TBWA's Choice: Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)

As the race for the Democratic nomination for president gets further along (even though we still have 8 months left of this), and with Sen. Clinton’s continued misfires and inane campaign strategies (Mark Penn is a putz), Scott and I have decided to officially disclose our choice for the nomination and the presidency; Sen. Barack Obama.

Yes, Obama may not have the eons of experience as Clinton, but that’s part of the attraction to his candidacy.

After 8 years of Bush and his cronies, the US is in a sad state… loathed around the world… citizens dying for an unjust war… the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attacks against us still free… the economy circling the drain… and the Constitution in peril of being destroyed, we need someone who will strike a chord with the nation while striving to put the US back into balance.

Sen. Obama fits that description… Sen. Clinton does NOT.

Obama has opposed the Iraq war from the start and would start to bring one or two combat brigades home per month until all troops are out of Iraq within 16 months.

He wants to create a new national health plan that would allow individuals without access to affordable insurance coverage to buy coverage similar to that available to members of Congress.

He wants to increase the number of working parents eligible for Earned Income Tax Credits while increasing the benefit available to parents who support their children through child support payments.

He supports implementing an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by top scientists.

He supports abortion rights and urges efforts to reduce teen pregnancy.

He wants to use $75 billion in tax cuts and direct spending to stimulate the economy while providing an immediate $250 tax cut to workers and their families, along with an immediate, temporary $250 bonus to seniors in their Social Security checks.

He would encourage, but not require, universal Pre-Kindergarten while rewarding teachers with higher salaries that wouldn’t be tied to standardized test scores.

Ms. Clinton and her campaign on the other hand, over the last few days, has shown her desperation with acts of…well, desperation.

You have her campaign laying out a plan to use super delegates to subvert the will of the Democratic Party electorate… show in a span of days her campaign has gone from saying certain states don’t matter… to saying certain voters don’t matter… to saying the electorate of the Democratic party doesn’t matter and only super-delegates matter… screw the American people.

Good luck Sen. Obama… we’re behind you.

www.barackobama.com

Presidential Poll Positions

As mentioned in this morning’s ‘BushWhack’ing, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll is showing something interesting.

Granted, I don’t usually trust polls… but the more I think about this one, the more I think it might actually be pertinent to the campaign as a whole.

The poll (1,002 adult Americans conducted by telephone by on December 6-9, 2007 with a margin of error +/- 3%) pit the top 3 Democratic candidates – Clinton, Edwards, Obama – against the top 4 republican candidates – Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney – in a head-to-head mash-up.

(Aside; notice who is conspicuously absent? The man called the second-coming of Ronal Reagan, Fred Thompson. Once heralded as the savior of the republican party, his campaign has disintegrated and all’s that’s left now is a couple of endorsements and little else…anyway; back to our post…)

In the poll, the Democrats swept the republicans out the door faster than Rush Limbaugh going through a bottle of OxyContin, well, anything really...

The numbers, as the saying goes, don't lie:

Against Guiliani:
Clinton 51% to Giuliani’s 45%
Obama 52% to Giuliani’s 45%
Edwards 53% to Giuliani’s 45%

No large deficits there, but it’s still interesting… and about to get more interesting…

Against Romney:
Clinton 54 % to Romney’s 43% (11 point deficit)
Obama 54% to Romney’s 41% (13 point deficit)
Edwards 59% to Romney’s 37% (22 point deficit)

A pattern starts to emerge…

Against McCain:
Clinton 48% to McCain’s 50% (statistical tie)
Obama 48% to McCain’s 48% (statistical tie)
Edwards 52% to McCain’s 44% (8 point deficit)

Against current gop-darling Huckabee:
Clinton 54% to Huckabee’s 44% (10 point deficit)
Obama 55% to Huckabee’s 40% (an incredible 15 point deficit)
Edwards 60% to Huckabee’s 35% (a staggeringly large - and smug - 25 point deficit)

At first blush we realize a few things about this poll; John Edwards runs stronger against ALL of the republicans in the survey and John McCain is the strongest republican candidate.

So in simpler words; anyone the Democrats run will beat the republicans…

Let’s just hope we, and by we I mean ALL DEMOCRATS, don’t do something stupid and screw this up…

The Friday Presidential ‘BushWhack’ing

TGIF… only a few weeks until the first primary of the season and the candidates are getting, shall we say, edgy...

• The candidates for both parties may want to listen closely to the results of a non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center survey that found 57% of registered Hispanic voters favor Democrats, while 23% said they favored republicans…


• Clinton is clinging to a narrow lead in New Hampshire (and Iowa)…and the numbers are getting closer with Clinton as 35%, Obama at 29%, Edwards at 17%, Richardson at 10% and the rest getting 3% or lower. ( I expect the numbers to swing more in one way or the other after the Iowa caucus on January 3rd…)


• Romney has a sizable lead in New Hampshire with 37%, McCain – who picked up a major endorsement in the state this week – is at 20%, Giuliani has 16%, Huckabee has a paltry 9% - sharp contrast from his numbers in Iowa – Paul has 8% and the so-called second-coming of Ronald Reagan, Thompson, has 4%....


• Romney gave his much-anticipated speech about his religion this week and said about Mormonism… absolutely nothing. The speech was being billed as a primer for the voters about his religion, but instead focused on the role religion should play in the presidency. (It was an absolutely brilliant display of playing the media and the voters with political hype; but will it come back to bite him in the ass? I think yes…)


• Edwards came out and said that the recently released NIE justifies his opposition to “President” Bush on Iran… personally I’m just happy a candidate knows about the NIE – hear that Huckabee???


• Not a good week for Huckabee. First his role in getting a rapist released early from prison that almost immediately raped and killed again is pushing him down. Second, his incredibly moronic lack of knowledge about the NIE is showing a LOT of people that he is NOT ready for the national stage…


• The incredibly inane and mis-calculated rumors about Obama’s ties to the Muslim world are still being talked about… why I have no idea…


• Romney fired his landscaping company this week because it hires illegal immigrants…


• Giuliani was abnormally quiet this week, seemingly because he’s letting the furor over the city paying for his affairs die down


• And have we mentioned? That the second-coming of Ronald Reagan went tin-foil hat on us earlier this week? It's true, Thompson said that Iran may have deliberately “leaked” the information on their lack of nuclear program to distract the U.S. so they could work without problems… (Um, okay?? See, he is like Reagan; he’s senile…)

Desperately seeking... desperation??

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is getting desperate.

Her lead is shrinking and signs are pointing to a Dean-esque like breakdown in her campaign… and one need only look at her campaign’s latest salvo against Barack Obama as evidence.

First they tried to use Obama's donations to other Democrats as a campaign issue (Norman Hsu seen hiding in the corner, pot heard calling kettle black) but since that didn’t work, the campaign decided to delve earlier into his life… and found something… something from his VERY early years that contradicts his recent overtures that he hasn’t always planned on running for president.

In Boston last week, Senator Obama said: "I'm not running to fulfill some long held plans or because I think it's open to me." Well, that got the Hillary Camp all aflutter, from HillaryHub.com;

“Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for president. Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality.”

Um… okay, what was the dastardly thing Obama said… let’s go to Obama’s Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell for that; “It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics.”

He was… thinking about politics… um, ok… what else you got Clinton camp? What’s that you said, 15 years ago, Sen. Obama told his brother-in-law he might someday think about running for president?

Ooooookayyyyy… he said he would maybe run for office… possibly even President.

Wow, that’s fascinating isn’t it? Is that all you got? It isn’t? What’s that you say? You say the Obama-plan was put into effect long before law school?

Kindergarten to be precise, that’s when Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President'

(An essay? In Kindergarten?)

He repeated this evil plan years later, third grade to be exact, when he wrote another essay entitled “I Want To Be a President.”

Well, that’s it then… we can’t vote for him… after all, he didn’t remember that he wrote essays before he was ten about his desire to become president…he didn’t remember that a law school classmate often thought that Obama would get into politics… he didn’t remember that he once told his brother-in-law that he might run for office someday…

This is what is being considered big news from Clinton’s campaign now…attempts to connect essays and conversation remembrances to reasons Obama shouldn’t win the nomination?

Christ, everyone wanted to be president in Kindergarten… it was that or a professional baseball player, ballerina or actor…

But Obama’s desire to be a president as early as five is enough fodder for the Clinton camp to attack.

Let’s get something straight, I am neither a Clinton fan nor an Obama fan (I have not yet made up my mind about the candidates, and won’t until closer to primary day… regardless of what comes out of the Twin Ego States) but this move is both sad, pathetic… and childish…

Obama’s camp isn’t allowing the inane arguments deter them, in fact they’re using them to their advantage. Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded to the charges with some humor, saying;

“I'm sure tomorrow they'll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut.”

Clinton’s campaign needs to reign themselves in, or they could destroy their chances as quickly as one poorly-timed yell could…

The Week That Was: Decision 20078

Sorry… it just feels like the election is this year.

Another week has been finished in the 2008 presidential race… so let’s get to our quick rundown of the week that was in the 2008 presidential race.

The Democrats
The Democratic candidates tried to bolster their union cred this past week with a few of them making speeches to thousands of union members on the National Mall at a rally sponsored by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. They all said different things but had the same general premise; a promise to reverse what they called a long-standing anti-labor stance by “President” Bush.

Biden discovered that he had something in common with one of his rivals, it’s just too bad that it’s republican rival Mike Huckabee.

Clinton she saw her big lead in Iowa shrink as a new poll in that state shows her running neck and neck with Obama and Edwards… too bad the election is still more than 14 months away… she also saw Bill stumping for her online (No, that is not a euphemism…)

Dodd came out swinging with his first ad in Iowa where he attacks his opponents on Iraq.



Edwards didn’t let a slip of the tongue interfere with his stumping and saw himself defending himself that some of his investments are with companies that do business with the Sudanese government.

Gravel Nothing to see here… move along…Gore the man who isn’t running gave another clue that he might be re-considering (yet another) change of mind. In an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday he said he has not “ruled out” a possible run. Having said that, he also stated that he has "fallen out of love with politics" and believes that he can advance his causes via avenues other than the presidency. (Al, I think I speak for everyone when I say this; Make. A. Decision)

Kucinich is he still in the race even???


Obama in an attempt to overtake Hillary’s seemingly ever-growing lead, he “flashed his fangs” this week by tearing into her flip-flopping position on the Iraq war ( in her defense, she’s just trying to be like everyone else…). When asked if he will take the Black vote for granted he responded with an intelligent; "I expect to have to earn it.” (that’s a great answer as it shows people that he’s not expecting to just get the Black vote because he is Black, but that he will have to earn it. Very smart answer) Richardson keynoted the Young Democrats of America convention and well… that’s it really…

the republicans
Brownback, Giuliani, Gilmore, Huckabee, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo, and Tommy Thompson all appeared at the second republican debate in Columbia, S.C on Tuesday. Two of them came out in favor of torture… while another blamed 9/11 on U.S. attacks on Iraq.

All in all it was your typical republican forum with tying everything into terrorism or 9/11… perhaps they should get some new material like… I don’t know…issues??

Bloomberg said and did nothing to strengthen or dispel any rumors about him running for President… so stay tuned. Although Chuck Hagel (R-NE) did hint at a possible Independent run and said he might seek to do it in conjunction with Bloomberg… so just when you think it couldn’t get any stranger… along comes Hagel…

Brownback didn’t do much but piss off abortion rights advocates by saying he wants abortion outlawed even in cases of rape or incest. (Lovely… while that will play to the republican base, every moderate slammed the door on his face after hearing that…)

Gingrich Even though he hasn’t declared his candidacy, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is certainly talking like someone running for President. This past week alone he’s given his opinions about how the ‘08 field is “demeaning the presidency,” that the field looks like “game show contestants” during the debates and that there is a “great possibility” that he might jump into the ring. (Newt would not bring anything new to the gop field as he’s another republican panderer)

Giuliani got slammed by James Dobson for not being conservative enough… despite clarifying his stance on abortion (which still didn’t sit well with the gop base) while also trying to justify the fact that his wife Judith is being paid close to $125,000 a year for “speechwriting help” (Is that what the kids are calling to today?)

Huckabee generated a lot of buzz, positive & negative, after making fun of John Edwards’ expensive haircuts in the debate earlier this week… and found himself defending the tax hikes he’s promised if he wins.

Hunter is even in the race still??? When he doesn’t even make news after a debate, you have to wonder why he’s still running…

McCain drew the ire of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) because he is the only presidential candidate in Congress this year that has missed a major vote on the Iraq war… and the age question is starting to catch-up to him (as slow as he walks, it certainly moves slow as well). The Los Angeles Times wrote an Op-Ed this past week asking if McCain is physically fit to serve as president. It should be noted that, at the age of 70, if he got elected he would be the oldest person in history to enter the White House… yes, even older than The Gipper. (While I don’t necessarily think age should be a factor in choosing a president, medical history should be a slight consideration. McCain has had a couple of bouts of cancer and still suffers from effects of years of torture. Can his health and his body handle a 24/7 life?) And VoteVets.org released an ad that slams McCain and his support of “President” Bush and his Iraq policies… (Now he feels how John Kerry did when he was attacked by Swiftboat ads… actually, since he IS a republican, McCain may not feel a damn thing)

Paul You’re probably doing like I did when I saw his name earlier this week… who the hell is this??? He’s a Texas Congressman who got into it with Rudy during this week’s presidential debate and also conjured up imagery of Ronald Reagan by saying the republicans need to have the “courage of Ronald Reagan”… (Uh-huh… anyway, we haven’t heard much from him in the past, but he came out swinging this week. While I wouldn’t consider him a second tier candidate yet, he deserves paying attention to as he can incite pretty damn well…)

Romney Most experts thing he won the debate, but he also picked up the telephone this past week and joined some of his volunteers in an effort to recruit 24,000 new supporters for his presidential campaign. He also saw his son, Tagg, defend his stance on abortion. And at the debate, he mentioned those words that are spoken so often by republicans on the stump and then taken back so often by republicans in office: “no new taxes” (and we know how well that always works out for them)

Tancredo is “looking for Jack Bauer” (I assume it for torture techniques and NOT something else… ew, ew, ew bad image just popped into my head…)
F. Thompson Law and Order got picked up for another season… and that’s about all the news linked with him for the week…
T. Thompson What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.. my hearing aid battery died and I have to go to the bathroom. This is what his campaign has been reduced to… constant verbal barrages about this poor showing in the first debate… at least he didn’t embarrass himself further in the second debate… oh, wait…

And finally…
Most of the candidates reported their finances this past week with Biden, Dodd, Edwards, Giuliani, Gravel, Huckabee, Hunter, Obama, Paul, Richardson and Tancredo reporting theirs. Clinton, Gilmore, Romney, McCain and Tommy Thompson requested and got extensions (Hmmmmm… nothing to see here… move along….)

The Washington Post has some highlights; such as

“Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) wrote his way to millionaire status with a best-selling memoir. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) raked in $11 million by trotting the globe giving speeches last year. [..]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) married money -- his wife is the millionaire daughter of an Arizona beer magnate. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) became the richest of the 2008 candidates for the White House by dealing in private equity funds that have bought and sold significant interests in more than 180 companies. […]

And John Edwards, a trial lawyer who earned his initial fortune by defending the ill and injured in the courtroom, made $479,000 last year in salary and held than $7.5 million in investments with Fortress Investment Group, a New York hedge fund.”

(Mmmmmmmmm, beeeeeeeer… maybe McCain should promise free beer for everyone, that would rocket him to victory. Does this really mean anything???

The week that was: Decision 2008

Welcome to our newest feature here at TBWA: The Week That Was: Decision 2008. AKA, The Weekly Presidential Rewind.

This week has been, for lack of a better word, a quiet one on the 2008 Presidential Race circuit, so let’s get to it.

The Democrats
Biden heard crickets chirping… saw tumbleweeds tumbling along… in other words; he was quiet.

Clinton had a very good week. Not only did she pick up a handful of endorsements this past week as Maryland Gov. O'Malley endorsed her candidacy along with New York Governor Spitzer, NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and NY Controller Tom DiNapoli backed her candidacy, she also enjoyed news on Monday that she has increased her lead over the rest of the field. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Monday, her support rose to 38% from 30%, while Obama dropped by two percentage points to 24%. Edwards has 12% (along with Gore?), Richardson has 5%, Biden & Dod 2%, Kucinich 1% and Gravel had nothing. (This is definitely good news for the Clinton camp.. but the question remains; can they maintain this pace and the lead? Only time will tell…)

Dodd is walking a fine line between regulation and donation.

Edwards is offering more public policy proposals than any of the other candidates, and while they are winning applause from Democratic audiences, the question remains if they will still be cheering them when they see the price tag attached with each proposal - more than $125 billion a year. He also discussed his time at hedge fund and defended it by saying it was a learning experience (Uh-huh… is it just me, or does it seem as though Edwards is panicking a little? He’s trying to get every iota of information about his plans and proposals out to the public ASAP. The problem with that is that with such a long time to go until the primaries, people might forget them. And if he continually repeats them, people will start to tune his messages out. I think it might be time for his campaign to re-do itself before it’s too late)

Gravel… his campaign seems to be as dead as a kipper on a cracker…

Gore has not, and probably WILL NOT, announced his candidacy, but that hasn’t stopped his supporters from holding on to their cash and NOT giving it to the current slate of candidates. (This is troubling. Gore has said he’s not going to run, yet people are still holding out hope that he does. My thought; the only thing that could possibly get Gore to run would be if a republican candidate so heinous in Democrat eyes but Reagan-esque in republican eyes would jump into the ring… say Jeb Bush – ugh… now I’m gonna have nightmares about another Bush presidency…)

Obama had the direct opposite of Clinton and had a very bad week. Besides dropping 2 points from his previous 24%, Ms. Clinton’s lead over him jumped from four points to 14 points (ouch) He also gave his staff a public spanking scolding for not booking a personal appearance with the New Hampshire firefighters union, even though every other Democratic candidate WILL. (Oops…). He also drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died when the actual number was 12. Monday he chastised U.S. automakers and said the time has run out for making excuses about building more fuel-efficient cars. (Since it was announced last week that he was being given Secret Service protection, his campaign has looked stalled and in desperate need of a kick start. But, since it’s still incredibly early in the process, they should be able to do just that in plenty of time)

Richardson had a somewhat quiet week but it’s that one thing that has everyone talking. Richardson had his first two ads air in Iowa this past week. In the new ads, the governor is in a mock job interview complete with a nervous expression on his face. In the first ad, the man interviewing Richardson doesn't ask too many questions, instead ticking off the list of his qualifications. “Fourteen years in Congress, U.N. ambassador, secretary of energy, governor of New Mexico, negotiated with dictators in Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Zaire, Nigeria, Yugoslavia, Kenya, got a cease-fire in Darfur, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times." (Richardson is still a dark-horse candidate for me. Despite only earning 5% in the above mentioned poll, his campaign is still trying to get the word out about who he is… this ad should help. Keep an eye on him AND his campaign…)

The republicans
Is Bloomberg even running? He’s says no, some friends say yes, but his website has been re-designed and re-launched, so stay tuned.

Giuliani, during a campaign stop in Houston, explained his views on abortion, saying that while he is morally against them, he still believes that a woman should have the right to choose to end her pregnancy… (Wow… a well thought-out opinion using his own brain… are you sure he’s a republican?) Unfortunately, he also got condemned this week by Pope Benedict for supporting abortion rights, who also said that people who support abortion should be excommunicated from the church… (but sleeping with young boys is apparently still OK by them…)

McCain, in the middle of what can best be described as a fundraising binge, he said that it’s unlikely that a pro-choice Republican could win the party's presidential nomination, an in-direct, yet direct, swing at Rudy. He also hired a new Political Director for his campaign with Rob Jesmer, a former chief-of-staff to Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, coming in to replace Mike Dennehy.

Romney is having a busy week. While currently watching a debate about his religion unfold and answering questions about his wife donating money to Planned Parenthood, he publicly admonished polygamy as being “awful” while simultaneously, according to the New York Sun, surging in some polls. (Ok, the religion question is silly. Unless he claims that God told him to become President as Bush did, it shouldn’t matter. Nor should the fact that his wife gave money to Planned Parenthood) He’s also been touting his proposal to expand the size and funding of the U.S. military… hopefully keeping attention away from a “60 Minutes” interview this Sunday that reveals his Grandfather was, oddly enough, a polygamist (That’s gonna go over REALLY well with the republican base. While it may hurt his campaign, I disagree with some that it will bury his campaign. At this point, with the dearth of gop candidates out there, I think they may be a little more open-minded… at least until “Saint Thompson” enters the race… then Romney’s screwed…)

F. Thompson has been busy in the blogosphere and… well, that’s it really. Oh, and by the way, he STILL has not announced his candidacy yet…

T. Thompson was trying to cover his ass this week and did little else. During the republican debate, he said that he supports employers’ right to fire people for being gay… apparently forgetting that firing people over their sexual orientation is actually a crime in quite a few states. This week he maintains that what he really meant to say was (coincidentally) the exact opposite of what he clearly said that night. Oh, and he blames the “incorrect” answer on the fact that his hearing aid suddenly broke during that question… so even though he didn’t hear the question at all, he specifically answered the question, just not in the way meant to answer it. (Tommy Thompson ladies and gentlemen… the republicans version of Admiral Stockdale Mike Gravel…)

And finally....
Never one to back away from the tough question, the AP is asking each candidates a series of questions. This week’s was What car or cars do you drive?

Sen. Biden drives a 1967 Corvette, Sen. Dodd drives a Ford Escape hybrid, something he shares with Sen. Edwards, Rep. Kucinich drives a Ford Focus, Sen. Obama a Chrysler 300C, Gov. Richardson a Jeep Wrangler and Sen. Clinton a Ford Hybrid – though she usually rides in a Secret Service vehicle.

The republicans also answered the question, with Sen.Brownback driving a Ford Taurus while in Washington and a Honda Civic hybrid in Kansas, Gov.Huckabee a 2007 Chevy Tahoe, Rep. Hunter a “Suburban with 274,000 miles on it”, Sen. McCain a Cadillac CTS, Gov. Romney a 2005 Ford Mustang convertible, Rep. Tancredo a Toyota Prius hybrid along with a Cadillac, a Mercedes & a Buick while Giuliani arrogantly answered: “I don't drive, I navigate.”

Yes sirree… it was a sloooooooow news week on the presidential campaign trail…