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The John McCain "Straight Talk Express" rolled into Hudson, Wis., this morning for a town hall session on women in business. But the conversation wasn't all business, as the attendees also got a prescription from Cindy McCain on weight loss, our colleague Maeve Reston reports.
These kinds of events usually feature two or three introductory speakers, and first up this morning was J&L Steel Erectors Chief Executive LouAnne Reger. She told the crowd of more than 500 people -- mostly women -- about her two divorces, losing weight and a recent Nordstrom shopping trip. Cindy McCain then followed with her own weight-loss experience.
The best way to lose 30 pounds, she said, was to get out on the campaign trail. As proof: The white pants she was wearing were two sizes too big, she said. This, as Reston points out, comes from a woman who told Vogue that she wears size 0 Lucky Jeans. Not the kind of detail that's likely to strike a chord of empathy. Or, for that matter, the kind of experience the women in the crowd -- any crowd -- could replicate. How many will have a chance to hit the presidential campaign trail, as spouses or candidates?
Before the session began, the attendees were sung to by a barbershop quintet wearing American flag ties. The song list? "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," "A Bicycle Built for Two" and "You Raise Me Up" (dedicated to the women in the crowd who have been "touched by cancer").
By the time it was candidate McCain's turn, Reston reports, he looked very relieved to get the mic.
-- Scott Martelle
On the Fourth of July, our thoughts naturally turn to those words penned by Thomas Jefferson and first read aloud on the square behind Independence Hall in Philadelphia 232 years ago today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So what would Jefferson, a noted slave-owner, have thought about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama?
For that answer ....
Read more What would the Founding Fathers think of Barack Obama? »
It wasn't the sort of issue that John McCain (or Barack Obama) needed to prepare for Saturday in Washington when each courted Latino elected officials at their annual meeting. But Monday, at a McCain town hall meeting in Pipersville, Pa., a woman had a pointed question for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, a query sparked by America's changing demographics.
 "Why, as an American, do I have to push a button to speak English or hear English?"
The audience, a sea of mostly white faces, erupted in deafening applause.
"I think you struck a nerve," said McCain, for whom this is a delicate issue, given his support in recent years of efforts to reform U.S. immigration law that included a "path to citizenship" for most illegal immigrants that was derided by its foes as "amnesty."
"I tell ya," continued the woman, "I really get ticked. I really do."
"I can tell," said McCain.
"And then you go into Lowe's," she continued, referring to the home improvement store, "and it says 'Entrada.' And every utility bill you got has got a foreign language on it."
Oh, and by the way, she added, would he autograph a copy of his book, a gift to her husband for his 71st birthday?
On immigration, McCain gave his now-standard reply, acknowledging ...
Read more John McCain gets put on the linguistic spot »
Among the concerns some of Hillary Clinton female backers have with Barack Obama is the perception that he can slide into misogynist comments at the blink of an eye. And as we mentioned in an earlier post today, he made an odd, unplanned comment about women and heels during his Unity moment of rapprochement with Clinton. (The Swamp looks at Obama and John McCain on women's rights.)
This is from the transcript of the appearance: "[B]ecause of the campaign that Hillary Clinton waged, my daughters and all of your daughters will forever know that there is no barrier to who they are and what they can be in the United States of America. They can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do (cheers begin) -- and do it better, and do it in heels. I still (Obama laughs) -- I still don't know how she does it in heels."
Clinton laughed with him, but for a guy with some pretty good political instincts -- or who has at least hired people with good political instincts -- it was an odd verbal cul de sac to turn into. Remember, Obama caught some serious flak a few weeks back by dismissing a Michigan television reporter with a "sweetie." And he was criticized during a debate performance for another off-the-cuff comment about Clinton being "likable enough." Now he falls into the faux-joke of expressing amazement that a woman can outperform a man despite wearing heels.
That's not likely to go very far in mending fences with women already suspicious of him.
UPDATE: Tommy Vietor, Obama spokesman, says via e-mail that although Obama didn't cite Ann Richards, that was the genesis of his comment: "Sen. Obama was referencing Ann Richards' famous quote: 'Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.' Certainly Gov. Richards didn't mean [to] make that comment, as you described, as a 'faux-joke of expressing amazement that a woman can outperform a man despite wearing heels,' and it's disappointing that you'd draw that cynical conclusion."
Fair enough. But Vietor -- like many posters below -- missed the point of the blog item. For a candidate with past troubles with off-the-cuff comments on gender, it struck us as an odd comment. Some took offense; many did not (read the comments for a rather scathing discussion). Remember, this is a political blog, where we write about the political implications of campaign events and appearances.
-- Scott Martelle
Well, the first of two Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama unity fests went off pretty well tonight in Washington. 
Except for Terry McAuliffe's story about the checks in his pocket. "We will do whatever it takes to win back the White House," clinton told her people.
About 200 of Clinton's top "bundlers," each of them responsible for having collected at least $100Gs for her 17-month-long unsuccessful campaign, gathered at the Mayflower Hotel.
McAuliffe, who talked with The Times' Peter Nicholas outside the closed session, said the goal was: "Get all of our top people together and let him talk to them. Gets them fired up for the general election."
According to Tom McMillen, a former congressman in attendance, the mood inside the ballroom was warm and receptive, especially when Obama pledged to help pay off Clinton's $10+million campaign debt. He said that prompted a standing ovation from the Clinton donors.
McMillen quoted the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee as saying, "Look, I'll enlist my supporters (to pay off the debt). We need to be unified, not distracted."
Obama told the crowd he'd personally given a check to Clinton. And McAuliffe said later he'd received $4,600 in checks, the maximum allowed, from Obama's finance chairman, Penny Pritzker, and her husband.
"I've got two checks in my pocket," McAuliffe said. But when reporters asked to see them,....
Read more Hillary Clinton hands off her top bundler$ to Obama the victor »
Political observers of a certain age these days remember the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in the dimness of two decades ago.
Today, Jackson says the anticipated nomination of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate represents a crowning achievement for the civil rights movement as well as an "I-told-you-so" moment in the history of U.S. race relations.
Jackson appeared before the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune today in advance of the annual Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention that begins Saturday. He also said that he, unlike numerous other observers this year, was largely satisfied with the proportional Democratic delegate selection system that was a key to the extended party nominating -- a system Jackson was substantially responsible for in 1988.
Jackson called Obama's nomination "the last lap of a 54-year marathon race" that began with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, followed by a series of civil rights events that included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I have a dream" speech.
"People have been too quick to say, 'Back in the civil rights day,' " Jackson noted. "The civil rights movement never stopped. Its form may have changed from certain kinds of demonstration activity, but the struggle to get the right to vote was not led by either party. They celebrate the results of it, but in those marches, neither party invested in the success of those marches or martyrs."
Our colleague Rick Pearson has the rest of the Jackson story over at the Swamp.
-- Andrew Malcolm
"Just remember, folks: Nobody reads it."
That's the advice Barack Obama reportedly gave to the staff of the Harvard Law Review when minor disputes broke out. The Politico's reporters Ben Smith and Jeffrey Ressner have taken a closer look at Obama's year as the first black president of the prestigious law journal.
They combed through the 2,083 pages Obama edited and conclude that he was on message even way back in law school.
Obama reportedly kept the review balanced, accepting papers decrying affirmative action alongside calls to expand the rights of women, African Americans and the elderly to sue for discrimination. Writers he worked with said he was a great editor, helping them express their thoughts more clearly instead of trying to inject his own opinions.
Amanda Erickson has a fuller version over at the Swamp.
--Andrew Malcolm
Once presidential candidates were always placed on podiums, above the crowds, on balconies or the backs of trains speaking down to the voters from on high.
In the last few presidential election cycles, however, populism became the theme. It's been the stage fashion to plop the candidate amid adoring throngs. All campaigns now line the back of rally stages with handpicked, politically correct supporters who represent the message of the day -- young college students, old white women, a rainbow array of ethnicities. The president does it too, lots of soldiers behind him, men, women, black, white, Latino.
These are the happy, adoring, enthusiastic supporters who will be on camera with the candidate for presumably millions of Americans to see and identify with. The others in the front audience are there to yell and scream and wave signs.
The candidate's advance team and its volunteers are charged with arranging this human facial bouquet before the event. There are risks, of course. Young children easily get bored and fidgety and sometimes pick their noses on camera.
Others may yawn or fall asleep and provide evil news photographers with an inadvertent comment on the candidate's remarks that will appear all over the country as quickly as you can say, "Hot dog, not another candidate holding a microphone photo!"
Trouble is, apparently a Barack Obama volunteer or two in Detroit on Monday barred two Muslim women from standing behind Obama because they were wearing head-scarves. Everyone knows how hard the Obama forces have fought viral rumors that with the middle name Hussein and a childhood in Indonesia he is really a closet Muslim plotting to subvert the United States of America.
So the volunteer, described as a black woman in a green shirt, barred the women from the stage.
Our colleague over at the Swamp, Katie Fretland, has this version of the embarrassing episode. And the Politico.com has a longer one here.
She explained, according to the women, by citing the political climate and widespread antipathy toward Muslims. It's particularly awkward for the Obama campaign, which talks often about its inclusiveness and the fact that Michigan is a major center of American Arabs.
The campaign apologized. "“This is of course not the policy of the campaign," said Bill Burton. "It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together."
But at least one of the women has indicated that an apology is insufficient. She wants an invitation to stand right behind Obama at another rally.
Watch for that. And watch for Obama then to walk over and personally apologize. Turn a minus into a plus.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo Credit: The Daily Pennsylvanian
The folks over at Details magazine offer a preview of a piece coming out in the August issue (though not due on stands until July 15) on Bobby Jindal, one of the names bandied about as a possible running mate for John McCain. No bombshells in the preview, but it gives a broad look at a guy with intense ambitions, rapid political success -- with the occasional knock-back -- and an evolved sense of his faith and politics.
Jindal was born in the U.S. six months after his parents arrived from Indi a. "Being the son of an immigrant is almost like being a convert to Americanism," the piece quotes Jindal as saying. He's also a convert to Catholicism from Hinduism. He became a Republican after growing up in a nominally Democratic house and has succeeded politically in Louisiana despite being the antithesis of a Louisianan, writes Jonathan Miles. "He doesn’t care much, for instance, about food. His musical tastes run toward middle-of-the-road FM rock -- Clapton, the Beatles -- though, really, whatever's on the radio will do. He doesn’t drink alcohol -- an anomaly in a state where, as the joke goes, cirrhosis of the liver gets listed on death certificates as 'natural causes' -- or even coffee, Louisiana’s second official liquid. In a state so devoted to hunting and fishing that its license plates read SPORTSMAN’S PARADISE, Jindal’s chosen sport is tennis. But something else sets Jindal apart in this deep-fried southern state: His first name is Piyush, not Robert..."
Jindal has downplayed talk that he might get on the Republican ticket, but as Miles -- and others -- point out that at half McCain's age, Jindal counters the relative youthfulness of Barack Obama, and his ethnic background could help erode that historic distinction for the Democratic ticket, as well.
Let the speculation continue.
-- Scott Martelle
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...
Read more Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two »
As we've noted before, the issue of bias -- against Hillary Clinton because she's a woman, against Barack Obama because he's African American -- has been an underlying theme in this year's contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. On ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, host George Stephanopoulos raised the matter yet again in discussing with Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean the party's hopes for unity in the aftermath of Saturday's contentious meeting over the seating of the Florida and Michigan convention delegates.
Asked about an op-ed in the Boston Globe last Friday by 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro (who got in trouble in March with her own racially tinged remarks about Obama) ...
Read more Howard Dean calls out the media on sexism »
As if the dispute over whether to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations isn't enough, the Democratic National Committee is facing a mini-uprising in the blogger world over which local blogs will be seated with state delegations at the Democratic National Convention in August.
The DNC, perhaps recognizing how many activists get their political fixes from blogs, decided to grant a seat to (usually) a single blog with each state's delegation in Denver. This is in addition to the large-scale blog sites (think Huffington and Kos) that will get media credentials to cover the event. And some of the state-level blog sites are fairly large, such as Calitics, which gets a seat.
But some bloggers left off the list are smelling bias, or at the least a failure of inclusion. And maybe exclusion based on how far left the bloggers lean. And there's the occasional accusation of favoritism.
One big happy family, those Democrats.
-- Scott Martelle
We never would have imagined that our brief item on Kentucky's Magoffin County -- the least demographically diverse community in the nation and site of Hillary Clinton's best showing, percentage-wise, in the state's Tuesday primary -- was going to strike such a nerve.
But so it did, as judged by the more than 200 comments it prompted -- some hard-edged and nasty, but most well worth reading and contemplating (which we did).
The majority held forth on whether and to what extent racism and sexism have driven voting patterns in the historic Democratic presidential contest. Others reflected on urban attitudes vs. rural ones, as well as "elitism" vs. "working class" values. And quite a few questioned or (to a lesser degree) defended the journalistic value of what to us was simply a fact worth chewing over.
One prominent thread in the comments -- an ongoing debate over whether a difference can be drawn between the huge vote margins Clinton rolled up in the largely white, rural areas of Kentucky (and, before that, West Virginia) and the overwhelming backing Barack Obama receives from black voters in virtually every primary and caucus -- caused us to wonder about the flip side of Magoffin County.
Times reporter James Hohmann tracked down the answer we sought: Jefferson County, Mississippi, nestled in the state's southwest corner, is home to the nation's largest concentration of African Americans. In the 2000 Census, 86.49% of its 9,740 residents were black.
And in the state's March 11 primary, Obama won 88% of the county's vote -- his best showing in a state where he defeated Clinton, 61%-37%.
-- Don Frederick
No one was surprised by Hillary Clinton's absolute dominance in the hills, hollows and other rural stretches of Kentucky in the state's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday. But as she rolled up an overall victory margin of 35 percentage points over Barack Obama in the state, one local result stands out.
Magoffin County -- which according to the Lexington Herald-Leader has been identified by the Census Bureau as "the least diverse place in the nation" -- delivered Clinton her largest share of the vote among Kentucky's 120 counties.
She racked up 93% of the vote in Magoffin (named for a former governor and located in the state's eastern half). In raw votes, the totals were Clinton, 2,714; Obama, 146.
How homogenous is the county? According to the 2000 census, 99.29% of its population of 13,332 was white.
[UPDATE: For information on the primary result in the U.S. county with the largest concentration of black residents, go here.]
-- Don Frederick
The folks over at Politico have an interesting piece this morning reminding us of California political history as they try to figure out why political polling in this cycle has been so off. One answer is something the pros refer to it as the "Bradley effect," the phenomenon of white poll respondents telling pollsters they'll vote for a black candidate -- but not doing so once they get into the privacy of the polling booth. Some think that was behind the gap between polls and results in former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's loss in the 1982 governor's race (and thus the name of the phenomenon).
Pollsters are trying to sort some of this out during their annual convention in New Orleans this week -- three out of five said they wouldn't get an answer (sorry, couldn't resist). And a study is underway to try to figure out what's gone wrong, looking at such arcana as whether pollsters' samples are not reflective.
Our guess? People have been genuinely undecided, and small events pushed them one way or the other. New Hampshire was the first notable poll flop, and a close look at the numbers could hold a key to the explanation.
All the polls showed Barack Obama with a healthy margin, but Hillary Clinton won by a 2.6% margin. But dig into the polls. The Suffolk/WGBH poll, for instance, found Obama leading but with 8% undecided; 6% of those who had decided were "very likely" to change their minds, and another 18% said they might change their minds. With that much volatility, it's hard to measure the impact of even something so small as a tear.
By the time the Indiana primary rolled around -- polls there gave Clinton an aggregate 5-point lead; she won with a 1.4% margin -- the pollsters had largely stopped asking about the depth of voter commitment. Maybe they ought to add that question back in.
But then, 40% of you don't care (you have to love a poll about polls).
-- Scott Martelle
Today's "Meet the Press" on NBC featured a full hour with Sen. Barack Obama, and it's no surprise that the first third of the interview focused on the inflammatory remarks of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and their effect on Obama's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
After snippets of some of Wright's more controversial sermons "were looped on cable stations 24 hours a day for about five straight days," Obama said, "I did what I thought was right, which was to denounce the words, not denounce the man."
After all, the Illinois senator noted, he had known Wright as a former Marine and a pillar of the community, and "I think that the American people understand that when I joined Trinity United Church of Christ, I was committing not to Pastor Wright; I was committing to a church and I was committing to Christ."
But last Monday, Obama said, "when [Wright] came out ...
Read more 'Gasoline on the fire': Barack Obama on Jeremiah Wright »
In his highly praised and closely critiqued speech on race in America in Philadelphia last month, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama took 37 minutes to dissect his views on race in America and the need for improved dialog and his controversial relationship with his outspoken pastor of two decades, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.
As the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Obama was under extreme and mounting pressure to distance himself from the inflammatory remarks of Wright.
They included denunciations of America, appearing to suggest the United States invited the 9/11 attacks and charging that the federal government invented the AIDS epidemic to commit genocide against people of color.
Obama said he had not heard the worst comments and did not specify which Wright remarks he was describing, but "condemned" the "statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy." So proud is the Obama organization of that now partially inoperative address that as of last night it was still offering a DVD of the speech in return for a minimum $30 campaign donation.
At the same time Obama also said of Wright: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."
Tuesday, after Wright's speech and news conference in Washington, Obama did just that. "The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.
"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs.
"And if Rev. Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
Obama's complete news conference remarks are published below after the jump, along with a third poll question. And as always on The Ticket, the comment line is open for dialogue.
Click on Read more.
--Andrew Malcolm
Read more Is Obama wrong or Wright? Vote here »
Well, here's a most interesting connection we just came across.
Everybody is talking today about how much the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's latest unrepentant militant remarks hurt his most prominent parishoner, Sen. Barack Obama, and his chances to win the Democratic presidential nomination and the general election. So much so that the Obama camp realized the latent danger overnight and the candidate was forced to speak out publicly a second time today, as The Ticket noted here earlier today.
There was little doubt left in today's remarks by Obama, who recently said he could no more disown Wright than he could the black community. He pretty much disowned Wright today. Obama described himself as "outraged" and "saddened" by "the spectacle of what we saw yesterday."
But now, it turns out, we should have been paying a little less attention to Wright's speech and the histrionics of his ensuing news conference and taken a peek at....
Read more Was Jeremiah Wright's speech set up by a Clinton supporter? »
Nora Ephron has posted a rather blunt political column over on Huffington Po st that pretty well sums up Tuesday's important Pennsylvania primary.
"This is an election," she writes, "about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men."
Can't lay it out much straighter than that.
Of course, there are economic issues also at play in Tuesday's balloting there. Pennsylvania has been hit hard by tectonic economic shifts that have roiled the Rust Belt for a couple of decades now.
Many communities and their members are still reeling and have yet to find an economic alternative. Hence, in part the blame heaped...
Read more Nora Ephron asks: Do Pennsylvanians hate blacks or women more? »
Perhaps being shot down over enemy territory, fished out of a lake with two broken arms and a broken knee, and incarcerated for nearly six years as a prisoner of war makes Sen. John McCain less intimida ted than other politicians at the thought of speaking to unfriendly audiences.
After all, what's a little heckling after you've endured years of North Vietnamese imprisonment and torture?
That thought came to mind last week as McCain spoke in Memphis to an African-American crowd gathered outside the Lorraine Motel, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr'.s 1968 assassination.
The venue was certainly well beyond the typical suburban comfort zone of many presidential candidates especially Republicans. And especially for Republicans named McCain who voted against the....
Read more McCain launches his general campaign with risky style he likes »
Cesar Chavez Day.
That's what Barack Obama is endorsing: A national holiday in honor of the late, legendary activist for farmworker rights (pictured below).
Today is Chavez's birthday -- and Hillary Clinton's campaign was the first to draw attention to that this morning, issuing a statement celebrating the 81st anniversary of Chavez's birth (he died on April 23, 1993).
But Obama, who has struggled to overcome Clinton's significant advantage among Latino voters in state after state, sought to one-up his rival for the Democratic presidential nod by joining the call for creating a national holiday to commemorate the father of the United Farm Workers.
"As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago,'' Obama said in a statement from his campaign. "And we should honor him for what he's taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.
"That's why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez's birthday a national holiday. It's time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union."
Clinton, in her statement, said: “Today, I join millions of Americans in commemorating the life of one of our great civil rights leaders, Cesar Chavez. Driven by his strong desire to ensure better quality of life for migrant farmworkers across the country, Chavez helped found -– along with Dolores Huerta –- the United Farm Workers of America, arguably one of the first effective farmworkers unions in the United States.''
Huerta, 77, endorsed Clinton ...
Read more Barack Obama calls for Cesar Chavez holiday »
Let's sit back and get a little less comfortable on a Sunday morning.
Nothing can cause a collective national squirm quite like a little racial tension. All those sentiments that are usually the stuff of private conversation, if spoken at all, are playing out in th e harsh light of the campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. That black thing-white thing, thing. We are dealing with race -- again -- whether we want to or not.
It is hard to believe that a mere three months ago, the good and overwhelmingly white people of Iowa started the whole process of the presidential race, delivering a powerful verdict on the Democratic side that Barack Obama's race was no impediment to his pursuit of the White House.
How quaint.
Now we are in the ultimate where-you-stand-depends-on-where-you-sit moment. It's never easy being a first, and perhaps the only surprising thing about the role race is now playing in the Democratic primary is that it took this long to boil. Meanwhile, beneath the same surface, the gender issue simmers.
From the outset, Obama faced questions that no other candidate had to face, ranging from "is he black enough?" to "is he maybe 'too black'?"
Or, as a white colleague pointed out, maybe the real question among whites was whether he was white enough. Who wants to start that conversation?
Then came questions about his faith. Was Barack Hussein Obama really a closet....
Read more Barack Obama's race, Hillary Clinton's gender and the 2008 race »
One of the most remarkable things about the ongoing controversy over Barack Obama's angry pastor is the sharply differing reactions, even among those who seem to have so much else in common.
New polling suggests the wildfire Internet spread of the newly-retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright's most inflammatory sermons has scorched off some national popularity of Obama, who's based so much of his political message on being "post-racial," not militant, not angry, pro-unity.
But that now can seem contradictory to many with Obama's intimate 20-year association with a black nationalist who rages about "the U.S. of KKK-A," suggests the country invited or deserved the 9/11 attacks and believes the AIDS epidemic is a government conspiracy to kill blacks.
For a sample video of Wright's sermons, click on the Read more line below.
Then, Obama continued to expose his two young daughters to such views In a congregation whose loud, demonstrative cheers clearly endorsed such extreme statements, while claiming he'd not heard them.
(UPDATE: In his sunrise Eastern sermon at the Trinity United Church of Christ, titled "How to Handle a Public Lynching," the replacement for Rev. Wright, the Rev. Otis Moss III, did not mention his predecessor by name but likened his recent public treatment to that received by Jesus, who was crucified. "You picked the wrong folk to mess with," a defiant Moss told the enthusiastic holiday congregation. He also appealed for donations to a special "Resurrection Fund," which he did not describe.)
As reported here last week, Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, admitted being sufficiently worried more than a year ago that they un-invited the pastor from giving the invocation at Obama's campaign announcement in February, 2007.
At the same time, some black and white voters say they were moved by Obama's ensuing speech as a long-awaited invitation to begin an honest, calm and cleansing national dialogue on race.
It's a topic clearly on the minds of voters in Pennsylvania, one of the largest....
Read more Easter Sunday: Voters ponder Obama and Rev. Wright. What do YOU think? »
Three poorly chosen words.
In the sound-bite world of political campaigning, three words have the power to overpower a broader and deeper message. So, as Barack Obama attempts to climb out of two weeks of trench-warfare over the most critical social division in America -- race -- he's going to need to refocus his campaign on the things that got him this far.
Obama didn't do himself any favors Thursday in an early-morning call to WIP-610, a sports radio station in Philadelphia, when he was asked about the comment in his Philadelphia speech on race about his grandmother and her racial view of the world. "The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there is a reaction that has been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way... That's the nature of race in our society and we have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little less like that, and that's pretty powerful stuff.''
Yet the three words linger on the short loop that is cable television news and reverberate on the Internet like some bad political equivalent of the film, "Groundhog Day": "Typical white person.'' And, suddenly, the candidate who delivered what has been called the most powerful speech about racial harmony since the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is lambasted online as racist.
The truth is, virtually every white person and every black person knows ...
Read more Barack Obama's three little words -- and they weren't, 'I love you' »
Geraldine Ferraro has not gone quietly to the good sidelines of the presidential campaign.
Ferraro -- driven from Hillary Clinton's finance committee after giving a quote to the Daily Breeze in Torrance, Ca., that, after percolating for a few days, was widely seen as dismissive of Barack Obama's political success -- now has told the same newspaper that she didn't much appreciate the reference Obama made to her in his widely covered and much-discussed discourse on race relations this week.
Specifically, Ferraro said she found it "unbelievable" that Obama -- in trying to defuse controversy sparked by inflammatory comments his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made in the past -- had linked "what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit ..." (For the rest of the story, go here.)
 Ferraro merited the mention because, as few political junkies now will ever forget, she told the Breeze earlier this month, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" (of potentially winning the Democratic nomination). "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
As it was, the country got caught up in the lack of acuity in the remark by Ferraro -- who has freely acknowledged that her gender paved the way for her historic selection as Walter Mondale's running mate in the 1984 presidential campaign.
Here's how Obama worked Ferraro into his speech: "We can dismiss Rev. Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Rev. Wright made in his offending sermons about America -- to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality."
-- Mark Silva/Don Frederick
Silva writes for The Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau.
In his much-publicized and hashed-over speech on race relations Monday, Barack Obama made a brief reference to the notorious O.J. Simpson murder trial, citing it as an example of the predilection to "tackle race only as spectacle."
 Less noticed was the elaboration he provided in an interview aired Monday night on ABC's "Nightline" on the question that once so divided many whites and blacks: did Simpson butcher his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her wrong-place, wrong-time friend, Ron Goldman?
"You remember when, during the O.J. trial ... black and white culture just had these completely opposite reactions and nobody understood it. I'm somebody who was pretty clear that O.J. was guilty," Obama told "Nightline's" Terry Moran.
He continued: "And I was ashamed for my own community to respond in that way, but I also understood what was taking place, which was that reaction had more to do with a sense that somehow the criminal justice system historically had been biased so profoundly that a defeat of that justice system was somehow a victory."
For the full transcript of the interview, go here.
For Obama, the jury remains out on whether he has defused the controversy that enveloped him as attention turned late last week to inflammatory comments uttered over the years by his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But ...
Read more Barack Obama thought O.J. did it »
You could probably have figured this out without a poll, but, well, that's what polls do sometimes, confirm what we know. And a fresh CNN/Opinion Research poll cuts right to the key issue now that the clock is nearing happy hour here on the West Coast: How do the beer and wine votes break down?
  The answer: Beer drinkers are leaning Red, while wine drinkers are tipping toward Blue. Yep, beer drinkers give a slight nod to the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, in the fall match-up, while the wine sippers are leaning toward either Democrat, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
We didn't delve into the subgroups deeply enough to figure out where the scotch drinkers go, but apparently the hard liquor folks don't vote. [Oh, put a cork in it, we're kidding].
But even here there's a further Democratic divide. As CNN reports, registered voters opting for beer over wine also pick McCain by 53% to 46% over Clinton. McCain and Obama, though, are essentially tied. But "in the head-to-head match-ups with McCain, Sens. Obama and Clinton each win a majority among registered voters who prefer wine to beer."
By the way, the margin of error was +/- 6.5%, which makes this a 13-proof poll. And it brings out a whole new approach to the "get out the vote" efforts, or GOTV: BYOB.
-- Scott Martelle
A fresh poll from Quinnipiac (doesn't that sound like a character in a Herman Melville novel?) University finds Hillary Clinton adding to her lead over Barack Obama in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. And you can't help but think some of this stems from the debate over race and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Race does matter, judging by the poll numbers. Overall, Clinton led Obama 53% to 41% among all likely primary voters, a widened gap over the 49% to 43% lead she had Feb. 27. The poll, conducted over six days ending Sunday, has an unusually tight margin of error of 2.7%, which means Obama's slide is within the margin but Clinton's gain exceeds it.
The most interesting stuff, as usual, is in the details. The poll found that the racial gap has widened. White voters preferred Clinton by 61% to 33%, a change from the 56% to 37% lead last month. Similarly, black voters backed Obama 76% to 18% percent, compared with a 69% to 23% earlier finding.
There's a lot of time -- and a lot of campaigning -- to go, but at the moment, the numbers are tracking better for Clinton than for Obama, at least in Quinnipiac's poll. You can browse the rest of the polls here, but pay particular attention to the trend lines on the Real Clear Politics aggregate graph. It shows Obama flat in Pennsylvania, while Clinton climbed. And she was ahead there to begin with.
-- Scott Martelle
In a posting this evening, Newsmax.com reports that its correspondent witnessed Sen. Barack Obama attending one of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-white sermons on July 22 and nodding his head in agreement with the black congregation.
The report on the conservative website directly contradicts the Democratic presidential candidate's recent statements that while he denounced the pastor's controversial anti-American and anti-white rhetoric, he had never heard such declarations himself in church or in private.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, immediately denied the Newsmax report, saying Obama was in Miami that day. He referred to an item hastily posted on the Obama Fact Check website saying simply: "Fact: Obama did not attend services on July 22."
The lengthy Newsmax report by Ronald Kessler said its correspondent, Jim Davis, attended services on July 22, 2007, at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side and saw Obama in attendance. Kessler's story states:
"In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the 'United States of White America' and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement."
(UPDATE: On Monday the Newsmax site issued a statement with the Kessler story that it stands by the account, despite campaign denials that Obama was in church that day. It points out that he could have attended some services and still traveled to Miami that day and that its correspondent attended several July services and saw the senator and his Secret Service detail witness the service as described in the article. It says Obama spokesmen declined several opportunities to comment before publication of its initial report on the sermon.)
The Sunday night Kessler story links to Davis' original account of the ...
Read more Website says Obama attended anti-white Wright sermon; campaign says no »
Barack Obama just took the unusual step of posting a column on Huffington Post to again reject the comments of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The core of Obama's piece: The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach ... or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
With Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good.
-- Scott Martelle
Earlier this week, Geraldine Ferraro lost her spot as a Hillary Clinton fundraiser after offering her unvarnished take on the role race has played in Barack Obama's political rise. The coverage led a reader to direct us to an assessment of race and Obama's election to the U.S. Senate.
The source is what caught our eye. It's a 2005 Chicago Tribune profile. Posted on his Senate website. A key passage: "We have a certain script in our politics, and one of the scripts for black politicians is that for them to be authentically black they have to somehow offend white people," Obama said in an interview. "And then if he puts a multiracial coalition together, he must somehow be compromising the efforts of the African-American community.
"To use a street term," he added, "we flipped the script."
In winning the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois, Obama drew as many as two white votes for every black one, showing nearly unprecedented crossover appeal for a black candidate in a statewide race.
Obama acknowledges, with no small irony, that he benefits from his race. If he were white, he once bluntly noted, he would simply be one of nine freshmen senators, almost certainly without a multimillion-dollar book deal and a shred of celebrity. Or would he have been elected at all?
-- Scott Martelle
Aides to Barack Obama campaign are doing their best to claim Geraldine Ferraro's scalp (figuratively speaking) in the wake of her racially tinged, dismissive comment about their candidate's success in the Democratic presidential contest.
The flap built somewhat slowly. Ferraro -- the first, and only, woman to secure a spot on one of the major parties' White House ticket -- opined in a story published Friday in the Daily Breeze of Torrance that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."
That "position" would be running slightly ahead of Ferraro's choice for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.
As is often the case with inflammatory statements, Ferraro's quote wasn't even played that high in the story; it ran in the 11th paragraph. And on Friday, the Obama campaign was otherwise occupied -- dealing with the uproar created when one of his foreign policy advisors, Samantha Power, had called Clinton "a monster" while talking with a reporter.
Ferraro's statement began attracting widespread notice today. The Obama campaign homed in on it this morning when another of his advisors, Susan Rice, said on MSNBC that the comment was "outrageous and offensive." Rice went on to say Ferraro's words ...
Read more The Geraldine Ferraro furor: Will it have legs? »
Each of the remaining presidential contenders ostensibly has a day job on Capitol Hill. And all of them, after their own fashion, have pledged that as a White House occupant, they would seek to change the way Congress operates.
On Wednesday, there came a reminder of what helps drive such pledges -- and why the candidates may not have minded spending so much time away from Washington these past several months.
The occasion was a seemingly routine gathering of a House Judiciary subcommittee to discuss immigration policy -- by all accounts, one of the nation's most pressing concerns and one most in need of untangling. Primed and prepped to delve into the issue was Michael Chertoff, head of the Homeland Security Department.
Several lawmakers, though, had other matters on their minds -- and did not hesitate to broach them, The Times' Nicole Gaouette related to us. Some wanted to talk to Chertoff about their latest fact-finding trip to Afghanistan. Others wanted to discuss the the Federal Emergency Management Agency's use of trailers for disaster victims.
As these and other tangents were pursued, Chertoff told chairwoman Zoe Lofgren that he really would prefer to stick to the subject he had come prepared to discuss. Lofgren, a seven-term Democrat from Northern California, mentioned to her colleagues that it would be best if they did not digress. But to no avail.
The meeting took a truly unexpected turn ...
Read more An object lesson in the ways of Capitol Hill »
There's been an understandable focus on bias in this year's race for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the two remaining contenders vying to become either the first woman or the first African American to head a major-party ticket for the White House.
Many who back Barack Obama are still angry at what they saw as former President Bill Clinton's efforts to minimize Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary by comparing the Illinois senator with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who twice won the same primary (in 1984 and 1988) but never was considered a front-runner.
At the same time, supporters of Hillary Clinton have taken umbrage at reports and comments that focus on the New York senator's hairstyle and clothing — in their view implying that because she is a woman, she should not be taken seriously as a potential president.
Those issues were addressed head-on ...
Read more Yes, Clinton's female and Obama's black. So what? »
Bill Cunningham, a conservative radio talk show host based in Cincinnati, won a National Assn. of Broadcasters Marconi Award in 2001. Today, he staked his claim for a different "honor" -- cheap shot artist of the year -- with his repeated and pointed references to "Barack Hussein Obama" as he helped emcee a rally in his hometown for John McCain.
As Times reporter Maeve Reston relates here, McCain, to his credit, quickly repudiated the type of "help" Cunningham was providing. Referring to the incessant use of Obama's middle name, the presumed Republican presidential nominee said, "It will never happen again. It will never happen again."
That comment earned a rapid note of thanks from Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "It is a sign that if there is a McCain-Obama general election, it can be intensely competitive but the candidates will attempt to keep it respectful and focused on issues," Burton said.
Despite McCain's pledge, though, the type of message Cunningham sought to send today almost assuredly will happen again. Perhaps not at an officially sanctioned ...
Read more The name game and Obama »
Maybe you remember, it seems like a year ago, there was this former president who campaigned around South Carolina for days. He was the fellow Maya Angelou once called "the first black president," although he wasn't really black.(A number of loyal Ticket readers remind us it was, indeed, Toni Morrison who said that not Ms. Angelou. Thanks.)
So this black but really white ex-president was campaigning hard for his wife and he appeared to inject the racial issue into the campaign in the state where the Civil War began. And he also seemed to suggest that somehow her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, was like a marginal candidate running solely on race as the Rev. Jesse Jackson did in the 1980s. And there was a lot of criticism directed toward the ex-president for bringing race in to help his wife win the Democratic primary, which she didn't do in a big way.
So the former president got kind of quiet and said he was going to just promote his wife and not "defend" her.
Now comes yet another white male supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton bringing up race....
Read more Should the governor say this in Pittsburgh? »
Former President Bill Clinton attended a service today marking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Apparently, it went on for a while.
--Andrew Malcolm
A new poll just out from CNN/Opinion Research tied to Martin Luther King Day today finds blacks and whites optimistic and pretty much in agreement -- 84% whites, 78% blacks -- that a lot or moderate progress has been made toward the civil rights leader's dream of equality in American society.
But hidden near the bottom of the survey of nearly 1,400 adult Americans Jan. 14-17 is some disturbing news for Sen. Hillary Clinton heading into tonight's Democratic debate in South Carolina and the party's primary there Saturday.
The survey's numbers show that Americans are more ready for a black president than a female president. You read that right.
In Saturday's Nevada caucuses, Clinton beat Barack Obama in the total....
Read more New poll: U.S. more ready for black prez than female one »
Just as Democrats moved to tamp down a racially tinged dispute between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama presidential campaigns that caused many in the party to cringe, Asian Americans in Nevada have gone public with discontents of their own.
Cosponsors of tonight's debate in Las Vegas among the Democratic White House contenders -- a forum that starts at 6 p.m. (PST) and is designed to spotlight issues of special importance to minority communities -- include gro | |
