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January 31, 2007
Obama lands a finance chair, and stays Chicago-centric.
TAPPED links a couple of Obama pieces from the 1990s, one by him and one about him, and notes, accurately, that his voice is remarkably unchanged.
The Plank makes a smart point about race and sex, and an advantage Obama has.
I'd add that -- as one reader just emailed me -- nobody is talking about Biden's remarks about Hillary's reliance on her husband as being sexist, though my reader took offense.
Posted by Ben Smith 06:59 PM
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January 31, 2007
To head back into patented over-analysis here, the two different responses today from Barack Obama to Joe Biden offer an interesting glimpse of the candidate.
First, coming off the Senate floor, he said of Biden, who had called him, "He was very gracious, and I have no problem with Joe Biden."
But then, at 5:30, Obama's office sends out an official statement:
"I didn’t take Senator Biden’s comments personally, but obviously they were historically inaccurate. African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."
What's interesting here is that his first instinct seems to be the new politics he preaches; refined through his campaign and further reflection, out comes a fairly standard formula of racial grievance, and a need to respond to his base.
Posted by Ben Smith 06:49 PM
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January 31, 2007
Terry McAuliffe's new book, What a Party!, will be listed at fifth in the forthcoming New York Times bestseller list, a source familiar with the list said.
That's pretty good for a political book by a guy who isn't running for president, or for anything.
Says something about the value of (relative) indiscretion.
Posted by Ben Smith 05:18 PM
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January 31, 2007
Hillary Clinton won't go to New Hampshire this weekend after all, because her husband's stepfather is ill.
This extends her New Hampshire-free run, which dates back to October 18, 1996. It was, for a long time, the geographical reflection of her refusal to talk about running for President.
As of now, she hasn't been there for 10 years, 3 months, and 14 days.
Posted by Ben Smith 04:20 PM
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January 31, 2007
This seems a bit of a risky thing for Biden to say:
"I have no doubt that Jesse Jackson and every other black leader - Al Sharpton and the rest - will know exactly what I meant."
Posted by Ben Smith 02:47 PM
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January 31, 2007
OK, you know a candidate is on the ropes when a reporter (I'm not sure who) feels comfortable asking him if his "verbosity" is a problem.
"I don't see it as the problem you apparently see it," Biden replied a bit testily.
Posted by Ben Smith 02:18 PM
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January 31, 2007
Joe Biden's trying to dig himself from beneath today's Observer story in a conference call right now.
"I believe I was quoted accurately but they weren’t meant to take shots," he said, backpedalling to the position that this is "probably the most qualified field of Democrats that he Democratic party has fielded in a long, long time."
And...about Barack "Clean" Obama: He's "Probably the most exciting candidate that the Democratic or Republican Party has produced at least since I’ve been around. He’s fresh, he’s new, he’s smart, he’s insightful, and I really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the word 'clean.'"
He said he'd called Obama, who told him, "Joe you don’t have to explain anything to me -- I know exactly what you meant."
Which was an old expression of Biden's mothers: "Clean as a whistle, sharp as a tack -- he's crisp and clear."
And -- oh, this is so much fun -- 1988 was a "gut punch," but he was more "naive" then than he is now.
Posted by Ben Smith 02:08 PM
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January 31, 2007
AIPAC's Josh Block tells me that John Edwards is also expected to swing by the AIPAC dinner tomorrow night, another indication that -- even as he pulls the field to the left on Iraq -- he's staying well within the Democratic Party's hawkish mainstream on the Middle East as a whole.
That's not to over-read a dinner appearance. The stronger indication of this was his relatively little-covered speech to the Herzliya Conference in Israel last week, where he sounded roughly like John McCain talking about Iran.
"To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table."
The speech won him a disapproving review in The Nation, but will get him some friendly applause tomorrow night.
Posted by Ben Smith 12:55 PM
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January 31, 2007
Here's a venue for more tough talk:
Hillary Clinton is addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee tomorrow night.
Much of the worry in hawkish pro-Israel circles these days is about Iran, and it's a gathering that will be listening closely to her on that question.
Posted by Ben Smith 12:01 PM
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January 31, 2007
Well, it seems like Joe Biden will have a few more reporters than he'd expected on his afternoon conference call, now that his New York Observer interview is leading the Drudge Report.
Drudge, who loves nothing more than a race war, is going with the racial overtones of Biden calling Obama "clean" (As in, you can let him in the house?), but that's about the only nice thing Biden had to say about anybody in the Jason Horowitz interview.
In the piece -- which is currently inaccessible because of Drudge traffic -- he also calls Hillary's Iraq plan a formula for "disaster" and sneers at Obama's inexperience.
"I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about," he says at another point.
His combative line is meant, I guess, to play to his strengths -- that he has experience, that he has a plan.
In any case, it's kind of fun to have an old-fashioned...Senator... in the race. Not one of these modest, careful ones who think all the time about running for President.
Posted by Ben Smith 11:21 AM
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January 31, 2007
You can watch the Biden announcement video here. It leads with his expertise in Iraq.
Biden, unlike the other Democrats, has a distinct, clear plan not only for withdrawal, but also for Iraq. You've got to think that will amplify his voice this year, even if it doesn't get him votes.
Best line of the video: On Iraq, Biden has been "trying my little best."
UPDATE: All overshadowed, it's safe to say, by his, er, wide-ranging comments to the New York Observer.
» Continue reading Here's Joe
Posted by Ben Smith 10:20 AM
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January 30, 2007
Barack Obama's speech on the Senate floor tonight seems to change the Democratic game on Iraq, and to continue what John Edwards started: A quick march toward pushing to defund the war, presumably in time for the Iowa caucuses.
It also appears to be a dramatic departure from his own, recent position on the issue, which had been the fuzzy, no-date-certain, foreign-policy-establishment view he shared with Hillary Clinton.
He articulated this old view in his June 21 floor statement:
"I do not believe that setting a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops is the best approach to achieving, in a methodical and responsible way, the three basic goals that should drive our Iraq policy..." he said, pronouncing himself "acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by Congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this Administration. It could compound them."
The legislation Obama announced today calls (with some conditions) for "removing of all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 31st, 2008."
His press secretary, Tommy Vietor, told me that's consistent with the notion of a timetable layed out in his November speech on the issue -- though if so, I don't think a lot of people grasped that he was talking about such hard dates.
(Perhaps because in that speech, he said, "I am not suggesting that this timetable be overly-rigid. We cannot compromise the safety of our troops, and we should be willing to adjust to realities on the ground." That's totally consistent with the new bill, but the emphasis is pretty different.)
Here are a few more of Obama's older statements on the subject that turn up in Nexis and on the Interweb. Boldface mine:
"A hard and fast, arbitrary deadline for withdrawal offers our commanders in the field, and our diplomats in the region, insufficient flexibility to implement that strategy," is also from that June 21 floor statement.
From the same statement:
"But I do not believe that setting a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops is the best approach to achieving, in a methodical and responsible way, the three basic goals that should drive our Iraq policy: that is, 1) stabilizing Iraq and giving the factions within Iraq the space they need to forge a political settlement; 2) containing and ultimately defeating the insurgency in Iraq; and 3) bringing our troops safely home."
Also, the St. Louis Post-Disptach that date quotes him as saying: "We should have a drastically reduced presence . . . by next year. What I have tried to avoid is a date certain that may not accord with the need to maintain stability in Iraq."
Then, he had this to say in his new book, The Audacity of Hope:
"In pursuit of these goals, I believe it is in the interest of both Americans and Iraqis to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2006, although how quickly a complete withdrawal can be accomplished is a matter of imperfect judgment, based on a series of best guesses – about the ability of the Iraqi government to deliver even basic security and services to its people, the degree to which our presence drives the insurgency, and the odds that in the absence of U.S. troops Iraq would descent into all-out civil war."
He elaborated on Meet the Press on October 22: "[W]hat I would do is to sit down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at this point and say, 'We are going to begin this phased withdrawal. How quickly can we begin this in a responsible way, in consultation with the Iraqi government?'"
And he said something basically identical to Diane Sawyer on November 13:
"Well, look, I said it should begin at the end of this year at a time when we weren’t certain what was going to happen with the President and how he was going to respond with respect to the Secretary of Defense. I think now it’s too late to try to start something before the end of the year. What I would do is sit down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military that’s actually on the ground and figure out how do we fit together a military strategy that can start that phased redeployment but insure not total collapse in Iraq and also make sure that we engage the Iraqi government."
And from the AP on November 22: "The Iraqi people like the American people are recognizing that a phased withdrawal is appropriate and that there should be some timeframe around that. It doesn't have to be a date certain that suddenly ... all troops are pulled out, but there has to be a game plan by which the Iraqis take more responsibility for their own security."
Whew.
In any case, hard to see anything stopping the direction this thing is moving.
Posted by Ben Smith 06:31 PM
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January 30, 2007
Joe Biden emails supporters: "I wanted you to be among the first to know. Tomorrow, I am filing the necessary papers to become a candidate for President of the United States and launching my official campaign website at www.JoeBiden.com."
Mike Allen delivers the best of the Hillary webchats.
Edwards looks to pack the DNC house on Friday. (Will anybody be there Saturday? Should I?)
Obama drives a wedge through the family Rubin.
Greg Sargent doesn't let Bush get away with "Democrat Party."
And Ezra Klein accuses me of "idiocy" and and Pat Healy of being "pathological." All in the name of fighting coverage that will "cheapen and demean our political discourse."
Posted by Ben Smith 06:05 PM
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January 30, 2007
The Republican National Committee launched its third attack this week on Hillary, this time accusing her (falsely*), of stealing a line from John Edwards.
Does Mark Penn have a mole over at the RNC? Because this, like Romney's engagement of her, is a gift to Clinton. Her campaign's main aim right now is convincing people that she's electable. And now, it's like, "You don't have to take it from us. Take it from the RNC."
And, while her rivals run against her, she's running against Republicans.
*Clinton was using line they're alleging she stole from Edwards, "basic bargain," back in this 2000 speech to the Democratic National Convention. (It's one of the rules of covering Hillary that whenever you think she's doing something new, Nexis proves that it has ever been thus.)
Posted by Ben Smith 03:40 PM
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January 30, 2007
So when did Barack Obama become the kind of person whom people meet and think, "He's going to be President"?
He didn't blow people away at Occidental College. And nobody seemed to remember him at Columbia. (The best one classmate could do for the New York Daily News: He had a "nice smile.")
But after a brief spell in the private sector, he took a job in January, 1984 as a campus organizer for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), according to the group's records. NYPIRG is one of a set of similar groups around the country. Obama mentions the organizing job in passing in Dreams for My Father; he doesn't mention the organization.
I put in some calls to the people he worked with that semester, and they recall him with the charisma and general impressiveness that now defines him.
"He was frighteningly coherent," said Chris Meyer, now a Consumer Union official, who interviewed him for the NYPIRG job. "I remember him interviewing with a presence and an assurance you just don't see in your average recent college grad."
"He was somebody that everybody took notice of," said Tom Wathen another former NYPIRG official now at the National Environmental Trust.
Obama's former supervisors recall hiring him to organize on the Harlem campus of the City University of New York as part of their campaign against the city's reliance on incinerators.
"We were knee deep in solid waste," Meyer said. "We were one of the groups that was focusing on trying to change New York City's recycling policies and the way we were doing that had to do with trying to get NYC weened away from incineration and trying to look at waste alternatives."
Both men recalled him as extremely good at the job.
"He did a very good job," said Wathen. "He revitalized the chapter, drew a lot of new students into it. Barack stood out because he had a certain amount of charisma that was kind of obvious."
But he left after the semester to work as an organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.
"I take it he did not feel completely connected to the work he was doing," said Meyer, who says he did expect great things for Obama, if not exactly the presidency:
"I thought he'd be more likely running a large not-for-profit," he said.
Posted by Ben Smith 02:55 PM
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January 30, 2007
One of the small puzzles of covering this race has been how many candidates they are. Do you count explorers? Hinters? Draftees?
But now we have a list of the Democrats showing up at the DNC cattle-call this weekend, which is the field as it now stands -- Sharptonless, Gore-Free, and Gravellicious:
Sen. Joe Biden
Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.)
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Sen. Chris Dodd
Sen. John Edwards
Sen. Mike Gravel
Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Sen. Barack Obama
Gov. Bill Richardson
Gov. Tom Vilsack
(Gravel, to save you the Google, is a (way) former Alaska senator coming, roughly, out of the Perot-sphere: His biggest issue is voter initiatives; he also backs replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, instituting single-payer health-care, and ending the Iraq war. He got in a bit of trouble in 2003 for speaking before Holocaust deniers.)
Posted by Ben Smith 12:48 PM
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January 30, 2007
Hillary seems to be winning the operative-hiring-stakes, though Obama's giving her a run for her money on this measure.
Jonathan Martin has more on the latest hire.
And I know -- enough about Hillary.
Posted by Ben Smith 12:24 PM
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January 30, 2007
About a year ago, conventional wisdom was that there were two ways to run against Hillary in the primary: Mark Warner and Evan Bayh would make the case that only they were electable, while John Kerry and John Edwards argued that they are truer Democrats.
Rank-and-file Democrats you talk to still constantly cite her electability as a problem.
But it's basically vanished from the inside conversation. That's because the two conservative Democrats dropped out; because the war and the Republican Party are so unpopular that it seems any Democrat could win; and because Barack Obama -- a liberal African-American, albeit with a very non-partisan message -- has emerged as her main challenger.
Now Clinton's team is trying to bury the old CW by circulating polls like this one, which shows her winning Ohio.
Posted by Ben Smith 11:20 AM
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January 30, 2007
...for an off-record labor breakfast.
The Naples News spots her entourage.
UPDATE: Nevermind. She came and went yesterday.
Posted by Ben Smith 09:33 AM
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January 30, 2007
I distilled the ideas I've been working out in this space about Hillary's Iowa trip into a piece that's in today's print edition of Politico, with this (perhaps slightly addled?) lede:
"In her first tour of Iowa last weekend, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton emerged as a candidate hard-edged enough to threaten violence, yet explicitly female enough to make women feel so comfortable that one mentioned menopause in front of crowd of more than 1,000 people."
Read on here.
Posted by Ben Smith 09:23 AM
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