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Comments

• [1] RCTB from Westchester April 04, 2008 - 10:11AM

  Obama is staying low to the ground, campaigning among white working-class voters rather than holding the huge rallies that he did in Texas and Ohio. He's a community organizer and knows how to reach out to individuals. His campaign (I know, because I'm a volunteer) is organizing a "million call" phone campaign -- people calling people, not recorded messages.

  Don't underestimate Obama's ability to win working-class votes. He has to show that he's solid on the basic working-class issues -- wages, benefits, health insurance, globalization -- and not a radical, as Clinton has tried to depict him using the Wright DVD.

  Plus, Hillary's accent is ridiculous and, as a person with working-class roots, I know what they are saying about that accent in the bars and kitchens of PA -- and what they're saying isn't pretty.

  
  
• [2] Joe Corrao from Brooklyn April 04, 2008 - 10:14AM

  my god what a show...2 experts dissecting the media view of what the media shows...anyone for issues...

  
  
• [3] Robert from NYC April 04, 2008 - 10:22AM

  YAWWWWWWWN!

  
  
• [4] MCH from Brooklyn April 04, 2008 - 10:26AM

  As someone who wants the Democrat to win in November, I think the sleeping dog here that will bite us all is Michigan and Florida. Neither campaign has offered a sincere idea out of the mess and neither has the DNC, at least not publicly. You can argue all you want that the states broke the rules and shouldn't count, and you would have a point, but this election seems to turn on perceptions. If enough people are angry and feel disenfranchised there is a good chance the Democrat, either one, will lose. Maybe there is no good solution, but I would like to see a better effort than I have so far.

  
  
• [5] John from Brooklyn April 04, 2008 - 11:33AM

  Barack Obama has delivered at least two dozen major policy addresses over the last year. He has a stack of white papers on every policy issue facing the country. He, alone among Democratic candidates, has hosted economic and foreign policy forums featuring his top advisers, to give voters a sense of what the policy thinking inside an Obama White House would look like. And on issues from Iraq to healthcare, it was he -- not Clinton -- who was first out of the gate with policy specifics.

  It is true that the best-known aspect of Obama's candidacy is the "big rally speech," in which he broadly analyzes the American condition, and uses this analysis to inspire and mobilize his listeners to work for change.

  But it is wrong and, indeed, shameful of you and your guests to use the fact of these speeches to advance the Clintonian myth that Obama is light on policy, or to say -- as you did -- that, because Obama is using a more policy-specific STUMP approach in Pennsylvania, that he just "now" is getting to policy, as if he wasn't getting to policy all along.

  It is not surprising that the media has obsessed over Obama's rallies. They are media events. But when you and your media friends get together to obsess some more about this one aspect of Obama's candidacy -- i.e., obsess about the myth that YOU have CREATED -- you are talking to yourselves.

  You are not presenting your listeners with the whole truth.

  
  
• [6] chestinee from Midtown April 04, 2008 - 12:03PM

  rallies and youth together remind me of germany in the 30s sorry to say and also mao and i do not trust these motives no matter how well organized the campaign. he's a suit.

  
  
• [7] John from Brooklyn April 04, 2008 - 12:03PM

  How about some big-picture analysis of what's actually going on in Pennsylvania?

  Every endgame scenario out there assumes -- is banked on -- Hillary winning Pennsylvania.

  But all seven of the PA polls released this week belie that assumption.

  Six of these polls show that Obama continues to trail Clinton but that, over the last 2-4 weeks (one poll was last conducted 6 weeks ago), he has narrowed the gap by anywhere from 21% to nearly 60%.

  In the other poll, Obama was actually up by 2 points.

  Indeed, although a string of PA polls in the first half of March -- just after the media falsely reported that Clinton had won both Ohio AND Texas -- had Obama running anywhere from 12 points to a whopping 26 points behind, the RCP average for PA now has him just 6.6 points behind.

  With still nearly three weeks to go until 22 April, its not too soon to start asking...

  What happens to Clinton's "big state, swing state" argument -- and what should happen in the race -- if it emerges that, on 4 March and 22 April, Obama actually won 2 out of 3, Texas and Pennsylvania?