Posted on 11.06.08 by dancurry @ 8:30 pm
When the history of this campaign is written, it should include a massive mistake by the Hillary Clinton team that probably cost her the presidency: Her negative research team failed to find the Rev. Jeremiah Wright tape.
ABC News was first to air the infamous tape of parts of Wright’s sermons on March 12—after the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses and several other key contests. By then, Barack Obama had a strong hold on the nomination. Once the tape aired, Obama’s poll numbers dropped and he struggled the rest of the primary season, barely limping home the nominee.
Had the Clinton team found the tape and dropped it at a strategic point during those early contests, Obama would have been toast. There’s really not much question of this.
The haunting part of this from the Clinton perspective is that the sermon tapes were available online and at Wright’s church. A basic job of negative research would have found them.
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
In the negative research business, this is malpractice. The Obama campaign also screwed up by not finding the tape in advance and removing it from the church and internet.
This was the unpublicized turning point of the campaign.
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2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Illinois, journalism, liberals
Filed under: Hillary and JFKvs.Dems and Mainstream media and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 11.05.08 by dancurry @ 10:26 pm
John Ruberry found this passage about Rahm Emanuel, President-Elect Barack Obama’s rumored choice as chief of staff. This is bi-partisanship we can believe in.
That night, on the northwest side, Rahm Emanuel was elected to Congress. A former Clinton whiz kid who’d gotten his start as a fundraiser for Mayor Richard M. Daley, Emanuel was connected — in the three years after leaving the White House (where he’d helped push through NAFTA), he earned $16 million putting together Wall Street mergers. He was also zealously partisan. He had once owned a consulting business devoted to finding skeletons in Republican closets. At a Clinton victory dinner in Little Rock in 1992, Emanuel celebrated by reciting a hoped-for necrology of Democrats who had “f*cked” the president-elect. After every name, he stabbed a steak knife into a table and screamed, “Dead man!”
Who will be his press secretary, Keith Olbermann?
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2008 election, Barack Obama, journalism, Keith Olbermann, liberals
Filed under: Hillary and Mainstream media and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 08.27.08 by dancurry @ 2:18 pm
Here’s what a prominent liberal blogger thinks of the Democratic convention so far.
The first two days of the convention were wasted, or seemed so from my vantage point. Tonight, Joe Biden will rip into McCain. And tomorrow, Obama will do whatever he does. Then on Friday, at noon, John McCain will announce his vice presidential nominee, strangling any convention bounce in the crib. Then the Republican Convention will begin, and you can be assured that they will remember Barack Obama’s name. They will remember how to make fun of him, how to mock his celebrity and inexperience. And the media will not cover Ron Paul’s protesters with the vigor or attention they gave to Hillary Clinton’s diehards. Instead, they will cover four days of straight attacks on Barack Obama, culminating with a grave address about sacrifice and service from John McCain. And unless Obama’s convention makes a sharp turn tonight and tomorrow, they will have done nothing to soften the impact of these attacks and themes or create a counternarrative for the media to cover.
Probably should have thought of that before nominating the most liberal and inexperienced major party candidate in U.S. history.
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2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, liberals
Filed under: Hillary and JFKvs.Dems and Mainstream media and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 08.23.08 by dancurry @ 7:13 pm
Closest primary race in history and Barack Obama treated the second place finisher like a discarded one-night stand. His first great test of leadership: flunked.
A top Clinton advisor also told CNN they were “outraged,” over how the process was conducted.
“You can’t put [Obama VP vetters] Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy on an hour plane ride to Chappaqua just to check the box? They should have done it just for the optics,” this person said. “Barack never even said to her, ‘Here’s how I envision the job’– not one discussion with her about [the position].”
“They thought her supporters were mad before? They are really mad now,” this person also said. We knew it was never going to happen but you would have thought they might at least make a show of it.”
Former Clinton strategist Paul Begala echoed similar frustrations on CNN Friday night.
“I think there are a lot of Hillary voters who are going to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, man You said you were going to put her on the short list. You know, you didn’t even vet her. You didn’t call her. You didn’t seek her advice,’” Begala said. “By the way, he didn’t seek President Clinton’s advice either. He’s actually the guy who I think picked the best vice president in American history. You would think maybe you would sort of check in with him.”
The convention looms. Obama’s “bounce” might just come from his own party.
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2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, liberals
Filed under: Hillary and JFKvs.Dems and Mainstream media and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 04.17.08 by dancurry @ 8:41 pm
We’ve said here for months that the MSM was vastly overrating the Democratic field for president. In terms of qualifications, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton always ranked fourth and fifth behind John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.
Now that the MSM is finally asking Obama a few pointed questions, his glaring weaknesses in the fall are becoming apparent. He’s a far left liberal who is smart but intellectually lazy. His positions are a hodgepodge of illogicisms stitched together with only one theme: opposition to President Bush.
He complained about the questioning last night, saying it was trivial.
“Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care. Forty-five minutes before we heard about Iraq,” he continued. “Forty-five - 45 - minutes before we heard about jobs. Forty-five minutes before we heard about gas prices.”
However, when the discussion turned to substance, Obama did just as poorly as he did on the “trivia.” His position on taxes is bizarre. One second he says he won’t raise taxes on anyone with income under $250,000 and in the next breath he says he wants to raise capital gains taxes, which affect millions under the $250K threshold. Does he think we won’t catch that whopper?
Gas prices? Barack is for investigating the oil companies for collusion, imposing a large windfall profits tax and investing more money for research. Boy, there are some original ideas. These same hackneyed bromides are trotted out every four years by Democrats. They represent politics, not an understanding of economics. Gas prices are high because of supply and demand. Impose higher taxes on the oil companies and they will do less research, not more.
Obama is not change. Obama is a disaster in the making for Democrats. He could lose big in November.
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Filed under: Hillary and JFKvs.Dems and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 04.03.08 by dancurry @ 6:51 pm
As I noted more than a year ago, when the ultraliberal magazine Rolling Stone says Barack Obama has “radical roots,” that’s quite a statement. Since the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, magazine editors decided to give Barack an in-kind gift by replacing the title with a more benign one.
Beyond the Wright matter, it is becoming increasingly apparent that if Democrats nominate Obama, they will be selecting a far left ideologue who masks his views with a disarming presentation.
Astute Illinois conservative blogger Tom Roeser sums it up well.
But lurking outside the ivy halls is the reality that the “National Journal†marked Obama the most liberal senator of all…that he favors higher income taxes, higher Social Security taxes and higher corporate taxes. That he supports enormous hikes in domestic spending, far greater regulation by government of the economy: which remains for the public to be told…a massive increase of government control over health care. Strong opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement: in fact he is a protectionist.
He stands supportive of infanticide by having killed the “Born Alive†bill in the Illinois legislature, meaning that a baby born alive from a botched abortion has to struggle and suffer without care because Obama fears that to render mercy to the baby would endanger abortion rights. He is just about the only U.S. Senator to take that stand because a similar bill passed with the support of Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein before Obama came to the Senate after having killed a version in Springfield.
He opposed the Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion. He wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. In his home state he supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He supports giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. He voted to deny legal immunity to telecom companies that have cooperated with the government in warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists. He wants habeas corpus rights to detained suspected terrorists and security risks at Guantanamo. He wants a full-scale withdrawal from Iraq. He has vowed in his first presidential year to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea with no preconditions.
Seemingly everything he does stamps him as a far-left-wing radical. His insensitivity, his alienation from traditional moral values is exhibited in his ultra-crass secularistic statement the other day. He was referring to his daughters when he casually said in Johnstown, Pennsylvania: .
“If people make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.â€
Punished with a baby. This is a very-very cold, uncompassionate and unfeeling young man whose inner-self is masked by a politician’s duplicity. All by himself, he has built the record and has woven the skein that will likely strangle his campaign. You don’t read about this in Carol Marin…the hard-bitten Mother Superior of Feminism, do you? You bet not.
The truth is starting to emerge. The MSM-created “dream field” was always inflated beyond belief. A fairy tale, really.
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2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, liberals
Filed under: Hillary and JFKvs.Dems and Mainstream media and National politics and Obama
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Posted on 03.04.08 by dancurry @ 11:00 pm
In his losing speech tonight, Barack Obama spoke outside against a cinderblock background. Not a good choice. Looked like he was speaking inside a penal institution. That’s the kind of mistake a big money campaign should never make.
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2008 election, Barack Obama
Filed under: Hillary and National politics and Obama
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Reverse Spin allows a former newspaper reporter, editor, government spokesman and long ago JFK Democrat turned Republican strategist to explain the weird and twisted things that are written and said every day...in Illinois...and across the country. Dan Curry can be reached at danieldcurry at gmail dot com. The opinions expressed here are correct and not always those of clients of my public affairs consulting company, Curry Public Strategies, Inc. |
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