IT'S OFFICIAL: NC GOES BLUE FOR OBAMA!

I can finally truly celebrate Obama's victory. I couldn't really celebrate until now. I know that sounds insane, and that's fine if it does. But I wasn't even truly happy during Obama's speech Tuesday night, because we weren't part of it. Now we are, and the US electoral map has officially changed, probably forever. By 2030, NC is projected to be the #7 most populated state, which will bring its electoral votes from 15 up to 20/21/22. And the state's electorate will only be getting bluer and bluer.

Basically, the Republicans have a new Pennsylvania they will have to worry about in every election from here on out.

"Obama Adds Symbolic NC victory to White House Win" [AP]

Working for Obama in the NC Mountains

I haven't been blogging lately because I was offered a Get Out The Vote position with the Obama campaign in the mountains of North Carolina. Most of my father's family is from McDowell County, so I spent a lot of time in the mountains during my childhood. I can't put into words how exciting it is to be working for the Obama campaign in my home state, especially in a part of the state where much of my family tree is rooted. Once I got the assignment, I made some "Scotch-Irish For Obama" buttons with the help of a couple of friends of mine, and it has been fun wearing mine around town (call me biased, but the plaid in the background is the Anderson tartan).

I can't talk about anything campaign-related, but I can say that the support for Obama in the mountains definitely includes a broader range of people than I had expected (it's not just Asheville, which is one of the most liberal cities in the Southeast). The man pictured above, who lives in Swain County, is probably one of the most compelling examples.

Anyway, I will resume blogging sometime after Election Day - in the meantime, don't forget to vote.

Hyperlinked Summary of Barack Obama's Legislative Record

*****ILLINOIS STATE SENATE*****

Barack Obama served in the Illinois Senate for eight years (1997 to 2004), sponsoring 823 bills, according to a graphic created by the New York Times (http://tinyurl.com/37kxxo). Bills sponsored by Obama which were enacted into law include: the 1998 Illinois Gift Ban (http://tinyurl.com/56ldrm), which has been described as the state's "most sweeping good-government legislation in decades"; the 2003 Hospital Report Card Act (http://tinyurl.com/6gnv4e), which requires hospitals to disclose infection rates, nurse staffing levels, and the average number of hours worked per nurse in quarterly reports; the 2004 Health Care Justice Act (http://tinyurl.com/6ryyn4), which established a bipartisan commission tasked with creating a universal health care access plan for IL residents; a 2003 law which expanded state health care coverage to 154,000 IL residents by raising the eligibility requirement from 185% to 200% of the federal poverty line (http://tinyurl.com/5ezlkg); a 2003 law which made Illinois the first state to require videotaped interrogations of suspects in capital cases (http://tinyurl.com/6afdoq); and a 2003 law which addressed racial profiling during traffic stops by requiring police departments to report the race/age/gender of those stopped (http://tinyurl.com/5rmcuy).

One thing that stands out about Obama’s record in the State Senate is his belief that providing greater transparency is a key to government reform. The common thread between the Gift Ban, the Hospital Report Card Act, the videotaped interrogations law, and the racial profiling law is that they all reflect the view that sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. In the case of his videotaped interrogations law, Obama eventually was able to convince skeptical law enforcement officials and Republican legislators that transparency would improve the criminal justice system for everyone, because, in his words, "the videotaping of interrogations and confessions is both a tool for protecting the innocent as well as a tool for convicting the guilty." (http://tinyurl.com/35lcyh). The Obama Campaign's legislative highlights page has more detailed information on his career in the Illinois Senate (http://tinyurl.com/35lcyh).

*****U.S. SENATE*****

In his three-and-a-half years as a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama has built a record that supports his campaign’s emphasis on reform. During that time, the Illinois Democrat has also demonstrated a strong willingness to reach across the aisle, co-sponsoring legislation with Republican Senators like Dick Lugar (R-IN), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and even his current opponent, John McCain (R-AZ). In a hearing on the Coburn-Obama bill, McCain, who was also one of the bill's co-sponsors, said: "I want to again thank the bipartisanship that is associated with this bill, including Senator Carper and Senator Obama." (http://tinyurl.com/63wenj).

According to the Library of Congress, Barack Obama has sponsored 136 bills during his term as a U.S. Senator, 66 during the 109th Congress (http://tinyurl.com/5b9jvj) and another 70 during the 110th Congress (http://tinyurl.com/66oplc). He has also co-sponsored 659 bills, 255 during the 109th Congress (http://tinyurl.com/68kppa) and 404 during the 110th Congress (http://tinyurl.com/6n2lrf). Senator Obama currently serves on four Senate committees: Foreign Relations, Veterans' Affairs, Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (http://tinyurl.com/59tchp).

THE ETHICS REFORM LAW

Barack Obama's emergence as a national leader on the issue of ethics reform has probably been the most impressive aspect of his career in the U.S. Senate, and it would have been impossible without his strong track record of reform in the Illinois State Senate. The Democratic Party successfully ran on a platform of changing Washington’s "culture of corruption" in the 2006 congressional elections, and party leaders made ethics reform their first order of business. Obama and Russ Feingold (D-WI) were tapped to lead the party's high-profile push for new ethics standards, and together they drafted a "gold standard bill" (http://tinyurl.com/3e4x86), which included bans on gifts, meals and travel funded by lobbyists, a new requirement that legislators to pay charter rates on corporate jets, and greater disclosure of donation "bundling" by lobbyists (http://tinyurl.com/5tzczf).

Feingold and Obama introduced their bill on January 8th, and several days later, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) authored an amendment which would strengthen the legislation’s prohibitions on anonymous earmarks, requiring public disclosure of which legislator is responsible for adding an earmark to a piece of legislation (http://tinyurl.com/57nxka). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) opposed the DeMint amendment and pressured the Democrats to vote to table the amendment - but the motion to table it failed, because nine Democrats, along with Joe Lieberman (I-CT), voted with the Republicans to keep the DeMint amendment. Among the Democrats who broke ranks with their party’s leadership were the two drafters of the ethics bill, Feingold and Obama, former Presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA), and newly-elected Senators John Tester (D-MT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) (http://tinyurl.com/2zwlbp). The next day, Senate Majority Leader Reid changed his tune and supported the earmark reform provision (http://tinyurl.com/5o5u9o).

Next, Feingold and Obama introduced an amendment to address the issue of Washington’s "revolving door" - legislators leaving the public sector to work as lobbyists. The amendment increased the amount of time legislators must wait before participating in lobbying activities from one year to two years (http://tinyurl.com/5rg3zs). On January 19th, the Senate passed the ethics reform legislation, including the Feingold-Obama amendment on lobbying, by a 96-2 vote (http://tinyurl.com/5uzz2o). American University political science professor James Thurber predicted that the law would have a substantial impact: "It will change lawmakers' behavior and lobbyists' behavior as well, and it will bring more transparency to lobbying." (http://tinyurl.com/5uzz2o).

THE LUGAR-OBAMA PROLIFERATION AND THREAT REDUCTION INITIATIVE

One of Senator Obama's first major achievements in the U.S. Senate was working with Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) as a co-sponsor of the Lugar-Obama proliferation and threat reduction initiative (http://tinyurl.com/5gdolf), which updates the programs established by the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The Nunn-Lugar law, passed in 1992, focused on the interdiction of unsecured WMD's in the recently-dissolved Soviet Union, especially nuclear weapons; the Lugar-Obama law expands the scope of those programs to include conventional (non-WMD) weapons like shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, and also bolsters the State Department's ability to interdict materials used to make WMD's.

According to Lugar's press release hailing the passage of the legislation, the bill had its roots in the senators' work together on the Nunn-Lugar programs: "Lugar and Obama traveled together to Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan in August 2005 to oversee a number of Nunn-Lugar projects. In Ukraine they saw a conventional weapons facility that is typical of the focus of the new legislation." (http://tinyurl.com/689mos). The picture of Obama and Lugar in the top-right corner of this page was taken during their tour of that facility in the Ukraine (http://tinyurl.com/6egvp5). In a 2006 article, the Washington Monthly described Lugar as Obama's mentor in the Senate, calling the bipartisan pairing "the most dynamic duo in Washington today," and attributing their collaborative relationship to a shared realist approach to foreign policy (http://tinyurl.com/2su5f5).

THE OBAMA-HAGEL COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR THREAT REDUCTION PROVISION

In addition to the Lugar-Obama threat reduction law, the Illinois Democrat co-authored the Comprehensive Nuclear Threat Reduction provision with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), which was attached to the omnibus appropriations bill signed into law in December 2007. According to a press release issued by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who sponsored the bill in the House, the Obama-Hagel provision "requires the President to submit to Congress a comprehensive plan for ensuring that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material at vulnerable sites around the world are secure by 2012 from the threats that terrorists have shown they can pose." (http://tinyurl.com/58xh3w).

THE COBURN-OBAMA "GOOGLE THE GOVERNMENT" LAW

Obama was the lead co-sponsor of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (http://tinyurl.com/659tuf) - often called the "Google the Government" law, or the Coburn-Obama law - which created a searchable database that allows citizens to track federal spending (http://www.USAspending.gov). Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the bill's sponsor, referred to it as the "Coburn-Obama Bill" in his press release hailing the bill's passage (http://tinyurl.com/movxq). Obama's role in the passage of the "Google the Government" law not only demonstrates his commitment to using technology as a tool for transparency and government reform, but also provides a particularly striking example of his willingness to work across the aisle, as Coburn is one of the most conservative members of Senate.

In an op-ed piece they co-authored after the bill was signed into law, Coburn and Obama highlighted the bi-partisan nature of the legislation: "In the Internet age, making this information available online should be automatic, which is why a vast array of interest groups, bloggers and commentators from both ends of the political spectrum joined forces to put public pressure on Congress when the bill was stalled. If nothing else, this activism and this bill are a testament to a hunger that exists in America today. It's a non-partisan hunger for a government that's honest and open — one that spends our hard-earned tax dollars wisely, efficiently and transparently." (http://tinyurl.com/6rmfqu).

Ironically, Senator McCain, who claimed in his convention speech that Obama has not "worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed," was actually one of the Coburn-Obama bill's co-sponsors. In fact, during a July 18, 2006 hearing on the bill, McCain said "I want to again thank the bipartisanship that is associated with this bill, including Senator Carper and Senator Obama." (http://tinyurl.com/63wenj).

Facebook Group: Fans of Barack Obama's Legislative Record

Over the weekend, I created a Facebook Group called "Fans of Barack Obama's Legislative Record." If you're a Facebook user, check it out (and note that you don't have to join the group to visit the site).

The goal of the group is to provide a convenient place for Facebook users to find and share information about Barack Obama's legislative record, in the wake of the attacks from the McCain-Palin campaign. Everyone's on Facebook 24-7 already - and the idea is that next time you're chatting with a friend about the election on Facebook's chat app, or having a long phone conversation with your grandmother who happens to live in a key swing state, you'll have a place to go for a quick talking point. The group page features a brief, but detailed, summary of Obama's legislative career, with links to more information about legislation he has sponsored or supported.

Obama's "Change" mantra would be nothing more than a campaign slogan without his strong record on ethics reform and government transparency - and we Obama supporters should not be surprised or offended that voters who are unfamiliar with his record may be skeptical. When it comes to rebutting the attacks on Obama's legislative record, we are the ones we've been waiting for.

(I'm also planning to post an extended version of the summary of Obama's legislative career here later this week).

UPDATED 10/21/08: Hyperlinked summary of Obama's record on outragedmoderates.org.

Thoughts on Palin's speech

The most striking thing about Palin's speech was that she used such a negative and petty tone in her introduction to the American people. As an Obama supporter, I was starting to worry that the McCain campaign had outsmarted everyone by picking a likable, sympathetic female candidate who would be almost impossible to challenge or attack without running the risk of alienating voters.

But her tone tonight may have insured that she's fair game from here on out. Some of her attacks were ridiculously hypocritical. The most embarrassing example had to be when she made fun of the columns that stood behind Obama during his acceptance speech - from a stage adorned not only with a replica of the Liberty Bell, but also with a massive Jumbotron which alternated between an American flag and images of other famous national landmarks!

There was also her attack on Obama's years as a community organizer (which Giuliani had already made fun of earlier in the night): "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." This line was a huge crowd pleaser, but it's a strange comparison for her to make. Obama worked as a community organizer between 1985 and 1988 - since then, he has attended law school, worked as a lawyer in Chicago, taught at the University of Chicago Law School, served as an Illinois State Senator for 8 years, and then served as a U.S. Senator for 4 years.

In contrast, Palin was still mayor of Wasilla until December 2006, when she was sworn in as Governor of Alaska. So when she mocked Barack Obama's experience level, she was comparing the job she held just 20 months ago to the job he held 20 years ago!

UPDATED 9/4/08:

The good news is that a lot of people seem to have had the same reaction to Palin's dismissive condescension. The Detroit Free Press asked a voter panel for reactions to the speech, and almost all of the panelists who identified themselves as independents were turned off.

Another thing I wonder about is whether the GOP is underestimating how distant and exotic Alaska seems to people east of the Mississippi, which is where most (but not all) of the major battleground states are. I think most people put Alaska in the same category as Obama's home state of Hawaii - and I think Obama would be a much less credible candidate if he was the junior Senator from Hawaii, rather than Illinois, a heavily-populated state that is home to Chicago, one of the major business capitals in the country. If you're a swing voter in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Michigan, Chicago is a lot closer to home than Wassila.

Are we going to make another big election about small things?

I still don't know what to make of the Palin pick, but increasingly, I think it is a deliberate attempt by McCain to distract the electorate from the bigger issues, where the Democrats have an edge this time around. Why would anyone knowingly pick a VP with a four-month old baby and a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter, unless he thinks that the inevitable soap opera coverage would benefit the ticket? George Lakoff has the best analysis I've seen of the pick so far:

"The Palin Choice and the Reality of the Political Mind" [Huffington Post]

UPDATED 9/2/08:

On the other hand, after reading this New York Times article, maybe the McCain campaign just botched the whole thing completely:

"They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Ms. Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything."

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. "I heard not a word, not a single contact," he said.

Andrew Sullivan is right - the story here isn't about Palin, it's about what the pick says about John McCain, especially in contrast with the Obama campaign's cautious, research-intensive vetting process.

Thoughts on Obama's acceptance speech

A few random, unorganized observations about Obama's acceptance speech:

- Obviously, everyone has known for a while now that he was going to become the first black person to accept a Presidential nomination for a major party. But it wasn't until I got to work yesterday that it really started to hit me. Last night was a huge, transformative moment in American history. I am still trying to wrap my head around the magnitude of it. Am I crazy for wondering if this is as big a deal as Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier? Or is it crazy not to think that a black man running for leader of the free world is an even bigger deal than Jackie Robinson's feat?

- The historical significance of Obama becoming the nominee underscores how brilliant it was for his campaign to focus so heavily on the mantra of "Change." The mere act of a President Obama sitting down at the desk in the Oval Office for the first time would immediately represent one of the most significant changes in the history of American politics. If a President Obama could deliver even an average presidency (and by average I mean substantially more effective than Bush, whose ranking might match his "43" order number) - he's lived up to the hype.

- I was impressed by how stern and serious Obama was, as compared to his standard stump speech, and that was exactly how he needed to be. His goal was to convince Democrats and swing voters who are on the fence that he is ready to lead, and he did a good job of projecting that.

- The speech seemed to start off a little slow, but it seemed intentionally restrained, and the intensity seemed to build over the course of speech until it rose to the level of being a great one.

- I loved when Obama ended a discussion of his family's middle-class values by saying "I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine." It made that ad seem so incredibly desperate and embarrassing.

- One of the main reasons Obama has appealed to me is that his philosophy seems pretty similar to mine. He doesn't seem phased by admitting that life is complicated, and that there are elements of truth in various different approaches to any given issue. Last night he discussed how Democrats have to remember that funding worthy programs doesn't solve all of our problems, echoing a common campaign line about how parents have to be the ones to turn off the TV and ensure that a kid is doing her homework. He ended this segment by saying: "Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility - that's the essence of America's promise." In this regard, Obama carries the mantle of Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" approach, and it is strange that he hasn't gotten more credit for the centrist/third way nature of many of his policy proposals.

- This line showed that Obama is going to punch back: "If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have." As far as I'm concerned, it's fair game once your opponent has taken some of the shots McCain has. Now, during the next week or so, everyone out there who is not a political junkee will be hearing about McCain's legendary temper for the first time. The combination of his neoconservative foreign policy outlook, his horrible temper, and strange behavior like the "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" moment could combine to create an insurmountable hurdle for McCain.

- Finally, Pat Buchanan says that Obama's speech was the greatest convention acceptance speech he's ever heard. Say what you will about most of his policy stances, but Buchanan is a hell of political analyst, and understands American politics as well as anyone. And if anything, the fact that Buchanan has often been outside of the mainstream is probably one reason he comes across as more honest than most analysts. I agree with him completely that this was a "deeply centrist speech." The clip would be worth watching merely for the expression on his liberal counterpart Rachel Maddow's face.

Bill Clinton comes around

Bill Clinton was great tonight, especially when he pointed out that critics had also said he was too young and inexperienced when he ran in 1992. (Obama is actually forty-seven, a year older than Clinton was when he won).

Biden's introduction bolstered the argument I've been making that Biden's appeal to older white Democrats may be almost as important as his foreign policy cred. His middle-class Catholic upbringing and often-imperfect life story (childhood stuttering, the tragic loss of his wife and daughter right after his first Senate race, and though it wasn't mentioned, his failed 1988 Presidential bid) serve as excellent foils for Obama's multicultural background and his meteoric rise. Biden comes across as incredibly real and human, and his beaming mother probably won the ticket some votes on her own.

Hillary hits a home run

Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention was right on target, including pretty much everything she needed to say. The most important part was when she asked her die-hard supporters what the rest of us have wanted to say for several months:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?" [CNN]

Part of me keeps asking: "wait, isn't this what anyone else in her position would have been saying for the last two months, instead of letting this whole rift fester?" Can you imagine how the party and the media would have treated Obama if he had come in second and acted the same way? As Ben Smith noted, the negativity coming from the Clinton camp and its surrogates in the days leading up to the speech made it a "study in the virtue of low expectations."

But whether or not one thinks Clinton should have handled the last two months differently, she deserves credit for a great speech last night. And after all, the next two months are much more important than the last two. If she and Bill keep fighting for the Obama-Biden ticket the way she did last night, all of the strife will be forgotten, and their roles among the Democratic Party's leadership will be restored.

Selected Biden articles

I don't have time for an extended discussion of the many ways Biden strengthens the Democratic ticket (and I already gave some of them last week), but I wanted to link to a couple of articles that help convey Biden's experience, and especially his foreign policy expertise. The long New Yorker article, from 2004, is the must-read article of the three - an extended George Packer piece on soft power and the potential for a reinvigorated liberal approach to foreign policy. The WSJ op-ed features the former US ambassador to Romania's take on Biden. Finally, David Brooks made the case for Biden in his NYT column from the morning before the announcement, and for once, he was right about what would happen.

"A Democratic World: Can liberals take foreign policy back from the Republicans?" [New Yorker]
"On Diplomacy, Biden Knows Who or How" [Wall Street Journal]
"Hoping It's Biden" [New York Times]

UPDATED 8/28/08:

Long interview about foreign policy from 2004 [Talking Points Memo]
WIRED on Biden: strong on civil liberties, but very pro-Hollywood in the copyright wars [WIRED]