OBAMARAMA

Sen. Obama need not worry about being labeled a flip-flopper on the subject of the President’s Iraq war. He was opposed to the incursion from the beginning, when, as an Illinois state senator, he denounced the plan to invade Iraq as “a dumb war,” “a rash war,” and “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” He rightly called it “a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

And while the administration and much of the national media was highlighting the “imminent threat” Iraq posed to US security — pressuring the American people not to let “the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” — Sen. Obama had the conviction to say that while Saddam Hussein was “a brutal man…I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

Today, Sen. Obama has released a new statement reaffirming his position on the issue, sending an email (not yet available on his websites) titled “Escalation Is Not The Answer.” In it, he opposes the anticipated call from President Bush for tens of thousands more troops in Iraq, calling instead for a phased withdrawal without a specific timeline:

Now we are faced with a quagmire to which there are no good answers. But the one that makes very little sense is to put tens of thousands more young Americans in harm’s way without changing a strategy that has failed by almost every imaginable account.

[…]

It’s not clear that these troop levels are sustainable for a significant period of time, and according to our commanders on the ground, adding American forces will only relieve the Iraqis from doing more on their own. Moreover, without a coherent strategy or better cooperation from the Iraqis, we would only be putting more of our soldiers in the crossfire of a civil war.

There is no military solution to this war. Our troops can help suppress the violence, but they cannot solve its rootcauses. And all the troops in the world won’t be able to force Shia, Sunni, and Kurd to sit down at a table, resolve their differences, and forge a lasting peace. In fact, adding more troops will only push this political settlement further and further into the future, as it tells the Iraqis that no matter how much of a mess they make, the American military will always be there to clean it up.

That is why I believe we must begin a phased redeployment of American troops to signal to the government and people of Iraq, and others who have a stake in stabilizing the country — that ours is not an open-ended commitment. They must step up.

To be completely honest, I am not 100 percent sold on this strategy for handling the President’s Iraq war, but then again there are no good answers, as Sen. Obama says. My overwhelming concern is that, despite the folly of the venture to begin with, leaving too soon would make Iraq a nest for terrorists, who will then turn their focus from American troops to American cities. This may be preventable without additional troops, and even with a phased withdrawal, so long as our attention is kept on the security situation there. But leaving behind a smoldering pit of resentment and the potential to organize attacks could turn a disastrous foreign entanglement into a catastrophic national nightmare, a situation that absolutely must be avoided.

With that said, Sen. Obama’s position is well-reasoned and wisely supported with details and military endorsements. It also positions him well for a Democratic primary, where his desire to begin a withdrawal will put him to the left of Sen. Clinton, moderated by the fact that he doesn’t call for a specific timeline. Not a bad position to stake out for himself, and one I think many Americans can get behind, myself included.

Sen. Obama is running the table in the early caucus and primary states, tied for first in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

In a Concord Monitor poll, Sen. Obama received 21% support in New Hampshire. Sen. Hillary Clinton — who was trouncing Sen. Obama by a whopping 23 percentage points just one month ago — received 22%. John Edwards received 16%.

A Research 2000 poll of Iowa caucusers shows Sen. Obama and Edwards tied at 22%, with Sen. Clinton receiving 10% support.

Additionally, Sen. Obama edged out prominent Republicans Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in head-to-head match-ups in Iowa:

If Obama were running in 2008 against Romney, 43 percent said they would pick Obama and 28 percent they would choose Romney. … Obama would lead McCain with 42 percent of respondents’ approval versus 39 percent. … If the race were between Obama and Giuliani, 43 percent of respondents said they would pick Obama and 38 percent said they would pick Giuliani.

Here at OBAMARAMA, our mission is pretty clear. In case there’s any question, it says it right there above the photograph at the top of the page: to support Sen. Barack Obama in his deliberations regarding the presidential election of 2008.

Of course, between his two possible decisions — to run or not to run — it would be fair to say we have a preference. By highlighting Sen. Obama’s unique qualifications for the job, not only of president but also of candidate, and by underscoring how both the national and global political climates are not just ripe but are in fact aching for his style of politics, we aim to increase awareness and interest in the senator’s potential candidacy. In our small way, we hope to add a thoughtful voice to the growing chorus that is encouraging Sen. Obama to seek the nomination.

This website is a message in a bottle. I have no idea who reads it or what impact it makes on your thinking. But if anyone walks away with a better understanding of what Sen. Obama brings to the table, or an interest in learning more about his unifying brand of politics, then it has served its purpose.

It is a difficult thing to sit through years of panderin? and narrow vision without becoming deeply jaded about government. But the belief that American politics can be an opportunity to explore different answers to our most pressing concerns — poverty, energy, war — continues to burn like a quiet pilot light in many of us. The conviction that government is what happens when people decide they want to live together in peace and prosperity, and that good government helps us balance our right to excel as individuals with our desire to comfort our neighbors when they fall on hard times, has not been extinguished. However faint, our faith that such a government can yet be achieved continues to burn.

Sen. Obama is poised to hit the gas. He understands that faith, because he shares it. As he says with characteristic modesty, “I think I’m sort of a stand-in right now for the American people being interested in a new kind of politics, and to some degree maybe I’ve come to represent some of that. But I think people are tired of the slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners, arguing-all-the-time politics.”

This Christmas, many concerned Americans are hoping Sen. Obama is planning a belated gift to the country in the form of a positive, constructive and hopeful presidential campaign. We’d like it even more than a Playstation 3.

May your Christmas and holiday season be full of peace and joy.

Let’s hope the voices in Bob Novak’s head are right about this one:

Obama runs

Contrary to reports that Barack Obama is still trying to make up his mind on seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, sources close to the first-term senator say he is unequivocally committed to making the race. The word has spread through political circles that Obama’s wife, Michelle, is resisting the campaign out of fear for her husband’s physical safety as an African-American candidate for president. But an Obama insider dismissed that as a problem. ‘’We took care of that last summer,'’ he told this column.

Here’s a great clip of Sen. Obama on the Today Show’s “Free Speech” segment:

CNBC host Larry Kudlow penned a column that is highly critical of Sen. Obama in yesterday’s Kansas City Star — basically a cut-and-paste of an article he wrote a week earlier for the right-wing forum Townhall.com — that demands attention. While it’s no surprise that Kudlow, a conservative pundit and loyal Reaganite, is not Sen. Obama’s biggest fan, his facile demagoguery of Sen. Obama’s record is in serious need of a closer eye.

In framing his attack, Kudlow opts for the “Obama as Marxist leftist” assault, a one-size-fits-all strategy for throwing mud at Democrats that Kudlow employs regularly, and which was first initiated against Sen. Obama by disgraced former House Majority leader Tom Delay. Unlike the scattered assault of this week’s Washington Times op-ed, Kudlow opens by calling Sen. Obama “an extremely liberal-left politician,” and then sticks to his narrative, refusing to let the obstinacy of the facts get in his way.

Kudlow begins with a disingenuous argument about tax cuts. Because Sen. Obama opposed extending them further to capital gains and dividends — a benefit accrued only by the very richest Americans — Kudlow labels him “anti-growth.” Ironically, Kudlow suggests Sen. Obama “justified” his vote through “the old class-warfare saw about tax cuts for the rich.” But there’s no older saw than that of a rich conservative attacking a Democrat as being anti-growth just because he objects to lining your pockets at a time of skyrocketing government debt and in the midst of two expensive wars — both of which you pushed, by the way.

Not surprisingly, Kudlow then extends his tired, aristocratic logic to the estate tax (which, of course, he refers to by its Frank Luntz-ordained title, “the death tax“), suggesting it will hurt family farms and small businesses who are “forced to sell their legacies because of this tax.” What Kudlow conveniently neglects to mention is that the only people in these categories who will be affected by the estate tax are those whose wealth puts them among the richest 2% of Americans. Once again, Kudlow attacks Sen. Obama for refusing to make him and Paris Hilton richer.

Kudlow’s concern for U.S. farmers suddenly vanishes when he shifts his attention to energy independence, however. He says Sen. Obama “voted against” U.S. energy independence because he “has opposed lifting a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol.” But Kudlow fails to note that Sen. Obama supports the tariff because he wants to support U.S. farmers who are producing ethanol. Where’s Kudlow’s concern for U.S. family farms now? And more importantly, how is supporting domestic energy production anti-energy independence? Is there anything more independent than producing your own energy? Is shifting our dependence from foreign oil to foreign ethanol really the sort of progress we want to make?

Once he gets out of the realm of economics, Kudlow’s attacks quickly erode into deceitful drivel. He says Sen. Obama “said no to Patriot Act wiretap extensions, despite their proven effectiveness in halting terrorist ?ttacks,” but offers no evidence of this nonexistent “proof” of the “effectiveness” of circumventing the legal system in order to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. He accuses Sen. Obama of having “collaborated in blocking John Bolton’s appointment to the United Nations,” but doesn’t say it was Republican rejection of Bolton that led to his dismissal. He criticizes Sen. Obama for opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, as if this is somehow a liberal position despite being held by 53 percent of Americans.

Finally, in a swan song of sophistry, Kudlow asserts that if he wants to be viable, Sen. Obama better move to the right, since “Democrats won their congressional majority by doing their best impersonation of Republicans.” Excuse me? Were we watching the same election? In the one I saw, Democrats retook Congress because Americans wanted it to be run by anyone BUT Republicans.

Kudlow’s vociferousness is no surprise, though. Republicans are deeply worried about the threat to their hegemony and power that would be posed by an Obama candidacy. As well they should be.

Here’s a clip from Sen. Obama’s appearance on The Tonight Show in early December, where the discussion ranged from religion to drug use to Iraq:

According to the book clerk at the Dulles airport Borders, likely Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich recently swung by and purchased Sen. Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

Studying the competition? When the clerk (whose skills of prescience are apparently sorely lacking) said of Sen. Obama to Mr. Gingrich, “I don’t think he’s going to become president,” Gingrich responded by explaining, “That’s why I’m reading his book.”

Say what you will about Newt Gingrich, he knows an uprising when he sees it. He’s also probably seen this polling.

This is an interesting video that pits Sen. Obama — representing “New America” — against a weathered old gunslinger — “Old America.” I’m not entirely sure what happens at the end, but the Clint Eastwood throwback is great.

American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky has a brilliant piece in today’s Los Angeles Times: “Obama the Anti-Bush.” He explains how in the past, the foremost predictor of a successful candidacy has been the ability to offer a narrative that responds to the negative aspects of the sitting president, managing to counter them somehow. Carter’s weakness spawned Reagan’s strength; Bush Sr.’s discomfort yielded Clinton’s charisma; Clinton’s recklessness created a desire for Bush Jr.’s integrity — or so we were supposed to believe.

And now, Tomasky argues (convincingly, too), Sen. Obama is the perfect foil to what we’ve come to know to be the real President Bush:

George W. Bush, to most voters, is no longer the man who restored honor and dignity to the White House. Nor is he — in another line from his 2000 campaign — a “uniter, not a divider.”He is now instead the stubborn, highly partisan unilateralist who doesn’t listen to others.

So what character type does this mean voters will be looking for in 2008? Someone who speaks of his frustration with our polarized politics and his fervent desire to transcend the red-blue divide.

Sound like anyone you know? I thought so.

Tomasky concludes:

Bush’s greatest flaw to the greatest number of voters has to do with his unrelenting partisanship. And this greatest flaw plays right into Obama’s greatest strength. He will have other opportunities to run, but it’s highly unlikely that he’ll ever again have an opportunity quite like this one.

Read the rest here.

Yesterday, the conservative Washington Times ran an editorial titled “Barack Obama, U.S. Senator.” Printed as it was in a newspaper whose owner believes that, among other things, “we have to abolish the concept of separation between church and state,” it was of course a smear piece.

And a disingenuous one at that. Throughout the rambling article, Sen. Obama is attacked alternately as a rookie with no voting record, an “unabashed liberal” with a deeply Democratic voting record, and a wishy-washy politico unwilling to take a stand on important issues.

One crutch the authors use to support their argument is the ratings of special interest groups, a favorite ploy of character assassins looking for a quick statistic to bolster their case. “The nonpartisan National Journal gives Mr. Obama an 82.5 liberal rating in the Senate,” they write, a number even liberal-er than that given to (prepare to be shocked!) Sen. Hillary Clinton. However, the authors fail to mention that the subjective National Journal rankings — which are skewed leftward, ranking the most liberal Senator at 96.7% liberal, and the most conservative at only 90.8% conservative — place 15 Senators to the left of Sen. Obama, putting him squarely in the middle among Democrats.

The editorial then launches into an assault based on Sen. Obama’s criticism of the war in Iraq, penning this wonderfully duplicitous sentence: “Although a longtime critic of the Iraq war, Mr. Obama hasn’t been as vocal as, say, Rep. Jack Murtha.” The intent here is to conflate being critical of the Iraq war with calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops, as Rep. Murtha has done. The Times editors leave no room for people who are vocal in their criticism of the war, but are not in favor of an immediate withdrawal — people like Sen. Obama, as well as such cut-and-runners as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and, as of this week, Colin Powell.

Finally, after painting him as a committed liberal, the editorial changes course and tars Sen. Obama as an empty suit: “Mr. Obama hasn’t done much at all on any particular issue aside from obediently follow his party. His self-deprecating explanation is that he is a first-term senator just learning the ropes.” No source is provided for this “self-deprecating” (and undoubtedly fatuous) explanation. Nor is the claim that he hasn’t done much at all supported with any evidence — probably because the evidence shows that Sen. Obama introduced 152 bills and resolutions in the last Congress, on issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to safe drinking water to veterans’ benefits, as we noted here.

Make no mistake: the Right’s war on Sen. Obama is underway. Look for the evolving themes as they try out different tacts, testing the water to see what will be effective in a general election. Will people respond to “Obam? the Marxist leftist?” Or “Obama the inexperienced nobody?” Or “Obama the calculating egomaniac?” Discombobulated editorials like this one are the political equivalent of throwing different types of mud on a wall and seeing what sticks best.

Attacks only really work, though, when they have at least the ring of truth. “Kerry the flip-flopper” and “Gore the stiff exaggerator” were successful for precisely this reason. What’s refreshing about Sen. Obama is that his integrity means he cannot be so easily assailed.

Take a look at this ad from DraftObama.org, which is set to begin running in New Hampshire this week. It is basically a montage of photographs with audio clips from Sen. Obama’s speeches running over it. Let’s hope it works!

When will the media honeymoon with Sen. Obama finally end? Is some of this Obama buzz unwarranted? Could he be overrated?

No, those aren’t questions drawn from Tom Delay’s “blog.” They’re from MSNBC anchor Amy Robach’s December 18 interview with U.S. News & World Report chief White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh. Ironically, as Media Matters for America notes, Robach’s quest for the end of the “honeymoon” comes amidst a parade of talking heads — several on MSNBC — who can’t seem to take enough potshots at Sen. Obama. If their segment isn’t devoted to his middle name or how his last name is “only one little consanant” away from Osama, then it’s focused on a joke he made about his ears. And of course there’s always Jeff Greenfield’s “sartorial timebomb” buffonery. This is a honeymoon? Can’t wait to see what the marriage will be like.

There’s no doubt Sen. Obama has received a boatload of media coverage lately, and much of it positive, but there’s a reason for that: very suddenly and with little warning, he has captured the imagination of the Democratic base. It is fundamentally a good-news story; reporting on his skyrocketing popularity is not a media “honeymoon.” It’s not him getting a pass — it’s what’s happening in the world of politics.

Out of practically nowhere, a viable presidential candidate has emerged and is steadily gaining the trust of a large group of Americans. Add to this the historically significant fact that he is black, that he receives ringing endorsements from both sides of the aisle, and that he is poised to lead to the White House a party that these same media pundits were pronouncing defunct just two short years ago, and you’ve got yourself a legitimate news story.

In the name of “balance,” of course, Sen. Obama’s coverage has been as peppered with snarky jabs and detractions as that of any other rising political star. But assuming the media does its job and reports the news, asking when the honeymoon will end is as pointless as asking when his support will become less enthusiastic. And I’m not a betting man, but I’m going to have to go with “not anytime soon” on that one.

Former-Clinton-advisor-turned-Republican-hack Dick Morris baselessly attacked Sen. Obama on FOX News on Monday. Media Matters has the video and the transcript:

MORRIS: Anybody who thinks about Obama for five minutes knows the guy’s never introduced a bill. He’s never been important. He’s spent 100 weeks in the Senate. He’s basically a — no foreign policy experience.

They also provide a sound rebuttal to the utter wrongness of Morris’s claim:

Obama was the primary sponsor of 152 bills and resolutions introduced in the last Congress, including a bill (S.2125) that passed Congress on December 8, 2006, “to promote relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” which he introduced on December 16, 2005. The bill is awaiting action by the president. In addition, three nonbinding resolutions sponsored by Obama have passed the Senate, and 14 bills that he has co-sponsored have become law.

Obama has also introduced numerous other pieces of legislation in the U.S. Senate. For example:

• Introduced a bill (S.1194) directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to establish guidelines for tracking spent fuel rods.
• Introduced a bill (S.1426) extending provisions in the Safe Drinking Water Act that relate to preventing and detecting contamination.
• Introduced a bill (S.1920) amending the Clean Air Act to establish a renewable diesel standard.
• Introduced a bill (S.3988) improving benefits and services for members of the armed forces and veterans.

FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly likes to browbeat people on the air who don’t accept an invitation to be interviewed by him, in the hope that they will ultimately surrender and come on his show. It’s a very unseemly tactic that unfortunately often works. When they finally drag themselves into the studio and the camera clicks on, O’Reilly, beaming with his sense of victory, magnanimously thanks them for overcoming their cowardice and proving themselves to be reasonable people, and the power dynamic is immediately established.

From the looks of this “Talking Points” segment, he’s trying to do the same thing to Sen. Obama. But if you watch the video below, something in his delivery suggests he’s a little less confident in his attack than usual. Could it be he’s daunted by the senator’s mounting success? Or just that the jab he chooses to make is probably the worst idea since Greedo shooting first?