The Latest Outrage

Most Sane Americans Wouldn't Buy a Used Car From Tea Party Crazies, Let Alone Trust Them To Run the Country

2010-10-26T02:30:00.000-07:00

With a week to go before this year's midterms, sane Americans are shaking their heads at all the madness that's been brewing this election cycle. Sensing a banner year, the GOP has nominated a crop of Tea Party-flavored, far right-wing nuts, flakes, and crazies for House and Senate seats all over the country.

Where to start? The GOP'ers gunning for Senate seats are the ones who could do the most damage in six-year terms. Tea Party diva Christine "I'm not a witch" O'Donnell in Delaware, who doesn't believe in evolution, condoms' ability to prevent AIDS, or the separation of church and state. Crazy Sharron Angle in Nevada, who thinks Social Security and Medicare are symptoms of America's "wicked ways."

Wealthy businessman John Raese, running for Sen. Robert Byrd's former seat in West Virginia on a platform of eliminating the minimum wage. Former Club for Growth head Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, whose views are so far-right he's like a real life version of Bob Roberts, minus the guitar and fascist folk songs.

But you've got to give folks like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) credit for stepping up to the plate and helping some of these wingnuts win their primaries, because it's going to cost Republicans control of the Senate.

Those two meddling fools flushed a guaranteed pickup of Joe Biden's old seat in Delaware down the toilet by endorsing O'Donnell. They were undoubtedly impressed by her willingness to stoop as low as necessary to win by gay-baiting moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle out of the running. This Palin clone's rise to national ridicule may be helping save another seat for the Dems, because the Delaware media market overlaps with Philadelphia. Democratic nominee Joe Sestak has clawed his way back into the race, partly by reminding voters that his opponent Pat Toomey and O'Donnell share the same warped political beliefs.

Most of these extreme right-wing candidates normally wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being elected to Congress. But all bets are off for 2010. In any low-turnout midterm election, it's the party out of power that has momentum on its side. And with a Democrat newly elected to the White House who just happens to be the first black President, the GOP has successfully scared up a tidal wave of right-wing rage with a decidedly racist tinge. Despite Democratic efforts to re-energize Obama's winning '08 coalition by boosting turnout levels among black, Latino, liberal, and young voters, this year's electorate is going to be older, whiter, and more conservative than America overall.

And to seal the deal, anonymous, filthy rich right-wingers are funding an avalanche of propaganda designed to sway the election for the Republicans. Shadowy GOP front groups have sprouted up like rotten mushrooms after the Supreme Court opened the shady money floodgates with its Citizen United decision.

Besides the big players, like Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and the American Action Network, headed by former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, there are lots of lesser known GOP gremlins doing the party's dirty work. Such as the patriotic-sounding, doublespeak-named Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Job Security, who are fighting to make the ultra-rich richer at everyone else's expense. And the 60 Plus Association, a particularly nasty front group that masquerades as an alternative to the AARP while agitating for privatization of Social Security. Then there's the Restore America's Voice PAC, based in Pittsburgh, which has set up dozens of fundraising websites to funnel cash from online donors to newly-minted right-wing celebrity candidates including Angle and O'Donnell.

We'll soon see what happens on Election Day, but the left has gotten caught napping this year, and things are not looking good for incumbent Democrats up and down the ballot. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile broke it down nicely when she recently said, "We should not have been in this position." The Tea Party crazies "crept in and took over the vacuum. Basically, we have danced to their negative drumbeat since. There's a lot of hands that need to be spanked when this is over with."

Voters Support Voter-Owned Elections

2010-03-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

Chapel Hill News, 3-31-10

Recently, the right wing Civitas Institute directed one of their interns to write up a misinformed attack on Chapel Hill's pioneering voter-owned elections (VOE) program ("Public Financing Folly," Chapel Hill News, Feb. 28). Why are far-right conservatives so threatened by campaign finance reform? Maybe because it means their well-financed propaganda will be less likely to buy elections for favored candidates, even in low-turnout local elections.

Like what's happened in Wake County, where a conservative school board majority was elected last fall when only 31,000 out of 572,000 registered voters showed up at the polls. The Civitas Insitute's board chair, far-right businessman Bob Luddy, was the single largest individual contributor to the campaigns of the four newly elected, Republican-backed school board members.

On Nov. 3, Chapel Hill voters showed their support for voter-owned elections. Both candidates who agreed to limit their campaign spending and participated in the VOE program finished first in their races for Mayor (Mark Kleinschmidt) and Town Council (Penny Rich). Three out of four candidates who vocally opposed the program, refused to limit spending, and accepted unlimited campaign donations were defeated by voters.

Rich and Kleinschmidt on election night

One VOE opponent was Town Council candidate Matt Pohlman, who said, "I'm not sure I can get behind voter-owned elections." Another was his fellow Council challenger Jon DeHart, who claimed it was "taxation without representation." Pohlman and DeHart lost the election. Besides voting for candidates who supported VOE, polls and surveys have shown most citizens of Chapel Hill favor campaign finance reform.

During the 2009 elections, Chapel Hill became the first-ever community east of the Mississippi to conduct a voter-owned election. The program leveled the electoral playing field and helped reduce the influence of big money. Since then, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Greenville have all passed resolutions asking the N.C. General Assembly for approval to implement VOE programs.

The mayoral candidate who most vocally opposed public financing was first term Council member Matt Czajkowski. And no wonder. Czajkowski raised more than $36,500 from wealthy backers like UNC Health Care CEO Bill Roper, and spent $35,000 of it.

Commenting shortly after the election, Town Council top vote-getter Penny Rich said, "This is what voter-owned elections are supposed to curb. $30,000 to become mayor? It's just an outrageous amount of money."

In the six days leading up to the Nov. 3 vote, Czajkowski spent nearly ten thousand dollars ($9,703), more than six times the $1,523 Kleinschmidt spent during that same period. Czajkowski desperately tried to buy the election, just as he first bought his Town Council seat in 2007 by spending the then-record sum of $20,000.

Kleinschmidt and Czajkowski

That year, ninety percent of his cash, or $17,750, was money he loaned his own campaign. Czajkowski's spending was more than the other three victorious Council candidates spent combined. Foreshadowing his '09 tactics, in a last-minute flurry he blew through $15,000 in the ten days before the 2007 election.

At the time, local activists had been fighting for nearly a decade to enact campaign finance reform in Chapel Hill. The cash flood by Czajkowski in 2007 was such a blatant display of the power of money to sway local elections that it helped convince the Town Council to commit to the voter-owned elections pilot. It was approved 8-1, with only Czajkowski opposed.

Now we know the VOE program works, and most Chapel Hill voters are behind it. And its success here is spreading. Propaganda machines like the Civitas Institute can make all the noise they want, but savvy voters will continue to support candidates who recognize the value of voter-owned elections.

Why Won't Borders Donate Their Soon-To-Be-Trashed Books?

2009-12-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 12-11-09

Last month, corporate parent Borders announced they will soon be closing 200 Waldenbooks book stores in communities nationwide. Current Waldenbooks employees have come forward to alert the public that the company plans to dispose of many unsold books in the cheapest, easiest, least responsible way possible – by trashing them.

"This is going to be happening in all the Waldenbooks stores at the end of their liquidation sales to anything left on the shelves," said Heather L., a Waldenbooks employee. "And it gives us all stomach aches to think about."

In response, these employees have helped organize a Facebook campaign asking Borders to work with publishers to find a way to donate any unsold books to libraries or other nonprofits instead of destroying them. More than 1,500 Borders customers & employees, public library supporters, and other book lovers have signed on so far to protest this colossal impending waste of unsold books.

The Waldenbooks locations are scheduled to close their doors in January, 2010. Meanwhile, libraries and nonprofits around the country have been hit hard by the Great Recession. Library branches are serving more and more people in the face of budget cuts. Nonprofits are struggling with decreased government and corporate funding and shrinking private donations.

There is enormous need right now for any kind of helping hand extended to charitable causes. And news of Borders' plans to destroy unsold books after its Waldenbooks liquidation sales has touched a nerve.

"Holy cow!! So many reasons that this is INSANE!," said Donna Higdon Hollenbeck of Montgomery, AL. "So many worthy places these books could go to. Come on and be reasonable." "This is a perfect example of the waste overwhelming our civilization," observed Myke Yeskewicz of Providence, RI. "I'm willing to cut my Borders Reward card in half if this is done," said Del Snow of Chapel Hill, NC.

Former Waldenbooks employees say they have previously witnessed and participated in the destruction of unsold books. "I used to work at a Waldenbooks and we would trash books, tons of books, like every two weeks," said Brooke Bennett, a former employee from Little Rock, AR. "It just killed me."

Known in the bookselling industry as "dumpstering," this method of book disposal is standard practice not only at Borders-owned stores, but at many other chain book stores and mass retailers.

"I work at a drugstore in New Hampshire where they do this all the time as well, 100's of books get tossed, it's crazy," said James C. "Ever wonder what they do with all those paperback novels that disappear from the shelves?" asked Cory Wilson of Huntington, WV. "Covers get ripped off and the text goes into the dumpster." "This is totally true," said Mary P. "I used to work at Walmart and they would tear off the front cover and throw the rest in the compactor."

Occasionally this practice makes headlines. Over the past few years, local TV stations have reported on dumpsters full of trashed books behind places like a Barnes & Noble in Dallas, and a B. Dalton Bookseller closing down in Ohio.

Dumpstered books behind Dallas Barnes & Noble, 2007

Yet there is surprisingly little consumer awareness of how the publishing industry's outdated business model results in unsold books literally being thrown away. Dumpstering happens every day in large chain book stores. But how many customers and citizens know the truth?

"One of the ways this effort is already making a difference is by spreading awareness," said Waldenbooks employee Heather L., who is one of the Facebook campaign's co-organizers. "If we are serious about living green, we need to pressure companies like Borders to change their ways."

So far, Borders' responses to consumers who have e-mailed in protest show they are unwilling to own up to their wasteful business practices.

"We do not expect to have any remaining product to donate once we complete clearance sales at the 200 Waldenbooks stores," reads one canned response from Borders Customer Care. "We sincerely expect to have virtually no product left - our goal is to sell everything. Therefore, we do not expect to have product to donate or to dispose of."

Not a mention of what current and former employees agree is standard operating procedure for Borders, Waldenbooks and other chain book stores. Dumpstering is a dirty little secret of the bookselling and publishing industries.

One concerned Borders customer e-mailed CFO Mark Bierley, only to learn he'd deleted her e-mail unread! Georgia resident Denise C. says she "used microsoft outlook to send the email and it gives you the option to have a delivery request sent and a read receipt." Here’s the reply she received:

>>Your message

To: Mary Davis (Corporate Affairs); Ron Marshall (BGI); Mark Bierley (Finance)
Cc:
Subject: DON'T THROW AWAY THE BOOKS
Sent: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:46:32 -0500

was deleted without being read on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:53:12 –0500<<

Borders corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI

If you'd like to let Borders executives know how you feel about this issue, you can e-mail CEO Ron Marshall - rmarshall@bordersgroupinc.com. Or CFO Mark Bierley - mbierley@bordersgroupinc.com (try the subject line, "Why Are You Deleting Customers' E-mails Unread?"). Or call Borders corporate headquarters toll-free at 1-800-243-7510 (press 9 for customer care). Please visit the Facebook page and help spread the word about this campaign!

Pulping is the Publishing Industry's Dirty Little Secret

2009-12-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

In time for the holiday season, while you're perusing best-of-lists to find that perfect book gift for a loved one, here's something the publishing industry doesn't want you to know. By shipping books to retailers on consignment terms, then requiring the return or destruction of unsold merchandise, the publishing industry operates unlike all other manufacturers. An estimated 30 TO 40 PERCENT of books are returned by bookstores annually. Between 65 and 95 percent of returned books are pulped - destroyed by publishers.

Clearly, the publishing indutry overprints on a massive scale because of returns. And the environmental impact of this pulping waste is staggering. The Canadian website Book Industry Bailout has calculated the shocking scale of trees cut and greenhouse gas emissions due to overprinting by the publishing industry in Canada. In the U.S., the environmental destruction is multiplied at least tenfold, since our publishing industry is 15 to 20 times larger.

Most big publishers would like to keep this a secret, refusing to release hard figures on their returns. Conscientious small publishers are thankfully not so quiet on the subject, especially those who have moved to publish-on-demand business models.

Reporting in the Wall Street Journal in 2005, Jeffrey Trachtenberg called returns "the dark side of the book world," and quoted Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio as saying, "We'd like to see (returns) discontinued. Any rational business person looking at this practice would think the industry has gone mad." Last year, Borders executive VP Robert P. Gruen told the New York Times that "We generally support the idea of looking at potential solutions to a return system that is not working well for the industry as a whole."

According to Book Industry Bailout, the practice of publishers providing books to retailers on returnable terms only dates to the 1930s, and "began as a temporary sales gimmick by a desperate New York publisher." But the concept spread as booksellers demanded the same favorable terms from other publishers, and eventually became standard – "handicapping an entire industry for the next seven decades in an unfortunate practice that has wasted literally billions of dollars worldwide."

Nearly all non-book retailers purchase products from manufacturers or distributors at 50% or less of their retail value, mark them up, then discount the items until they sell. They can't return unsold items.

The business of selling books turns this normal practice on its head by allowing book returns of unsold books to publishers. Yet it costs money to ship returned books back. Thus was born the practice of stripping covers from books, only sending back the covers, and book stores themselves destroying the remainder of the unsold books.

Dumpstered books behind a B. Dalton Bookseller store in Ohio, 2003

Independent book stores have far fewer returns than chains, with sell-through rates estimated at 80 percent. This suggests that smarter buying practices by stores reduce returns, and further demonstrates why overprinting is so unnecessary.

Many chain book stores do the publishers' dirty work of pulping the books for them – booksellers call it dumpstering. And when financially struggling book chains shut stores, as is happening right now with Borders closing 200 Waldenbooks locations, there is enormous pressure for management to take the cheapest way out and order employees to simply dumpster unsold books.

20 Years Ago Today: SEAC on the Threshold of a National Movement

2009-10-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Nearly twenty years after we both spent countless hours helping to organize Threshold in our first semester at UNC-Chapel Hill, C-line and I recently sat down to remember SEAC's early days. We thought about visiting the Forest Theatre, where Threshold concluded in an emotional ceremony on Sunday, October 29, 1989. But it was otherwise occupied by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention, performing one of their annual late summer shows. So we traveled a few hundred yards down the road, and ended up at the curved stone bench behind Gimghoul Castle that overlooks the far edge of Battle Park.

At the first SEAC organizing meeting of the fall semester '89 (in Hamilton 100), Jimmy Langman convinced us all that Threshold was going to spark a national movement, and Ericka Kurz gave a fiery, impassioned speech wearing a cool black leather jacket. Besides Jimmy and Ericka, SEAC founding members who were running the show included Alec Guettal, Blan Holman, and Don Whittier. They were all juniors, seniors, even recent grads, but nobody past their early twenties. Still, as C-line put it, "They seemed so old. And we said, tell us what you need us to do!"

The nuts and bolts effort required to actually organize a nationwide conference in the pre-internet era was a little less romantic. Working alongside dedicated souls like Lisa Abbott, Chris van Daalen, Celeste Joye, Yu-Yee Wu, Raj Krishnasami, Mark Chilton, Quaker Kappel, Ruby Sinreich, Susan Comfort, Sarah Davis, Dave Ball, Nicole Breedlove, and a bunch of other SEAC'ers, we prepared mass mailings, entered hundreds of pre-registered attendees' names into ancient Mac computers, lined up crash pad arrangements with hundreds of UNC students, and using a primitive device known as the landline telephone, called up folks who wanted more info to convince them to make the trek to Chapel Hill. And my favorite part, sitting around in endless meeting circles on the second floor of the Campus Y, arguing over one minor detail or another until the WHOLE GROUP reached a consensus.

Threshold ad from Oct. '89 issue of Music Monitor.

The conference succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Over 1,700 people showed up from around the country, representing 43 states and 225 schools. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the heyday of SDS in the late 60s. And it launched SEAC as a national student environmental movement. By the early 90s, SEAC chapters existed at over 2,000 U.S. colleges and high schools.

SEAC helped spark a renewal of progressive activism on campuses nationwide. From early on, organizers expanded the definition of environmental issues to include environmental racism and corporate accountability. Over the next few years, national SEAC trainers traveled the country to run local weekend organizer trainings that schooled a new crop of student activists.

SEAC coordinated additional national and regional conferences (most notably, the 1990 Catalyst conference, which drew 7,600 students to Champaign-Urbana, IL) and organized a series of national campaigns (including energy independence, corporate greed, defense of old growth forests, Free Burma, and anti-globalization). SEAC-sponsored voter education work helped elect green candidates at local and state levels.

Unfortunately, SEAC's growth made it overly reliant on grant money. And when some of its foundation donors eventually decided the group was too radical, and yanked their support, SEAC lost a significant chunk of its budget. The number of paid staffers plummeted from 13 down to 7 and then zero.

PIRGs also began jockeying with SEAC chapters for members, and after using SEAC's membership list to organize a 1994 conference, founded a competing student activist network called Free The Planet.

Internal SEAC struggles intensified, and the national office in Carrboro, NC closed its doors in the fall of 1996. However, SEAC rebuilt from the grassroots up, and reopened its national office in 1998, which moved first to Philadelphia and then Charleston, WV.

On a personal level, my involvement with SEAC convinced me I wanted to be an organizer, and laid the foundation for all my political work that's followed. I saw my first published articles appear in issues of SEAC's national newsletter (later renamed Threshold Magazine). I became good friends with C-line, and our adventures have continued ever since. I worked on my first winning political campaign thanks to SEAC, when we elected Mark Chilton to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1991 (at age 21, he was the youngest candidate ever elected in North Carolina, and the first and only UNC undergraduate to hold public office in Chapel Hill to this day).

Two decades after Threshold, SEAC remains the nation's largest student- and youth-led environmental group. The most fitting thing that happened to commemorate Threshold's 20th anniversary was that from Oct 16-18, the SEAC-affiliated Energy Action Coalition sponsored a regional summit (Carolinas Power Shift) at UNC-Chapel Hill. 350 student environmental activists gathered from schools in North and South Carolina to network and organize for action on clean energy and climate change. And speakers included Mark Chilton (now the two-term mayor of Carrboro), wearing his original Threshold t-shirt!

Clearly, SEAC continues to mobilize young people to protect our planet and our future. For more information on SEAC and its work today, visit SEAC.org.

The Secret Superdelegate War Revealed

2009-06-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 6-4-09

Now that President Obama has settled into the job enough to give Brian Williams a backstage pass to the West Wing, the heat of last year's campaign has faded. Especially with Secretary of State Clinton at his side as they tour Egypt to help repair U.S.-Arab relations, the significance of June 4th to Obama's rise may have diminished.

But it was one year ago today that Hillary Clinton announced plans to suspend her campaign for the Democratic nomination, and urged her supporters to unite behind Barack Obama. It was an overdue end to a seemingly endless primary campaign. And a surprising one, considering that until actual primary voters weighed in, the nomination had appeared to be Clinton's for the taking.

Bill and Hillary at New York rally, June 3, 2008

She had money, momentum, and crucial to the Democratic nominating process, Clinton had a big lead in superdelegate support. The rules said these Democratic elected officials and other party leaders could choose to back whomever they wanted, regardless of how their states or districts voted.

One of the unanswered questions from the primary campaign was why more superdelegates didn't endorse Clinton over Obama, even though they were party insiders, and she was the insider candidate. Plus, the conventional wisdom was that Hillary might be a stronger general election pick.

After Obama battled Clinton to a standstill on Super Tuesday, parts of the Democratic establishment were open-mouthed in disbelief. For the next three months, the Clinton campaign did its best to fan doubts about Obama's electability. They were helped as controversies involving the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s "bitter" comments swirled around his candidacy. Clinton won crucial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, largely by rebranding herself as a "fighter" and tailoring her message to older, white, working class Democrats.

(In hindsight of Obama's resounding victory over John McCain in the fall, the conventional wisdom was dead wrong. If Hillary had ended up as the nominee, many disillusioned Obama voters would have stayed home. McCain would never have picked Sarah Palin as his VP, instead going with his gut instinct to choose someone far less politically radioactive, like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.)

Yet Obama kept getting a steady trickle of superdelegate endorsements. In mid-February, Clinton was backed by 100 more supers than Obama, but her advantage gradually shrank. On May 9, various news organizations reported Obama had overtaken Clinton in the superdelegate chase. The final tally as of June 4 was 389 superdelegates for Obama versus 282 for Clinton.

Interviewed for the New York Times' official post-mortem on Hillary’s campaign, Pennsylvania superdelegate Jason Altmire explained the "frustration" within Hillaryland, since "they kept winning state after state and they expected others [superdelegates] to start turning their way and it just didn’t happen."

So what happened? Harold Ickes would surely like to know. In addition to being a divisive presence in Hillary's inner circle, the legendarily hot-tempered Democratic operative was in charge of the Clinton superdelegate operation.

Certainly, some superdelegates saw the writing on the wall. They recognized Barack Obama was both the Democratic Party's future and the strongest candidate against McCain, and endorsed accordingly. Some were reluctant to fight past battles and ready for the party to embrace new leadership. All had personal reasons for their choices.

As a blogger and activist who campaigned for superdelegates to support Obama over Clinton, I had a window on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering going on largely out of view of the press and the campaigns themselves. There was a secret war being waged by both Obama and Clinton supporters to convince individual superdelegates to endorse their preferred candidates.

The Clinton campaign, in an all-out struggle to prevent the nomination from slipping away, was very public about its strategy. They openly encouraged their supporters, particularly big money donors, to pester and cajole superdelegates on Clinton’s behalf, unconcerned that heavy-handed lobbying might turn off the very superdelegates they were trying to influence.

But they were beaten to the punch by Obama supporters, who organized spontaneously, and used the power of the internet to shine light on who the superdelegates were and how ordinary citizens could contact them. None of this was encouraged by the Obama campaign, who had their own, internal strategy to woo the supers. Barack and Michelle began personally calling superdelegates as early as March 2007, something Hillary agreed to do only after the Texas and Ohio contests on March 4. Although Team Obama eventually decided a little citizen lobbying might not be such a bad thing. Yet throughout the primaries, lobbying was happening fast and furiously at the grassroots and netroots levels.

While careful to remain neutral, Democratic Convention Watch was essential for anyone tracking superdelegates. A no frills, Blogger-hosted site run by two Denver political junkies, DemConWatch became the most trusted source for news about superdelegate endorsements, more accurate and up-to-date than any brand name media outlet.

The Superdelegate Transparency Project was another independent, neutral resource. A joint project of LiteraryOutpost, OpenLeft, DemConWatch, and HuffPo’s Off the Bus, organizer Jennifer Nix described the effort as a "collaborative project among all interested parties to bring transparency and accountability to the Democratic National Convention." They posted state-by-state breakdowns of which superdelegates had endorsed which candidates, what popular vote totals each had received, and whether the supers’ endorsements lined up with the votes in their respective districts.

Obama supporters on MyBarackObama.com and sites like DailyKos and Democratic Underground were constantly circulating lists of uncommitted superdelegates. In mid-February, MoveOn.org jumped into the fray when it began an online petition drive that 400,000 signed, calling for superdelegates to "let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama, then support the people’s choice." The San Francisco-based group Color Of Change delivered 25,000 e-mails urging Congressional Black Caucus members to follow their districts' votes.

In North Carolina, our congressional superdelegates originally backed former Sen. John Edwards. When Edwards exited the race in late January, most had yet to endorse another candidate.

So a few Obama supporters in N.C. decided to lobby them and organized Voters for Obama. Our website, votersforobama.org, launched on President's Day (Feb. 19). Using info gathered by DemConWatch and STP, we posted state-by-state lists of supers, their endorsements, and going a crucial step further, included contact info (work mailing addresses, e-mails, and phone numbers) for selected superdelegates. We provided simple instructions on how to make polite, respectful phone calls or send e-mails asking superdelegates to support Obama.

Over the next few months, 15,000 people visited our site, and we helped voters from around the country generate an estimated several thousand e-mails and phone calls to superdelegates. Volunteers gathered thousands more signatures on petitions in seven states including North Carolina.

And together with similar efforts by other Obama supporters, it made a difference. Most superdelegates are politicians, and they pay attention to the voters who elect them. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory announced his support for Obama on Feb. 25 as a superdelegate from Ohio. Following a news story about his previous indecision, Mallory said he heard from many community members. "[I] got lots of calls and e-mails, mostly telling me to support Obama," he said. "I got three or four calls in support of Clinton, but it was very lopsided."

In mid-Feburary, approximately 400 superdelegates remained uncommitted. We targeted half of them, mostly elected officials and state Democratic party leaders, who we thought would be the most responsive to their constituents and rank-and-file Democrats in each state. Of the 205 superdelegates we posted contact info for, 130 of them (63%) endorsed Obama during the three and a half months leading up to June 4, when Hillary announced her intention to suspend campaigning. 56 superdelegates that we lobbied (27%) remained neutral, while only 19 (or 9%) came out for Hillary. Our target superdelegates delivered an 111-delegate net gain for Obama.

Superdelegate endorsement graph courtesy of DemConWatch

Belatedly, the Clinton campaign set up their own online lobbying operation, including slick, interactive websites. But whoever was running the show was decidedly not slick enough to realize the dangers of providing contact info for all the supers, including those who had already endorsed Hillary. Ditto for posting personal cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

NObama Democrats backing Hillary were late to the game, but they made up for it with frenzied enthusiasm once they got going. Taylor Marsh harangued her listeners to lobby superdelegates for Hillary, and sites like JustSayNoDeal.com and PUMAPAC.org (Party Unity My Ass) were hot on the bandwagon.

A project called LobbyDelegates.com also launched, and although officially neutral, became the go-to site for disgruntled Clintonistas. Three of the top five URLs directing traffic to LobbyDelegates.com were official Clinton websites, and a fourth was a site affiliated with PUMA PAC.

By late May, Obama's high profile supporters were anxious to get the nomination fight settled. Perhaps fed up with the efforts of Hillary dead-enders to keep dividing the party, on May 22 Arianna Huffington called for superdelegates to endorse Obama, and encouraged her readers to contact and lobby them.

In the end, enough superdelegates swung behind Obama to allow pledged delegates from the final primaries to put him over the top. Obama reached a majority of 2,118 delegates on the night of June 3, after voters in Montana cast their ballots in the 54th nominating contest of the season. The next day, Democratic members of Congress who had remained Clinton supporters up until that point urged her to withdraw, and she announced she would. Hillary delivered her concession speech three days later on June 7th, at a final event packed with her supporters.

A year later, I would like to thank all our Voters for Obama coalition members, volunteers, and supporters. Special thanks go out to co-organizers M.L. Dexter, who did most of the superdelegate research necessary to first set up our site, and Dana Lumsden, for his enthusiasm and unwavering support; SuperVoters Susan Baylies and Scott Priz, for being willing to put on capes for Obama and help deliver 2,000 signed petitions to N.C. Gov. Mike Easley; and local organizer Cristobal Palmer, whose tireless efforts helped make our N.C. petition drive a success.

And a big thanks to everyone who visited votersforobama.org and used its tools to call, e-mail, or sign a petition to superdelegates for Obama. We let our party leaders know their constituents wanted Obama to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008, and they listened.

Send Smithfield Foods the Bill for Swine Flu Outbreak?

2009-04-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

You don't need to have read Stephen King's The Stand to be scared about the swine flu outbreak. Or, as the pork industry prefers, the H1N1 virus.

The wave of media hysteria that swept the nation this week put us all on edge. At a time when most people are already unnerved by the Great Recession, worried about losing their jobs, homes, and retirement savings, a scare like the Swine Flu Panic found fertile ground.

So how did this seemingly new mix of pig, bird, and human flu virus erupt? Since it first emerged in Mexico, xenophobic, anti-immigration racists were quick to label the strain "Mexican Flu" and use the crisis to attack President Obama's support for immigration reform.

But serious questions are being raised about whether a U.S.-owned factory farm is to blame for creating unsanitary conditions in which deadly viruses like the swine flu can incubate. Suspicion is swirling around a giant hog plant near the town of La Gloria, in Mexico’s Vera Cruz State.

La Gloria has been called the possible "ground zero" of the current epidemic. Starting in February, there was a widespread outbreak of a "powerful respiratory disease" in the town which sickened some 60% of its residents. Now, it's been revealed that one of the town’s children, 5-year old Edgar Hernandez, had contracted swine flu and was the earliest known case of this virus strain.

Health workers sealed off the town and sprayed chemicals to kill the flies from the plant's massive hog waste lagoons that reports claim were "swarming through people’s homes."

The hog plant is owned by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the United States. Smithfield Foods is also one of the nation's top polluters. The company's misdeeds have been well documented over the years, including by the Waterkeeper Alliance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s environmental group. In 2006, Rolling Stone ran a stomach-churning report on the vast amounts of toxic fecal waste generated by the company's pigs each year, and the environmental destruction its factory farming causes.

Whether the swine flu outbreak mushrooms into a full-blown pandemic or not, it should be a wakeup call for us all about the unsustainable, potentially hazardous, environmentally devastating nature of industrial agriculture. It's time we stood up and just said no to factory farming.

Operation Chaos II: Get Rush

2009-03-03T16:40:00.000-08:00

NewsOne, 3-3-09

By CASEY GANE-MCCALLA

Last year, Rush Limbaugh attempted to divide the Democratic party between supporters of Hillary Clinton and those for Barack Obama. Calling it "Operation Chaos," he urged his listeners to temporarily switch their party registrations to the Democratic Party in order to vote in the Democratic primaries. Limbaugh then prayed for riots in the streets of Denver during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

As much as I wished that the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) would turn into a riot between racist Rush supporters and decent Republicans who are not racist but believe in conservative principles and values, there weren't enough of the latter to start a confrontation.

After the Barack the Magic Negro controversy, I wrote about why The GOP Must Denounce Limbaugh and why we should all boycott his parent companies.

Now, it is time for further action. The Republican party must choose whether its principles are fiscal responsibility and family values, or racism, sexism, and a desire to see our country fail.

Here are some ways we can help take out Rush the evil bigot:

1. Get him off Armed Forces Radio.

Not only does Limbaugh have the support of hundreds of GOP politicians, but he is also one of the voices of Armed Services radio. That means all soldiers, including all women, blacks, and Latinos, three groups who Limbaugh continually offends, are a captive audience at times for Rush's propaganda. Everybody should write to their elected officials and demand that Limbaugh be taken off Armed Forces Radio. There is no reason taxpayer money should go to Limbaugh while minority and female U.S. soldiers are forced to listen to that bigot.

2. Force the GOP to address him.

The media has been doing a good job asking Republican officials to address Rush Limbaugh and let the country know where they stand on his influence within the party. We as citizen journalists can do the same thing. Elected officials are public servants and must listen to the concerns of the public. Republican office holders must be asked the question Pete Seeger posed, "Which side are you on?" Seek out opportunities to question GOP officials in public forums. Here is an example of how we can act locally to take down Rush.

3. Boycott Clear Channel.

Clear Channel is Rush Limbaugh’s parent company. Not only do they distribute Rush Limbaugh but they also own many urban radio stations which play corporate-backed, negative hip hop. If the black community were to boycott these stations (I assume they are already boycotting Rush), it would force Clear Channel to address Limbaugh as we would hit them in the pocket.

Here is a list of Rush's sponsors.

4. Boycott CPAC sponsors.

CPAC chose to back Limbaugh and make him their keynote speaker, legitimizing his political beliefs. We should also try and boycott or bring pressure on their sponsors as well. Some of them include AT&T and Google. These sponsors must address why they are sponsoring a neo-conservative conference that uses a bigot as its spokesman.

Here is a list of CPAC's sponsors for 2009.

5. Protest stations that carry Limbaugh.

Rush must be given the same treatment as the New York Post's Sean Delonas. The center of Rush’s power is WABC 770 AM in liberal New York City. 770 AM not only carries Rush but also other right wing bigots like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. A nice protest outside 770's studios would call attention to the hate and bigotry the station spews daily.

We proved how successful protests can be with the recent action taken against the New York Post cartoon. Now we must take out Limbaugh. If Black people can unite with Latino and women's groups, both of whom Limbaugh has offended in the past, we could make the Post protest look miniscule.

Here's a list of Republicans who are on Rush's side:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Tony Snow, and Matt Drudge. All of these people have either appeared on Rush's show or hosted his show for him.

Here's a list of Republicans who are scared of Rush:

John McCain (despite the fact that Limbaugh bashed him in the '08 primaries, he has never uttered a disparaging word about the evil bigot), Michael Steele (criticized Limbaugh and then apologized), Phil Gingrey (same as Steele), Bobby Jindal (called Limbaugh a conservative leader).

Here's a list of Republicans who stand up for their conservative principles and reject Limbaugh's bigotry and negativity:

None so far.

(Casey Gane-McCalla is a writer, rapper, producer and actor, and the assistant editor for NewsOne.)

Why Did the BBC Censor a Cry to Help Gaza Victims?

2009-01-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 1-28-09

Gaza is recovering from Israel's latest assault, which ended in a cease-fire earlier this month. In the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation has let down its worldwide viewership by refusing to broadcast this charity appeal to help Palestinian victims of the violence:

The appeal was produced by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), a consortium of charities including the Red Cross, Oxfam and Save the Children. What is so inflammatory about this humanitarian plea, which doesn't blame Israel or any other party for the plight of Gaza?

Why did the BBC hide behind a statement that "the debate about who is responsible for causing (suffering and distress in Gaza) and what should be done about it...is contentious?"

The Corporation joined Rupert Murdoch's Sky News as the only two major UK broadcasters not to air the charity appeal, a decision which has caused a huge uproar in the UK.

Demonstrators march to BBC Headquarters in London

In years past, the BBC regularly aired similar charity appeals:

The BBC broadcast DEC appeals after the 1999 Kosovo war and 1990 Gulf conflict. In 1968 it broadcast an appeal for victims of the Vietnam war. Over the last two years it has broadcast appeals for aid for crises in Burma, Bangladesh, Sudan, Chad and the Congo. Neither has it previously shunned humanitarian appeals in the Middle East. The second DEC appeal ever to be broadcast on the BBC, in June 1967, was a film seeking help for Palestinian and Syrian refugees displaced by the Six Day War. In 1982, the BBC helped raise £1m by broadcasting a DEC appeal for victims of Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

But now, things have changed. Blame is being laid at the feet of the BBC's Director General, Mark Thompson.

Since his arrival at the BBC in 2004, according to senior sources within DEC charities, the BBC has grown cautious and worried about compromising its impartiality. In 2006, the BBC similarly rejected a DEC appeal for victims of Israel's month-long war against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

This episode is revealing interesting things about the factors that guide the BBC's coverage of the endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, coverage which helps shape worldwide opinion. These include a set of reporting rules that BBC journalists must follow in their dispatches:

"The 24 words and phrases from the reporting rules the BBC has agreed to make public appear innocuous enough, but even here some might discern a sense of paranoia. Journalists are instructed to avoid using 'assassination' in favour of 'killing' and in discussing Gaza, the word "occupation" is to be avoided in favour of 'permanent military presence'."

Palestinian children in Gaza

Ironically, the resulting controversy over the BBC's censorship has resulted in a doubling of donations to the DEC’s emergency fund for Gaza, with over one million pounds raised since the appeal was aired by other UK broadcasters on Monday night. Shame on Mark Thompson, and shame on the BBC. It's a sad day if this once-venerable news organization can't be counted on to honestly and accurately inform the public.

An Entirely Different Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T11:11:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 1-20-09

Earlier today, as President Obama was sworn in, everything about the event heralded change. From Aretha Franklin singing My Country, 'Tis of Thee, to the Rev. Joseph Lowery using his benediction to invoke a coming day when "black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

Instead of the Supreme Court selecting the President, Chief Justice John Roberts was reduced to mischief-making as he tried to trip Obama up with a bungled, mis-worded oath of office. Or perhaps Roberts was simply displaying his arrogance by attempting to administer the oath sans notes.

President Obama used his inaugural address to draw a line separating the past eight years and what the nation should expect to come next. In an obvious rebuke to George W. Bush's decision to institutionalize torture of U.S. detainees, he made it clear "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." He renounced Bush's orgy of deregulation and giveaways to the rich by reminding us that "without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."

Eight years ago, the country was experiencing an entirely different sort of Inauguration Day. On January 20, 2001, people were outraged that George W. Bush had stolen the 2000 election. The largest number of protesters since the Nixon era came to Washington, D.C. and staged a counter-Inaugural, vowing to resist the fraudulent Bush Administration.

My friends and I were among them. The three of us were too worked up over Bush’s electoral shenanigans to let the day pass within raising a ruckus. It was a bitterly cold morning, and we got up early to walk a few miles from where we were staying to the Capitol. Our plan was a simple one – get as close as we could to the swearing-in ceremony and make as much noise as possible denouncing it.

To these ends, I borrowed a bullhorn for the occasion, the biggest, most powerful one I could find. I was carrying it in a large black messenger's bag. Security seemed tight, with cops and security personnel everywhere, although nowhere near post-9/11 levels.

It was 11:45 am as we walked down Independence Avenue, past the Capitol steps where the reviewing stands were set up. The first entrance we came to for VIP ticketholders was on the corner of 1st Street S.W. and Independence, next to the U.S. Botanic Garden. I walked right through the security line, blending in with the stream of well-heeled GOP donors and activists, despite toting a bulky black bag nearly capable of holding a suitcase nuclear bomb.

My friends weren't as lucky. What made them stand out in the otherwise lily-white crowd was their skin color – both were black. Somehow, even to the incompetent Republican party functionaries doubling as ticket takers, they didn't look like George W. Bush supporters.

So we retreated across the street, and made our stand at the entrance to Bartholdi Park. At the stroke of 12 noon, we whipped out the bullhorn and began delivering our own counter-Inaugural address. Enraged GOP attendees rushed over, trying to intimidate us into shutting up. But just as quickly, other protesters carrying banners and signs swarmed to our streetcorner, yelling their own slogans, and swelling our numbers to more than 100.

The three of us took turns leading chants of anti-Bush, pro-democracy slogans for the next half-hour, like WHAT IF THEY HELD AN ELECTION...AND NOBODY COUNTED THE VOTES?, BUSH WAS SELECTED, NOT ELECTED, and YOUR VOTE ONLY COUNTS...IF YOUR CANDIDATE'S DADDY ALREADY PACKED THE SUPREME COURT.

That bullhorn was loud, and it's safe to say audible to most of the VIP guests gathered to watch their illegitimate hero take the oath of office. FBI agents hovered around us, videotaping our activities. But we didn't stop until we felt we'd made our point. Then we packed up and moved on down the street to the Justice Department to protest John Ashcroft's impending confirmation as Attorney General.

What a difference eight years made. Today, on January 20, 2009, a sea of Americans of all colors stretched for two miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. Far from being out of place, revelers who look like my friends were well represented among the 240,000 who received tickets to view the ceremonies from designated viewing areas near the front of the Mall.

Only the weather remained the same. It was a frigid, cold day, but millions braved the elements to be there, their hearts warm and full of joy, witness to a proud day in our nation's history. And there was nary a protester in sight.

George W. Bush's Legacy of Shame

2009-01-19T23:59:00.000-08:00

This look back at the long national nightmare we endured during George W. Bush's presidency comes courtesy of Omid Malekan at Visual Stories.

MLK’s Words Changed Our World

2009-01-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

NewsOne, 1-14-09

By CASEY GANE-MCCALLA

(Editor's note - Today, January 15, would have MLK's 80th birthday.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. might be the greatest orator in American history. His words and speeches changed America forever. Not only did his speeches address integration, but King also gave powerful calls to action on poverty and the war in Vietnam. Here are MLK's Top 5 Speeches.

1. I Have A Dream.

This is one of the most well known and referred to speeches in modern American history.

2. Why I Am Opposed To The War In Vietnam.

Many people forget about King's strong anti-war stance. Many of the reasons he opposed the war in Vietnam relate to the current conflicts in Gaza and Iraq.

3. I've Been To The Mountain Top.

King's last speech was prophetic. He would die the next day but his words would live on and inspire people forever.

4. The Urgency of Now.

In a theme later used by Barack Obama, King showed why integration couldn't wait.

5. A Time to Break Silence.

In this speech, Martin Luther King again outlined his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

(Casey Gane-McCalla is a writer, rapper, producer and actor, and the assistant editor for NewsOne.)

Israel vs. Gaza: 985 to 13 and Counting

2009-01-12T18:37:00.001-08:00

NewsOne, 1-12-09

By CASEY GANE-MCCALLA

As Israel continues its re-invasion of Gaza, all this talk of a proportionate response and Israel defending itself seems to be off the mark, judging by the numbers. If a man hits you and you beat up his whole family, is that a proportionate response? Is shooting a man for throwing a rock at your window defending yourself?

The Associated Press reports that as of January 14th, more than 985 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 400 civilians. This is in comparison to 13 Israelis who have been killed, including three civilians. It is estimated that 40% of all the Gaza casualties have been civilians.

Last weekend, Barack Obama was on ABC's This Week and reiterated his statement, "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Palestinians are seeing bombs dropped on their houses at a much more frequent rate than Israelis have had rockets shot at them, so shouldn't they have the right to defend themselves, too? Far more Palestinian daughters have died because of this conflict than Israelis.

We've all heard the saying that an eye for an eye leaves us all blind. What about 200 eyes for an eye?

Does Israel expect to be greeted as liberators in Gaza? Every Palestinian family member they kill just fuels the desperation and hatred of Israel that creates the rocket launchers and the suicide bombers that they are trying to stop.

From 2005 through 2007 in Israel and the Palestinian territories, there were 86 Israelis killed, eight of which were civilians, meaning less than 10% of all Israelis killed during that time were civilians. There were 1290 Palestinian casualties during that same period, of which 222 were civilians.

So in the last two and a half weeks, Israel has killed as many Palestinians as they have during the past four years.

An unequal death toll has marked this conflict for years. From 1987 through 2005, there were 3196 Palestinian casualties, including 620 civilians; and 946 Israeli casualties, including 112 civilians.

In the face of the murder, terror and dead children, U.S. politicians are not condemning the violence or the war, but defending Israel's right to defend themselves. N.Y. Gov. David Paterson said, "I believe the Israeli people, under constant attack from the Palestinian territories, have a right to protect themselves and I stand with them as they fight to defend the basic rights of humanity."

Is Hamas not under attack by Israel as well? Given the disproportionate amount of casualties, isn't it the Palestinians who have more of a need to defend their basic human rights?

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg said there is no measured response to terrorism, essentially saying that Israel has carte blanche to use what ever force it wants, regardless of civilian casualties.

I worked for many years as a teacher and had to break up several fights. If a 100 pound kid kicks a 300 pound kid in the shins, and the 300 pound kid begins pummeling the 100 pound kid, I wouldn't say that the 300 kid had a right to defend himself. I would tell them both to stop fighting and try and break it up.

Maybe one of the reasons the US has been slow to criticize Israel is the Iraq war. 100,000 Iraqi civilians (some have estimated it in the millions) have been killed vs. 4,000 U.S. soldiers.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were a boxing match it would have been declared a TKO a long time ago. If it were a football game, Israel would have put in their second string. Without a referee, the game has gotten far out of hand.

In war there is rarely a right side and wrong side. If Hamas was wrong for breaking the previous ceasefire, that does not mean Israel is right for killing more than 400 civilians.

The current war on Gaza is doing very little to improve Israel's relations with both the Palestinians and their Middle East neighbors. It is only fueling hatred for Israel in the Arab world.

While I've heard several good arguments justifying Israel's actions, I've always been told that number and pictures don't lie. Given the lopsided score on the casualty count and gruesome pictures of the casualties, it is very clear that Israel is in the wrong along with Hamas.

For more evidence of Israel's brutality in Gaza check out this gallery of Palestinian casualties.

(Casey Gane-McCalla is a writer, rapper, producer and actor, and the assistant editor for NewsOne.)

The GOP Must Denounce Rush Limbaugh

2008-12-29T21:00:00.001-08:00

NewsOne, 12-29-08

The Rest of Us Should Boycott Clear Channel

By CASEY GANE-MCCALLA

With the recent scandal involving Chip Saltsman, a candidate to run the RNC, and his distribution of Rush Limbaugh's mix CD, which contained the song "Barack the Magic Negro," it is high time for the Republican Party and America as a whole to reject and denounce Rush Limbaugh.

"Barack the Magic Negro" is hardly the most offensive thing that Rush Limbaugh has said and is hardly the strongest tie that Limbaugh has had to the Republican party.

Limbaugh is a bigot, a sexist, a hypocrite and a xenophobe. He stirs up fear and hate in his listeners. He preys on the disenfranchised and uneducated and turns their resentment against blacks, feminists, immigrants, and liberals. For a sampling of Limbaugh's most racist quotes against blacks, click HERE. Limbaugh has also managed to offend Latinos, saying Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reminded him of a shoe shine boy and also saying in reference to Hugo Chavez, "A Chavez is a Chavez. We've always had problems with them."

Limbaugh's prejudice does not only extend to minorities. He also has discriminated against women, who happen to make up the majority of this country. He has said, "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society," and also, "We're not sexists, we're chauvinists — we're male chauvinist pigs, and we're happy to be because we think that's what men were destined to be. We think that's what women want."

Rush Limbaugh has long acted as the de facto spokesman for the Republican Party, the self-appointed voice of conservative broadcasting, saying what mainstream party figures mean to say but won't for fear of being deemed politically incorrect.

The GOP has continually given him their approval. George W. Bush has appeared on Limbaugh's show several times, as has his brother Jeb. GOP Uncle Toms like Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas have also appeared on his show, along with Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has not only appeared on Limbaugh's show, but has served as a replacement host for Limbaugh, as has Matt Drudge.

It's amazing how few Republicans have come forth to criticize Limbaugh. When rapper, Ludacris referred to Hillary Clinton as a bitch, Fox News criticized him for a whole news cycle, yet when Limbaugh repeatedly referred to Clinton as a "B-I-itch," Fox News kept quiet. Meanwhile, John McCain asked Obama to publicly condemn John Lewis for rightfully comparing the crowds at McCain/Palin hate rallies to those drawn by George Wallace, but never condemned Rush Limbaugh for comparing Obama to Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, linking Democrats to Al Qaeda, and labeling feminists as Nazi's.

In 2000, John McCain bravely stood up to 'agents of intolerance' on the Right such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. However by the 2008 campaign, he had turned into a yellow-bellied coward. Despite the fact that Limbaugh criticized him heavily throughout the primaries, John McCain has never spoken out against Limbaugh.

In 2007, Limbaugh, who avoided the Vietnam draft because he "did not want to go," said that soldiers who did fight for their country and returned home to criticize the war (after seeing the death and carnage there) were "phony soldiers." Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called on his fellow Senators to condemn the remarks. John McCain's response? "I did issue a statement saying that I thought it was inappropriate, and perhaps Mr. Limbaugh didn't mean it, but he should not have said it." Hardly a condemnation.

McCain had another chance to condemn Limbaugh's statements last year when the Obama campaign ran an ad using Limbaugh quotes like, "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified," and "Shut your mouth or get out (of this country)." The ads referred to Limbaugh as one of McCain's Republican friends. McCain could have issued a statement saying that Limbaugh was not one of his friends and that his views did not represent the McCain campaign or the Republican Party, but instead he stayed quiet for fear of pissing off the dittoheads.

McCain had one last chance to distance himself from Limbaugh on Meet The Press shortly before the election, when Tom Brokaw played a clip of Limbaugh saying that Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama was all about race and asked McCain if he agreed. McCain could have said, 'I know Colin Powell and have been friends with him for many years. While I disagree with his endorsement, it is ludicrous to insinuate that a man who has given so much service to his country would endorse a Presidential candidate based on his skin color.' By repeatedly refusing to criticize Limbaugh, McCain has shown that he either shares Limbaugh's bigoted views or is too cowardly to renounce them.

One of the most disturbing things to know about Rush Limbaugh is that his program airs on Armed Services Radio. Given the fact that the army is 24% Latino and 12% black, Limbaugh is offending more than a third of our enlisted soldiers. Is Limbaugh the voice of America we want represented on our military airwaves? Do we really want someone broadcasting to our enlisted soldiers who said Abu Ghraib was just a fraternity prank, and compared a wounded Iraq vet who appeared in TV ads against the war to a suicide bomber?

Many of Limbaugh's supporters have defended him by saying his statements are made in a humorous context. When someone like the character Borat makes racist, sexist or anti-semetic comments, it falls in the category of humor because we know that Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't mean it and is using the character to show the stupidity of prejudice. However, with Limbaugh, it is quite clear that he stands by his statements and it is minorities and women who are the butts of his jokes, not his own racism and sexism.

If the GOP is to truly move into the 21st century, they must cut all ties to bigots like Rush Limbaugh. When the President, Vice President, Vice Presidential candidates, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Senators, Governors, and Supreme Court justices all appear on the show of a hate-spewing racist, sexist pig, it does not reflect well on their political party.

While Limbaugh might have a large base, it is not as large as the base he offends. By attacking blacks, Hispanics, feminists and liberals he is alienating more than half of the country. Not only blacks and Hispanics, but every white person who has an African-American or Latino relative, loved one, hero or friend.

Throughout the campaign, Obama was repeatedly asked to denounce people he associated with because of their statements. Whether it was Ludacris, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, or Rep. John Lewis. Obama repudiated them all but Lewis. Now, it is the Republicans' turn to speak out.

Pleases write to your Senators, Representatives, and Governors, and ask them to publicly denounce Limbaugh for his racism, sexism, xenophobia and disrespect, and to cancel his contract with Armed Services Radio. It is ridiculous that any part of our tax money goes to this rich, mean spirited bigot...and ridiculous that our brave soldiers are forced to listen to him.

Is there any Republican brave enough to criticize or acknowledge Rush Limbaugh's bigotry, or has the party traded in its fiscal conservatism and family values for hatred and racism?

I urge all leaders in the African-American and Latino communities as well as leaders of the women's movement to protest Limbaugh. When we went after Don Imus, we targeted the wrong bigot. Limbaugh makes Imus look like he works for Air America.

I'm also calling for a boycott of all Clear Channel stations. Clear Channel is the parent company of Limbaugh's show. The corporation's president, Mark P. Mays, recently defended Limbaugh for his 'phony soldiers' comment. Please e-mail him with you questions and concerns about Limbaugh at MarkPMays@clearchannel.com. You can also call Clear Channel with your concerns at 1-210-822-2828. And please call the local stations in your area that carry Limbaugh's show.

(Casey Gane-McCalla is a writer, rapper, producer and actor, and the assistant editor for NewsOne.)

Ten Chumps Who Helped Elect Barack Obama

2008-11-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 11-14-08

Barack Obama ran a great campaign. While shattering all fundraising records, he created a movement backed by small donors, not big lobbyists. Using community organizing techniques derided by his GOP opponents, he mobilized millions of supporters and gave them an ownership stake in his historic candidacy.

But he got some invaluable help along the way. With the post-election analysis season almost over, it's worth taking one final look at some of the characters who ensured President-elect Obama would make it to the White House.

This list is devoted to a special breed, seasoned political players and 15-minutes of famers alike, who did everything they could to stop Obama, only to see their efforts backfire. It's a bipartisan honor, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. For obvious reasons, this list omits the folks with the most to gain from Obama's defeat, namely, John McCain and Sarah Palin, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Although they also deserve special recognition for trying every boneheaded trick they could dream up.

Jeremiah Wright - The good Reverend's sin was enjoying his turn at the microphone too much. From the start, he was a nuisance and distraction. Wright got irritated with Obama after being asked not to deliver the invocation at his 2007 announcement speech in Springfield, IL, and made sure the press knew about it. Rev. Wrong for Obama should have disappeared after tapes of his most incendiary sermons aired on national TV last March. But by resurfacing barely a month after Obama's masterful speech on race in Philadelphia, Wright tried his best to sabotage the damage control. And by continuing to draw attention to his outrageous beliefs in the process of defending himself, he allowed Obama to repudiate him entirely.

Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt - Joint acclaim for the two strategists who were initially hailed by the press as turning around McCain's campaign. They undid all their own hard work by advising McCain to pick Sarah Palin, thus undercutting Schmidt's strategy of painting Obama as too inexperienced to lead. They urged McCain to ignore his gut instinct to choose either Sen. Joe Lieberman or former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. Together, their counsel trumped Mark Salter's preference of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who would have been a formidable VP candidate. Pawlenty's only drawback was that he was sold to McCain as the safe pick, which left him out of step with McCain's need to gamble on a "maverick" choice.

Schmidt also deserves special props for convincing McCain to announce he was temporarily suspending his campaign and returning to Washington for what turned out to be bungled negotiations over the $700 billion financial bailout package. And Davis gets a shout out for signing off on TV spots attacking Obama over ties to former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac advisors, shortly before it was revealed he had been earning $15,000 a month as a lobbyist on Freddie Mac's payroll for the past several years.

Mark Penn - Assigning honors to Hillary's strategists is tough, because collectively they ran a criminally dysfunctional campaign unequaled in modern politics. But Mark Penn was at the center of much of the infighting and tension that plagued her inner circle. According to Newsweek's behind-the-scenes account of the election, Penn was suspected of being less than honest with the campaign team about polling results that were unfavorable to Hillary, which helped Obama catch them unaware and unprepared with his Iowa caucus victory.

John Edwards and Mike Easley - This pair of North Carolina pols each contributed an assist through the self-serving ways they tried to play the endorsement game. Edwards withheld his endorsement for months, until it was clear Obama would beat Hillary and be the Democratic nominee. Thus Edwards made sure he would not be identified as an Obama team player, and limited damage to the Democrats' chances when Edwards' own career went up in smoke in August in his self-inflicted adultery scandal. Outgoing N.C. Governor Mike Easley endorsed Hillary a week before the state's May 6 primary. In doing so, the unpopular lame duck enraged Obama voters in North Carolina, particularly African-Americans, and solidified Obama's support.

Joe The Plumber - By basking in his moment in the spotlight, and running his mouth about his far-right wing nutty beliefs, he was immediately discredited as a spokesperson for average working stiffs. The unlicensed plumber whose name wasn't even Joe and whose income level would qualify him for a tax cut under Obama's tax plans made a mockery of McCain's last-minute campaign gambit to frighten voters with the spectre of higher taxes.

Sheldon Adelson - The wealthy casino mogul behind the right wing 527 group Freedom's Watch was suspected of being the Republican sugar daddy who anonymously funded the Clarion Fund, which dumped 28 million anti-Islamic scare DVDs in swing states around the country through mailings and paid advertising supplements in newspapers. Adelson and similar fat cats who bankrolled GOP-leaning PAC's wasted lots of money producing an avalanche of hate propaganda - mailers, robocalls, even DVDs. But this campaign tactic has lost much of its effectiveness in a world where people have access to multiple sources of information on the internet, instead of being limited to what they see on TV, read in their newspapers, or find in their mailboxes. Should have spent their cash on registering new Republican voters at conservative churches, state fairs, and NASCAR races.

Geraldine Ferraro - The most prominent member of the Nobama Democrats, she gave credibility to the divisive, time-wasting efforts of pro-Hillary deadenders who clung to PUMA, Just Say No Deal, and other faux-grassroots groups after Obama clinched the nomination. Ferraro was forced to step down from her official role with the Clinton campaign in March after claiming, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," similar to comments she made in 1988 about an earlier black presidential contender ("If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race"). She reared her head again in May, quoted by the New York Times as saying she might not vote for Obama in the fall, because "I think Obama was terribly sexist."

Yet by refusing to cede her role as a Hillary surrogate, and tirelessly fanning the fames of party disunity, she helped keep media attention on the myth that there were legions of disaffected Hillary voters whose allegiance was available for harvest by any candidate in a pantsuit. Without Ferraro's efforts to keep the gender pot stirring, Sarah Palin might not have presented such a tempting opportunity for Team McCain to make a play for women voters.

Ashley Todd - It didn't get any uglier than this. Dishonorable mention goes to the mentally unstable McCain campaign volunteer with delusions of grandeur who thought she could scare America into believing she was attacked and robbed by a 6' 4" pro-Obama black thug who cut a (backwards) "B" into her face after spotting her McCain bumper sticker. Despite skepticism from police, the McCain camp rushed to exploit the situation, peddling breathless versions of events to the press that could not be confirmed at the time. McCain and Palin even called Todd to wish her well, guaranteeing the incident would receive widespread media coverage. Then Todd's story fell apart, as she admitted it was all a hoax and was charged with filing a false police report. The McCain campaign was left burned and looking even more desperate and unbalanced than they had before, with less than a week to go until the election.

Looking back over this parade of campaign horribles, it's no wonder the GOP blame game started long before election night, when the depths of McCain's meltdown became evident. There's a lot of credit to go around. But every fool on this list can rest assured that despite their worst intentions, they made a unique contribution towards helping the best man win in 2008.

Wave of Racist Terrorism Follows Obama Victory

2008-11-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

NewsOne, 11-11-08

By CASEY GANE-MCCALLA

Most of the post-election reaction to Barack Obama's presidential win has been beautiful. People from all backgrounds, races, cultures and religions are elated to see such a good, decent, inspirational man become President. Many are proud of the historical significance of the United States electing a leader of African descent after the turbulent history of blacks in America.

There has also been a significant racist backlash in the wake of the election results. Which is not surprising. After seeing videos of the hate mobs attracted to McCain-Palin rallies, I politely declined an offer to cover election day in Pennsylvania or Ohio out of fear of being attacked by some angry bigot.

One of my greatest fears after the euphoria faded was that the irrational Republican crowds who were drilled into believing that Obama was a terrorist, communist, Muslim traitor would continue their anger toward the President-elect and his supporters. The campaign was heavy with racial undertones, from Rush Limbaugh's racist rants to Sarah Palin turning a blind eye to someone yelling the N-word at a rally.

Sure enough, a few pathetic racists and violent extremists have been lashing out. Since election night, there has been a string of disturbing firebombings, assaults, and incidents of vandalism directed at African-Americans.

A black church in Springfield, Massachusetts burned down on election night. While I would like to believe it was totally unrelated to racism or Obama’s triumph, I am fearful that it was. If this was a hate crime in liberal Massachusetts, it is a painful reminder of the destruction and terrorism that greeted the civil rights movement, in particular the bombing that killed four little girls in a church in Alabama.

A black family near Pittsburgh had their car torched right outside their house, while they were watching Obama give his victory speech on TV. Before the cowardly arsonists burned the car, they tossed the family's Obama yard sign through a window and spraypainted "Obama" across the trunk. The blaze almost caught the family's house on fire, leaving them afraid for their safety in a home where four generations of black Pennsylvanians have lived.

This can only be seen as an act of terrorism. Instead of a burning cross on the family’s lawn, there was a burning car, symbolizing the torching of our new African-American president. Carbombings are something you'd expect to happen in Iraq, not America.

There was another election night incident in Staten Island, New York where a 17 year-old Muslim, African-American male was beaten with baseball bats by a group of white men who repeatedly yelled, "Obama." This brings back memories of Yusef Hawkins who was chased and beaten by an angry mob in Bensonhurst during the summer of 1989, which resulted in his death.

Ali Kamara, beaten on election night

At North Carolina State University in Raleigh, four students admitted spraypainting an entire campus walkway with racist and violent threats including "Shoot Obama" and "Kill that nigger." As disgusting as that display of bigotry was, it was encouraging to see nearly 500 students and school officials including the chancellor rally against the hate. In Austin, Buck Burnette, a back up center for the University of Texas football team, wrote on his Facebook page, "All the hunters gather up, we have a Nigger in the White House." Burnette promptly apologized and was kicked off the team.

Like the examples set by NCSU and the University of Texas, we all must condemn any post-election outbursts of hatred or intimidation. While Obama's presidency is a great thing for the nation, it may trigger what remains of the lunatic racist fringe to resume their old tactics of bombings and assassinations. Already the FBI and ATF have broken up two plots to kill Obama, each originating with radical white supremacist groups.

Clearly, this election was a statement on how much progress black Americans have made in this country and how much tolerance, acceptance and even admiration whites have for an African-American candidate like Obama. The cynic in me would like to talk about how far we have to go to reach a truly colorblind society, but the optimist in me prefers to consider how far we've come.

I actually thought we'd see even more hate crimes both before and after Obama’s victory. Rather than being standard among whites, blatant racism in 2008 has been marginalized. This is not to say average white people don't have their own prejudices and stereotypes, but the dehumanizing bigotry that defined America during the Jim Crow era is now discredited. Just like Bloods and Crips don't represent most black people, and Al Qaeda doesn't typify the Arab world, bigots and white supremacists do not in any way showcase the general feelings of today’s Americans.

But terrorism perpetrated by radical racist extremists must be taken as seriously as attacks from radical Islamic extremists. We must condemn the culprits and support the victims just as we did during 9/11. Our country has matured considerably, enough to enter the age of Obama, but the fight against racism is not over. We cannot tolerate the acts of a lunatic fringe still caught up in the outdated philosophy of white supremacy.

To send a check to the rebuilding fund for the church that was burned down in Springfield, MA:

Macedonia Church of God in Christ, c/o Greater Springfield Council of Churches, 39 Oakland St., Springfield, MA 01108

Donate to the charitable fund set up to support the carbombing victims:

Whiteside Family Relief Fund, c/o First National Bank of PA, 4140 E. State St., Hermitage PA 16148

(Casey Gane-McCalla is a writer, rapper, producer and actor, and the assistant editor for NewsOne. The Latest Outrage editor Erik Ose contributed to this report.)

(UPDATE 11/25 - I (Erik) was on NPR’s News & Notes today along with Mark Potok, Director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, talking with Tony Cox about the post-election rise in hate crimes and violence first covered two weeks ago by TLO & NewsOne. You can listen to the audio of our segment HERE.

This is what I would add to the discussion we had:

Thinking about the hundreds of incidents that have occurred since the election, it's possible to lose sight of the hurt caused by any single act of racist terrorism. Here's one incident up close.

Phillip Whiteside, an African-American who lives in Greenville, PA, about an hour outside of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania, was watching Obama's victory speech on election night at home with his family when his grandmother saw a fireball erupt outside. Phillip's grandfather, who has MS, rushed outside to find Phillip's car on fire, parked right next to their house.

This is a home where four generations of Whitesides have lived, in fact, their family came up from Tennessee and helped settle the town. The blaze threatened to spread to the house until Mr. Whiteside hosed down the outside walls with a garden hose.

After the fire burned out, the Whitesides discovered the arsonists had tossed the family's Obama yard sign into the flames and spraypainted "Obama" across the car trunk.

"We're striving for change," said Phillip. "People don't want to change. It's going back to the olden days. It doesn’t make sense that in these times we have problems like this."

In the aftermath of the fire, community members wrote letters to the local paper denouncing the hate crime, which ran an editorial reminding folks that Obama's victory does not spell the end of racism. A local bank has sent up a relief fund for the family.

But the carbombing has left the Whitesides afraid for their safety in their own home. "Not knowing what's coming," said Phillip, is how his family is feeling now.)

Supposedly Safe GOP House Seat in CA Too Close To Call

2008-11-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 11-6-08

Prop 8 Hangs In Balance as GOP Lawyers Try To Influence Vote Count

Two days after the Nov. 4 elections, a congressional race in conservative Orange County, California that was dismissed by most observers as a lock for the GOP remains unresolved. Democratic challenger Bill Hedrick is down by 4,600 votes against 16-year incumbent Republican Ken Calvert in the 44th congressional district, but nearly 100,000 provisional and vote-by-mail absentee ballots have yet to be counted.

GOP lawyers are descending on registrars’ offices in Orange and Riverside, the district’s two counties, trying to influence the vote counting which began today:

Rebecca Martine, Riverside County's chief deputy registrar, said there are 38,000 paper provisional ballots and 9,000 electronic provisional ballots to be counted.

This is in addition to approximately 50,000 absentee ballots still outstanding.

Calvert's team has apparently been having private conversations with the registrar’s office in Riverside County, which was the last county in California to report its election results. There were numerous reports from Democratic Party officials, voters and even a poll worker in Riverside County that voters were "forced to use provisional ballots" or "denied ballots entirely" on Tuesday.

Hedrick's campaign today issued a call for all votes to be counted. "We are urging any voter within Riverside or Orange County who voted in the 44th congressional race and were issued a provisional ballot to contact the registrar of voters in their county," said Hedrick communications director Lori Vandermeir, "to demand their ballots are counted."

44th district incumbent Ken Calvert (left), and challenger Bill Hedrick (right)

The fate of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 initiative is still up the air, with the measure’s foes refusing to concede before all provisional and absentee ballots are counted. Voters in Riverside County approved the initiative by a heavy 64-36% margin, but provisional votes may skew differently.

If you'd like to ask elections officials to count all the provisional votes fairly, free from influence by GOP lawyers, call the Riverside County Registrar’s office at (951) 486-7200, where you can leave a message for Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore.

The 44th congressional district includes San Clemente, home to Richard Nixon’s Western White House. It is a GOP stronghold. The Hedrick-Calvert race was rated solid Republican by Charlie Cook's Political Report as of mid-October. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in the district by 59-40%.

Calvert was named one of the most corrupt members in Congress for three years running by the independent watch dog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. He has served in Congress since 1993. Calvert outspent Hedrick in this race by more than 5-1, raising and spending nearly a million dollars to Hedrick’s $150,000.

Despite voting with George W. Bush 94.4% of the time, this fall Calvert distributed mailers without a single mention that he belonged to the Republican party, proclaiming himself "An Independent Voice Working for You." The 44th district has seen a jump in voter registration this year, with Democrats outpacing Republicans, especially in Riverside County. It is the second-fastest growing district in California, adding almost 200,000 new residents since 2000, the majority of that growth in the district’s Hispanic population.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise reports Hedrick got an assist from Obama voters:

Republicans still hold a slight edge over Democrats in the Riverside County portion of the district, with roughly 5,000 more registered GOP voters than Democrats. But Hedrick, perhaps aided by the excitement surrounding President-elect Barack Obama, was ahead by almost 6,000 votes in Riverside County, according to the Riverside County registrar of voters.

Voters wait in line in Riverside, CA on election day

National Journal's Hotline on Call blog agrees:

"Calvert...appears to not have taken his re-election seriously enough, and may have gotten tripped up by the big Obama-influenced turnout. An unlikely win by Hedrick would be the story of the cycle."

Although the Obama tsunami wiped out GOP incumbents across the country, this is one congressional contest no one predicted would become a cliffhanger. Help bring public pressure to bear in support of a fair counting of all the votes in this race, which is shaping up as a poster child for meaningful voting reform that takes us beyond the sloppy provisional ballot system. Any form of Election Day confusion that leaves 47,000 citizens in a single county unsure whether their votes will count is not what a true democracy looks like.

(UPDATE 12/1: Last Thursday, Nov. 27, Bill Hedrick conceded the race to Ken Calvert after falling about 6,400 votes short in the final count. In an e-mail to supporters, Hedrick vowed to run again. "We have shown quite clearly that we most certainly can win this seat two years from now," Hedrick said.

In hindsight, the national Democratic Party dropped the ball by not ponying up behind the Hedrick campaign. It's reminiscent of how they similarly ignored North Carolina congressional challenger Larry Kissell in 2006, before he lost by a heartbreaking 329 votes to right wing nut Robin Hayes. Kissell came back to beat Hayes this cycle with the full support of the DCCC in a solid 55-45% victory. Likely, Hedrick will enjoy the same turnabout in party support for his 2010 rematch.)

Yes We Can, Said Barack Obama, And We Did

2008-11-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 11-5-08

The day after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, our first African-American President, it is a truly historic time to be an American. Slavery was one of the United States' original sins, practiced and tolerated even as the country declared our independence from England in 1776, and part of the national fabric for nearly a century afterwards. The violent overthrow of Reconstruction in the South and imposition of Jim Crow laws relegated most black Americans to second-class citizenship for another eighty-odd years, until the civil rights movement smashed the legal underpinnings of segregation and the 1965 Voting Rights Act finally gave the power of the vote to all.

The wounds borne of such a long struggle against racism, hatred, and enforced economic servitude remain with us today. Less than a year ago, the concept of a black American president was still considered fantasy to many, or, as Bill Clinton swears he was misquoted in January, "the biggest fairy tale" imaginable. Some thought Obama’s presidential run was destined to fail for this reason alone.

Yet he won in Southern states like Virginia, capitol of the old Confederacy, and North Carolina, cradle of the sit-in movement in 1960, by mobilizing the same multi-racial coalition that first swept him over the top in South Carolina's primary early this year. And Obama carried Florida, with a big assist from his early vote strategy, the state where elections stolen from black voters shut down Reconstruction in 1876 and led to our current national nightmare under George W. Bush in 2000.

A wave of euphoria gripped the country starting on election night, with Americans dancing in the streets from coast to coast. Today, newspapers sold out their entire press runs and rushed to print more copies to meet demand for the celebratory headline, "Obama Wins." The eminent Duke University historian John Hope Franklin confirmed the national mood, calling it "one of the most momentous, if not the most historic moment in the history of this country."

Obama's victory does not spell the end of racial disparity in America, but it is a ringing sign of progress, a triumph on the road to greater equality and realizing the Dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. revealed to us.

Earlier this afternoon, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. delivered a stirring commentary on NPR’s All Things Considered (originally written for TheRoot.com) in which he compared today to the day after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and shared the reaction of Frederick Douglass:

"the greatest black orator in our history before Dr. King Jr., (who) said that the day was not a day for speeches and 'scarcely a day for prose.' Rather, he said, 'it is a day for poetry and song, a new song.' "

Early Voting Flood in Swing States Predicts Obama Tsunami

2008-11-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post, 11-3-08

Beyond election-eve polls, the best indicator of how this election will turn out is to look at who has already voted. Early voting has now ended across the country, and the results are very good news for Barack Obama and the Democrats. In four swing states - Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina, the early voting period has seen numbers equal to at least two-thirds of all ballots cast in 2004. More than half of the '04 totals have been surpassed in Florida (54%) and Georgia (60%).

More Democrats than Republicans have early voted in these states - in some by big margins. In most, this is a sharp reversal from the early voting edge Republicans enjoyed four years ago, when Bush won all six battlegrounds.

Just as Team Obama out-hustled Hillary Clinton by devoting time to organizing the caucus states, they have soundly beaten McCain-Palin on the early voting front. And they were helped by McCain's cash-strapped, strategy-challenged, demoralized, disorganized campaign. True to form, McCain dropped the ball. Judging by turnout figures, the GOP had no early voting plan.

Early voting in Charlotte, N.C.

For example, in North Carolina, where 2008 marks the third presidential cycle early voting has been made available, 2,573,899 voters cast early or absentee ballots, or 41% of the state's 6.25 million registered voters. This is an astounding 259% increase over the 992,231 early and absentee votes cast during 2004.

52% were Democrats this year, versus 30% Republicans and 18% unaffiliated, a 22-point Democratic advantage. In 2004, the Democratic Party also made early voting an integral part of their GOTV game, but only managed to gain an 11-point advantage over Republicans (48.5-37.5%) in a much smaller early voter universe.

Early voting turnout already represents 72.5% of all the 3.5 million votes cast in North Carolina during 2004, which skewed 56-43.5% for Bush over Kerry. Black voters are overrepresented in the statewide early vote numbers, accounting for 26.5% of the total. 2006 Census Bureau figures estimate North Carolina's African-American population to be 21.7%.

Research on early voting shows that it "disproportionately rewards campaigns that are better organized," according to UCal-Riverside political science professor Benjamin Bishin, who has studied early voting in Florida, because it requires campaigns to roll out more complicated GOTV efforts. It also may benefit Democrats because it "lowers barriers to participation," especially for working class voters who can't afford to take time off to vote on the Tuesday of Election Day.

Early voters in Fort Lauderdale, FL on Sunday, Nov. 2

The Obama campaign's early voting advantage was evident around the country. Celebrities and rock stars streamed into battleground states and drew crowds to rallies held during early voting hours, usually located close to early voting sites.

In Florida, Matt Damon and Jason Alexander headlined a string of early voting rallies. In North Carolina, Ashley Judd and Chris Rock held events in the vote-rich Triangle region during early voting's final days. Judd and Rock have also hosted rallies in Missouri and Florida for the campaign, and Colorado saw Kevin Costner pitch early voting. James Taylor returned home to North Carolina to play five free concerts across the state that doubled as early voting events.

Interviewed by the Miami Herald, Jason Alexander summed up why it made sense for the campaign to deploy stars at GOTV rallies:

"I don't think people like to be proselytized to because someone's been on a television show," he said. "It doesn't give us special powers . . . the key reason for a celebrity surrogate is to create an environment where people come out and then go early vote."

Even absent celebrities, Obama offices organized community marches to early voting sites. In Florida, 27 such marches were held statewide on October 27th, one march for each of Florida's electoral votes. Drum-line marches were staged in Miami's black neighborhoods. In North Carolina, early voting marches organized by students at the state's historically black colleges drew thousands to the polls on the very first day of early voting.

Early voting march in Nevada, Oct. 18

Banking base voters early is now allowing the campaign to focus its energy in the home stretch on independent and undecided voters. "You're simply able to throw that much more at the people who haven't voted yet," said Bishin. And Obama volunteers were sent not only to greet early voters at pollsites and arm them with information about each state's ballot design and down-ticket Democratic races, but to provide bottled water to voters when lines backed up.

This all builds on the historic gains in Democratic voter registration that the Obama campaign has engineered in the battleground states. Since 2004, voter rolls have surged by 946,000 in Florida (up 9%), 737,000 in North Carolina (up 13%), and 375,000 in Nevada, a 35% increase.

Democratic registrations have increased the most in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and shockingly competitive Arizona. Republican registrations declined in Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania but were up by 16% in Nevada (compared with a 39% jump for the Democrats).

More about the actual early vote totals. In Colorado, 56% of the state's registered voters have cast 1,477,836 early votes or mail-in absentee ballots. Democrats have outnumbered Republican early voters by 37.7% to 35.9%, with 26.4% declaring other or no party affiliation. This is up from the 48% of registered Coloradoans who voted early or absentee in 2004, or 913,222 early votes out of 2,148,036 total.

Early voters in Colorado

Four years ago, Republicans led Democrats in early voting by a 42-34% margin, on their way to carrying Colorado for Bush with 51.7% to Kerry's 47%. In 2008, the number of votes already recorded during the early voting period in Colorado is equivalent to 69% of all votes cast in that state in the 2004 general election.

The Obama GOTV operation in Colorado has gotten out more of the core Democratic vote than its GOP counterpart. In the state's Democratic strongholds of Denver and Boulder, early vote turnout ran higher than in rock-solid Republican El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs. Enough votes have already been cast in Denver County to equal 58.7% of its 2004 totals, and 62.7% for Boulder County, versus 52.6% in El Paso County.

In Florida, Democratic voters have cast 46% of the state's eye-popping 4.1 million early votes and absentee ballots, versus 38% for Republicans. During 2004, GOP voters led Democrats in early and absentee balloting by 44-41 percent. Florida's early voting turnout this year represents nearly 54% of votes cast in 2004 (7.64 million), when Bush beat Kerry by 52-47%.

African-American turnout is sharply up in urban areas. Through last Thursday, black voters had cast 39% of all early ballots in Broward County, 30% of votes in Miami-Dade and Orange counties, and 36% in Duval County. As of 2006, African-Americans made up an estimated 15.4% of Florida's population.

Early voting rally in Nevada

Early voting is here to stay, and Democrats adapted to the new environment first, culminating in this year's Obama-led nationwide early vote effort. Its success marks the clearest indicator seen so far that Tuesday night will bring a Democratic landslide in the wake of Obama's tsunami.

(To report voter suppression tactics at the polls, call the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition toll-free at 1-866-OUR-VOTE, or visit their website to see the latest reports from your state.)

(UPDATE 11/5 - En route to his historic victory, President-elect Obama carried most of the battlegrounds his campaign targeted, helped enormously by his early voting leads in states including Florida, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. With 100% of precincts reporting and only provisional ballots still to be counted as of Wednesday morning, McCain trails Obama in North Carolina by slightly over 12,000 votes. Defeated Republican moderate Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut summed up the election:

" 'There was this tsunami throughout the country,' said Rep. Christopher Shays, a 21-year House member from Connecticut and the last Republican in the New England delegation, who suffered defeat at the hands of Democrat Jim Himes.")

Helms and Herzenberg: When The Old South Met New

2008-10-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 10-28-08

Top McCain Advisor Learned Slime Tactics From Jesse Helms

Despite sharing the same initials and middle name "Alexander," Jesse Helms and Joe Herzenberg were very different. Helms was a bigoted, heterosexual, Southern Baptist, extreme right wing Republican who used divisive politics to keep himself in power for five U.S. Senate terms. Herzenberg was a tolerant, gay, Jewish, staunchly liberal Democrat who spent his life standing up for progressive ideals.

Jesse Helms and Joe Herzenberg

Yet they were both historic politicians who bookended the Old and New South. Helms, who died last summer at age 86, was the last unapologetically racist politician of the segregation era. Herzenberg, who passed away one year ago today at age 66, was elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council two decades ago as the first openly gay elected official in the former Confederacy. And in 1984, their paths memorably crossed during the epic Helms-Hunt U.S. Senate race.

That year, Helms used shameful hate mongering against Herzenberg, his partner Lightning Brown, and the rest of North Carolina's gay and lesbian community to eke out his narrow re-election against sitting Gov. Jim Hunt. Helms had been getting decreasing mileage out of race-baiting, drawing heavy criticism for his filibuster against the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday a year earlier. So he found a new bogeyman - the homosexual menace.

GOP operatives like Lee Atwater whose names are synonymous with slimy politics cut their teeth working on Helms' campaigns. During the '84 race, one of the top Helms aides responsible for implementing this gay-bashing strategy was Atwater's mentor, Charlie Black. Black was neck deep in the planning behind every one of Helms' infamously racist and divisive election bids. He went on to a long lobbying career representing disgraced foreign dictators like the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos and Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire. Black currently serves as a senior advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign, and the results of his most recent handiwork have become evident as the McCain-Palin message has swerved disgustingly into the gutter.

McCain and Black confer aboard McCain's campaign plane

Headlines screaming "Jim Hunt Is Sissy, Prissy, Girlish and Effeminate," and asking, "Is Jim Hunt homosexual?...Is he AC and DC?" appeared throughout 1984 in a free newspaper called The Landmark, a virulently anti-gay publication printed in Chatham County, N.C. The paper's homophobic publisher, Bob Windsor of Chapel Hill, was a cog in the Helms machine.

The stories ran alongside paid ads for Helms' re-election campaign, and hundreds of thousands of copies of the paper were distributed around the state, particularly in rural areas. Its press run increased dramatically in the weeks leading up to Election Day. The Landmark was funded by shadowy national Helms backers, part of the religious right that played a key behind-the-scenes organizing role in Helms' campaign.

That June, the N.C. Republican Party held a press conference to accuse Jim Hunt of a "gay connection" because gay donors had bought 100 of 700 tickets to a Hunt fundraiser in New York, and Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, leading Senate sponsor of a gay rights bill, had held a fundraising dinner for Hunt in Boston. The next day, Helms supporters paid to have a Landmark story reprinted as a large ad in the Raleigh News & Observer, accusing Hunt of "accepting a $79,000 contribution from Gay Activists."

Posing as reporters for the black and gay press, right-wing operatives made and taped phone calls to gay Hunt supporters around the country. Articles based on distorted excerpts from the phone calls were then published in issues of The Landmark.

Herzenberg and Brown were the smear campaign's N.C. poster children, targeted because they had helped co-found the Lesbian and Gay Democrats of North Carolina two years earlier, and were both vocally campaigning for Hunt. According to Lightning, one caller "asked about my fund raising for Hunt. The details ended up in The Landmark right away - it was frightening."

Besides running made-up stories that slandered Herzenberg and Brown relentlessly, including accusations that they had started a Chapel Hill NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) chapter and were secretly "porno kings," The Landmark also published their home addresses and did everything possible to incite violence against the two of them. No wonder, as gay activist Mab Segrest recounted in an article on the Senate race, that "Brown and Herzenberg were subjected to more than a dozen separate incidents of intimidation, vandalism and harassment...for their work within the Democratic Party."

In a 1984 interview with the Independent Weekly when Herzenberg and Brown were awarded two of the Indy's first-ever Citizen Awards, Brown told of how "two people even threatened to kill me on Rosemary Street" in Chapel Hill. Herzenberg called the attacks "very disruptive and at times painful." Asked if he had been scared, he admitted, with a subtlety that testified to his courage, "At moments."

In September, The Landmark published an interview with Helms in which he called homosexuality "a perversion and a crime." He described the gay movement as a "threat to the morals of our young people" and to "the ability of our population to reproduce itself...jeopardizing the very survival of the nation."

Helms was eventually forced to publicly distance himself from The Landmark after the paper published its most sensational charges accusing Jim Hunt of having a lover who was a "pretty young boy."" But he was well aware of how the paper was being widely distributed on his behalf. Helms betrayed himself on this point during a televised debate.

Although both were known in Triangle political circles, and in the state's gay community, the only actual media coverage of their status as gay activists was through The Landmark's smear campaign. But in one of their four debates, Helms twice gay-baited Hunt by thundering, "You're supported by people like Joe Herzenberg and Lightning Brown!" Herzenberg considered the moment he was publicly outed to have been when Helms announced his name on statewide television.

In the wake of his sliming by Helms' hateful tactics, Herzenberg decided he was out of the closet for good. His political activism and organizing flourished. He was elected as an openly gay Mondale delegate to the 1984 Democratic National Convention. He helped organize North Carolina's first Gay Pride Parade in 1986. He ran for the Chapel Hill Town Council as an openly gay candidate in 1985, and again in 1987 before he was finally elected.

Herzenberg was arguably the first gay candidate in U.S. history elected to office outside an urban area or historically gay enclave, and he did it by assembling a broad-based progressive coalition. His election was an important symbol of how the South was changing, and in some ways, Jesse Helms and his repugnant minions like Charlie Black made it possible. Joe Herzenberg would have been thrilled to see the political landscape one year after his death, only one week away from the election of Barack Obama and a historic repudiation of the politics of division and hate.

McCain Campaign Tried Using Assault Hoax to Slime Obama

2008-10-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 10-24-08

The day after her story of a politically-motivated assault made headlines around the nation, coverage pushed relentlessly by McCain-Palin campaign officials, a McCain campaign worker admitted she made it all up. Ashley Todd, 20, told Pittsburgh police on Wednesday night that she had been held up at an ATM, and the mugger, a 6' 4" black male, had become enraged once he saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car. Todd claimed her assailant had then pinned her to the ground and used a dull knife blade to carve a "B" into her cheek, after telling her, "you are going to be a Barack supporter."

The most appalling part of this episode was the McCain team's reaction. Desperate for a turn of events that would paint their opponents in a negative light, they rushed to disseminate the story to media outlets before all the facts were known. McCain's Pennsylvania communications director Peter Feldman actually peddled a version to reporters that was far more incendiary than details confirmed by police at the time. Feldman claimed the attacker told Todd, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson," and that the carved "B" definitely stood for "Barack."

But it was all a hoax. Friday morning, police stated that "we have learned that the victim's statement has a few inconsistencies in it and her statement has changed." A few hours later, police said Todd had confessed that there was no robbery or attacker, and would be charged with filing a false police report. She also told police she had prior mental health problems.

According to one of the actual police reports documenting the charade's unraveling, Todd says she can't remember whether she mutilated her own face, or had someone else do it. And Todd now claims she can't explain why she invented the story, but her motivation behind staging the incident seems clear from details in the police report - to smear Obama supporters.

Todd said she was driving around in her car, looked in her rear-view mirror, saw a "B," and the first thing she thought of was Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, according to a police report obtained by WTAE Channel 4 Action News.

Todd, from College Station, Texas, had been campaigning for the McCain-Palin ticket in Pennsylvania for the past few weeks. She was volunteering through the College Republican National Committee to recruit other college students to volunteer for McCain-Palin. CRNC executive director Ethan Eilon told FOX News that Todd had taken a year off from Blinn College in Texas to work on the campaign. She is also apparently a former Ron Paul volunteer.

Todd with Ron Paul at campaign appearance in February, 2008

Police doubted her story from the beginning, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division:

"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that," Bryant said. "They just take the money and run."

Bryant confirmed that police were also suspicious as to why the "B" on Todd's cheek was backward.

This tale faced a skeptical public from the moment it hit. Even rabidly far right blogger Michelle Malkin pointed out numerous holes in Todd's hard-to-believe account of being the victim of a political hate crime.

The entire mess is a tragic development, and I hope this young woman gets the mental health treatment she needs.

Yet a double standard is obvious based on the amount of coverage this incident received prior to any suggestion that it might be a hoax. The story was pushed hard by the Drudge Report, and most conservative talking heads ran with it. Sean Hannity devoted most of his Thursday afternoon talk radio broadcast to the topic, broadcasting live from Pittsburgh. Local news stations around the country featured the story on Thursday night's evening and late night newscasts.

Compare this with how little attention has been paid to a recent wave of politically-motivated, violent acts perpetrated by McCain-Palin supporters, several of which occurred in North Carolina and were covered on HuffPo earlier this week.

The crucial difference is that Obama and Biden are not traveling the country stirring up hatred among their supporters that would incite violence, while McCain and Palin clearly are. But let loose the spectre of a scary, hulking black criminal knifing up a poor, defenseless white girl, and predictably, the media lights swarmed.

Thankfully, McCain and Palin's disgraceful attacks on Obama have backfired, contributing to their meltdown in the polls. And the McCain camp's shameful eagerness to exploit hurtful situations like this hoax for political gain helps explain the revulsion that decent citizens have developed for the GOP's increasingly desperate, unbalanced campaign.

McCain and Palin Inciting Violence in North Carolina

2008-10-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 10-22-08

Forced to defend what should be reliable red state turf, John McCain and Sarah Palin finally showed up in North Carolina over the past few weeks. So far in October, the GOP running mates have appeared at four campaign rallies here. And in the wake of their visits, a string of election season crimes have occurred around the state involving violence, vandalism, and harassment.

First, a reporter was assaulted at a Palin rally held last Thursday at Elon College. Greenboro News & Record reporter Joe Killian was kicked to the ground by a Palin supporter as he was trying to interview protestors at the event who backed Barack Obama. From Joe's blog:

"Oh, you think that's funny?!" the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that's real funny..." he said.
And then he kicked the back of my leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

An MSNBC sound technician was hit in the head by a rock thrown by another Palin supporter at this same rally.

Next, over the weekend, about 30 Obama supporters had their tires slashed while attending an Obama rally that attracted an overflow crowd of more than 10,000 at the Fayetteville Crown Coliseum. Among the citizens left stranded were a single mother and toddler. "This is an embarrassment to this city and to me as a citizen," said a nearby resident. "This is a crying shame."

After the rally finished, a mob of white McCain-Palin supporters jeered and harassed a steady stream of mostly black Fayetteville residents standing in line to vote early at the downtown Board of Elections office. According to the Washington Times correspondent who reported the story, "people were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word 'terrorist.' " In doing so, they almost certainly violated the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which states:

"No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote"

McCain supporters heckle early voters in Fayetteville, N.C., Oct. 19

And this Monday, a black bear cub was killed and left at the entrance to Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, with Obama campaign signs wrapped around its body, including two taped together over its head. Police reports are calling the incident a "prank," and claim seven students are being questioned. Whatever the motive, this latest development was met with immediate public revulsion and condemnation. As the Asheville Citizen-Times editorialized today, "It was an innocent bear cub that lost its life this time as some deranged person or persons expressed their political rage. Next time, it could be an innocent person."

These incidents have all been perpetrated by or linked to McCain supporters, and stirred up by McCain and Palin's angry, hateful campaign rhetoric. Like during Palin's first stop in the state at a Greenville rally on Oct. 7, when she continued trying to smear Obama over his tenuous connection to Bill Ayers. With uniformed service members standing in the crowd behind her, she again peddled her discredited attack line that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" by asking, "He didn't know that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?"

The McCain campaign is currently flooding the state with robocalls making identical false charges. The N.C. Republican Party is aiding the attack with a scurrilous mailer sent to N.C. voters headlined, "Obama has close ties to domestic terrorist," with mug shots of Ayers from 1968 and a recent photo of him wearing a Cuban national baseball team jersey. This is the same ridiculously far right state GOP party that ran an attack ad during the primaries tying Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which McCain repudiated at the time.

Briefly, McCain realized the angry tone of his rallies was turning off voters, and rebuked an elderly supporter who called Obama "an Arab." Within days, he was back in the gutter at their final debate. Before 56.5 million people, he linked Obama to the community organizing group ACORN's voter registration efforts, and hysterically insisted ACORN was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

On Saturday, McCain recorded a radio address in Concord, N.C. in which he made the racially loaded claim that "Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency," then appeared at a rally attended by several thousand supporters. There McCain was introduced by loony Republican Congressman Robin Hayes, who informed the crowd, "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Hayes is locked in a tight rematch against challenger Larry Kissell, a progressive former textile worker who lost to Hayes in 2006 by only 329 votes.

Last week, Palin told big donors at a fundraiser in Greensboro that she was thrilled to be visiting the "pro-America areas of this great nation," a gaffe so ill-advised and guaranteed to offend that she actually apologized for it, a first for Palin. But it was entirely consistent with her worldview, which is warped and narrow minded, categorizing anyone who doesn't share her extreme beliefs as "haters" and enemies.

The same day, she was asked by a local reporter what she thought of the late Sen. Jesse Helms, who was the last unapologeticly racist U.S. politician of the segregation era, held legendary, disgraceful campaign rallies of his own, and whose ultra right wing views were cut from the same cloth as Palin's. No wonder she expressed admiration for the man, admitting that "I do respect those years of service that he had provided." She also did her best to whitewash Helms' shameful legacy by falsely claiming he had apologized for his past misdeeds.

Interviewed by the Washington Post for a recent story on McCain's early political career, former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party Jon Hinz gave some insight into why McCain shows little concern over his campaign stooping to such lengths to trash Obama. "He needs to make enemies of the people he's going against in order to get fired up," said Hinz.

The violent incidents we've witnessed in North Carolina are all lower than low, in fact, they're despicable. But McCain and Palin are to blame for creating an environment where their more unbalanced supporters feel these kinds of actions are legitimate.

Supporters line up for a McCain rally in Wilmington, N.C., Oct. 13

It shows what dangerous ground McCain-Palin are traveling by relying on increasingly desperate, unfounded character attacks on Obama in their attempts to distract our country from the ongoing economic crisis. Yet as polls continue to indicate, these attacks have backfired. They are contributing to voters' distaste for the Republican ticket.

And they're leaving behind a hollowed out party destined for minority status. As independents and moderate Republicans like Colin Powell abandon the McCain-Palin GOP in droves, all that remains are increasingly bitter, frustrated, far-right voters. This election's coming Democratic tsunami will exile Republicans to the political wilderness, where they will have to decide whether to keep clinging to yesterday's politics of fear.

As for John McCain and Sarah Palin, shame on both of them. After resorting to careless demagoguery and stirring up hatred and division so recklessly, neither deserves to hold public office.

Signs of Growing Friction Between McCain and Palin

2008-10-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 10-6-08

The call to "Free Sarah Palin!" has been answered, and Palin off the chain is proving to be a loose cannon. The day after her debate with Joe Biden, Palin told FOX News she learned about the McCain campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan when she read about it in the newspaper that morning. Maybe this was just to reassure us she stays well informed by reading newspapers like The New York Times, part of her post-debate strategy to try a damage control re-do of her Katie Couric interviews that continued to drip out one Palin gaffe after another earlier in the week.

But then she claimed to have "fired off a quick e-mail" in which she said, "Oh come on, do we have to?" Over the weekend, she again questioned the decision to reporters outside a diner in Englewood, Colorado, saying she "would sure love to get to run to Michigan and make sure that Michigan knows that we haven't given up there."

And yesterday, in a phone interview with William Kristol, Palin leapt at the chance to resurrect Obama's former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a way to drag Obama through the mud. "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more," she said. "Because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country...I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."

When the far right wing clowns running the North Carolina Republican Party ran a racially-tinged attack ad during the primaries tying Obama to Wright, McCain graciously denounced it. "I've said again and again, I do not believe that Sen. Obama shares Rev. Wright's extremist views which he has stated," said McCain, and promised to "disassociate myself from that kind of campaigning."

Either Palin never got the memo, or McCain has flip-flopped and flushed his honor down the toilet yet again in his quest for the presidency. The latter is certainly possible. With McCain-Palin's chances cratering like the economy, McCain has clearly signaled it's time to get McDesperate.

Responding to rising GOP fears that the election is slipping away, the McCain campaign has decided their only hope is "turning a page on this financial crisis," in the words of one senior McCain adviser, and relentlessly tearing down Obama.

"It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," echoed another top McCain strategist to the NY Daily News. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

But there's more going on with Palin's off the reservation moves than simply carrying out the McNasty plan of attack against Obama. Sarah Palin has her own agenda. She wants to be president, and knows this election is her best shot at elbowing her way into the Oval Office.

Laura Chase, Palin's campaign manager during her first run for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, remembers a night they chatted about her ambitions:

"I said, 'You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,' " Ms. Chase recalled. "She replied, 'I want to be president.' "

And she's not going to let John McCain stop her. At a rally yesterday in Omaha, Nebraska, playing defense far within the red state zone, Palin also claimed to be making her own calls about which states she barracudas into:

"The pundits were saying, 'Check out where she's going. She's going to Nebraska.' The pundits were saying, 'The only reason she would be going there is because they're scared. They have to shore up votes,' " Palin said. "I so wanted to reach into that TV and say 'no.' I'm going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska," Palin said.

These incidents are not the first time Palin has bared her naked ambition. In September, she made a revealing slip when she flipped the ticket at a rally in Iowa, referring to a "Palin and McCain administration." This happened back when the campaign was still babysitting Palin by restricting her to joint appearances with McCain. Now all bets are off as to what she'll say next out on the trail on her own.

Unless McCain reins her in again fast, we can look forward to another month of jarring moments like on Saturday when she misread a saying from Madeline Albright. Quoting off a Starbucks cup, she warned female voters at a rally in California, "there's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women."

In Palin's Mary Poppins bubble, why shouldn't she strut her stuff? At the moment she's pumped up from surviving her debate with Biden, although failing to realize she didn't do nearly enough to prove herself competent enough to be Vice President and reverse her drag on the ticket. But by stepping over the bar painted on the floor, her performance quieted the voice of reason that was beginning to percolate among conservative talking heads calling for her replacement.

Since she now knows McCain won't dump her, Palin is in the driver's seat and plans to stay there. And her take-no-prisoners nasty streak and extreme right wing views have found kindred spirits now that she's fully staffed up with veterans of George W. Bush's slash-and-burn, hyper-partisan campaigns. Like Tucker Eskew, Palin's new chief of staff, who was instrumental in trashing McCain when he helped run Bush's 2000 primary campaign in South Carolina.

Far from a fresh crop of reformers, the Republican operatives who are currently stage managing Sarah Palin are virtually all transplants from the Bush White House. As one Republican strategist told the Washington Post:

"It's insane to me that at the same time that it's running saying it's not going to be the Bush administration, this campaign looks like the Bush campaign on steroids."

Reminiscent of how John Edwards helped keep the Democratic ticket disorganized in 2004 by sticking to his own playbook, Palin is showing the nation McCain is already an afterthought for her. She even said so at the debate, reminding us she "joined this team that is a team of mavericks with John McCain, also." Mr. DeMille, she's ready for her 2012 closeup.

(UPDATE 10/25 - Politico published a jaw-dropping story today confirming that the McCain-Palin rift first spotted here three weeks ago has only gotten worse. Heavy on not-for-attribution interviews with four senior Palin advisors, it revealed that Palin "blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image." These are the same former Bush campaign veterans and dirty-politics practicing Karl Rove proteges who were hand picked by McCain’s team to guide her. Meanwhile, McCain stalwarts on the inside describe Palin as "simply unready — 'green,' sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain." Other stories that have trickled out in recent weeks tracing the McCain-Palin divide can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

Sarah Palin's Inbox Reveals Possible Troopergate Smoking Guns

2008-09-19T11:08:00.001-07:00

The Huffington Post, 9-19-08

Lost in the hoopla surrounding the hacking of one of Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail accounts are a couple of key points.

As first reported on HuffPo, the hacking incident gave Palin aides a convenient excuse to delete not one, but two of Palin's Yahoo accounts. After 27 year-old Palin assistant Ivy Frye was notified of the hacking on Wednesday morning, the compromised account (gov.palin@yahoo.com) vanished, along with the other private Yahoo account that Palin has acknowledged using for public business (gov.sarah@yahoo.com).

A public records lawsuit has been filed to release Palin's Yahoo e-mail trail, which is thought to contain multiple e-mails pertinent to the Troopergate investigation into whether she abused her power as governor.

Also important is what exactly was leaked during the hacking.

Forget the screenshots of fairly innocuous e-mails, partial shots of Palin's inbox, two family photos, and her personal contact list. The most intriguing thing posted online was a cut-and-pasted, text-only inbox list showing subject headers, dates and who e-mailed Palin at this account. The inbox list goes back to early August, almost a month before John McCain recklessly picked Palin as his VP.

On July 28, a bipartisan panel of Alaska legislators voted unanimously to hire an independent investigator to probe Palin and her staff over Troopergate, events set in motion by Palin's July 11 firing of DPS (Department of Public Safety) Commissioner Walt Monegan.

Top Palin aide Frank Bailey figures large in the Troopergate scandal. Bailey was placed on paid administrative leave by Palin on August 19 after an audio recording surfaced of a call Bailey had made in February pressuring Alaska state troopers to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten. Yet although on leave, Palin's inbox shows another two e-mails from Frank Bailey (using the e-mail address "ftb907@hslak.com") were received on Sept. 5.

Michael Nizich is Palin's Chief of Staff, and has also been implicated in and subpoenaed over Troopergate. On August 7, he sent an e-mail to Palin's Yahoo account with the subject line, "FW: CONFIDENTIAL Ethics Matter." The following week, on August 13, Palin held a press conference disclosing that in addition to Bailey's phone call in February, members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about her ex-brother-in-law.

Palin at Aug. 13 press conference

Randall Ruaro serves as Deputy Chief of Staff for Palin. On August 19, the same day Palin announced that Frank Bailey would be placed on paid leave, Ruaro sent an e-mail to her private Yahoo account titled, "FW: DPS Personnel and Budget Issues." The following day, he followed up with another e-mail, "FW: DPS Employee Draft."

At the very least, these leaked inbox glimpses all show Sarah Palin was using "gov.palin@yahoo.com" to conduct state business, which she had not previously disclosed, despite an ongoing public records lawsuit to release all e-mails related to her official duties.

She had admitted using "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" for official business, so why not reveal this second Yahoo account? If not for this week's hacking incident, it would have remained unknown to the world. Why the secrecy? Why try so hard to cover up your e-mail trail? What exactly is Gov. Palin trying to hide?

The irony is that as numerous observers have noted, relying on Yahoo e-mail accounts instead of a propietary, secure system means Palin's accounts have not been deleted forever. E-mail providers like Yahoo keep backups, and the e-mails could be retrieved under court order if subpoenaed as part of an investigation.

Since the McCain campaign is expending maximum effort trying to shut down the bipartisan investigation into Troopergate, one can only conclude that where there's smoke, there was probably a smoking gun or two somewhere in Palin's Yahoo e-mails.

Digg It.

Sarah Palin E-Mails Deleted Under Cover of Hacking Incident

2008-09-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 9-17-08

A strange hacking incident earlier today tied up another loose end for Gov. Sarah Palin.

Overnight, one of Palin's Yahoo e-mail accounts was compromised, allegedly by members of the leaderless collective of hackers known as "Anonymous." A hacker apparently cracked the password to the e-mail address "gov.palin@yahoo.com," posted it to a public forum, and then multiple users copied some of the e-mails and information the acccount contained

This morning one user reset the password, notified a Palin aide of the security breach, and the Yahoo account was soon deleted. Simultaneously, a second personal Yahoo account used by Palin, "gov.sarah@yahoo.com," was also deleted.

Screenshot of one of Palin's Yahoo e-mails

Screenshots of some of Palin's e-mails and photos were posted online. Wired's Threat Level blog has confirmed the authenticity of at least one of the hacked e-mails.

An e-mail from July between Palin and Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell gives insight into Palin's tendency to demonize her political opponents. In reference to local talk radio host Dan Fagan, who has refused to back Parnell's bid for Congress, Palin commented, "His fighting you reveals some evil stuff going on with him."

Last week, the Washington Post reported that Palin regularly used one of the two Yahoo e-mail accounts that was deleted today, "gov.sarah@yahoo.com," to conduct public business, and copied her husband, Todd, on some e-mails. A Republican activist in Anchorange, Andrée McLeod, has filed suit seeking to have 1,100 e-mails made public that Palin has withheld from an open records request, on suspicion that Palin aides engaged in political activity on state time.

McLeod calls Palin's use of Yahoo accounts for official state business "the most nonsensical, inane thing I've ever heard of." Todd Palin was often copied on e-mails relating to the Troopergate scandal, says McLeod, which nullifies her claim of executive privilege for witholding the e-mails. According to an appeal filed last week to release the rest of Palin's Yahoo e-mail trail:

"(Gov. Palin) has allowed Todd Palin -- who has not been elected by the people of Alaska, who is not a state employee -- to entangle himself apparently as he sees fit in the operations of the executive branch of the state government."

Palin's reliance on personal e-mail accounts for her official duties makes a mockery of her 2006 pledge while campagning for Governor of Alaska to run an "open and transparent" administration. "Where you've got a governor apparently using a Yahoo account for state business, that's kind of a complete inversion of what ought to be happening in terms of public records," said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

Special assistant Ivy Frye, whose name appears in screenshots of the hacked account's inbox, was one of the Palin appointees who tried hard to find loopholes in the law that would allow Gov. Palin to continue conducting state business on personal e-mail accounts without fear of disclosure. Frye, 27, worked as a receptionist before joining Palin's gubernatorial campaign, and her frequent interactions with the Palin children have earned her the title of "the babysitter" among Alaska legislators. As the Washington Post revealed:

"On March 17, minutes after peppering a state official about whether e-mails about state business contained on a personal BlackBerry could become public, senior Palin aide Ivy Frye addressed a message to both Palins and two other aides: 'In sum, it's just as I thought -- questions of confidentiality are still unanswered by law.'"

The Anchorage Daily News confirms Palin "has one of the devices (which allow users to read and send e-mails) for state business, another for personal matters, but those worlds intertwine."

Palin and her two BlackBerries, backstage at McCain VP announcement rally in Ohio on Aug. 29

Anonymous is the same group of hackers embroiled in an ongoing feud with the Church of Scientology. Last January, members were responsible for posting an internal Scientology training video featuring an interview with Tom Cruise on YouTube. It was widely viewed and ridiculed. Soon after, they coordinated denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites, prank calls, and sending black faxes to Scientology centers.

Taking its activism offline, Anonymous helped organize protest marches in cities around the world against Scientology on March 15, including Boston, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Vancouver, Toronto, Berlin, and Dublin.

Two weeks later, the collective was blamed for allegedly posting flashing computer animations on the Epilepsy Foundation of America's website, which could induce seizures in epileptic viewers. Anonymous members denied responsibility for the attack, suggesting the Church of Scientology was actually behind it, attempting "to ruin the public opinion of Anonymous."

The truly troubling part of this episode is that both of Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail accounts were deleted this morning - not just the compromised one, but also the other personal Yahoo account that Palin acknowledged using for public business (gov.sarah@yahoo.com).

Has this hacking incident given Palin a convenient way to dodge the eventual release of whatever else she had hidden in her Yahoo e-mail accounts?

(UPDATE 9/18 - Wired has posted a supposed first person account of the hacking. There is debate over whether the individual who first hacked Palin's e-mail was a self-identified Anonymous member, or simply posted the account's password to an on-line message board frequented by Anonymous hackers.)

(UPDATE 10/8 - David Kernell, 20, of Memphis, TN, was indicted yesterday on a single count of "intentionally accessing without authorization" Palin's Yahoo e-mail account. Kernell, who was arraigned today and pleaded not guilty, is the son of Tennessee state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Democratic state legislator.

But far from being a Democratic Party operative or even activist, Kernell appears to have allegedly hacked Palin's e-mail for other reasons, describing the incident as "just some prank to me" in a purported first hand account previously published by Wired. He is also a troubled individual who claims to have been hospitalized twice for depression.

In a post from June, 2003 on a blog he kept for a short time called "Apocoliptic visions," Kernell wrote:

"My name is David Kernell I am 15 a white cacasian male i live in memphis, TN. My favorite and only hobby is chess, more like an obsession. I am not afraid to say that i have acute depression and have been institutionalized twice, one at th age of 9 in Texas and one this past year. I have been strugleing with this for my entire life...")

Digg It.

Pro-McCain Group Dumps 28 Million Scare DVDs in Swing States

2008-09-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 9-12-08

(UPDATE 9/13 - 70 newspapers in swing states have been paid to distribute Obsession this weekend and next, which means not all the DVDs have been delivered yet. Check the list at the end of this post to see if your newspaper is one of them, and let them know how you feel about their participation in this shameless propaganda campaign.)

This week, 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states. The 60-minute DVDs, titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, are landing on doorsteps in a campaign coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York-based group called the Clarion Fund, a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are unclear.

The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and far right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers.

Talking heads in the film include infamous anti-Muslim, self-proclaimed "islamophobes" like Daniel Pipes and Walid Shoebat. In 2001, Pipes claimed the "presence" and "enfranchisement" of Muslims in the U.S. presented "true dangers to American Jews." Shoebat is an evangelical Christian who falsely claims to be a former Muslim terrorist. Last year, Shoebat told the Missouri Springfield News-Leader, "Islam is not the religion of God - Islam is the devil."

As detailed in an OffTheBus report on HuffPo two days ago, the DVDs were distributed last weekend in national editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal within selected swing states. These included Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail.

Here in North Carolina, another battleground state that John McCain must win to reach 270 electoral votes, 160,000 copies of the DVD are to be distributed tomorrow by the state's leading newspaper.

The Raleigh News & Observer reported yesterday on its Under The Dome politics blog that the paper is preparing to bundle copies of the DVD with this Saturday's newspapers. Jim McClure, vice president of display advertising for the N&O, said the "ultimate decision" to distribute the DVDs had been made by publisher Orage Quarles, and compared the propaganda to harmless household samples.

"'Obviously, we have distributed other product samples, whether it's cereal or toothpaste,' he said. He declined to say how much the agency paid."

The News & Observer recently announced deep buyouts and layoffs for its employees. It is owned by the struggling McClatchy news chain, which is slashing newsroom jobs and pages at the papers it owns around the country. Advertising revenues have plummeted during the ongoing economic downturn, and it appears the N&O is now auctioning off its journalistic integrity to the highest bidder.

The paper's announcement touched off immediate criticism from angry subscribers:

"A box of cereal? Toothpaste? Does a box of cereal or a tube of toothpaste encourage me to look with hatred and suspicion on my law abiding neighbors who have a different religion than mine? Does cereal and toothpaste lead to pogroms, religious harassment, fear and intimidation? The trailer for this video is about hate, pure and simple, and shows the video has only one goal -- to instill fear and hatred of neighbor against neighbor.

If I receive this DVD in my paper, that day, after 22 years of receiving the N&O, will be the last day of my subscription.

Please, please reconsider this decision!"

Although supposedly a 501 c(3) non-profit, this week the Clarion Fund's website featured an article supporting John McCain. Yesterday, the Patriot-News in PA reported on the DVDs showing up in Pennsylvania, and noted:

"On Wednesday, though, there was an article on the group's new Web site, www.radicalislam.org, that backed Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The article discusses both candidates and concludes: "McCain's policies seek to confront radical Islamic extremism and terrorism and roll it back while [Barack] Obama's, although intending to do the same, could in fact make the situation facing the West even worse."

According to Clarion Fund director of communications Gregory Ross, the article "crossed the line" and would be removed.

Where else exactly are these DVDs landing, and who's funding the Clarion Fund?

If you'd like to give News & Observer executives a piece of your mind, executive editor John Drescher can be reached at (919) 829-4515, or drescher@newsobserver.com. Or ask for publisher Orage Quarles at the paper's main phone number, (919) 829-4500.

(UPDATE 9/13 - Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher has more details. And here's a state-by-state list of most of the 70 newspapers in swing states that have agreed to deliver this garbage to their subscribers:

Colorado - Boulder Daily Camera, Centennial Citizen, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Post, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Greeley Tribune

Iowa - Daily Nonpareil, Des Moines Register, Iowa City Press Citizen, Quad City Times, Sioux City Journal

Florida - Daily Commercial, Florida Times-Union, Ft. Lauderdale El Sentinel, Ft. Myers News Press, Miami Herald, Ocala Star Banner, Orlando Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Tampa Tribune, Tallahassee Democrat, St. Petersburg Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Michigan - Detroit Free-Press, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Lansing State Journal

Missouri - Springfield News-Leader

Nevada - Las Vegas Review-Journal/Sun, Nevada Appeal, Reno Gazette-Journal

New Hampshire - Portsmouth Herald News, Union Leader

New Mexico - Clovis News Journal, Hobbs News-Sun, Rio Rancho Observer

Ohio - Canton Repository, Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News, Hamilton JournalNews, Middletown Journal, Morning Journal, Springfield News-Sun, Toledo Blade, Youngstown Vindicator

North Carolina - Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer

Pennsylvania - Bucks Co. Courier Times, Erie Times-News, Morning Call, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Reading Eagle, The Patriot-News

Virginia - Sun-Gazette, Virginian-Pilot

Wisconsin - Green Bay Press-Gazette, Janesville Gazette, Journal Times, La Crosse Tribune, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

(UPDATE 9/15 - Only two papers bravely refused to push this poison on their communities - the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Missouri and the Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina. The American Muslim website has posted a lengthy list of "Resources for Responding to Obsession DVD Mass Distribution," and a detailed look at organizations and individuals involved in the production, promotion and distribution of the film - "Who is behind Relentless, Obsession and The Third Jihad?"

The progressive Jewish group JewsOnFirst.org has a thorough report on the Clarion Fund’s background and role in pushing these hate DVDs. Highlights include the film's past ties to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Clarion's rent-an-address location, its incorporator, New York attorney Eli Greenberg, spokesman Gregory Ross’ implausible denial that the Fund also paid to distribute Obsession at both the Democratic and Republican conventions, and Ross’ statement that the Clarion Fund will not disclose its donors’ names.

Obsession at the conventions.

However, one detail in this report seems mistaken, that "because it was established only recently, the Clarion Fund has not yet filed its first required disclosure (Form 990) with the IRS." According to the New York Secretary of State’s website, the Clarion Fund was incorporated nearly two years ago, on December 28, 2006. So where are their Form 990's? Hello, IRS?)

(UPDATE 9/26 - NPR's Secret Money Project has picked up the trail of who's behind the Clarion Fund, and posted good information HERE and HERE. Earlier today, NPR also aired a story on Morning Edition - "Charity Floods Swing States With Anti-Islam DVD." Omid Safi of the American Academy of Religion has exhaustive coverage of Clarion Fund backers in his post, "Who Put Hate in My Sunday Paper?")

(UPDATE 9/30 - On Sept. 26, four days after the Dayton Daily News in Ohio distributed Obsession to its subscribers, there was a cowardly attack on three hundred American Muslims at a Dayton mosque. Unknown assailants, described by a witness as two white men, sprayed a toxic substance through a window of the mosque into a room where infants and children were waiting as their parents conducted Ramadan prayers. Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has the full story, including excerpts from a graphic e-mail sent out by a family member of children who were gassed. Dayton police are refusing to treat the attack as a hate crime.

The incident has received little mainstream media attention since it occurred, except for one post from yesterday by Philadelphia Daily News senior writer Will Bunch. Not surprising, because it's pretty damning evidence that the newspapers who distributed Obsession DVDs have stirred up intolerance and hatred in their communities and encouraged this kind of terrorism.)

Digg It.

Mad Over Sarah Palin? Time To Get Busy for Obama.

2008-09-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 9-9-08

Until last week, recent events in the presidential race might have seemed too strange for fiction. A movie about a candidate battling age-related concerns, who would be the oldest president in history if elected, choosing the least experienced VP ever, and announcing the choice on his 72nd birthday? It would have been laughed off the screen. Thanks to John McCain's warped judgment, no one's laughing now.

Add in the fact that the McCain campaign rolled out Sarah Palin by focusing on her family and biography, managing to whitewash most of her extreme right-wing views, and you'd have more cause for disbelief. Yet the mass media was celebrity-struck. McCain played the Paris Hilton card against Barack Obama, accusing him of being too famous. Still, McCain wanted his own infotainment soap opera star to juice up his lackluster campaign, and in Palin he got one.

Palin has rallied the far right Republican base, drooling at the 1 in 3 actuarial chance that McCain will die in office if McCain/Palin win. Since she wants to ban abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest, what would a President Palin's Supreme Court picks look like?

But she's also got Democrats and independent voters mad as hell that McCain would gamble with the future of our country so recklessly.

So what to do? How can progressives channel our outrage over the prospect of an unqualified, dangerously far-right wing ideologue, rabidly partisan pitbull with lipstick like Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Here's a simple solution. If there's an Obama campaign office near you, get down there and volunteer. Don't fool yourself into thinking one more volunteer won't make a difference. It will, and they need us. If your state is true blue or red and not in play this cycle at the presidential level, you can volunteer for a Democratic candidate for Congress. And it's not too late to donate or raise some money from friends for Obama. Log onto MyBarackObama.com to get started.

Four years ago, I worked for John Kerry in North Carolina. Based in Durham and Orange counties, the most liberal part of the state, I oversaw a voter registration effort that added more than a quarter of all the voters registered that year by the N.C. Democrats.

The most important factor was that we mobilized a huge number of local volunteers into a grassroots voter registration army. In 2004, Democrats were fired up to get rid of George W. Bush. Even folks normally detached from politics were energized by the unfolding disaster of Bush's first term in the White House, and the mess he'd gotten us into by invading Iraq.

By the voter registration deadline, more than 400 volunteers were working with us to register voters in both counties, with teams on the ground three shifts a day. From the Durham Democratic party office, we deployed volunteer voter registrars to high-traffic sites - grocery stores, bus stations, college campuses, libraries, concerts, festivals, and anywhere else we could think to register likely Democratic voters. As our volunteer ranks exploded, the number of voters we added to the rolls reached into the thousands.

The weekend before election day, U.S. Rep. David Price was on hand to watch the crowd of get-out-the-vote volunteers streaming into our headquarters, so big they filled the parking lot. "They trained 1,000 people in Durham," he was overheard saying later, in wonderment. It was the largest outpouring of support ever seen for a North Carolina election.

Yet even with all the volunteers we had, and all we accomplished in our office, we could have done a lot more. We did everything we could to get volunteers in the door, but there were still many nights in the campaign's final two months with work to be done, and not enough hands on deck to do it.

A big part of the reason Bush was able to add three million votes in 2004 to his popular vote totals from 2000 was because Karl Rove masterminded a sweeping Republican voter registration drive during those years. GOP activists all over the country signed up voters at conservative churches and events like state fairs, NASCAR races, and country music concerts.

During 2008, the Obama campaign has flipped the script. Our efforts in 2004 were funded by the N.C. Democratic Party. By contrast, Obama has directly invested in voter registration as part of his national strategy. Obama field organizers started registering voters during the primary season, and have picked up where they left off in every state being contested for the general election.

And it's working. News accounts have trickled out all year long about Democrats adding voters to the rolls since 2004, while Republican registrations have declined.

September is possibly the month in an election cycle when volunteer help is the most productive. Voter registration deadlines in most states (the ones without same-day registration) don't occur until early October. If you show up to volunteer now, you can bank votes for Obama. You can roll up your sleeves and transform your distaste for Sarah Palin and John McCain into on-the-ground activity that will help win this election.

Plus, you'll have a good time. I met my wife on the campaign trail in 2004. Campaign offices are social places. You'll meet dedicated, good-hearted people who share your views and have fun fighting for a common goal. Make time to do it. Turn the local Obama office into your hang-out spot for the next couple months.

Four years ago, after John Kerry failed to respond forcefully to a month of swiftboating attacks, we saw a marked decrease in volunteer enthusiasm in our office. The energy picked back up, but it was valuable time lost. At a moment when McCain is coming off his convention bounce in the polls, Republicans would love it if we lost hope again, sat back on our hands and did nothing.

The stakes are high. Go volunteer today.

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The View From Wasilla - God Help Us if Sarah Palin is Elected

2008-09-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 9-5-08

I got a fascinating e-mail from a Wasilla, Alaska resident who was witness to Sarah Palin's tenure as mayor. Except for a New York Times article this week that explored how Palin ran as an anti-abortion candidate of the Christian right, I haven't yet seen much detailed reporting of exactly what she did as a local government official in Wasilla. How did Palin handle the "actual responsibilities" of a small-town mayor that she bragged about to the nation on Wednesday night, when she was officially nominated as John McCain's VP?

For starters, Palin "turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots" while lowering taxes for businesses and increasing the sales tax burden on residents. Far from being a fiscal conservative, she "oversaw the greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history." Palin borrowed taxpayers' money to fund an unprofitable sports complex "in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system," and "built streets to early 20th century standards."

This account lays it all out, from an observer who says she "attended more City Council meetings during (Palin's) administration than about 99% of the residents of the city." She was one of roughly 100 Wasilla citizens who stood up for the city librarian when Palin tried to fire her in 1996, early in her first term as mayor.

But what really struck me was the picture this author paints of Palin's ruthless, unbridled ambition, and willingness to try and fire or destroy anyone who stands in her way. Even though national reporters are hunkering down in Alaska, the details of Palin's life and political career emerging from her hometown will probably be distorted and whitewashed. Her own neighbors are afraid to speak out about what they've witnessed during her quick rise to power, scared to cross her, fearful of retribution.

If this side of Sarah Palin was more widely known, it would frighten and disgust most of the U.S. voting public. Haven't we had enough of incompetent, crony-driven leadership from George W. Bush over the past eight years? Do we really want someone in national office who believes rabidly partisan, personal political loyalty tests should continue to be the sole qualification for government employment? Someone who keeps enemies lists, and surrounds herself with appointees who are "loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda"?

Here's more excerpts from the e-mail...

(UPDATE 9/8: This e-mail is no hoax. Its author is Anne Kilkenny, a homemaker and education advocate from Wasilla, Alaska. She wrote it on August 31 and sent it out to friends and family, but asked that it not be posted online with her name attached. It went viral anyway. Later in the week, with her permission, it was published online by various media outlets including the Anchorage Daily News, Crosscut Seattle, and The Nation. Yesterday Anne herself posted the full text of her e-mail on HuffPo.)

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Is John McCain Mentally Fit To Be President?

2008-08-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 8-30-08

In a breathtakingly puzzling move, John McCain on Friday showed terrible judgment by selecting first term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Despite the spin that desperate Republicans immediately parroted, it wasn't a brilliant pick, or a game-changer. It was an amazingly bad choice.

Palin's shortcomings have been documented in an instant feeding frenzy among journalists and bloggers. She is the least known, least experienced VP nominee in modern political history. Those who compare her to George H. W. Bush's choice of Dan Quayle in 1988 forget that Quayle had already been in Congress for 12 years.

By contrast, Palin took office as Governor in December, 2006, less than two years ago. Before that, she served two terms on the city council and then as mayor from 1996-2002 of Wasilla, Alaska, a town with a population under 9,000. That's less than 1/20th the size of the Illinois State Senate district Barack Obama represented for eight years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

What a way to undercut McCain's central argument that Obama doesn't have enough experience to serve as president or commander in chief.

Of course, McCain hardly knows her. He first met Palin only in February of this year at a governors' conference, where they spoke for approximately fifteen minutes. The next time he saw her was on Thursday, two days after Hillary Clinton's rousing address to the Democratic Convention. McCain may have been worried about losing diehard Clinton supporters to Hillary's cry of "No way, no how, no McCain!" That morning, he offered her the job.

If he thinks Hillary Democrats will cheer and fall in line behind Sarah Palin, McCain is in for a rude awakening. Palin's gender is the only thing she has in common with Hillary Clinton. She is an extreme right winger who is anti-abortion to the core, doesn't think global warming is man made, and enthusiastically supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Sarah Palin at her office in Alaska

Billed by McCain as bearing "a message of reform and public integrity," Palin is currently under investigation herself. A few weeks ago, a bipartisan panel of Alaska state legislators appointed an independent investigator to look into charges that Palin abused her office. In mid-July she fired the Alaska public safety commissioner, allegedly after he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law, a state trooper who divorced Palin's sister three years ago and was locked in a custody dispute over their child.

Announced on his 72nd birthday, this pick follows a string of McCain gaffes, memory lapses, and episodes of forgetfulness on the campaign trail. As reported by Talking Points Memo:

"McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries' names wrong, forgets things he's said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused."

It all raises the uncomfortable question of whether McCain might be exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's disease.

I don't take the subject of Alzheimer's lightly. My grandfather died of complications from the disease, and I watched his mind waste away over a period of several painful years. But it's a question that must be asked in view of John McCain's age. If elected, he would be the nation's oldest president in history.

According to the national Alzheimer's Association, the leading voluntary health organization for Alzheimer care, support and research, one of the top ten warning signs of the disease is poor or decreased judgment. The number one warning sign is memory loss.

The last septuagenarian in the White House, Ronald Reagan, exhibited symptoms of forgetfulness and mental degeneration before leaving office, although his Alzheimer's diagnosis was only made public in 1994. Former White House correspondent Lesley Stahl wrote in her book Reporting Live that she and other reporters suspected Reagan was "sinking into senility" as early as 1986, but aides "covered up his condition" and editors chose not to cover it.

History seems to be repeating itself, because the press is not devoting nearly enough attention to McCain's well-documented memory problems.

There are certainly other explanations for why McCain went with Palin. Earlier this summer McCain suggested he might pick a pro-choice running mate, like former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, and anti-abortion Republicans went ballistic. So he may have caved to the right wing, and delivered up a candidate to their liking.

The National Review gushed over Palin, saying McCain had "wowed the public and enthused the right." Other more clear headed conservatives were a little subdued. Even Republican strategist Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan's former political director, hedged his bets by calling it a "brilliant, but risky choice" for McCain. Rollins did admit the Republican Party was "in desperate need of young people and women role models."

But this VP pick is the most questionable decision yet from John McCain. He passed over numerous plausible Republican contenders and failed to pick someone remotely qualified for the job.

Going with the white-haired Arizona Senator was once a "safe choice" for voters hesitant to embrace Obama's message of change. Putting Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the White House has made McCain's candidacy a much bigger risk. It's fair to ask whether John McCain is mentally fit to be president.

(UPDATE 9/1: My Dad, of all people, gave me an interesting scoop about John McCain earlier today that's relevant to this post. Seems he recently met someone who has flown with McCain on multiple occasions. The source says McCain looks much older in person than when made up for TV interviews, it's clear he's "got some serious mileage on him." And although McCain does his best to come across as energetic on the campaign trail, in reality, he can more accurately be described as a "tired old man." These are direct observations from someone who's seen McCain up close and personal more times than most voters ever will, and reinforce concerns about his age. In my Dad's words, this source was "very believable," and that's good enough for me.)

(UPDATE 9/2: Cross-posted to the Huffington Post, this story has drawn a lot of response. It made the top ten list on Digg yesterday, and was Dugg 2,500 times within 24 hours, which tripled its readership on HuffPo to more than 35,000. If you haven't yet watched the video embedded above (a compilation of McCain's memory lapses and confused stumbles on the campaign trail), check it out, and when you’re done, consider forwarding this post to friends.

But I'm hardly the first McCain critic to raise this question. Frank Rich and Josh Marshall have previously written about how the media is ignoring McCain's frequent "senior moments," signs of possible impairment that look awfully familiar to many who have seen a family member or loved one in the early stages of senility. Back in April, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann aired a commentary on "McCain’s Memory" featuring similarly disturbing video. Last Friday, Paul Begala wrote an op-ed for CNN ("Is John McCain Out of His Mind?") that questioned his "shockingly irresponsible" judgment over the Sarah Palin pick.)

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Obama-Biden Trumps McCain-Rove

2008-08-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 8-28-08

Illustration by Ethan Wenberg

John Kerry stood up on Wednesday night and showed some of the fire he should have displayed four years ago. He did what many Democrats had been calling for all week, delivering a blistering attack on John McCain's misguided policies and the failures of George W. Bush. Commentators including NBC anchor Brian Williams immediately labeled it the Democratic Convention's hardest hitting speech.

Condemning the Republicans for opening the tired playbook of Karl Rove and daring to question Barack Obama's patriotism, Kerry highlighted McCain's only plan to win this election. With Steve Schmidt at the helm, the same Rove disciple who ran the 2004 Bush war room, the McCain campaign has a simple strategy - to trash Obama by any means necessary.

But by picking Joe Biden as his running mate, Obama has made it much harder for McCain to Swiftboat, Paris Hilton, and Willie Horton his way into the White House. Biden's acceptance speech proved what the citizens of Delaware have known for a long time. Biden is a regular Joe with all-American family values who also happens to be a Senator.

Biden has been on the national stage since he led the fight against Robert Bork's extreme right wing Supreme Court nomination in 1987, and campaigned twice for president. Yet as he stepped into the spotlight Wednesday night, it was his first introduction for many voters. And Biden knocked it out of the park. Like Obama, the man has the gift of the tongue, which makes the fact that he overcame a childhood stutter all the more remarkable.

He stressed the values he learned from his parents growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His father "fell on hard economic times," but told him, "Champ, when you get knocked down, get up. Get up." In one of the speech's many emotional moments, he introduced his elderly mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, who was sitting in the audience. And Biden reminded us that "My mother's creed is the American creed: No one is better than you. You are everyone's equal, and everyone is equal to you."

Unlike McCain, Biden doesn't own a house or condo in Washington, let alone seven of them spread around the country. He takes an Amtrak train most nights on his regular commute back to Wilmington, Delaware. Biden has a middle class bankroll, ranked 99th in net worth out of 100 Senators in 2005. His wife Jill, who briefly took the mike to introduce Barack Obama's surprise appearance following Biden's speech, is a full-time teacher at Delaware Technical and Community College.

And Biden painted a powerful picture of the imagined conversations around kitchen tables in all the houses he passes while riding home on the train:

"Winter's coming. How we gonna pay the heating bills? Another year and no raise? Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care? Now, we owe more on the house than it's worth. How are we going to send the kids to college? How are we gonna be able to retire?"

These are anxieties most Americans share at a moment when our economy is in shambles. Having Joe Biden voice them on the campaign trail from now until November will do more than help the Obama-Biden ticket appeal to working class voters in critical states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. It will keep the focus on how Republicans have screwed things up. George W. Bush spent two terms driving the country into a ditch, and McCain offers more of the same.

It's hard to distract from a historic foreclosure crisis that severely threatens the value of working and middle-class families' homes. Or a broken health care system, falling wages, and inflation that has pushed up the cost of nearly everything. Or sky-high gas prices. And the war in Iraq, pushed off the front pages as U.S. casualty levels drop, is a steady drip in the back of voters' minds, a constant reminder that we are wasting billions of dollars a month while needs at home remain crying out to be met.

Even reporters for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network are calling the Obama-Biden ticket "authentic and real," saying "Joe Biden is a genuine working class guy." John McCain and his team are in trouble unless they wake up and smell the economic realities confronting the country, then start re-thinking the Rove formula for victory. With the economy in the tank and Obama-Biden not afraid to say it, the GOP slime machine may soon be out of gas.

Debbie Cook and Larry Kissell: Two Progressive Democrats for '08

2008-08-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews, 8-30-08

Candidates for Congress who deserve our support

It's Democratic Convention time in Denver, and this week we'll be seeing some of the most promising '08 House and Senate candidates on display. Many have been struggling for a turn in the spotlight all year, as the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain continues to monopolize attention, volunteer energy and fundraising dollars.

Earlier this year, community activist Donna Edwards beat longtime Congressman and friend to corporate interests Al Wynn in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 4th Congressional District. Small donations raised online from progressives nationwide were critical to Edwards' anti-war, populist campaign, and allowed her to counter Wynn's desperate, lobbyist-funded, slash and burn attack ad scramble to hang onto his seat.

Here are profiles (and links to their websites and fundraising pages) of two other progressive Democrats running for House seats. These contests will help determine whether the party can hold off Republicans' attempts to seize back control of Congress, or add seats to the Democratic majority they gained in 2006.

Debbie Cook (CA-46)

Barack Obama and Debbie Cook in Newport Beach, CA

Orange County, California's 46th Congressional District has been represented since 1988 by delusionally far-right Republican Dana Rohrabacher. But this year he faces a stiff challenge from Huntington Beach mayor and former city council member Debbie Cook.

Rohrabacher was first elected to Congress with the fundraising help of his pal Ollie North. He's a right wing nut who doesn’t believe in global warming, joking during a 2007 congressional hearing on climate change that previous warming cycles may have been caused by "dinosaur flatulence." He was a close associate and campaign contribution recipient of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who Rohrabacher described as "a very honest man" when the Abramoff scandal first broke in 2005.

Although from a coastal California district, he supports lifting the offshore oil drilling ban, and recently questioned whether abuses at Guantanamo Bay qualified as torture, or merely "hazing pranks from some fraternity."

By contrast, Debbie Cook entered politics in 1989 fighting for things that matter. She led Save Our Parks and Beaches, a grassroots group that saved part of Huntington Beach Central Park from being turned into an 18-hole golf course. She is a former PTA President, small business owner, and attorney who earned her law degree at age 40. Cook became counsel for the Bolsa Chica Land Trust and helped preserve the Bolsa Chica wetlands when they were threatened with development in the mid-90s. The court victory she won protects coastal wetlands throughout California.

Elected to the city council in 2000, and re-elected in 2004, Cook now serves as mayor of Huntington Beach. She is on the board of directors of the national Post Carbon Institute, and will be a leader on environmental and sustainable energy issues in Congress.

In July, the Cook Political Report (no relation to Debbie) downgraded Rohrabacher’s re-election effort from "solid Republican" to "likely Republican." During the second quarter, Cook actually outraised Rohrabacher, collecting $78,712 to his $92,990. But as of June 30, he still had a substantial financial advantage, with $387,950 on hand to Cook’s $97,392.

Debbie Cook's website is HERE and ActBlue fundraising page is HERE.

Larry Kissell (NC-08)

Larry Kissell is a high school social studies teacher and former textile worker who is fighting a rematch with incumbent Republican Robin Hayes to represent North Carolina's 8th District. In 2006, Hayes clung to his seat against Kissell by only 329 votes in what was almost the closest congressional race in the country.

Hayes is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, an heir to the Cannon Mills textile fortune. His working class district, which stretches between Charlotte and Fayetteville, has suffered severe manufacturing job losses since Hayes was first elected in 1998. Hayes went back on his word to oppose the CAFTA free trade agreement, providing George W. Bush with the 1-vote margin of victory it needed to pass on July 27, 2005. Earlier, Hayes had promised, "I am flat-out, completely, horizontally opposed to CAFTA," and admitted "it's not in the best interests of the core constituency I represent."

In 2006, Hayes also provoked controversy and headaches for the GOP when he suggested that "stability in Iraq ultimately depends on spreading the message of Jesus Christ…everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the Savior." He received zero ratings in 2005 from the League of Conservation Voters, in 2005-06 from the National Education Association, and in 2007 from the Children's Health Fund.

A study released earlier this month by the Sunlight Foundation ranked Hayes as the #1 member of Congress with personal financial investments in oil industry stocks. Not surprisingly, Hayes recently called the need for increased off-shore oil drilling the number one issue this election year.

Larry Kissell knows first hand about the economic hardships that pro-corporate trade policies have brought to his district. He worked in the textile industry for 27 years until plant closings forced him to switch careers, becoming a high school social studies teacher in 2001. He is a deacon at First Baptist Church and two-time past President of the Biscoe, NC Lions Club.

Kissell is a regular guy who understands the difficulties his neighbors face with the economy in the tank. As he said in an on-line chat with FireDogLake in 2006:

"What folks in my district talk about are the kitchen table issues that impact their daily lives. They want a Congressman willing to stop all the bad trade deals ruining our economy, a strong advocate of education and something finally done about high energy costs with a significant investment in alternative energy."

In July, Kissell told the Fayetteville Observer that he first ran for Congress two years ago because gas prices were high and the economy was shaky, but "things have gotten worse...our days of George Bush are thankfully numbered."

After not getting full financial support from the national Democratic party in 2006, this year the DCCC is firmly behind Kissell’s campaign. Kissell recently released his first TV ad, telling voters Robin Hayes has "had his chance" during 10 years in Congress and done nothing about the loss of 60,000 N.C. jobs or gas prices jumping by $3 a gallon.

Last March, Congressional Quarterly ranked the race "No Clear Favorite," its most competitive ranking. The Cook Political Report upgraded the Hayes-Kissell rematch from "leans Republican" to "toss-up" in early June. But Kissell had only $231,583 in cash on hand at the end of June, versus $1.2 million for Robin Hayes.

Larry Kissell's website is HERE and ActBlue fundraising page is HERE.

Visit these two candidates' websites to learn more about them and their House races. Consider donating to their campaigns. And check out Blue America PAC for snapshots of three dozen progressive House and Senate Democratic candidates running to change America this fall.

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Memo to Netroots: Stop Tearing Down Obama's VP List

2008-08-19T04:31:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 8-19-08

(UPDATE 8/23: As the world found out via text message shortly after 3:00 AM EST, my wife and I both lost our bet. Kudos to Steve Clemons for having accurate info all week long about Joe Biden being Obama's impending pick.

Biden's been on the national stage since he led the fight against Robert Bork's extreme right wing Supreme Court nomination in 1987, but stepping into the VP nominee spotlight, he'll probably surprise people who think they know him. For someone who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden may be the most average Joe in the Senate, with a middle class bankroll (ranked 99th in net worth out of 100 Senators in 2005), and a daily commute to Washington on Amtrak from his home in Wilmington, Delaware. His wife, Jill, is a full-time educator at Delaware Technical and Community College.)

(UPDATE 8/21: As the veepstakes drag on, my wife's prediction is looking better and better. Yesterday, Team Obama swiftly issued a denial of press reports that he would be at an event in Indianapolis on Saturday following the VP roll-out in Springfield, IL, which sounds suspiciously like an attempt to keep the secret in the bag).

My wife and I have a bet on who Barack Obama will choose as his vice presidential nominee. She says Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), while my money’s on Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. But the more I think about Bayh, and the mini-controversy surrounding his name being in contention, the more I’m convinced I may be backing the wrong horse.

Bayh would bring a lot of strengths to an Obama ticket. He’s got experience as a former two-term Governor and has served in the Senate since 1999. He is a politically moderate former chair of the Democratic Leadership Council, and would provide ideological balance to Obama’s progressive credentials. He could carry his home state of Indiana for the Democrats, a reliably Republican bastion that John McCain is counting on to get to 270 electoral votes.

Most importantly, Bayh would help attract votes for Obama in the battleground Midwest, the most hotly contested region in the country. In 2004, John Kerry swept the Northeast and West Coast by large margins, and George W. Bush won by landslides in the South, Rocky Mountain West and Great Plains. However, the popular vote in the Midwest was an exact tie – 49.6% to 49.6%.

Yet a group of netroots activists are trying to scuttle Bayh’s chances of getting the VP nod. Last week the New York Times ran a profile of Bayh that reminded us he co-sponsored the Iraq War Resolution in 2003, and the next day activists set up a Facebook group called "100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh for VP."

The effort fell short of its call to arms to "grow this group to 100,000 in a day and send a clear message to the Obama campaign," with 3,794 members as of Monday afternoon. Still, noted liberal bloggers like Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and OpenLeft's Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller signed on, as word of the campaign spread through the blogosphere and immediately attracted press coverage.

Over the weekend, Washington insider Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation posted on his blog that "sources close to Obama report to me that after the 'surge of concern' on the net about Evan Bayh, he has not been selected as Obama's VP running mate." Bloggers fanning the flames of the Bayh "reverse draft" promptly rejoiced. But if any leaks dissing Bayh are coming out of the previously ironclad, no-drama Obama machine, it’s likely he was never going to be the VP pick.

The Obama camp has already shown it couldn’t care less what the netroots think by its handling of the FISA wiretap issue. Which is a smart move, because netroots bloggers are a lot more irrelevant than most of them would like to believe.

This primary season, the darling presidential candidate of the blogosphere was not Obama, but John Edwards, the candidate running for president while hiding a big secret. No one can be blamed for not realizing Edwards was concealing an affair, yet his constant missteps throughout the campaign showed terrible political judgement.

Just as Howard Dean’s support from bloggers in 2004 never materialized into off-line, real world votes, Edwards’ campaign sputtered out in ’08 after a series of mostly third place finishes in the early contests. As Obama caught fire, building an enormous online fundraising machine and winning votes without the endorsement or support of some of the biggest name liberal bloggers, some of them felt sidelined.

Is this why the netroots are wasting time and energy tearing down one of Obama’s potential VP choices? I hope not.

A few of the same bloggers now campaigning against Bayh were lukewarm on Obama from the start. Amanda Marcotte was actually hired by Edwards in early 2007 as a campaign blogger before resigning in controversy over some of her incendiary past blog postings attacking Catholicism. Bowers posted an "Obama Campaign Post-Mortem" in October, 2007 that proclaimed "losing the netroots has been the downfall of Barack Obama's campaign." Following Obama's FISA vote, Stoller accused the presumptive nominee of being "part of that old politics, in this case, that he said he wasn't. It will spur us to challenge him."

The anti-Bayh Facebook group labels him "a career legacy politician who fell hook, line, and sinker for the administration's case for a disastrous war." But like John Edwards eventually renounced his vote for the Iraq War, Bayh also admits he was wrong. "Senator Bayh has shown the judgment that we need to admit that mistakes were made and we need to learn from them," said a Bayh spokesman. Since the netroots took the credibility-challenged Edwards at his word when he apologized for his Iraq vote, why can’t Bayh catch the same break?

Some activists have also voiced problems with Evan Bayh (and Tim Kaine) for their less than total support for the pro-choice agenda. Bayh’s record on abortion rights is mixed. In 2003, he received a 50% rating from NARAL, although in 2006, the anti-choice National Right to Life Committee gave him a 25% rating.

The pro-choice movement has lost a lot of ground over the past few decades. The right has made a concerted effort to pack the federal judiciary with rabidly conservative, anti-choice judges. Their ultimate goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade, and return us to the days of back alley abortions. Now they’re only one Supreme Court seat away from a solid anti-choice majority.

Obama’s pro-choice record is pretty stellar. If he selects a vice presidential nominee who has triangulated on the abortion issue, should pro-choice activists sit out the election? Not voting for Obama means helping elect John McCain and flushing Roe v. Wade right down the toilet. This is not rocket science.

And as McCain made clear last week, he might make a play for disaffected Hillary Democrats by choosing a VP who’s pro-choice, like former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. "We need to accept both points of view," said Ridge about running with McCain. "He’s not judgemental about me or my belief. He just disagrees with me."

If the left is ever going to get serious about winning elections, we need to stop insisting on 100% ideological purity from our candidates. News flash to progressives: politics is about assembling winning coalitions. In 2004, only 23% of Americans described themselves as liberal, versus 26% middle of the road and 32% conservative. Unless you’re running to represent a constituency that’s dependably left of center, it’s almost impossible to get elected without appealing to the middle.

So here's a message for the netroots. If Obama picks Evan Bayh, or Tim Kaine, or someone else who you don’t agree with on every issue, get over it. Look at the realities of the political map. Save your fire for the real enemy, the GOP slime machine that’s trying its best to render Obama unelectable. Encourage readers of your blogs to volunteer for the Obama campaign to register new voters. Conduct opposition research on John McCain’s short list, post the findings, and set up Facebook groups opposing some of them for VP. Otherwise, by screwing around with Obama’s VP selection, you’re doing McCain’s work for him.

America Dodged a Bullet Named John Edwards

2008-08-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

In light of the John Edwards affair scandal, the country dodged a bullet in 2004 when Edwards was defeated for the Democratic nomination by John Kerry. Thinking about a candidate with Edwards’ stunningly bad judgement in the Oval Office is enough to make anyone shudder, unless you’re a fan of how George W. Bush has driven America into the ditch for the past eight years.

Still a first term U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Edwards was struggling to stay in the presidential race during late 2003 after his fundraising dried up. He had trouble making his payroll that December, a fact his staff kept secret. His campaign was running on fumes before his surprise second place showing in the Iowa caucuses over better known contenders like Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt gave it new life.

Kerry narrowly edged Edwards in Iowa on Jan. 19, with 37.6% of the vote to Edwards’ 31.8%. Kerry rode the momentum from his Iowa victory and steamrolled his opponents, winning all but four of the primaries and caucuses that followed. He wrapped up the nomination when Edwards dropped out in early March.

With participation in the Iowa caucuses estimated at about 124,000 that year, Edwards would have won if only a few thousand caucusgoers had chosen him over Kerry. And it could easily have happened. By caucus night, Edwards was surging on the strength of his powerful "Two Americas" closing speech, which he rolled out late in the game on Dec. 29, and his last minute endorsement by the Des Moines Register. It’s plausible that then Edwards would have been the one coasting on a wave of subsequent victories to the nomination.

According to NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, Edwards' chief miscalculation was not devoting more of his energy to Iowa in 2003, instead of spending so much time in New Hampshire. The Edwards campaign only started rounding up Iowa precinct captains in early December, and eventually had them in place in just 75% of all precincts. In longtime USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro's book on the '04 race, One Car Caravan, he described Edwards' statewide caucus organization as "having been assembled out of tin foil and chewing gum."

In early 2004, I volunteered for Edwards’ presidential campaign at his headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. It gave me an up close glimpse at an operation that often seemed as much software start-up as national political campaign. I witnessed a weird hybrid of an organization that was chronically disorganized, struggling to adapt to the big leagues of presidential politics, and flying by the seat of its pants, but with a top-down, corporate feel.

I should have known things were a little nutty after meeting Edwards’ close pal and eventual baby daddy fall guy Andrew Young, then serving as Director of Operations. Young handed me a campaign credit card on my second day through the door as a volunteer (I’d walked in off the street, with no mention of my previous campaign experience), and sent me out to pick up supplies.

My volunteer duties started with stuffing envelopes, about as entry level as it gets, before I graduated to phonebanking, calling to put other local volunteers on the schedule, and helping answer the phones. Which afforded me a window seat to the campaign’s panic on the morning after Edwards won the South Carolina primary on Feb. 3. As luck would have it, the not-ready-for-prime-time Edwards for President website crashed due to traffic overload. Campaign staffers and volunteers spent the day taking hundreds of credit card donations over the phone.

Following South Carolina, Edwards’ only primary win that year, I e-mailed a close friend of Elizabeth Edwards and asked him to pass along some of my observations as a volunteer about how the campaign was functioning. In retrospect, this was a naïve move on my part, since things were set in stone by that point. Who knows if my e-mail was ultimately given any more attention than the myriad letters that arrived at the headquarters containing unsolicited campaign advice, and were promptly stored away in filing cabinets, unread and unanswered. Although Elizabeth’s friend did get back to me immediately, and we had a long phone conversation.

I’m not saying his 2004 effort was grossly mismanaged, because every political campaign is chaotic to a degree. But re-reading what I wrote in hindsight of Edwards’ tabloid downfall, I’m struck by how fortunate it is that the Edwards campaign wasn’t a little more organized that winter, at least based on what I saw from my admittedly limited perspective as an ordinary volunteer.

Here’s some excerpts from that e-mail...

Thank You, John Edwards

2008-08-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 8-13-08

Silver linings for Democrats in the John Edwards affair scandal

Cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, lying to the public about it while running for president, and lying some more while supposedly coming clean on national TV. There are good reasons for the rush to denounce the suddenly toxic John Edwards. But lest we forget, he accomplished a few positive things during his decade on the political stage. On several counts, the nation owes him a debt of gratitude.

During Edwards' meteoric rise in politics, many people thought he could be another Bill Clinton, minus the sex scandals. Turns out he had that part covered, too.

They looked at Edwards and saw an optimistic, folksy, Southern Democrat talking about bread and butter economic issues. Edwards had rhetorical gifts honed by years of appealing to juries as a highly successful trial lawyer. He seemed disciplined enough to stay on message, whether meeting donors, giving stump speeches, or appearing before the TV cameras.

Yet in 2004, Edwards' unrelenting ambition and self-promotion ensured he would be off message as John Kerry's vice presidential nominee. Perhaps fueled by the "increasingly egocentric" narcissism he copped to last week while admitting his affair, Edwards kept the focus on himself. He refused to go on the attack against George W. Bush, reasoning that playing the traditional VP role of hatchet man would blow his image as a sunny, fresh face in politics. And maybe damage his prospects for another presidential run.

He couldn't even agree with Kerry on a slogan, refusing to adopt Kerry's "Help is on the way." Edwards preferred "Hope is on the way," which was more tuned to the themes of his own primary campaign. But Edwards was unable to entirely charm his way out of reality. He was woefully unprepared for his biggest turn in the spotlight, his sole debate with Dick Cheney, who wiped the floor with him. Edwards didn't carry his home state of North Carolina, even losing his home county and hometown of Robbins, N.C. The Democratic ticket lost every Southern state.

Ironically, by helping to bungle the 2004 elections for the Democrats, Edwards may have done us all a favor. As much continued damage as the Bush Administration has caused in the past four years, Bush's second term set the stage for Republican overreach. If the Kerry/Edwards team had been elected, the burden would have been on them to find a graceful exit from the Iraq war disaster. Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans would have happened on their watch, instead of providing the country with the wakeup call we needed to finally see Bush, Cheney & Co. had no clothes.

In 2006, Congress would almost certainly have remained in Republican hands, with Tom DeLay possibly emerging as Speaker. We'd be getting ready to coronate John McCain in '08, or worse. Maybe Jeb Bush would be heading the ticket, about to lead yet another restoration of the Bush family dynasty.

Edwards' tone-deaf political instincts again helped America out when he foolishly decided to push ahead with another presidential bid. Despite carrying on an affair with an unstable, new age nutcase with a shady past like Rielle Hunter in the 24/7 infotainment fishbowl of presidential politics, Edwards honestly thought the public would never find out. He even took her with him on his official announcement tour in the closing days of 2006, allowing her to be photographed sitting next to him on his campaign plane.

Hillary Clinton's former communications director Howard Wolfson was essentially right when he observed that by covering up his affair and staying in the 2008 race, Edwards cleared the field for Barack Obama. That's not a knock on Obama's historic candidacy, it's just the way things happened.

Wolfson's detractors cite a caucus night survey showing Obama was the second choice of 51% of Edwards caucusgoers, versus 32% for Clinton. But if Edwards had decided to quit before Iowa, where he had been practically living for the past few years, Clinton would never have considered writing the state off. It would have been harder for Obama to win the caucuses. As things turned out, Edwards finished second, edging out Clinton by a few tenths of a percentage point in a serious psychological blow to her campaign.

And by staying in the hunt until he limped to third place in South Carolina, the only primary state he won during 2004, Edwards split enough of the white vote with Clinton to give Obama a lopsided 55% victory. Only 2% of African-American voters in South Carolina backed John Edwards, according to exit polls, but he won the white vote, 40% to Clinton's 36%, with 24% for Obama.

Thanks to Edwards, the story that came out of South Carolina was that Obama had scored a bi-racial landslide, which gave him much needed momentum going into the Super Tuesday contests. It was a watershed event in Obama's path to the nomination.

Win or lose in November, Barack Obama's turn at bat is giving the Democratic party a huge boost for the future. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, younger voters' party affiliations basically tracked those of their parents and grandparents. But because of Obama's ascendancy (and the country souring on the GOP brand after eight rotten years of Bush), the generation gap is back.

In late June polls, voters under thirty-five backed Obama over McCain by an astonishing 27-point margin. And 58% now self-identify with the Democratic party versus 33% with the Republicans, as shown by a recent Pew Research Center report.

Finally, by falling short in his bids for the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, Edwards ensured Democrats would not be seriously tarnished again by a national sex scandal. He would have truly been the second coming of Bill Clinton if Edwards had advanced further and then gotten caught with his pants down.

He even chose as good a time as any to go public with his ludicrously half-truthful televised mea culpa. If he had waited another two weeks, coverage of the Democratic National Convention would have been drowned out by the media fury. It would have been a replay of when Dick Morris was busted at the '96 convention for consorting and toe-sucking with call girls, only a lot noisier.

The Edwards affair story has been a big distraction from real news, like Wal-Mart coercing its employees to vote Republican in November, oil companies funding a massive propaganda campaign designed to open up our coasts to off-shore drilling, and a GAO report just released that reveals two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no annual taxes from 1998-2005.

But because Edwards is out of office, not on the ballot, and now out of the running for a convention speech, VP slot or cabinet post, it will have little effect on Democrats' chances this fall.

So thank you, John Edwards. You can go now.

I'm Disappointed in John Edwards

2008-08-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 8-8-08

His political career flames out in a tawdry tabloid mess

I’m disappointed in John Edwards. The former presidential hopeful’s admission that he did in fact have an extramarital affair with his one time campaign videographer Rielle Hunter was not surprising to anyone who’s been following the story. Nor was his fessing up to having repeatedly lied to the public in his attempts to cover up the affair, or conceding the National Enquirer was accurate to report he had recently met with Hunter in a Beverly Hills hotel.

I feel badly for his wife Elizabeth and the rest of the Edwards family. The public exposure of what should have remained a private matter is an unfortunate situation all around. But what dismays me the most about this episode is the astoundingly bad judgement it reveals about the man. He was risking his own political career, and potentially the Democratic party’s chances of winning the presidency if he had been nominated, all for some cheap thrills in the sack.

Before entering politics, Edwards didn’t even vote regularly in national elections until the 1990s, so perhaps he missed what happened to Gary Hart in 1987. The then-frontrunner for the Democratic nomination thought he was invincible enough to cheat on his wife without anyone finding out. When it hit the press, Hart’s White House bid was over.

Flash forward twenty years to April of 2007. Several months before questions began swirling about Edwards’ relationship with Hunter, he came under fire for his $400 haircuts. And many progressives, myself included, rushed to his defense. Edwards had a lot of admirers on the left during his second run for the presidency. Many thought he was an effective advocate for working people who have been left behind by the growing income inequality in America.

People wanted to believe that John Edwards was sincere when he talked about his dedication to ending poverty and fighting for average folks. He positioned himself as the most liberal of the major Democratic contenders in 2008, far to the left of the centrist persona he displayed while running for president in 2004.

As a result, Edwards got a pass from the left on a lot of things, from his early cheerleading for the war in Iraq to his weak support of gay rights. And when rumors of his affair with Hunter first surfaced last fall, progressives circled the wagons. When the Enquirer reported on July 22 that Edwards had visited Hunter and their supposed “love child” in the Beverly Hills Hilton, the same thing happened. Last week, a HuffPo blogger who wrote about the Edwards scandal was banned from DailyKos, one of the biggest progressive sites on the internet.

I volunteered for John Edwards’ presidential campaign in early 2004 at his national headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. There I met Andrew Young, the former Edwards campaign aide and married father of three who helped cover up the candidate’s indiscretion. Last December, Young claimed he had the affair with Hunter and was the father of her child.

In 2004, Young was serving as director of operations for the Edwards campaign. To me he seemed like an aging frat boy, a fairly common type on political campaign staffs. What I didn't know at the time was that Young had started out a staffer, but become a close Edwards pal. If anyone was going to take the fall for John Edwards in an embarrassing situation like this, it would be Andrew Young. There was a high turnover among Edwards’ campaign workers and consultants. But Young was part of the inner circle, on board since Edwards was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998.

The moment press reports stated Rielle Hunter had moved down the street from the Youngs into a tony, gated community just outside of Chapel Hill called Governor’s Club, it was obvious something shady was going on. If Edwards thought the best response to rumors of an affair was to whisk his former girlfriend down to North Carolina and hide her away from the national media’s prying eyes, he was clearly delusional. And by engineering a clumsy coverup that implicated Young, his trusted campaign aide, Edwards created even more questions for inquiring minds.

But he got lucky. It was the week before Christmas when the Enquirer broke the news that Rielle Hunter was pregnant, and in its most sensational charge, alleged she was carrying Edwards' baby. The same media blackout on display for the past two weeks held firm then. Mainstream media organizations refused to report on the story, although Edwards was one of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination and had led Iowa caucus polls for much of 2007.

Edwards’ withdrawal from the presidential race in late January after losing the South Carolina primary made it even more likely that the press would forget the whole thing. Yet the National Enquirer stayed on the beat. As interest in Barack Obama’s vice presidential shortlist heated up, they decided revisiting the Edwards “love child” story might help sell some late summer papers and stave off the Enquirer’s impending bankruptcy.

Sadly, I’m disappointed but not surprised by this turn of events for John Edwards. In the statement he issued today about his affair, Edwards said, “I made a serious error in judgement.” But throughout his short political life, he’s shown similarly poor judgement on many occasions. Like voting for the war in Iraq and swallowing the Bush Administration’s fairy tale about WMD’s hook, line and sinker. Or giving up his U.S. Senate seat after only one term to seek the presidency in 2004.

In the months leading up to the 2008 primaries, his defenders consistently slammed the press for covering the gaffes known as Edwards' "three H's" - his newly constructed 28,000 square foot house, $400 haircuts, and large salary earned from a hedge fund for the super rich. Edwards raised the charge himself, accusing the media of playing a game called "Let's distract from people who don't have health care coverage."

There were plenty of right-wing Edwards haters out there who gladly used the media spin machine to magnify any bad news about him. Still, most of Edwards’ problems during the 2008 campaign were self-inflicted.

Like it or not, if you're running for president, your every move is under press scrutiny. Too bad Edwards didn’t realize this in time. Of course, part of Edwards' statement from today helps explain his foolish behavior, regarding the affair as well as his other political missteps. “In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.”

In retrospect, Edwards’ entire political career was a flash in the pan, a triumph of hype over substance, and a big let-down for any progressives who were fooled into thinking Edwards was a working class champion capable of leading the Democratic Party to victory in a presidential race. Instead, John Edwards’ turn on the national stage will forever be remembered as ending in a tawdry tabloid mess, a cautionary tale of squandered potential.

Goodbye and Good Riddance, Jesse Helms

2008-07-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

Independent Weekly, 7-16-08

I met Jesse Helms in the closing days of the 1990 U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina. It was at one of his rallies at a Smithfield high school gymnasium in Johnston County, a place with a history of racial tensions. Schools weren’t integrated in Smithfield until 1965, eleven years after Brown v. Board of Education. As late as the mid-70s, a billboard stood on the outskirts of town proclaiming, "This is Klan Country – Help Fight Communism and Integration!"

I went to the rally because I had spent the summer traveling the state to register voters against Helms as a co-founder of Musicians Organized for Voter Education (MOVE). Now I had to see the man in the flesh.

The warm up speakers were other right-wing Republican candidates and current office holders, but none of them held a candle to Jesse when he took the stage. Frail looking and thin even then, his voice nonetheless boomed around the gymnasium like a thunderstorm. He played the crowd's fears in a virtuoso performance, stirring them out of their seats in demagogic riff after riff about homosexuals, liberals, and minorities trying to destroy the North Carolina way of life. He warned of dire consequences that would follow a victory by his African-American opponent, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt.

Helms tossed around staples from that year's version of his stump speech. Like justifying his crusade against art by hissing, "what that perverted, homosexual filth is, is not modern day Michaelangelo, it is modern day Sodom and Gomorrah!" Or mixing bigotry with down home country flavor, telling the crowd to "Think about it. Homosexuals and lesbians, disgusting people marching in our streets demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other. How do you like them apples?"

Illustration by Ethan Wenberg

Never before or since have I witnessed a crowd whipped into such a frenzy, or felt more prejudice and ignorance all around me than I experienced at that rally. Maybe it was that the audience, like those attending many of Helms' events, was made up mostly of senior citizens raised during the segregation era. They grew up bigoted partly because they didn’t know any better, and voted for Helms because he appeared to be like them. Yet to me, it seemed that hatred hung in the air.

When it was over, by chance I ran into Helms as he was leaving the high school, and something possessed me to shake his hand, to see if he felt as menacing as he sounded. His hand was cold, and soft and flabby as a jellyfish. He was just a man, not the Devil. But there was evil in his politics.

Jesse Helms' Shameful Legacy Can't Be Whitewashed

2008-07-10T11:24:00.001-07:00

The Huffington Post, 7-13-08

The urge to speak no ill of the dead is a powerful one. And it was on full display this week as former Senator Jesse Helms was laid to rest. Although one brave North Carolina state employee, L.F. Eason, resisted that urge when he refused to lower the flag at his state lab to honor Helms and was forced to retire.

Republican leaders including Vice President Cheney attended Helms' funeral. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky eulogized Helms as one of the "kindest men" in Congress, and said, "no matter who you were, he always had a thoughtful word and a gentle smile."

Which is a load of crap. Clearly, McConnell saw the charming face Helms could present to the world when he wanted to. But the real Jesse Helms oozed out nearly every time he opened his mouth to slander those who didn't agree with him. He claimed "crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced" in a 1981 New York Times interview, and in 1963 asked, "Are civil rights only for Negroes? White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights."

Helms reserved his full disgust for gays and lesbians, who he called "weak, morally sick wretches" (1994), accused of engaging in "incredibly offensive and revolting conduct" (1990), and warned his constituents to beware "homosexuals, lesbians, disgusting people marching in the streets, demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other" (1990).

Beyond his hateful words, Helms' bigotry was shown by his political aims. He led the opposition to the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and consistently opposed civil rights legislation. For nearly two decades, he fought tooth and nail against expanded federal funding for AIDS research, and exploited gays and lesbians as convenient scapegoats in his constant fear-mongering crusade.

Helms at 1990 campaign rally, moments after calling gays "disgusting people"

Media post-mortems of Helms' career were mostly deferential, especially in North Carolina, the state he represented in the Senate for five terms. N.C. television stations and newspapers glossed over almost all of Helms' ugly history as the last unapologeticly racist politician of the segregation era. Even the liberal Raleigh News & Observer kept its gloves on, despite having been Helms' favorite press punching bag for years.

It was largely a repeat of the softball treatment Helms got when he announced his retirement in 2001. Then, the Washington Post called Helms "one of the most powerful conservatives on Capitol Hill for three decades," and the New York Times said he'd been "a conservative stalwart for nearly 30 years." But they avoided serious discussion of how Helms stirred the pot of bigotry and hatred to win elections and further his political career.

Helms grew up in small town Monroe, N.C., home to an active Ku Klux Klan. His father, known as Mr. Jesse, was the police chief and a mean, imposing 6' 4" man who didn't hesitate to intimidate and run roughshod over the civil rights of Monroe's black citizens.

Jesse A. Helms, Sr.

In North Carolina historian Tim Tyson's biography of civil rights leader Robert Williams, head of the Monroe NAACP, Williams described watching when he was eleven years old as Mr. Jesse beat a black woman on the street, then "dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head." He was haunted for years by the woman's "tortured screams as the flesh was ground away from the friction of the concrete."

Interviewed in 2005 for the documentary Senator No and asked about Monroe in the 1920s and 30s, Helms said, "In so many ways I think the relationship between the races was far better than it is now. I could give you a thousand examples of why I'm convinced of that. I don't know of anybody who ever persecuted anybody of another race."

Helms had his first brush with statewide politics in 1950. Employed as a radio reporter for conservative magnate A.J. Fletcher's WRAL network, he unofficially aided right wing Raleigh attorney Willis Smith in his primary campaign against incumbent U.S. Senator and North Carolina liberal hero Frank Porter Graham.

Graham beat Smith in the initial Democratic primary, and Smith had all but decided not to call for a runoff. But three Supreme Court decisions undermining segregation were announced within weeks, inflaming racial tensions in the South. Helms took to the airwaves and urged Smith's voters to assemble at his Raleigh house and ask him to reconsider. A mob of supporters responded, and Smith called for a runoff.

The scene outside Willis Smith's home in Raleigh, June 1950

In the runoff, Helms used the skills he had learned as a reporter to help create scurrilous, race-baiting ads and handbills for Smith's candidacy. One was headlined, "White People - Wake Up Before It's Too Late," and asked, "Do you want negroes working beside you, your wife and daughters in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."

Handbill created by Jesse Helms for Willis Smith's 1950 runoff campaign

The most infamous was a flyer featuring a fake photo, doctored to show Sen. Graham's wife dancing with a black man. Helms and his backers later went to great lengths to cover up his role in the Smith campaign, but as biographer Ernest Furgurson put it, "Jesse was in it up to his neck." Helms went to Washington with the victorious Sen. Willis Smith, hired as his top assistant.

Throughout the 1960s, Helms denounced the civil rights movement from his bully pulpit as the most widely known TV and radio commentator in North Carolina. He delivered snarling five-minute commentaries that were broadcast twice a day at the end of WRAL's newscasts, railing against integration, liberals, and anything the Kennedys said or did. Helms' diatribes were reprinted in newspapers throughout North Carolina and the South with titles like "Nation Needs to Know of Red Involvement in Race Agitation!"

He called civil rights workers "Communists and sex perverts," claimed there was "evidence that the Negroes and whites participating in the march to Montgomery participated in sex orgies of the rawest sort," and commented "they should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro," in response to students holding campus vigils when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Helms won election to the U.S. Senate in 1972 after tying his Greek American opponent to George McGovern and using the slogan, "Jesse Helms: He's One of Us!" He was soon dubbed "Senator No" for his votes against government spending on social programs, including education, environmental protection, school lunches, food stamps, and aid to the disabled.

During the 1976 presidential campaign, Helms and his political organization, the National Congressional Club, made a lasting impact on American politics by helping Ronald Reagan come from behind to win the North Carolina primary. This victory sparked a surge for Reagan in the late contests that almost led to his unseating President Gerald Ford as the Republican nominee. It sealed Reagan's position as the 1980 frontrunner following Ford's narrow general election loss to Jimmy Carter.

To win North Carolina, the Helms machine went all out. They ran hard-hitting attack ads slamming Ford over the Panama Canal Treaty. And of course, Helms used racially coded appeals. Tens of thousands of leaflets were distributed that alleged Ford was considering picking a black running mate.

Button from 1976 Republican Convention

Close Helms advisor Tom Ellis founded the National Congressional Club in 1973 to retire Helms' first campaign debt. He later admitted the Club's role in distributing the race-baiting leaflets against Ford, at his 1983 confirmation hearing to serve as a Reagan appointee to the Board for International Broadcasting. Ellis was forced to withdraw after it was also revealed that he served as Director of the Pioneer Fund from 1973-77, which funded research into racial genetics and churned out reports alleging blacks were genetically inferior.

National Congressional Club founder Tom Ellis

In the late 70s, Helms called for ending sanctions on formerly white run Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe. His aides interfered with negotiations to turn over rule to the country’s black majority by encouraging then-Prime Minister Ian Smith to hold out for more concessions.

Helms was a strong supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He voted against virtually every U.S. measure ever proposed to pressure the white minority government, no matter how mild. Speaking against one attempt to impose economic sanctions, Helms claimed, "all this bill does is exacerbate the situation in South Africa." Referring to anti-apartheid protests, he asked, "who are we to be so pious about the efforts of the South African government to stop the riots, the looting, the shooting and the mayhem that's going on over there?" Even when Congress overrode a Reagan veto and finally imposed sanctions in 1986, by a lopsided Senate vote of 78-21, Helms voted no, arguing the move would result in a "lasting tyranny" of Communism in South Africa.

He even served for a time as chairman of the editorial advisory board for a conservative think tank called the International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986, run by disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The IFF was later revealed to have been set up and funded by the South African government, dedicated to waging “political warfare” against enemies of apartheid. When Newsday broke the truth in 1995, Helms spokesman Marc Thiessen (now chief White House speechwriter for George W. Bush) claimed Helms had “never heard of” IFF.

N.C. students protesting apartheid cross paths with Helms, 1984

Helms filibustered against renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982. The next year, he made national headlines and drew heavy criticism when he led the charge against making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday.

In his 1984 re-election fight against sitting N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt, Helms went to the mat in a knock-down, drag-out campaign remembered as one of the nastiest campaigns in modern history. Perhaps realizing he had overreached in his overt displays of racism, Helms dialed back his attacks on blacks and minorities, although he still stirred up fear of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign. According to the Washington Post, "his campaign newspaper featured photographs of Hunt with Jackson and headlines like ‘Black Voter Registration Rises Sharply’ and ‘Hunt Urges More Minority Registration.’"

But Helms had found a even scarier bogeyman - the homosexual menace. He and his supporters repeatedly linked Jim Hunt to gay activists and took every opportunity to "throw rocks at the gays," as the N.C. Republican Party chair explained Helms' strategy.

Helms at press conference, 1982

During the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis unfolded, Helms led the opposition in the U.S. Senate to increased federal funding for AIDS research. This was perhaps Jesse Helms' greatest crime, and left real blood on his hands. Even a modest increase in spending could have saved tens of thousands of gay Americans who died horrible, painful deaths in the years before effective AIDS drugs were developed.

In 1987 he said, "Somewhere along the line we're going to have to quarantine people with AIDS." Helms' uncaring response to the disease was explained by his tirade the next year against the bipartisan Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill, when he claimed, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Helms continued to oppose AIDS funding throughout the 1990s. In 1995, he fought reauthorization of the Ryan White Act, saying AIDS victims contracted the disease through "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct." That same year, nationally syndicated advice columnist Ann Landers called him out as a liar when she published a sharp rebuke to his efforts to cut AIDS funding, headlined "These are the facts, Sen. Helms."

Helms makes his point, 2002

Sadly, this account only scratches the surface of all Jesse Helms' shameful words and deeds. No amount of whitewashing Helms' legacy can erase the stain of his reliance on hate-filled, divisive politics, or the hurt he caused so many people in the process.

How Jesse Helms Ruled North Carolina

2008-07-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 7-8-08

Jesse Helms’ death comes as no surprise, since his health had rapidly declined after he retired from the U.S. Senate in 2002. Yet it’s fitting that he died on the Fourth of July. Helms was a disgrace to North Carolina and the nation, and what better time to celebrate our independence from the bigoted, hate-filled politics he stood for.

Helms was the dominant political figure in North Carolina from the early 1970’s until his retirement. For more then a decade before that, he had been the leading conservative voice in the state as a radio and television commentator for Raleigh's WRAL network.

After his election to the Senate in 1972, he started a political operation called the National Congressional Club that pioneered the use of direct mail fundraising techniques to build a nationwide base of fervent conservative supporters. In the process, Helms helped reinvigorate the national Republican party, laid groundwork for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and became the far right's most infamous spokesman.

Helms urges Christians to get political in a 1980 promo spot for the Moral Majority

During Helms’ heyday, the question on many people’s minds about North Carolina was how could its citizens keep re-electing an extreme right wing, unrepentant segregationist, self-proclaimed “redneck” like Helms? The perception was that the state was filled with racists, or that Helms’ voters were ignorant and uneducated. The reality is more complex.

For one thing, he started in Tar Heel politics as a household name thanks to his decade-long career as a radio and TV commentator - the Rush Limbaugh of his day. Helms got lucky running for election in the GOP landslide years of 1972 and 1984, coasting on Nixon and Reagan’s coattails. He faced a black opponent twice at a time when no other African-Americans were in the Senate. His national fundraising operation ensured he would almost always have a financial advantage over his opponents. And Helms shrewdly made sure his office would be second to none when it came to constituent service, helping North Carolinians navigate the federal government bureaucracy. This last factor in particular won him many votes over the years.

But Helms did rely on hate-mongering to keep himself in power. He denounced Democrats, liberals and communists in virtually every breath, then went far beyond that. Helms’ vicious, bullying attacks on African-Americans, gays and lesbians, civil rights workers, the poor, and AIDS victims were legendary. His speeches, direct mail appeals, and campaign ads were a steady stream of bile.

Campaigning in Lenoir, NC, 1991

Helms poisoned the ideological well of North Carolina politics, and helped drag the entire country further to the right. Especially damning were Helms’ own words, his countless mean-spirited, prejudiced public statements for which he never apologized.

During the 1960’s, Helms ruled the North Carolina airwaves. As radio and TV news director at WRAL, his five-minute Viewpoint commentaries were broadcast twice a weekday at the end of the station’s morning and evening newscasts. They were rebroadcast on the 70 N.C. radio stations that made up WRAL’s “Tobacco Network,” and published in newspapers across North Carolina and the South.

Helms delivered more than 2,700 Viewpoints from 1960-1972, all taking hard line stands against desegregation, busing, Vietnam War protests, and anything else progressive. He blamed the civil rights movement on outside agitators, accused Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist, and called the 1964 Civil Rights Act “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.”

Locking down the tobacco vote during Helms' first Senate campaign, 1972

The N.C. Republican Party recruited Helms to run for U.S. Senate in 1972, against a three-term liberal Democratic Congressman named Nick Galifianakis. His name was so long it needed two campaign buttons to fit it all, and Helms’ slogan was, “Jesse Helms: He’s One Of Us!” Linking Galifianakis to George McGovern, who was deeply unpopular in North Carolina and would lose the state by forty points, Helms rode Nixon’s huge victory to a 54% win and his first Senate term.

In 1978, he raised $8 million through his direct mail base, the most raised by any Senator up to that time. Facing a weak opponent who had been disowned by the state Democratic party, Helms outspent him by 30-1, and was re-elected with 55% of the vote.

Helms with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, 1981

Reagan’s 1984 re-election landslide helped Helms beat popular, incumbent N.C. Governor and moderately liberal Democrat Jim Hunt by a 52-48% margin. Hunt raised $9.4 million, but Helms outspent him by nearly 2-1. The Hunt-Helms race was loud, nasty, and notable for Helms’ use of gay-baiting to pull out a win.

The $26 million spent by both candidates that year funded a two-year war of political attack ads that according to the New York Times, "defined the use of saturation negative media...[and] set the stage for the search-and-destroy tactics of the 1988 Bush Presidential campaign." Jim Hunt had been expected to seek a rematch, but as 1990 approached, he announced he would not be a candidate.

Helms’ direct mail money came in small amounts, with the same contributors being asked to give again and again over time. The success of Barack Obama’s current presidential fundraising juggernaut rests largely on the same principle, updated for the twenty-first century using the internet. Contributors to Helms were mostly elderly conservatives who lived outside North Carolina, from whom he raised more than $15 million in contributions averaging less than $35 each between 1987 and 1990.

In 1990, Helms ran for his fourth Senate term against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, who was the first African-American candidate ever nominated for a U.S. Senate seat by the Democratic Party. The Gantt-Helms U.S. Senate race was the most closely watched political battle of the year. National media descended on the state, camera crews and print reporters rushing from campaign appearance to appearance as if a presidential campaign was unfolding.

Gantt was Helms’ polar opposite in every conceivable way. A proud liberal running against the most right-wing conservative in the Senate. One of the heroes of the civil rights movement, the first black student to integrate Clemson University, versus a notorious white bigot who opposed desegregation. A challenger with a positive, progressive agenda of change taking on the incumbent dubbed Senator No for his opposition to social programs, foreign aid, and AIDS research.

The most infamous Helms attack ad of the campaign was dubbed “White Hands.” It showed the hands of a white male crumpling a job rejection letter, and claimed Gantt supported “racial quotas.” But Helms aired many other hard hitting ads that put Gantt on the defensive. Some accused Gantt of wanting to “cut defense up to $300 billion,” and of favoring abortions "in the final weeks of pregnancy," plus sex-selection abortions. Helms flooded the airwaves with attacks on Gantt’s credibility, values, and race.

Gantt pulled even with Helms in polls taken that summer, and by mid-October, led Helms 49-41 in a Charlotte Observer poll. In response, Helms blitzed the state in a series of campaign rallies and unleashed a final wave of attack ads, including the “White Hands” spot, released five days before the election. He spent more than $13 million overall compared to Gantt’s slightly less than $8 million. On election day, Helms defeated Gantt by a 53-47% margin.

Six years later, Gantt sought a rematch. He rallied opposition around the country to Helms and made up the fundraising gap, actually outspending Helms by $8 million to $7.8 million. Helms’ bankroll was much smaller than in 1990, following a messy split with the directors of his own National Congressional Club. Helms refused to debate and his health became an issue in the campaign.

Progressives had high hopes for a Gantt victory the second time around, but he fared little better against Helms. Like he had tied his earlier opponents to Democrats like McGovern and Mondale, this time Helms capitalized on Bill Clinton’s weakness in North Carolina. Clinton would lose to Bob Dole by 49-44%. Unlike in 1990, Gantt never led in polls during 1996, and Helms again beat him by a 53-46% margin.

Despite his election victories, Helms always faced opposition within the state. In his five Senate campaigns he never won more than 55% of the vote. A popular bumper sticker for years read, “I’m from North Carolina, and I don’t support Jesse Helms.”

To shore up his support, Helms’ machine coined the slogan, “You may not agree with Jesse, but at least you know where he stands.” It became a crucial part of his image. When Helms turned into a favorite target of the left, it only fired up his appeal among older, white, rural North Carolinians. National criticism consistently helped him solidify his base at home. Helms’ voters said, “He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s ours.”

Editorial cartoon from Raleigh News & Observer, 1990

In the end, North Carolina found enough reasons to keep Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate for three decades. We may be rid of Helms, but his toxic legacy won’t soon be forgotten.

Remembering The UpStairs Fire, 35 Years Later

2008-06-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post, 7-3-08

Firebombing of New Orleans gay bar killed 32 on June 24, 1973

Last week, California gave its stamp of approval to same-sex marriage, becoming only the second state after Massachusetts to do so. Gay couples in California lined up to tie the knot, welcomed with open arms by most city halls. Many Americans rejoiced, both gay and straight. Especially happy was the California wedding industry, which stands to gain an estimated additional $684 million over the next three years.

Fear of gay marriage has long been exploited by right-wingers as the ultimate homophobic weapon to scare up bigotry and votes. Predictably, a parade of anti-gay forces came out of the woodwork, howling in protest.

Some rural counties stopped issuing any marriage licenses to avoid implementing the California Supreme Court’s ruling. Opponents have placed an initiative on the fall ballot that would once again shut the door on same-sex marriage.

But they’re on the wrong side of history. And to fully understand the events of last week, it’s important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago today, and how much things have changed for gays and lesbians since then.

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed, and the resulting blaze killed 32 people. At the time, the bar had recently served as the temporary home for the fledgling New Orleans congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. Founded in Los Angeles in 1968, the MCC was the nation’s first gay church.

It was the third fire at a MCC church during the first half of 1973, following earlier arsons in Nashville and Los Angeles. The church’s Los Angeles headquarters was destroyed on January 27, five days after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its momentous decision in the case of Roe v. Wade.

That Sunday was the final day of Pride Weekend, the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. Yet there was still no Gay Pride Parade in New Orleans. Almost two dozen gay bars dotted the French Quarter, but gay life in the city remained largely underground.

Located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets, the UpStairs Lounge had only one entrance, up a wooden flight of stairs. Nearly 125 regulars had jammed the bar earlier that afternoon for a free beer and all you could eat special. After the free beer ran out, about 60 stayed, mostly members of the MCC congregation.

Original site of the UpStairs Lounge at 141 Chartres Street as it looked in Spring, 2008.

Before moving worship services to their pastor’s home earlier in June, congregation members had been holding services at the UpStairs on Sundays. But the bar was still a spiritual gathering place. There was a piano in one of the bar’s three rooms, and a cabaret stage. Members would pray and sing in this room, and every Sunday night, they gathered around the piano for a song they had adopted as their anthem, United We Stand, by The Brotherhood of Man.

United we stand, divided we fall...
And if our backs should ever be against the wall,
We’ll be together…
Together...you and I.

They sang the song that evening, with David Gary on the piano, a professional pianist who played regularly in the lounge of the Marriott Hotel across the street. The congregation members repeated the verses again and again, swaying back and forth, arm in arm, happy to be together at their former place of worship on Pride Sunday, still feeling the effects of the free beer special.

At 7:56 pm a buzzer from downstairs sounded, the one that signaled a cab had arrived. No one had called a cab, but when someone opened the second floor steel door to the stairwell, flames rushed in. An arsonist had deliberately set the wooden stairs ablaze, and the oxygen starved fire exploded. The still-crowded bar became an inferno within seconds.

The emergency exit was not marked, and the windows were boarded up or covered with iron bars. A few survivors managed to make it through, and jumped to the sidewalks, some in flames. Rev. Bill Larson, the local MCC pastor, got stuck halfway and burned to death wedged in a window, his corpse visible throughout the next day to witnesses below.

This photo appeared in wire stories about the tragedy. Rev. Larson's body was not removed from the window throughout the initial investigation, and symbolized the city's uncaring attitude towards the mostly gay victims.

Bartender Buddy Rasmussen led a group of fifteen to safety through the unmarked back door. One of them was MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell. Then Mitch ran back into the burning building trying to save his partner, Louis Broussard. Their bodies were discovered lying together.

View of the building from Iberville Street in the fire's aftermath. Police are visible in the far right window.

29 lives were lost that night, and another three victims later died of injuries from the fire. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time, including when the French Quarter burned to the ground in 1788. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States.

Yet the city of New Orleans tried mightily to ignore it. Public reaction was grossly out of proportion to what would have happened if the victims were straight. The fire exposed an ugly streak of homophobia and bigotry. It was the first time New Orleans had to openly confront the existence of its own gay community, and the results were not pretty.

Initial news coverage omitted mention that the fire had anything to do with gays, despite the fact that a gay church in a gay bar had been torched. What stories did appear used dehumanizing language to paint the scene, with stories in the States-Item, New Orleans’ afternoon paper, describing “bodies stacked up like pancakes,” and that “in one corner, workers stood knee deep in bodies…the heat had been so intense, many were cooked together.” Other reports spoke of “mass charred flesh” and victims who were “literally cooked.”

The press ran quotes from one New Orleans cab driver who said, “I hope the fire burned their dress off,” and a local woman who claimed “the Lord had something to do with this.” The fire disappeared from headlines after the second day.

A joke made the rounds and was repeated by talk radio hosts asking, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” Official statements by police were similarly offensive. Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, dismissed the importance of the investigation in an interview with the States-Item. Asked about identifying the victims, he said, “We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.”

In the days that followed, other churches refused to allow survivors to hold a memorial service for the victims on their premises. Catholics, Lutherans, and Baptists all said no.

William “Father Bill” Richardson, the closeted rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church, agreed to allow a small prayer service to be held on Monday evening. It was advertised only by word of mouth and drew about 80 mourners. The next day, Richardson was rebuked by Iveson Noland, the Episcopalian bishop of New Orleans, who forbade him to let the church be used again. Bishop Nolan said he had received over 100 angry phone calls from local parishioners, and Richardson’s mailbox would later fill with hate letters.

Eventually, two additional ministers offered their sanctuaries – a Unitarian church, and St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in the French Quarter. It was here that a July 1 memorial service was held attended by 250 people, including the state's Methodist bishop, Finis Crutchfield, who would die of AIDS fourteen years later at age 70.

Although called on to do so, no elected officials in all of Louisiana issued statements of sympathy or mourning. Even more stunning, some families refused to claim the bodies of their dead sons, too ashamed to admit they might be gay. The city would not release the remains of four unidentified persons for burial by the surviving MCC congregation members. They were dumped in mass graves at Potter’s Field, New Orleans' pauper cemetery. No one was ever charged with the crime, and it remains unsolved.

Thirty-five years from now, let’s hope we look back and wonder what the fuss over gay marriage was all about. But history won’t remember anti-gay bigots kindly, whether they were cowardly murderers like the unknown arsonist who firebombed the UpStairs Lounge in 1973, the people of New Orleans who callously disregarded a fire that took 32 of their fellow citizens' lives because it happened at a gay bar, or today’s misguided opponents of same-sex marriage.

Much of the research for this post came from Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Civil Rights Movement in America (1999), by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, and James Thomas Sears' book Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (2001). Thanks also to Nashville writer Cole Wakefield for making news footage of the fire available on YouTube.

Special thanks to New Orleans community historian Robert Rickey, author of a recent University of New Orleans paper on the UpStairs Lounge tragedy, "Fear and Loathing in the City that Forgot to Care," for taking most of the photos included here.

In Memory (List of victims from The UpStairs Fire: 25th Memorial Service)

Partners Joe William Bailey & Clarence Josephy McCloskey, Jr. perished together. McCloskey's sisters and two nieces attended the Memorial Service. His niece, Susan, represented McCloskey in the Jazz Funeral.

Duane George "Mitch" Mitchell, assistant MCC pastor. He had escaped through the emergency exit with a group led by bartender Douglas "Buddy" Rasmussen, but ran back into the burning building trying to save his partner, Louis Horace Broussard. Their bodies were discovered lying together.

Mrs. Willie Inez Warren of Pensacola later died from burns suffered in the fire. Her two sons died inside the bar, Eddie Hosea Warren and James Curtis Warren.

Pastor of the MCC, Rev. William R. Larson, formerly a Methodist lay minister.

Dr. Perry Lane Waters, Jr., a Jefferson Parish dentist. Several victims were his patients and were identified by his x-rays.

Douglas Maxwell Williams

Leon Richard Maples, a visitor from Florida.

George Steven Matyi

Larry Stratton

Reginald Adams, Jr., MCC member, formerly a Jesuit Scholastic. Partner of entertainer Regina Adams.

James Walls Hambrick, who had jumped from the building in flames, died later that week.

Horace "Skip" Getchell, MCC member.

Joseph Henry Adams

Herbert Dean Cooley, UpStairs Lounge bartender and MCC member.

Professional pianist, David Stuart Gary.

Guy D. Anderson

Luther Boggs, teacher, who died two weeks later. Notified while hospitalized with terrible burns that he had been fired from his job.

Donald Walter Dunbar

Professional linguist, Adam Roland Fontenot, survived by his partner, bartender Douglas "Buddy" Rasmussen, who led a group to safety.

John Thomas Golding, Sr., member of MCC Pastor's Advisory Group.

Gerald Hoyt Gordon

Kenneth Paul Harrington, Federal Government employee.

Glenn Richard "Dick" Green, Navy veteran.

Robert "Bob" Lumpkin

Four men were buried in Potter's Field: Ferris LeBlanc (later indentified), and three persons only identified as Unknown White Males. The city refused to release these bodies to the MCC for burial.

A sidewalk memorial plaque now rests outside the building, dedicated on the fire's 30th anniversary in 2003.

Voters to Superdelegates: Support Obama

2008-03-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

The News & Observer, Raleigh NC, 3-11-08

Voters for Obama petitioning superdelegates

By Erik Ose and Dana Lumsden

After showdowns in Texas and Ohio failed to wrap up the race, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) remain locked in battle for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The delegate count between them is close enough to suggest the 796 superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention may tip the balance. The rules say these Democratic elected officials and other party leaders can choose whomever they want, regardless of how their states or districts voted.

Clinton leads Obama in the superdelegate chase. According to the Associated Press, 247 have endorsed Clinton versus 211 for Obama.

There has been a huge backlash among rank-and-file Democrats over the role superdelegates might play in deciding the nomination. Especially since the voters seem to be speaking loud and clear.

Votes have already been cast in 42 of 50 states. Obama is ahead by over 700,000 in the popular vote, and has won far more contests than Clinton. He also leads Clinton in delegates won in primaries or caucuses, currently by a margin of 1368-1226, out of a total 2,025 needed to win.

Obama's appeal among independent voters makes him a strong general election candidate. The excitement surrounding his candidacy has expanded the Democratic electorate throughout the primary season. And Obama is bringing a wave of young people into the political process that will give the Democratic party a huge boost for the future.

But if Clinton is nominated, many observers feel the race will be too close to call against Republican nominee John McCain.

Since President's Day, a coalition of voters based in North Carolina has been calling for Democratic elected officials and other superdelegates to support Barack Obama. We are gathering signatures in congressional districts across the state. So far, 1000 voters have signed petitions asking three N.C. superdelegates to back Obama - Democratic Reps. David Price and Brad Miller, and Gov. Mike Easley.

Our website, www.votersforobama.com, has drawn nationwide traffic and sparked petition drives to superdelegates in three other states.

Drawing on the work done by independent researchers like Democratic Convention Watch and the Superdelegate Transparency Project, the site contains everything voters need to contact superdelegates near them.

There is an easy to use, state-by state list that shows who is for Obama, Clinton, or is still undecided, and how to reach them by phone or e-mail. Tools include petition forms that can be printed and addressed to individual superdelegates.

We organized in North Carolina because all our congressional Democrats originally backed former Sen. John Edwards. When Edwards exited the presidential race, most had yet to endorse another candidate.

Ironically, the elected official we petitioned first is Rep. David Price, the sitting member of Congress most responsible for the existence of superdelegates within the Democratic Party. Price served as staff director on the Democratic Commission on Presidential Nominations, the 1982 commission led by former N.C. Governor Jim Hunt that set up the superdelegate system.

The last time these party insiders mattered was in 1984. Walter Mondale failed to win enough delegates to put him over the top in his campaign for the Democratic nomination, but still beat Gary Hart with an assist from the superdelegates. Mondale lost the general election to Ronald Reagan that fall in a 49-state landslide.

Twenty-four years later, times have changed. The Democratic Party establishment is split between Obama and Clinton, unlike when the vast majority backed Mondale. Now Mondale himself is a superdelegate and this year supports Clinton.

In 1984, Gary and his wife Lee Hart sat around their kitchen table dialing superdelegates, trying to win their votes. Today, the internet has made it possible for ordinary citizens to share information and organize from coast to coast.

As a result, the superdelegates are facing unprecedented scrutiny from Democratic voters and activists. MoveOn.org organized an on-line petition asking them to respect the will of the voters, and 400,000 people signed on. The San Francisco-based group Color Of Change has an e-mail campaign urging Congressional Black Caucus members to endorse according to how their districts voted.

About 50 superdelegates who were previously undecided have declared for Obama over the past month, while Clinton's support has stagnated. Some, like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, have abandoned Clinton for Obama.

Many superdelegates are politicians, and they pay attention to the citizens who elect them. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory announced his support for Obama on Feb. 25 as a superdelegate from Ohio.

"[I] got lots of calls and e-mails, mostly telling me to support Obama," said Mallory. "I got three or four calls in support of Clinton, but it was very lopsided."

Take five minutes and use the tools on our website to call or e-mail an undecided superdelegate in your state.

If the superdelegates hold the key to the nomination, we the voters can take action to help determine the outcome.

(Erik Ose and Dana Lumsden are Democrats from North Carolina and two of the co-organizers of Voters for Obama.)

Fighting Together for Something We All Believed In

2008-02-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

In 2004, I worked for the North Carolina Democratic Party’s Coordinated Campaign. With then-sitting U.S. Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) on the national ticket as John Kerry’s running mate, North Carolina was thought to be in play for the fall.

So for the first time in years (if not ever), the various Democratic campaigns in N.C. reached an agreement to fund voter registration efforts. In the past, this work had been left to non-profits and other, non-party groups. This time around, the state party was determined to go the extra mile to try and turn North Carolina blue for Kerry-Edwards, not to mention holding onto Edwards’ Senate seat by helping former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles beat Rep. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).

A team of voter registration organizers were brought on board, and dispersed throughout the state in areas with historically high levels of Democratic turnout. As one of the few organizers with past voter registration experience, I was placed in charge of Durham and Orange counties, the state’s Democratic strongholds. Although they account for only 2% of the 100 counties in North Carolina, Durham and Orange typically produce 25% of the statewide Democratic vote.

Our voter registration goal for the cycle was 42,000. As it turned out, the party fell short of its goal, and only registered about 34,000 new voters in all.

In Durham and Orange, however, we blew past our goals and signed up 9,200 voters, approximately 27% of the total number registered statewide. Even better, nearly two-thirds of them were Democrats, versus a very low number of Republicans, maybe 10-15 percent.

We were far from the only group in town doing voter registration. Everywhere you turned, it seemed, someone was registering voters that year. Non-profit advocacy groups like Democracy North Carolina and NC NARAL, grassroots alliances like Durham for Kerry and the local MoveOn chapter, they all launched their own voter registration drives before the Democrats even got started. The student governments at UNC-CH, NCCU and Duke registered students to vote, in official drives that were separate from the voter registration efforts we and other groups helped coordinate on the three campuses.

But even with lots of competition, we were able to produce such high numbers for several reasons. The pool of potentially unregistered, Democratic-leaning voters in both counties was deep by definition, in the state’s two most liberal counties. Even folks normally detached from politics were energized by the unfolding disaster of George W. Bush’s first term in the White House, and the mess he’d gotten us into by invading Iraq. And although North Carolina hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976, people thought this year, with John Edwards, a sitting U.S. Senator from our own state on the national ticket, North Carolina might just go blue.

The most important factor was that we mobilized a ridiculous number of local volunteers into a grassroots voter registration army. Traditionally, volunteering for a political campaign means signing up for one of three basic activities – phonebanking, canvassing voters door-to-door, or databasing. Some people are willing to do any of the three, and some prefer one activity over the others. But when we started running two training sessions a day for volunteers to learn how to register voters, people got interested fast. Soon, we had to find more and more sites to send the avalanche of volunteers who decided they liked going out into the community and registering new voters.

By the voter registration deadline in early October, more than 400 volunteers were working with us to register voters in both counties, with teams on the ground three shifts a day. From the Durham Democratic party headquarters, we deployed volunteer voter registrars to high-traffic sites all over Durham and Orange – grocery stores, bus stations, college campuses, libraries, concerts, festivals, and anywhere else where we could get permission to register voters.

Our voter registration volunteers were an amazing bunch. They were willing to go wherever we sent them, whether it was registering liberal yuppies on the lawn of Weaver Street Market in Carrboro or low-income residents of East Durham outside the Lowe’s Foods on Holloway Street. They set up shop for hours at a time to snare new voters, braving rain and cold, sometimes not returning to the office until late at night with their stacks of completed voter registration forms.

Although we were Democrats, our voter registration was non-partisan – we registered anyone who wanted to, including Republicans. During 2004, Republican parties in several battleground states hired companies to conduct shady voter registration drives. Democrats were registered, but their forms were thrown out instead of being properly delivered to local elections boards. The N.C. Democratic Party made it clear to everyone involved with its voter registration efforts that failure to turn in filled-out voter registration forms was a firing offense, or cause for a volunteer’s dismissal.

Still, there were plenty of places that wouldn’t allow even non-partisan voter registration on their premises. We couldn’t register voters, and neither could any non-profit organization that wasn’t a political party. These included places like the major malls in Durham, Wal-Mart locations, and surprisingly, all the area post offices, except the Franklin Street branch in downtown Chapel Hill, which has a long-standing tradition of allowing citizens to petition outside on its plaza.

As our volunteer ranks exploded, and the number of voters we were adding to the rolls reached into the thousands, everyone started getting giddy. We thought maybe we could drum up enough new voters in Durham and Orange alone to tip the statewide balance and win North Carolina for the Democrats.

On the last day of voter registration for the November elections, I encouraged several of my most hardcore, committed volunteers to go directly to some of these same high-traffic places where we’d been forbidden to register voters. We discussed strategies to use when they’d inevitably be asked to leave, and what might play out. It was up to them whether they wanted to commit civil disobedience for the cause of voter registration, but several folks were willing that day, and they did. One courageous volunteer, Susan Baylies, later wrote an account of her experience that appeared in the Independent Weekly’s Front Porch:

Guerrilla registrar

by SUSAN BAYLIES

Before this election season I didn't consider myself very political. I always vote for president, but I rarely noticed those little elections. Now my minivan carries card tables, chairs and clipboards of voter registration forms at all times. I think my desire to volunteer was bolstered by MoveOn.org and Fahrenheit 9/11.
One Saturday, I volunteered with a local nonprofit to spend all day driving around, knocking on doors where no one was home, and then leaving lame flyers on doorsteps of already registered voters. It seemed like a colossal waste of time, but the great thing they taught me was how to register voters correctly. I decided that until the Oct. 8 deadline, any time I could spare would go to helping people register.

First I tried going door to door in my own neighborhood. Most people were happy I called on them and several did need to register. Then I began volunteering with the Democrats by setting up a table at Food Lions or Kmarts. It was exciting to sign up first time voters. I made signs to go with each table and then I printed up some T-shirts that read, "Are You Registered to Vote?" I live in those shirts.

As Oct. 8 approached, I found myself going solo asking people everywhere if they were registered. I stopped at a convenience store where a bunch of men were hanging out. They had never voted before, but were glad to sign up if it meant they could help get rid of George Bush.

I saw everything through new eyes, asking myself, "How many potential Kerry voters are in this crowd? Should I speak up?" Sometimes I would be non-partisan, sometimes openly pro-Kerry, depending on whether I thought some manager might ask me to leave. At fast-food restaurants I would hang a sign at my table, "Register to Vote Here."

For the final day I thought a post office would be the best spot. I had heard that the manager at the post office on Estes Street in Chapel Hill had denied permission to the Democrats to set up there. They were covering the other post offices, so I decided to go there anyway. I set up my card table and signs at 2:30 p.m. without asking. I had forgotten my chairs, but some angel sent another self-made guerrilla voter registrar to my side. He approached me with clipboard in arm, wearing a black baseball cap topped with a goofy yellow handwritten sign saying "Register to Vote Here." He said, "I guess we're here for the same reason. Wanna work together?" I said, "Sure, but I don't have any chairs." No problem, he had four chairs in his car but no table. He also pulled out a huge homemade sign saying "LAST DAY to Register to Vote!"

Three or four people immediately flocked to our table, and then the postal manager came out. "It's against our policy for you to set up here, you will have to leave immediately." I made my best case for staying, pointing out that voter registration was allowed at other post offices, including Franklin Street; I was doing my non-partisan American duty and it was the last three hours of voter registration. He brought another employee to back him up, and she said we could move way across the parking lot right by the street, off the post office's private property. I shook my head--no, I don't think so.

By now, a woman who was registering got quite angry and said to the postal worker, "That's ridiculous! What's your name? I'm going to write a letter to the newspaper about this."

With all these supportive witnesses, I pulled out my trump card. "I'm not leaving here until 5:30 p.m. Call the police to drag me away if you don't like it." Baseball cap angel said, "Whew! Sounds like we should call the media right now!" He whipped out a cell phone and began talking to the news desk at The N&O to see if they wanted to send out a reporter. The postal employee blustered, "It's not me, my supervisor has this policy, I just have to enforce my boss' rules." I repeated, "I'm not leaving." Everyone was agitated. Baseball cap suggested he call that boss. So they retreated inside the post office and he came back five minutes later saying we could stay.

We were all elated with the Victory for the People! Baseball cap called off the media and we continued with our brisk registration service, helping 50-60 people register in the next three hours. Several people donated whole sheets of stamps. The postal teller smiled as she hand-stamped the crucial postmark on every form we ran in.

It was a good day to be assertive. I have never been arrested or stood up to authority like that before, but getting out the vote this year is worth it.
- Independent Weekly, Oct. 13, 2004

The volunteers who mobilized to register voters in Durham and Orange then became the backbone of a highly successful early vote campaign and election day GOTV operations. During two weeks of early voting, 46,000 votes were cast in Durham versus 10,600 in 2000; and 33,000 people voted in Orange compared with 9,000 in 2000.

The two biggest blue dots on this map are Orange and Durham counties.

The weekend before the elections, Rep. David Price was on hand to watch the crowd of election day volunteers streaming into our headquarters, so big they filled the parking lot. “They trained 1,000 people in Durham,” he was overheard saying later, in wonderment. It was the largest outpouring of volunteer support ever seen for a North Carolina election.

In the end, all our efforts didn’t matter, because the results in November weren’t even close. Bush took 56 percent of the vote, versus 43.5 percent for the Kerry/Edwards ticket, almost identical to his 56-43 victory in North Carolina over Gore in 2000.

But lots of people got involved in grassroots politics because of our efforts that year, and many of them stayed involved. We registered a lot of Democrats to vote in the Triangle, and helped build a more progressive North Carolina for the future. It was a remarkable election season. I’ll never forget the dedicated, good-hearted people I met and worked with that year, like Susan Baylies. It was a moment when a diverse section of the community came together in a humble office building in Durham to fight together for something we all believed in.

Bi-racial coalition carried Obama to South Carolina landslide

2008-01-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

OpEdNews, 2-1-08

Voters rejected the politics of division in historic Democratic turnout

Facing a loss in South Carolina, the Clintons did their best to spring a trap on Barack Obama. Their plan was to lower expectations for Hillary, while making an Obama victory appear meaningless. As an unnamed top Clinton adviser admitted to the Associated Press, they would paint Obama as “the black candidate” in a state where African-American voters were 47% of the Democratic primary electorate in 2004.

Until the polls closed, it looked like things were going according to schedule. Hillary signaled South Carolina wasn’t a priority by campaigning elsewhere for most of the week leading up to the primary, leaving Bill to tour the state on her behalf.

Pre-election polls seemed to show Obama’s support among white Democrats in S.C. slipping to 10%. A Wall Street Journal headline from the day before the primary epitomized the effects of the Clintons’ spin by proclaiming “To Truly Win in Carolina, Obama Needs Large Margin.” The reporter speculated Obama “will have to win by a double-digit margin in order for voters nationwide to perceive South Carolina as a real victory.”

But despite Bill’s pledge to go door-to-door for Hillary in the black community if necessary, black voters in South Carolina were turned off by the Clinton campaign’s increasing reliance on racially coded appeals against Obama.

One high profile episode occurred when Clinton supporter Bob Johnson, the billionaire head of BET, raised the specter of Obama’s drug use as a young man at a rally in Columbia, S.C. Defending an earlier comment by Hillary that “Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Johnson said, “that is the way the legislative process works in this nation and that takes political leadership. That’s all Hillary was saying.”

He then added, “Hillary and Bill Clinton…have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in (his) book.”

When called on it, Johnson shamelessly denied he was talking about drugs, claiming “my comments today were referring to Barack Obama’s time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect.”

The month before, Billy Shaheen had been forced to step down as the co-chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign when he first raised the drug use issue against Obama. But this time, the Clintons refused to disassociate themselves from Johnson’s remarks.

On the day of the primary, Bill tried to downplay the significance of an Obama victory by invoking the specter of Jesse Jackson. Asked by a reporter why it was taking “two Clintons to beat” Obama, he helpfully pointed out that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

Despite his groundbreaking career as an outspoken civil rights activist and the first black American to make a serious bid for the White House, (and to knee-jerk racists, because of these things), Jackson remains a controversial figure to some voters. As CNN commentator Roland Martin put it, Jackson “is beloved in black America but stirs hatred in many whites.”

Clearly, Bill was trying to tar Obama with a negative brush. Either by associating him with Jackson solely because both candidates are black, or trying to remind voters that Jesse ultimately came up short in his unsuccessful runs for the presidency.

Obama has already far exceeded Jackson’s performance in the early primary states. In nearly all-white (91%) Iowa, Obama won with 38% of the vote, versus Jackson’s 9% when he finished fourth in 1988. In New Hampshire, Obama was a close second to Clinton with 37%, compared with 8% twenty years ago for Jackson.

In 1984, Jackson won South Carolina with 25% of the vote, and in ’88 he won again with 54%. But in both years, South Carolina held caucuses, and turnout was less than a tenth of the number who voted in this year’s primary. And Jesse Jackson was born in South Carolina.

Jackson’s insurgent campaigns were chronically underfunded and ran on shoestring budgets. By contrast, Obama has assembled one of the biggest fundraising operations in the history of presidential politics, raising $103 million last year, and an astounding $32 million during January 2008. Significantly, his funds have come from both large donors and a diverse, nationwide network of small contributors.

One of the highest ranking white elected officials to back Jackson in 1988 was the Agriculture Commissioner of Texas, progressive Jim Hightower. This year, the Democratic party establishment is genuinely split between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Liberal icon Ted Kennedy is only the latest prominent white Democrat to endorse Obama, following John Kerry, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and a string of sitting Senators and Governors from red states including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The minute S.C. polls closed, major news organizations immediately called the race for Obama, based on exit polls showing his huge win. He ended up with 55% of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 27% and 18% for John Edwards.

As the shape of Obama’s landslide victory became clear, the Clintons (and reporters who fell for their race-baiting spin) were left with egg on their faces. Obama won more than twice as many votes as Clinton. He beat Clinton among independents by 40% to 23%. He carried black voters by a 4-1 margin.

But he also won a quarter of white voters, far more than the 10% forecast by pre-election polls. He won a majority of white voters under 30. He won nearly as many white men as Clinton. Obama probably would have done even better among white voters without S.C. native son John Edwards in the race, who took 40% of the overall white vote.

Carol Fisher, a middle-aged white voter from Greenville, South Carolina, explained her vote for Barack Obama when interviewed outside the polls. “I was just voting for, to me, the most attractive candidate overall. It had nothing to do with the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman, so I would want to vote for her. I just think I’m voting for the best candidate.”

The competitive race sparked the second-highest voter turnout in history for a South Carolina primary - 530,000, just shy of the record 573,000 set in the 2000 Bush vs. McCain Republican primary smackdown. Even more amazing, voters who participated in the Democratic primary outnumbered the 446,000 who showed up for the Republican presidential contest a week earlier. It was the highest-ever Democratic turnout in the country’s most reliably Republican state.

One behind-the-scenes factor firing up the huge turnout was Obama’s impressive field S.C. organization, the best in the state among presidential contenders of either party. On primary day, Team Obama fielded an army of 9,000 volunteers, flushing out voters from 150 different staging sites across South Carolina. By comparison, Hillary Clinton’s emergency ground operation in New Hampshire that helped pull her to victory numbered only 4,000.

Unfortunately for the Clintons, their plan to put Obama in a black box backfired. Not only did Obama win by a bi-racial landslide, but Bill Clinton’s legacy as a uniter of black and white Americans is now at risk.

In his victory speech, Obama emphasized this election "is not about rich versus poor or young versus old, and it's not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future." A historic number of South Carolina voters seem to have agreed with him.