http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_group/1000AmericansforObama/CHjY

Hillary's campaign has misread the public mood.

Her experience is precisely what disqualifies her for the Presidency, as it is based solidly on success at supporting policies the country has repudiated (e.g., Iraq), and failure at establishing policies the country supports (e.g., health care reform).

No one spins as brilliantly as a Clinton, but there is no way to spin her experience as anything but the cause of the problems voters want to see solved.

"all hat and no cattle," applies to politicians from Illinois, too.

Can someone tell me all about G.W.'s accomplishments before he was elected? How about Bill Clinton?

How valid is this argument? Barack's campaign is about change from the status quo. Do people really think that if he were elected that decisions would be made blindly? That the man doesn't have a level head and would surround himself with a well-informed and competent people?

First..I think that if the Obama campaign keeps putting these people front and center then they should at least have bare minimum knowledge of his record in the state and US Senate..because believe it or not..there is one and it's not half bad.

Secondly, I have seen Matthews do this before, but the best part of this one was when Keith Olbermann looked him in the face and asked him to list out Obamas accomplishments and he didn't have a clue either.

Point being...surrogates have NO excuse for going on television looking like a dufus and journalists should have some idea of the answers to the questions they ask.

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Clinton

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Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term - 6yrs. - and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law - 20 - twenty pieces of legislation in her first six years.

These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress www.thomas.loc.gov, but to save you trouble, I’ll post them here for you.

1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.

2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.

3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.

5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.

6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.

7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day.

8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day.

9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death.

10. Congratulate the Syracuse Univ. Orange Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.

11. Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.

12. Establish the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Commemorative Program.

13. Name post office after Sergeant Riayan A. Tejeda.

14. Honor Shirley Chisholm for her service to the nation and express condolences on her death.

15. Honor John J. Downing, Brian Fahey, and Harry Ford, firefighters who lost their lives on duty. Only five of Clinton’s bills are, more substantive.

16. Extend period of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11.

17. Pay for city projects in response to 9/11

18. Assist landmine victims in other countries.

19. Assist family caregivers in accessing affordable respite care.

20. Designate part of the National Forest System in Puerto Rico as protected in the wilderness preservation system.

There you have it, the fact’s straight from the Senate Record.

and not O'Riley.

This time.

I saw that interview and thought a couple of things: 1) Couldn't MSNBC have found a spokesperson a little closer to the Obama campaign than an obscure TX state senator?; and 2) Can someone name for me any significant legislative accomplishment for Hillary Clinton in the last six years (or for the Democrats in the Senate as a whole, for that matter?

I didn't think so. This just struck me as yet another example of Tweety trying to appear more significant than he really is. By the way, Keith Olbermann asked Matthews my second question from above, and Matthews couldn't answer it.

Obama has a talent for using these incidents to his advantage. By this afternoon, i will bet, he will have a co-ordinated response to this attack angle. What will happen now is everyone will start on this new meme, and Obama will have a response ready that not only answers the question but turnbs it to his advantage.

That is what makes his campaign so formidable.

For contrast look at how HRC responds to attacks- she cries foul, victim and raises counterarguments that only make her look bad. That is the real reason she's losing a race that was hers for the taking.

So this is great. Best to get these previews of the RNC attack points now.

Obviously, most is in the Illinois STATE Senate.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

By Charles Peters

"Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him.

He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that "Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics."

The police proved to be Obama's toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, "This means we won't be able to protect your children." The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought -- successfully -- to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.

By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.

Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them.

Taken together, these accomplishments demonstrate that Obama has what Dillard, the Republican state senator, calls a "unique" ability "to deal with extremely complex issues, to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people." In other words, Obama's campaign claim that he can persuade us to rise above what divides us is not just rhetoric. "