As the GOP sets its sights on the general election, they are also setting their sights on winning local and state elections by tagging candidates with Obama as these new ads from Mississippi for a Congressional seat demonstrate. Obama’s coattails? They are likely to be short indeed. Will the super delegates take notice? Cause while that dog may not hunt, it sure does bite.
Can there be any doubt that the Clinton campaign is hitting its stride after so many early missteps? Since the arrival of Maggie Williams as the principal campaign manager, Senator Clinton continues to refine her message in a very Edwardsian language. Edwards talked often about his mill worker father; Clinton now talks about her father’s fabric printing business. This from today’s New York Times:
All politicians talk about jobs, but these days Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton does it with tactile, almost sensuous detail. She began a rally here on Saturday morning with memories of her father’s fabric-printing business, feeling aloud the cloth, the silk screen and the squeegee he used to create patterns that would decorate strangers’ drapes.
In a story on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times points to a steady drip of negative news on Barack Obama that while in and of itself is unlikely to cause much damage, the cumulative effect is akin to a death by a thousand paper cuts. Here is the crux of the story:
After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client — a longtime political supporter.
Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.
A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.
Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.
Well Obama can now safely claim that he has done more for ping pong than any other candidate. But many will simply see this as a quid quo pro and another in a series of not very flattering connections. The problem is not so much the former, this story of an alleged quid quo pro but rather the latter, just one more in a series of not very flattering connections. The death of a thousand paper cuts. The only question is he whether he will bleed to a political death now or later.
Obama still leads but it appears Clinton is closing the gap. McCain trails badly.
Obama $240.5 million
Clinton $194.6 million
McCain $80.0 million
Clinton’s numbers do not include her post-Pennsylvania bump which ran over $10 million.
Here is Sunday’s edition of interesting reads from around the world.
European Union’s Peacelab in Colombia
The European Union has invested €33 million in the province of Nariño in southwestern Colombia in an innovative “Peacelab” to promote peaceful coexistence and help farmers turn from cocaine production to traditional forms of farming. The story with a video from Euro News.
A Reversal for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Khyber Pass
In this story from the Asia Times, a behind-the-scenes look at the struggles for NATO to supply its forces in Afghanistan.
Elizabeth Edwards on Media Coverage of the US Presidential Campaign
The wife of John Edwards, the former Senator from North Calorina, Elizabeth Edwards faults the media coverage of the US Presidential campaign for not focusing enough on the serious policy proposals of the candidates in this op-ed in the New York Times.
A Setback for Mugagbe
In a rare setback for Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugagbe, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) yesterday released seven more results from the recount, changing none. The full story from the UK Guardian.
Korean Economic Growth Slows
The Korea Herald reports that economic growth in South Korea slowed to the lowest pace in more than three years in the first quarter due to weakening private consumption and corporate investment in a report released by the Korean Central Bank.
Germans Discover the Power of a Referendum
Berliners go to the polls Sunday in a referendum to determine the fate of historic Templhof Airport. But as Der Spiegel reports Germans have discovered the power of referendum making life difficult for Germany’s political elite and its business community.
How Vunerable is the US Economy to a Quake in Silicon Valley?
The name of this blog, By The Fault, refers to the fact that I live about three miles from the seismically active San Andreas Fault (I used to live almost on the fault when I was a graduate student at Stanford, less than a mile then). One of my former professors, Dr. Paul Saffo has written an article for ABC News examining the possible reprecussions to the US and world economy in the event of a major earthquake striking the Bay Area. Paul Saffo is a futurist with a blog. Among his predictions is that there is a greater than 50% probability that by 2050 the United States will no longer exist as a unified political entity.