Tracy Jopek gave the bracelet to Obama in February 2008. Sounds like a setup. The link below is a Feb 18, 2008 story written long before the debates.
"Jopek, a Democrat who will vote for Obama in Wisconsin's primary on Tuesday, has been against the war from the start, the paper said."
''And it's not over for us until this war is over. I just don't want any more soldiers to die in vain for something that we can't solve,'' she told the paper."
"Jopek, a self confessed political junkie, told the New York Times that she had noticed Republican presidential candidate John McCain wearing a similar bracelet."
"McCain, the Arizona senator, received the bracelet from the mother of Corporal Matthew Stanley, who was also killed in Iraq, and he has been wearing it ever since."
I wonder if this bracelet business was a set up by the Obama campaign who sought this woman out in order to counter the McCain campaign. I find it odd that she now doesn't want to talk, yet the story at the time as related to the NYT makes no bones as to why she asked Obama to wear it. Why the silence now? I suspect that there is much more to this story.
What kind of “set up” do you have in mind? That the right will jump on Obama for continuing to use the bracelet and Sgt. Jopek’s name in public events, and then the mother will suddenly emerge to say Obama still has her support and permission to do this?
The ex-husband has said she asked Obama to stop. I suppose then it could turn into a really ugly matter of “he said, she said” which the media would blame on those mean Republicans for bringing it all up in the first place?