Posted on 04/26/2008 6:31:54 PM PDT by blam
Tired Barack Obama resorts to aggression
By Tim Shipman in Kokomo, Indiana
Last Updated: 2:00am BST 27/04/2008
He seems tired, brittle and more aggressive, and some of his appealing hope and charisma have been dispensed with.
Five days after losing to Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama has taken off the gloves in his battle to win the American presidency - and in so doing has left critics wondering whether he is not just another conventional politician grubbing for votes.
After his loss in Pennsylvania, Obama strengthens his attack
In Indiana on Friday, scene of his next showdown with Mrs Clinton, he deployed sharper verbal onslaughts to go with the attack advertisements he has begun to run. Tackling the former first lady on health care, her key campaign issue, he said: "Here's the difference between Senator Clinton and myself. All these folks who talk about how experienced they are, you ask yourself, 'Why haven't we got health-care reform?' I'll get it done in my first term."
On Iraq, a war he opposed from the start, he is blunter than ever. "I was right. Those who voted for it, like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, were wrong."
But in the battle to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, it is Mr Obama who has not "got it done". He is convincingly, perhaps insurmountably, ahead in the number of states won, his share of the popular votes cast, and his tally of elected delegates. But he has yet to win over enough party grandees, the "super-delegates", to be sure of securing the nomination.
If he fails to wrest Indiana from Mrs Clinton, who is slightly ahead in the polls, his campaign fears that the remaining uncommitted super-delegates will lose faith in his ability to win and back his rival instead.
Defeat to Mrs Clinton by 10 points in Pennsylvania on Tuesday provided proof that recent ill-chosen words about working-class Americans who "cling" to God and guns because they are "bitter" about their economic hardship have hurt his candidacy. So, too, has his association with Jeremiah Wright, the incendiary pastor of his Chicago church.
advertisementWhere once Mr Obama emphasised what he could do for voters, at a town hall meeting in Kokomo, north of Indianapolis, he stressed instead what they could do for him. "I need you to fight for me, right here, right now," he pleaded.
He has spent a week facing accusations that he does not identify with ordinary voters. As he courted senior citizens on Friday he tried a little bonding. "Seniors, listen up. I'm getting grey hair myself. Running for president will age you quick."
It is not just his hair that is changing tone. The frontrunner, who had the nomination in the palm of his hand a month ago on the back of soaring rhetoric and a pledge to transform politics, sounds different, too. The Democratic battle increasingly resembles a civil war, with recognisable Cavaliers and Roundheads.
Mr Obama emerged, like Oliver Cromwell, as a challenger to the established order, with his New Model Army of students and internet donors, to unseat Mrs Clinton, whose apparent belief in her divine right to rule the Democrats echoed the doctrine of the Stuart monarchy.
But as the overwhelming favourite to take on Republican John McCain in November's election, Mr Obama now exhibits irritation at his need to keep explaining himself to those voters - including the white working class, older, women and Catholics - who remain stubbornly resistant to his charms. The Pennsylvania campaign created a New Model Obama who, in addition to running attack adverts, complains about media scrutiny of his missteps.
The scramble for delegates
The conservative columnist David Brooks, once an admirer, complained that he has morphed into "a more conventional politician", guilty of "the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics". The liberal commentator Paul Krugman condemned Mr Obama's reliance on the message that Mrs Clinton is unlikely to overcome his lead among pledged delegates. "'Yes we can' has become 'No she can't'," he wrote last week.
It is all a far cry from February, when the Republican senator Mitch McConnell joked that the Democratic race featured a New York senator born in Illinois, and an Illinois senator "who seems to have been born in a manger".
In the sweltering heat of a school sports hall, Mr Obama is still slick, at times uplifting, but the edges are flintier, the irritation at the same old questions about claims that he disrespects the American flag, more pronounced. "It's a lie," he finally blurts about the claim, after giving a laboured history of his patriotism.
Minutes later a young man is on his feet bursting with enthusiasm as he declares Mr Obama the candidate for his generation. "He's got energy," Mr Obama observes. "I want to plug him in. We could run a generator on him." The moment serves to reinforce the contrast with the candidate, who is clearly tired and lacks the electric energy of two months back.
Linda Colbert, 64, a Kokomo resident, believes he is feeling the pressure of failing to seal the nomination. "He's trying to get more aggressive," she said. "I don't think he expected it to be this close and now he's tightening up because he's got to get over the finish line."
Campaign insiders say the senator will do more to stress his humble roots as the scholarship schoolboy son of a single mother. In Indianapolis last week he pledged to "remind people of where I come from. I was raised with far fewer advantages than either of my two remaining opponents." In Kokomo he peppered his rally speech with references to his days as a community organiser in Chicago "helping folk laid off when the steel mills closed". Yet the poise with which he carries himself can seem aloof. There remains a suspicion that he is reluctant to tailor his appeal to those voters who want their president to be someone like them.
Senator Obama is gracing the next cover of GQ magazine, the men's style bible. One quote released by the magazine is revealing: "I'm in this to win and I think I will win. But I'm also going to emerge intact. I'm going to be Barack Obama and not some parody."
Democrat strategists say his campaign is carefully nailing down the pledges of super-delegates, to wheel out after the final primary on June 3. One strategist told The Sunday Telegraph that he has seen a list of 50 names ready to declare for Mr Obama within days of the last vote, but that his campaign expects to have up to 150, enough to clinch the nomination.
If he is to solidify his advantage, New Model Obama must combine some of the early Cavalier flair, with a bit more Roundhead pragmatism. Or come June, it may be his head the super-delegates chop off.
Obama hasn't morphed into anything, he is merely showing his true nature now that things are not going his way. How dare the media, or anyone, actually ask hard questions about his beliefs and his intentions and those of his associates. Why, to hear him and his crew(and to what should be his great shame, McCain)tell it, telling the truth is dirty politics.
Obama’s Pastor Celebrates 9/11 (explicit)
Only 5 Days After 3,000 Americans Killed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzhl-endvco
Jeremiah Wright Says America Deserved 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9HUdF9OZa8
Obama: Bitter Americans Cling to Guns and Religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJAl8a3d9Q
Meet Barack Hussein Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onOYL2ZG7fk
Obama’s Racially-Divisive Pastor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbUBTlmAiA
Obama Disrespecting U.S. Flag and Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8QCkgg5Kjo
The Audacity of Barack Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwjnT4eJJvs
The Audacity of Barack Obama 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeC8BE-2T_k
Is Obama Wright? - Pastor Wright & Senator Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72B3tUAqpo4
Obama’s Pastor - 9/11 Fault of Israel Association
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnI431s1r6s
Obama - Cult of Personality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP7lUGn7HWk
Name Obama’s Accomplishments if you can #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGeu_4Ekx-o
Name Obama’s Accomplishments if you can #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzFOOcEQtP0
Barack Obama: There Will Be Bamboozling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuB_W8o_UsU
The Two Things Senator Obama Accomplished
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/02/27/obamas-empty-change-message/
The Jeremiah Wright Lifetime Achievement Award
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prhnc2fxAzg
Gaza Strip Palestinians Campaigning for Obama
http://youtube.com/watch?v=21YF7ggCG6g
Barack Obama Doesn’t Want His Daughters ‘Punished’ With a Baby
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eNzmly28Bmg
Oh well :)
You nailed! :)
You wonder???
Hahahahahaha! Oh, Tim, you are so naive--such a fool!
My God, what a putz.
Obama clinged to his church early on to snow people into believing he was some fine Christian. Then he tried to distance himself from the church. Seems he cannot make up his mind.
Did he give another middle finger? Because there is nothing new or aggressive in the quotes in this article.
Obama's chances of being elected President are betweend zilch and zero.
Hillary might be electable--but only through election fraud.
If the Allies had invaded and occupied Germany after the violation rearmament provision of the Versailles Treaty in 1935 at a cost of 5,000 casualties and a long term occupation, an appeaser in 1940 would have claimed:
"I was right. Those who voted for it, like Winston Churchill, were wrong."
Another typical journalistic spin to imply something not there.
Fixed it.
Now I have to rewatch that old Richard Harris film about Oliver Cromwell to understand the historical references.
Obama's chances of being elected President are between zilch and zero.
Hillary might be electable--but only through election fraud.
The D's nomination process has come to the point that the Hillary and Obama camps don't care about McCain. Each camp wants to destroy the other so much, that each camp would happily vote for McCain just to prevent the other camp's candidate from becoming President.
Maybe Ken Burn's Civil War theme music should be played at the opening of the Democratic National Convention. ;)
Good one.
“..left critics wondering whether he is not just another conventional politician grubbing for votes.”
Are there still people wondering if Obanana and Hitlery do not fit that description? Come to think of it, McCrazy is the third member of that trio.
Obama cannot take what has been inflicted on President Bush for eight straight years
Uh oh, does that mean that if he wins he is going to dismiss congress (parliament) and rule as “Lord Protector?”
Is he also ‘gonna ban Christmas while he’s at it?
Who will he have beheaded?
Hillary or Dubya?
The answer is, yes, he’s just another conventional politician grubbing for votes.
HOw do you tell when a candidate is losing an election.
The answer is the candidate that changes tactics and strategy during the campaign.
A winning candidate has no reason to change anything. If he or she is winning all their goals are being met.
But a candidate that is losing has to do something different in order to have a chance to win. The candidate that changes tactics is always losing.
Typical old people!
I hate everything that Hillary Clinton stands for, but you have to admire her determination and unwillingness to give up.
I understand your point, but there's nothing admirable to me about her hunger for raw power and sense of entitlement masquerading as "determination and unwillingness to give up."
Agreed. Says a lot about this boy-candidate who grouses "Can't I eat my waffle?" when a reporter asks him a question.
Listen up, Hussein. You think it's bad now? Try putting up with four years (if you're not removed forcibly from office before then for treason and incompetency) of non-stop attacks from the New Media.
Unlike her battle strategy for Iraq.
Hillary might be electable—but only through election fraud.
__________________
Hillary is definitely electable, never underestimate the Clintons. Particularly since she is a fight to the death with an overtly socialist Obama with his posters whose concept is stolen from the communist, she will appear to be a “conservative”, and definitely a fighter.
Against someone whose conservatism was clearer, she’d lose for sure. Against McCain, who knows?
Hate to break the news - but all 3 of them are doing the same thing.
I'm no fan of any of them - but frankly - I like seeing Obama slapping the 'queen of entitlement' around. Hope he does more of it.
She likes to dish it out & then pulls the 'being picked on girl' when she gets it back.
This is true; I have a (black, male) Dem coworker who hates Hillary so much, and loves Obama so much, that he says he’ll vote for McCain if Hillary gets the nomination.
(He’s former military, was in the first Gulf War, so I think that also makes him slightly more McCain leaning anyway.)
Nobody dislike her more than me, but I agree. It reminds me of Bill when he first ran. I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would vote for him but he just kept at it no matter what, like she is doing, smiling and keeping on. Maybe it is because Obambi by comparison is such a weenie, and mccain is not far to the right of him.
“Obama cannot take what has been inflicted on President Bush for eight straight years.”
There’s a rather astute observation. He’d come completely unglued.
lol
You got that right. But he’ll have plenty of help from his close friends, i.e., ACLU, they can sue people, Ayers, he can blow things up, most terrorist types they can.... well you see where I’m going.... just like Sharpton who is now threatening to shut NYC down because ..... well, read for yourself. You know how it goes with some people when they don’t get their way.
Regardless, the last I heard Indiana might have a little bigotry, especially among the demos.
My prediction.......He’s going downnnnnnnnnn.
It’s exhausting keeping up a facade like he does. You know he’s dying to make a “Farakhan” speech inside. One thing you gotta give Hillary credit for...she’s relentless. Don’t step in it, BO. She’ll be chewing on you before you hit the ground.
It is time to give this Marxist impostor the Red Boating of his life.
The only thing Obama has left to do is angrily point and loudly shout, "White Devils."
I know he wants to shout that phrase given his devious friendships, comments and speeches.
While he is too much of a coward and snake to reveal his true beliefs, he certainly has hinted at them over the past few months with his "typical white person" comment and his close ties to vile black racists.
That is so true. Remember sKerry and his flip flops? He did everything possible to change his image. That worked real well. < /sarc
“whether he is not just another conventional politician grubbing for votes.”
I can’t recall any other politician grubbing for votes by attacking his own grandmother. Obama is in a class by himself.
The thing that keeps Obama from saying “White Devils” is that he is half white. And his daddy was the black sperm to his mama’s white egg. He is still against cross”race” relationships (he wrote about calling a friend of his an uncle tom for dating a white girl) but he cannot claim that his “black mom” was “oppressed” by the “white man”.
He is CRAZY screwed up over his broken Marxist home. A red diaper doper baby gone wrong and lashing out at the world.
Get him some counseling and keep him away from adult business, please.
To those who claim that there will be a riot in Colorado if Obama doesn’t get the nomination AND that Obama is easier to beat in the general election...
Considering how we were at the brink of Leftist revolutionaries rioting in the streets in 2000 and 2004, what makes you think that we won’t have a civil war break out in 2008 if Obama is the Democrat candidate and he loses in November? Say by 5%?
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