I've volunteered to be a Neighborhood Leader for the Campaign for Change, which means I'm responsible for canvassing a few precincts for both voter registration and GOTV. I've organized a registration drive for this Saturday afternoon and well... I'm not getting too many volunteers, which is disappointing to say the least since I've invited all of the precinct's Obama and Clinton delegates and alternates. I'm looking for 12 volunteers, and have gotten one response so far.
What a coincidence! On the exact same day that John McCain tries his hardest to immolate his own campaign with his monster-gaffe about not even knowing how many houses he owns, the campaign reports that one of their offices has been targeted by a terrorist.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's 2004 all over again. Terror alerts, and all.
Wasn’t Obama’s VP choice supposed to be announced on Wednesday or this morning at the latest? To take advantage of the news cycle and so as not get lost in the weekend news which no one apparently pays any attention to.
So what happened? What might have happened? Here’s what I think—and hope:
Most people knew this was going to be a tough fight. So why, at the first sign of vulnerability for the Obama campaign, is everybody crying out for Hillary?
My oh my, how quickly things can change. From the handwringing of yesterday to the buttkicking of today. It started with the news that he couldn't keep track of how many homes he owns:
While viewed as one of the foundational works of military strategy, it would be a mistake to view it purely as a military work. The Art of War has immense value in any competitive faceoff. Especially politics.
Given John McCain's performance at Annapolis, I would be surprised if Walnuts remembered two words from the Art of War. But I have no doubt that Obama's quite familiar with it... especially this line:
If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him.
Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
Chesapeake, Virginia. They are outside of Obama's rally talking to the people in line and some of his campaign workers. News Channel 3 covers ALL of HamptonRoads, including Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk...........including parts of North Carolina.
McCain surrogates are pointing the elitist finger back at Obama
"But, but, Obama has a big house, and he made $4 million last year!"
(Is that figure accurate? I'm sure Obama did make a big haul off books last year, but is $4 million accurate?)
Regardless, Obama should not be playing "regular guy". He should show that he is aware of his own success to be part of his message. Something like this:
I'm a US Senator. We make $170,000 a year. That alone means that I am--like Senator McCain--making more money than 90% of Americans.
But, I have also written some books, and those books have made me a good bit of money the past few years. Especially last year, we did very, very well. Heck, I made $4 million! That's 10 times[?] as much money as I ever made in one year before that! FOUR MILLION DOLLARS!
But, here's the thing. According to John McCain, all that money I made last year off my books--DOESN'T MAKE ME RICH! I guess I haven't taken time to get used to the idea that, in spite of all those book sales, there are still a lot of people out there who can afford to buy a bigger boat than I can, or who can afford to OWN MORE HOUSES THAN ME. And here I though we were doing pretty well
This is the words of Reporter Dexter Filkins from today's article, the paragraph continuing as follows:
The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now: violence, measured in the number of attacks against Americans and Iraqis each week, has dropped by 80 percent in the country since early 2007, according to figures the general provided. Civilian deaths, which peaked at more than 100 a day in late 2006, have also plunged. Car and suicide bombings, which stoked sectarian violence, have fallen from a total of 130 in March 2007 to fewer than 40 last month. In July, fewer Americans were killed in Iraq — 13 — than in any month since the war began.
UPDATED: Good Lord, a diarist doesn't have time to hit the restroom before being flamed over the title. I guess I see the point about it being my prediction not inside info, but if you read the first line of the diary, I thought I made it pretty clear this was just my prediction.
------------------
How do I know this? I don't. I have no inside information whatsoever. But it makes a lot of sense.
Just for fun, let's go through the process.
Obama is sending out his VP pick via text message. This is a big move, and it ensures that his supporters will hear the news unfiltered, and before the news media gets it. (Of course many of them have registered and will hear about it at the same time.)
You remember how McCain was saying that all of his questioning of Obama's motives in ending the Iraq war wasn't questioning his patriotism, but instead his JUDGMENT? Well Obama saw through that BS. Sounds to me like Obama's gloves have also come off on Iraq. First Obama called him the liar that he is.
On Thursday, Obama took umbrage with this interpretation of events. "I expect [John McCain] to show me the same courtesy that I showed him," said the presumptive Democratic nominee. "Then yesterday he tried to say he wasn't challenging my patriotism, he was challenging my judgment. What does it say when you say someone would rather lose a war than lose an election? Of course he was challenging my patriotism."
The Obama campaign has (rightly) spent all day making McCain look like a (rich, elitist) fool for not knowing how many houses he (his wife?) owns. This is obviously a great line of attack because it counter's McCain's claims that Obama is an elitist and that McSame is a regular guy. But there's another angle here!
Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere; I scanned the recent diary list and the front page but didn't see anything about it. According to Le Monde (linked article is in French; I haven't yet seen it on an English-language site), the secretary of state, on a surprise visit to Iraq, announced that negotiators were "very close" to a SOFA deal that, according to an anonymous military source, might be announced tomorrow. According to the same anonymous source, the agreement calls for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq beginning in June 2009.
Summary: So let's see...in Bill O'Reilly's new column, we've got vampire-analogies, the Rightwing "moral equivalency" complaint showing up again, an attack on "a far-left commentator working for NBC News", and something about someone or some group being symbolic "of appeasement and anti-American attitudes".
The fact that John McCain dispatched his paid consultant to launch this despicable ad from a so-called ‘independent’ committee shows how desperate he is to change the subject from his shocking disconnect with the economic struggles of the American people. He knows that Barack Obama has denounced the detestable crimes that Bill Ayers committed forty years ago.
Instead of invoking Paris, Britney and obscure sixties radicals, Senator McCain should take the day off at one of his seven homes to consider whether his support for outsourcing, tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas and continued spending of ten billion a month in Iraq is really putting ‘country first.’ To us, it sounds like just more of the same.
