Obama gains ground in Hillary country

Harlem State Senator Bill Perkins became the first major elected Clinton supporter in New York to break ranks and endorse Senator Barack Obama.

"I think that his message of hope and opportunity is the right message. ... There's no question that folks in New York - and throughout the country - are looking for a change from the way things are being done," said Perkins.

Other NY elected officials have banded together to explore the possibility of endorsing Obama.

Barack makes Time's most influential

Obama was selected as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. Hillary Clinton also made the list, but Barack got better coverage on the magazine cover:

More MySpace news

There are two important MySpace developments to report.

First is a statement from Joe Rospars posted on the official blog:

There have been a lot of questions and comments in this community related to our MySpace profile, and so I wanted to come by and clarify how we got here and answer questions.

Our campaign started quickly. People around here say that this has been like building an airplane in mid-air, having already taken off. This is especially true of the New Media operation. While the campaign in general is going from zero to sixty, our team is at the same time charged with exploring the new ways we can build relationships between Barack and his supporters, and foster relationships among supporters themselves.

When it came to MySpace, we decided to take a leap. We decided to make the attempt to combine the organic support and community-building of a grassroots effort with the official campaign outreach efforts.

In many ways this mirrors what has happened on the campaign's own web site. On February 10th, the day Barack announced his candidacy in Springfield, we launched My.BarackObama.com has an unprecedented public utility for supporters.

Even on the campaign's own web site, the organizing efforts and community-building by the grassroots has outpaced the growth of the traditional campaign infrastructure. On the site, over 11,500 people have created their own blogs about everything from their issue priorities to their personal experience campaigning locally. Thousands of events have been planned using the events tool (social events, planning meetings, small fundraisers), and tens of thousands of people have RSVPed to these grassroots-driven gatherings.

And over 5,000 grassroots volunteer groups have been founded -- in many states, these groups will be the only organizational presence the campaign has. Even in the early states, staff organizers are hitting ground in places where volunteer groups have already been meeting and organizing. One of the first orders of business for new staff on the ground is getting to know the grassroots who have already started building the movement.

When it comes to MySpace, I'm not sure if a campaign of this size has ever teamed-up with a grassroots volunteer on this scale, but we wanted to give it a try.

Joe Anthony's great work was building community at the www.myspace.com/barackobama address, and so we contacted him.

At that point, the profile had about 40,000 friends, and to our delight, Joe agreed to work with us. Indeed, he seemed relieved to have some help -- he gave us the password, and we began to exchange content, work together, and continue growing this community from the ground-up. We created images that he (and others online) could post, and began going through the process of preparing the profile to be "official" by combing through the content and establishing a plan to ensure that everyone who tried to contact the campaign through the profile received an answer. (People wrote messages and comments in huge numbers, virtually all addressed to Barack or the campaign -- "Will you come speak at my graduation?", "Where do you stand on issue X?", "How can I help locally?", etc.)

We started talking to Joe about formalizing the arrangement, preserving his work building the community, and talking through how to preserve his involvement in the direction and development of the profile.

For a time, both the campaign and Joe had mutual access. Soon after, MySpace launched a promotional campaign to direct traffic to the official candidate pages. The campaign allowed MySpace to promote this unofficial profile because, strictly speaking, there was no official presence. And so MySpace began featuring the profile in candidate promotions -- and the friends and workload grew.

We knew Joe had a full-time job already, and, early on, we floated the idea of moving to Chicago to work for us full-time (potential staffers were moving to Chicago and join the team at that time, and there were openings). I totally agree when Chris Bowers says that the New Media/online outreach efforts of campaigns should be a priority -- and we have built an operation here in Chicago and in the early states that reflects that posture.

But Joe seemed to prefer to volunteer part-time from the outside with the campaign to continue building the community. He said he was honored to help out, and we were honored to work with him. We worked through the complications that arose: letting Joe know that he shouldn't work on the site from work, educated him about the rules governing campaign promotion of official Senate material, etc. Joe was right with us, and things continued down the path towards making this unofficial community into an official space run with help from volunteers.

As we progressed, we began to work-up paperwork that would codify this arrangement -- ensuring that the campaign would have full access (what if someone put up an obscene comment during the day while Joe was at work?), and assuming the liability burden (legally, ethically, and politically) for what happened on the site.

At the same time, though, the community had skyrocketed. Nobody expected the grassroots to respond this campaign in such large numbers the way they have, and the rapid growth of the MySpace profile once the MySpace Impact Channel began promoting the various candidates is yet another example of the appeal of Barack. We were well over 100,000 friends, and the burden of administering such a profile became immense.

Unfortunately, at that point, Joe changed the password on the profile, and didn't give us the new one, like he had done in the past. This changed the previous dynamic, and we could no longer access the profile at a moment's notice if need be. We asked Joe what was needed to restore access, and subsequently we received the list of itemized financial requests that have been discussed elsewhere.

This made us uncomfortable. Every day, MySpace was driving tens of thousands of people to the page on the premise that this was more or less our "official" presence -- yet we had no access to the content on the page, and no ability to be responsive to the thousands of messages coming in from supporters seeking information or action from the campaign.

We talked to Joe and made clear that we truly wanted to incorporate the community into the campaign's official presence, but that if these financial demands were a precursor to the campaign having access at all, that we would need to start with an official profile separately and have MySpace promote that instead.

And so it became clear that we needed to have MySpace point people at something we had at least basic access to -- immediately. In MySpace, politicians, musicians, and other public figures have the right to their own name (www.myspace.com/barackobama, www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton, etc.), and so we asked MySpace for use of that URL and to ensure that any promotion of "official" profiles for candidates be directed to the new profile our team created.

The community of the 160,000 still exists, and we've made sure that MySpace will let Joe have access to the community he helped build. And we hope we can continue to work with him to make that as effective as it can be.

At the end of the day, this is all new for everyone -- this Joe, that Joe, and everyone participating or commenting on it. We're flying by the seat of our pants, and establishing new ways of doing things every day. We're going to try new things, and sometimes it's going to work, and sometimes it's not going to work. That's the cost and that's the risk of experimenting. Joe launched this profile for all the right reasons, and for a while grew it with us.

But the ultimate purpose is building a community around the idea that ordinary people can come together and affect change in this country. Barack Obama is the candidate I believe can transform the process and make that change happen.

And, to the extent that more and more people every day come to that same conclusion, my bet is that both profiles will continue to grow.

The other development was a call from Barack Obama to Joe Anthony, the owner of the original MySpace page for Obama, as reported in the latter's MySpace blog:

Dated Today May 2, 2007

TC from Barack Obama (!!!)

I just received a phone call from Barack Obama himself.

He expressed his appreciation and we agreed that there is something to be learned by everyone involved at this point. (Frankly, I was a little surprised by the call, and was too nervous to remember any exact quotes)

I assured him that this is just a horrible thing that happened and obviously he wasn't responsible and shouldn't be held responsible. It's his campaign that perhaps mismanaged this whole thing. He of course stands by his campaign, but again. . . much to be learned by all.

I'm sure he has mixed feelings in speaking with me about this, but it was nice of him to call, and quite an honor to finally speak to him!

I guess I have mixed feelings as well, but it was still a great honor.

I urge you all to consider this situation carefully. It'll take time for me to work this out and decide if I will personally continue to support Obama, regardless of how I feel about his campaign's handling of this situation.

It's not right what they did to me and this profile, but it's also wrong to let this change your views of Barack Obama as a candidate.

After all it was Obama that inspired me to do all this.

What a day. I'll keep you posted. . . .

MySpace Hoopla

Media reports are buzzing over the Obama camp takeover of the Barack Obama page on MySpace.com.

The action has caused what I would say is some of the first truly internal, rather than mischief-related, rumblings among the Obama netroots crowd. Not surprising perhaps given the scale of his support.

Here is a part of what I wrote about the incident on the official public blog:

This whole episode brought to my mind the concept of "esprit de corps."

Under one definition this term refers to those who have sort of a sense of belonging to a group, organization, movement, etc.

Another definition involves a belief in which the well-being of the whole is taken as more important than that of any of its members.

Some people see Anthony as selfish and greedy. After all he was volunteering his time just like the rest of us. Why should he expect to get paid any more than any of us? Why could he not see the wisdom of ceding to the official campaign for the sake of the overall effort?

Others see Anthony as someone who was wronged. Who had his creation forcibly taken from him, although apparently he was offered some compensation.

The rights of the individual come into play in this type of thinking. A dislike of top-down hierarchy.

Are there two different bodies here -- one of the movement, and another of the centralized official campaign?

Or is this there a head (official campaign) connected to a body (movement, grassroots support)?

Of course, I referring to the more committed Obama supporters and realize that a lot of people on this site are just checking things out.

On another front, Oprah endorsed Barack again this time on the Larry King Show. A Mother Jones article comments: "If Obama uses Oprah to chip away at Clinton's base amongst women, it's over. Obama should just start campaign for re-election."

Bringing up race again...and again

Recently, the "white guilt" and "Magic Negro" theories on Barack Obama's campaign have resurfaced in print and blog media.

Unfortunately, it's still difficult for some people to understand how a person, particularly a white person, could support a black person for president.

The simple history of the movement to draft Obama puts to rest these concocted theories rather quickly. Barack has a natural appeal to young people who played a very key role in his decision to run. He's young himself, idealistic in many ways and reminds many people of all ages of John F. Kennedy. He has very similar charismatic appeal.

Another important segment that drove the draft Obama movement were the opponents of the Iraq War. Do a great extent this group overlapped with Barack's young supporters, many of whom have friends or family in Iraq.

Barack has anti-war creds going back to 2002.

The whole idea that Barack's support despite his supposed lack of experience backs up the "white guilt" theory goes against historical analysis.

The last two presidents were elected without any Washington experience at all.

George W. Bush served only one term as governor of Texas before his election as president. In comparison, Barack will have had 12 years in high elective office, two terms in the Illinois State Senate and one in the U.S. Senate, if elected.

Barack is a superb writer and speaker and this no doubt has drawn many into his circle. He has natural appeal to people of all races.

This appeal has been demonstrated recently by his growing support among African Americans, who certainly don't suffer from white guilt. Some polls show him leading Hillary Clinton among this population group drastically reversing Clinton's previous "slam-dunk" backing among blacks.

Many commentators have noted that Barack has a particularly set of skills and experience that are particularly relevant to our time. His international background, multi-cultural upbringing in Hawai'i, and his intimate understanding of Muslim culture are among the unique qualities he brings to the table.

His appeal to progressives is also natural given his background as a street-level community organizer.

We live in a polarized world where the old clash between Muslim and Christian has been revived. Barack effectively straddles those two conflicting worlds. We live in a country that is increasingly biracial or in some cases as in Hawai'i, multiracial. And the environment is becoming more multicultural all the time.

Who can deny Barack's multicultural appeal?

There is something compelling about Obama's life-story. It's not Horatio Algier. He did not grow up dirt poor or pull himself up out of the gutter.

But his youth straddled the globe. He dealt with questions at a young age that are highly relevant to the situation America finds itself in today. He was raised by parents of both Muslim and Christian background, though non-religious. His search for identity that led him from the beaches of Hawai'i to the streets of Chicago is fascinating and attracts people toward him.

Now we should note that there is also this confusion about Barack as a "Safe Negro."

Of course, no one votes for anybody just because they are "safe" so we have to see this aspect in conjunction with the ideas of "white guilt" and the "Magic Negro."

Barack is not the confrontational, fiery black reverend type made familiar by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. However, that's the only way we can really consider him "safe."

Opposed to this view is the picture of Barack Hussein Obama (rhymes with Osama), the supposed "hidden Muslim" ready to turn America into a Talibanic state upon taking office. Or the Barack Obama who attends an "Afrocentric" church. The Barack Obama who joined anti-war protests went it was not a popular thing for Democrats to do.

However, all the efforts to paint Obama as an "unsafe" candidate have had little effect on his ratings. Some thought when the senator stood up in the Imus controversy it would hurt his support because he was stirring up the racial pot. But they were wrong. There is little evidence to support the suggestion that Barack cannot talk about race, or overtly oppose racism.

Barack does not have a confrontational style, indeed his style is considered unusual for Democrats in general. But again, his unique approach of looking at the problem from all angles is something that separates Barack from the pack.

When we take off the race-tinted glasses, we find that there are many, many reasons to support Barack Obama as a person as a candidate regardless of race.

I think the real question that is perplexing the "Old Guard" is why even with these qualities are people supporting him in spite of his race. In the old way of thinking, race should be the primary, overriding factor, and old-way thinkers can't quite figure out what's going on.

Bush vetoes Iraq bill, Obama answers

President George W. Bush vetoed the Iraq withdrawal bill today prompting this response from Senator Barack Obama:

With one stroke of his pen, President Bush has stubbornly ignored the will of the American people, the majority of Congress and, most disturbingly, the realities on the ground in Iraq. Now we call upon our Republican colleagues in Congress to help override this veto and acknowledge what the President will not – that there is no military solution to a political conflict that lies at the heart of this civil war. Only the Iraqi leadership can make peace, and the best way to pressure them to do so is still a phased withdrawal of American forces with the goal of removing all combat troops from Iraq by March 30th, 2008. It is time to end this war so we can bring our troops home and redeploy our forces to help fight the broader struggle against terrorism and other threats of this new century.

Obama, The Conciliator

Shawna V, the creator of the "Obama Imagines" video wondered what she could do to help Barack in his race:

"I sometimes wonder how I can really get involved in this campaign and make a difference. I'm not a wealthy person that can tap the ladies at the country club for their donations. And I'm no longer a student in college with hours on end to volunteer and a seemingly impenetrable shield of optimism. I work full-time and I'm a full-time mom. I was literally nursing my toddler's flu symptoms while trying to catch snippets of the debate. I missed Obama coming to Tampa because I had to work. How in the world can I help get this man elected in what I feel is one of the most critical elections of my lifetime?"

Well, it didn't take her long to come up with a gem:





Obama, The Conciliator

The New Yorker has an excellent in-depth article on Obama that breaks down how this man ticks. A must-read for Barackists and the curious alike:


"There are three things that Democratic political candidates tend to do when talking with constituents: they display an impressive grasp of the minutiae of their constituents’ problems, particularly money problems; they rouse indignation by explaining how those problems are caused by powerful groups getting rich on the backs of ordinary people; and they present well-worked-out policy proposals that, if passed, would solve the problems and put the powerful groups in their place. Obama seldom does any of these things. He tends to underplay his knowledge, acting less informed than he is. He rarely accuses, preferring to talk about problems in the passive voice, as things that are amiss with us rather than as wrongs that have been perpetrated by them."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/07/070507fa_fact_macfarquhar

Results of the Halle Berry primary

Endorsements flow in

South Carolina Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum and more than a dozen other S.C. Democrats endorsed Barack Obama on Monday.

Joining Tenenbaum are:

Rep. Bakari Sellers of Bamberg; Rep. Todd Rutherford of Columbia; Columbia City Council members E.W. Cromartie and Tameika Isaac-Devine; Emile DeFelice, the party’s 2006 candidate for state agricultural commissioner; former state party chairman Dick Harpootlian; Columbia activist and former state representative I.S. Leevy Johnson; Rep. Joe Jefferson of Berkeley County; Phil Noble of Charleston, president of the S.C. Democratic Leadership Council; Irmo Town Councilman Barry Walker; and Columbia activist Bud Ferillo.