Today is Valentine's Day and love is in the air. Love for Barack Obama that is.
O-bama-slamma swept this week's Potomac Primaries, taking Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. in dominating fashion. The wins have now given Obama 8 straight primary victories and have propelled the Democratic presidential candidate to his first delegate lead since the Iowa primary. His recent swell in the polls have brought many analysts to begin calling him the favorite.
Key to his improbable run up the delegate charts has been his appeal to what have up until now been dependable demographics for his opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton.
Obama was favored in all three Potomac states among lower-class whites, working-class whites and minority women, all of whom had typically been Hillary's crew. The only demographic that seems to remain at her side are white women.
And don't think that this hasn't affected Ms. Clinton. She appeared at a recent rally
in Ohio with boxing gloves, a symbol for what will be a more aggressive smear campaign against Obama. She has been quoted as describing the attack phase of her campaign as "fun" and "exciting."
"There's a big difference between us -- speeches versus solutions, talk versus action," Clinton has been quoted saying.
She even fired her campaign manager earlier this week. Clinton will now focus on winning the upcoming Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4. The most overheard adjective describing her campaigns there has been "must-win."
Yep. Things are looking pretty darn lovely for the junior senator.
But it doesn't end there. Obama even has a town named after him in Japan.
Okay, so the town has always been called Obama, but hey publicity is publicity, even if it's on another continent.
The Associated Press's Junji Kurokawa wrote a story today detailing how the fishing town 250 miles west of Tokyo is suffering from a bad case of Obamania.
Posters of the Obama the Man hang all around Obama the Town, even in the foyer of its largest hotel. Barack's face adorns everything from T-shirts to headbands, which have been some of the most popular items in the town's souvenir shops. Confectioners have even started baking sweet bean cakes displaying the man's face. Talk about some sweet P.R.
Obama's mayor plans on sending a large, lacquerware (another thing the town is famous for producing) doll with the Japanese character for "victory" sprawled across it.
There's one more thing. It is Valentine's Day and I just couldn't resist. You may have seen this floating around that campaign hotbed known as Youtube.
Things sure are looking up for Obama.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Obama Boy?
Yesterday Sen. Obama knocked down the so-called Potomac Primary— that is, the combined primaries of Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC. Basically, the man lofted a long three-pointer and swished without even so much as a hand in his face. Voting statistics suggest the victory came as a result of Obama’s widest demographic appeal to date. In addition to his usual coalition of young people, well-educated people and young and well-educated and every other kind of black people, he drew the support of folks across all income brackets. White women as a group reportedly remain the last bloc of Hillary supporters, although that may be changing.
Henry Jenkins is a professor at MIT and co-director of the university’s comparative media studies program. In addition to writing great forward-thinking books on media and popular culture, he is a persuasive public advocate for the rights of digital-era fans, gamers, bloggers. He defended gamers against legislative backlash after the Columbine school shootings, for example, made calls for increased media literacy with the Federal Communications Commission, and has made the case repeatedly in various settings for a more consumer-oriented approach to intellectual property. He is, as Mimi Ito put it this past weekend at the USC 24/7 DIY Video Summit, one of the “superheroes of the internet” whose work in championing the tastes, activities, and intelligence of everyday people is an inspiration.
It came out at the Summit that Jenkins is, in his words, “an Obama boy.” He explained why in a way that reflects his thinking about how society has changed in the network era. “Adult leaders tend to talk about ‘I’ but young people online talk about ‘we’ … The difference between the ‘I’ campaign based on experience, a la Hillary, and the ‘we’ campaign based on bottom-up energy, a la Obama, speaks to two different models of what political change might look like… We don’t want to go back to the centralized mindset… I don’t want a president who feels my pain. I want someone who will get us to work together to solve the problem.”
A link to the video: http://de.sevenload.com/videos/czjS3UW/I-am-an-Obama-Boy
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
McCain, don't get excited just yet
The traffic ruined everything.
Had it not taken more than two hours to get from downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills on the morning of the California presidential primary, I would have gotten to watch Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vote and then ask him the usual barrage of election day questions.
But there was traffic, and lots of it.
Amid my steaming frustration, staring down miles of seemingly endless freeway at a dead stop before the clock even struck 7:30 a.m., I realized something was missing. It didn’t feel like an election day.
In more than three hours in the car en route to Beverly Hills and back downtown, there were only four small signs promoting presidential candidates, and they were all above freeway overpasses, almost too tiny to read.
Every one belonged to the democrats, specifically Sen. Barack Obama. Not one for Sen. Hillary Clinton, not one for Sen. John McCain, not one for Mitt Romney, not one for Mike Huckabee or even Ron Paul. As if the lack of campaigning on the part of republicans was to be an indication of the turn out that day, less than one million republican voters opted for the inevitably victorious candidate, McCain.
There are more than 36.4 million in the entire state. And only about 986,000 came out to support the candidate who will probably take office if a Republican is given the nod next November.
Clinton, the leading democrat, garnered more than two million votes, personally.
So what happened? Why did McCain get the shaft, even considering the generous boost given by our state’s increasingly moderate governor?
Maybe it was because his wife, Maria Shriver endorsed Obama, for what that’s worth.
According to CNN exit polls, 70 percent of Californians who strongly support Gov. Schwarzenegger voted for McCain. Maybe his endorsement meant something after all.
“When it comes to choosing a presidential candidate, for decades California wasn't important. Now it is," said Schwarzenegger in the USA Today.
To get less than million votes as your party’s front runner in a state this size while supported by a governor as popular as Schwarzenegger should send a clear message to McCain about what he needs to do if he is going to emerge victoriously in November. He’s going to have to do more than get former candidate Rudy Giuliani to jump out from behind a curtain on Jay Leno’s tonight show and surprise the audience as McCain’s new best friend.
He’s going to have to connect with republicans in a way he has yet to find, because as we’ve seen in a number of elections, the momentum he carries with him now, which may well launch him into the GOP nomination, may not be an indication of how voters will act in the general election.
Simply put, McCain is going to have to do something.
Yes he found a friend in Schwarzenegger, yes he found friends at the Los Angeles Times, who declared that "he has waged a principled and persistent effort to end the Bush administration's embrace of torture as a weapon of war, a frightening concession to terrorism and an abdication of basic American values."
But his staunch criticism for supporting the series of immigration bills that would have increased the chances of citizenship for about 12 million illegal aliens in this country, and also his co-authorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign financing law has made him enemies in his own party. He also voted against President Bush's tax cuts and for banning same-sex marriage. The point to be made here is this: Primaries are sometimes and indication of how a candidate will fair in the general election. This one is not. McCain is a front-runner, but only because conservatives see no other viable candidate. There will be no Mike Huckabee to pull him up by his bootstraps when facing Clinton or Obama.
A Field Poll, however, found that McCain and Clinton would garner approximately the same amount of votes if this were the general election. But the poll has McCain losing to Obama by about seven points.
If McCain walks away from California with a smile on his face, it should be because he is still in the race, not because he has sealed a presidency. He should take the clear and deliberate message sent to him by California’s voters and change his tune, rapidly, if he wants to become the next president of the United States.
Had it not taken more than two hours to get from downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills on the morning of the California presidential primary, I would have gotten to watch Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vote and then ask him the usual barrage of election day questions.
But there was traffic, and lots of it.
Amid my steaming frustration, staring down miles of seemingly endless freeway at a dead stop before the clock even struck 7:30 a.m., I realized something was missing. It didn’t feel like an election day.
In more than three hours in the car en route to Beverly Hills and back downtown, there were only four small signs promoting presidential candidates, and they were all above freeway overpasses, almost too tiny to read.
Every one belonged to the democrats, specifically Sen. Barack Obama. Not one for Sen. Hillary Clinton, not one for Sen. John McCain, not one for Mitt Romney, not one for Mike Huckabee or even Ron Paul. As if the lack of campaigning on the part of republicans was to be an indication of the turn out that day, less than one million republican voters opted for the inevitably victorious candidate, McCain.
There are more than 36.4 million in the entire state. And only about 986,000 came out to support the candidate who will probably take office if a Republican is given the nod next November.
Clinton, the leading democrat, garnered more than two million votes, personally.
So what happened? Why did McCain get the shaft, even considering the generous boost given by our state’s increasingly moderate governor?
Maybe it was because his wife, Maria Shriver endorsed Obama, for what that’s worth.
According to CNN exit polls, 70 percent of Californians who strongly support Gov. Schwarzenegger voted for McCain. Maybe his endorsement meant something after all.
“When it comes to choosing a presidential candidate, for decades California wasn't important. Now it is," said Schwarzenegger in the USA Today.
To get less than million votes as your party’s front runner in a state this size while supported by a governor as popular as Schwarzenegger should send a clear message to McCain about what he needs to do if he is going to emerge victoriously in November. He’s going to have to do more than get former candidate Rudy Giuliani to jump out from behind a curtain on Jay Leno’s tonight show and surprise the audience as McCain’s new best friend.
He’s going to have to connect with republicans in a way he has yet to find, because as we’ve seen in a number of elections, the momentum he carries with him now, which may well launch him into the GOP nomination, may not be an indication of how voters will act in the general election.
Simply put, McCain is going to have to do something.
Yes he found a friend in Schwarzenegger, yes he found friends at the Los Angeles Times, who declared that "he has waged a principled and persistent effort to end the Bush administration's embrace of torture as a weapon of war, a frightening concession to terrorism and an abdication of basic American values."
But his staunch criticism for supporting the series of immigration bills that would have increased the chances of citizenship for about 12 million illegal aliens in this country, and also his co-authorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign financing law has made him enemies in his own party. He also voted against President Bush's tax cuts and for banning same-sex marriage. The point to be made here is this: Primaries are sometimes and indication of how a candidate will fair in the general election. This one is not. McCain is a front-runner, but only because conservatives see no other viable candidate. There will be no Mike Huckabee to pull him up by his bootstraps when facing Clinton or Obama.
A Field Poll, however, found that McCain and Clinton would garner approximately the same amount of votes if this were the general election. But the poll has McCain losing to Obama by about seven points.
If McCain walks away from California with a smile on his face, it should be because he is still in the race, not because he has sealed a presidency. He should take the clear and deliberate message sent to him by California’s voters and change his tune, rapidly, if he wants to become the next president of the United States.
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