Pres. Obama, please come to Milwaukee for the late Spring time

Glory days - February 2008

Update: See also Where's The DNC In Wisconsin?

President Obama won a huge victory in Wisconsin in February 2008, capping a string of 10 straight wins launching Obama's path to victory in the Democratic presidential primary.

Today, as Wisconsin families campaign after successfully demanding a historic recall election, Clancy Sigal writes:

Obama is afraid or unwilling to come to Wisconsin to back up his most fervent supporters. With only a little more time to go, in a finely balanced contest, with the Republicans outspending progressives 20-to-one, Obama’s Democratic National Committee stubbornly refuses to invest a penny in the battle to unseat Walker.

This is kamikaze politics. A Walker victory would be a disaster for Democrats nationally. If a grass-roots movement like the citizen Recallers manages to dump Walker it could be the start of a liberal-progressive rollback all across the country.

Many variables exist in the race, indisputably among them is Milwaukee County turn-out.

I did some heavy field work in Milwaukee's South side in 2008. I have never seen such intensity and in a word, joy in wards where many people almost never vote.

I'll remember a black woman walking up to me and saying, "nice shirt!" commenting on my Obama t-shirt soaked in sweat in the August heat. After I told her, "we're going to win this year, count on it;" she replied: "Oh, I know we will."

I checked the voting histories on my walking list, and these people—black, brown, Polish, disenchanted veteran, young and old—did vote in February and November 2008 and in massive numbers.

That's why Republicans, from civil rights pretender Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Corporatism) all the way down to the various idiots Scott Walker has installed as election inspectors, are desperate to obstruct Wisconsin voters from getting to the polls.

President Obama, absent a nuclear crisis: Get to Milwaukee fast, and while you're at it, give Beaver Dam, Wausau, Eau Claire and Racine a quick drop-in to let us know you're still fighting whom FDR called "economic royalists" with a major GOTV effort.

There are four state Senate recall elections on June 5 as well:

• District 13 - Lori Compas v. Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau)
•  District 21: John Lehman v. Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine)
•  District 23 -  Kristen Dexter v. Sen. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls)
•  District 29: Rep. Donna Seidel (D-Wausau) v. Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R-Stettin)

Very often doing the right thing is good politics. This is one of those times.

Disaffected Hillary Clinton Supporter Debra Bartoshevich

Update: See Traitor, tool or token trick? Questionable former Clinton delegate Debra Bartoshevich prefers identity politics to issues by Meg White for an excellent analysis.

Debra Bartoshevich: Really, how dumb is this Wisconsin woman, appearing now in a new McCain spot.

Had caught this beauty in Blogging Blue in June:

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ... (D)isaffected Hillary Clinton supporter Debra Bartoshevich - a delegate to the DNC National Convention - is planning on voting for Senator John McCain in November:

She said she planned to vote for Clinton at the convention, but in an Obama-McCain match-up in November. ['I will not be voting for Obama. I will cast my vote for John McCain,' said Bartoshevich: 'I just feel you need to have somebody who has experience with foreign matters.']

Hey Debra, why not write in Dick Cheney? He's had eight years of "experience with foreign matters."

Hillary Sold Her Soul in a Losing Cause

Wonderful speech by Hillary endorsing Obama Saturday.

And, personally, I'm all for letting bygones be bygones to further unity to defeat the odious John McCain.

Just right after setting the record straight on the gutter appeals to bigotry that Hillary Clinton and her most trusted advisers launched into the political campaign.

Sunday's NYT's retrosective by PETER BAKER and JIM RUTENBERG offers these nuggets:

... Backed by Bill Clinton, Mr. (Mark) Penn pushed for aggressive attacks on Mr. Obama, something other advisers resisted. At one point, Mr. Penn argued that Mrs. Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit what he called Mr. Obama’s 'lack of American roots,' referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia and even the offshore state of Hawaii, the campaign officials said. Mr. Penn recommended that Mrs. Clinton own the word 'American' — she should talk about the 'American century' and her 'American Strategic Energy Fund,' and so forth. She should add flag symbols to her logo, he suggested. ...

When Mr. Clinton referred publicly to Mr. Obama as a 'kid,' Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, recalled in an interview that a fellow black congressman said, 'I don’t know why he didn’t just call him ‘boy’ and get it over with.'

In private, Mr. Clinton was making matters worse. On the night of the South Carolina primary, Mr. Clinton called and Mr. Clyburn said he told him to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton responded by calling him a rude name that Mr. Clyburn would not repeat in an interview. Mr. Clinton called back a few days later for what Mr. Clyburn called 'a much more pleasant conversation,' but the damage was done. 'Clinton was using code words that most of us in the South can recognize when we hear that kind of stuff,' Mr. Clyburn said.

When the chips were down, Clinton did not hesitate to appeal to the most vile aspects of the American political culture. Below is a reposting of a piece from March 12, 2008 on Hillary's racist appeals; in which, in a phrase, she sought to portray herself as more American than the black guy.

Mar 12, 2008

Hillary's Appeal to Racism Is a Project, Not an Accident

Hillary Clinton's evolving attacks to define and brand Barack Obama involve what advertising and marketing professionals call impressions—the projection of one image (in this case Barack Obama) onto one human brain (a voter).

Designing and managing Obama’s brand by generating impressions for the benefit of Hillary running in the primary, it is necessary to merge negative (ostensibly plausible) aspects of Obama onto the consciousness of key voting demographics susceptible to certain appeals based on fear and xenophobia.

The more frequent and emotionally potent the impression, the greater is the political impact.

That’s why we see the escalation after the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary of Hillary's project of generating political impressions of Muslim, Black, stranger, unsteady, Ken Starr, creepy, inexperience, and so on.

One threat to the project is the negative reaction of the African-American community and its allies well-versed in recognizing racist appeals, subtle or not so subtle. This threat is being realized today as we see Obama taking some 80 to 90 percent of the African-American vote in primaries and caucuses.

Hillary's amoral and empirically valid branding of her opponent is more simply stated as an old South appeal to racism.

Concomitant with branding Obama is the project of projecting Hillary as a unique and convincing brand of steady, strong, experienced, familiar, and knowledgeable.

Even among Democratic-voting communities with a negative predisposition towards Hillary, this brand of Hillary with the above positive qualities rings true, so we see Hillary present her Commander-in-Chief credentials, including vast foreign policy and national security experience.

Facts can get in the way of Hillary's project. And we do see the occasional piece knocking down Hillary's brand. See today's Clinton's foreign experience is more limited than she says, for example.

But William Douglas's thoughtful and rigorous piece in McClatchy Newspapers noted above makes less an impact than Hillary's crash kitchen sink, branding program.

After all, Hillary's is not an appeal to thoughtfulness and issue analysis; rather it is an emotional appeal to unthinking racist sentiments that can be identified in micro-demographics by Hillary's campaign devoted to the enterprise.

Some demographics can be counted on to combat Hillary’s racist, divisive project (for example):

- Today's socially tolerant under-29 vote

- Social justice progressives

- Casually political, middle-class Americans fed-up with Bush and division and concerned about fairness

Hillary is hoping these spheres remain marginalized and ineffective in Pennsylvania and the coming campaign.

Selling her soul is not a decisive factor to consider. As Hillary once said in a different context, face reality!

Obama Wins Democratic Nomination Tonight

Tonight, we make history.

[Pictured at right, Obama at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisconsin, Feb. 12. (JAKE NAUGHTON/Badger Herald photo)]

Montana Primary: 24 delegates
South Dakota Primary: 23 delegates

From Americablog, by Joe Sudbay:

5:42 PM Maxine Water, 2 FL SuperD and 3 Delaware SuperDs.
5:22 p.m. Two more supers via the Obama campaign, Ben Johnson from DC and Kamil Hasan from CA, lowers the number needed to 16.5.
Major update from the Obama campaign, the number of delegates needed is down to 18.5:

The Obama Campaign today announced that the following delegates pledged to former Senator John Edwards have committed to vote for Senator Obama at the Democratic National Convention. With today's announcement, every delegate pledged to Senator Edwards in Iowa (four delegates), New Hampshire (four delegates) and South Carolina (eight delegates) will be voting for Senator Obama at the National Convention. In addition, 10 of the 13 Edwards delegates from Florida will be voting for Senator Obama at the National Convention.

The updated roster adds ten delegates today to Obama's delegate total, raising it to 2,099.5 and leaving the campaign only 18.5 delegates away from clinching the nomination at 2,118.

Obama will reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination tonight. We are on the verge of having a nominee. The Democratic Party is making history today.

Hillary Is Gone, Now

Update: BREAKING AP: Hillary won't concede tonight

With Obama likely to claim victory in some manner tonight, Hillary Clinton will have a lot of time to ponder what she has accomplished with her campaign.

The answer is: Not very much of a constructive nature.

Beginning with an unprecedented amount of money and political infrastructure, Hillary managed to threaten the historic Democratic coalition with the black-African American-civil rights community, and stoke the vestiges of racism that remain rooted in the American political culture.

Her incompetently run campaign does serve as an illustration of what not to do for future Democratic candidates.

Good riddance to Hillary; and well, let's look to the future.

Harvey Korman and Barack Obama

Two events merged this week.

The last-chance (though not seriously employed) folly of shooting down the Democratic nomination of Barack Obama, and the death of actor, Harvey Korman (1927-2008).

Harvey Korman, among his numerous amusements, portrayed the Hedley Lamarr character in Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks).

Brooks and Lamarr mocked bigotry, hatred and ignorance so mercilessly that 30-plus years later one almost feels sorry for the bastards manipulating and manifesting these imbecilites today—diseased pursuits of the American mind that have played a great role in American history and that soon will dismay loudly John McCain and his ilk as this truism of American bigotry is discovered to have been uttered by anybody at anytime in anyway associated with Barack Obama’s campaign.

Nothing makes a non-bigot laugh so much as watching Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Mel Brooks, and company ridicule bigotry into nothingness in Blazing Saddles.

One scene in Saddles (and you can pick among many) is set among the villains, including Korman’s Hedley Lamarr, scheming to drive out the residents of the town of Rock Ridge.

As the villains brainstorm specific methods of shock and awe to scare the residents out of their homes so that the villains can build a railroad through the town and profit to their huge financial advantage, one not-so-bright villain, Taggart, stumbles upon an apparent solution.

Taggart: I got it.

Hedley Lamarr: What?

Taggart: Let's kill every first born male child in Rock Ridge.

Hedley Lamarr: Nah, too Jewish.

The villains decide upon murder, rape, and pillage as the non-controversial solution.

Pure comedic, political, and cinematic brilliance.

So, hearing of Korman’s death, one hopes for a voice from Obama that holds up bigotry, hatred, and ignorance with the same grace and clarity as Brooks and Korman, and that bunch, displaying the disease with such good humor and illuminatingly cool ridicule that McCain and his forces of stupidity will be left by the wayside of segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, misogyny, racism, and anti-Semitism—old hatreds and idiocies good for a great political laugh today, if only a presidential candidate can perform as a Mel Brooks or a Harvey Korman.

Meeting Racism Head-on

Update: And speaking of Islam, Was Muhammed REALLY a man of peace? Human Events is on this faster than you can say 'Islamofascism'

Second-hand, I heard an anecdote last week about some typical rural, white Georgia residents.

As reported to me, said one resident: "A lot of people like Obama. I love Obama, but it’s too bad he’s a Muslim, he’ll never get elected. "

McClatchy had a piece Thursday on the same sentiment: Where did the Web rumors about Obama come from?

Writes Matt Stearns:

Some things about Barack Obama rub some voters the wrong way.

"We don't need a Muslim," said Jannay Smith, a retiree from Kokomo,
Ind. "Who's to say if he gets in there what he'll do?"

Added Steve Shallenberger, a Kokomo electrician: "He's just calling himself a Christian because he knows that's what we in Indiana want to hear."

Then there's Sherry Richey, also from Kokomo: "He wouldn't put his hand on the Bible; he wanted the Quran. He won't put his hand over his heart during the anthem or say the Pledge of Allegiance. He's too un-American."

All of these slurs on Obama are categorically untrue.

But, Stearns notes, this has not prevented the slurs from being pushed on the Internet, nor has it prevented campaigns from appealing to the racism and ignorance that still exists, worrying some astute analysts.

Writes Stearns:

E-mails falsely claiming that Obama is a Muslim, that he took the oath of office on a Quran and that he refuses to take the Pledge of Allegiance have stormed inboxes. A newer e-mail has a picture, allegedly of Obama posing with his African family, with the title 'Say Hi to the next potential first family.'

I received an e-mail like this myself last year, from a decent American, and the e-mail is despicable (published below).

The fact is racism exists, but this time we are not going to run from it, and John McCain will do his worst. The following e-mail is repulsive, then again so is John McCain's appeal to fear and ignorance.

Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:20:53 -0800 (PST)

Subject: Why Obama wants to be President of the US...

Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice. If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scarey to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States .... better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on " snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself. Who is Barack Obama? Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel , Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHIEST from Wichita , Kansas ..

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii . When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.?

When Obama was! 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta He also spent two years in a Catholic school. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that?

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States , Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible , but instead the Koran. Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!! Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME!!!

Hillary Is the Abusive Boyfriend and the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

Never did buy that argument that Hillary's appeals to racism are good for Obama because he'll face the same line of attack in the fall.

Hey, he'll get it out there, if he doesn't get it here.

Or the argument that Democrats need Hillary, cause she really knows what's best.

Ran across this at John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, in The real 3:00 AM call. The piece is from Madatoms.

Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party

Despite all the math counting her out, Hillary Clinton fervently remains in the race to become the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. She has become the Democratic Party's psycho ex-girlfriend, and she's not going away without a restraining order.

It's 2:31 AM. The Democratic Party is sleeping peacefully when it hears its phone buzz on the night stand. It rolls over and sees "Hillary" on the caller ID. It pauses briefly, considering pushing "END" and not dealing with this shit tonight. The thought is appealing but the Democratic Party knows that if it doesn't take this call, another one is only minutes away.

DEMS: ...Hello?

Hillary: Hey baby.

DEMS: C'mon Hillary. Enough with this.

Hillary: Don't you get it? You NEED me.

DEMS: No, I don't. It was fun while it lasted but I'm with Barack now. I made my choice, it's done.

Hillary: You can't really mean that. How can you say that after all the good times we had?

DEMS: To be honest, I started hanging out with you because Bill's pretty awesome.

Hillary: But I'm just like Bill!

DEMS: No, you're not. Bill is charismatic, inspiring, and gets me really good weed.

Hillary: Fuck you. You're elitist!


DEMS: I'm going back to sleep.

Hillary: No, no, wait. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Listen... there's still got to be a chance. Remember when people told George W it was all over. When the numbers were against him?

DEMS: Yeah but...

Hillary: Remember?! And remember how everyone said America didn't really want to be with George W? But they stuck it out anyway?

DEMS: Yeah and they're really fucked up now, Hillary.

Hillary: But WE'LL make it work. Forget Barack, baby. Just take me back and we can forget this ever happened.

DEMS: Look, I think you're a really good Senator... let's just keep it that way, OK?

Hillary: ...I'll see you at the convention.

DEMS: No! Hillary I told you...

CLICK

DEMS: Dammit. Crazy bitch.

Hillary Is John Cleese Playing the Black Knight

Update: Clinton Pledges to Fight on

Too funny.

Seth Greenland has a great piece: Hillary Is John Cleese, from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.'

King Arthur first cuts one of the Black Knight's arms off with his sword, then another. He then cuts off his leg. Bleeding from three stumps, the Black Knight announces, 'All right, we'll call it a draw.'

Good one, Seth; and Hillary: It's more than a flesh wound.

Full disclosure, below is an animated video of some friends and me, laughing at Hillary last night as the returns came in. :)

Even NBC's Russert Says It's Over, But Not Hillary ... Yet

Update III: David Plouffe: An Update on the Race for Delegates, Obama Needs 36 Percent of Remaining Delegates to Win Nomination [Those Obama elitists are sooo into math.]

Update II: Hillary doesn't say it's over. This morning's press release: As West Virginia Takes Center Stage, Clinton Campaign Ramps Up Statewide Get Out The Vote Effort

Update: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue by John Judis, a big Clinton supporter -

Even the major networks are admitting it's over.

From AmericaBlog: Russert: "It's over for Hillary. She just lost the nomination."
That's a big step for the pretend-to-know-nothings on broadcast TV, next thing you know, maybe we'll have a campaign about substantive issues.

Maybe we'll hear the refrain of questions that were posed to Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Jerry Brown in 1992 when they overstayed their welcome from the talking heads in the Democratic primary: What do you want?

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

NBC declares Hillary the winner, barely, in Indiana. Hillary may get one delegate more than Obama in Indiana. Chuck Todd says Obama will get 13 more delegates than Hillary tonight, and that wipes out the 12 delegates more than him that she got in Pennsylvania. Obama now has a pledged delegate lead of over 160, he's got a popular vote lead of over 700,000, per Todd.

There is simply no path to victory for Hillary. Now she's just screwing around and hurting the party. Look at what Chuck Todd just said, again - even with Michigan and Florida, she has lost ...

Russert's quote in response to the question "Did it just end tonight?" from Olbermann:

(Russert): 'We now know who the democratic nominee is going to be and no one is going to dispute it.'

This is it. The media finally turned on her. It's over. It's finally freaking over. I say this because the race was over 2 months ago. But the media kept it alive by pretending as though Hillary had a chance, when they knew she didn't.

But, their pretending permitted her to keep going with a straight face. Now that the media is turning on her, she's going to have an impossible time continuing. If she continues to run the only question she will be asked from now on is 'you've lost, why are you still in this race?' There is nothing she can do now. Yes, she can stay in the race, says she's not quitting until the convention in August. But now that the media has turned on her, good luck with that.

NC, Indiana Primaries' Breaking News - Obama Takes NC., IN Too Close to Call

Updated - Obama looks to net some 16 pledged delegates, (200,000) margin in popular vote count. Hillary advisers expect contributors and staffers to call for Hillary to bow out. Hillary's speech lacked recent fire and tone.

**** Live Election Results in Indiana ***
**** Live Election Results in North Carolina ***

FIRST EXIT POLLS: HILLARY +7 in INDIANA; OBAMA +12 in NORTH CAROLINA, via Huffington Post

Huge turn-out in both states; in Indiana , its vote-suppressing voter ID law and Rush Limbaugh-inspired GOP crossover votes for Hillary should help contribute to a Clinton victory.

Multiple sources report anecdotal data indicating huge black turn-out in NC, possibly in response to Hillary's friendly (to her) and publicized voter suppression group.

Barring an independent run in the general, Hillary is history and is just stirring the ashes of her slash-and-burn campaign. [Note: Exit polls are often off a few points, but these number are consistent with the most recent polling and trends.]

CNN: Black voters in Indiana: Obama 92%, Clinton 8%.
Black voters in North Carolina: Obama 91%, Clinton 6%. This is slightly above Hillary's horrendous performance with blacks in other primary states.

Best guess: Big Obama double-digit win in NC, toss-up or Hillary win in Indiana.

Sources for breaking news throughout day:

The Primary Source (Charlotte, North Carolina)

Huffington Post

Kos IN/NC (see comments section)

Indy Star

Talking Points Memo

Time

Americablog

Drudge and NRO, The Corner often have leaked exit polling, worth checking.

- By the way. Gingrich warns of ‘real disaster' for GOP this fall. -

Hillary Cannot Win Democratic Nomination

Just some good news to start the week, that in a sense, is not news: Hillary Clinton cannot win the Democratic nomination.

See Timothy Noah at: Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess. Stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination? Obama will win the nomination.

So all those friends and progressives who have refrained from tossing 10-point weights into their TV sets and plasma screens have no reason to fear.

Have a good week, (it's going to hit 70 in Wisconsin), and let's celebrate her demise and Obama's coming nomination.

As noted at the top of Daily Kos, of the remaining 682 delegates left, Obama needs just 286 delegates to win the nomination. That's some 42 percent.

By the way, isn't the Rev. John Hagee whose endorsement John McCain sought and obtained a whack?

Wisconsin and the White Working Class

via MAL Contends

Madison, Wisconsin - Salon has a piece by Mike Madden explaining the importance of Wisconsin's primary and probing why this perfectly composed demographic state for Hillary handed her a 17-point thrashing on Feb. 19.

Why did Obama do so well with Wisconsin's white working class, but not with Ohio and Pennsylvania's?

So well-received was Obama's victory here that many secular progressives were smitten with whimsical rumination of metaphysics. But Madden reasonably attributes the win to Wisconsin's progressive history.

Writes Madden:

... 'I think Democrats do have questions about whether or not [Obama] is going to be able to reach out and successfully win over the kind of blue-collar voters that Democrats need to win in order to take the White House back in November," Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson reiterated on CBS's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday.

But that's not what Wolfson was saying back in February, when Obama clobbered Clinton by 17 points in Wisconsin, another state whose largely white, working-class demographics should have made it Clinton country. Census figures show the state is only 6 percent black, barely a quarter of residents have college degrees, and the median income hovers around the national average. But Obama won Wisconsin across the board, according to exit polls, taking almost every demographic group and subgroup. ...

... 'You could put the same demographics together and the same kind of community together, and I guarantee you that a liberal or African-American candidate will do about 5 to 10 points better' in Wisconsin than in other Rust Belt states, said (Paul Maslin, a neutral Democratic pollster based in Madison, Wisc., who helped run Howard Dean's 2004 campaign).

See also Wisconsin More Important than Pennsylvania Machine-State.

Vote-suppressing, Pro-Hillary Group Operated in Wisconsin

Update: at Kos by stefanielaine

via MAL Contends

A voter-suppression group operating in North Carolina, exposed in the journal Facing South (see also Talking Points Memo), was operating in Wisconsin before its primary on Feb. 19 as part a national voter deception strategy.

And with the same apparent motive: To suppress voter turnout and minimize the margin of an expected Clinton defeat.

The story, broken by Chris Kromm, and aired on CNN, exhibits another example of Hillary Clinton borrowing from the Karl Rove playbook; and Hillary can expect a serious backlash.

Writes Kromm:

Who's behind the mysterious 'robo-calls' that have spread misleading voter information and sown confusion and frustration among North Carolina residents over the last week?

Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women's Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among 'unmarried women voters.'

'What's more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women's Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn't the group's first brush with controversy. Women's Voices' questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law. ...

In Wisconsin, state officials singled out Women's Voices for misleading and possibly disenfranchising voters, stating in a press release [PDF]: 'One group in particular -- Women's Voices. Women Vote, of Washington, D.C. -- apparently ignored or disregarded state deadlines in seeking to register voters,' sending in registrations past the January 30 deadline and causing 'hundreds of Wisconsin voters who think they registered in advance' to actually not be.

Obama in Madison

Turn off cable TV idiots and see change happening from the bottom-up.

From Feb. 12, 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin delivering a (VA, DC, MD) victory speech to 20,000-plus with an overflow crowd at the Kohl Center. It was louder in person.

Pressure Building on Lone Wisc Clinton-declared Superdelegate Officeholder

Update: John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

So, why is Wisconsin's most progressive elected official and superdelegate still declared, alone among elected state officeholders, for Hillary Clinton?

Good question for Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison).

What does it take from Clinton for Baldwin to jump ship?

Hillary playing on homophobia like Hillary does in North Carolina? [See Andrew Sullivan - She's on O'Reilly and her surrogate is accusing her opponent of being a 'pansy'. Classy - but vintage Clinton. Never miss an opportunity to exploit homophobia. Remember DOMA? Remember doubling the discharges from the military? Remember inaction on AIDS? Remember the Clintons' using anti-gay marriage ads in the South in 1996? And yet the gays keep coming back for more. I don't understand why. I really don't. See also DavidKC at DailyKos.]

Hillary playing on fear and race like she has done for months now?

I wish Tammy would cut the shit.

What do you owe Clinton? Better yet, what do you owe your constituents?

Don't get Washingtonized on us.

Campaign Notes - Stephanopoulos Pushing the Clinton Spin, Again

Update: Stephanopoulos is holding a campaign event - 'townhall meeting' - for his former boss Hillary during his show on Sunday

Via MAL Contends

- On ABC's News's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, viewers were treated to a graphic comparing the two Democratic candidates' performance thus far in the primary.

Stephanopoulos, following the disingenuous Clinton spin that uses its logic of primary-election-state performance morphing into general-election state performance, displayed the electoral votes (general election) total of every primary state that the candidates have won.

Why are electoral votes important now? Does Stephanopoulos really believe performances in Democratic primary states are, even arguably, predictors of performance in general elections? If so, Bill Clinton would never have been president, because Clinton lost most of New England in the 1992 Democratic primary. The reason for displaying the graphic is clear.

Coming off his deplorable performance as a debate moderator, Stephanopoulos can be counted on to continue his preening for the Clinton campaign, buying every Clinton spin possible and framing the election for his old chums.

But gee maybe Stephanopoulos is right. And since John McCain won New York and California in the GOP primary, McCain can be counted on to win these states in the general election. But that really doesn't make any sense, does it?

- Just ran across this item below in Buzzflash linking to an ABC News item.

The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets Saturday, May 31 in Washington, D.C., to consider whether DNC panel exceeded its authority when it stripped Florida and Michigan of all of its delegates for holding their primaries before Feb. 5th, 2008.

No word yet on the composition of the Committee or the deadlines and consequences of the Committee's deliberating. Will keep you posted.
Update: One take: Hillary Will Steal The Nomination on May 31 Owing to Composition of Committee

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Blast Hillary

Great stuff from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, via everywhere now: