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Obama's Big Tent
By Ari Berman
Say what you will about Barack Obama's national security team, but clearly the President-elect wasn't fibbing when he promised to bring unity to Washington. Who else could get Robert Gates, General James Jones, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice on the same stage--let alone the same team?
Press reports have been emphasizing that Obama's vulcans are more hawkish than many of his supporters expected. Maybe so, but there is also a fair amount of ideological continuity and agreement among Obama's senior national security advisors about how to redirect American foreign policy--away from unilateral military action and aggressive posturing--and place diplomacy and cooperation at the center of our efforts.
"To succeed, we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy; our intelligence and law enforcement; our economy and the power of our moral example," Obama said today. "The team that we have assembled here today is uniquely suited to do just that... They share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my sense of purpose about America's role as a leader in the world."
(15) CommentsDecember 1, 2008
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Soggy Bottom
By Ari Berman
In a Democratic primary debate in December 2007, Barack Obama was asked by the editor of the Des Moines Register: "With relatively little foreign policy experience of your own, how will you rely on so many Clinton advisors and still deliver the kind of break from the past that you're promising voters?"
"I want to hear that," Hillary Clinton folksily interjected.
"Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me, as well," Obama responded with a smile on his face.
(32) CommentsNovember 24, 2008
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Legal Problems Remain for Norm Coleman
By Ari Berman
The recount in Minnesota's deadlocked Senate race has yet to begin, but Norm Coleman's legal problems aren't likely to fade anytime soon.
A few days before the election, a lawsuit filed in a Texas district court alleged that one of Coleman's biggest donors and closest friends, Nasser Kazeminy, had routed $75,000 to Coleman's wife, Laurie. The suit was filed against Kazeminy by Paul McKim, a self-described diehard Republican and CEO of Deep Marine Technologies, a deep sea energy exploration company in Houston in which Kazeminy is controlling shareholder.
A second lawsuit, filed by minority shareholders of DMT in Delaware a few days later, alleged that Kazeminy ordered the payments directly to Coleman. According to the lawsuit, Kazeminy told a confidential source: "We have to get some money to Senator Coleman" because the Senator "needs the money." When McKim and DMT's CFO objected, three payments of $25,000 were then sent to Coleman's wife at a Minneapolis-based insurance firm, the Hays Insurance Co, even though Hays did no work for DMT and is not a licensed insurance broker in Texas, according to the lawsuits. Laurie Coleman is best known as an actress who's lived in Los Angeles, not an insurance broker. "These fraudulent and grossly improper payments cost DMT at least $75,000 and brought absolutely no value to the company," the second lawsuit stated. "These payments expose the Company to serious potential criminal and civil liability."
(19) CommentsNovember 12, 2008
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GOP at Odds with Country
By Ari Berman
Just a few years ago conservatives were planning on establishing a permanent Republican majority. Now they're stuck in the minority for the foreseeable future, beset by infighting and increasingly at odds with the rest of the country.
Take, for example, the hot-button issue of the moment: Sarah Palin. Before the election, nearly 60 percent of Americans believed Palin was not qualified to be Vice President. But nearly 70 percent of Republican said after the election that Palin helped the Republican ticket. Sixty-four percent want the Alaska Governor to be the GOP nominee for president in 2012. Only 20 percent of Republicans think she hurt John McCain. That group, presumably, includes McCain's own staff, which keeps leaking damning details about Palin to the press.
A similar conundrum for Republicans exists when voters are asked how the GOP should position itself after Barack Obama's historic win. In the wake of their lopsided defeat last Tuesday, top conservatives are urging the party to move even further to the right. Following a strategy session among conservative leaders last week, the Cybercast News Service reported: "There was a consensus among the group that conservative ideas and principles had not been defeated in Tuesday's election, but a Republican Party that walked away from these principles had been defeated."
(57) CommentsNovember 10, 2008
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Coleman-Franken Race Still Too Close to Call
By Ari Berman
"Gracious" is not the first word that comes to mind when describing Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman. On Wednesday morning he announced, "Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," even though Coleman led opponent Al Franken by just 725 votes out of nearly 3 million cast.
That margin is now down to 239 votes, as of this afternoon, after errors by county election officials were corrected. The official recount has yet to even begin and won't start until mid-November, when every ballot is counted again, by hand. One RNC member told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "If [Coleman] was nervous on Tuesday, he's really got reason to be nervous today."
In Minnesota's 2006 Senate race, when Democrat Amy Klobuchar easily defeated Republican Mark Kennedy, there was disparity between the Election Day results and the final certification numbers. Kennedy lost 3,520 votes and Klobuchar lost 666, more than enough to swing the current contest.
(24) CommentsNovember 7, 2008
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Mo' Money, Mo' Problems for Palin
By Ari Berman
You thought the infighting between the McCain and Palin factions was bad before the election? Try now. Angry McCain aides, who believe the Alaska Governor harmed the GOP ticket, are going to do their best to make sure Palin gets the blame.
Already word is emerging that Palin "didn't know that Africa was a continent rather than a country," reported Fox News's Carl Cameron, based on conversations with McCain aides, didn't know which countries were in NAFTA and didn't prepare for her disastrous interviews with Katie Couric. I'm skeptical about some of these claims--it wouldn't be surprising if jilted McCain aides are now trying to make Palin look even worse--but Palin's capabilities have been overestimated before. Like the idea that she was ready to be vice president.
New details have also emerged about Palin's shopping sprees. Reports Newsweek:
(79) CommentsNovember 6, 2008
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The Movement Obama Built
By Ari Berman
CHICAGO, IL - When I was a senior at Northwestern University in the winter of 2003-04, I took a political communications class with David Axelrod. At the time, Axelrod was known as a top strategist to John Edwards, but he was also advising a then-unknown Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama who was running for the US Senate.
I hadn't heard of Obama before the class. My first reaction, like so many people, was: "Who is this Obama guy?" But many of my classmates were already clued in. As part of the class we had to volunteer for a political campaign. I chose Howard Dean but I'd estimate that 15 of the 25 kids in the class volunteered for Obama, well before anyone knew who he was or it was cool to do so. When I first saw Obama on TV, I realized what my classmates had: that this guy was different, special, the type of politician with the unlikely name and story and background that truly represented the melting pot of the 21st century. We watched with jubilation as the public at large saw what we did following his speech to the Democratic convention, election to the US Senate and improbable campaign for President. Those of us who watched Obama up close, in those early days of his Senate run, knew he could slay giants like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, even if others initially did not.
So it was fitting to return to Chicago last night and see the 100,000+ people--young and old, black and white--who packed into Grant Park, a reflection of the movement across racial and class lines that Obama's campaign helped build. I thought of Studs Terkel, a Chicago institution who passed away last week, four days before Obama's election. A friend of his said Terkel badly wanted to live to see Obama win; after all, Terkel had authored many books about other implausible yet deeply American stories, and also an oral history about race, which he called, "America's Obsession."
(28) CommentsNovember 5, 2008
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Jubilation & Awe in Chicago
By Ari Berman
CHICAGO, Illinois -- When they announced that he'd finally done it, I was standing next to an Obama press secretary and speechwriter, two of the many brilliant young people who powered his remarkable campaign. They had huge grins on their face but also seemed in disbelief. The dream that Obama had talked about so often now didn't seem real. He'd actually done it. President Obama.
When Obama came out to speak to the country and his adoring fans, the predominant mood among the tens of thousands of people packed into Grant Park in downtown Chicago was jubilation but also awe, and maybe a little shock. "It feels so surreal," one Obama staffer told me.
The crowd reflected the same people that put Obama in this position: the coalition of young people, minorities and new voters that so many pundits thought couldn't pull it out. This is now their time, as Obama likes to say. The campaign and its supporters were as improbable as the candidate himself. These young voters and staffers and volunteers, in particular, will be a force to be reckoned with for decades to come.
(18) CommentsNovember 5, 2008
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Penn Senator: "The Economic Message Got Through"
By Ari Berman
Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania went out on a limb and endorsed Barack Obama during his state's primary, when the Democratic machine sided with Hillary Clinton. He was vindicated today, when Obama whupped McCain in the Keystone state--and probably clinched the nomination in the process. With 45 percent of precincts reporting, Obama leads McCain 62-37.
Obama won huge margins among young, suburban and African-American voters in the state, while Casey noted his surprising strength among white voters and older voters, both of whom would've been key to McCain's failed Keystone strategy. "The economic message got through," Casey explained in Chicago tonight.
He also dismissed talk of the so-called Bradley Effect, which some pundits thought might hurt Obama in Pennsylvania. "I always thought, if prejudice existed in our state, that we've washed that away in Pennsylvania and across the country."
(6) CommentsNovember 4, 2008
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Indiana Could Go For O
By Ari Berman
Vigo County, in Southeast Indiana, has picked the next president in every election since 1960. The home of Terra Haute went for Bush over Kerry 53-46 percent. This year Obama's winning it 56-42 over McCain.
Such is the case across the state, where Obama is greatly overperforming compared to Democrats in years past, in both urban and rural areas. In St. Joseph County, home to the Democratic stronghold of South Bend, Bush beat Kerry by two points; Obama is beating McCain by eighteen. Kerry won only four counties in '04; Obama is ahead in eleven and by much, much bigger margins. He's kept down his losses elsewhere.
Politico's Jonathan Martin noted McCain's modest wins in three key counties in rural Indiana, Clinton in north-central Indiana, Pike in the far southern portion of the state and Cass in northern Indiana.
(16) CommentsNovember 4, 2008
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