It's already been revealed the Empress has no clothes, but this is just out, and video speaks so much louder than words.
Registering Voters! Just on Saturday in the county I was in, we registered almost 3000 new voters or people switching parties to vote in the Democratic primary. Obama still is unlikely to win in PA, but hopefully we got him some new voters.
Here's some info from the NY Times:
Democratic voter registration in Pennsylvania has hit a record of more than 4 million voters.And:
“It’s kind of incredible,” Harry A. VanSickle, the state’s elections commissioner, tells The Caucus as his office prepares to post the new numbers. “It’s the first time we know of that a party in Pennsylvania has gone over 4 million.”
A total of 4,044,952 people are now registered to vote in the Democratic primary; a total of 3,215,478 are registered for the Republican primary.
Some of the biggest numbers of those who switched to become Democrats were recorded in the Republican suburbs of Philadelphia, which are likely to be an important battleground in the primary. [thats where we were canvassing]
Democratic enrollment is up by more than 110,000 since last year’s election, an increase of roughly 3 percent, state election officials said. It is likely to surpass the record of 4 million by Monday. Republicans lost about 14,000 voters in the same period.And jeez, its a sappy local news kind of story, but c'mon its nice - check out how a high school student was inspired by Obama to set up a voter registration table at her school.
More than 58,000 registered voters have changed their affiliation to Democratic, with about 10,000 changing to Republican. Voters must be registered in a party to vote in the state’s primary.
More looks at Obama's advisors and policies.
The American Prospect takes a great look at Obama's foreign policy team (also explored in this earlier post):
Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.)And in today's Washington Post, Obama's economic advisor takes a quick look at Obama's plans to deal with the economic crisis. Keep Reading (if there's more)...
...I spoke at length with Obama's foreign-policy brain trust, the advisers who will craft and implement a new global strategy if he wins the nomination and the general election. They envision a doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering "democracy promotion" agenda in favor of "dignity promotion," to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root. An inextricable part of that doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of al-Qaeda. Is this hawkish? Is this dovish? It's both and neither -- an overhaul not just of our foreign policy but of how we think about foreign policy. And it might just be the future of American global leadership.
Are the Democrats on the path to giving us a McCain administration? Noam Schreiber of the New Republic explores (and looks at parallels to the 1980 Democratic race):
The problem is that each day Clinton and Obama spend consumed with the other is a day that moves John McCain closer to the White House. McCain's biggest asset is his political brand, which evokes a straight-talking, party-bucking reformer. Among his biggest liabilities is the suspicion he inspires among conservatives thanks to these same attributes. McCain apparently plans to spend the next few months making nice with his base. But anything he accomplishes on this front clearly diminishes his swing-voter appeal and, therefore, his chances in November.
Ideally, the Democrats would be exploiting this tension like mad. They would highlight the anti-Catholic, anti-gay ravings of John Hagee, the evangelical minister whose endorsement McCain recently accepted. They would ridicule his chumminess with supply-side Neanderthals like Jack Kemp and his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts. They'd dwell on McCain's less-noticed association with crony-capitalists during his tenure as Commerce Committee chairman.
Instead, something close to the opposite is happening. McCain's courtship of the lunatic right and his ties to K Street have largely been hidden from view, while the Democrats' dirty laundry has been aired for swing voters. The upshot for Democrats has not been good. In late February, a Gallup poll showed Obama leading McCain among independents by 15 points. By March 6, a Newsweek poll put McCain up ten points among this group--and that was before Jeremiah Wright weighed in. Hillary went from down five to down 15 among independents during the same time.
Bill Richardson, '08 presidential candidate, Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of Energy, and current Governor of New Mexico endorsed Obama today in a speech far more rousing than any I saw from him during the campaign (hey Bill - I like the beard too!) He was clearly inspired by Obama's speech earlier this week.
In a statement released earlier today, he said:
My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver. It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall...Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.Also - significantly from the '08 Democratic candidate with some of the most extensive foreign policy - he takes on Hillary's "commander-in-chief" threshold argument:
"There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation's security is on the line," Richardson said. "He showed this judgment by opposing the Iraq war from the start, and he has shown it during this campaign by standing up for a new era in American leadership internationally."
If you missed Obama's speech, or only saw soundbites on TV, watch it here:
And/or read it here. I have to admit I got a little misty at the end.
And here is the rest of it.
Keep Reading (if there's more)...
