No matter how in the tank (as this election season's second most overused linguistic trope, after "Main Street/Wall Street," would have it) much of the media may be for Barack Obama, it's worth remembering that some journalists are actually in the other guy's corner...shamelessly, rabidly, hilariously in his corner.
Just watch this interview Orlando newswoman Barbara West conducted with Joe Biden on Thursday, which resulted in the Democratic campaign canceling an interview Biden's wife had planned to give the station, WFTV. Drudge [ http://drudgereport.com/ ] and other right-wing sites are spinning the incident as an Orwellian attack on free speech. Personally, I was impressed by Biden's good humor in the face of what was less a grilling than a desperate audition for a primetime job at Fox News.
Consider some of West's questions:
"Aren't you embarrassed by the blatant attempts to register phony voters by ACORN, an organization that Barack Obama has been tied to in the past?"
"Isn't Sen. Obama's comment [about spreading the wealth around] a potentially crushing political blunder?"
"How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
"Are you forewarning Americans that...America's days as a world's leading power are over?"
"What do you say to the people who are concerned that Barack Obama will want to turn America into a socialist country much like Sweden?"
(Watch the full clip below.)
WFTV's news director says West was being appropriately tough -- but her approach was nowhere near as aggressive when she interviewed John McCain last week. Here were some of her questions for him:
"Why haven't you gone after [Obama] on these serious issues of voter registration fraud and the mortgage crisis?"
"Do you feel that the Democrats are trying to paint you into a box -- in other words, make it impossible for you to criticize Sen. Obama?"
"Are you going to cut and run [in Florida] or fight harder?"
According to her official bio [ http://www.wftv.com/station/1874549/detail.html ], West was "the principal assistant to Peter Jennings during his years as the anchor for ABC's World News Tonite [sic] in London," as well as a former Miss Vermont. Google doesn't turn up much about her politics, but her husband, Wade West, is a media trainer [ http://mediapowergroup.com/wadebio.html (as I post, page now blocked, in fact entire site now blocked)] who has consulted for Republican political candidates and donated money [ http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?last=west&first=wade ] to Republican campaigns.
Here's the full interview.
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Obama with his grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham (aka Toot and Gramps) at his high school graduation in 1979.
Obama's grandparents during World War II. Stanley joined the Army after Pearl Harbor, and Madelyn worked on a bomber assembly line.
Stanley and Madelyn Dunham with their daughter Ann, Obama's mother, on the left.
Obama with his Gramps and Toot in New York City in the 1980s.
A young Obama, at right, with his grandfather Stanley, mother Ann, and sister Maya.
A little Obama plays with his grandfather on the beach.
Madelyn spoke about her grandson in a campaign commercial.
The Huffington Post | November 3, 2008 04:36 PM
A statement from Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng on their grandmother's death:
"It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.
"Our family wants to thank all of those who sent flowers, cards, well-wishes, and prayers during this difficult time. It brought our grandmother and us great comfort. Our grandmother was a private woman, and we will respect her wish for a small private ceremony to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, we ask that you make a donation to any worthy organization in search of a cure for cancer."
Sen. Barack Obama speaks to voters as he canvasses a neighborhood in Holland, Ohio, Oct. 12, 2008. Reuters/Jim Young
In bellwether Perry County, the Ku Klux Klan once thrived. Now, Republican truckers and coal miners are backing Barack Obama.
By Walter Shapiro
Nov. 2, 2008 | NEW STRAITSVILLE, Ohio -- The Saturday afternoon scene seemed ripped out of a Republican playbook. A campaign canvasser wearing a black cowboy hat stood on the threshold of a mobile home in a hardscrabble, virtually all-white rural county talking about God's will and the White House with a retiree who once was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher.
"I think God had it all planned out for Barack-o to be our man," said Tom Morris, 73, a lifelong Republican whose career was mostly as a self-employed truck driver and electrician. Eighty-two-year-old retired coal miner Rufus Fultz, one of the most active Obama volunteers in Perry County, chimed in, "I believe it too." Morris and his wife, Ernestine, who also crossed party lines to vote early for Obama, live in a trailer in their backyard because they lack the money to repair their ramshackle house. Morris confessed, "I pray every night that Barack and his wife will be elected to the White House unanimously."
There is nothing unanimous about politics in Perry County, located about 60 miles southeast of Columbus at the point where Midwestern Ohio gives way to Appalachia. With only 15,000 voters in 2004 (New Lexington, its largest town, has fewer than 5,000 residents), Perry County appears to be a fly speck in a swing state where turnout is expected to exceed 6.5 million.
But Perry County has an uncanny knack for being a political soothsayer. In both the 1988 and 2000 presidential elections -- the prior two contests without an incumbent on the ballot -- Perry came closest among Ohio's 88 counties of mirroring the presidential vote. In 2004, Perry County came within 1 percent of matching the George Bush and John Kerry vote margins. The Political Research Center at Suffolk University, which identified the county as a bellwether for its Ohio polls, found that Obama led John McCain by a 45-to-41-percent margin in Perry County in mid-October, relatively close to the survey's statewide result. "There is a chance that the bellwether model will not work this year because of heavy urban registration in Ohio," said David Paleologos, the polling director at Suffolk University. "But it has worked in the past."
Even though the minority population of Perry County is little more than a few guys who checked the "Hispanic" box on the Census form as a joke, Obama appears to be holding his own in a place where the Ku Klux Klan thrived through the 1920s. Typical of today's Obama voters is Rick Barnette, a beefy school bus driver with a goatee, who said, "I can't see myself 10 years ago voting for an African-American like Obama. It was how I was brung up. I've seen the Ku Klux Klan pictures." But now Barnette's major objection to Obama is that he did not choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
Shortly after noon Saturday, Barnette was sitting in the unused keno room at Fiore's restaurant and bowling alley in New Lexington helping devise schedules for the high-school bowling league. His companion and fellow Obama supporter Mike Shiplett, whose daughter is in the Air Force in Guam, tried to explain the transition in Perry County. "It's generational," said Shiplett, who is a self-employed truck driver and the operator of a cleaning service. "People our age are different from our parents. My daughter dated a black guy and he was a hell of a nice guy. Things are changing."
But not completely. Standing behind the counter of the bowling alley that has been in his family for three generations, Tim Fiore lamented that teenagers and young men still use "the n-word." A few feet away, watching his teenage daughter bowl, a long-haul truck driver (who would not divulge his name) talked about his indecision as he stood at the booth for early voting. "It was awful," he said. "I really couldn't decide." What finally pushed the trucker over the edge for McCain was his thinking about how Barack Obama's name was so different from the roster of prior presidents.
At the Perry County GOP headquarters in New Lexington, Donald Minor, a retired Teamster who is volunteering for the party, said, "Many Democrats, who never voted Republican before, are coming in to say that they're pulling the whole Republican lever." Why is that, I asked Minor, who confessed that he was a registered Democrat himself. "Because they don't trust Obama," he said. "People who come in here are afraid of Sen. Obama. I won't tell you all the names he's called. But socialist is the nicest."
If there is an ideology in Perry County, it is not so much conservative or liberal as it is rooted in a profound mistrust of the nation's political and economic establishment. "They're remarkable people," said Lowell Morrison, the county Republican chairman who runs a printing company, in a telephone interview. "They're the only people I know who vote principle over their pocketbook." Morrison explained that McCain fits their core values while Obama reflects their economic concerns. Then he shrewdly added, "Republicans and Democrats here have more in common with each other than they do with the leadership of their respective parties."
It is simplistic to believe that this tightly knit county would be heavily Democratic if it were not for Obama's race. After all, the last time the Democrats hit the 50 percent mark in Perry County was in 1976 when Jimmy Carter carried Ohio. But the economic crisis has made a heavy impact. Almost everyone here not on a pension seems to be holding two jobs to make ends meet -- and we are not talking about occupational hyphenates like "model-actress." As Dan Dodd, the local Democratic state representative, put it, "We didn't see the boom days of the 1990s. But we're certainly feeling the recession of this decade."
It is easy to concoct theories to explain what appears to be occurring in Perry County. There is the notion that recession trumps race. And also the inchoate feeling that the 2008 presidential campaign has been going for so long that Obama and his African-American background have grown familiar.
Speaking at a rally in Columbus Friday night, McCain declared, "I know my history. I know it's been a long time since someone didn't carry the state of Ohio and become president of the United States. I'm not going to risk it. I'm going to carry the state of Ohio." McCain was right: The last president who failed to win the Buckeye State was John Kennedy in 1960. But if history is any gauge -- and Perry County remains a divining rod for presidential elections -- then McCain is facing a steep uphill climb in this key state.
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How Obama might just win Ohio In the state that broke Democratic hearts in 2004, favorable poll numbers and a wave of early voters could point to victory. By Walter Shapiro http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/02/ohio_obama/
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