Obama defender of the election process! Except when its his ass on the line

[rinsd]

Obama knows his way around a ballot
Some say his ability to play political hardball goes back to his first campaign

By David Jackson and Ray Long | Tribune staff reporters

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

<snip>

n a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."

But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.

"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070403obama-ballot,1,57567.story

[acmavm]

1. Jeeze this guy plays both sides of the fence, doesn't he?

[rinsd]

2. New politics my ass.

Its the same shit rebranded.

[FrenchieCat]

45. Obama was not going against voters being disenfranchised.....

Who he fought were politicians paying for signature...as the ruling found.

because the signature were found to be unacceptable.

Obama wasn't the one who made that determination.

Guess working for Project Vote and increasing voter rolls by an unheard before amount in 1992 taught him a thing or two in detecting electionaring fraud when he saw it!

Article from 1993. SEE OBAMA ENFRANCHISING VOTERS.....
and not taking any shit from those POLITICIANS attempting to game the system.

Vote of Confidence
A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.

In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The number of new voter registrations before the election hit an all-time high. And the majority of those new voters were black. More than 150,000 new African-American voters were added to the city's rolls. In fact, for the first time in Chicago's history-including the heyday of Harold Washington-voter registrations in the 19 predominantly black wards outnumbered those in the city's 19 predominantly white ethnic wards, 676,000 to 526,000.

None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization.

"It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama.

To understand the full implications of Obama's effort, you first need to understand how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a dollar per registration).

The campaigns did produce new voters. "But bounty systems don't really promote participation," says David Orr, the Cook County clerk, whose office is responsible for voter registration efforts in the Cook County suburbs. "When the money dries up, the voters drop out." Nor did the Democratic Party always vigorously push registration among minorities, Orr says. "It's not that they discouraged it. They just never worked hard to ensure it would happen."
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-1993/Vote-of-Confidence

Read the whole damn article.

[rinsd]

51. Paying for the sigs had nothing to do with their validity.

Obama's team used purged voter rolls to challenge signatures leaving him un opposed on the primary ballot.

[aquart]

5. It was legal. Ruthless, but legal.

He was absolutely entitled to challenge those petitions. (His opponents didn't have the brains or balls to challenge HIS.) Just as Clinton supporters and the teachers' union were entitled to challenge the NV caucus apportionment.

Anyone who thinks Obama is running for the presidency because his high ideals have elevated him to a fluffy pink cloud of purity is just nuts.

[rinsd]

21. And that my friend is the point.

High horse Obama supporters can stuff it.

[indimuse]

23. Yeah, Obama, does seem to rise above it ALL.

As columnist Alice Miles notes in the London Times today in a piece titled, "Obama's detestable dirty tricks";

:www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article3192712.ece



Mr Obama seems determined to cry "race" whenever anyone attacks him. He has been playing the game carefully, admittedly, allowing spokesmen and leaked

memos to speak for him, while publicly denying that he wants to stoke up the race issue. For a candidate who seeks to be beyond race, it is a dangerous game,

which perhaps is why on Monday he told a rally: "We share the same goals, we are all Democrats, we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights", adding

that the Clintons "have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues. I think they care about the African-American community and they care

about all Americans and they want to see equal rights and equal justice in this country". And he could have added, but didn't: and I do not believe that they are playing

the race card, and I believe they are above that - so stop making those claims in my name.

Even for "the good of the Party", he never seemed to get around to saying that did he?

He never got around to saying how unfair it was to twist and completely misrepresent the words of Andrew Cuomo, a man who has spent most of his life as an activist

for the homeless and a provider of low income housing, and to imply to and through the news media that he was a racist.

On Tuesday Big Tent watched Obama once again blame his staff for any misdeeds and he came away bedazzled by his service 'to the Party'.

A Party that now after the actions of he and his campaign, is divided along racial lines for at least the remainder of these Primaries and who knows about the long term

damages come November.

Yeah, Obama, does seem to rise above it ALL.

But only AFTER he got his 39% swing, not before.

The damage from these 10 days has already been done. As I wrote, USA Today reports a 39% swing of AA voters from Hillary to Obama. Early exit polling out of

Michigan had him winning 72% of the African American vote yesterday.

Call it what you will, but the cynical and damaging ploy worked.


We must understand this. The question is what will be the long term effects of these days for our Party. No truce precludes the need to understand what has

happened in our primaries or why.


The only good from this is that it makes the probability of a Hillary-Obama pairing for the general election much more likely, not less. Since I have been wishing and

calling for this for a long while, it would be fine with me.


If this came to pass, forgive and forget,of course... on one condition. That our Party give the falsely slandered Andrew Cuomo and Robert Gibbs, the man who pushed

the lie that Andrew was a closet racist to the political media, a good half hour alone in a locked room together to "hash out their differences" over all of this.


Then together, united, our Party could go on to "hashing out our differences" with the GOP and its nominee in November.

[Skip Intro]

22. Big Time.

[sunonmars]

3. and thats his home state paper saying that.......

Yup, told you, when someone claims to whiter than white, your alarm bells should be ringing off like no tomorrow.

but alas his supporters will say its been debunked and swallows and doves will fly round his head like Mary Poppins.

[tritsofme]

4. His "home state paper" that hasn't endorsed a Democrat for POTUS in 140 years.

No agenda there...

[aquart]

What debunked? What he did to Alice Palmer is a fact.

It's also a fact that it was entirely legal.

His house deal? Rezko? Anyone with an IQ over ten can see the deal was dirty, but it cannot be conclusively proved so it's not indictable...which is not the same as being legal or honest.

But I expect him to do well in Illinois anyway.

[JackORoses]

6. Is somebody upset that they didn't get their way in NV?

So sorry that the Big Dog got the door slammed in his face this time.

The DNC recognized what the Clintons were attempting here, so they stepped in and put a stop to it.

Howard Dean knows exactly what Hillary is trying to do with MI and FL, as well.
He will not put up with it.

The Clintons are making the wrong enemies.

[rinsd]

10. Just driving a truck thru the holes in the plot of "The Obama Story: A New Kind of Politics"

Both the example in my OP and the at large caucus lawsuit are examples of tough political tactics that can be politically risky.

The difference is Obama supporters claim to abhor them and are curiously silent on his actions.

[William769]

7. K&R!

Say it isn't so! :sarcasm:

[Ashy Larry]

8. Just to clarify

Is it your position that candidates should have been allowed to submit fake signatures to the election board?

[HeraldSquare212]

9. That's the petitioning process, not voting

People petition to have their names on the ballot - they have to get x number of signatures to get on the ballot. Oftentimes the signatures are a joke, as in literally - names of cartoon characters, etc.


from the story linked to re: one of the petitioners Obama challenged:

Askia filed 1,899 signatures, but the Obama team sustained objections to 1,211, leaving him 69 short, records show.

Leafing through scrapbooks in his South Shore apartment, Askia, a perennially unsuccessful candidate, acknowledges that he paid Democratic Party precinct workers $5 a sheet for some of the petitions, and now suspects they used a classic Chicago ruse of passing the papers among themselves to forge the signatures. "They round-tabled me," Askia said.

[rinsd]

12. Alice Palmer is a joke then?

Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.

[HeraldSquare212]

17. Do you think the guy I quoted should have been on the ballot? nt

[aquart]

13. And the OTHERS?

There wasn't one other person running was there? Obama knocked them ALL off. Were they all dishonest and only Obama pure of heart? Was Alice Palmer dishonest?

[Renew Deal]

11. Do you support breaking the law?

I know you're a Clinton supporter, but still.

[sunonmars]

14. and your an Obama apologist but still

[Renew Deal]

16. lol

ok

[Perky]

34. answer the question

[TwilightZone]

18. Seems to be selective interpretation of the law, actually.

They challenged the petitions of his opponents. If the intent was to follow the law, shouldn't he have been equally vigilant with his own?

[sunonmars]

25. Definition of a career politician

ruthless, arrogant, hates someone standing in their way, probably pull the plug on someones respirator to get elected.

Sorry i got that definition from the dictionary.

All politicians are the same, the only difference is I cant stand the ones that constantly say they are whiter than white and pontificate that they are going to be different. I'm pretty sure Obama falls in that category.

[Renew Deal]

26. Obviously he was vigilant.

His petitions cleared.

[TwilightZone]

29. Were they challenged?

They certainty weren't challenged by Obama. If, as you claim, he did it for "law", he should have applied the same standards to his own as he did to the others. There is no indication that he did so.

Besides, there would be no reason to do so. The intent was obviously to force everyone else off the ballot, not be Mr. Law-Abiding Citizen.

Win at all costs, right?

[Renew Deal]

33. His petitions cleared, so obviously he "applied the same standards to his own"

You're trying to prove a negative. It's impossible.

[TwilightZone]

35. Wrong.

I guarantee that he did not obtain all of the signatures himself. That's why you have staff and volunteers.

I also guarantee that he did not scrutinize the signatures that his staff and volunteers obtained in the same manner that he did the others. There would be no reason to, because that didn't fit the agenda.

The sole intent was to knock everyone else out. The assertion that he did this out of respect for the law is one of the most ridiculous assertions I've ever seen on DU.

[Renew Deal]

36. You can't prove it.

You're saying "I think they did this and that." Prove it. The petitions cleared all scrutiny at the time. Your argument is lame, yet amusing.

[TwilightZone]

38. If you honestly believe that Obama didn't do this intentionally...

you're nuts.

Blind faith is a wonderful thing.

[Renew Deal]

39. Didn't do what exactly?

Because that's what we're down to.

[rinsd]

19. Alice Palmer feels differently

"Palmer to this day does not concede the flaws that Obama's team found in her signatures. She maintains that she could have overcome the Obama team's objections and stayed on the ballot if she had more time and resources."

Alice Palmer submitted nearly twice the number required.

Thanks to purged voter rolls Obama's lawyers were successful in challenging her petition.

Aparently it was important for the democratic process that Obama be the only one on the ballot for that primary.

[sandnsea]

42. Twice the number, at the very last minute, the problem

right there. She hadn't intended to enter the race, was beat in the Congressional, and then popped up with all these signatures at the last minute. Obviously they were going to be challenged. He decided not to embarrass her and challenge all the candidates, that's all.

[sandnsea]

15. Signatures have to be verified, it's the friggin' LAW

All over the country. Just like it's the LAW that Parties make their own primary rules.

Jeez louise people will say any damn thing.

[TwilightZone]

20. It's the law, certainly, but this seems to be a rather selective interpretation of it.

If the intent was to "follow the law", shouldn't they have scrutinized Obama's petitions in the same manner as they scrutinized the others?

It's pretty obvious that law had little to do with it.

[elixir]

30. Unfortunately, someone has to challenge BO's petition. They cldn't 'cause they were busy defending

theirs.

[TwilightZone]

32. Which, of course, was the whole idea.

Can't go on offense if you have to play defense the entire time.

[sandnsea]

41. See #40 and the rest of the article n/t

[sunonmars]

28. I'm pretty sure this is obama's game here

He's knocking them off the list one by one until he has no use for them. The people are falling for it hook line and sinker and Obama, I suspect is the worst kind of politician, the one that will lie to your face with a smile, a wolf in sheeps clothing, the mask will slip soon and the people will realise they have been duped.

[sandnsea]

40. No it was in response to Alice Palmer's late entry

She had promised not to enter the race if she lost and changed her mind. Obama would not step aside as she expected him to. So at the last minute, she had to gather signatures. In order to challenge those hastily gathered, he decided to challenge all of them. Regardless, it's the law. Signatures have to meet standards and are challenged on a regular basis, every single election.

[panader0]

24. 'If you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised

questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be." Makes sense to me.

[elixir]

27. Eek, this guy is scary. His ego is big enough to make up for his voting record.

[FrenchieCat]

49. Big scary black mandigo.....Uppity and all that.....

A real Ojay Simpson.

Booga-booga!

Fucking getta outa here with that dumbshit!

[rinsd]

52. Saying someone running for President has a big ego is racist?

[elixir]

54. Since when do big egos equate with "Mandingo" and "uppity"? Frenchie's upset.

You could find racial bias in anything!

[Perky]

31. Some things to keep in mind

Obama did not suit yo keep anyone from voting or not voting in Nevada, Hew was not a party to the lawsuit... he was not a defenedant. He was not a witness. And as far as I know neither he or his campaign filed an amicus brief. The suit was meritless and the plaintiffs have chosen not to appeal.


Two. There is a huge difference between Ballot Access and insuring that those on the ballot are legitimately there. The challenges he made were judged acceptabbble y those who are empoweded to make those judgement. If they were invaild or some how corrupt, the signature should not be on the ballot..... It's called the rule of law and no on is above it. Aagin if you notice the other candidates did not appeal the decision. Why? Because they probablyknew some of the signatures were....shall we say.....problematic.

The rulles on petitions for candidate support are very clear. They are there to protect the electoral process.

I am quite sure that you would have no problem with the Clinton folks challenging Obama signatures on those same ground.

[2rth2pwr]

37. Can't we rise above all this? We are a better people, there is no red states..blah, blah.nt

[Debi]

43. So people who have inaccuracies in thier nomination petitions should be allowed on the ballot?

I just want to make sure that that's your point.

People should not have to follow the rules, which are clearly set out, when they have others sign their nominating petitions?

[AtomicKitten]

44. This has nothing to do with Obama other than Clinton is trying to screw him over.

Three of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Clinton advocates that AUTHORED the very plan that was perfectly fine until * oops * Obama got the coveted union endorsement Hillary expected to be hers ... and then and only then was there a problem.

Let's recap: Three of the plaintiffs of the lawsuit are Hillary advocates that AUTHORED the plan which now they are trying to stop with an injunction two days after the endorsement.

The fact that anyone has the nerve to try to turn this around on Obama speaks to the vile depths the Clinton campaign and their surrogates and supporters are prepared to stoop to.

BEWARE OF ANYONE TRYING TO SUPPRESS THE VOTE.

And tell your candidate to tuck in her GOP ways because it ain't pretty.

[rinsd]

46. This is about campaign tactics and high horses.

Some feel such tactics are beyond pale when committed by their opponent.

Not so much when its their guy.

[AtomicKitten]

48. Inconsistency is being fine with a plan YOU authored and then trying to get an injunction against it

when the Master Plan doesn't pan out the way you hoped.

As you continue to try to spin this because of your protection of this vile GOP election manipulation, it reflects on the whole party badly.

It is hypocritical for Democrats to bemoan voter suppression when the Republicans do it and turn a blind eye when a Democrat is doing it state by state - see my sig line.

[rinsd]

50. The Clinton campaign authored the plan now?

I've seen you sig line.

Not sure how a column by Yepsen and some campaign comments amounts to voter suppression in IA.

I know it makes for a great rallying cry to get a traditionally unmotivated group to the polls but there was no attempt to suppress the vote.

And New Hampshire?

Perhaps the Obama fans here who ran around screaming that Hillary stole the election can apologize now.

[AtomicKitten]

53. Read what I said ...

The YOU is referencing the subject of the sentence - the three Clinton advocates that wrote the plan 10 months prior - and it wasn't until two days after Barack got the Culinary union endorsement did they have a problem with the very plan they wrote.

I won't hold my breathing waiting for you to apologize to the Democratic Party en masse for your candidate suing state by state to suppress her opponents' votes. That's a fact that stands tall in spite of all your efforts to make excuses for your candidate's vile behavior.

Beware of anyone that tries to suppress the vote.

[Nailzberg]

47. Verified petitions go hand-in-hand with fair elections.

Duplicate or out-of-district signatures threaten the voice of the people.

Cook County has long and storied history of voter fraud in favor of the Democratic machine. Challenging petitions is a must for any campaign.