Young Obama Backers Twist Parents’ Arms

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By JAN HOFFMAN of the New York Times

The daily phone calls. The midnight e-mail. And, when college lets out, those dinner table declamations? Oh, please.

Senator Barack Obama’s devotees just won’t give their parents a break.

As the race for the Democratic presidential nomination continues, youthful volunteers for each candidate have been campaigning with bright-eyed brio, not only door-to-door but also at home. But the young supporters of Mr. Obama, who has captured a majority of under-30 primary voters, seem to be leading in the pestering sweepstakes. They send their parents the latest Obama YouTube videos, blog exhortations and “Tell Your Mama/Vote for Obama!” bumper stickers.

Megan Simpson, a Penn State senior, had not been able to budge her father, a Republican. But the day before the deadline for registering for the coming Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, she handed him the forms and threw in a deal-sweetener as well. “I said, ‘Dad, if you change your party affiliation in time to vote for Obama,’ ” recalled Ms. Simpson, 22, an Obama campus volunteer, “ ‘I will get you the paperwork the day after the primary if you want to switch back to being a Republican.’ ”

Thus did Ralph E. Simpson Jr., 50, construction company owner, become a newly minted Democrat. “I probably will switch my affiliation back,” Mr. Simpson said, “but I haven’t decided who I will vote for in the general election. If Meg keeps working on me, who knows?”

No poll has counted Obama supporters who made their choice at the urging of their children. But combined exit polls for all the primaries so far (excluding Florida and Michigan) show that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has edged out Mr. Obama, 50 percent to 46 percent, among voters ages 45 to 64 — those who are old enough, and then some, to be the parents of Mr. Obama’s young supporters.

But even politicians are mentioning the persuasiveness of their children, either in earnest or as political cover, as a factor in their Obama endorsements.

That list of Democrats includes Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

While politicians inevitably invoke children and the future, rarely have the political preferences of children themselves carried much weight with their elders. On the contrary: when baby boomer parents were the age their children are now, the ideological and social gap between generations was more pronounced. Parents were, by definition, authoritarian. Their children were, by definition, anti-.

But the sharp distinctions between generations have eroded. Parents now are exponentially more entwined with their offspring, inclined to place their children’s emotional well-being ahead of their own. Even when students live away at college, many parents call them and send text messages every day.

The Obama campaign was well positioned to capitalize on this veritable seamlessness. From the outset, Mr. Obama eagerly sought out young voters with his Internet operation and a widespread, efficient campus network. Those efforts are paying off: in all Democratic primaries to date (excluding Florida and Michigan), about 6 in 10 voters under age 30 have supported him, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.

For some waffling primary voters, the relentless push by their children was good enough reason to capitulate. Eager to encourage their offspring’s latest enthusiasm, they have been willing to toss up their hands and vote for Mr. Obama, if only to impress their children.

“Our kids are probably more precious to us than any previous generation of parents,” said Dan Kindlon, a Harvard child psychologist. “We have fewer of them, we’re relativists, and we’re more swayed by them. A lot of parents are a little afraid of their kids.”

For many parents, this campaign season also feels like a fond flashback: in their children’s unvarnished idealism, many see a resurrection of their own youthful political passions.

“It’s something you can brag to your friends about,” said Professor Kindlon, who writes about child-rearing and adolescents. “ ‘My kid is involved in politics.’ ”

Donna Wall, 50, an elementary school teacher from Roanoke Rapids, N.C., had been a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. But her son, Drew, 21, a college student and Obama volunteer, would not let up until his mother switched allegiances for the coming primary.

“I’m glad they’re interested in something other than their own self-interest and partying,” Mrs. Wall said.

Curtis Gans, a staff director of Eugene J. McCarthy’s 1968 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed out that the youthful enthusiasm in this primary did resemble that of 40 years ago. But he said that while Mr. McCarthy’s temporary success was largely due to the support of college students and middle-class mothers, they had been aroused more by the issue of the Vietnam War than by the candidate’s charisma.

“People are enthused by the fact that young people are engaged and excited again,” said Mr. Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University. “They think that’s really healthy, and they’d like to sustain it. But at this point, it is temporary and it is about Obama.”

There’s no telling whether these youthful importunings on Mr. Obama’s behalf will tip the balance for the nomination, or follow him into the general election should he be nominated. Certainly Mrs. Clinton is not without her own fresh-faced vanguard.

Rachel Mattson, 18, a freshman at Wellesley, called her mother, Michelle, in Memphis daily, pressing her to vote for Mrs. Clinton in the Tennessee primary.

“I don’t see a huge difference between the two candidates,” said Michelle Mattson, 45. “But Rachel never let it go. You’ll be sitting at the dinner table for an hour going over this stuff! Her enthusiasm and what it means to her inspired me.” She voted for Mrs. Clinton.

While Mrs. Clinton has a national network of student volunteers, Mr. Obama’s network is far more extensive. Web sites like Kids for Obama and YrMomma4Obama urge youngsters to talk up the candidate to their parents.

The two adult sons of Governor Doyle, 62, both black and both adopted, spoke to him with fervor about Mr. Obama’s vision of a multiracial country. Then Mr. Doyle’s young grandson piled on.

“He’s a complete Barackomaniac,” Mr. Doyle said in a phone interview. “When I asked him why, he said, ‘I think he’s really going to work hard for us.’ I thought, that’s it through the eyes of a 7-year-old. ‘He’ll work hard,’ and ‘for us.’ ”

The stealth campaigning was more persistent in the home of Senator Casey, 47. Mr.Casey, who was going to remain neutral, noticed how excited his four daughters, ages 11 to 19, were about Mr. Obama. The autographed Obama posters on the bedroom walls. The self-imposed hush in the living room when Mr. Obama would give a televised speech.

His daughter Julia, 13, would say, “Dad, when are you going to endorse Obama?” Mr. Casey recalled in a phone interview. “My response was, ‘I’m thinking about a lot of things, Julia.’ And she’d laugh and say, ‘Dad, answer my question.’ ”

Not all parents have been overjoyed to see their children donate countless unpaid hours to Mr. Obama. Bader ElShareif, 52, who immigrated from Gaza 31 years ago, was appalled that his daughter Ami, 20, a student at the University of Wisconsin, worked almost seven days a week last summer in Chicago for the candidate. Mr. ElShareif, who was leaning toward Senator John McCain, was annoyed that she did not have a salaried job to defray college expenses.

“I’d be exhausted, but I’d still want to debate with him,” Ms. ElShareif said. “Then he’d start calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, did you hear this about Obama? So and so endorsed him!’ ”

In the Illinois primary, Mr. ElShareif voted for Mr. Obama. His daughter, thrilled, sent him an Obama sign, which he displays in his convenience store near the University of Chicago.

“The neighbors and the students come in now and say, ‘We like your sign,’ ” Mr. ElShareif said. “Maybe these young people know something we don’t.”

Let’s play, ‘Imagine If A Democrat Had Said This’

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As a rule, insulting U.S. troops trying to keep you safe in Iraq doesn’t seem like an especially good idea. And yet, there was Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), one of Congress’ most right-wing members, reflecting on his recent visit to Baghdad, and calling one soldier he met a “two-bit security guard.”

“We spent the night in the Green Zone, in the poolhouse of one of Saddam’s palaces. A little weird, I got to be honest with you. But I felt safe. And so in the morning, I got up early — not that I make this a great habit — but I went to the gym because I just couldn’t sleep and everything else. Well, sure enough, the guard wouldn’t let me in. Said I didn’t have the correct credentials.

“It’s 5:00 in the morning. I haven’t had sleep. I was not very happy with this two-bit security guard. And so you know, I said, ‘I want to see your supervisor.’ Thirty minutes later, the supervisor wasn’t happy with me, they escort me back to my room. It happens. I guess I didn’t need to work out anyway.”


Yes, poor Patrick McHenry. An American stationed in Baghdad followed orders on Green-Zone security only to get mocked by a conservative lawmaker who never wore a uniform. Classy.

Somehow, I have a hunch that if McHenry were a liberal Dem, and he called an American serviceman or servicewoman serving in Baghdad a “two-bit security guard,” it’d be quite a while until we heard the end of it.

As long as we’re playing “Imagine If A Democrat Had Said This,” we should also probably highlight Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) provocative thoughts on the 9/11 attacks.

The California congressman who called the Sept. 11 attacks “simply” a plane crash ran for cover Wednesday under a barrage of ridicule from fellow Republicans, first responders and victims’ families.

San Diego GOP Rep. Darrell Issa was under siege for suggesting the federal government had already done enough to help New York cope with “a fire” that “simply was an aircraft” hitting the World Trade Center. […]

Under pressure from all sides, the Golden State pol - who got rich selling car alarms after getting busted for car theft as a teen - pulled a partial U-turn. He issued a statement but cowered from the press.

“I continue to support federal assistance for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” he said.

But he didn’t retract his wacked-out rhetoric claiming the feds “just threw” buckets of cash at New York for an attack “that had no dirty bomb in it, it had no chemical munitions in it.”

He went on: “I have to ask … why the firefighters who went there and everybody in the city of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state consideration.”


I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if McHenry and Issa were Dems, Fox News would talk about nothing else for the foreseeable future.

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

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By Robert S. McElvaine


“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.

An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. “He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and—if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter—then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce,” wrote another historian.

The reason for the hesitancy some historians had in categorizing the Bush presidency as the worst ever, which led them to place it instead in the “nearly the worst” group, was well expressed by another historian who said, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title.  Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

In a similar survey of historians I conducted for HNN four years ago, Mr. Bush had fared somewhat better, with 19 percent rating his presidency a success and 81 percent classifying it as a failure. More striking is the dramatic increase in the percentage of historians who rate the Bush presidency the worst ever. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the respondents rated Bush’s presidency last. That conclusion is now reached by nearly six times as large a fraction of historians.

There are at least two obvious criticisms of such a survey. It is in no sense a scientific sample of historians. The participants are self-selected, although participation was open to all historians. Among those who responded are several of the nation’s most respected historians, including Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners.

The second criticism that is often raised of historians making such assessments of a current president is that it is far too early. We do not yet know how the things that Mr. Bush has done will work out in the future. As the only respondent who classified the current presidency among the ten best noted, “Any judgment of his ‘success’ or lack thereof is premature in that the ultimate effects of his policies are not yet known.” True enough. But this historian went on to make his current evaluation, giving Bush “high marks for courage in his willingness to attack intractable problems in the Near East and to touch the Social Security ‘Third Rail.’ ”

Historians are in a better position than others to make judgments about how a current president’s policies and actions compare with those of his predecessors. Those judgments are always subject to change in light of future developments. But that is no reason not to make them now.

The comments that many of the respondents included with their evaluations provide a clear sense of the reasons behind the overwhelming consensus that George W. Bush’s presidency is among the worst in American history.

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians.  “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches.  His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

Four years ago I rated George W. Bush’s presidency as the second worst, a bit above that of James Buchanan. Now, however, like so many other professional historians, I see the administration of the second Bush as clearly the worst in our history. My reasons are similar to those cited by other historians: In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States enjoyed enormous support around the world. President Bush squandered that goodwill by taking the country into an unnecessary war of choice and misleading the American people to gain support for that war. And he failed utterly to have a plan to deal with Iraq after the invasion. He further undermined the international reputation of the United States by justifying torture.

Mr. Bush inherited a sizable budget surplus and a thriving economy. By pushing through huge tax cuts for the rich while increasing federal spending at a rapid rate, Bush transformed the surplus into a massive deficit. The tax cuts and other policies accelerated the concentration of wealth and income among the very richest Americans. These policies combined with unwavering opposition to necessary government regulations have produced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Then there is the incredible shrinking dollar, the appointment of incompetent cronies, the totally inexcusable failure to react properly to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the blatant disregard for the Constitution—and on and on.

Like a majority of other historians who participated in this poll, my conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence now indicates that, while this nation has had at least its share of failed presidencies, no previous presidency was as large a failure in so many areas as the current one.

The Fundamentals Are Awful For Republicans, And Getting Worse

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So sayeth the NY Times/CBS poll. And this is not going to help John McCain win an election (nor help John Boehner keep his job... who wants to be a Republican? The answer is no one).

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll...

The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one. Today, however, Americans report being deeply worried about the country even though many say their own personal finances are still in fairly good shape.


Ouch. Maybe it's because no one can stand George W. Bush, and everyone realizes he's ruined the Republican brand.
The unhappiness presents clear risks for Republicans in this year’s elections, given the continued unpopularity of President Bush. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they approved of the job he was doing, a number that has barely changed since last summer. But Democrats, who have controlled the House and Senate since last year, also face the risk that unhappy voters will punish Congressional incumbents.

Oooh, I love that fair and balanced analysis. By the way, it's the exact same tripe (Democrats will pay for Republican failures) that the media was pushing just before the Democrats unexpectedly retook Congress in 2006. That's hogwash, probably stuck in by an editor looking over his or her shoulder. Republican self-identification is down, Democratic primary votes are up, people vote the economy, and
The poll found that Americans blame government officials for the crisis more than banks or home buyers and other borrowers. Forty percent of respondents said regulators were mostly to blame, while 28 percent named lenders and 14 percent named borrowers.

In assessing possible responses to the mortgage crisis, Americans displayed a populist streak, favoring help for individuals but not for financial institutions. A clear majority said they did not want the government to lend a hand to banks, even if the measures would help limit the depth of a recession.


John McMoreofsame, economics reformer in a change election? I think not.
A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

Blather on, cable TV, about the horse race. Americans are paying attention to the shape our country is in, and they will not ignore which party was in the White House steering us there.

Obama Raised $40 Million in March; Clinton Concealing Fundraising Totals

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by DHinMI


Yesterday it was speculated that that Hillary Clinton's campaign was getting caught under growing debt while Barack Obama continues to raise massive amounts of money.

Today we learned more about the finances of the two campaigns.  First, Obama's fundraising:

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced today that more than 442,000 contributors across the country gave more than $40 million in March. More than 218,000 donors contributed to the campaign for the first time, and the average contribution level was $96.

"Senator Obama has always said that this campaign would rise or fall on the willingness of the American people to become partners in an effort to change our politics and start a new chapter in our history," campaign manager David Plouffe said. "Today we’re seeing the American people’s extraordinary desire to change Washington, as tens of thousands of new contributors joined the more than a million Americans who have already taken ownership of this campaign for change. Many of our contributors are volunteering for the campaign, making our campaign the largest grassroots army in recent political history."


One of the truisms of campaign fundraising is that if you're not going after max donors ($2,300 for the primary, $2,300 for the general), then the key is getting donors in to the pipeline early.  When someone contributes once, they're more likely to contribute again.  We're seeing the confirmation of this belief with Obama's fundraising.  He's bringing in new donors, but he has hundreds of thousands of donors making repeated contributions.

March was arguably Obama's worst month of the campaign.  He wasn't able to take advantage of his shot to knock Clinton out of the race by winning the primaries in Ohio and Texas (and yes, I know, he got more delegates out of Texas, but he didn't win the primary).  Clinton got a bit of a bounce after the March 4th contests.  Then the Jeremiah Wright story blew up on Obama.  His poll numbers tanked in the middle of the month.  His extraordinary speech on race in Philadelphia has helped him recover, but he probably lost well over a week of momentum, so one would expect his fundraising to have suffered.

Obviously it didn't.  Based on what the Clinton campaign leaked to Time, that Clinton didn't hit $20 million, and adding in the $13 million raised by McCain, Obama raised more money in March than both his Democratic and Republican rivals combined.

That leads us to the second thing about fundraising we've learned today: the Clinton campaign is financially screwed; from Ben Smith at The Politico:

Clinton aide Howard Wolfson suggested that Hillary's tax returns will be out today or tomorrow:

"She said late last week that they would be out within a week and so you can count on that," he said.

Wolfson also said Clinton's fundraising totals would be out when the filings are due, around April 20.


People have started asking whether Clinton is going broke.  Obama is outspending her 5-1 on TV.  Now, for probably the first time in the campaign, the Clinton campaign is refusing to divulge their finances until they're required by law.

There is no plausible explanation for why the campaign would refuse to release their fundraising totals except that the news is dreadful.  Releasing her tax returns today, which they've refused to do for months, appears to be a diversionary tactic, something to buy them a few days of avoiding having to ignore too many questions about whether the campaign is in debt and going broke.

We know why Obama might have had a tough month fundraising.  Why would Clinton's fundraising go in the tank?

One obvious answer, that savvy people have predicted for some time, is that Clinton's fundraising was heavily skewed toward people who gave the maximum donation.  When those folks gave their $2,300 for the primary, they were done.  They can't give any more money to her for the primary.  Unlike Obama, she doesn't have a comparatively deep well from which to draw repeat contributions.

Another possibility, though, is that some of Clinton's potential donors are just as angry with the divisive and racial direction of her campaign as many other Democrats.  If you're from a state that Clinton's campaign says doesn't matter, why would you contribute to her campaign?  If you want to heal rather than exacerbate racial divides in the United States, why would you reward her for the campaign she's conducted?

It would be great for the party if Hillary Clinton would admit she won't be the nominee, and step aside so Obama can focus exclusively on defeating John McCain.  By staying in a contest she can't win, Hillary Clinton is imposing an opportunity cost on Democrats by keeping Obama from being able to devote his full resources from taking on John McCain.  But even though she refuses to admit she shouldn't continue, at some point, her bank account may insist that she admit to the world, and admit to herself, that she will not win, that Barack Obama will be our Presidential nominee.

April Fools 2008

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As everyone is well aware, every year on April 1 the internet collectively goes nuts. I've compiled a list below of notable April Fools Jokes that I've found, but my list is by no means comprehensive. In addition, a good source for April 1st jokes can always be found at Wikipedia's April 1st, 2008 listing page.