I really don't understand these people. Leave aside TR's extensive and quite impressive background before winning the VP nomination and consider this: TR became president because McKinley was assassinated, and he used his time in office to push a radically progressive agenda. Is that really the comparison these people want to make?
At the same time... one of the major talking points tonight seems to be that it's impossible to know who is and is not prepared to be president in advance. But but but... I thought they were certain that Obama isn't prepared?
Given that this is the last day at the Pepsi Center... and given that I haven't actually spent all that much time in there... I've decided I'm going to head over early and sit through most (if not all ) of today's events. I fully expect most of the speakers will bore me to tears, but I've come this far, so I should at least once experience the whole thing, right?
If you want to follow along, see me on Twitter. I'm charging my iPhone now with the hope that it makes it through the night....
A blog-based update is probably in order today.....
The first 48 hours of the convention have been a whirlwind. After 2+ weeks in the mountains, I rolled into Denver Saturday night to begin preparing for the week. By Sunday afternoon, I had managed thru Don, one of my dad's good friends, to get my hands on 2 tickets to the invite-only DNC / Laurie David organized concert at Red Rocks. Now Sheryl Crow, Dave Matthews, and Sugarland are far from my normal choices in music, but you know what? I had a hell of a time anyway. Spencer Ackerman and I spent most of the night alternating between marveling at the beauty of the place (built during the Great Depression by FDR's WPA, of course) and marveling at the fact that life had brought us to the point where we were at this sort of event.
I spent most of Monday afternoon trying to work out credentials for both the Pepsi Center and a variety of panel discussions, and Monday evening wandering the halls of the Pepsi Center with Don. The guy knows everyone. I met Representative Neil Abercrombie from Hawaii, and then spent a few minutes in the Senate cloakroom (think VIP area for the Senators themselves) with Sen. Leahy. That of course led to another bout of "how did I get here?" followed by a quick trip out of the security perimeter to a bar to watch Michelle Obama's speech. Why not watch from inside? Because they give out way, way more credentials than they have seats, so unless you get there hours before the big events, you'll never find a place to sit. After the speech we headed to one of the nearly 400 parties that are happening each night. Ours was headlined by Robert Randolph and the Family Band, a blues rock group that just tore the place up. As I mentioned the next day to my wife (sadly she's not here with me - won't make that mistake again!) they singlehandedly restored my faith in live music.
Tuesday afternoon was spent at a Politico/Annenberg panel on politics and new media. As I twittered yesterday, I got some quotes from Karen Tumulty and Margaret Carlson that fit so perfectly into my dissertation work it is almost hard to believe - but more on that later. After that, my Pepsi Center experience featured a box just off to the side of the stage. Funny thing about skyboxes - you end up having so many people in them that you have to watch the speeches on TV! Now I suppose if I wanted to be a cynical blogger, I'd at this point have to say that proves how ridiculous the whole thing is, but... no. You watch the TV if you want to see the speaker, but turn around and you can watch the room react in real time to what is being said. And during Hillary's speech, you got the very distinct feeling that you were living through history. And after Pepsi? Don hooked me up with a ticket to the John Legend / Doug E Fresh show hosted by Harold Ford Jr. Which, of course, led to an enormous hangover this AM.
And tonight? I've got my credential in hand, so I'm heading over shortly to get a seat with a good view of the stage. Tonight is Biden and the Big Dog. Don't want to miss that, right?
And that's the short version of my first 48 hours. The pace of this thing doesn't really allow for longer posts filled with thoughtful analysis, so you'll have to wait until I get back to Boston for my general thoughts about the convention. I'll be honest - right now I'm having way too much fun to think all that through!
Three Clinton negotiators - all confidantes of the Senator and her husband - have been dispatched to Chicago to spearhead this effort, a source told The Huffington Post. Bob Barnett, a powerhouse Washington lawyer, Cheryl Mills, another lawyer, and Minyon Moore, a political consultant, were meeting today to discuss three key areas of negotiations: what role Hillary Clinton will play at the Democratic convention in August, the nature of her involvement in Obama's general election campaign, and the Obama campaign's plans to help alleviate her campaign debt, which is believed to be around $30 million.
Such plans seemed expected. What may be more interesting, the source adds, is the B-matter. For starters, the Obama campaign is pining to reap the benefits of Clinton's large-scale fundraising apparatus. A meeting, as reported by Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo, has been scheduled for this Thursday in Manhattan, with the New York Times estimating that some $50 million to $75 million could be on the table for Obama.
The big loot that remains to be raised by the Hillraisers, however, seems likely destined for the Democratic National Committee, whose coffers are in need of repletion. Individuals are allowed to donate $28,500 to the DNC - which is coordinating efforts with Obama - as opposed to $2,300 to the Obama campaign. Obama has begun organizing joint fundraising ventures on the party's behalf.
The most potentially sensitive matter in the negotiations may very well be about how to handle Clinton's high-profile political supporters. According to a source with knowledge of the Clinton campaign's machinations, there is concern among some members of Congress, particularly those in the Congressional Black Caucus, that Obama won't aggressively support their reelection efforts because of their alliances with Clinton. A few black House members fear primary challenges.
"These members are already facing some heat for backing [Clinton]," said a source close to the New York Democrat's campaign. "But that has been going on for a while. In some place in these negotiations between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, there will be a discussion of them providing not just economic help but moral support. That will be limited to the places where they have primaries."
"I'm sure," said the source, "that [Clinton] is saying, 'Please do what you can to make sure that the people supporting me aren't punished."
For those of you who haven't lived through a fierce primary battle like this before, this might help you understand why the Clinton's were so desperate to hang on until the end. Obama didn't just win the nomination. He wrested control of the party from the Clintons and everyone they counted on for support.
Insiders say control over the campaign resided with a small clique of loyalists close to Sen. Clinton but at odds with each other. Ultimately, however, she relied on an inner circle of two -- her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their longtime pollster, Mark Penn -- whose instincts often clashed with those of the campaign veterans around them.
As Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign took shape amid her easy Senate re-election race in 2006, she wanted Mr. Penn to serve as both chief strategist and sole pollster. Virtually no one else in the campaign did. Since his work on Mr. Clinton's 1996 re-election, current and former associates have criticized Mr. Penn as too data-driven, more comfortable with centrist general-election campaigns than Democratic primaries, socially awkward and not a strategic thinker.
For campaign manager, Sen. Clinton chose the more popular Patti Solis Doyle. No one doubted that Ms. Solis Doyle, hired 17 years ago as the future first lady's scheduler, spoke for the senator. Yet even friends say she had little to prepare her to lead what would become a $200 million presidential campaign with nearly 1,000 employees.
The clear front-runner for all of 2007, Sen. Clinton was shaken by her third-place finish in the first contest, Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses. Big donors demanded a management shake-up. The morning of the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8, she told Ms. Solis Doyle she wanted another manager.
Other staffers protested. The senator hesitated. Her headquarters was rattled for a crucial month up to the 20-plus Super Tuesday contests in early February. When she ousted Ms. Solis Doyle in mid-February, it was done so coldly and publicly that hardened colleagues say they were stunned. Ms. Solis Doyle -- who still has a Hillary Clinton sign in the yard of her Washington home -- and Sen. Clinton haven't spoken since, an associate said.
"I take my fair share of the responsibility for the mistakes that were made," Ms. Solis Doyle says now. But she said she got the campaign up to speed quickly, kept the trains running and the egos in check, and for a year fostered a fun yet disciplined atmosphere.
Colleagues told Sen. Clinton that Mr. Penn should have been fired instead. Insiders resented that the pollster-strategist remained CEO of public-relations giant Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, given the potential conflicts. Their fears were realized in April, when The Wall Street Journal reported he was helping a client, Colombia, win Congress's approval of a trade pact that Sen. Clinton opposed. Mr. Penn was replaced as head strategist by Geoff Garin, though he remains in frequent touch with both Clintons.
Critics' bigger complaint was that from the campaign's start Mr. Penn had been its only pollster. Other campaigns typically use many pollsters to provide alternative views; Sen. Obama has had up to four. Ms. Solis Doyle says that throughout 2006 and 2007, she urged Sen. Clinton to add more. Sen. Clinton told advisers Mr. Penn is "brilliant," and multiple pollsters would slow consensus on strategy.
But top aides chafed that Mr. Penn used his control of "the numbers" to win most disagreements. "He could go straight to the [former] president of the United States, who in turn got to Hillary," says a senior strategist. "After a while, people just shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Hey, look, this is how she wants her campaign run.'"
Mr. Penn defends his polling analyses, and counters that others were responsible for budgets and field operations. "The misleading thing here is, the title of chief strategist connotes that I was in charge of things," he said. "It was a much more complex structure than any title connotes." As for the core staff's divisions, he evoked Abraham Lincoln's contentious but largely successful cabinet. "I think she had in mind a 'team of rivals' idea, and it almost worked."
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified -- and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign now acknowledges privately:
3. She underestimated the caucus states
While Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses. She had a reason: the Clintons decided, says an adviser, that "caucus states were not really their thing." Her core supporters -- women, the elderly, those with blue-collar jobs -- were less likely to be able to commit an evening of the week, as the process requires. But it was a little like unilateral disarmament in states worth 12% of the pledged delegates. Indeed, it was in the caucus states that Obama piled up his lead among pledged delegates. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they -- bewilderingly -- seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."
What hasn't been emphasized enough, however, is that the election results are a resounding affirmation of the netroots critique of the Democratic consultant class. One of the basic netroots arguments is that the Democrats have been ill-served by a grossly overpaid, out of touch, incompetent, and pathologically risk averse consultant class. The Clinton campaign provides some powerfully persuasive evidence in support of this critique. Hillary started out with every advantage: money, name recognition, the overwhelming support of the Democratic establishment, and enormous leads in all the polls. Yet her advisers somehow managed to burn through all that political capital in record time.
At a time when polls show the public moving significantly leftward on most issues, and with record numbers of Americans disapproving of Bush and the war and saying the country is moving in the wrong direction, there has never been a better time to craft a "change" message. Yet the Hillary people stubbornly insisted on sticking to the "experience" meme. They smugly assumed Hillary would have the nomination wrapped up after Super Tuesday and failed to draft contingency plans. Their fundraising aggressively targeted big donors, yet they ran out of money. The campaign reportedly owes $10 million to Mark Penn, a man so stunningly ill-informed that, according to the Wall Street Journal piece and other sources, he didn't realize that California's delegates are awarded proportionally, not winner-take-all.
Barack Obama's team, however, worked smarter and harder. They spent their money on grassroots organizing instead of bloated consultants' fees, a strategy that paid off spectacularly for them. They thought ahead and planned ahead. They poured resources into every state, and refused to give up any of them as "lost." Their fundraising strategy focused on small donors and proved wildly successful. Most importantly, rather than timidly adopting a "me, too" message on Iraq, Obama strongly defended his anti-war position and aggressively punched back when Republicans accused him of being weak on national security. In short, Barack Obama ran his campaign in the manner the netroots had always urged Democrats to do, and he won, defying the pundits and the conventional wisdom at every turn.
Are there a lot of other things the campaign could have done differently? Of course. We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier, and we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates. From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.
While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.
Mark Penn is a moron who should never, ever be allowed to involve himself in Democratic Party politics again. Ever.
Clinton raised more money than any candidate in history during 2007, and yet thanks to Penn's campaign strategy, she had almost nothing left come 2008. Not only was Penn responsible for creating the losing strategy that misspent her money, he also personally claimed more than $10 million from the Clinton campaign during the campaign.
I realize that Penn has a great deal at stake personally in convincing people that the problem was the one thing he wasn't responsible for - fundraising - but even so... this is the best he can do? He was the campaign's chief strategist, for god's sake. Even if he wasn't responsible for raising the money, he sure as hell was the one who determined how it would be spent.
The fact that he doesn't realize that his defense is actually an indictment should tell you something about this man's cognitive abilities.
In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."
Taking a more positive approach, I've got two words for you: Supreme Court.
Here are the 9 Justices, ranked from oldest to youngest:
John Paul Stevens (88)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (75)
Antonin Scalia (72)
Anthony Kennedy (71)
Stephen Breyer (69)
David Souter (68)
Clarence Thomas (59)
Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (58)
John G. Roberts. (53)
Over the next 8 years, it's entirely possible that half of the Justices on the Court will be replaced.
I understand that anger and resentment can be powerful motivators, but...
UPDATE: Be sure to check out this story about the way McCain ended his first marriage, too.
It probably won't surprise anyone reading this to learn that I've spent most if not all of tonight reading and watching stories related to Obama's historic victory. But sometime in the last 15 minutes or so, I must have reached the end of the Internet, because there was literally nothing new left for me to read.
But rather than give up I decided to keep digging, this time into my own archives just to see what I might find. And here, from July 28, 2004, is what I wrote after watching Obama deliver his now famous address to the Democratic National Convention.
For months now I've been reading articles in political magazines and on web sites singing the praises of Barak Obama, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Illinois. From literally everything I've heard this guy is a political star in the making, so I was more than a bit curious to hear him give the coveted keynote address tonight.
So... having just watched it for a third time, I must say... If his speech tonight is any indication of who he is and what he's about, this man is going to some very, very big places. I know what I'm about to say is a bold claim to make after seeing just one speech (even if it was three times), but here goes. I think its quite possible that this man will be the first African American President of the United States.
Yes, I realize that's a bold prediction to make about someone I don't know much about, someone whom I've only seen give one speech, and someone who is only just beginning his national political career. It's crazy talk, I know. But this speech was... electrifying. And it wasn't just for its content or its delivery, although both were masterful. It was more than that. It was the force of the conviction behind the words. It was the strength of the belief behind the rhetoric. It was the man behind the message.
On the surface this nation is deeply divided. But underneath the red and the blue, the left and the right, he's right, we are the same. We all want to be inspired, to be united, to have the best parts of our nature called forth in common cause. Throughout our history, all of our greatest leaders - every single one of them - have been men who have done just that. In each, it was more than just the words they spoke, the phrases they turned. They had something extra, something more, something that made people believe, truly believe, that their vision of hope for the future not just could but would become a reality. Tonight, this man did just that....
Think I'm making too much of this? Watch the speech and tell he doesn't make you believe.
It doesn't surprise me to see that I made that prediction on that night, nor that I have been driving his bandwagon for this long. What I am thoroughly startled to discover, however, is that the ages of the bandwagon and of this blog are almost identical. Obama's speech and the prediction it inspired were delivered on my one-week blogiversary. Almost from the beginning, this really has been a pro-Obama blog.
