Barack Obama appealed to rich educated white voters by boasting of his responsibility for the welfare reform and placated working-class constituencies by emphasizing that he softened its blow:
<blockquote>Candidates address drug prices, welfare law By CHRISTOPHER WILLS The Associated Press <http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/emaf.nsf/Popup?ReadForm&db=stltoday%5Cnews%5Cstories.nsf&docid=5DA1BA9DBD874A7586256F3C004DC627> Friday, Oct. 29 2004
. . . Obama said he had "been responsible, in this state, for one of the most successful welfare reform programs in the country."
Obama, a freshman senator when the welfare reform package passed, was a key Democratic negotiator on the issue, but Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, was its lead Senate sponsor. Keyes said Obama did sponsor a bill to track the progress of the Illinois program. . . .
Obama said the two bills were separate, and his statements about helping shape welfare reform in Illinois refer to his role in the negotiations.
"I've never claimed that I single-handedly passed welfare reform," Obama said. "What I said was I was the Democratic lead negotiator for the welfare reform bill we eventually passed."</blockquote>
Obama will be an obstacle in bringing the troops home and ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan:
<blockquote>Alan Keyes and Barack Obama debate, hosted by Illinois Radio Network October 12, 2004 . . .
MODERATOR: Senator Obama, you were against the war, no doubt about it, before the war began. But now you're in favor of keeping troops there. How long?
BARACK OBAMA, (D) ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: Well, let me first of all say thank you for hosting this debate.
Ambassador Keyes and I agree on one thing, and that is that the War on Terror has to be vigorously fought. Where we part company is how to fight it, because I think Afghanistan in fact was not a preemptive war, it was a war launched directly against those who were responsible for 9-11. Iraq was a preemptive war based on faulty evidence--and I say that not in hindsight, or Monday-morning quarterbacking. Six months before the war was launched, I questioned the evidence that would lead to us being there. Now, us having gone in there, I do think we now have a deep national security interest in making certain that Iraq is stable. If is it not stable, not only are we going to have a humanitarian crisis, I think we are also going to have a huge national security problem on our hands--because, ironically, it has become a hotbed of terrorists as a consequence, in part, of our incursion there.
In terms of timetable, I'm not somebody who thinks we can say with certainty that a year from now or six months from now we're going to be able to pull down troops. I think that we have to do three things. Number one, we have to rapidly advance the speed with which we are training Iraqi troops and security forces so that they can stabilize the country, and that's going to require our help.
But it's also going to require the help of the international community, which is why we have to internationalize this process. I'm under no illusions that the Germans and the French are going to be sending troops in any time soon, but I do believe that we can get them to put more resources into the training and infrastructure required to secure the Iraqi borders and the Iraqi streets.
And finally, I think it's important that we get our reconstruction moving. I think it is undeniable that the reconstruction process that has taken place has been completely inept. And that's not simply my estimation, that's the estimation of the two ranking Republican Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar, who issued a blistering attack on this administration six weeks before the presidential election. Highly unusual--and I think it indicates how badly botched this job has been.
MODERATOR: Senator Obama, Afghanistan has just conducted the first elections in its 5,000-year history. They appear to have gone very well--at least, up to this point. The Bush administration is pointing to that as a suggestion of the way the elections might proceed in Iraq. Is that not a hopeful sign for Iraq, and for the elections that we may be seeing there in January?
OBAMA: I think it is an absolutely hopeful sign for the people of Afghanistan. And as I have stated unequivocally, I have always thought that we did the right thing in Afghanistan. My only concerns with respect to Afghanistan was that we diverted our attention from Afghanistan in terms of moving into Iraq, and I think would could have done a better job of stabilizing that country than we have in providing assistance to the Afghani people.
But I think that all of us, Republican and Democrat, should be rooting for the Afghani people and making sure that we are providing them the support to make things happen. With respect to Iraq, I think it's going to be a tougher play. But, again, I don't think any of us should be rooting for failure in Iraq at this point. This is no longer George Bush's war, this is our war, and we all have a stake in it.
But, you know, the analogy that I use is that, you know, if a driver of a car, your car, drives it into a ditch, there are only so many ways to pull it out. And so, John Kerry is going to be doing many similar things to what George Bush is doing in terms of making sure that we do the best we can in Iraq.
That doesn't mean we don't fire the driver, and it doesn't mean that we don't examine carefully what lead us to be in this ditch in the first place. I think it was a bad strategic blunder--and as I said, that's not simply my estimation. That's the estimation of a number of Republicans.
<http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/debates/04_10_12irndebate.htm></blockquote>
On big-ticket items, he is a typical Democrat. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>