England for Obama

There has been a flurry of superdelegate endorsements throughout the day, so much so it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with them all, as USA Today discovered. Different news outlets seem to have different numbers of endorsements for each side too, with CNN reporting nine in the last 24 hours (5 for Obama, 4 for Clinton).

We have been keeping an eye on the all important superdelegates as well, but instead of trying to determine who’s ahead in the last day, we shall be reporting on those who have endorsed since the Pennsylvania primary. The April 22 date is as good as any as a starting point, particularly as Hillary Clinton hailed her win saying “the tide is turning”.

Bad news Hillary, the superdelegates do not seem to agree with you! Since Pennsylvania, we calculate that there have been 16 endorsements. Ten went to Obama, six for Clinton.

Endorsements for Obama
Jeff Bingaman (NM), Senator - 28 Apr 2008
Bruce Braley (IA), Representative - 30 Apr 2008
Lois Capps (CA), Representative - 30 Apr 2008
Ben Chandler (KY), Representative - 29 Apr 2008
Charlene Fernandez (AZ), DNC & State Vice Chair - 26 Apr 2008
Brad Henry (OK), Governor - 23 Apr 2008
Baron Hill (IN), Representative - 30 Apr 2008
Richard Machacek (IA), DNC - 29 Apr 2008
Audra Ostergard (NE), DNC & State Vice Chair - 23 Apr 2008
David Wu (OR), Representative - 24 Apr 2008

Endorsements for Clinton
Luisette Cabanas (PR), DNC &Territory Vice Chair - 30 Apr 2008
Mike Easley (NC), Governor - 28 Apr 2008
William George (PA), DNC - 30 Apr 2008
Ike Skelton (MO), Representative, 29 Apr 2008
Kathy Sullivan (NH), Add-On - 26 Apr 2008
John Tanner (TN), Representative - 23 Apr 2008

This is of course bad news for Clinton who needs the vast majority of the undeclared superdelegates to endorse her if she has any hope of catching up with Barack Obama’s 130-odd delegate lead.

Overall, Obama now has the majority of the Governors, Senators, and Representatives which have declared. Clinton leading is still leading among so-called ‘Distinguished Party Leaders’ and DNC Members.

Obama needs just 285 more delegates (not just superdelegates) to win.

As promised, we are starting to show you the finalists in MoveOn’s Obama in 30 Seconds adverts. The first finalist is called Playground politics:

This site was first established as an homage to the breath of fresh air Barack Obama would bring to international affairs and, although it’s evolving into a wider advocate of Obama, it’s clear that there is still support throughout the world for our would-be President.

We can’t vote of course, but we can now show our support for Obama via a unique little website called A letter for Obama.

The site is brilliant in it’s simplicity. At the top is a little note:

Dear Mr Obama,

I just wanted to drop you a quick note just to say, “Thank you”. Thank you for giving us hope that America will be lead by a true American for the first time in twenty years.

As Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

We look forward to coming together again and building a better place for everybody today, and for our children tomorrow.

Yours sincerely,

The other 95% of the planet

Below is the opportunity to endorse the message and select which country you come from. Your name is then added to the rolling list together with a flag icon and the time you ’signed’ the letter. It took me 30 seconds to join the rapidly growing list, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t too.

Go on, give Barack some support!

The Democratic Party is desperate to start fighting their real opponent John McCain, but is sadly still locked in a battle between Obama and Clinton, even though Obama has effectively already won the nomination.

So it’s no surprise that progressive organisations such as MoveOn are already looking past this primary contest, to the battle between McCain and Obama in November.

They have recently been holding an online contest for ordinary Americans to make 30 second political adverts, just as they previously did 4 years ago against President Bush, but this time all of which are supporting Obama for President.

MoveOn, in case you’re not familiar, is a grassroots organisation originally founded to counter the media hounding of the Clinton Presidency over the Monica Lewinsky affair. But MoveOn, like much of the activist base of the Democratic Party, have themselves moved on from the Clinton years and have endorsed Barack Obama.

Their Obama in 30 seconds initiative is not just an exercise in online participation - the winner of the competition will see their film aired on national television as part of the general election campaign.

England for Obama will be showing some of the best contesting films in the days ahead too. Our first offering is shown above.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s dwindling support within her own Party has caused consternation and bitterness, which was demonstrated when the Huffington Post recently managed to catch her off guard at a private fundraiser.

This is not what you say if you want to represent your Party for President!

“We [her campaign has] been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party…Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down.”

Besides the news and political discussion programmes, occasionally other TV shows touch on the Presidential race too. That candidates appear on comedy programmes is one example, another is when commentators spontaneously endorse one candidate or another. So it was today when CNBC had not one, but two, Nobel Prize winning economists on a business programme.

Asked the question “who do you think will be better for the economy - President Clinton, President Obama or President McCain…and why”. Both backed Barack as the best candidate for the economy.

The surprising aspect is that the first, Joseph Stiglitz who won the prize in 2001, was connected to the Bill Clinton presidency. He called Obama’s recent speech on the economic problems America faced “brilliant”.

The hosts seemed a bit surprised by this and offered the second economist, Edmund Phelps who won the 2006 prize, the opportunity to move on to the next question without answering, but he volunteered his endorsement of Obama instead.

It’s a terrible indictment of the corporate news media in America that time after time it’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report which report on the facts and call the lies for what they really are in this election. So it was yesterday when The Daily Show turned their attention to the Clinton campaign’s desperate attempt to rewrite the rules of the Democratic contest. Enjoy:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has lost no time trying to frame her victory in the Pennsylvania primary in terms which might appeal to superdelegates. She has to, because her win yesterday does little to advance her cause in the delegate race. In fact, before yesterday’s contest she needed to win 66% of the remaining delegates. Now she needs 71%!

That’s why she’s not only ignoring the fact that it is a delegate race, but she’s also having to manufacture a whole new contest and dictating how it has to be interpreted. Hillary’s new contest, indeed the only possible measure she even has an outside chance of claiming legitimacy with, is the popular vote. So today she is claiming to be ahead in the popular vote, and is telling the press this with gusto. It’s nonsense, and here’s why:

Bad contests in, good contests out!
In order for her to claim to be ahead in the popular vote, she first requires Obama’s victories in the State caucuses to be ignored, as if they mean nothing. So she’s striking Iowa; Nevada; Alaska; North Dakota; Washington; Maine; Hawaii; and presumably Obama’s caucus-based victory in Texas off the map!

Next, and this is ironic as well as desperate, she’s including the votes in Florida and Michigan, which did not hold legitimate contests. The Florida primary, as mutually agreed, was not contested by Obama and shouldn’t have been by Clinton either. In Michigan Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, and nor would Clinton’s if she had kept her pledge.

So, let’s get this straight: If you exclude Obama’s caucus victories but include two non-contests, Hillary is winning? Hmmm…

Currently, to their credit, the media isn’t buying this fanciful accounting. Nor will the superdelegates who will eventually decide the nominee.

What the superdelegates will be looking at is not only who’s winning - and by any real measure that’s Obama by a mile - but also the advantages and disadvantages of each candidate when matched up against John McCain. Nobody so far has summed these up better than Professor Lawrence Lessig, who has made a 10 minute film about it for us, and the superdelegates (shown above).

So the results are in and she’s likely to pick up between 12 and 14 delegates more than Obama as a result of Pennsylvania, although this still leaves him with a still unassailable delegate lead.

The Obama team apparently predicted that they would lose Pennsylvania by 5%, so it’s important that they take sober assessment of what went wrong, and there’s no shortage of advice from pundits. Much of that advice centers around Clinton’s negative campaign, here’s ABC’s take:

The tough tone of the Pennsylvania Democratic campaign tarnished both candidates — more so Hillary Clinton, with 68 percent of voters saying she attacked Barack Obama unfairly.

Yet it appears to have worked: Late deciders favoured Clinton by a wide margin, boosting her to an essential victory in the state.

Some, like the New York Times, concluded the opposite:

By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.

But they too went on to berate Obama for responding to the negative agenda:

Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.

I am also critical of the Obama team for allowing itself to be sucked into Clinton’s new negative strategy. Barack Obama speaking last night in Indiana, the next must-win state for Clinton, attacked the tone of the Pensylvania primary saying:

After 14 long months, it’s easy to forget what this campaign’s about from time to time, to lose sight of the fierce urgency of this moment.

It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics, the bickering that none of us are entirely immune to, and it trivializes the profound issues: two wars, an economy in recession, a planet in peril, issues that confront our nation.

That kind of politics is not why we are here tonight. It’s not why I’m here, and it’s not why you’re here.

Perhaps this was a concession that his campaign faltered by getting “caught up in the distractions”, but maybe this is just wishful thinking, we’ll have to wait and see.

What was encouraging, and this is my humble prescription for countering future negative campaigns by Clinton, was the emphasise on attacking his real opponent - John McCain and the Republican’s policies.

Although he resolutely only responded to Clinton’s attack ads in Pennsylvania, it still tarnished Obama’s message, with 50% saying that he unfairly attacked Clinton. That’s still much less than the 68% who said that Clinton attacked Obama unfairly, but it demonstrates that the perception was that both campaigns went negative.

If that lesson is to be learned and acted upon, there appear to be two choices open to Obama’s team: Take the gloves off and follow Clinton’s low road of character assassination, or take an even higher road than before. I favour the latter course.

When Clinton’s camp air negative ads, he should not respond in kind as he did in Pennsylvania. Instead he should use his superior resources to brush these off as “more of the same old politics”, but stick to his own message of hope and change on the real issues that matter and, if he needs to attack, reserve the attacks for John McCain.

As the final video shows, Barack Obama can no longer be beaten in delegate numbers. In this delegate race, he is already the winner. He should now be assuming the mantle of presumed nominee and refuse to get caught up in the distractions and silliness. Only time will tell what actual path the Obama team shall take, but more of the same simply will not do.

The polls for the Pennsylvania primary close in about an hour and the Obama team is expected to lose. They’ve always expected to lose Pennsylvania but, contrary to what the Clinton camp would have everybody believe, a win is not always win!

Starting with a 20-point advantage, Pennsylvania was always Hillary’s to lose. She has family roots in the state, she has the support of the Democratic establishment - including Governor Rendell’s extensive network - and former President Bill Clinton is still fondly remembered in contrast to Bush.

At the start of the campaign, they were so confident that even one of their own Pennsylvania spokesmen explained to the Washington Post on 7 March that:

“We can build a team here that is unbeatable.”

“Even if the other side runs more television ads or sends more mailings, they can’t beat us on the ground. We’ve got the support of the people that control the infrastructure here in the state. We’ve got that institutional structure that can deliver people on Election Day.”

Clinton started with every advantage. It should have been an easy romp home for her, but instead she had to resort to a “slash and burn” campaign of negative attacks to even stay in the running.

As the campaign has proceeded, and Obama steadily gained in the polls, voices which rightly said that she needs to win, and win big have been drowned out by the Clinton campaign’s more recent spin that “a win is a win”.

This is nonsense.

The contest is a delegate battle and Obama is leading by a huge margin. Delegates are apportioned proportionally based on the vote, so a 10% margin of victory is not the same as, say, a 5% margin. Hillary’s campaign know this to be true, the media know this to be true, the superdelegates know this to be true as well.

Whatever the result in an hour’s time, Hillary Clinton still can not win the nomination without conducting more of her “slash and burn” campaign against Barack Obama. The only question left is: will her shrinking donor base and the superdelegates let her continue to slash and burn, or can the rightful victor of the overall contest start taking on McCain?

Almost completely ignored in the wave of criticism which followed the turgid, tabloid ABC debate was a new and dangerous foreign policy proposal from Hillary Clinton.

Quite why she chose the 21st debate to enunciate this remains a mystery, but the policy is nothing short of an Imperial Presidency which extends America’s nuclear umbrella to the whole of the Middle East. Which she later extended worldwide.

As the USA is seeking a way out of the Iraq war, Hillary is proposing that US force be deployed in any fight between any two middle eastern nations and later implied that any non-nuclear nations favourable to the US worldwide would also receive the same ‘protection’. That ‘protection’ apparently means “massive retaliation” by the US on any state challenging US interests.

The issue was raised on Sunday’s Meet the Press, with David Brookes of The New York Times saying:

“I’m surprised the didn’t become much bigger in the media - can you imagine two Arab nations fighting and the United States getting in the middle of it?”

Keith Olbermann went further on his MSNBC television show, describing the policy as:

“Far further to the right of John McCain, this may be further to the right than the Bush administration policy with the Middle East, which you didn’t think was physically possible.”

“Who on Earth, from that political point of view, who could she be appealing to with this? I mean are the Superdelegates going to say ‘this is how we win, we elect a Republican calling herself a Democrat. That’s how we do it!’”

Speaking on Good Morning America, Hillary Clinton once again reinforced the neoconservative’s notion that Iran was working towards a nuclear weapon, which contradicts the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and is an eerie echo of her failure to read the NIE about Iraq about WMDs in Iraq prior to her voting for the invasion and subsequent quagmire there, said:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran… In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

It seems that John McCain isn’t the only presidential hopeful who wants to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”, it’s just that Hillary isn’t saying it to the tune of a Beach Boys song.