Sen. Obama made an important announcement on Monday Night Football. Allahpundit, who we stole this clip and subsequent commentary from, said “I like to picture the Clintons sitting together watching it, she with a look of annoyance, he trying to suppress a smile at the slickness of it all.” Hard to imagine that scenario NOT happening.
[C]oolness doesn’t get you elected, and coolness wasn’t what had the New Hampshire audiences even more excited after they heard Obama speak. They were in love with the senator’s message, a call to political renewal and rebirth that eschews what he calls the “24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative-ad, bickering, small-minded politics.â€â€¦
If he decides to run, Obama faces the difficulty of any politician campaigning against politics as usual—he can’t act politically or he ruins his brand… If voters stay in such a deep state of affection, they may get disappointed some day when he doesn’t walk on water.
He has acted politically, though: according to the New York Post, he’s got a perfect rating from lefty lobbyists Americans for Democratic Action — five points to the left of Teddy Kennedy, in fact. On the other hand, he’s got absolutely no foreign policy experience. Howard Kurtz thinks that makes him unelectable; I think it’s just the opposite. Decades of Bakerite realism got us to 9/11; three years of Bush’s idealism got us to the brink of civil war in Iraq. Why not try an unknown quantity?
The leading potential heirs to that political fortune so far are Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a onetime rival to the current President Bush and presumed front-runner for the nomination, and, a bit surprisingly, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has emerged as a top-tier contender by wooing social conservatives considered crucial in the early primary contests.
Adding to the drama, a sibling divide appears to be emerging among aides closest to President Bush and his brother, outgoing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Some key members of Gov. Bush’s tight-knit inner circle have signed up to help Romney, while several of President Bush’s senior strategists have gone to McCain. They include the media advisor and political director for the president’s 2004 campaign.
Find out about the Democrats’ big plans for running Congress. Very out of place joke for Letterman. Think it is a sign we can expect more democrat jokes for the next 2 years? Doubtful.
From NBC’s Huma Zaidi: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will make a formal announcement at noon tomorrow in Cleveland that he will run for president in 2008. According to the AP, Kucinich said he’s running because he doesn’t feel his party is doing enough to get the US out of Iraq.
Kucinich, who ran for president in 2004, received just 1% of the vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He was the last candidate to officially drop out of the race before endorsing Sen. John Kerry.
Sources tell CandidatesBlog that the progressive wing of the Democratic party is planning high volume support for Kucinich in an effort to intimidate likely frontrunner Hillary Clinton to make a hard move to the left. Once she appears to give to this pressure, they will vocally endorse her in hopes that the strategy will unite the Democratic party. One progressive source currently working for a Senator whom we were asked not to name, tells us “We’re tired of this glorification of being a centrist. If the Republicans nominate Mccain, the last thing we can do is nominate someone like present day Hillary, where the voters will see little difference between the two. If Hillary is destined to get the position, we need to put heavy pressure on her to get back to her roots and actually fight for the values she was once a poster for”.
We have recieved no indication from anyone in the Kucinich camp that they are part of this strategy.
Lindsay Lohan is set to battle the accusations that she is addicted to the drug Oxycontin and may have overdosed on Cocaine by bringing out the big guns in Washington. The troubled actress sent out a bizarre rambling, often misspelt email, the full text of which can be read on slate.com, which appears to be motivated by recent attacks on Lohan in the tabloid press. The e-mail says she wants help in going after the magazines that made the accusations and drops a few powerful names:
Have Harvey (sic) and all lawyers help me please. If he is willing. Al Gore will help me he came up to me last night and said he would be very happy to have a conversation with me. If he is willing to help me, let’s find out. Hilary (sic) Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Evan metroplis, (sic) and John Daur who works with them would be willing, if we just ask. If we just ASK.
According to the website Actress Archives, Al Gore and Lindsay Lohan did meet last week at the GQ Men of the Year dinner, a fact that was confirmed by Gore’s PR rep, who said, “I can confirm to you that Mr. Gore has only met Ms. Lohan once, very briefly, at the GQ Men of the Year dinner last week. There were hundreds of other guests.”
Hillary Clinton apparently has not been asked if she knows that she is to give Lindsay an assist, but as she has kicked off her run for the 2008 election she may actually have to give some answer.
Although this may be a silly story about Lohan, it doesn’t take a completely conspiritorial mind to notice that any connection these two media-stiff politicians can get to a younger livlier crowd – the better for their image.
Newly elected Senate Republican Whip Trent Lott will host a 10 a.m. coffee session for invited Republican guests Tuesday at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington to discuss Sen. John McCain’s impending campaign for president with him and McCain.
Lott, a supply-sider and social conservative, had not been allied with McCain previously. However, in his e-mailed invitation, Lott asserted, “John and I have been friends for many years, and my respect for him is unparalleled.” Tuesday’s meeting with McCain, Lott said, will “begin to build an organization that focuses not on our differences, but on our shared goals for peace and prosperity for this nation.”
A footnote: New York investment banker Ken Langone is hosting a fund-raising cocktail reception for former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s prospective presidential campaign the evening of Dec. 19 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel ballroom in Manhattan. The price: $2,100 per person and $4,200 per couple.
Lost amid the hype about Barack Obama’s presidential prospects, and the conventional wisdom that the Democrats’ 2008 nomination is Hillary Clinton’s for the asking, John Edwards has been overlooked.
But the former one-term senator from North Carolina, who was the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004, is perhaps its best chance to win the White House.
Part of this is merely the accident of his birth. He was born in South Carolina and no Democrat has been elected president since 1960 who wasn’t a southerner. And, that is the case because of more than just the happenstance of history.
Democrats need some electoral votes in Dixie to avoid painting themselves into an uncomfortable corner. It is mathematically possible for them to win without carrying southern states, but as a practical matter it is a very, very uphill undertaking. It will get even more difficult after the 2010 Census shifts additional electoral votes South and West.
Meanwhile, the northerners that the Democrats have been nominating for president in recent decades have been unable to appeal to enough southern voters, who are generally more conservative, to make the region competitive.
- excerpt from recent RealClearPolitics column By Peter Brown
Be the First to Comment 
From the LA Times:
From NBC’s Huma Zaidi: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will make a formal announcement at noon tomorrow in Cleveland that he will run for president in 2008. According to the AP, Kucinich said he’s running because he doesn’t feel his party is doing enough to get the US out of Iraq.
Lindsay Lohan is set to battle the accusations that she is addicted to the drug Oxycontin and may have overdosed on Cocaine by bringing out the big guns in Washington. The troubled actress sent out a bizarre rambling, often misspelt email, the full text of which can be read on 