We are letting religious fanaticism dominate the presidential campaign. The candidates have brought it on themselves with tedious references to their churchgoing piety. Now we’re all paying for it. Who cares what their preachers say?
When looking at Sen. Barack Obama’s primary election results, I always check the white vote first. I imagine many Democratic National Convention superdelegates do, too. The reason is obvious: Obama is the first African-American with a strong chance of winning the presidency, and his prospects depend on whether whites will give him a vote.
Journalists are famous for their dogged drive to “get the story.” But when it comes to situations like Wednesday’s campaign debate in Philadelphia, they have the ability to make stories, too—and the story ABC’s pundits created that night buried the most important issues of the day, at Americans’ expense.
Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s congressional check-in about Iraq this week didn’t offer much hope for America’s overseas entanglements, and as coverage of the overseas wars wanes, the media isn’t holding politicians’ feet to the fire—or telling the real story about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Real politicians don’t quit. They are defeated, indicted, jailed, die or, in some jurisdictions, ousted by term limits. So don’t expect Hillary Clinton to surrender just yet.
Sen. Barack Obama’s latest, and possibly greatest, challenge is to overcome a simplistic view that the United States is hopelessly split by a racial divide that could badly damage his candidacy.
I’m afraid Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are giving the game away to John McCain on the most important matter facing the country, the Iraq war. I hate to sound like one of those middle-aged jock-loving MSNBC pundits, but as I sit here on the sidelines I want to scream, “Quit playing defense.”
The bad side of being a new face in politics is that your enemies can treat you like a blank slate, to be filled in with lies and slurs. That’s what is happening to Sen. Barack Obama, who is being subjected to a secretive whispering and e-mail campaign that aims to alienate him from Jewish voters by linking him to Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan and the Muslim religion.
Since Super Tuesday produced not one but a duo of Democratic front-runners, pundits from across the political spectrum have made ominous noises about the potential dangers of a prolonged contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Here, Truthdig’s seasoned political correspondent, Bill Boyarsky, begs to differ.
After Super Tuesday, Democrats are worrying that a long Clinton-Obama contest might irreparably damage the party’s prospects in November. But, as longtime political reporter and former Los Angeles Times City Editor Bill Boyarsky points out, the bigger threat is a McCain-Huckabee ticket.
Although racial politics apparently still has a place in the national discourse, there are times when an emphasis on unity is necessary. According to Boyarsky, Barack Obama’s win in South Carolina last weekend reflects his appeal among voters across a broad demographic range and among the diverse volunteer squad rallying support for him in California.
Hopefully, the results of the New Hampshire primary will eliminate the words hope and change from his presidential campaign. Maybe I am too cynical or too old or too disillusioned from being burned by past failed crusades. But words and elevated oratory are not enough for me.
As the candidates press forward in the final hours before the state’s primary, the war and health care stand as prime issues. But no one is fully facing up to the fact that the latter cannot be properly addressed as long as the U.S. is paying for the former.
Just as the Iowa caucuses were hitting their boiling point, Truthdig’s indefatigable campaign correspondent Bill Boyarsky high-tailed it to New Hampshire to check out the next electoral battleground. Here he takes stock of the frenetic scene he just left and looks to the future of political reporting.
As he addressed a room full of members of the Iowa Christian Alliance in the small city of Cedar Falls, the senator demonstrated how hard it is for him to find his way through the tangled forest of Christian right doctrine.
Political reporters are not widely embraced, but in Iowa, they are eagerly welcomed when they show up to cover the state’s unique system of selecting presidential nominees. The reason is simple: The media is a co-conspirator in a con, the Iowa caucuses.
In these final days before the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards’ chance for the presidency comes down to people like Jim Clifford, trudging up an icy driveway to persuade Leo Oswald, a shipping clerk at the Georgia Pacific plant in Dubuque, to turn out and support Edwards.
In his first dispatch from the scene of the upcoming caucuses, Boyarsky gets a look at Barack Obama in action as the Democratic presidential hopeful delivers a speech in Des Moines touching on foreign policy and the issue of experience in office.
John Edwards’ words at the last Iowa Democratic debate sounded so out of tune with this year’s campaign discourse—and so sensible and important—that the man might as well have been campaigning on another planet.
Reporters often live in the moment, focusing on the present and forgetting, at least temporarily, about the past and future—a trait that works well for many journalistic beats. Boyarsky warns that “when such habits are brought to the political beat, we’re all in trouble.”
If the Illinois senator beats Hillary Clinton and the others for the nomination, a good portion of credit will go to the volunteers now making phone calls in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, California and other places.
As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani honed his skills in creating a public persona that obscured some of his less savory behind-the-scenes activities. But now, Giuliani’s facing serious resistance from the likes of filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who’s turning his lens on the wily GOP candidate in a series of Web-ready shorts.
America’s political correspondents are enchanted with Clinton, but their passion might fade when voters start asking her hard questions about her hawkish view of the Iraq war.
I don’t know Al Gore’s plans, but here’s what I’d tell him to do if he wants to be president: Ignore New Hampshire and Iowa. Hope Hillary fizzles. Bet the house on early February when the big states have their primaries, and he could win the biggest, California.
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is striking a chord among middle-class black voters, notes Boyarsky, who looks into Obama’s fundraising successes among that demographic as an entrée into “an African-American political landscape seldom visited by journalists.”
The Man Who Put the Rainbow in ‘The Wizard of Oz’
