times. And the number of blacks who described racial conditions as generally bad in this survey was almost identical to poll responses in 2000 and 1990.
“Basically it’s the same old problem, the desire for power,” Macie Mitchell, a Pennsylvania Democrat from Erie County, who is black, said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “People get so obsessed with power and don’t want to share it. There are people who are not used to blacks being on top.”
White perceptions, by contrast, improved markedly from 1990 to 2000, but have remained steady since. This month’s poll found that 55 percent of whites said race relations were good, almost double the figure for blacks.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted July 7-14 with 1,796 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. In an effort to measure views of different races, the survey included larger-than-usual minority samples — 297 blacks and 246 Hispanics — with a margin of sampling error of six percentage points for each subgroup.
Black and white Americans agree that America is ready to elect a black president, but disagree on almost every other question about race in the poll.
Black voters were far more likely than whites to say that Mr. Obama cares about the needs and problems of people like them, and more likely to describe him as patriotic. Whites were more likely than blacks to say that Mr. Obama says what he thinks people want to hear, rather than what he truly believes. And about half of black voters said race relations would improve in an Obama administration, compared with 29 percent of whites.
About 40 percent of blacks said that Mr. McCain, if elected president, would favor whites over blacks should he win the election.
There was even racial dissension over Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle: She was viewed favorably by 58 percent of black voters, compared with 24 percent of white voters
Among black voters, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, Mr. Obama draws support from 89 percent, compared with 2 percent for Mr. McCain. Among whites, Mr. Obama has 37 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for Mr. McCain.
After a Democratic primary season in which Mr. Obama had difficulty competing for Hispanic votes against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain among Hispanic voters in the likely general election matchup by 62 to 23 percent. Mr. Obama is viewed favorably by more than half of Hispanic Americans, compared with Mr. McCain, whose favorability rating is just under one-quarter. By significant margins, these voters believe that Mr. Obama will do a better job of dealing with immigration; Mr. McCain has been trying to distance himself from Republicans who have advocated a tough policy on permitting illegal immigrants to stay in the country.
Over all, Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain among all registered voters by 45 percent to 39 percent.
White voters, much more so than black voters, are divided in their political loyalties. Mr. Obama draws significant support among white Democrats. Yet still, among just Democrats, blacks were more apt than whites in the poll to express positive views of Mr. Obama across a range of questions. For example, black Democrats were 24 points more likely than white Democrats to have a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama.
“I don’t like some of his policies, like on energy,” said Bob Beidelman, 69, a white Democrat from York, Pa., about Mr. Obama. “Also I don’t like statements his wife made. She seems like a spoiled brat to me.”
He added: “I’m one of those white people who clings to guns and the Bible, and those things that Barack said kind of turned me off,” he said. “This isn’t a black and white thing. If a conservative African-American like former Congressman J. C. Watts was running, I’d have bumper stickers plastered all over my car supporting him.”
The survey found extensive excitement among African-Americans about the prospect of Mr. Obama’s candidacy, a factor that could prove important in pushing voter turnout. The poll found that 72 percent of black voters said they expected Mr. Obama to win.
The high levels of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama among black Americans suggested that there was less of a divide among them about his candidacy than suggested by occasional tension among black leaders. Last week, Mr. Obama was criticized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as “talking down to black people” by going before black audiences and urging parents to take more responsibility for their children.
“He’s got all these enthusiastic young people working for him,” said James Wilson, 75, a property manager from Philadelphia who is black. “I’m a person who would never give money and they called on the phone and got me to give.”
The poll found that Mr. McCain is yoked to the legacy of President Bush — majorities believe that Mr. McCain, as president, would continue Mr. Bush’s policies in Iraq and on the economy. Mr. Bush’s approval rating on the economy is as low as it has been in his presidency, 20 percent; and even while there has been an increase in the number of Americans who think the war is going well, there has been no change in the significantly large number of people who think it was a mistake to have invaded.
Kevin Sack, Dalia Sussman and Marina Stefan contributed reporting.
Read more in The New York Times
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Denver Group Speaking out for Democracy in the Democratic Party
Click on image to enlarge.
This is being posted here as a public service and is not paid political advertising. The ad has been placed by the Denver Group in the Chicago Tribune on July 11, 2008. For more information about the Denver Group.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Obama received rate discount in loan for Chicago mansion
By Boston Globe - July 2, 2008
WASHINGTON - Shortly after joining the US Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.
The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. "The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust," he said in a statement.
Modest adjustments in mortgage rates are common among financial institutions as they compete for business or develop relationships with wealthy families. But amid a national housing crisis, news of discounts offered to Senators Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, and Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, by another lender, Countrywide Financial, has increased scrutiny to the practice and has resulted in a preliminary Senate ethics committee inquiry into the Dodd and Conrad loans.
Within Obama's presidential campaign organization, former Fannie Mae chief executive James Johnson resigned abruptly as head of the vice presidential search committee after his favorable Countrywide loan became public.
Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts prohibited by law.
"The real question is: Were congressmen getting unique treatment that others weren't getting?" associate law professor Adam Levitin, a credit specialist at Georgetown University Law Center, said about the Countrywide loans. "Do they do business like that for people who are not congressmen? If they don't, that's a problem."
Under financial disclosure rules, members of Congress are not obliged to disclose debts owed to financial institutions for personal residences.
Last week, during debate on a bill to help homeowners caught in the foreclosure crisis, members of the Senate ethics committee proposed an amendment to require that lawmakers disclose their mortgage lenders and terms in financial forms starting next year.
Read more in the Boston Globe
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