Despite the nation's pop paralysis over the death of sad singer Michael Jackson, the Democratic National Committee's Change Commission begins its complicated work tomorrow of reforming the procedures, timing and rules of that party's convention delegate selection process.
What comes from this series of meetings, that sprouted from the long bitter struggle last year between Barack Obama and a New York senator, could radically alter the way Democrats pick their presidential candidates for many elections starting in 2012.
As The Ticket reported here in March, it's a delicate delegate process because certain states -- we'll call them Iowa and New Hampshire -- believe they have a right handed down by Thomas Jefferson to go first in the selection process, which is deemed to make them more important. Or at least help fill the state's hotels and restaurants and empty the rental car lots during a normal winter's months when inbound flights to Des Moines often have vacant seats.
At the "suggestion" of its nomineeat last summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver, delegates voted to establish a commission to examine everything including improving the caucus process, which can seem even longer than Iowa winters, reducing the number of unpledged delegates and quite possibly tinkering with the calendar window for the caucuses and primaries for the 2012 presidential election cycle.
Co-chairs of the Change Commission are Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. There'll be a lot of talking starting Saturday at 9:30 Eastern in the Capitol Hilton. They'll start with history lessons and a speech by DNC ChairTim Kaine, who isn't the governor of New Jersey despite VPJoe Biden'scomments.
Democratic President Obama chose former Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa the other day as the new chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Leach was a veteran Republican representative who previously supported George W. Bush while serving 30 years in the House. Most recently, the 66-year-old has been teaching at Princeton, his alma mater.
The Obama move was widely hailed as another bipartisan broadening measure by the new president. But a closer look, via this C-SPAN video, reveals a bit more to the story.
Republican Leach is to Democrat Obama as longtime Democrat-nominal independent Joe Lieberman is to Republican John McCain.
Leach actually endorsed Obama before the GOP nominated its candidate last year. Leach spoke for eight minutes at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, talking critically about the Republican Party, as Lieberman did the next week about his old party during the GOP gathering in St. Paul.
Leach lavished praise on Obama as a "transcending candidate" with a "clarion call for renewal." He also praised former Vice President Al Gore, who'd chosen Lieberman as his 2000 running mate.
It's understandable that few would remember this close political tie between appointer and appointee. Judging by the chattering convention audience's reaction on the video, not many of them were listening either.
While the nation was watching the world watch Obama speak and tour in Egypt, news of the East Wing staff changes came out. Out as the old chief of staff after less than five months is Jackie Norris, who started working with Mrs. Obama during the Iowa caucus campaign.
In as the new chief of staff is Susan Sher, who's been a friend of her boss since even before they started working together years ago at the University of Chicago.
Norris was sent over to become a "senior advisor" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
To make things look all smooth and friendly-like in a city that thrives on gossip about invisible internal conflicts, all three women issued boiler-plate statements of their longtime friendship, deep commitments and excitement about pursuing the administration's agenda.
Norris, for instance, was quoted as saying: "I am grateful to President and Mrs. Obama for the opportunities and friendship they have given me over the last few years and I am looking forward to becoming an integral part of this Administration’s efforts to advance the cause of national and community service."
The only cliche left out of the White House statement was anyone's avowed goal of spending more time with their family.
It's been seven long months since we've had an official presidential campaign going. Of course, in modern times the incumbent president in a first term is never not running. Hence, Nancy Reagan at the White House today with Barack Obama.
And so many other ongoing activities of the new Democratic administration that's taking its show to the Middle East overnight.
But a new CNN/Opinion Research poll out today takes a peek at the 2012 field of possible Republican candidates. Yeah, right. Don't make your bets now. The most important news from this poll perhaps is that as of May 14-17, no Americans didn't know of George W. Bush or John McCain.
Neither of whom could conceivably be a candidate in 2012.
However, 3% of the country still hasn't heard of this Dick Cheney fellow. Well, no one ever accused Americans of paying too much attention to the news of their democracy.
Anyway, here's what the telephone poll of 1,010 adult Americans reveals almost five months into Obama's term, all obviously designed by CNN to drive the competing talkers berserk over at the White House's favorite network:
Americans now are thinking more favorably of Bush, Cheney, McCain, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and someone named Rush Limbaugh. Their favorable numbers are all up, some significantly.
As The Ticket reported earlier today, Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who was not included in the poll, announced he would not seek a third term.
Which either means he's positioning himself for a 2012 run at the GOP nomination or he wants to have more time to attend his daughter's volleyball games. (Yeah, that's what we figure too.)
The only Republican polled who did not advance in popularity was Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Her unfavorables stayed constant at 43%. But her favorable rating slipped slightly from 49% right after the Nov. 4 election to 46% today.
No, wait now. Calm down. Even down 3 points, her 46% is still better than all the other Republicans polled except McCain.
Obama, of course, has a current popularity rating north of 60%. However, that's probably mostly due to VP Joe Biden's coattails, don't you think? He won't be on the Democratic ticket in 2012.
And this time next year, when unemployment rates are still high or growing as predicted and the midterm congressional campaigns are ramping up, we'll see where all these numbers stand.
No, not for that again already. Caucus preparations are still weeks away.
The president flew all the way out to midcountry in his large airplane to the Hawkeye State to talk about saving the environment and developing green energy, which a 747 isn't. But who would ever point out such an inconsistent, inconvenient truth unless it involved evil automobile chief executives in their private jets?
Anyway, Obama went to Newton. Ring a bell? Newton, Iowa? Onetime headquarters home of Maytag, a famous American thing that they don't manufacture there anymore. Nor in Searcy, Ark. Nor in Herrin, Ill. Which made even Maytag women unemployed.
Ever since 2006, one more thing that's clearly Bush's fault. No, better yet, Bush-Cheney, Obama's evil cousin. Eight long years. All that.
So here below is what the country's new chief executive said there about the good news he sees developing now in Newton. And hopefully elsewhere. We have a video excerpt down there too.
Remarks by President Obama at Clean Energy at Trinity Structural Towers, Newton, Iowa, April 22, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Thank you, Rich, for the great introduction. Thank you very much. Please, everybody have a seat. (UPDATE: The prepared speech opening has been edited to reflect the additional remarks the president inserted.)
It is good to be back in Newton, and it's a privilege to be here at Trinity Structural Towers. I've got a couple of special thank-yous that I want to make, because I've got a lot of old friends -- not old in years, but been friends for a long time now.
First of all, your outstanding governor, Chet Culver, please give him a big round of applause. (Applause.) His wonderful wife, Mari, I see over here. She's not on the card, but -- (applause.) My outstanding secretary of Agriculture, who I plucked from Iowa, Tom Vilsack and his wonderful wife, Christie Vilsack. (Applause.)
We've got the attorney general of Iowa, one of my co-chairs when I ran in the Iowa caucus and nobody could pronounce my name -- Tom Miller. (Applause.) My other co-chair, Mike Fitzgerald, treasurer of Iowa. (Applause.) We got the Iowa secretary of state, Mike Mauro. There he is. (Applause.) We've got your outstanding member of Congress who's working hard for Newton all the time, Leonard Boswell. (Applause.) And your own pride of Newton, Mayor Chaz Allen. (Applause.) There he is, back there. It's good to see you again, Chaz.
It is terrific to be here -- and by the way, I've got a whole bunch of folks here who were active in the campaign, and precinct captains. And I just want to thank all of them for showing up, and to all the great workers who are here at this plant -- thank you. (Applause.)
I just had a terrific tour of the facility led by several of the workers and managers who operate this plant. It wasn't too long ago, as Rich said, that Maytag closed its operations in Newton. And hundreds of jobs were lost. These floors were dark and silent. The only signs of a once-thriving enterprise were the cement markings where the equipment had been before they were boxed up and carted away.
Today, this facility is alive again with new industry. This community continues to struggle, and not everyone has been so fortunate as to be rehired, but more than 100 people will now be....
The Ticket is republishing this weekend some of our favorite items from recent campaign months. This one looking toward the Obama inauguration on Jan. 20 originally appeared in this space on Dec. 5, 2008:
Shortly before the Nov. 4 presidential voting closed, noted Obama-backer Oprah Winfrey announced that she'd already picked out her inaugural ball gown, a sign of overconfidence that she did not have to pay for in the end.
Now that Barack Obama'sinauguration is virtually certain (unless the Supreme Court's ponderings lead it to get involved), Oprah has announced she's taking her Chicago talk show to Washington, which is also famous for lotsa talk. (And that'll allow her to write off the gown cost as a business expense.)
She's rented the 2,300-seat Kennedy Center to do two shows there right around Jan. 20.
You may remember Oprah came out early for her fellow Chicagoan. She held a huge celebrity fundraiser for him at her Montecito house.
And she emceed giant primary rallies for him in Iowa and North Carolina, which he won, and New Hampshire, which he lost to Hillary Clinton, the first serious female presidential candidate who many former Oprah fans thought she should support. Winfrey's ratings took a hit.
We don't want to let anything out of the bag and spoil the screaming.
But wouldn't it just be a perfect television moment if, while Oprah is talking to the excited Kennedy Center audience in January at inauguration time, a certain someone who's about to become president and maybe his wife too walked out on the stage behind the show host?
Everyone would cry, except those execs watching the ratings.
From time to time in the next two weeks The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from this amazing 2007-08 political season. This item originally appeared Nov. 11, 2007:
Hillary Clinton stopped at a bio-diesel plant in Newton, Iowa earlier this week to see alternative fuels in the making and drive home the week's campaign theme of her energy plan. After a tour, the candidate took questions from the crowd.
She called on a young woman. "As a young person," said the well-spoken Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, "I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?"
"Well, you should be worried," Clinton replied. "You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it's usually young people that ask me about global warming."
There's a good reason for that, too. The question was a plant, totally rigged in advance, like a late-night infomercial. Just before the public forum a Clinton staffer had chosen the young woman, a student at Grinnell College, and asked her to ask that specific question. To watch a video of the staged question and the pefectly-formatted response, click here.
Trouble is, the young woman told others and today her account showed up on the Grinnell website, including a mention that the staffer signaled Clinton who to call on.
Tonight, as other campaigns chuckled and hypocritically spread the news far and wide, a Clinton campaign spokesman admitted sheepishly, "On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Senator Clinton's energy plan at a forum. However, Sen. Clinton did not know which questioners she was calling on during the event. This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.”
Perhaps in large urban centers such stage-managed set-ups are acceptable, even expected. But in smalltown Iowa and New Hampshire, where even political opponents run into each other at the Dairy Queen after the high school football game, they take great pride in genuinely meeting candidates face-to-face in living rooms and diners for honest questioning.
Rigging a show like this is extremely bad form and Clinton could take a real hit for it, especially since it suits her reputation for being calculating.
But here's the catch. Although other campaigns are righteously denying it tonight, virtually every...
Shortly before the Nov. 4 presidential voting closed, noted Obama-backer Oprah Winfrey announced that she'd already picked out her inaugural ball gown, a sign of overconfidence that she did not have to pay for in the end.
Now that Barack Obama'sinauguration is virtually certain (unless the Supreme Court's ponderings lead it to get involved), Oprah has announced she's taking her Chicago talk show to Washington, which is also famous for lotsa talk. (And that'll allow her to write off the gown cost as a business expense.)
She's rented the 2,300-seat Kennedy Center to do two shows there right around Jan. 20.
You may remember Oprah came out early for her fellow Chicagoan. She held a huge celebrity fundraiser for him at her Montecito house.
And she emceed giant primary rallies for him in Iowa and North Carolina, which he won, and New Hampshire, which he lost to Hillary Clinton, the first serious female presidential candidate who many former Oprah fans thought she should support. Winfrey's ratings took a hit.
We don't want to let anything out of the bag and spoil the screaming.
But wouldn't it just be a perfect television moment if, while Oprah is talking to the excited Kennedy Center audience in January, a certain someone who's about to become president and maybe his wife too walked out on the stage behind the show host?
Everyone would cry, except those execs watching the ratings.
Hard to believe this much time has passed already since the 2008 presidential election. But here we are only 37 months away from the Iowa caucuses.
And only 32 months till the Ames Straw Poll.
And here goes Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal speaking at a fundraiser for the Iowa Family Policy Center (you remember them) at that familiar Sheraton Hotel in West Des Moines.
The 37-year-old Jindal made light of the occasion, of course, joking to some 800 curious listeners that it was way too soon to be making political speeches. "You might want to consider getting involved in some kind of recovery program," he suggested to a receptive audience on his first trip to the Hawkeye State, as noted by MSNBC's First Read.
But, of course, that's exactly what he was doing anyway in the form of speaking about family. "As a parent," said Jindal, knowing his conservative audience had precisely the same feelings, "I'm acutely aware of the overall coarsening of our culture in many ways."
Jindal took the tack that many non-Washington Republicans instinctively know is the right one nowadays, giving the president-elect some time and room to succeed or fail on his own without the constant carping that hurt Republicans more on Nov. 4.
"'Whether you voted for him or not," Jindal said of the new president, "whether you supported the new leaders of Congress or not, they're our president. They're our Congress. They need our prayers. They need our support."
Then he proceeded to talk some about his chief executive work back home in Louisiana, a kind of political introduction and plenty of mingling with the audience, who may remember he was there, come 2011. Jindal will be back. Same for Mike Huckabee. Probably Mitt Romney. Sarah Palin will pack them in sometime down the road.
Not so much because any of them have decided what they're going to do come the next leap year. But because they and their strategists want to be ready just in case.
You can bet the bayou that Jindal went home with a pocketful of names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. His staff will fire off thank you messages to those folks today or tomorrow. And they'll stay in touch.
It didn't seem to make much sense in late September, with poll after poll showing Barack Obama with a solid lead there.
True, President Bush, after losing Iowa in 2000, had won it in his 2004 reelection bid. But since then, the state Democratic Party had staged a comeback. And more importantly, Obama seemed to have a strong hold on the state, which began in early 2007 when he started organizing for the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
It was his victory in those caucuses that set him on the path that will culminate in his presidential election later tonight, when the three West Coast states start reporting their vote.
The McCain camp, though, kept insisting that their own polling and the word from Iowa Republicans showed that the state remained competitive.
And so McCain kept dropping in on the state throughout October.
As it turned out, it was time wasted. As the independent surveys had indicated, the state was a slam-dunk for Obama. The moment the polls closed there tonight, every network reported that he would carry its 7 electoral votes.
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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