Geraldine Ferraro's Big Mouth

Old time feminist are having a hard time with Obama. I really don't believe they are racist, but I think they view politics and conflicts through a prism of sexism. It distorts everything for them.

Her argument is wrong for a number of reasons:

1) Every candidate is who they are in part due to what they are
2) You could fairly say Hillary is where she is due in a large part to her marriage (which in part is due to being a woman).
3) Her statement gives Obama no credit for who he is. Apparently he has done nothing for the past few months but people are voting for him anyways.
4) Hillary's failure to win the nomination at this point is apparently not due to anything she has done or how she has managed her campaign.

I have more reasons to disagree with her, but you get the point. It is sad.

Obama as a blank slate

What Obama just ran into yesterday was the reaction to being a "blank slate".

People have been defining Obama as what they want. He admits that people put their hopes and dreams onto him since they just assumed he believed what they believed. He hadn't defined himself clearly enough. That worked to build his campaign.

So still being a relative unknown to many voters, this go around Clinton was able to start to define him negatively.

Clinton was able to get into voters heads that Obama may not be what they hoped.

If you start having doubts about an unknown, it is hard to vote for him.

Was it dirty? Might it hurt the Democratic Party this November? Yes to both questions, but it saved Clinton's campaign.

Obama can comeback from this easily enough. He has to start defining himself to voters and he will have to answer the charges. So that means he will have to find forums that allow him to explain his relationship to Rezko and the house/land deal. He will need to keep renouncing and denouncing Farrakhan. He will need to show his knowledge of foreign affairs. He will have to keep stressing judgement versus experience.

It will be interesting to see if Clinton stays negative or decides to change direction for a while at least. I think she would be foolish to not go negative again if she needs to.

And only be doing a better job of defining himself can Obama blunt that attack.

Little Boy Bush

I did listen to the President's press conference this morning.

When I hear the President talking, I can't help but get this mental picture of a 7 year old boy just getting off the school bus and eagerly telling me what he just learned in school. The 7 yr old wants show you how smart he is by explaining his new info to you. You have to be careful how you ask any question since he will only know what he was just taught, and you don't want to bust his bubble of excitement.

Another way to describe it would be "a mile wide, but an inch deep" but I think "a mile" is overestimating it.

I do think that no matter which major candidate running actually wins this November, we will be getting a leader who will actually understand the issues at hand. That's going to be a big upgrade.

She must know better

I can't figure out how Clinton could attack Obama for plagiarism and then take a riff from Edwards.

I would think if you examined the words of any politician, you'll be able to find passages from their speeches that are very similar to someone else's. That's a given.

And Obama borrowed from a friend who happens to be one of his campaign's co-chairs, so it just is not a big deal. They're friends. They have each borrowed phrases and phrasing from each other, so who cares.

The attack on Obama did not resonant with the voters at all, so Clinton should have just dropped it. But she went after him again during the debate.

That would have been viewed as just a waste of time, but then she ends the debate with her big emotional close that gets the audience going and the pundits praising, but she took it from Edwards. What do they say about people in glass houses?

I don't think her lifting a line from Edwards is a big deal at all, and I don't think anyone else would have cared either, except she made it a big deal.

Not landing the punch

I've noticed that every time Obama is attacked, he finds a way to turn that attack around. The Clintons' attacks that Obama's stance on Iraq was a fairytale or that he brings false hope have been co-opted by Obama. Now he uses those charges in his speeches for major applause.

For the last couple of days, Bill and Hillary are using the line that the Democrats need to nominate a candidate with solutions, not speeches. They've been repeating this basic concept enough to try and magnify a real issue in some people's mind.

I will bet you that we will soon find this "solutions, not speeches" idea coming back at the Clintons with a vengeance. Obama knows how to use a line like that.

And the funny thing is, almost all the time the candidates speak, they could be accused of giving us speeches, not solutions. Unless they want the crowd to fall asleep, no one gives a speech filled with policy details.

Obama's just so much better at giving a speech than any of the candidates this primary season, his opponents just have to try and turn his strength against him.

Watching Clinton stumbling around trying to land a punch in this campaign, I feel like I'm watching Sonny Liston versus Muhammad Ali (okay, I know he was Cassius Clay at the time).

Value of endorsements

I heard that John Glenn endorsed Hillary Clinton, and I realized that I didn't care. It didn't have an impact one way or another on me. I like John Glenn. He is a true American hero several times over, but I believe that endorsements just don't seem to help Clinton as much as they do Obama.

Now, I don't think most voters tie their voting decisions to one person's endorsement, no matter how high profile. But Obama is still such an unknown to most voters that an endorsement gives voters more confidence that there is something really there.

Obama gets people's attention. He is such a gifted speaker, and his post-racial, post-partisan message is exciting, but some voters doubt what he can really do if elected. He doesn't have a track record of actual accomplishment, so an endorsement can add some substance to the concept that is Obama.

We know who Clinton is or who McCain is, so an endorsement from some pillar of their party just doesn't carry that much weight. I guess you can view their need for gathering endorsements as a rearguard action.

Hillary needs Glenn's endorsement so Barack doesn't get it, but that is about it.