Obama released a major package of technology initiatives today that Matt Stoller has greeted as "transformative" and "genuinely radical" ––– even announcing that, based on this package and despite his other reservations, Obama is now his first choice.
Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works.
Kos has praised the package on the frontpage. And VentureBeat today called the package "the most comprehensive set of policies for open government I’ve seen."
Clearly, with this package, Obama has hit the ball out of the park.
A mere week after launching Students for Hillary and touting its support among young people, top advisers to Hillary Clinton were busy in the spin room Saturday night disparaging them, claiming that Obama's supporters were young and unlikely to caucus.
Good strategy: A week after finally setting up your campaign's organization to attract young people, tell them they won't vote anyway so their presence is irrelevant.
The ad features David Hartgrave of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a former longtime employee of Farmstead Foods, standing before the shuttered factory where he worked, describing how executives misused company funds and left him with a dramatically reduced pension. The message is clear.
The roots of Students for Barack Obama are the stuff of legend:
In the summer of 2006, on July 7th, some eight months before Obama announced his run for president, Bowdoin College junior Meredith Segal created a Facebook group that went on to reach fully-fledged PAC-status before being rolled into Obama's campaign organization as its official student wing.
By February when Obama's campaign was actually launched nine months ago, Students for Barack Obama was already:
a political action committee with nearly 62,000 members and chapters at 80 colleges, the most structured grass-roots student movement -- there's a director of field operations, an Internet director, a finance director and a blog team director -- in the presidential campaign so far.
Literally for months now, at least since David Geffen's comments in late February, the Clinton campaign has mind-numbingly repeated the same charge and relentlessly misunderstood, twisted, and confused Obama's message about a new politics. After eight months of the same, Salon.com writer Tim Grieve finally had enough of his inbox being bombarded with Clinton staffers endlessly charging, "Whatever happened to the politics of hope?"
After receiving yet another email Tuesday, Grieve snapped:
When considering whether Obama will be able to draw votes in rural Iowa, the Associated Press recommended reflecting on the example of Henderson County, Illinois. A tiny rural county in northeastern Illinois, right across the Mississippi river from Iowa, Henderson County has a population of only 8,213. The population is 98.5% White and a mere 0.25% African-American.
The Obama campaign is unique in the amount of fresh energy and innovation that it has spawned on the web: People like Farouk Olu Aregbe and Tamer Abouzeid who changed the way our political leaders think about the Facebook; Meredith Segal, who in 2006 founded the Facebook group that was to become the official student wing of Obama's campaign; citizen ad creators like lovingj; independent bloggers like sagereader of Think on These Things; assorted Kossacks and MyDD diarists; and, yes, Phillip de Vellis and Joe Anthony. Independent activists, working at home, with little more than a computer, can change the way politics works.
Would Gore endorse Clinton? I'm going to take apart the latest article postulating that he might, but at the same time I'd like to light a few fire under Gore activists, as well as Obama and Edwards supporters, not to let this happen.
I also think the subtext of the Politico I'm about to rail against conceals a threat from the Clinton campaign: Gore should endorse her or risk losing his ability to lobby a future Clinton administration on global warming. Follow me after the jump...
Obama announced additional details for his plan to fight global warming today. The plan would set two crucial deadlines:
By 2030, we would:
(1) take dramatic steps to improve energy efficiency -- aiming for a 50% improvement by 2030 through steps like:
Phasing out the incandescent light bulb by 2014 -- "a measure that Obama estimates would save consumers $6 billion a year on their electric bills."
Having all federal government buildings carbon neutral by 2025
Require all new construction to be carbon neutral by 2030
(2) reduce "our dependence on foreign oil and reducing oil consumption overall by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels of oil."
By 2050, we would have reduced global warming emissions by 80% below 1990 levels through "an economy-wide cap-and-trade program." (The system would also mandate a return to 1990 levels by 2020.)
Obama's appearance on Friday at the National Association of Black Journalists sparked one of the most interesting question and answer sessions in a long time, with Obama addressing tensions between the black and hispanic communities, arguing for a broader engagement with Africa, and answering questions about his chances as an African-American candidate. Obama gave his most detailed and thoughtful treatment of the problem of race in America in a long time.
I posted my own unedited transcription of the most interesting sections of the Q and A session on My.BarackObama.com here, and you can also listen to a full audio recording of the event here. This diary is cross-posted at MyDD(where I'm a regular poster).
