Obama Has the Upper Hand. But McCain Can Still Take Him.

 

By Dick Morris

John McCain is America’s favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support.

But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are destined to win the White House. But I don’t do political science; I do politics, and I’m convinced that McCain can still win — if he’s willing to follow the road map below.

McCain needs to not run as a traditional Republican, which is easy, since he’s not one. After all, how did an anti-torture, anti-tobacco, pro-campaign finance reform, anti-pork, pro-alternative-energy Republican ever emerge from the primaries alive? Simple: The GOP electorate, along with the rest of the country, has moved somewhat to the left. (In Florida, for example, exit polls showed that only 27 percent of Republican primary voters described themselves as “very conservative,” while 28 percent said they were “moderate” and 2 percent said they were “very liberal.”)

Read full article at the Washington Post [here]

 

Officials say Obama starts search for running mate

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama has begun a top-secret search for a running mate, fresh signs that the general election campaign is well under way and the primary race against Hillary Rodham Clinton is basically over.

Obama has asked former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson to begin vetting potential vice presidential picks, Democratic officials said Thursday. Johnson did the same job for Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984.

Obama refused to acknowledge Johnson’s role when The Associated Press asked the Illinois senator about it in the Captiol Thursday.

“I haven’t hired him. He’s not on retainer. I’m not paying him any money. He is a friend of mine. I know him,” Obama said. “I am not commenting on vice presidential matters because I have not won this nomination.”

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McCain To Attend NAACP Convention

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(AP) What a difference a nomination makes. Now that he’s wrapped up the Republican nomination for president, Sen. John McCain has decided to attend the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Cincinnati in July. A year ago when he was just one of a pack of GOP contenders, he turned down the civil rights group’s invitation.

McCain disclosed his plans in an interview with the African-American publication Essence, which was released Tuesday. Asked how he might reach out to the black community, McCain replied that he would “go to places and venues that would allow me to continue a dialogue with the African-American community. I will go to the NAACP convention.”

McCain noted that he “talked about the need to include ‘forgotten Americans’” during a visit he recently made to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., where Alabama state troopers and local sheriffs deputies stormed and beat 800 blacks and whites marching for voting rights on March 7, 1965.

Go to CBS News for full article [here]

Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama

By JODI KANTOR

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — At the Aberdeen Golf and Country Club on Sunday, the fountains were burbling, the man-made lakes were shining, and Shirley Weitz and Ruth Grossman were debating why Jews in this gated neighborhood of airy retirement homes feel so much trepidation about SenatorBarack Obama.

“The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel,” Ms. Weitz, 83, said, lingering over brunch.

“They’re going to vote for McCain,” she said.

Ms. Grossman, 80, agreed with her friend’s conclusion, but not her reasoning.

“They’ll pick on the minister thing, they’ll pick on the wife, but the major issue is color,” she said, quietly fingering a coffee cup. Ms. Grossman said she was thinking of voting for Mr. Obama, who is leading in the delegate count for the nomination, as was Ms. Weitz.

Read full article.. at the New York Times

HARKIN SUGGESTS MILITARY BACKGROUND MAKES MCCAIN UNFIT TO BE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

 

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin is catching grief for suggesting John McCain’s family history of military service makes the presumptive Republican presidential nominee unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Harkin, who has a history of embellishing his own military record, told Iowa reporters last week that McCain’s background as the son and grandson of Navy admirals creates a “dangerous” situation because he can only view the world through the prism of the military.

“He has a hard time thinking beyond that,” Harkin said, according to The Des Moines Register. “I think he’s trapped in that. Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.”

The paper also quotes Iowa’s junior senator telling reporters, “It’s one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that’s just how you’re steeped, how you’ve learned, how you’ve grown up.”

Military service is not a foreign concept to U.S. presidents. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spent seven years as assistant secretary of the Navy, Bill Clinton is the only president to have not served in some branch of the military.

McCain, who touts his family history on the campaign trail, was a Vietnam War pilot who spent five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp rather than accept the North Vietnamese offer to release him ahead of his fellow troops because he was the son of an admiral.

Read More at Fox News

McCain’s Strategy For Beating Obama

(AP) Republican John McCain’s game plan for beating Democrat Barack Obama rests on one huge assumption: Despite an unpopular war, an uncertain economy and the GOP’s beleaguered status, the country still leans more to the right than to the left. 

“There are going to be stark choices between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican,” McCain says at nearly every turn as he seeks to portray Obama as out of step with the nation. The more the GOP nominee-in-waiting can frame the debate along those lines, and capture a larger chunk of the electorate’s center, the better his chance to eke out a victory in an extraordinarily challenging political environment. 

Of course, a slew of other factors will come into play, including experience, character and outside events. 

And, although Republicans shy away from publicly discussing it, race could have an enormous role. Public attitudes about issues like taxes and health care have been tested for years, but no one knows whether the nation will elect a black man, Obama, as president. 

Age is another unknown. McCain will be 72 in August and would be the country’s oldest elected president; Obama is more than two decades younger. 

Seeking an early edge, McCain has spent the past few weeks laying out arguments against Obama, who is on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination over Hillary Rodham Clinton. McCain has claimed that Obama lacks experience, raised questions about his judgment and suggested that the Democrat offers change that could imperil the country.

Read more at CBS News.

Fact check: Obama questions McCain on lobbyists

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama had harsh words for Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying McCain once wanted far tougher lobbying reforms than those he has imposed on his own presidential campaign.

Democrats are trying to make McCain seem less than sincere on the issue of lobbying. They argue that while he has built a career and image as a reformer, trying to rid politics of the influence of money and special interests, he has hired lobbyists and former lobbyists to run his presidential campaign.

McCain instituted a new lobbying policy last week that says no campaign staffer can be a registered lobbyist. Unpaid advisers also must disclose whether they are registered lobbyists or work on behalf of foreign entities.

The Arizona senator created the policy after being stung by the disclosure that two advisers worked for a firm that had represented Myanmar’s military junta, which has restricted foreign assistance for cyclone victims.

“We have enacted the most comprehensive and transparent policy in any presidential campaign in history, and I challenge Senator Obama to adopt the same policy,” McCain told reporters Monday.

Three more departures resulted from the new policy, most recently a top fundraiser and lobbyist, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler.

Continue.. at the Associated Press