OBAMARAMA

The web has been buzzing over Sen. Biden’s comments about Sen. Obama today. The general consensus seems to be that Sen. Biden was tone deaf (though some say worse) when he described Sen. Obama as an African American candidate who is “articulate” and “clean” — words that many interpret as suggesting that other African Americans are not.

Interestingly, in a segment of his interview with FOX News highlighted by RunObama, President Bush also chose “articulate” as his primary adjective to describe Sen. Obama:

“He hasn’t gotten elected yet. He hasn’t even gotten the party’s nomination. He’s an attractive guy. He’s articulate,” Bush said in an interview with Fox News.“I’ve been impressed with him when I’ve seen him in person, but he’s got a long way to go to be president,” Bush added.

This may seem minor, but to many people it is not. At the very least, it seems clearly to reveal a distinct racial tone deafness and insensitivity. Is President Bush really so impressed that a black man is so adept at expressing himself?

The President’s defenders will say he was trying to compliment Sen. Obama, as Sen. Biden’s defenders have said today. But as TPM Cafe commenter goethean asks, “What if he had said that Obama can swim? Would that be a compliment, too?”

UPDATE (2/3): MSNBC discusses Sen. Biden’s and President Bush’s use of the “articulate” adjective with WaPo’s Eugene Robinson:

On Saturday, February 10, Sen. Obama will announce his presidential intentions at Illinois’ Old State Capitol in Springfield. As the AP reports, the building, “where Lincoln once served as a state representative,” was used from 1839 to 1876 and “was the site of Lincoln’s famous ‘House Divided’ speech warning that America could not remain half slave and half free.”

OBAMARAMA will be there.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus compares Sen. Obama to Bill Clinton in her latest column, “The Clintonian Candidate.” Some highlights:

Like Clinton before him, Obama presents himself as a new kind of politician who can rise above and bridge partisan differences. Go back to Clinton’s 1991 announcement speech, and it’s easy to imagine Obama speaking.“Today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way,” lamented one politician. The other called for “a new kind of leadership … not mired in the politics of the past, not limited by old ideologies.” Can you tell the difference? The first is Obama, the second Clinton, but either could have been channeling the other.

…In fact, Obama fits himself explicitly into the Clinton mold. “In his platform — if not always in his day-to-day politics — Clinton’s Third Way went beyond splitting the difference,” he writes. “It tapped into the pragmatic, nonideological attitude of the majority of Americans.”

…Obama is like Bill Clinton in his natural ease with people and his ability to win them over.

It’s not an unflattering analogy, despite some of the negative aspects a comparison to President Clinton can entail (Vermonters for Obama expects that the darker parallels are yet to come). Now if we can just extend Marcus’s list of similarities to include a 61 percent favorability rating…

On a segment of NBC’s “Poker After Dark” that ran late last night, the conversation around the table turned to politics. It was an interesting debate, the highlight undoubtedly being when poker legend Doyle Brunson responded to Antonio Esfandiari’s comment that “I kind of like America” by saying, “Yeah I think so….but not when the Republicans are in office.” He added: “I’m a stone cold Democrat now, Erik.”

That second comment was directed to another poker idol, Erik Seidel, also at the table. The conversation then turned to Sen. Obama, who seemed to be generally well-regarded by the other players…until Seidel called him an atheist.

DailyKos diarist SlackerInc captured the exchange:

Eric Seidel wondered if Obama could actually win; Brunson countered that Obama is “smart”. Seidel agreed that he was smart, but claimed “He’s an atheist, though…I think he’s an atheist”. [Poker star Jennifer] Harman chimed in “I actually like him”; Brunson responded to Seidel with audible alarm, “he’s an atheist?!?” and Harman hadn’t apparently heard it the first time, as she then sighed, “He is? Never mind.”

To see the video for yourself, go here and then click on “Tuesday, Segment 3.” The exchange is at about the 4:25 mark. It’s worth noting that Brunson won that hand.

It’s also worth noting, just for clarification, that Sen. Obama and his family are Christians and members of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Whether it’s the claim that he’s a Muslim or that he’s an atheist, it’s alarming to see this misinformation being spread on network television. Obviously the conversation was impromptu and not scripted by NBC — but that doesn’t make the national broadcasting of a negative misrepresentation of a presidential candidate any less unfortunate. (It was negative in the sense that all of the other players responded negatively to it, casting Sen. Obama in an undeservedly poor light.)

It may seem unimportant, and it’s certainly not the end of the world, but the fact is that this is precisely the sort of casual inaccurate speculation that wheedles its way into the consciousness of the public.

One good way to address it may be by going right to the source. Erik Seidel seems like a reasonable guy. Why not let him know that he’s mistaken about Sen. Obama’s religious beliefs, and that he just spread that mistakenness to the entire country? If presented respectfully, I’m sure he’ll realize it’s something he probably shouldn’t have done, and with any luck he’ll take steps to correct it.

You can contact him through his agency, Poker Royalty, at this page. Just premise the message by asking that they pass it on to Mr. Seidel.

UPDATE: Here is an artist’s rendering of the event, pretty much:

File this story under “K” for “Kicking Ass and Taking Names:”

[T]he Obama camp has “frozen out” Fox News reporters and producers in the wake of the network’s major screw-up in running with the erroneous Obama-the-jihadist story reported by Insight magazine.“I’m still in the freezer,” one Fox journalist said, noting that the people at Fox “suffering the most did nothing wrong.”

…Since the madrassah incident, Obama has given interviews to ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC — pretty much every other network except Fox. Sources close to Obama acknowledged that they’re not thrilled to play ball with Fox journalists, but they stopped short of saying they are freezing the network out.

While it undoubtedly can’t last for ever, the silent treatment of FOX News by a major presidential candidate like Sen. Obama sends a much needed message. There’s reason to believe it is being received, too, as FOX News CEO Roger Ailes has reportedly spoken to Sen. Obama twice on the phone. No word on whether or not he apologized — though, for what it’s worth, the incident seems to have sparked a change of policy at the network:

John Moody, vice president for news at Fox, issued this missive to staff in his daily editorial note on Jan. 23: “For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this.”

Hilarious! I audacity-of-hopefully think you like this:

(Hat tip to Kos.)

In a press release and an email to supporters tonight, Sen. Obama announced his Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007. According to the email and the Associated Press, the bill “would cap troop levels in Iraq at the early January level of around 130,000, when Bush announced he would send 21,500 additional U.S. forces to Iraq” and would “require that troops begin coming home on May 1 with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31, 2008.”

From the email:

In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed and promote stability. The U.S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else’s civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience, is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried and failed policy opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and even the Iraqis themselves.

Sen. Obama presented his plan in response to President Bush’s call for alternatives from critics of his escalation proposal. In his interview with the AP, Sen. Obama said that “It is important at this point that Congress offer specific constructive approaches to what’s proven to be a foreign policy disaster, because we’ve got too much at stake to simply stand on the sidelines and criticize.”

His proposal differs from that of other Democrats (such as John Edwards and Tom Vilsack) who have called on Congress to refuse to fund the escalation, noting that such a policy “could genuinely [create] a Constitutional crisis or at least a crisis on the ground where the president continues to send troops there but now they’re being shortchanged in terms of armaments and support.”

Interestingly, Sen. Obama’s bill will reportedly include a provision that will allow the redeployment of troops to be temporarily suspended “if the Iraqis meet security, political and economic benchmarks.” Carrots and sticks.

Here’s the senator’s introduction of the bill on the Senate floor this evening:

How will the plan be received? RunObama notes that many bloggers on the left have already leveled high praise for Sen. Obama’s proposal. More analysis to come soon, undoubtedly.

Lately, the media — left, right and center — has been falling all over itself to point out, ever-so-gingerly, that Sen. Obama does not in fact have a “lock on black voters.” Such “analysis” articles are an apparent response to the unspoken assumption (held by whom, it isn’t clear) that, because he himself is black, Sen. Obama is somehow automatically entitled to the votes of every African American.

Poll after poll shows that, among black voters, Sen. Hillary Clinton holds a distinct advantage over Sen. Obama. Add to this some soundbites from black political leaders in Chicago and the fact that Rev. Al Sharpton has been noticeably slow to warm up to the senator (despite having no visible familiarity with his record), and you have yourself a veritable media firestorm. Apparently, we’re supposed to be shocked that Sen. Obama doesn’t inherit the vote of every African American simply by virtue of being black.

(Interestingly, the media’s faith that this silent expectation exists is actually a mutation of conservative thinking. Intent on denting the Democrats’ overwhleming African American support, conservatives have for years viewed “the black vote” as a package deal, and black voters part of an unthinking monolithic block that has somehow been “duped” by Democrats and can be won back with smoke and mirrors. No chance the party’s backing of social policies that benefit African Americans could have anything to do with their support…)

Far from being shocked, however, most people are not at all surprised to find that there are as many political opinions as there are black voters, that they have established political loyalties, and that their votes are not determined entirely by something as superficial as skin color. In response to this media obsession, most people are largely indifferent, while some — including readers of this blog — find it insulting. (Read more after the jump…)