Obama entered public life "not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it."

[candice]

At age 35 in 1996 Obama first ran for political office. Neither naive nor idealistic, he went for the jugular by hiring an election law expert to invalidate the nominating petitions of his opponents, one of whom was the popular incumbent, a liberal African-American woman activist named Alice Palmer. Palmer was Illinois State Senator from 1991 to 1996. She was also Founding Executive Director of Chicago Cities in Schools and Creator and Founding Director of the Chicago Metro YMCA Youth and Government Program. (Her Ph.D. is from Northwestern University.)

Obama's hired expert found sufficient flaws in the petition sheets (although only 757 signatures from registered voters living within the district were required) — to eliminate all of his other Democratic contenders. He was able to run unopposed.

"A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career," wrote Chicago-Tribune political reporters David Jackson and Ray Long. "The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it."

Here's a link to an article by Todd Spivak in today's "Houston Press." Spivak has followed Obama since he was a reporter in Hyde Park:


http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me

It gives a lot more background information than I've been able to find in the mainstream media. I googled Alice Palmer to find out about her credentials. The article doesn't cite much that Obama did for his district so it's too bad she was steamrolled by someone who was using the position as a stepping stone (seems to have had a 3-year plan for each rung on the ladder). And some people thought Hillary was an opportunist!

[TwilightGardener]

1. Yeah, he's just a naive head-in-the-clouds dreamer. The GOP will eat him alive...

:rofl:

[alphafemale]

7. LOL!

:yourock:

:patriot:

[Sensitivity]

13. Please, Please, someone tell me how CLINTON SMEAR tactics are different than BUSH'S

[AtomicKitten]

2. ClintonCo describes him as Bambi AND the Terminator. Pick an epithet cuz you're making us dizzy.

[anonymous171]

15. I wish they would just choose one! lol

[Botany]

3. Good for him

Ready to go from jump street.

[BuyingThyme]

4. It's all coming out now.

[candice]

9. This has been known, but the media does not bother to advertise it...

...kind of like the history of Bu$h's disaster in Texas was known (Molly Ivins wrote a book about it), but the media presented the empty suit as a contender. Laughed down Gore and sold the undiscriminating American voter on Bush--take a chance with change.

[Lerkfish]

20. they're throwing everything at the wall, hoping something sticks.

LOL

[mrbluto]

21. And you, with no counter queue up a lame "LOL"

devoid of content.

Remember: "First they laugh at you..."

Thanks for getting that ball rolling.

[Lerkfish]

28. oh, you've cut me to the quick, sir! I doubt I can survive the humiliation!

I've typed "LOL", I must be a horrible, horrible person.!

[mrbluto]

29. You'll survive - I'm sure you have practice.

Not horrible.

Lame.

[Lerkfish]

30. thanks for your opinion of me. Would you like me to assess your character in return?

No?

didn't think so.

have a nice day.

[mrbluto]

35. Actually yes. You go right ahead.

Ask me a question, then answer for me?

Common tactic. Lame, but common.

I know you'd rather argue with yourself, because you'd be sure to win. (or lose depending how you want to look at it - I can guess how you see it.)

That and it takes less effort.

A very Faux move if you ask me.

[Lerkfish]

36. ok, here's my assessment, based on only the few posts to me in this thread

1. you have no sense of humor
2. you have a low self esteem that requires you to try to put others "in their place" in order to make up for how crappy you really feel when you look in the mirror. Think napoleonic complex. I estimate you're either very short, ugly or were psychologically abused as a child. Someone tried very hard to make you feel bad about yourself. So you direct that uber judgementalism outward to those around you in order to compensate.


I could do more if I had more posts to go on.

If you have a problem with this, remember, you started the "lets assess your character" game first.

[BuyingThyme]

34. Actually, I was kidding, so

LOL is probably appropriate.

[Lerkfish]

37. yeah, that's what I thought.

:) (oh wait, a smiley is "devoid of content"

[Drunken Irishman]

5. Politics is a contact sport.

Nice guys do not make it in this game. I can guarantee you every president we have had has played the tough political game.

Clinton supporters should be glad Obama is not a lightweight, as they originally feared.

[tabatha]

11. At least it passed legal muster.

[sandnsea]

33. That is not what happened

Alice Palmer ran for the Congressional seat and told Obama to run for her old seat. When she lost, she expected him to step aside. By that time, he had many people who had put a lot of time and money into his campaign so he said he was going to continue running. She very quickly got her signatures together, which is why he challenged them. Since he challenged hers, he had to challenge them all. That's all that happened.

[NewHampshireDem]

6. Hmmm ...

Quoting Taylor Marsh quoting The Sun-Times. She couldn't find anything in the Wash Times to smear him with?

[Maddy McCall]

8. Link?

[candice]

16. See updated post for link.

[Maddy McCall]

17. Thanks, candice.

[Sensitivity]

10. Are you suggesting that FRAUD will be routed and REAL VOTES WILL COUNT. Wow

[FrenchieCat]

12. Hahahaha! You mean that the constitional lawyer is on the side

of the good?

Fishing in a empty lake is a mighty humiliating game.


----------------------
OBAMA'S US SENATE RECORD:

S.1975 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/8/2005) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/8/2005 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.

---------------------

S.4102 : A bill to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the use of telecommunications devices for the purposes of preventing or obstructing the broadcast or exchange of election-related information.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 12/7/2006) Cosponsors (None) Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 12/7/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
--------------------

S.4069 : A bill to prohibit deceptive practices in Federal elections.

Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack (introduced 11/16/2006) Cosponsors (4)
Committees: Senate Rules and Administration
Latest Major Action: 11/16/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration.
--------------------

Obama's Rewards

13,000 a year, plus $2,000 for a car--a beat-up blue Honda Civic, which Obama drove for the next three years organizing more than twenty congregations to change their neighborhoods.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

Obama's organizing history may give few clues about what policies he would pursue as President, but Obama the presidential candidate still shows his roots--a faith in ordinary citizens, a quest for common ground and a pragmatic inclination toward defining issues in winnable ways.

Even when Obama was an organizer, Augustine-Herron told him he would be the nation's first black President. Now the Rev. Alvin Love, whom Obama recruited to DCP, looks at his candidacy and says, "Everything I see reflects that community organizing experience. I see the consensus-building, his connection to people and listening to their needs and trying to find common ground. I think at his heart Barack is a community organizer. I think what he's doing now is that. It's just a larger community to be organized."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

What Obama has done in the past, not including what he has done thus far during the primaries; bringing new voters into the frey.


Vote of Confidence
A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama.

In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The number of new voter registrations before the election hit an all-time high. And the majority of those new voters were black. More than 150,000 new African-American voters were added to the city's rolls. In fact, for the first time in Chicago's history-including the heyday of Harold Washington-voter registrations in the 19 predominantly black wards outnumbered those in the city's 19 predominantly white ethnic wards, 676,000 to 526,000.

None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization.

"It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama.

To understand the full implications of Obama's effort, you first need to understand how voter registration often has worked in Chicago. The Regular Democratic Party spearheaded most drives, doing so using one primary motivator: money. The party would offer bounties to registrars for every new voter they signed up (typically a dollar per registration).

The campaigns did produce new voters. "But bounty systems don't really promote participation," says David Orr, the Cook County clerk, whose office is responsible for voter registration efforts in the Cook County suburbs. "When the money dries up, the voters drop out." Nor did the Democratic Party always vigorously push registration among minorities, Orr says. "It's not that they discouraged it. They just never worked hard to ensure it would happen."
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-1993/Vote-of-Confidence

-----------------------
Project Vote is the voter-mobilization arm of ACORN. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose professed purpose is to carry out "non-partisan" voter registration drives; to counsel voters on their rights; and to litigate on behalf of voting rights -- focusing on the rights of the poor and the "disenfranchised."

Project Vote’s major program areas include the following:

Voter Participation Program: “, Project Vote has helped more than 4 million Americans in low-income and minority neighborhoods register to vote, including 1.1 million in 2003-04. In the same period, Project Vote reached more than 2.3 million low-income and minority voters to educate them about the importance of voting. Our methodology is based on face-to-face contact between voters and trusted community messengers, generally a representative of a local community organization.”

Election Administration Program: “ encompasses every aspect of election implementation, from voter registration application design to voting booth placement to vote counting and everything in between. Working in neighborhoods nationwide, Project Vote documents voting problems and works closely with elections officials, secretaries of state, and state legislators to enact proactive, pragmatic solutions. A central component of our work is the inclusion of low-income and minority voters through the involvement of our community partners.”

NVRA Implementation Project: “ partnership between Project Vote, ACORN and Demos aims to improve voter registration services at public assistance agencies. Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to offer voter registration to public assistance clients upon application, recertification or renewal, and change of addresses. The Project ... offers technical assistance.” The National Voting Rights Institute and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have recently become co-administrators of this initiative.

The stated purpose of Project Vote is to work within the system, using conventional voter mobilization drives and litigation to secure the rights of minority and low-income voters under the U.S. Constitution. However, the organization's actions indicate that its true agenda is to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation. In this respect, Project Vote is following the so-called "crisis strategy" or Cloward-Piven Strategy pioneered during the Sixties by Columbia University political scientists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6966

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate income people with over 200,000 members in over 90 cities. For 35 years, ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education, improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living wages.

Over the last decade, ACORN chapters have been involved in over fifteen living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won living wage or minimum wage ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver, Chicago, Cook County, New Orleans, Detroit, New York City, Long Island, Sacramento and San Francisco.

In addition, we have led coalitions to win statewide minimum wage increases in five states - including the huge 71% ballot victory in Florida in November 2004 - which delivered a raise to an estimated 850,000 workers. ACORN is following up that exciting victory by promoting a National Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage through states and cities. This campaign includes cutting edge efforts to win citywide minimum wage increases - as well as ambitious statewide minimum wage ballot initiatives in the battleground states of OH, MO, AZ and CO for November 2006.

In 1998, ACORN established the Living Wage Resource Center to track the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to living wage organizers all over the country.
http://www.livingwagecampaign.org /

THINGS WE THOUGHT NEVER COULD, CAN CHANGE!
....AND ELECTION REFORM IS ONLY ONE OF THEM!


WE CAN DO THIS IF WE WANT TO!

[sanjiadem]

14. They all do it ... and, if you're not up for a full scale revolt

there will be no REAL 'change'. It's just platitudes and rhetoric.

We've been being molded into serfs since the early 80's and nothing will change until the M$M, money, lobbyists, and celebrity are erased from the equation that determines our policies and our Presidents.

[TacticalPeek]

18. K&R

When the City of Chicago seized the 70-year-old Gerri's Palm Tavern by eminent domain in 2001, sparking citywide protests, Obama was silent. And he offered no public comments when the 30-year owner of the Checkerboard Lounge was forced to relocate a couple years later.

Even in Hyde Park, Obama declined to take a position on a years-long battle waged by hundreds of local community activists fighting against the city's plan to replace the historic limestone seawall along Lake Michigan — a popular spot to sunbathe and swim — with concrete steps.

It would be comparable to representing Barton Creek in Austin, and sidestepping any discussion about conservation.

http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/full

The play-it-safe "present" vote syndrome.

[Danger Mouse]

19. So is Obama a wimp or an opportunistic cutthroat?

Make up your minds already! :crazy:

[indimuse]

24. Obama had....... expanded access to the ballot box,

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.



Related links
Election 2008
The Swamp
The latest on national politics from the Tribune's D.C. blog. Clout Street
Local and state politics Election 2008
Complete coverage of local and national races. Obama Watch
The latest on the Illinois senator. Presidential race
Profiles | Issues
Quiz: Candidate selector Presidential contributions
Who gave what to whom.
Portrait of a pragmatist
Activism blossomed in college
Obama's mom: Not just a girl from Kansas
The not-so-simple story of Barack Obama's youth
The troublesome return of a long-lost classmate
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.

"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"

In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."

But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.

"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."



Obama behind challenges
America has been defined in part by civil rights and good government battles fought out in Chicago's 13th District, which in 1996 spanned Hyde Park mansions, South Shore bungalows and poverty-bitten precincts of Englewood.

It was in this part of the city that an eager reform Democrat by the name of Abner Mikva first entered elected office in the 1950s. And here a young, brash minister named Jesse Jackson ran Operation Breadbasket, leading marchers who sought to pressure grocery chains to hire minorities.

Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.

But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.

Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.

"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."

His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.

"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements."

Had Palmer survived the petition challenge, Obama would have faced the daunting task of taking on an incumbent senator. Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070403obama-ballot,1,57567.story

[Adelante]

22. I thought he was supposed to not know what he was doing

A political neophyte, wasn't that it?

A provincial punkin.

A babe in the woods.

Chicago, chicago that toddling town

[DemGa]

23. His actions don't match the lofty rhetoric

What in Obama's past indicates he is this "transformational" figure?

This is a strange gamble on what may certainly amount to no more than a fad.

[indimuse]

25. While Obama didn't attend the hearings,And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers:

Obama contended that in the case of the 1996 race, in which he routed token opposition in the general election, he was ready to compete in the primary if necessary.

"We actually ran a terrific campaign up until the point we knew that we weren't going to have to appear on the ballot with anybody," Obama said. "I mean, we had prepared for it. We had raised money. We had tons of volunteers. There was enormous enthusiasm."

And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: "If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."




Obama Watch
The latest on the Illinois senator. Presidential race
Profiles | Issues

At the time, though, Obama seemed less at ease with the decision, according to aides. They said the first-time candidate initially expressed reservations about using challenges to eliminate all his fellow Democrats.

"He wondered if we should knock everybody off the ballot. How would that look?" said Ronald Davis, the paid Obama campaign consultant whom Obama referred to as his "guru of petitions."

In the end, Davis filed objections to all four of Obama's Democratic rivals at the candidate's behest.

While Obama didn't attend the hearings, "he wanted us to call him every night and let him know what we were doing," Davis said, noting that Palmer and the others seemed unprepared for the challenges.

[Skidmore]

26. It must really steam the Clintons' shorts that all their vaunted political savvy

has been matched and exceeded to date. Obama is no slouch nor is he naive now matter how badly they want to portray him as such.

[Adelante]

27. It's driving them nuts, obviously nt

[Lerkfish]

31. well, it certainly is bringing out their worst behaviour in some cases.

when a democrat starts flinging racist crapola at another democrat, then it has gone too far.

[NastyRiffraff]

32. IOKIODI

Yeah, It's OK if Obama does it. It's amazing that Obama's supporters will accept and defend anything he does, even if had Hillary done the same thing they'd be "outraged." Obama himself was hesitant over the tactic of knocking other candidates out of the race; that should tell you something. But he did it anyway.

There's a pattern here. I think on a lot of his votes he knows better, including his "present" votes. He even said so on the Schiavo case. Too many times, he looks at a difficult issue, evaluates it, and decides either not to take a stand on it. He's not the only politician ever to do so, but to portray him as some kind of hero standing up for the people doesn't match his record.