The Clinton(s) campaign needs some new material.

[hiaasenrocks]

They've taken the Obama campaign's "Yes We Can" and changed it to "Yes She Can." I get the play on words but I wonder, first, why The Clinton(s) people need to do that and, second, if they realize that the real message they're sending is that "we" can't do it but "she" can.

They've taken the Obama campaign's "GOBAMA" and changed it to "GOMAMA." I get the play on words but I wonder, first, why The Clinton(s) people need to do that and, second, if they realize that the real message they're sending is that they need a mother figure to do things for them. (Sort of more of the "we" vs. "she" stuff.)

The last two days, Hillary's stump speech has sounded more and more like Obama's, only without the motivational speaker flair.

Is there any originality with these people or should we just chalk this up to yet another reason why she's a washed up candidate of the past?

And if you're about to blast me with anti-Obama stuff, don't waste your time. I have very little confidence in him as well and am a little fearful of occupying the Oval Office with a "community organizer," something his supporters seem completely incapable of explaining.

:rant:

[REDFISHBLUEFISH]

1. Obama HIMSELF barked out a copy cat line!

Ready to judge on day one?
That was theft ....

You attribute theft to DU people while Obama rips off stuff HIMSELF?

LOL

[hiaasenrocks]

4. No comment on The Clinton(s) supporters, I see.

By the way, you might want to read the last paragraph of my post.

[bidenista]

the clinton campaign isn't centered around slogans

That's why we can joke about our slogans. If other campaigns get uptight because of some gentle satire of their slogans, then they need to reconsider their priorities.

[hiaasenrocks]

13. What is it based on?

I mean, other than it being her turn?

[ErnestoG]

20. Lies, threats and fluffery.

[FrenchieCat]

5. That was turning a phrase....... it is not a part of his motto in the campaign.....

And it's "Right on day one".

[bidenista]

2. ...

[FrenchieCat]

3. I agree.....

and here's part of what a Community organizer does, and in this particular instance, what Barack specifically did:


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

[hiaasenrocks]

8. Who paid his salary?

[FrenchieCat]

11. Project Vote.....

Project Vote is the voter-mobilization arm of ACORN. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose professed purpose is to carry out "non-partisan" voter registration drives; to counsel voters on their rights; and to litigate on behalf of voting rights -- focusing on the rights of the poor and the "disenfranchised."

Project Vote’s major program areas include the following:

Voter Participation Program: “, Project Vote has helped more than 4 million Americans in low-income and minority neighborhoods register to vote, including 1.1 million in 2003-04. In the same period, Project Vote reached more than 2.3 million low-income and minority voters to educate them about the importance of voting. Our methodology is based on face-to-face contact between voters and trusted community messengers, generally a representative of a local community organization.”

Election Administration Program: “ encompasses every aspect of election implementation, from voter registration application design to voting booth placement to vote counting and everything in between. Working in neighborhoods nationwide, Project Vote documents voting problems and works closely with elections officials, secretaries of state, and state legislators to enact proactive, pragmatic solutions. A central component of our work is the inclusion of low-income and minority voters through the involvement of our community partners.”

NVRA Implementation Project: “ partnership between Project Vote, ACORN and Demos aims to improve voter registration services at public assistance agencies. Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to offer voter registration to public assistance clients upon application, recertification or renewal, and change of addresses. The Project ... offers technical assistance.” The National Voting Rights Institute and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have recently become co-administrators of this initiative.

The stated purpose of Project Vote is to work within the system, using conventional voter mobilization drives and litigation to secure the rights of minority and low-income voters under the U.S. Constitution. However, the organization's actions indicate that its true agenda is to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation. In this respect, Project Vote is following the so-called "crisis strategy" or Cloward-Piven Strategy pioneered during the Sixties by Columbia University political scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6966

[hiaasenrocks]

17. Thanks for the link. It also contains this information:

In the 2004 election cycle, ACORN and its sister group Project Vote ran a nationwide voter mobilization drive that was marred by allegations of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams. ACORN's get-out-the-vote activists were implicated in schemes that included the falsification and destruction of thousands of voter registration forms, and the registering of convicted felons even in states where felons are ineligible to vote.

In 2006, approximately 20,000 questionable voter registration forms were turned in by ACORN officials in Missouri -- virtually all in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, where ACORN purportedly sought to help empower the "disenfranchised" minorities living there. Similar allegations of ACORN voter fraud were made in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado. Between 2004 and 2006, ACORN employees were accused of submitting fraudulent voter registration cards and forging signatures on ballot initiatives in 12 states.

ACORN makes a great deal of money from its "community organizing" campaigns, and shows little tolerance for rival leftist groups infringing on its turf. For instance, when ACORN set up shop in San Francisco in May 2002, it discovered that many of its potential recruits - low-income blacks and Hispanics - were networked with the Outer Mission Resident's Association (OMRA). The San Francisco Examiner reports, "ACORN soon began a process of intimidation by busing in activists from Oakland to disrupt OMRA events. ACORN members then began showing up at some neighbors' homes, and in one case jabbed a person in the chest."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6968

[FrenchieCat]

23. Yes, but he was there years before any of what you cite.....

like 12 years earlier, to be exact....and certainly before the Bush Administration took that operation over.

His work led to the election of the first Black Women Senator ever....a Democrat.

[hiaasenrocks]

24. So that was something new and unprecedented with ACORN?

Before you answer, do you know the answer or are you just going to assume the answer?

[FrenchieCat]

27. Acorn, like other community government funded organization has

gone through many changes.

I wouldn't suggest that you would indict Obama's efforts as a lowly paid employee of Project vote, an organization under the ACORN umbrella, that concentrated on increasing voter turn out.

That would be reaching might hard. :shrug:

[hiaasenrocks]

30. OK, so you're assuming the answer.

That's what I wanted to know.

It's a curious thing that you don't want to know more about his past. It might be squeaky clean, for all we know, but it seems reasonable that an ardent supporter would want to know more. Oh well.

[FrenchieCat]

32. I'm just providing information.

However, if you want to be a skeptic, help yourself.

[hiaasenrocks]

34. I don't see anything wrong with being reasonably skeptical based on information

like the stuff I posted above.

In fact, when it comes to looking into a politician's past, I think it would be insane not to want to know more about stuff like this. Maybe that interferes with people's preconceived notions based on motivational speeches, but I like to know more about the candidates.

[FrenchieCat]

45. Yes....maybe so. BUT, you are not assessing the information prior

to asking me about it.

Since you know he was a activists back in the early 90s...why would you post issues dated 2002 and more recent and ask me about them in such a suspicious manner?

I'm not here to analyze the information that you find for you.

You appear to be a smart and intelligent person, and so I would have to think that the information available to me on the Internet, is also available to you.

[hiaasenrocks]

26. Regarding your edit: When did the federal government

under Bush take that operation over?

Honest question. I didn't read that in their material.

[FrenchieCat]

31. ,,,,,,

http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income people with over 200,000 members in over 90 cities. For 35 years, ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education, improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living wages.

Over the last decade, ACORN chapters have been involved in over fifteen living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won living wage or minimum wage ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver, Chicago, Cook County, New Orleans, Detroit, New York City, Long Island, Sacramento and San Francisco.

In addition, we have led coalitions to win statewide minimum wage increases in five states - including the huge 71% ballot victory in Florida in November 2004 - which delivered a raise to an estimated 850,000 workers. ACORN is following up that exciting victory by promoting a National Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage through states and cities. This campaign includes cutting edge efforts to win citywide minimum wage increases - as well as ambitious statewide minimum wage ballot initiatives in the battleground states of OH, MO, AZ and CO for November 2006.

In 1998, ACORN established the Living Wage Resource Center to track the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to living wage organizers all over the country.
http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/

[hiaasenrocks]

36. So you're still alleging that this is a group controlled by the federal government?

[hiaasenrocks]

33. Oops. Look what I found.

AMY GOODMAN: Bertha Lewis, you’re executive director of New York ACORN, how does ACORN fit into this picture?

BERTHA LEWIS: Well, I think we are the poster-child for the right. We have been defamed, and case after case has been brought against us, because we’re very successful in registering African American, Latino, immigrant, low- and moderate-income folks. And ever since 2003, we have been the target of what believe are partisan rightwing attacks. And for six years, the Bush administration has come after ACORN.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/24/ex_justice_dept_attorneys_accuse_bush

Why would the executive director of ACORN NY accuse the * admin of coming after them if ACORN was, as you said, taken over by the * admin? Seriously. You're just making up stuff now.

[FrenchieCat]

42. You know, I hope you learn what you need about Obama......

but it will become clear to all of those following these conversations that you are poking a stick and attempting to come up with whatever.

I am not an "expert" on ACORN nor Project Vote, but from what I have been able to research, I find nothing nefarious about Obama's role there whatsover (and anything that you are citing from years 2002, 2004 & 2006 has nothing to do with Obama).

The man made very little money, although he had graduated from Columbia University. He worked as a community organizer, and then went on the Harvard Law school, where he received his degree. He turned down a Federal Judge Clerkship in order to go and work as a Civil Rights Attorney.

He's written 2 books on this...in which he goes into details. He mentioned the darker parts of his life openly. So, I don't believe that he is "hiding" anything. If you really want to know more, I suggest that you go to the library and check out his books. :shrug:

[FrenchieCat]

14. Obama's Community Roots per the Nation

13,000 a year, plus $2,000 for a car--a beat-up blue Honda Civic, which Obama drove for the next three years organizing more than twenty congregations to change their neighborhoods.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

[Dogmudgeon]

15. Thanks for posting that

THAT is where I first heard about Barack Obama!

I think the Philadelphia City Paper picked the story up through the Alternative Press Syndicate, but I'm not sure. A similar effort seems to have been launched in Philly, but its success was not as dramatic. But then, Philly has supported African-American activism since before WW2. (My apologies for not having remembered that all in more detail.)

--p!

[DJ13]

6. Im tired of the unimaginative Hillary supporters copying the .......

"Fired Up!" line on here too.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

7. They know a good game when they see it.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

[FrenchieCat]

9. Obama is an original thinker; another advantage for us when he becomes President!

[hiaasenrocks]

10. How is he an original thinker?

[FrenchieCat]

37. You have to pay attention to get there on that.....

but a telling aspect was how Hillary changed her backdrop of old people behind her in Iowa to Young people behind her in New Hampshire.

Iowa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH19CmfZNRw

New Hampshire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJWmAS7z2I

[hiaasenrocks]

38. I see.

So putting young people behind you for a speech is original thinking. I guess that was the first time anyone had done that.

I thought maybe you were saying he was an original thinker when it comes to stuff that matters -- substance, not appearance.

[FrenchieCat]

43. Actually, that was another example of Hillary's unoriginal thinking

which is what your op was about.

In reference to original thinking, just stay tuned to the Obama campaign....and one day when they analyze it, you will realize how original Obama actually was, in his management style (Bottom up) and his campaign tactics.

Also, if you have read anything about him at all, you would know how he worked to get things done while he was in the State Senate.

That's when you will find out how it was that a skinny kid with a funny name but without a father and of mixed race background was able to still be cream that floated to the top.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. True, but you are forgetting something

These are come-back lines, not the core of the campaign.

Hillary's campaign isn't slogan-oriented, either. I am very sensitive to the fact that Obama's campaign involves large groups of people chanting slogans and getting highly emotional. There is something I find very sinister about that. Obama is playing with fire, not hope, and my own hope is that he can strike the right balance REAL soon. (Emphasis so no one misunderstands me.)

I'm an HRC supporter, but I have admired Obama for a long time. I considered myself an Obama supporter until a little before Iowa. This recent diversion into political crusading is distressing.

--p!

[GoldieAZ49]

44. all the campaigns do the chanting during a stump speech...sheesh

[Azathoth]

16. It's actually very instructive: Hillary's campaign is about HER, Obama's is about US

n/t

[ErnestoG]

18. Right on the money.

[Dogmudgeon]

21. Yes. The Money. Exactly.

--p!

[Dogmudgeon]

19. Sounds like the Lakoff meme

Sort of like, "Hillary is selfish, but Obama is deeply reflective". That kind of reframing.

I was disappointed in George, though. It was a clumsy article, George is a bright guy, and I have been a fan of his for a long time. I have also read many excellent pro-Obama articles, but Lakoff's HuffPo article wasn't one of them.

--p!

[Azathoth]

22. "Yes We Can" vs. "Yes She Can"

The psychology there isn't hard to read.

[Dogmudgeon]

28. I've already answered that one

See #12.

--p!

[Azathoth]

47. No, you didn't really address it

The Hillary campaign is essentially lifeless. It is unimaginative, has no core message or genuine energy, and is parasitic in nature, a pastiche of buzzwords and themes stolen from other candidates. Early on, after it became apparent that Obama's message of change was resonating with voters, Hillary suddenly showed up one day with "CHANGE!" plastered all over her campaign banners, signs, her bus, etc. It was sad and indicative of the fact that she is running a mechanical campaign that simply says whatever the latest polls tell it to say. Now we see that they are continuing to steal every theme Obama has, twisting his fundamental message of empowering people into one of empowering Hillary. "Yes We Can" vs. "Yes She Can". The psychology couldn't be clearer.

[bigtree]

25. irony

[TexasObserver]

29. Hillary has never had an original thought in her life

She's an adequate technician who copies ideas others have.

[BlackVelvet04]

35. I wasn't aware it came from her campaign people .....

thought it was just D.U. people.

[boston bean]

39. So when Obama changes Ready on Day One, to

Right on day one, I am sure you express the same indignation, right?

[GoldieAZ49]

40. How about "She can Garnish Your Wages"

has a REAL catchy ring to it, no?

[City Lights]

41. Startin' to remind me of the GOP in 2000. When McCain handed Bush his

ass in NH running as the "reform" candidate, Bush morphed into the "reformer with results."

[Jed Dilligan]

46. Si se puede!