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By W. Jackson Bate
By Edward W. Said
$20
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huffingtonpost.com
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It’s hard to limit oneself to just a couple dozen names, slogans and events representing the worst of the Bush years, but that’s what the folks at The Huffington Post have done for a postering campaign designed to promote Democratic candidates and shame Team Bush for its transgressions.
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dallasnews.com
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — In the first of a new Truthdig series on religion and politics, the Rev. Madison Shockley analyzes Mitt Romney’s recent landmark speech and finds that America’s most famous Mormon is trying to have it both ways.
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AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
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It’s not at all shocking when candidates and their assorted aides take pot shots at each other as they slog through the long and dirty campaign trail, but it’s at least a bit surprising when they ‘fess up to it. That’s just what happened— twice! —in about 24 hours.
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By Joe Conason — Some killers apparently were able to get out of prison by letting then-Gov. Huckabee know they had “found Jesus.” The terrible aftermath may say something important about the presidential candidate.
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ethanol360.com
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Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign co-chair issued a sleazy attack on Barack Obama on Wednesday, which he tried to pass off as an exploration of “openings for Republican dirty tricks.” It’s a tactic we’re likely to see more of as the candidates jockey for position and one-time front-runners get desperate.
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motherjones.com
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The Huckabee campaign has refused to give the media much more than scraps of the candidate’s religious speeches, leaving his 12 years as a pastor relatively shrouded in mystery. We already know he doesn’t believe in evolution, thought at one time that AIDS patients should be quarantined and isn’t ashamed “to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people,” so what is he hiding?
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The candidate who has gone from microscopic numbers to front-runner status is starting to feel the heat, but Mike Huckabee would rather suffer the slings and arrows of his opponents’ attacks than go back to toiling away in conservative obscurity: “It’s almost like ‘take your best shot, people.’ ” Now if the marginalized Democratic candidates could replicate Huckabee’s success, we’d have an exciting race on our hands.
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Ari Berman takes a look at the Democrats’ premiere non-issue as the campaign in Iowa draws closer to a conclusion: electability. He concludes that, their propaganda aside, all of the top candidates have positives and negatives that cancel each other out, but that probably doesn’t even matter. As Bill Clinton himself said: “This electability thing is a canard.”
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AP photo / Gerry Broome
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If Oprah Winfrey can do for politicians what she’s done for books and for any number of consumer items on her “Favorite Things” lists, Barack Obama might have a serious shot at the White House next November. Oprah held court on Sunday at a South Carolina stadium filled with nearly 30,000 Obama supporters, a giant pep rally that “had the feel of a rock concert,” according to Associated Press reporter Seanna Adcox.
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By Andy Borowitz — In a bold move that could dramatically alter the playing field of the 2008 GOP presidential race, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has named Jesus Christ as his vice presidential running mate.
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By Eugene Robinson — One assumes that the front-runner and her inner circle are rethinking their new strategy of singling out the Illinois senator and attacking him on issues of experience, ambition and character. And if they are not, they should be.
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gamecocksonline.cstv.com
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If you think the “Oprah effect” is all hype, you may be interested to learn that the Barack Obama campaign has had to move the location of an upcoming rally featuring the TV talk show host to accommodate the “overwhelming demand.” The new venue is the University of South Carolina’s 80,250-seat Williams-Brice Stadium, pictured here.
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By Ellen Goodman — Barack Obama is a do-gooder who has promised to do away with polarization and political bickering, but what if the Democrats need a winner more than a healer?
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A new USA Today/Gallup poll fits a trend other surveys have been pointing toward, namely that the front-runners in both parties are slowly losing their headlock on the election. Hillary Clinton, though still in the lead nationally, has lost 11 points in a month while Barack Obama and John Edwards have both picked up a few. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, once firmly stuck in statistically insignificant territory, continues his climb, like that other famous Arkansan who surprised his way to his party’s nomination.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The former senator knows his fate hinges on a strong showing in the coming caucuses and that he will be out of the race if he runs third.
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich stole the show at the Brown and Black Democratic Forum when he hijacked the format to ask himself a question.
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wcbstv.com
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Barack Obama shared an emptied restaurant and about 45 minutes of conversation with New York mayor and potential presidential bombshell Michael Bloomberg on Friday. A Bloomberg aide implied the meeting was more about sharing ideas than about political aspirations, but at the very least it was a challenge to Hillary Clinton, who would love to have New York and its power brokers all to herself.
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abcnews.com
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A man who said he had a bomb strapped to his chest took and eventually released several hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office Friday. The man demanded to speak with Hillary, who was in the Washington, D.C., area at the time. Either for safety reasons or simply to not be outdone, a Barack Obama campaign office also evacuated.
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By David Sirota — Through their ethics scandals, Republicans in Washington long ago began making the word conservative synonymous with the term corrupt. Surprisingly, though, it is a group of Democrats that is cementing this definitional conversion for good.
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travelks.com
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Web sites—they grow up so fast! We’re popping open the bubbly today, the second anniversary of Truthdig’s launch, and raising a glass to our staff and our readers. Two years ago, we started the venture with the driving idea of digging for the truth, and we’re thrilled by the results: 15,445,974 unique visits (and counting), two Webby awards, and the daily opportunity to engage in a community of ideas with our contributors.
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AP photo / Elise Amendola
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By Bill Boyarsky — 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.”
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villagevoice.com
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Rudy Giuliani likes to pretend that he’s the world’s greatest terrorism fighter, but it turns out that his business empire has contracted with a Qatari sheik who once helped Khalid Sheikh Muhammad escape the FBI. The Village Voice has the goods.
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By Ellen Goodman — Scientists may have found a way to grow stem cells without using embryos. The president’s people are claiming this as a White House victory, causing a flood of gall on Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Zogby International has issued a statement in defense of its poll showing Hillary Clinton, unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, losing to any of the top five Republican candidates. Clinton’s chief political strategist dismissed the survey as “meaningless,” and Zogby shot back, noting that “no other campaign has made as many requests for Zogby polling data over the years than [Mark] Penn has made on behalf of Clinton.”
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foxnews.com
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Politicians have always looked to celebrities for support, wanting stars on their team but not always wanting all the drama that can come with the celeb package. But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have chosen carefully—each scoring one of the top picks of the Hollywood litter.
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obama.senate.gov
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With the Iowa caucus fast approaching, the candidates are getting less shy about flinging a little mud. Take this jab from Barack Obama, for example: “There is no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in [Hillary] and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle. ... On the other hand, I don’t think Michelle would claim that she is the best qualified person to be a United States senator by virtue of me talking to her on occasion about the work I’ve done.”
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By Eugene Robinson — The conventional wisdom says that celebrity endorsements don’t mean much in politics. But the conventional wisdom also says that enormously long, difficult novels published more than a century ago don’t suddenly become best-sellers today.
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satiricalpolitical.com
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Fred Thompson told Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” that his network was biased, charging that criticism against Thompson’s campaign “has been a constant mantra of Fox.” As if to demonstrate the point, Wallace shot back: “Do you know anybody who thinks you’ve run a great campaign, sir?”
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By David Sirota — “Ross Perot was fiercely against NAFTA. Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?” It was a straightforward query about a Clinton administration trade policy that polls show the public now hates, and it was appropriately directed to a candidate who has previously praised NAFTA.
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By Joe Conason — Rarely does the endorsement of a presidential candidate make any national impression, especially when offered by a retired local politician. Former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean may well disprove that maxim, however, not so much because he chose McCain but because he rejected Giuliani.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The contours of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination are set, and it is not a battle about “issues.” Advisers to the major contenders largely see things this way, and Democratic voters are in a quandary about what to do.
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By Eugene Robinson — Finally, we’ve got a real presidential campaign on our hands. Wake up, those of you in the back row, because it looks as if the long-running seminar is finally over.
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By Marie Cocco — Now that Hillary Clinton has hushed, for the moment, the chatter about how she can be both a woman and a presidential front-runner whose opponents pile on, can we pay attention to the way the most powerful “gender card” is really going to be played in the 2008 campaign?
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nytimes.com
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Rudy Giuliani is on the defensive over immigration, which has become this campaign’s hot-button distraction. In response to criticism from his opponents that, as mayor of New York, Giuiani had the audacity not to arrest hospitalized immigrants, the candidate has promised to end illegal immigration within three years. At the center of his strategy is a virtual fence he’d like to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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trb.com
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Barack Obama has taken the lead in Iowa, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. However, his lead is within the poll’s margin of error, so he remains in a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Much of Obama’s strength may come from “new direction” voters, and the sense that voters have, according to the survey, that he is “the most honest and trustworthy.”
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cnn.com
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Conservative columnist Robert Novak initiated a scuffle between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over the weekend by reporting that “agents” of Hillary Clinton claimed to possess “scandalous” information about Barack Obama. Obama promptly accused the Clinton campaign of trying to “Swift-boat” him and demanded that the front-runner come clean.
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peakaction.files.wordpress.com
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By Bill Boyarsky — 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.
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By Andy Borowitz — Campaign-trail satire: Paper? Plastic? Both? Neither? The senator finds it’s hard to do a bit of shopping when a world of voters is looking on.
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The man who turned an inarticulate failed businessman into an inarticulate failed president offers his take on the campaign so far. It’s a real shocker: Rove is impressed by the Republicans, while he finds the Democrats “weak.”
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By Nicholas von Hoffman — Why is it that so many voters continue to elect reactionaries who do their best to disenfranchise them? The answer, says Paul Krugman in his new book, is racism.
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By Eugene Robinson — “That’s an excellent question” normally doesn’t make the list of utterances that can get a candidate in trouble on the campaign trail. But this presidential campaign isn’t what anyone would call normal.
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In this latest campaign video for Hillary Clinton, her once-tubbier hubby is shown sweating it out on a treadmill as a cheeseburger appears on the TV he’s watching, rotating in lascivious beefy splendor on the screen. This isn’t, however, the cheesiest moment from this ad, which ultimately aims to point out how “Caucusing [i.e., for Hillary] is easy!”
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Just in case anyone forgot that Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York on Sept. 11, 2001, or wondered why a former mayor thinks he’s qualified to be president, the candidate has developed something of a “9/11” tick. It turns out he might not be entirely conscious of it.
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The horse-race coverage of the campaign mostly missed this absolute gem of a speech from Barack Obama, who has scratched and clawed his way to a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa.
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By Marie Cocco — Sometime before the average price of gas topped the $3-a-gallon mark, an inevitable moment arrived. The economy beat Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans.
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AP photo / Adam Rountree
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By Bill Boyarsky — 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.
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jfklibrary.org
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While Hillary’s out on the campaign trail, Bill Clinton may be offering his diplomatic expertise to help bring a resolution to the Writers Guild of America strike, which has halted several productions in Hollywood and New York.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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