Analysis: two tough foes ahead for Obama
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama woke up yesterday morning with hopes of vanquishing his last remaining rival and claiming the Democratic presidential nomination. He ended the day with two stubborn opponents: Hillary Clinton — vowing to continue her campaign after big victories in Rhode Island and Ohio — and a long-delayed but growing media backlash against his candidacy.
The second one may be more threatening than the first.
Despite breaking Obama’s string of 11 victories, Clinton is likely to gain only a modest boost in delegates and will have a hard time erasing his lead in delegates. And the Democratic party leaders who make up the party’s ‘‘superdelegates’’ will feel pressure to validate the will of the people, meaning that Obama remains the front-runner for the nomination.
But for the first time in his improbable rise, Obama himself became the main issue in the campaign — and the voters’ response wasn’t encouraging.
Obama had built up a 75,000-vote lead in early voting in Texas, only to see Clinton erase it with a strong comeback in the last few days; exit polls showed that late-deciding voters chose her over him by a 2-1 ratio.
A last-minute Clinton TV ad questioning Obama’s ability to maintain national security may have helped her; so too did his own mishandling of a controversy over his aide’s alleged comments to Canadian officials suggesting Obama wasn’t serious about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Clinton, in what may be her first memorable phrase of the long campaign, accused Obama of giving voters the old ‘‘wink-wink’’ — promising something he didn’t intend to deliver. And Obama suddenly was on the defensive.
''It seems clear that Clinton had the better of the last few days of the campaign,’’ said Dante Scala, political scientist a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. As a result, he said, Clinton is unlikely to face as much pressure to withdraw from the race, setting up another potential showdown in Pennsylvania on April 22.
The long wait for Pennsylvania will give both campaigns a chance to rearm themselves with money and issues. But compared to previous chapters in this drawn-out epic of an election, Obama election year, Obama will almost certainly be receiving greater scrutiny than Clinton.
For two months, the Illinois senator dominated the national zeitgeist with his ‘‘yes, we can’’ message of hope and change, a phenomenon celebrated in YouTube videos and T-shirts. But his recent return to earth coincided with the settling of the TV writers’ writer’s strike and the reemergence of late-night comedy shows as a political force.
Comics are quick to impose a story line and make it stick: Their jokes spring from common knowledge about the candidates — John McCain’s age, Clinton’s marital troubles, Mike Huckabee’s frequent professions of faith.
‘‘Saturday Night Live,’’ the granddaddy of all political comedy shows, chose to build its Obama narrative around the idea that reporters were completely in his thrall. And its skits — on both Feb. 23 and March 1 — presented Obama as an amiable guy inflated to hero status by a worshipful media.
Clinton, by contrast, was presented as annoying but indefatigable — a scrappy underdog whose complaints of unfairness got laughed off by the media. As if to drive home the point, comedienne Tina Fey used the Feb. 23 ‘‘Weekend Update’’ segment to deliver a thinly veiled exhortation to young women to quit Obama and get with the Hillary bandwagon.
‘‘In less than a minute, the SNL skit crystallized Hillary’s complaints [about unfair media treatment] and upgraded them from mere media inside baseball to the conventional wisdom,’’ said Matthew Felling, the former media analyst for CBS.com.
Clinton was quick to seize on the skit as proof of her point — mentioning it in last week’s debate in Ohio and then flying to New York for a long cameo on the show last Saturday.
The SNL appearance, followed by a stint on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday night, seemed to clear some of the gloom from around Clinton; her poll numbers began improving late last week.
Still, her wins in Ohio and Rhode Island and her battle for Texas only put her where the polls had had her a few weeks earlier, before Obama’s campaign blanketed the states with ads and staffers.
Rhode Island and Ohio were her turf, and she held it. She can feel relieved to be going on to Pennsylvania, but Obama remains the main focus of the race.
If he can handle it.
Hillary is the one we need....GO HILLARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you lost me at saturday night live being the "grandaddy of all political comedy shows"..
this isnt 1975... turn on a tv.
Chillary Clinton is actually the very last person we need... Go Obama!!!!!!!
Amazing. The Clinton's have lied their way to victory. If she wins the nomination, she will not win the general. I'm white a liberal pro-choice, pro-feminist, equal opportunity male. And there's no way I'm voting for her. I, like hundreds of thousands of others, will write in Obama's name or support an independent candidate first. Her advertising and message are totally phony, and I don't buy into it for a second. Good riddance on this. Astounding how the media can be bought and sold. This should have been over weeks ago. This is uglier than Bush stealing an election. Wow.
If the nation passes on the chance to elect a true leader like Obama over Hillary or McCain, we all lose... just like we did the last 2 elections.
Barack Obama's speech last night: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGB2yx
I'm a long time DEM and if Hillary gets the nomination I'll be voting in the general election for John McCain!!!! Why does everyone who supports Hillary see her as such a great leader? When I read the washington post I don't want some 55 year old woman in the throws of menopause! Frankly I don't want some 60 year old John McCain in the office either. I wish he had beat Bush in 2000 but it is what it is.
I wish she would just accept the writing on the wall and see that the best thing is to get behind Barack and get into general campaign mode. She is being power hungry and selfish and for the good of the country needs to head back to New York.
I'm sick of it and she is the first to go negative and drag the party down with "win at any cost" politics.
Obama’s efforts to connect to the Republican Party, specifically Bush, and Dick Chaney, of the Halliburton Company, dates back to the Presidents Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and indeed Chaney was once an executive officer of Halliburton.
The American military pounds Iraq with Artillary, bombs, and the like, destroying large sections of cities, and infra-structures, then Halliburton comes in to rebuild. Halliburton and Halliburton associated companies have raked in ten’s of billions.
Obama is just like the BIG HALIBURTAN. Haliburton has contracted to build detention centers in the U.S. similiar to the one in Quantanammo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton does nothing to earn the Two Dollars for each meal an American Serviceman in Iraq eats.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
Halliburton was scheduled to take control of the Dubai Ports in The United Arab Emiirate. The deal was canceled when Bush was unable to affect the transfer of the American Ports.
Now we see what some might suspect as similiar financial escapading from the Democrats.
Two years ago, Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company - Companion- owned by now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO) Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley, to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States. An Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo. Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract.
Involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor of Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former cop Daniel T. Frawley, is Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON --
Recently, Obama's campaign staff have been vetted by the IRS to disclose his connection to the criminal money generating underworld. Besides, his connections to the REZCO MAFIA types, his up-coming tax fraud charges — Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and disclose Obama's MUSLIM Farrakhan mob connection to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church are trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. Obama should stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke "GLORK" Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He is MAD!!! --
OBAM YOU'RE NO JFK --
"GLORK" Obama looks like Alfred E. Newman: "Tales Calculated To Drive You." He is a MUSLIM "Glork" He's MAD!!! Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of Mad. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek.
Michelle Obama should be ashamed.
"GLORK" Michelle Obama should be ashamed of her separatist-racist connection to Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. If Michelle Obama new what her husband -- the Hope-A-Dope, Fonster Monster -- Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama did in Harlem, she would wash her wide-open, Hus-suey loving MUSILM mouth out, with twenty-four (24) mule-team double-cross X-boX-BorraX. He is a MUSLIM "Glork" It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He's MAD!!!
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
Obama’s efforts to connect to the Republican Party, specifically Bush, and Dick Cheney, of the Halliburton Company, dates back to the Presidents Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and indeed Cheney was once an executive officer of Halliburton.
The American military pounds Iraq with Artillary, bombs, and the like, destroying large sections of cities, and infra-structures, then Halliburton comes in to rebuild. Halliburton and Halliburton associated companies have raked in ten’s of billions.
Obama is just like the BIG HALIBURTAN. Haliburton has contracted to build detention centers in the U.S. similiar to the one in Quantanammo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton does nothing to earn the Two Dollars for each meal an American Serviceman in Iraq eats.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
Halliburton was scheduled to take control of the Dubai Ports in The United Arab Emiirate. The deal was canceled when Bush was unable to affect the transfer of the American Ports.
Now we see what some might suspect as similiar financial escapading from the Democrats.
Two years ago, Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company - Companion- owned by now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO) Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley, to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States. An Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo. Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract.
Involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor of Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former cop Daniel T. Frawley, is Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON --
Recently, Obama's campaign staff have been vetted by the IRS to disclose his connection to the criminal money generating underworld. Besides, his connections to the REZCO MAFIA types, his up-coming tax fraud charges — Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and disclose Obama's MUSLIM Farrakhan mob connection to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church are trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. Obama should stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke "GLORK" Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He is MAD!!! --
OBAM YOU'RE NO JFK --
"GLORK" Obama looks like Alfred E. Newman: "Tales Calculated To Drive You." He is a MUSLIM "Glork" He's MAD!!! Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of Mad. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek.
Michelle Obama should be ashamed.
"GLORK" Michelle Obama should be ashamed of her separatist-racist connection to Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. If Michelle Obama new what her husband -- the Hope-A-Dope, Fonster Monster -- Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama did in Harlem, she would wash her wide-open, Hus-suey loving MUSILM mouth out, with twenty-four (24) mule-team double-cross X-boX-BorraX. He is a MUSLIM "Glork" It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He's MAD!!!
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
THE SPEECH --
The Apologia has arrived and once again the self-indicting, separatist-racist Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama, promises to heal the wounds of the world. The speech is the rude awakening of mass messianism of his campaign. Apologetically, Obama the MUSLIM double-cross X-boX-BorraX has an astonishingly empty two-prawn echelon explanation of his misjudgment.
In the first prawn: with regard to his connection to separatist-racist Rev. Wright; Obama summons voodoo and juju to express slavery as beginning and ending with the Rev. Wright.
In the second prawn: Obama's speech takes credit for Ashley's dream. A dream of unity Martin Luther King, Jr. borrowed from Ashley for his historic "I Have A Dream" speech. In Obama's speech, the connective bond Ashley, the elderly black man and Obama's grandmother share; represents Obama's self-indicting rise to the Harvard Yard. For Obama, the grand flag of language is the semi-fore of words, bestowed upon our nation by the messiah-alumni from Harvard. Obama's Swoon-Song Apologia to the nation represents a failed hymn -- a hymn that fails to heal the nation, repair the world, or make this time different than all the rest. Obama's speech is a brilliant failure.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
MUSLIM LIES --
The ILLIGITIAMTE MUSLIM MESSIA has blundered yet again!!! The self-indicting, separatist-racist Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama, lied about the politics of his campaign. The danger involved with this self-aggrandizing, -a-hoop, Hope-A-Dope, Fonster Monster -- Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama is that -- "Like Father Like Son" Obama is constantly wanting to impress America with "...his incapacity for sound judgment." On top of the horrible crime Obama committed in Harlem, the fact is, we have to hear it from Karl Rove about Obama's latest campaign crisis: "GLORK" Top Ten Obama Lies:
1. Obam said his parents met at the Selma march -- Reality: He was born 4 years before that.
2. Obam said he was a constitutional law professor -- Reality: . . . Obama Made This False Claim In His 2004 Senate Race. “Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary [Senate] campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school..
3. Obam said he spoke fluent Indonesian as a child -- Reality: . . . Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. Yet another Phi Beta Krakatau lie from Obama. Those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews. Israel la Pareira Darmawan, Obama's 1st-grade teacher, said she attempted to help him learn the Indonesian language by going over pronunciation and vowel sounds. Truth-be-told: Obama's Indonesian teachers say Kaku-Pooh.
4. Obam said he was involved in community asbestos and housing project for the poor -- Reality: Didn't happen. This was the basis for Barrack and Misshell's claim, that he was a community activist on the South and East Side of Chicago. Usher A+ lie both he and his twenty-four (24) mule-team, Hus-suey loving wife Misshell Obama have been claiming in the campaign -- Reality: The Chicago Newspapers say NO WAY
5. Obam said in his book that he received his racial awakening at age nine reading a Life/Ebony Magazine story about a black man who was scarred trying to dye his skin white -- Reality: Didn't happen. Both Magazines (Life and Ebony), and the Rev. Wright and Farrakhan MUSLIM Trumpet Newsmagazine say, just didn't happen.
6. Obam’s Campaign Didn’t Have The “Technical Capacity” To Produce The “1984” Ad:
Obama: “But it's not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of and that frankly, given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like that.” (CNN’s “Larry King Live,” 3/24/07) -- Reality:...The Creator Admitted All It Took Was A “Sunday Afternoon” On His Mac. Phillip de Vellis: “I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.”
7. Obam’s Campaign Claimed His High School Friend Tried To Extort Money From Them:
“According To The Obama Campaign, [Obama’s Punahou Classmate Keith] Kakugawa Explicitly Raised The Possibility That He Could Make Up False Stories About Obama, Implying He Would Do So If The Campaign Did Not Give Him Money.” (Maurice Possley, Kirsten Scharnberg and Ray Gibson, -- Reality: “...An Old Friend's Troublesome Return,” Chicago Tribune, 3/25/07).
8. Obam voted to bring low-cost foreign labor into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- Reality:...This was a slap in the face against the African-Americans who were displaced in that city. Obama also voted to place Michael Chertoff, the man responsible for the Katrina catastrophe, in charge of Homeland Security. Obama voted for Senate-Bills that gave Blackwater the funding they needed to shoot the folks of New Orleans who were only trying to save their own lives. The towel head voted to allow Michael Chertoff to waive all applicable laws, including murder, torture, kidnaping, and he suppoted water-boarding.
9. Obam voted more than five times for USA-PATRIOT ACT renewal -- Reality:...This is a Senate-Bill patently offensive to most Americans. City after city has passed resolutions condemning USA-PATRIOT ACT. Obama chose to side with tyranny over freedom and Bush over the folks on this issue. The Real ID Act, which would allow Michael Chertoff to declare martial law and imprison Americans, was supported by Obama, as noted above.
10. Obam is not a MAD MAN. Senator Obama Is not involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor, now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO), or Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley. Senator Obama is not involved in any nuclear security, bribery, money payoffs, or cronyism in the state of Illinois; or criminal activities related to the BIG HALIBURTAN and V.P. Cheney's Halliburton bribery case; or any political misjudgment in his escalating campaign crisis. "GLORK" Senator Obama is not a self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box. Obama executed no crime in Harlem. Obama is Not America's Poison -- Reality:...He's Radio-Active.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
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