SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2008 Mountains from Mole Hills
Two relatively recent posts [see below - DH] here at Musings & Migraines regarding Barack Obama’s run for the Illinois State Senate in 1995 have picked up a lot of attention of late. Those who’ve expressed interest in those posts, which mentioned Obama’s appearance at a meet-and-greet fundraiser for the candidate, hosted by Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn, have included Thomas Edsall from Huffington Post, Ben Smith from Politico.com, Peter Hitchens from the London Sunday Mail, and an anti-Obama blog called Rezcowatch.com. The question everyone seems to be asking is whether or not the connection indicates that Obama is secretly some flame-throwing lefty. Well, it doesn’t and he isn’t. In fact, neither were Ayres and Dohrn at the time of the event. And we say this as critics of Obama whose flaws we haven’t hesitated to mention on this blog.
What’s disturbing here is the pathology of current political coverage that leads pundits to go off chasing wild geese while they neglect the real issue lying right in the open. What’s the real issue? Obama is a centrist, who apparently has the knack of making a lot of people with ostensibly different views see what they want in him; a centrist who may have, ironically, opened himself up for attacks by helping stigmatize ideas associated with the left.
It’s a foregone conclusion that the Republicans are going to indulge in their usual left-baiting tactics when it comes to the general election, but it would be a shame for the liberal blogosphere to give them an assist.
---
<http://warrenpeacemuse.blogspot.com/search?q=Obama+Bill+Ayers>
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2007 See Obama Run I was wondering when someone else was going to bring this up.
> They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos
> episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir "Dreams From My
> Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." Credit for pushing
> officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to
> interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-
> known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper
> called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in
> his book.
>
> ..."Just because someone writes it doesn't make it true," said
> longtime Altgeld resident Hazel Johnson, who worked with Obama on
> the asbestos campaign and had been pushing for a variety of
> environmental cleanups years before he arrived.
A prominent political activist I know told me that community organizers he knew here in Chicago had never heard of Barack Obama before he ran for political office.
> But "Dreams From My Father," the first of Obama's books, is not a
> historical account. In it, Obama uses literary techniques that are
> rarely found in political memoirs.
>
> Dialogue in the memoir is an "approximation of what was actually
> said or relayed to me," Obama wrote in its introduction. For the
> sake of compression, he wrote, some characters are "composites of
> people I've known, and some events appear out of precise
> chronology." Most names in the book were changed for the sake of
> privacy, he wrote.
>
> And though most memoirs place their authors at the center of
> events, critics of "Dreams From My Father" say the book unfairly
> omits others responsible for the successes of the asbestos
> campaign, an event that Obama portrays as central to his maturation
> as a political leader. For example, Johnson is not mentioned, and
> no character in the book appears to resemble her, even though she
> was already a prominent Altgeld activist and her presence in the
> anti-asbestos effort is confirmed by interviews and news accounts
> at the time.
Hmmmm...no wonder the details around his first political campaign against Alice Palmer are so fuzzy. The guy disremembers the folks that cloud the minty fresh image.
Last night at the University of Chicago, in a "conversation" with Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, political science professor, Michael Dawson, raised a little known fact that Obama displaced Alice Palmer, a sitting black state senator, who was farther to the left of Obama, politically. Dawson also reminded the audience that the DLC, with which Obama is closely associated, is one of the most conservative elements within the Democratic Party.
Alice Palmer was a popular and effective legislator, and would have retained her seat had Obama not challenged her nominating petitions. Most accounts of what took place claim that Palmer lost a special election for an open congressional seat and then changed her mind about running for reelection to the state senate. The fact is the special election was held December 12, 1995 and Alice Palmer had already announced to the Illinois Public Action Convention that she would run for reelection for her senate seat. The fact is the Hyde Parkers whom Obama was courting at the time would've remained loyal to Palmer and many told him as much at the home of Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers in late November of 1995.
Why did Obama go after an office held by an effective, progressive, black incumbent, not once, but twice? (see Bobby Rush)
POSTED BY RED RABBIT AT 3:36 PM 0 COMMENTS LABELS: 2008 ELECTION, DEMOCRATS THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2005
Get to know Barack Obama
When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own- minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him-- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread. His "bright eyes and easy smile" struck me as contrived and calculated--maybe because I was supporting another candidate. Since then, I've never heard him say anything new or earthshaking, or support anything that would require the courage of his convictions. I only voted for him in this last race--because his opponent was a pinhead. And I've been mostly alone in my views. But maybe that's changing.
Thanks, Barack. By voting to confirm Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State you confirmed my opinion of you as someone who will not come through when it counts. You voted with the entire Republican membership rather than your compadre, Dick Durbin, and the man you supported for president, John Kerry. Your sense of collegiality is ridiculous under the circumstances.
What are all those people who thought you walked on water thinking now? I'm just wondering who's going to whisper in President CandyAss's ear when Condo's busy playing Secretary of State.