Monday, December 10, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Oprah Winfrey Hits Campaign Trail for Obama
December 9, 2007
By JEFF ZELENY
DES MOINES, Dec. 8 — When she begins a typical show, seldom does Oprah Winfrey question the power of her brand or wonder aloud about the influence that accompanies her golden seal of approval.
But when Ms. Winfrey strode onto a stage here Saturday, imploring Iowa voters to support the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, she acknowledged not knowing whether her endorsement would matter. And as she waded into American politics like never before, she declared: “I feel like I’m out of my pew.”
Still, with three weeks before the presidential nominating contest begins here, Ms. Winfrey’s arrival on the campaign trail and her irrefutable appeal was threatening enough for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York to invite a famous guest of her own, Chelsea Clinton, who has waited in the wings for a moment like this.
It was, perhaps, the best way Mrs. Clinton could be assured attention on a political day devoted to Ms. Winfrey, who drew more than 15,000 people here and a second audience of about 7,000 in Cedar Rapids. In a state awash in presidential politics, with a competitive fight on both sides of the ticket, it was the largest spectacle of the campaign cycle.
“Oh my goodness,” Ms. Winfrey said. “At last, I’m here.”
The intersection of politics and celebrity began the moment that Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, declared, “It is my honor to introduce to you the first lady of television, Oprah Winfrey.” A wave of camera flashes illuminated a downtown convention center here as Ms. Winfrey entered to a thunderous roar.
Ms. Winfrey, of course, is hardly a stranger to speaking before large crowds. But as she explained her rationale for supporting Mr. Obama, of Illinois, she stood behind a lectern, reading from prepared remarks. She paused for a moment, saying: “Backstage, somebody said are you nervous? I said, damn right I’m nervous.”
But for 17 minutes, Ms. Winfrey delivered an emotional testimonial for Mr. Obama, arguing the nation was at a critical moment in its history that required a new direction, a new face, a new way. She did not mention Mrs. Clinton or any of their rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, but dismissed suggestions that voters should chose a candidate with the most Washington experience.
“If we continue to do the same things over and over again, I believe we get the same results,” Ms. Winfrey said. Later, she added: “When you listen to Barack Obama, when you really hear him, you witness a very rare thing, You witness a politician who has an ear for eloquence and a tongue dipped in the unvarnished truth.”
In his quest to win the party’s nomination, and become the first black president, Mr. Obama is working to expand his reach beyond the traditional set of Democratic primary voters. The campaign is hoping to use Ms. Winfrey’s visit to Iowa on Saturday, followed by New Hampshire and South Carolina on Sunday, to expose his candidacy to a new audience of prospective supporters.
“I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to ask you to think — seriously,” Ms. Winfrey said. “I’m not here for partisan beliefs. Over the years, I’ve voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats. So this isn’t about partisanship for me.”
She ticked through a list of Mr. Obama’s accomplishments, from his days as a community organizer to a state senator to a United States senator. When she hailed his opposition to the war, “long before it was the popular thing to do,” the crowd responded with a roar of approval.
The Obama campaign captured the names and addresses of thousands of those who attended the rallies. Those who agreed to volunteer for at least four hours over the past two weeks received premium tickets.
“I think Oprah is John the Baptist, leading the way for Obama to win,” said Dale Cobb, 40, of Des Moines, who has never participated in the caucuses before. Yet, she added: “I’m still kind of in between Hillary and Obama.”
Cate Doty contributed reporting.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Will Clinton's Obama Attacks Backfire? -- Printout -- TIME
Will Clinton's Obama Attacks Backfire? -- Printout -- TIME
Back to Article Click to Print Tuesday, Dec. 04, 2007
Will Clinton's Obama Attacks Backfire?
By Jay Newton-Small/Washington
It started in earnest a couple of weeks ago when Hillary Clinton questioned how much Barack Obama's time spent living in Indonesia as a child could actually help him make foreign policy decisions as a commander-in-chief. "Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face," Clinton said November 20 in Shenandoah, Iowa. "I think we need a President with more experience than that."
Then Clinton announced in an interview with CBS that she was sick of being a punching bag for Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and that she intended to fight back. "After you have been attacked as often as I have from several of my opponents, you cannot just absorb it. You have to respond," she said.
Since that declaration Clinton has done just that, attacking Obama's plans for health care, Social Security reform and diplomacy with Iran. She even went so far as to dig up a kindergarten essay of Obama's entitled "I Want to Be President" to accuse him of lying about not having a lifelong lust for the Oval Office. "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate," Clinton said in Iowa Monday. But at a time when two new Iowa polls show Obama actually pulling into the lead and Clinton losing support among women, some political observers are wondering if Clinton will come to regret her newly assertive strategy. She already has the highest negative ratings in the race, and the shift in tactics comes only a month before the Iowa caucus — where voters are famous for their distaste of negative campaigning. Launching the attacks herself, rather than with via surrogates, only makes the move even riskier.
"The attack will backfire in two ways: it will reinforce the negative stereotype of Mrs. Clinton as a cold and calculating person who will do whatever it takes to win," said Stephen J. Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University and author of The Road to the White House. "And two, it will make Mr. Obama seem to be the less shrill and more emotionally mature candidate."
John Norris, who ran Senator John Kerry's Iowa campaign in 2004 and now serves as an adviser to Obama's campaign, said that's what they were banking on. "Barack positioned himself as drawing distinctions with Hillary," Norris said in an interview. "You don't want to get too negative — he's come close to the line but I don't think he's gone over it with Iowa voters." Clinton is "the one who made it personal by calling him naļ¶„ — that was the first personal attack in the campaign," Norris said. "It's not a good position to be in — being forced to go negative in the last month."
The Obama campaign has started a website which almost gleefully tracks all of Clinton's attacks. And in an e-mail sent to supporters Monday asking for donations, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited the Des Moines Register poll that also showed Clinton with the highest negatives of any candidate. "And sure enough, less than 12 hours after the poll results were released, the Clinton campaign launched multiple frantic, baseless attacks against Barack Obama," Plouffe wrote, calling for 10,000 people to donate over the next 48 hours in response. "The emerging pattern is disturbing: as Senator Clinton's poll numbers slide, the campaign of 'inevitability' becomes more desperate and negative by the day. Barack will always respond swiftly and forcefully with the truth when attacked."
Negative campaigning has not had a history of success in Iowa. In 2004 Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean committed what some described as "murder-suicide" with their attacks on each other, opening the door for Kerry. In 1988 John Glenn's attacks on Walter Mondale helped to hand Garry Hart a surprise victory in the caucuses. The person who could stand to gain the most this time from the negative attacks is John Edwards. His campaign, which hasn't been shy about attacking Clinton in recent months, remained remarkably silent in recent days. "Edwards has been a pretty harsh critic of the Clinton campaign himself, so one could argue that when everybody goes negative no one gains from it," said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist who is remaining neutral this cycle.
Clinton has insisted that her attacks against Obama are substantive, not personal. "There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," Clinton told reporters traveling this past weekend with her in Iowa aboard the first press plane of Clinton's campaign. That difference, she said, is "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk." Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama's character, she replied: "It's beginning to look a lot like that. You know, it really is." (When asked if former President Bill Clinton would also be stepping up the heat on Obama or Edwards, Clinton spokesman Mo Eilleithee would say only, "I think you'll see him out there talking about his knowledge of her, because no one knows her better.")
Clinton's harsh new rhetoric has not won much support, either from pundits or other Democrats. "I could see the desire to raise the salience of personal traits — because her strengths are experience and strength of character," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT and author of the book Going Negative. "But her choice surprised me — she might be emphasizing the wrong thing. Given how close this is in the polls, especially a month out, this might be a very risky strategy for her."
"This series of slurs doesn't serve HRC well," said Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, in a blog post. "It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she's worried her polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up."
Perhaps the biggest downside to Clinton's negative attacks is that the press seems to be focusing on nothing else, at least for the moment. "What's tough about the stories from this weekend is that they're telegraphing — they're more about going negative than the substance of the attacks," Simmons said. "It underlines the case that Edwards and Obama have been making that she's practicing politics as usual." And for Clinton, that kind of an association could be the costliest negative of all.
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Monday, December 3, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
In West Iowa, Obama’s Man Thinks Locally - New York Times
In West Iowa, Obama’s Man Thinks Locally - New York Times
November 26, 2007
In West Iowa, Obama’s Man Thinks Locally
By JEFF ZELENY
MISSOURI VALLEY, Iowa, Nov. 24 — Rory Steele had bounced along a gravel road that rides like a washboard to get to the farmstead. He stepped across a few rows of soybeans, climbed up the steps of a red Case combine and squeezed into a seat next to Lyle McIntosh, who was circling a field.
Mr. Steele drove 17 miles from his office in Council Bluffs that crisp October morning to see how the harvest was coming along. He had no stake in the crop yields or commodity prices, but another question weighed on his mind: Would the work be finished in time for Mr. McIntosh to help drum up support for Senator Barack Obama?
For all the uncertainties in presidential campaigns, Mr. Steele would not have guessed that a soggy, unusually long harvest would complicate his task of building an organization for Mr. Obama. Yet since arriving here in March, he had learned to think like a local, which in this part of Iowa means only gently pestering people about politics.
Mr. Steele, a 29-year-old former marine who has worked as a truck driver in the Pacific Northwest and a crab fisherman in Alaska, is the face of the Obama campaign in western Iowa. His territory of 21 counties, the largest in the state, is an essential front line in one of the most competitive presidential races that anyone here can recall.
The outcome of the Iowa caucuses, a set of 1,781 precinct meetings to take place across the state on Jan. 3, hinges on creating a strong and loyal person-to-person network. Mr. Steele is among the hundreds of Democratic and Republican campaign aides stationed in Iowa responsible for building — and sustaining — those networks throughout the state’s 99 counties.
That is precisely what took Mr. Steele to the soybean field. In August, Mr. McIntosh signed on as Mr. Obama’s Harrison County co-chairman, so Mr. Steele drops by from time to time to see if Mr. McIntosh is satisfied with the campaign’s direction and to replenish a supply of Obama DVDs he lends to neighbors.
“If I could make one suggestion, I would get the senator to Dunlap or Ottaway or Missouri Valley,” said Mr. McIntosh, 64, talking over the combine’s purr as he referred to three nearby towns. “I realize he can’t go everywhere, but we really need to get him over here.”
On Saturday, after more than a month of negotiating and planning by his campaign, Mr. Obama bounded onto the auctioneer’s platform at the Dunlap Livestock Auction and was greeted with applause from more than 300 people who filled the orange seats usually occupied by cattle buyers. (The campaign advance team wanted to hold the event in the local high school, but Mr. Steele and other aides fought that option, which pleased Mr. McIntosh.)
Mr. Steele is a political strategist, an office manager, a real estate prospector, a party planner, a life coach, a cheerleader, a concierge and a problem solver. Even in a campaign that has raised more than $80 million and spent $5 million on TV spots in Iowa alone, getting the office computer printer to work falls on his abilities to beg and barter.
“I can only control what I can control,” he said, “or I’d spend all day freaking out.”
So neither Mr. Steele, a soft-spoken, bearded man, nor his ever-growing cadre of young staff members spend time tracking daily campaign developments on cable television or the proliferating blogs. They seldom have time to watch the presidential debates. Their lens is purposefully microscopic.
On the ground floor here, which the campaign has designated Region 5, he and his team are recruiting precinct captains, the supporters who will organize Obama followers on caucus night. Finding a reliable captain for the Ashton Belvidere precinct in Monona County is far more important than fretting over poll numbers.
“I’m trying to find a gong,” Mr. Steele said. “Every time we get a new precinct captain, I will ring it.”
To inspire his troops, he not only encourages “Snoop Dogg breaks” — brief naps on the sofa near the front doorway of the campaign office — but he also holds competitions. On the Fourth of July, he vowed to have himself tattooed with the initials of whoever turned in the most signed supporter cards. Delane Adams, a campaign organizer from Chicago, won by submitting 33.
So on Mr. Steele’s right bicep, just below a Marine Corps tattoo, is another work of art: “DA 33 July 4.” (“I thought it would have been weird to tattoo “Obama” on my arm,” he said, “but now I have some dude’s initials on me.”)
For all this, Mr. Steele is paid roughly $2,300 a month (plus occasional mileage reimbursements) to supervise about a dozen workers and scores of volunteers. He took a temporary apartment in Council Bluffs, where he relocated for the presidential race — his first — after working the last election cycle for local Democratic candidates in Washington State.
Since arriving here eight months ago, he has logged nearly 26,000 miles on his red Chevrolet S-10 truck. He has listened to a recording of “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama’s second book, four times. He is intimately familiar with Mr. Obama’s voice, his positions and his biography, yet Mr. Steele has had only a few passing conversations with him.
Mr. Steele has never seen the campaign’s sprawling national headquarters in Chicago, on the 11th floor of a downtown skyscraper, with views of Lake Michigan and the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. From his sparse office on the first floor of a Council Bluffs office building, a window overlooks nothing.
Across the rolling bluffs and the flat plains of his territory, in towns like Defiance and Denison, Honey Creek and Harlan, it is his responsibility to know which caucusgoing Democrats are supporting which candidate.
And if the answer is someone other than Mr. Obama?
“Like a girlfriend who cheats on you, we don’t give up on people,” Mr. Steele said during an evening drive to a house party in Greene County. “We never want to burn those bridges and we never — ever — speak ill of another candidate.”
Beyond civility, there is also a practical reason for this. With six Democrats running serious campaigns for the nomination here, candidates who do not receive 15 percent of support in a caucus are deemed unviable in that caucus, so their supporters have to make a second choice. Mr. Steele does not want anyone in his region to be irked at Mr. Obama.
That does not mean he is not constantly looking for poaching opportunities, particularly a “maven,” which is campaign shorthand for a community leader, party official or, quite simply, someone who can persuade others to join the Obama team.
Consider the story of Karl Knock, a vice president of a Creston bank.
On a late-summer afternoon, Mr. Steele and Mr. Adams, the tattoo contest winner, drove two hours across southern Iowa to see Mr. Knock, a prominent Democrat who was undecided but had favorable feelings toward Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.
Mr. Steele had been eying this maven for weeks. He had already given Mr. Knock a free ticket to attend an Obama fund-raiser in Omaha with Warren Buffett. Now, he was hoping to sign him on as leader for Mr. Obama’s effort in Union County.
In a basement conference room of the bank, over cans of soda, the three men talked for more than an hour. Mr. Steele mostly listened and took pages of notes on a yellow legal pad, writing down Mr. Knock’s concern about presidential powers and what he fears are threats to the Constitution and the politicization of the Justice Department.
“I like what I see with Senator Obama,” Mr. Knock said as the meeting drew to a close. “But I’ve got to figure out how I can step away from Biden. They gave me the cellphone of his national political director and his niece!”
In his daily report to state headquarters in Des Moines that evening, Mr. Steele passed along a summary of the meeting. Within a week, a campaign policy aide from the Chicago office was on the phone, answering Mr. Knock’s specific questions.
When Mr. Obama went to Creston a month later, Mr. Steele arranged a brief one-on-one meeting between the senator and Mr. Knock, who signed on to the campaign soon after.
This month at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines, the Democratic Party’s marquee event of the year, who was seated at Mr. Obama’s table? Mr. Knock and his wife, Jan. Later, Ms. Knock told her husband that Mr. Obama had “swept her off her feet,” but she remained a committed supporter of former Senator John Edwards.
This could be Mr. Steele’s next project. He has less than six weeks.
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