OBAMA THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
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GOOD MORNING FLINT!
BY Terry Bankert 4/01/08
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Article at http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com/
And Flint Talk http://flinttalk.com/viewtopic.php?p=26847#26847
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Obama Is Moving to Down-to-Earth Oratory for Working People [n]

A POLITICAL ACT IS A RESOURCE ALLOCATION, POLITICS IS THE PROCESS TO
ACHIEVE THE ABILITY TO CAUSE POLITICAL ACTS. OBAMA UNDERSTANDS THAT
COMMUNICATION IS THE HEART OF POLITICS

Its time for Flint to jump on th Obama bandwagon. At last a
politician who we can believe in. What a fresh breeze![trb]

Obama Event At Penn State Draws 20,000 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reports that Sen. Barack Obama headlined a massive rally at Penn
State yesterday, where he "offered praise for the public service" of
Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton "but described both as mired in
the partisanship of Washington. 'Her basic argument is we just need
to change political parties,' Mr. Obama said" of Clinton,
adding, "Just because we have a Democrat in the White House doesn't
mean that things are going to change." The AP reports from this
morning that the rally drew "20,000 to 22,000" people, who came out
in the cold for the event.[U]

Reflect on the last time you recall a US political leader that could
draw a crowd of 20,000![trb]

THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERS RECOGNIZE GOOD POLITICS

The latest Gallup poll is like manna from heaven for Barack Obama it
so neatly backs up two key arguments he and his supporters are
making -- that he is the stronger candidate for the fall, and that
the marathon nomination fight is hurting the party.[B]

MDP AND DNC get your house in order or step aside and let someone
else do it...right.[trb]

OBAMA COMMUNICATION EXCELLENCE [n]

The Speech is his finely polished sword, a transcendent weapon. Seen
and heard on a thousand YouTube postings, Senator Barack Obama's
speeches have made a happening of that hoariest of campaign forms,
the stump speech. [n]

TIMING AND KNOWING YOUR CROWD IS A HIGH SKILL

But Mr. Obama sheaths that sword more often now. He is grounding his
lofty rhetoric in the more prosaic language of white-working-class
discontent, adjusting it to the less welcoming terrain of
Pennsylvania. His preferred communication now is the town-hall-style
meeting.[n]

A PLACE LOWER ON THE SCALE THAN MY HOME FLINT, PITY THEM....

So in Johnstown, a small, economically depressed city tucked in a
valley hard by the Little Conemaugh River, Mr. Obama on Saturday
spoke to the gritty reality of a city that ranks dead last on the
Census Bureau's list of places likely to attract American workers.
His traveling companion, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania,
introduced the candidate as an "underdog fighter for an underdog
state."[n]

THE RISE OF THE UNDERDOG.....

Mr. Obama, a quicksilver political student, picked up that cue. He
often mentions his background as a community organizer but in
passing, a parenthetical. Not this time. "I got into public service
as an organizer," Mr. Obama told these 1,200 mostly white
Pennsylvanians in a local high school gymnasium. "There were a group
of churches, mostly Catholic parishes, and they hired me for $12,000
plus car fare."[n]

WRESTLE MANIA

Throughout the Democratic primary race, Barack Obama has cast himself
as an underdog trying to wrest the nomination from the grip of the
party establishment, which he contends is partial to rival Hillary
Rodham Clinton.[h]

ACCOUNTABILITY

That detail drew knowing chuckles in a town where the median income
hovers at just over $20,000. "So I got myself believing that the most
important thing is not to be an elected official but to hold them
accountable."[n]

TOASTED BREAD, BUTTER , A LITTLE JAM...

Then, echoing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's focus on bread-and-
butter concerns, Mr. Obama went on to talk about the price of gas and
to offer the precise amount of his health care premium and to explain
exactly what he would do about the foreclosure rate and Big Oil and
Big Energy and how he would stop companies from moving to China. [n]

AND A DOLLOP OF PEANUT BUTTER! IT GETS NO BETTER....

On Monday, he added a dollop of denunciation of corporate salaries at
Countrywide, a company at the center of the subprime loan
implosion. "So they get a $19 million bonus while other folks are
losing their homes," he said in Lancaster. "What's wrong with this
picture?"[n]

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM GOT US HERE..NEW STUFF GETS US OUT!

But it is Obama, a first-term Illinois senator running against the
conventions of Washington, who is increasingly benefiting from
institutional support — bolstering his campaign during a rough month
when he lost two key primaries and faced questions about his
spiritual mentor.[h]

PLAIN... SPOKEN HERE...

Mr. Obama's effort to master a plain-spoken and blunt language that
extends back centuries in Pennsylvania is accompanied by no small
stakes. Voters here, as in neighboring Ohio, where Mr. Obama lost the
white and aging blue-collar vote, tend to elect politicians whose
language rarely soars and whose policy prescriptions come studded
with detail.[n]

THE SUPER DELEGATES SHOULD BE LISTENING

Of the nearly 800 superdelegates, roughly 330 remain undecided.
Because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the 2,024-delegate
threshold to win the nomination without superdelegates, that group of
330 will almost certainly determine who will represent the party
against McCain.[H]

A WORKING FAMILY CULTURE, WILL THE KIDS BE FED AND IS IT SAFE TO SIT
ON THE PORCH...

"The problem with talking about hope all the time is that these are
not hopeful lands; Obama is talking change to people who equate
change with life getting worse," said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic
Party consultant who has studied the political culture of these
working-class states with a Talmudic intensity.[n]

Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama's Democratic rival, has studied this argot.
Her style of declamation tends toward that of the school
valedictorian, but she grounds her talks in detail after detail after
detail — her plan for stanching foreclosures, for tuberculosis, for
tax breaks and so on and on, every program coming with a precise
dollar sign attached. [n]

IF I AM STARVING I WANT A BUTCHER OR A BAKER NOT AN ACADEMIC...

A thrill these talks are not, but G. Terry Madonna, director of the
Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall
College, noted that politics that attended to the precarious details
of life could provide comfort to the hard-pressed.[n]

GREAT IDEAS OR JUST LIVING THE WEEK OUT

"If you're an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want
to know about job training, who pays your health care," Dr. Madonna
said. "Obama's speeches are uplifting but without much specificity,
and that's a tough sell for working people who don't live in a world
of ideas."[n]

BOOMERS RULE Mr. Obama grabbed a big chunk of the male working-class
vote in Wisconsin, and another chunk in Virginia and in Maryland. But
Pennsylvania is both blue-collar and aging — it has the third highest
median age in the nation. And that has proved to be a troublesome
demographic for him and a rich target for Mrs. Clinton.[n]

DO WE WANT I've done it or I'm gonna do it? [trb]

So, noted David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's chief political strategist,
voters can expect to hear the candidate emphasizing his organizing
roots. "What we want to do is acquaint people with that dimension of
his history," Mr. Axelrod said. "A lot of this can be pleasing, but
empty patter unless you can establish your authenticity."[n]

ONE MANS BLATHER IS ANOTHER'S DISCOURSE

His challenge comes laden with complication. Pennsylvania's culture,
as the historian David Hackett Fischer noted in his book "Albion's
Seed," is rooted in the English midlands, where Scandinavian and
English left a muscular and literal imprint. These are people
distrustful of rank, and finery, and high-flown words. It should come
as no surprise that the word "blather" originated here.[n]

GET AN EDUCATION

Mr. Obama does not shrink from arguing that the days when high school
graduates could find good-paying union job in mills and factories are
gone. In Johnstown, he spoke of retrofitting shuttered steel mills
into high-tech factories to build wind-powered turbines.[n]

"I don't want to make a promise that I can bring back every job that
was in Johnstown," he said. "That's not true."[n] Some in the
audience applauded; others sat stolidly.[n]

YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK

"There is a romance in the Rust Belt about bringing back those old
industrial jobs and the culture those jobs represented," Mr.
Sheinkopf said. "Their message to a politician is, Restore our jobs,
restore our culture."[n]

Party Leaders Migrating To Obama?[U]

While Sen. Hillary Clinton promised over the weekend to fight for the
nomination all the way to the convention, the Wall Street Journal
reports on its front page this morning that "slowly but steadily,"
a "string of Democratic Party figures is taking" Sen. Barack
Obama's "side in the presidential nominating race and raising the
pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up." North Carolina's seven
Democratic House members "are poised to endorse...Obama as a group --
just one has so far -- before that state's May 6 primary, several
Democrats say."[u]


PARTY OF THE RICH STUMBLES WHEN BLATHERING WITH WORKINGMEN AND WOMEN

(Senator John McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, took
this same lesson in the Michigan primary, when he suggested that high-
paying industrial jobs were a thing of the past. His opponent, Mitt
Romney, insisted he could somehow summon that lost time, and he won
handily).[n]

The candidate's best weapon in this race just might be Senator Casey.
Laconic to the core, a politician who dominates the working-class
cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, he seems intent on refashioning
his candidate — still very much a long shot in the primary. In his
telling, Mr. Obama is nearly a shot-and-a-beer guy. [n]

Our battles are his battles! What are your battles?[trb] "We can't
just curse the darkness. We have to do our best to roll up our
sleeves," Mr. Casey said. "He'll fight for your jobs, and your
families' jobs. Understand this: All of our battles are his
battles."[n] .

Obama stood and watched; he might as well have been taking notes.[n]

What has been striking over the past month is that Obama has racked
up key endorsements during a relatively turbulent period in his
candidacy. The endorsements — Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and
Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania are two of the most influential — have
given him a strong underpinning after Clinton's big wins in the March
4 Ohio and Texas primaries, and amid bruising coverage of his
relationship with his controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah
A. Wright Jr.[h]

"It's pretty clear that in the last couple weeks the Obama argument
seems to have been more persuasive with those superdelegates than the
Clinton argument, even in the face of the questions that were raised
about Obama," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist who worked
on Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign but is neutral
this election. "Whether that's going to continue as we get new
primary results from other states, that remains to be seen."[h] Obama
Opens Up Wide Lead Over Clinton In Gallup Tracking[U]

According to new data out from Gallup, Sen. Barack Obama has opened a
10 point lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton in their national tracking
poll. Obama leads Clinton 52%-42%; the race had been an effective tie
as recently as last Monday, when Obama held just a 46%-45% lead. In
general election trial heats, Sen. John McCain tops both Democrats.
McCain leads Obama 47%-44% and Clinton 48%-44%. The Democratic
primary data is based on 1,228 likely Democratic voters taken March
27-29 while the trial heats are based on interviews with 4,407
registered voters taken March 25-29.[U]

"Clearly at this point, the party rank-and-file thinks Obama would
present a stronger challenge to McCain in the fall than Clinton
would," the pollsters said in a release. "Those attitudes could
certainly change over the remainder of the campaign, but it is
notable that Obama maintains a wide lead in these perceptions shortly
after the Jeremiah Wright controversy knocked his campaign off
stride." [B]

GEORGE BUSH A CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN AND HIS CROWD HAVE DESTROYED
OUR QUALITY OF LIFE. MCAIN IS A BUSH CLONE CLINTON IS OUR
HISTORY.......... OBAMA IS OUR FUTURE!

Posted here by Terry Bankert ...
http://attorneybankert.com/
Join my political party of preference,
http://www.michigandems.com/join.html

—WHERE DID THIS STUFF COME FROM?---
[n] The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/us/politics/01obama.html?hp [trb]
Comments of Terry Bankert to include CAP headlines
http://attorneybankert.com/
[h] Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/5663775.html
[U] U.S. News and World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080331.htm
[B] The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/03/poll
_supports_o.html