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Monday, February 18, 2008
Clinton plans campaign trip to Appalachia
So far Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois have been waging their campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in Ohio’s big cities.
That will change next week, at least for Clinton, the New York senator. She’ll campaign in southern Ohio, the state’s Appalachian region, her campaign announced Monday, Feb. 18. That’s the region that her top Ohio backer - Gov. Ted Strickland -comes from. He’s from Duck Run in Scioto County.
“We wanted to make clear to the people of southern Ohio that their voice will be heard by Sen. Clinton in this campaign and that no part of Ohio will be ignored in her efforts to talk to voters across the state,” Isaac Baker, campaign spokesman, said.
She will discuss economic development in an area hard hit by unemloyment and other economic problems, the campaign said.
Details of the trip will be announced later.
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Eye on Ohio: “Choices” ad for Obama
Obama ad touches on his past and about strengthening communities
The ad: “Choices,” 60-second television commercial.
Where to see it: It began airing Monday in Ohio.
SCRIPT:
(Obama speaking) “It is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.”
Announcer: “After college, Barack Obama signed on as a community organizer for local churches, working to lift an area torn apart by plant closings.”
Jerry Kellman (Calumet Community Religious Conference, 1980-85): “Those mills began to close. People lost their jobs for starters. The neighborhoods were devastated.”
David Kindler (former community organizer): “The fact that Barack chose to try and effect social change, you know, how do you understand that motivation? The pay stinks, the hours are bad.”
Announcer: “Three years later, Barack went to Harvard Law, then returned to the community to lead a voter registration drive and defend civil rights.”
Professor Laurence Tribe (Harvard University Law School): “It was inspiring, absolutely inspiring, to see someone as brilliant as Barack Obama, as successful, someone who could’ve written his ticket on Wall Street, take all of the talent and all of the learning and decide to devote it to the community and to making people’s lives better.”
VIDEO:
Blends old photos of Obama with Kellman, Kindler and Tribe speaking so highly of him. Shows photographs of rusty, old industrial plants with an ominous sign saying, “Keep Out.” As Tribe talks, the commercial shows a New York Times article from 1990 heralding Obama as the first black elected to head Harvard Law’s Review. The commercial concludes with footage of Obama mingling with voters.
ANALYSIS:
This minute-long commercial is a reasonably accurate biography of Obama, and it strongly makes the case that he chose public service and community organizing over making a fortune as a Wall Street lawyer.
The commercial, however, leaves out the fact that Obama and his wife have earned enough money from his two books to have bought a $1.6 million house in Chicago.
The commercial also delivers a veiled hint that Obama chose low-paying public service while his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, did not.
In fact, upon graduation from Yale Law School, Clinton became a staff lawyer for the Children’s Defense Fund. She also served as a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee staff that built a case for impeachment in 1974 against President Richard Nixon. Only after moving to Arkansas with her husband did Clinton work for a private law firm.
Jack Torry is a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch. E-mail address: jtorry@dispatch.com.
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Eye on Ohio: “Join” ad for Obama
Obama ad discusses ending the war and saving the environment
THE AD: “Join,” 30 seconds.
WHERE TO SEE IT: It began airing in Ohio on Monday.
SCRIPT:
“I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message. We want an end to this war, and we want diplomacy and peace. Not only can we save the environment, we can create jobs and opportunity. We’re tired of fear; we’re tired of division. We want something new. We want to turn the page. The world as it is is not the world as it has to be.”
VIDEO:
The crowd shots in this ad are exclusively of young people. Text quickly flashes across the screen, proclaiming, “We can end a war,” “We can save the planet,” “We can change the world,” “Change begins with you.” A young, vigorous Obama is among supporters who are visibly ga-ga in their gazes and expressions.
ANALYSIS:
Billed as “Join,” the ad is classic feel-good campaigning. The not-so-subtle message is that Obama is the future, and his opponents represent the past. This has been a recurring theme in the 46-year-old’s campaign.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and husband Bill have tamped down the criticism about whether Obama has really been consistently and vigorously anti-war, after the former president’s jabs at his wife’s opponent seemed to backfire. (Mr. Clinton said it was a “fairy tale” for Obama to be seen as having been prescient about how the war could go badly.)
Obama has attacked Clinton for voting for authorization to go to war, though she has criticized him for once saying he was unsure how he would have voted on the question and noting that he has voted for funding for the war.
Last fall, Clinton told NBC’s Tim Russert that she wanted all the troops out by 2013. On the same show, Obama said it would be “irresponsible” to project when the troops could come home, but that he would “drastically reduce” the U.S. mission to “protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians and making sure that we’re carrying out counterterrorism activities there.”
In short, both candidates say this country needs to get out of Iraq quickly, which, of course, leaves much to the imagination about what that precisely means.
Regarding saving the planet, Obama recently gave a major speech at a GM plant in Wisconsin (which has its primary today, Feb. 19) calling for a decade-long investment of $150 billion to create 5 million so-called “green-collar” jobs that would be focused on improving the environment.
As for Obama’s call to change the world, this is another iteration of his focus on promoting hope, which has become a trademark of his speeches. Sen. Clinton continues to emphasize her experience.
Ellen Belcher is editorial page editor of the Dayton Daily News. E-mail: ebelcher@daytondailynews.com/ Telephone: (937) 225-2286.
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Eye on Ohio: “Need” ad for Obama
Obama ad talks about taking care of middle-class workers
THE AD:
“Need,” 30-second television commercial.
WHERE TO SEE IT:
It began airing in Ohio on Monday.
SCRIPT:
“I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.
“This administration has further divided Wall Street from Main Street. You’ve got CEOs who are making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers are making in a year. The bedrock, the foundation, of our economy is our workers. And the middle class have been treading water or worse.
“My plan says, ‘Let’s return some balance to our tax code. Close these corporate loopholes the lobbyists put in. And let’s make sure that tax breaks are given to people who really need it.”
VIDEO:
The commercial opens with a black-and-white still photo of Obama with voters, switches to color footage of him speaking at a voter forum, then shows him speaking briefly to the camera. It cuts to video of him meeting voters, and a black-and-white photo with a group featuring a man wearing a “Jobs! Worth fighting for” T-shirt.
Obama speaks to the camera for two seconds before full-screen text says: “The Obama Plan,” adding “Close corporate tax loopholes,” “$1,000 tax cut per working family,” “No taxes on seniors making under $50,000.”
ANALYSIS:
Broadcast in earlier primary states, the commercial continues Obama’s effort to chip away at Hillary Clinton’s strength among working-class voters and women by focusing on pocketbook issues.
CEOs who make more in 10 minutes than an average worker in a year are the exception, but they do exist. The gap between CEO and worker pay has been rising for 40 years. The ratio, 24-to-1 in 1965, surged in the 1990s and declined from a peak in 2000.
In 2006, average annual CEO compensation was 262 times the average full-time worker’s salary of $42,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That means the average CEO earned more in one work day than the average worker in a year.
Interestingly, some of the highest-earning Americans are hedge-fund managers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions, Obama has received $504,484 from hedge fund employees in the 2008 election cycle — slightly less than Clinton, but more than five times the contributions to Republican front-runner John McCain.
Obama’s “$1,000 tax cut per working family” would be a refundable income-tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per family, offsetting payroll tax on the first $8,100 of earnings.
Thomas Feran is a reporter at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. E-mail: tferan@plaind.com.
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Another day, another list of endorsements for McCain
Presumptive Republican front-runner John McCain scored another Ohioan on his ever-growing list of endorsements Monday when U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Columbus, gave him the thumbs-up, calling him a “true fiscal conservative.”
McCain last week got the endorsement of House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester at a press conference that included other members of the House Republican leadership.
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McCain to visit Young’s Dairy
Sen. John McCain will be at Young’s Jersey Dairy at noon Wednesday, Feb. 20, for what his campaign called a short meet and greet event.
Young’s, 6880 Springfield-Xenia Road, Yellow Springs, has hosted presidential candidates and their surrogates in the past. Who doesn’t love ice cream?
Details of the appearance were being worked out Monday night.
Republican McCain also will be in Ohio the night before, attending a party in Columbus to celebrate the Wisconsin primary. That event will be at the Hayes Grand Ballroom in The Columbus Renaissance Hotel, 50 North 3rd St. That event begins at 7:30 p.m.
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Eye on Ohio: “Enough” ad for Obama
Obama ad addresses American job loss
THE AD: “Enough,” 30-seconds.
WHERE TO SEE IT: It began airing in Ohio on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, though it has been used in other states as well. Watch it now.
Obama ad addresses American job loss
THE AD: “Enough,” 30-seconds.
WHERE TO SEE IT: It began airing in Ohio on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, though it has been used in other states as well. Watch it now.
SCRIPT: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
“Ordinary people all across the country are struggling from paycheck to paycheck. If the plant moves to China, and you’ve been working there for 20, 30 years, and suddenly you have the rug pulled out from under you, and you don’t have health care, and you don’t have a pension, you’re on your own.
“We’ve got to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that are investing in the United States of America. Enough is enough.”
VIDEO: The spot opens with Obama in a suit, and then flashes to a restaurant where he’s talking to a diverse crowd that looks on approvingly. A tieless Obama has his shirt sleeves rolled up and is gesturing emphatically. The day’s menu appears on a chalkboard in the background. A color drawing of the Statue of Liberty, with Lady Liberty holding an American flag, is displayed prominently.
ANALYSIS: This ad plays to voters’ feelings of insecurity about the economy, and it’s a convenient scene-setter for Obama’s touting of the Patriot Employer Act. That legislation would provide economic incentives for companies to keep their headquarters and employers in this country.
With John Edwards out of the race, and as he comes to a state that has been buffeted by job losses, Obama is ratcheting up his rhetoric about how he’d be the president who’d look out for workers.
To that end, Obama has been attacking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on foreign investment and free trade, knowing that President Bill Clinton fought furiously to get the North American Free Trade Act passed.
That fact still infuriates Ohio’s labor unions, and the free-trade debate was front-and-center in U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s successful campaign in 2006 to unseat Sen. Mike DeWine.
For her part, Sen. Clinton is calling for a “time out” on new agreements and a reconsideration of trade deals every five years, a move Obama characterizes as a change in her tune.
Ohio’s experience with expanded foreign trade has been far from all negative. Though the state has lost more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the last two decades, business groups say an equal number of Ohio manufacturing jobs are dependent on the state’s $38 billion worth of exports.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Ohioans work for foreign-owned companies, and that’s not counting farmers who export their crops.
Though Obama comes to Ohio after an eight-state winning streak since Super Tuesday, the polls show him trailing Clinton in Ohio. Most pundits say those interviews are too dated to mean much, but they’re the reason that Obama’s ads are aimed squarely at uneasy workers.
Ellen Belcher is editorial page editor at the Dayton Daily News. E-mail address: ebelcher@daytondailynews.com. Telephone: (937) 225-2286.
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Obama says he should have given credit
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said at a press conference in Niles that he probably should have given credit to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick for words Obama used in a speech delivered over the weekend in Wisconsin.
The New York Times on Monday reported striking similarities between Obama’s speech and words used by Patrick in 2006.
Patrick and Obama are friends and share the same political adviser, David Axelrod. Obama said the two share ideas all the time.
Obama said his opponent Hillary Clinton has used his words in the past, including “fired up and ready to go.”
Obama, who is known for his inspirational speeches, said, “I really don’t think this is too big of a deal.”
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McAuliffe to attend opening of Clinton’s Dayton office
Sen. Hillary Clinton is sending in her presidential campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, to help open Clinton’s Dayton campaign office on Tuesday, Feb. 19.
The public is invited to the opening at 3854 Wilmington Pike, Dayton.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the event starts at 6 p.m.
McAuliffe is also a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Cordray endorses Obama
Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois for the Democratic nomination for president. That puts Cordray at odds with Gov. Ted Strickland, who’s endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.
“I believe in Sen. Obama’s inspirational message and his efforts to create a politics that will bring people together,” Cordray said in a prepared statement released Sunday, Feb. 17.
McCain in Columbus on Tuesday
Republican frontrunner John McCain is throwing his Wisconsin primary night party in … Ohio.
The public event will be at the Hayes Grand Ballroom in The Columbus Renaissance Hotel, 50 North 3rd Street in Columbus. The event starts at 7:30 p.m.
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