August 20, 2008
Categories: Blogs

Remainders: No hints

No hints.

Aravosis is worried by the tightening polls.

Obama's longtime Jewish outreach guy was also a lobbyist until earlier this month.

Obama pushes a commission to weaken the superdelegates and decompress the calendar.

Brian Montopoli has more detail.

Toby Keith praises Obama in the course of promoting "Beer for My Horse."

David Ignatius finds McCain's self-professed love of the "zinger" problematic for future diplomacy.

The Obama campaign floats the Dr. Strangelove meme.

Michelle Cottle profiles Valerie Jarrett.

Will Biden's war vote undermine Obama's message? (Although Biden's record on the war -- he and Richard Lugar first supported a resolution that would have limited the president's authority -- is probably more compatible with Obama than that of the more hawkish Evan Bayh.)

Erick Erickson accuses Ben of covering up Obama's infanticidal tendencies. 

Down-ticket candidates plug Obama's message into their campaigns.

And don't miss Ryan Grim's great story about Dr. Irshad Sheikh, a weapons expert working for the U.S. in Iraq whose life was turned upside down by the anthrax investigation.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

Obama: 'Never'

In another local negative spot -- this one running only in Atlanta, per the AJC -- Obama airs an ad linking McCain and Ralph Reed, and suggesting McCain deliberately let him off the hook in his Indian Affairs Committee investigation of Jack Abramoff's Indian lobbying.

Despite the ad's implication, that investigation was reviled by the GOP lobbying establishment.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

Nuclear energy

McCain, in Las Cruces, N.M., repeated a shot at Obama on energy: "He's opposed to nuclear power."

I'm not sure where that comes from. It may mean that Obama opposes McCain's specific drive for more nuclear power plants. Obama's opposition to storing waste at Yucca Mountain, while good for votes in Nevada, also means that he's opposed in practice to any expansion of nuclear power.

But Obama's not opposed to nuclear power in the sense of -- like John Edwards -- promising to shut down nuclear power plants. Indeed, he said in the primary that it's a source America "should explore" -- and was attacked by Edwards for saying it.

In general, nuclear energy is a tricky political subject. It is clean and abundant; but even McCain, who supports a dramatic expansion, uses images of windmills, not cooling towers, in his TV ads.

(Also, and semi-relatedly, an esoteric question for the wonks: Why isn't anyone talking about nuclear fusion?)

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

Obama, unchanged

A pro-Obama blogger turns up this 1995 video which reveals that Obama was...exactly the same 13 years ago.

He tells the story of his grandmother visiting his African-American Chicago world for the first time, and speaks warmly (as he does in Dreams for My Father, which he's promoting) of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Andrew Sullivan sees the consistency in "his determination to confront racial polarization and his cultural centrism (as well as liberal politics)." There's also, though, an analytical detachment, even when talking about himself, that he's shaken off as this campaign cycle progressed.

August 20, 2008
Categories: John McCain

Cutting off the JTA

Rudy Giuliani's appearance on a McCain conference call got off to a rocky start when Ron Kampeas, the Washington, D.C. of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, compared an Obama advisor's trip to Syria -- the subject of the call -- to Giuliani's and McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann's paid work on behalf of Georgia (in Scheunemann's case) and Venezuela's Citgo and the Saudi government (in the case of Giuliani's law firm).

"You're making an issue of him taking a hotel room?" Kampeas asked -- and then dropped off the call mid-sentence.

"I think they cut me off," he said in an email just now.

Scheunemann noted that his lobbying contract, unlike Obama advisor Daniel Kurtzer's trip to Syria, was publicly disclosed and not "covert." Giuliani said that Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan government, is an "American company."

"I never represented Saudi Arabia," he said.

The Associated Press reported that Bracewell & Giuliani, a Texas-based energy firm, has represented Saudi Arabia.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

A trip to Syria

The McCain campaign today is rolling out Rudy Giuliani to attack Obama for the trip an adviser made to Syria.

The adviser, former Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, was on an American Bar Association-sponsored trip, as the Sun reported today.

The Obama campaign noted that Kurtzer isn't a paid adviser, but heisn't the kind of marginal figure on whom campaigns try to hang attacks. He's been a key Obama surrogate with Jewish voters, and just this morning, he and Dennis Ross were the signatories on an email to Obama's Jewish outreach list recapping Obama's visit to Israeli.

"In his meetings with Israeli officials, Senator Obama reaffirmed his longstanding belief that Israel's security is 'sacrosanct,' and reiterated his commitment to the steadfast relationship between the United States and Israel," they wrote.

One data point to keep in mind here: Israel started talking to Syria (indirectly) in May.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Congress

Tubbs Jones in critical condition [CORRECTED]

The Plain Dealer reported earlier today that the the Cleveland congresswoman, who had a sudden aneurysm, had died, but has now retracted its report.

The paper says Tubbs Jones, a prominent Clinton supporter this year and the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Ohio, is in critical condition after an aneurysm.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

Big Indiana event Saturday?

Such is the buzz, but an Obama campaign aide denies the rumor to my colleague Ken Vogel.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Barack Obama

No first in fencing?

Avi Zenilman, just back from Beijing, sends over Obama's remark today in Virginia that he expects America to be first in "just about anything."

"Maybe fencing or something we don't win first," he says.

Maybe not first, but as a point of local pride, two of my Brooklyn neighbors, Keeth and Erinn Smart, led their U.S. fencing teams to silver earlier this week. And U.S. women swept gold in another fencing events.

ALSO: Zenilman college roommate James Williams also got a silver. Fencing is huge.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Rudy Giuliani

Biden bait

Giuliani to keynote Republican National Convention, offering Biden an opportunity to reprise his best line of the primary.

August 20, 2008
Categories: Polls

Polling patriotism

Democratic pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner have a well-timed poll out today on patriotism.

The poll, commissioned by the Democratic-leaning True Patriot Network, found that 74% of Americans say McCain is patriotic, and that just 56% say the same of Obama

Their upside for the Democrat: That within the fuzzy definition of patriotism, "by a 20-point margin, 58 to 38 percent, respondents believe patriotism should be more about 'actively improving' America than simply honoring its past."

August 20, 2008
Categories: John McCain

McCain: Questioning Obama's judgment, not his patriotism

McCain, in prepared remarks for a New Mexico event, keeps hammering the surge, and responds directly to Obama's charge that he was questioning the Illinois Senator's patriotism:

Obama was referring to Mccain's charge that he "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

His campaign also circulated Joe Lieberman's charge that the race is between "one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.’’