Friday, November 16, 2007 - Posts
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Barack Obama just won the anonymous blog commenter vote. In
his tech plan (PDF)
released Wednesday, Obama pledged to give Americans “an opportunity to review
and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any
non-emergency legislation.” I can hardly wait for the comment war between
ObamaIsHott245 and BarackSux666.
The initiative is a small piece of a progressive Obama plan
that open-Internet
advocates love. He wants to build digital literacy, outsource government
problems to expert citizens (open-source style), and beef up the nation’s
broadband infrastructure to compete globally. The White House message board,
though, seems to be one of the most innovative pieces. It’s unclear whether
President Obama would ever sit down and read these things, but an Obama
spokesman told me it would emphasize that Americans have a digital seat around
the legislative table. I doubt Obama's reasoning behind vetoing legislation would be, "The Internet told me to."
Obama’s spokesman didn’t have details, though, about how the
White House would moderate these posts. Imagine if an elementary school kid is
surfing the Web to do research on the executive branch. He heads over to
WhiteHouse.gov to do some research and sees a message inviting him to, “Tell
President Obama what you think of the immigration legislation on his desk!” God
only knows what he’ll see when he clicks on the link.
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Joe Biden has a goofy new Web video (goofy because it's scored by Randy Newman) that compiles clips of the other Democratic candidates agreeing with him during debates. For a full minute plus, they spew variations on "Joe is right." It's not just a trick of the eye—Biden has killed in the past few debates. When it comes to foreign policy, especially, his answers are usually as strong or stronger than the frontrunners'.
But that doesn't mean praise is a good thing. On the one hand, yes, he has good ideas about education and immigration and Iran that earn his opponents' admiration. But on the other, the frontrunners can praise Biden because they don't see him as a threat. Hillary, for example, looks good for saying something nice about a colleague, but she doesn't set any traps for herself by making that colleague Barack Obama. It's win-win, but it's also more than a little condescending. Just as "you never put your crosshairs on a dead carcass," as Mike Huckabee says, you never pet an animal that can still kick.
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Team Edwards is already on message today, expanding on last night's insta-spin that seized on Hillary's response to a question about NAFTA—a laugh, followed by a dismissive quip—as an indication of her soulless disregard for working people. The campaign just held a conference call in which Michigan Rep. David Bonior and others repeated that the trade agreement is "no laughing matter." "I saw families devastated in my state of Michigan," Bonior said. "Families and communities ripped apart as a result of the worst trade deals. ... John Edwards understands this instinctively." Roger Touse of the transport workers union described her laugh as "like a flashback" to working-class nightmare that was Rubinomics.
It's no mistake the campaign decided to make this moment the night's sticking point. For one thing, there weren't really any others: Hillary was, sigh, back in action. It also fits Edwards' message of working-class solidarity. (He's walking the Hollywood picket lines today.) Plus, it maintains the Edwards narrative of Hillary Clinton as heartless, gutless, and in the sack with corporate interests.
But most importantly, it resurrects her laugh. The Hillary "cackle" managed to span a half-dozen news cycles a few weeks back. Anything her opponents can do to remind people of it—and how much they hate it—is a point for Edwards. Cue the YouTube mashup of Hillary chuckling over NAFTA spliced with Dr. Evil's muah-ha-has. Going after her laugh is a low blow, but subtle enough that it's lowness probably won't make Edwards look bad. Of course, this is the candidate who bristled at the media's obsession with his hair. Now those nitpicky, superficial chatterboxes just might help him.
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Just so everybody is aware, Lou Dobbs is thinking of running for President.
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Using data from the indispensable New
York Times’ debate
analyzer , I crunched some word-per-second numbers from
last night’s debate. Dodd talks faster than Biden and Richardson speaks the slowest of all. Clinton and Obama’s
cadences, meanwhile, are in sync.
| Talker |
Words |
Seconds of talk |
Words/sec |
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|
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| Moderators |
4131 |
1435 |
2.88 |
| Audience |
719 |
304 |
2.37 |
| Biden |
1906 |
586 |
3.25 |
| Clinton |
2944 |
953 |
3.09 |
| Dodd |
1564 |
446 |
3.51 |
| Edwards |
2010 |
627 |
3.21 |
| Kucinich |
1119 |
355 |
3.15 |
| Obama |
3339 |
1081 |
3.09 |
| Richardson |
2199 |
838 |
2.62 |
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