WASHINGTON — Republican Jesse Kelly was still basking in the glow of his victory in an Arizona congressional primary when the Democratic congresswoman he's trying to unseat released a scathing TV ad branding him "a risk" who would gamble away people's retirement savings.
Click here to find out more!
It took Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' campaign just hours to start hitting Kelly on the airwaves for his stance on Social Security. That's because Giffords, like dozens of other Democrats around the country facing tough re-election bids in a political environment that favors the GOP, was trying to score a knockout punch against her rival before he had a chance to introduce himself to voters.
It's a time-tested tactic in political campaigns, particularly when an incumbent is facing a lesser-known challenger, or when a seat is up for grabs after a lawmaker's retirement or departure. And with Democrats at risk of losing their grip on Congress in the November elections, going negative early and often is regarded as a necessity.
Polls show voters leaning toward the GOP — disillusioned with President Barack Obama, dissatisfied with the direction of the country and skittish about the sagging economy. So the idea, strategists and campaign watchers say, is for Democrats and their allies to portray Republicans as an even worse alternative to the devil they know.
"Things are looking so bad for Democrats that their only hope is to come out early and simply disqualify the Republican," said University of Wisconsin political scientist Ken Goldstein, who studies political advertising.
Unlike in most years, when the party in power can afford to boast about its candidates in the early stages of a race before going hard after its opponents in the closing days, Democrats are skipping the pleasantries this particularly grim year, Goldstein added.
"Usually people like to serve a little sorbet before the main course, but things are so dire now that they're jumping right into dinner," he said.
Giffords had the financial wherewithal to do so, knowing that her challenger didn't have the means to hit back. Her campaign had nearly $2 million in cash as of last month, according to federal disclosures, while Kelly had less than $80,000 in the bank.
Democrats' House campaign arm took a similar tack this week in its first advertisement of the political season, hammering Wisconsin Republican congressional candidate Sean Duffy. It charged that the former district attorney and reality TV personality, who's running to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Dave Obey, favors privatizing Social Security.
"Remember the crash?" an announcer asks over a sinister soundtrack in the ad, which intersperses images of worried-looking women and senior citizens with pictures of Duffy.
His campaign says he doesn't back privatizing the federal retirement program.
That's nothing compared with a pair of ominous advertisements a labor union began airing late this month on behalf of endangered Democratic Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees shelled out $750,000 to run ads bashing Titus rival Joe Heck. One calls Heck "dangerous to women" because of his stance against requiring insurance companies to cover a cervical cancer vaccine. The closing frame reads, "Warning. Joe Heck Dangerous."
Advertisements like that are already dominating the election season even before its customary Labor Day kickoff. Ad spending by candidates, parties and outside groups is way up, and negative spots are dominating, according to figures compiled by political ad tracker Evan Tracey.
As of last week, Tracey found, candidates for state and federal office had spent $395 million on ads for the November elections — nearly 40 percent more than at this point in the 2006 midterm elections
— and more than half the ads had been negative. Political parties and outside groups had been even more negative, going on the attack nearly 80 percent of the time.
Democrats
aren't the only ones accentuating the vicious this year.
In one recent ad, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle pins the state's surging unemployment and foreclosure rate and plummeting home values on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saying he has "dragged Nevada down to perhaps its lowest point ever."
In Indiana, Republican Dan Coats is bashing his opponent, Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth, for voting to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, charging that he wanted to let terrorists into the country and give them the same rights as Americans.
Independent groups advertising on behalf of Republicans have also come out early with an onslaught of negative TV spots that tie embattled Democrats to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in hopes of making Election Day a referendum on the party's leadership.
Democrats' only hope this fall is to resist that and instead convince voters they'd get a worse deal with Republicans.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the party's House campaign chief, has been making the case on a national level in recent days, saying voters aren't satisfied with things now but don't want to go back to policies that created the current economic mess.
Asked recently whether Democrats were willing to be "cold-blooded" in hitting the GOP with advertising, Van Hollen said, "Our candidates are out there. They're going to be drawing clear distinctions."
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Enduring Obama Muslim Rumors
That after 19 months in the spotlight people still think Obama is a Muslim is a fault of the White House
Is Barack Obama a Muslim? It seems very clear that he is not. He has called himself a Christian for many years and for two decades was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, before ending his membership during the 2008 campaign in protest of the inflammatory racial remarks of his pastor. Trinity is a Congregationalist denomination of mainstream Protestantism.
Click here to find out more!
So it came as a surprise last month when the Pew Research Center found that 18 percent of Americans, or nearly 1 in 5, think Obama is a Muslim, an increase from 11 percent in March 2009. This was not an isolated finding. A recent Time magazine poll found that even more Americans, 24 percent, think that Obama is a Muslim. Reflecting the partisan divide, 1 in 3 conservative Republicans say Obama is a Muslim, according to Pew. Only one-third of Americans know he is a Christian, down from 48 percent last year, and 43 percent say they don't know what Obama's religion is.
White House officials and Obama strategists are more than a little troubled by this misunderstanding. Some think it may derive at least in part from willful ignorance on the part of Obama haters. These critics want to believe what they consider the worst about Obama, such as that he wasn't really born in the United States and isn't qualified to be president. That, in addition to his alleged commitment to Islam, is nonsense.
But these misapprehensions aren't new. Many Americans believed Thomas Jefferson was an atheist, which was untrue. Many thought Abraham Lincoln was Catholic, a despised minority in many places in the 1860s. Also untrue. Some thought Franklin Roosevelt was Jewish. Likewise, false. Of course, there was plenty of anxiety over John F. Kennedy's Catholicism in his 1960 campaign, so much so that he felt compelled to make a speech declaring that his faith wouldn't interfere with his policy decisions. After he was elected, other concerns dominated the nation's agenda and the Catholic "issue" faded.
For the record, 11 presidents were Episcopalian, including Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, James Monroe, James Madison, and George Washington, according to Pew. Eight were Presbyterian, including Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, and Andrew Jackson. Four were Baptist—Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, and Warren Harding. Three presidents were unaffiliated with a specific religion—Jefferson, Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson. Kennedy was the only Catholic president.
Obama has had several problems in defining his religious beliefs. His father and namesake was brought up a Muslim but didn't practice his faith (and, in any case, abandoned the family when Obama was a young boy, so his direct influence on his son was minimal). Obama spent much of his childhood in a Muslim country, Indonesia, and attended a Muslim-dominated school, all of which may account for some suspicions. As president, he has been reaching out to the Islamic world, which some of his critics don't like. And, most recently, he has supported the right of American Muslims to build a controversial cultural center and mosque near ground zero in New York (although he said he would prefer that the sponsors voluntarily pick a different location).
[See a roundup of editorial cartoons on the so-called "ground zero mosque" controversy.]
Obama rarely attends services, unlike his predecessors Bush and Clinton, who made at least periodic visits to church on Sundays. White House spokesman Bill Burton recently told reporters: "The president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day." But there is scant public evidence that he really practices any organized religion at all. And he rarely talks about his faith, unlike Bush, who used the rhetoric of born-again Christianity in his speeches and public comments. And Bush's repeated declaration that freedom is a gift from God to all of humanity invested one of his guiding policy ideas with spiritual meaning.
None of this means that Obama is a Muslim. He actually seems to be more of a secular leader than anything else. But it all points up a paradox. Obama has been one of the most visible figures in the world for more than 19 months, with the media covering him exhaustively. But still there are huge misunderstandings about him. It shows that the White House has a long way to go, not only in explaining his policies but in clarifying his values.
Is Barack Obama a Muslim? It seems very clear that he is not. He has called himself a Christian for many years and for two decades was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, before ending his membership during the 2008 campaign in protest of the inflammatory racial remarks of his pastor. Trinity is a Congregationalist denomination of mainstream Protestantism.
Click here to find out more!
So it came as a surprise last month when the Pew Research Center found that 18 percent of Americans, or nearly 1 in 5, think Obama is a Muslim, an increase from 11 percent in March 2009. This was not an isolated finding. A recent Time magazine poll found that even more Americans, 24 percent, think that Obama is a Muslim. Reflecting the partisan divide, 1 in 3 conservative Republicans say Obama is a Muslim, according to Pew. Only one-third of Americans know he is a Christian, down from 48 percent last year, and 43 percent say they don't know what Obama's religion is.
White House officials and Obama strategists are more than a little troubled by this misunderstanding. Some think it may derive at least in part from willful ignorance on the part of Obama haters. These critics want to believe what they consider the worst about Obama, such as that he wasn't really born in the United States and isn't qualified to be president. That, in addition to his alleged commitment to Islam, is nonsense.
But these misapprehensions aren't new. Many Americans believed Thomas Jefferson was an atheist, which was untrue. Many thought Abraham Lincoln was Catholic, a despised minority in many places in the 1860s. Also untrue. Some thought Franklin Roosevelt was Jewish. Likewise, false. Of course, there was plenty of anxiety over John F. Kennedy's Catholicism in his 1960 campaign, so much so that he felt compelled to make a speech declaring that his faith wouldn't interfere with his policy decisions. After he was elected, other concerns dominated the nation's agenda and the Catholic "issue" faded.
For the record, 11 presidents were Episcopalian, including Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, James Monroe, James Madison, and George Washington, according to Pew. Eight were Presbyterian, including Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, and Andrew Jackson. Four were Baptist—Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman, and Warren Harding. Three presidents were unaffiliated with a specific religion—Jefferson, Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson. Kennedy was the only Catholic president.
Obama has had several problems in defining his religious beliefs. His father and namesake was brought up a Muslim but didn't practice his faith (and, in any case, abandoned the family when Obama was a young boy, so his direct influence on his son was minimal). Obama spent much of his childhood in a Muslim country, Indonesia, and attended a Muslim-dominated school, all of which may account for some suspicions. As president, he has been reaching out to the Islamic world, which some of his critics don't like. And, most recently, he has supported the right of American Muslims to build a controversial cultural center and mosque near ground zero in New York (although he said he would prefer that the sponsors voluntarily pick a different location).
[See a roundup of editorial cartoons on the so-called "ground zero mosque" controversy.]
Obama rarely attends services, unlike his predecessors Bush and Clinton, who made at least periodic visits to church on Sundays. White House spokesman Bill Burton recently told reporters: "The president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day." But there is scant public evidence that he really practices any organized religion at all. And he rarely talks about his faith, unlike Bush, who used the rhetoric of born-again Christianity in his speeches and public comments. And Bush's repeated declaration that freedom is a gift from God to all of humanity invested one of his guiding policy ideas with spiritual meaning.
None of this means that Obama is a Muslim. He actually seems to be more of a secular leader than anything else. But it all points up a paradox. Obama has been one of the most visible figures in the world for more than 19 months, with the media covering him exhaustively. But still there are huge misunderstandings about him. It shows that the White House has a long way to go, not only in explaining his policies but in clarifying his values.
Alaska Democrat's Campaign for Senate Ramps Up
ANCHORAGE
, Alaska — Ten days ago, Scott McAdams had a volunteer treasurer and a few thousand dollars to help him pursue the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator in Alaska.
With the shocking upset victory by tea party darling Joe Miller over U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for the Republican nomination, volunteers and money are flowing his way.
Click here to find out more!
A pair of staffers from the office of U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, are taking leave to assist the campaign. McAdams has hired a spokeswoman.
The Democratic Senatorial Candidate Committee is polling in Alaska to find out if their money would be well-spent backing McAdams, the mayor of Sitka.
Wednesday evening, McAdams was listed among the top fundraisers on ActBlue.com, which helps Democrats set up fundraising campaigns for candidates, with $76,117 in donations. McAdams expects his campaign to have collected $100,000 by end of the week as Alaskans pitch in to help him defeat the Republican endorsed by former Gov. Sarah Palin.
"Things are ramping up," McAdams said Wednesday in an interview at a picnic table in Anchorage's Elderberry Park.
He will face a Republican who until a few months ago was also a political unknown.
Miller is a Fairbanks attorney, a West Point graduate and a decorated Gulf War veteran. He cast Murkowski as too liberal and part of the problem in an out-of-control Washington. He won the endorsement of Palin and was subsequently backed financially by the Tea Party Express.
Miller on Tuesday night repeated his contention that the answer to the country's financial solvency crisis is to transfer power and holdings back to the states.
Alaska has long depended on federal largesse, Miller said, but could work toward self-reliance with more control of its own resources and a reduction in federal regulatory burdens.
Senate Democrats quickly lumped Miller into what it's calling the "Tea Party Set" with Senate Republican hopefuls Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, Sharron Angle of Nevada, Ken Buck of Colorado and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Democratic Senatorial Candidate Committee spokesman Deirdre Murphy said Miller wants to end Social Security and Medicare, joining other "right-wing insurgents" dangerously outside the mainstream of their states.
She would not comment on whether the committee plans to help McAdams financially. McAdams said he has not heard from the group.
"The national Democrats don't even know my name," he said. "I'm not sure how they operate or what they're up to. This campaign is about Alaska and about Alaskans and putting Alaskans to work. I would suspect that there are elements of my agenda that are completely off the radar of the national Democrats."
McAdams, a former commercial fisherman, said he never considered himself a sacrificial lamb, even though Murkowski's campaign had collected $2.4 million a month before the primary. Early on, he said, he suspected Miller could be the nominee with Palin's endorsement.
With only about $20,000 in hand, McAdams did much of his preprimary campaigning by phone. Miller's emergence prompted him to take leave without pay from his job as community schools director to campaign full time.
The U.S. Senate, McAdams said, has been frozen by the partisanship. The country needs bipartisanship, not someone looking to annihilate the opposition.
McAdams said his message will be that Alaska can develop its resources with measures now in place.
"We need to make the case to liberals, to the environmental movement, to anyone who will listen, that Alaska is the green choice in a global marketplace," he said.
State politicians for years have pushed and failed to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling. A new argument is needed, McAdams said, perhaps increasing Alaska's share of revenue from federal leases and creating a fund to encourage renewable energy in the state, where villages strewn across roadless wilderness are part of Alaska's 150 stand-alone utility grids, many burning diesel.
"We could create a laboratory for renewable energy for the planet," he said. "We could use ANWR as a cash machine to transform the way that we do renewable energy at the local level. The things that we would learn, the mistakes that we would make, the innovations that we would come up with, through that effort, could be a blueprint for the world."
, Alaska — Ten days ago, Scott McAdams had a volunteer treasurer and a few thousand dollars to help him pursue the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator in Alaska.
With the shocking upset victory by tea party darling Joe Miller over U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for the Republican nomination, volunteers and money are flowing his way.
Click here to find out more!
A pair of staffers from the office of U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, are taking leave to assist the campaign. McAdams has hired a spokeswoman.
The Democratic Senatorial Candidate Committee is polling in Alaska to find out if their money would be well-spent backing McAdams, the mayor of Sitka.
Wednesday evening, McAdams was listed among the top fundraisers on ActBlue.com, which helps Democrats set up fundraising campaigns for candidates, with $76,117 in donations. McAdams expects his campaign to have collected $100,000 by end of the week as Alaskans pitch in to help him defeat the Republican endorsed by former Gov. Sarah Palin.
"Things are ramping up," McAdams said Wednesday in an interview at a picnic table in Anchorage's Elderberry Park.
He will face a Republican who until a few months ago was also a political unknown.
Miller is a Fairbanks attorney, a West Point graduate and a decorated Gulf War veteran. He cast Murkowski as too liberal and part of the problem in an out-of-control Washington. He won the endorsement of Palin and was subsequently backed financially by the Tea Party Express.
Miller on Tuesday night repeated his contention that the answer to the country's financial solvency crisis is to transfer power and holdings back to the states.
Alaska has long depended on federal largesse, Miller said, but could work toward self-reliance with more control of its own resources and a reduction in federal regulatory burdens.
Senate Democrats quickly lumped Miller into what it's calling the "Tea Party Set" with Senate Republican hopefuls Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, Sharron Angle of Nevada, Ken Buck of Colorado and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Democratic Senatorial Candidate Committee spokesman Deirdre Murphy said Miller wants to end Social Security and Medicare, joining other "right-wing insurgents" dangerously outside the mainstream of their states.
She would not comment on whether the committee plans to help McAdams financially. McAdams said he has not heard from the group.
"The national Democrats don't even know my name," he said. "I'm not sure how they operate or what they're up to. This campaign is about Alaska and about Alaskans and putting Alaskans to work. I would suspect that there are elements of my agenda that are completely off the radar of the national Democrats."
McAdams, a former commercial fisherman, said he never considered himself a sacrificial lamb, even though Murkowski's campaign had collected $2.4 million a month before the primary. Early on, he said, he suspected Miller could be the nominee with Palin's endorsement.
With only about $20,000 in hand, McAdams did much of his preprimary campaigning by phone. Miller's emergence prompted him to take leave without pay from his job as community schools director to campaign full time.
The U.S. Senate, McAdams said, has been frozen by the partisanship. The country needs bipartisanship, not someone looking to annihilate the opposition.
McAdams said his message will be that Alaska can develop its resources with measures now in place.
"We need to make the case to liberals, to the environmental movement, to anyone who will listen, that Alaska is the green choice in a global marketplace," he said.
State politicians for years have pushed and failed to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to petroleum drilling. A new argument is needed, McAdams said, perhaps increasing Alaska's share of revenue from federal leases and creating a fund to encourage renewable energy in the state, where villages strewn across roadless wilderness are part of Alaska's 150 stand-alone utility grids, many burning diesel.
"We could create a laboratory for renewable energy for the planet," he said. "We could use ANWR as a cash machine to transform the way that we do renewable energy at the local level. The things that we would learn, the mistakes that we would make, the innovations that we would come up with, through that effort, could be a blueprint for the world."
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