Apparently I only read the “highlights” stuff the other day and not the bulk of the story. It was really illuminating, and the first section in particular should dispel anybody’s notions that Obama is a lightweight and a political naif coasting around on promises of “hope” that even he hasn’t defined. Rahm Emanuel has accepted the chief of staff job and the Obama team is already trying to keep people from getting carried away with their partying and make expectations more realistic. He wants to make “Change” happen in a concrete way.
Dear Penthouse: It started out as a typical day on the campaign trail . . . .
I was wondering why they never went after that. Not even Limbaugh and Hannity seemed to spend much time on it, if any. There wasn’t a whole lot going on in the late '70s early '80s anyway when he was at the age most guys make that decision. No draft to dodge, no international situation that might compel a generation of young men to join up that he eschewed. Hannity’s roughly the same age as Obama so he couldn’t rag on Obama without casting the spotlight on himself and looking like a hypocrite. Not that that’s ever stopped him before. Pretty much an issue without much payoff ultimately I suppose. There, I answered my own question. 
Last night, I was watching something Tivo’d prior to the election, and saw a Jeremiah Wright anti-Obama commercial. But it was funded by the GOP Nat’l Committee, not by McCain, so it didn’t carry the “I approve this message” tag.
:rolleyes: So McCain may have scruples, but doesn’t mind being associated with people with fewer scruples.
But it seems that more dirt was flung at Obama during the primaries (Wright, the bogus Michelle “whitey” tape) than during the general. So Hillary may be more willing to get down in the dirt than McCain.
It is the final measure of Sarah Palin’s cluelessness that she thought she’d get to give a concession speech, too, and was miffed when the zookeepers wouldn’t let her. I don’t recall a veep candidate ever being part of the concession speech.
As W.C. Fields would have said, “Go away, little girl, you bother me.”
I remember Edwards introducing Kerry at Faneuil Hall in 2004, so there’s that. Here’s what he said. Gore spoke alone in his concession, I think. But this probably does indicate the McCain camp’s irritation with her, and perhaps also a memory of what Edwards did in 2004 and 2005: he soon went on what Kerry aides called a “don’t blame me tour” of his home state.
I just wasted several work hours reading parts 1 through 4. I’m unsure of the veracity of the story, but it’s downright fascinating. Presuming it’s mostly true, I have some respect for McCain as a person again, but I am so very glad he did not become president-elect. He let himself be directed by his advisors even when he didn’t like the way the campaign was going, so he rebelled against it causing a confusion of messages. Admirable, but it shows that he wasn’t really in charge and didn’t really have a plan other than ‘become president’.
Obama, by contrast, kept a firm hand on his campaign and steered it where he wanted it to go. I’m really looking forward to the next four years.
What annoys me the most about that/those stories is that Todd was right there. In most households, if the wife is in the shower, the husband tells the callers she’ll be right there, sits them down, and offers them some coffee.
Pure class, through and through. :rolleyes:
I always pegged him as somebody who could turn the air bright blue in private, but with too much class and self-discipline to swear in public.
Come on. :rolleyes:
Most politicians interviewed on the topic and former campaign managers from both parties have said that something like this would be very uncommon. Campaigns do not typically finance their candidates wardrobes. However, most candidates are very wealthy already, have been in either Washington or State legislatures for a long time and live in much more cosmopolitan cities. So, personally I don’t find the RNC funding her and her family’s wardrobe problematic. Alaskan fashion almost certainly won’t fly on the national stage, but spending over $150,000 for a 3 day convention is so far and beyond reasonable that the criticism and anger is justifiable. Even Cindy McCain’s pricey wardrobe wouldn’t have cost that much, and Palin simply had to look professional, not ready for the Oscars’ red carpet.
Wh…
Why…?
-FrL-
I should read those sometime.
-FrL-
Those chapters did confirm something I’ve thought about on and off for months but never found the right discussion to post in: Obama’s race obviously presented challenges for his candidacy, but in some ways it also made it more difficult more his opponents to go after him. There were attacks that had racial tinges, which was wrong, but there were also cases where they got self-conscious because they didn’t want to step on a landmine. It’s nobody’s fault and it doesn’t mean he got a free pass at all, but aside from a couple of Doper Republicans I don’t know if anybody ever acknowledged that Obama’s race had that kind of effect on his opponents.
Because they’re elitists? 
Part of the disturbing trend to apply technical computer jargon to everything. Merely adding more and more unnecessary terms to the lexicon of corporate bullshit language.
For the Obama campaign.
We’d ask voters for their names as they came in. If they asked why we were asking, we told them it was so we could take them off the list so the GOTV people wouldn’t continue calling them. If they didn’t want to give us their name, we’d just shrug and tell them the poll workers were down the hall, and they’d vote in there.
I have an excuse…I work in a technical computer environment. For everyone else, though, it’s bullshit.
I saw no F-bomb in your post, thus I have no reason to believe you.
We don’t agree on much, so I want to say how thoroughly I agree with you about this!
Means the database hadn’t caught up with you yet.
On Election Day I did some phonebanking at my town’s Dem GQ in Massachusetts. We were calling numbers in Virginia in the late morning. We had one sheet with two scripts: One to leave a message if we got an answering machine, giving our name, that we were calling for Obama’s Campaign for Change, a reminder that it was Election day, poll times, and the specific location where they could vote. The other, longer script was for reaching live voters, in order to find out whether they’d voted and to encourage them to if they hadn’t yet.
The other sheet we had was a printout of voters that previous canvassing had indicated as likely Obama voters, sorted by telephone number, and giving name (or names if there were more than one Obama-likely at that number), address, and polling location (“blank-blank school” or “bup-bup community center” for example, including street address). We had little check boxes to indicate whether they’d voted, were planning to, or didn’t intend to. We had other little boxes to indicate left message, no answer, or other responses.
Our office’s coordinator was doing data entry, sending the results we recorded on each sheet back to some central operation. Later in the day we’d be receiving updated sheets, with the already voted cleaned out and only the yet-to-votes on the list, for another round of GOTV calls. Those results would be sent back to central, generating another round of revised call sheets for a still-later GOTV push.