Ten Chumps Who Helped Elect Barack Obama

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.

Signs of Growing Friction Between McCain and Palin

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.)

Obama-Biden Trumps McCain-Rove

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.