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.
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?
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