Why Primaries/elections don’t become interesting until a month before they are set to occur
July 10th, 2007 2:41 pm by Ian G.Okay so with the crashing servers a while back it has been a long time since I have posted. I have been busy working about 25-35 hours a week and every couple weeks I intern for U.S. Congressman Walz out of his mobile Winona office. Each week I get an update about Senator Obama and what he and his campaign have been up to. Last I heard, he (Obama) was leading in South Carolina and was in third place in Iowa. However, things can change and I am honestly not going to go out and find all these statistics about who is leading where because quite honestly things can change overnight. Lets look at the 2000 election how Vice President Gore (who basically is an unofficial U.S. President) who’s Presidential campaign was all but lost a couple months before election time, but in the last couple weeks he got basically neck and neck with Bush…..anyway what I am trying to say is that while these initial numbers are important, it will only get interesting about a month out of the primaries. Here are the weekly Obama talking points,
Barack Obama Schedule: Barack Obama and his family spent Independence Day in an RV, stopping at events throughout eastern and central Iowa. Last Thursday, he discussed his commitment to teachers in a speech to the annual meeting of the National Education Association before traveling to New Orleans to speak at the Essence Music Festival on the need to make Katrina recovery a priority. On Tuesday, Senator Obama makes his 14th visit to Iowa, and later that night, he joins four supporters from across the country for an intimate dinner in Washington, D.C. Thursday, Obama participates in the Presidential Candidates Forum at the NAACP’s 98th Annual Convention.
Michelle Obama Schedule: Early last week, Michelle Obama visited South Carolina’s Upstate, where she spoke at the Bethlehem Baptist Church’s “Salute to Courageous Women” in Simpsonville before visiting summer programs at the Phillis Wheatley Community Center in Greenville. She then joined her husband, bringing their daughters Malia and Sasha along on an RV tour of eastern Iowa, attending an Iowa Cubs game and celebrating Malia’s ninth birthday on the Fourth of July.
Fundraising: In a record-breaking outpouring of grassroots support, more than 258,000 donors – 154,000 in the second quarter alone – have joined Barack Obama’s movement for change. The campaign raised $31 million in primary funds for a total of $32.5 million in the second quarter – all of it without accepting any money from PACs or Washington lobbyists. $10.3 million was raised online, with 90% of all online donations in amounts of $100 or less and 50% of all online donations in amounts of $25 or less.
Recent Developments: On Tuesday, July 3, the Obama campaign announced the launch of its My Policy health care blog. In keeping with the inclusive grassroots nature of the campaign, Americans across the country are invited to engage in a discussion of their health care ideas and personal stories. The goal is to allow participants to collaborate with others across the nation to define and refine the best ideas for the future of health care policy. Senator Obama also recorded a video in support of the Live Earth concerts.
Television Ads in Iowa: The campaign has been running two new biographical ads for the past two weeks. The ads focus on Barack Obama’s commitment to the power of grassroots movements and his success in bringing people together to solve important challenges. By demonstrating how Senator Obama has successfully dedicated his life to these values, these ads will help Iowa voters better understand his vision for bringing the country together to solve important problems.
Iraq: Barack Obama has a plan to end the Iraq war by commencing a phased redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq with the goal of redeploying all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that U.S. forces will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunnis and Shi’a to come to the table and find peace.
Web: Senator Obama is running a different kind of campaign, empowering people with the tools to take organizing into their own hands. The result: more people are more deeply involved than ever before. Since the website was launched in February, more than 5,000 grassroots groups have been created, and more than 70,000 people have created profiles on my.barackobama.com.
Biography: Senator Obama moved to Illinois over two decades ago with little money and no family connections, getting a job for $12,000 a year as a community organizer in some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. Later, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, became a civil rights lawyer, and taught constitutional law before winning a seat in the Illinois State Senate.
As a State Senator, he joined both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education and the strongest ethics reform in Illinois in 25 years. After a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.
In the U.S. Senate, Obama has worked with the Republican leader of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Richard Lugar, to pass a law that would secure and destroy some of the world’s deadliest weapons. He has also helped lead the fight for the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate, and found common ground on issues including energy policy, helping push through a provision that will offer tax credits to gas stations for installing refueling pumps with E85 – a blend of 85 percent clean-burning, domestically grown ethanol and 15 percent petroleum gasoline.