Comparing and contrasting: an Obama rally vs a Palin one
Sean Quinn over on FiveThirtyEight goes to an Obama rally and a Palin one in the same day.
Tags: barack obama, five thirty eight, ohio, rallies, rally, Sarah Palin, sean quinn
Obama's Inauguration Ceremony: in 12 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, 34 seconds
Sean Quinn over on FiveThirtyEight goes to an Obama rally and a Palin one in the same day.
Tags: barack obama, five thirty eight, ohio, rallies, rally, Sarah Palin, sean quinn
October 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Yes, Palin certainly seems to be going over the top with her smear remarks against Obama and I’ve been making myself unpopular with my Republican friends by pointing this out to them.
However, the Bill Ayres story worries me as did the racist quotes from Obama’s autobiography. I appreciate that Obama’s relationship with Ayres was probably much less close than Palin is suggesting, but surely ANY kind of relationship with someone involved in a terrorist bombing campaign is something to be deplored and at the very least demonstrates bad judgement.
Why was Obama’s Chicago campaign launched in Ayre’s apartment of all places? Obama could have said no way, I’m not going to be associated with someone like that. I have yet to come across a convincing answer to these points. Perhaps you or your friends can oblige.
These are important points since they reflect on Obama’s character, as do the other points I have raised on this site and it would be helpful to have some reassurance here. Incidentally, I’m still waiting for replies to those other points. As someone who wants to believe in Obama I’d hate to believe that there ARE no answers.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Stan - this is a site primarily for posting news and opinions on Obama and his campaign. I’m sorry if we don’t always have time to go into detailed rebuttals or answers to all of the points you raise.
on the subject of Ayers. he didn’t “launch his campaign” at his house. apart from the fact that Ayers was/is rehabilitated. but these people say it all far better (and more quickly ;-0) than I can -
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/04/17/fact_check_on_clinton_attacks.php
October 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
and here’s a pretty balanced view on the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?hp
October 12th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Andrea, thank you for taking the trouble to give me these links but I’m afraid they have got me even more worried. They confirm that Obama DID attend that meeting at Ayers’ place, and Ayers is quoted as saying just before 9/11 “I don’t regret setting bombs”. He also pleaded guilty to possessing explosives.
The fact that Obama was only eight when all this happened and that Ayers has now been “rehabilitated” in liberal circles is immaterial. As someone quoted in one of those links said “I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings”. He was speaking not of the law but of the political and moral implications of what Ayers had done and this remark particularly applies where the person concerned has expressed no regrets.
I think a site supporting Obama should likewise be concerned about the political and moral implications of Obama associating with such a person. After all, you are supposed to be occupying the moral high ground.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Stan,
I think we should stick to the original piece first. Which is the broadening contrasts between how these two campaigns are being run. One which is the Obama/Biden campaign has run their campaign with a great deal of dignity, and have kept their negative ads to a minimum. Each ad that has been attacked by the opposition as a smear, has been been a justified point on a specific area of their opponents policies.
The McCain/Palin ticket has been a campaign that has been divisive and hostile from the start. Inside the last month we have seen no specific policy announcements from their campaign, and in the last two weeks, we have seen them drag back American politics 50 years. They have sadly brought the issue of Obama’s race to the surface, in such a volatile way with no apology forthcoming.To call this strengthing ‘The Base’ is laughable. And we now enter the last three weeks of this campaign, with McCain either unable or unwilling to reign in his running mate. I can only see this divide between the two to continue.
Stan, I think you should post something on the Ayers question. I’m sure everyone would be willing to debate this further.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
but Obama has condemned Ayers’ actions - he met the man years after what he had done, didn’t know at the time what he had done, assumed (correctly) that he had been rehabilitated (and after all, all charges against Ayers were dropped)… I’m sorry, but this feels like people putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5. it’s guilt by association. all those things you say about Ayers are true - but it doesn’t make them true of Obama. no one’s denying the despicable things that Ayers has done or said - but Obama isn’t responsible for those things, nor guilty of them himself.
and in terms of him ‘associating with such a person’: they both worked on the same education reform program; he once went to a meeting (with other people!) at his house. I’m sorry, but: big deal!! Obama doesn’t and didn’t ‘pall around’ with Ayers. he isn’t one of the people he ’surrounds himself with’; he isn’t and never has been one of his advisors. as the NY Times says, even after investigating it thoroughly and by no means giving Obama a carte blanche on this: they “have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood” and “the two men do not appear to have been close”.
the Right is trying to make it *look* like they were close, don’t you see?
as the guy at the end of that article, who’s known Ayers for 45 years, says: “… attempts to link Mr. Obama with bombings and radicalism are “typical campaign shenanigans…. If Barack Obama says he’s willing to talk to foreign leaders without preconditions, I can imagine he’d be willing to talk to Bill Ayers about schools. But I think that’s about as far as their relationship goes.”
this is a non-story blown up by a right-wing media and an opposition campaign who are desperate to link him to something seedy.
and in terms of his judgment: looking at his team of, say, economic advisors; looking at his record of not taking money from lobbyists and vowing never to do so if in power; look at his choice of such a decent, honourable and intelligent man for VP - do you honestly think that Obama is corrupt, that he is lacking in judgment, that he surrounds himself with the wrong people? because I don’t.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Andrea, I think you’re missing the point here. It’s not a question of HOW close Obama was with Ayers. It’s simply about whether someone running for office should have had ANY kind of association with a notorious ex-terrorist, even if it’s just attending a meeting at his house and maintaining tenuous links with him thereafter. If it had been me, the answer would have been obvious, both on moral and political grounds. If you condemn the crime you should condemn the criminal, particularly one who has not renounced the crime!
Obama must have been aware of Ayer’s background; if he wasn’t then he must have been extremely naive at the time. The fact that Ayers had been “rehabilitated” says more about the ethics of those rehabilitating him than anything else. And Ayers was not charged only because of the illegal wire-tapping, not because the case against him was not strong enough (indeed he later defended his actions, as I’ve pointed out).
This IS a big deal because it reveals a kind of softness towards acts of terrorism, which does not say much about his judgement on one of the biggest issues of the day, regardless of his judgement in other areas. I can imagine the reaction of the Democrats and their supporters in the media if McCain had had a similar association with an ex-Nazi who did not regret his Nazi past.
And taken together with those racist remarks in his autobiography (which have not been rebutted) it seems to me that there IS cause for progressive reservations about his candidacy,
October 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Stan - do you honestly think that someone who’s running to be POTUS would be “soft” on terrorism?! of course he isn’t. nobody is! I’m not, and I’m not even running to protect and defend the United States!
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the idea of rehabilitation; and whether this is all a ‘big deal’ or not. I think it isn’t, you think it is. I don’t think there’s anything to be done about that ;-).
re. his book, which racist remarks are you referring to?
October 13th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Andrea, the racist remarks were the ones referred to in this article (which I’ve already drawn your attention to). They are more in keeping with the perspective of the Black Power movement than those of someone who wants to heal the division between the races.
It is possible that that these quotes have been taken out of context and Obama’s views have now moved on. But since he does not appear to have disavowed them there does seem to be a case to answer here.
The Audacity of Obama
Phyllis Schlafly
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, many had high hopes that his breakthrough would move American social consciousness forward into a post-racial era. Many thought the time had come when candidates would be judged by their qualifications and dedication to our country, not by their race.
To see why it is impossible for Obama to play this transcending role, read his autobiography, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” His Dreams are obsessed with race and race conflict.
This book is an extraordinary 442 pages that appear to be written by an experienced novelist who knows how to tell a compelling story laced with minute detail about everything from clothes to odors, fictional characters and invented conversations. It is complete with the colloquialisms, ungrammatical English and four-letter words that the author thinks are appropriate to the people he quotes.
Obama describes how he deliberately separated himself from his multiracial heritage in order to give himself a 100 percent black persona, different and alienated from the white world around him. Obama writes that the book is “a record of a personal, interior journey” to establish himself as “a black American.”
With his new all-black identity, Obama stews about injustices that he never personally experienced and feeds his warped worldview by withdrawing into a “smaller and smaller coil of rage.” He lives with a “nightmare vision” of black powerlessness.
Obama says that the hate doesn’t go away. “It formed a counter-narrative buried deep within each person and at the center of which stood white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”
Obama’s worldview sees U.S. history as a consistent tale of oppressors and oppressed. He objects to the public schools because black kids are learning “someone else’s history. Someone else’s culture.”
He even criticizes his white grandparents, who worked hard to give him a privileged life. Their motives are a mystery to Obama because they came from the “landlocked center” of the United States, which, he asserts, is full of “suspicion and the potential for unblinking cruelty.”
Obama grew up in Hawaii, the exemplar of a melting pot of races, yet he sees it as a place of “aborted treaties and crippling diseases brought by the missionaries.” Although his mixed race was not a handicap in Hawaii, he whined that “we were always playing on the white man’s court … by the white man’s rules.”
One day his grandmother, while waiting for a bus to take her to work, was accosted by a panhandler. She gave him a dollar, but he aggressively demanded more — and she was scared because he looked like he might hit her.
When Obama learned that the panhandler was black, he said the news hit him “like a fist in my stomach.” Obama objected to the fact that his grandmother was “scared of a black man,” and his resentment at her (not at the panhandler) was such a big deal that he referred to this incident repeatedly.
Obama immersed himself in the writings of radical blacks: Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Obama’s favorite became Malcolm X.
Obama scarcely knew his father, yet he wrote: “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”
Obama described his happiness in going to Kenya: “For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide.” He felt he “belonged” and had come home. Apparently, the only other place he felt at home was in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church in Chicago.
Obama rejects racial integration because it is “a one-way street” with blacks being “assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around.” Does he think America would be a better country if whites were assimilated into African culture?
There is absolutely nothing in this book that expresses pride in or love of or appreciation of America. In 442 pages of introspection extending over his life as a teen, undergraduate and law student at prestigious institutions, community organizer and working adult, he doesn’t say anything positive about American government, culture, society, freedom or opportunity.
Obama’s refusal to wear an American flag pin on his lapel sounded too trivial for a campaign issue. But since there is nothing in his book about respect for the flag, or the republic for which it stands, maybe the flag-pin flap does indicate his disdain for patriotism.
In his autobiography, Obama accepts the view that “black people have reason to hate.” His later book is called “The Audacity of Hope,” but his autobiography, which he has never disavowed, should be titled “The Audacity of Hate.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
sorry, Stan, but I’m over halfway through Dreams Of My Father right now - and I can tell you that the above review is a hatchet job, and totally and utterly skewed. the book is a fascinating, thoughtful, insightful and, yes, honest account of Obama’s upbringing, including his journey through what it means to be a black man in modern America. reading it, I have been blown away by his intelligence, sensitivity and thoughtfulness. there is no ‘hate’ in it. not one iota. just a young man coming to terms with who he is, and what his identity is.
have you read it? if not, I would suggest that by what you’re saying you sound no better than the groups or individuals who slam films/books for being immoral or outrageous without, erm, ever having actually seen them. so I’d suggest you read it for yourself and make your own judgment. if you *have* read it, well, then, I’d be interested to know what *you* think, as opposed to Phyllis Schlafly, who clearly has an agenda.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Andrea and Darrell,
I agree with your approach to the issue in question: the differing tones of both campaigns. I think we could easily dig around to discuss Keating or coke usage or flag pins or womanizing or any other bit of embarrassing historical human foible in the personal dossiers of ALL candidates, but the discussion would end up meandering aimlessly with two firmly entrenched and opposing camps which, at best and in a rare bit of internet interpersonal respect, would tactfully agree to disagree, as you all have.
For me, a serving US military member who’s participated in the now re-named GWOT (it now has the same name as the symbol for androgyny I understand) for 7 years in Asia (yes, there’s terror there, too) and the Middle East, I am not overstating my visceral reaction to inferring that Barack Hussein Obama has terrorist links approaches grief. That’s grief for the campaign I once thought I supported, grief that a man I once greatly respected (as a fellow alumni) could allow the tenor of his campaign, whether through his running mate or campaign staffers, to race so egregiously off the rails of decent conduct. I am many miles away from the US but I can still get on the internet to observe empirically that supporters at McCain-Palin rallies are quite literally baying for blood. It is fact, not hyperbole. In the current environment, coupled with that persistent implication that Obama might secretly be–wait for it–A MUSLIM (aahhh!), dropping terrorist references on the name of the obviously front-running candidate for POTUS seems desperate and is morally reprehensible. It’s up there with unfounded charges of pedophilia or spousal abuse. As a person (I speak Arabic…I might be a Muslim…ahhhh) working every day on the front line of efforts to help the scourge of Islamic fascism disappear, I feel it is one of the vilest accusations which could be made right now. Coupled with the responses from crowds at the rallies, it’s tantamount to fomenting violence. As the campaign winds its way to what appears to be the inevitable conclusion, I think it is incumbent upon the McCain-Palin team to make a concerted, dignified effort to retract those hateful insinuations and aggressively check the growing tone of rage among GOP supporters. Otherwise, they will be remembered as bearing some significant measure of responsibility for any distasteful episodes which could quite conceivably transpire from the climate of hate which has been fomented. I think it is well within the purview of candidates to address issues of character in their competitors but there are red-lines and those red-lines have certainly been crossed. I’m certain this will chase away more supporters than it attracts, as it did in my case.
Thanks for a great blog and really intelligent discourse from all (until I got here!).
October 13th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hi Dick,
It’s good to hear from an American on here, instead of us British Obama supporters who are all a little worried it’s all going to go wrong for the democrats once more. Well I am anyway but I’m naturally pessimistic. Obviously I’m heartened to hear your disenfranchment from the GOP, but it saddens me to hear why you’ve come to this point. I genuinely believed that we could have a campaign that was free of this form of attack. Like you I had a lot of respect for McCain, but his pick of Palin, his woeful response to the economic crisis, and his complete lack of leadership to bring his vp in line, and those supporters and campaign operatives who continue to distribute these spurious attacks.
I personally believe these attacks have not just hurt the standing of American politics, within your country, but across the world. What does someone in the middle east feel, when you hear at a McCain rally a supporter tell him ‘I would’nt vote for him, because he’s an Arab’ ?? Thankfully McCain abmonished her for her views, and gained applause for at least a few other supporters. But to me it’s too little too late.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Andrea, just to answer your question about whether I’ve read Obama’s book. I haven’t, but my point was not about “the journey” but about the specific QUOTES from the book which prima facie seem to be quite damning. I shall try to get hold of the book to see them in context. In the meantime since you are half-way through it, perhaps you can confirm that what was quoted was not what Obama said or meant. (with evidence, of course).
October 14th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Stan - I’m sorry, I’m a very busy gal and don’t have time to go back through the Obama book (or at least the half I’ve read so far) to pick out the quotes she pulls out and put them in context. but trust, me, her review is a total hatchet job. you shouldn’t trust biased reviews like this. you should read the book yourself. like I say: I am reading it and enjoying it very much, and to me, he comes across as an incredibly sensible, intelligent, thoughtful and caring young man in it, and not at all full or hatred or bitterness. but hey, that’s also my view. so you probably shouldn’t trust that, either.
October 14th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Dick - thank you for your very thoughtful and valuable insight.
Darrell - I agree. and did you notice that McCain’s response to “He’s an Arab” was “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man”. because Arabs aren’t decent family men, presumably.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Andrea, I’m bowing out at this point hoping you are right about Obama. Thanks for keeping this exchange at such a civilised and good natured level.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Stan - thanks for taking an interest in the blog :-). I really do recommened the book (next on my list: The Audacity Of Hope!
). I think Obama may not turn out to be as progressive as some may hope, but I don’t doubt for one second that he, Joe Biden and their administration are going to turn the page on a terrible 8 years, and lead America in a wonderful, much-needed, new direction.
October 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Andrea for that. Yeah I was so shocked by the question that I lost his response. Because it sounded roughly positive about his opponent for once I didn’t really listen to it properly. Hmm I don’t think anything he says is working. Channel 4 news has just shown a poll on negatives ads. In the last month Obama has gone up 18 points, McCain down by the same number. You really would have thought they would have come up with a new strategy wouldn’t you?
October 15th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
indeed. but I think the lack of strategy - or even strategery! - just shows up how McCain is driven by personal ambition, rather than by a bigger sense of purpose. if you have purpose, and principles, then it’s much easier to steer a steady course (as Obama has shown so well, of course). and the Rolling Stone article would seem to back up this theory. McCain isn’t being guided by a strong sense of values, principles or purpose - so his campaign has been all over the place, responding to events rather than guiding them.
as some commentator has said, to flip on its head the point McCain made in the first debate: his campaign has been all about tactics; whereas Obama’s has been all about strategy.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Everything is personal ambition as this is his last chance, and the last three weeks are going to be desperate. Where is the John McCain of eight years ago? Committed emviromentalist, government reformer, the senator that had respect on both sides of the house. Has he simply sold his soul to the hardline Gop? Or did we simply have higher opinion of him in 2000, because he was running against the most ineffectual, and incompetent politician in American history? I think it’s somewhere in between.
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm
i love you
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:10 pm
i love you obama