From abcnews Political Punch by Jake Tapper: June 10, 2008 9:36 AM
"That's the problem with bringing a Washington, DC, insider on board. They're sometimes covered with the goop from the insides of Washington.
What's the big deal about Obama campaign fundraiser/Vice President selection committee member Jim Johnson getting $7 million in loans from Countrywide Financial Corp.? (As the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday and the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein followed up on.).
Mortgages with rates below market averages, including "a $5 million home equity line of credit against a house in Ketchum, Idaho, a 5.25% loan of $1.3 million for a home in Palm Desert, Calif., and a 3.875% loan of $971,650 for a home in Washington, D.C." Mortgages set up through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo.
The problem is, Obama critics say, perception and hypocrisy. Obama had railed against Countrywide and Mozilo, and his campaign had impugned Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, for taking money from Countrywide lobbyists and for allowing a senior campaign adviser to simultaneously do work for Countrywide.
**
Campaigning in Pennsylvania in March, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, assailed mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp., for embodying the economic and political culture dominated by corporate lobbyists and insiders.
"Countrywide Financial," Obama said. (Watch HERE.) "This is a company that is as responsible as any firm in the country for the housing crisis we're facing today. When Countrywide Financial was sold a few months ago, its top two executives got a combined $19 million. These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis….They get a $19 million bonus while people are at risk of losing their home. What's wrong with this picture?"
("They" are Mozilo and the president of Countrywide, David Sambol.)
Around that time the Obama campaign also criticized Clinton for affiliations with Countrywide.
In the Washington Post: "Obama aides also said Clinton is in no position to stiffen oversight after taking contributions from mortgage industry lobbyists, including funds from representatives of Countrywide, which has been at the center of the mortgage meltdown. 'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors,' campaign manager David Plouffe said."
On MSNBC, senior Obama strategist David Axelrod criticized how senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn had consulted for Countrywide. "She's stuck him with him through the revelation that his firm was working for Blackwater and working for Countrywide," Ax said (watch HERE.) "And, you know, so, it’s kind of stunning. Remember that the embassy said they weren't sure whether he was there as a representative of his firm or a representative of Senator Clinton. I mean, I think there are issues associated with this. I'm not - you (Keith Olbermann) can use the word hypocrisy, but there are certainly questions that arise from this."
**
Yesterday McCain told Fox News that the presence of Johnson on the Obama campaign "suggests a bit of a contradiction talking about how his campaign is going to be not associated with people like that. Clearly he is very much associated with that."
Shot back the Obama campaign, through spox Tommy Vietor, "It’s the height of hypocrisy for the McCain campaign to try and make this an issue when John Green, one of John McCain’s top advisors, lobbied for Ameriquest, which was one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders and a key player in the mortgage crisis. As President, Senator Obama will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis—the kind of change that works for the American people.”
The Obama campaign through talking points first reported at Mark Halperin's The Page call this story "overblown and irrelevant...This an overblown story about what appear to be completely above-board transactions. The Wall Street Journal even admits that they don’t have a story-noting that it’s 'impossible' to know the factors that went into these arrangements."
(Note: the Wall Street Journal admits no such thing.)
Continue the talking points: "Americans know that we face a critical choice in this race-and isn’t about the terms of an outside advisor’s loans. This race is about leadership, and which candidate will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis. Barack Obama has offered a real solution to the housing crisis-John McCain hasn’t."
Showing posts with label Edwards Attacks Obama on Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edwards Attacks Obama on Change. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Edwards Faults Obama's Theory of Change
From Huffingtonpost.com on December 28, 2007: "It is rare to have John Edwards go straight after Barack Obama, so the speech he is planning to give today is noteworthy. Here's the key excerpt:
Why on earth would we expect the corporate powers and their lobbyists -- who make billions by selling out the middle-class -- to just give up just because we ask nicely? Nobody who takes their money and defends the broken system is going to bring change. And, unfortunately, nobody who thinks we can just sit down and talk them into compromise is going to bring change either.
Compromise and conciliation is the academic theory of change. It just doesn’t work in the real world. Fighting for conviction is the historic reality of change.
The "defender of the broken system" is no doubt meant to be Hillary Clinton, but Edwards is now taking down Obama as naive in his view of how to bring about change -- calling his approach the "academic theory of change." Edwards is emphasizing the confrontation of FDR's era and of the Civil Rights era: "We fought for change, and we changed history." (Full script here. The message: Every progressive change in American history has been won through struggle -- not through conciliation and compromise.
Edwards's emphasis on the need to take corporate interests head-on has always been an implicit criticism of Obama's approach, but Edwards rarely feels the need to explicitly point out just how wrong-headed Obama is and use sound-bites like "academic theory of change."
This is especially interesting because it echoes Hillary Clinton's own criticism at the DMR debate two weeks ago: "Some believe you get [change] by hoping for it," Clinton said. And she has continued using that angle of attack on the trail in the past few weeks, so we now have two candidates aiming the same attack on Obama, the surest way to get something to stick.
Edwards v. Obama back-and-forth has been a late development in this campaign, but it took on a particularly vicious shape last week-end when the Obama campaign accused Edwards of being tied in with special interests for being unable to get the 527 supporting him to forgo the ads; and the Obama campaign's argument was helped today by the emergence of emails that were written between the Edwards and that camp, in what could cast suspicion on the campaign given that any coordination is illegal.
Edwards needed to switch from Hillary to Obama sooner or later. He needs a win or nothing in the caucuses at this point, and Obama and Edwards both have similar claims to outsider change. With Clinton weakened, Obama and Edwards are dividing up some of the anti-establishment vote and need to discredit each other to be able to go further ahead at this point. I am not saying that every Edwards voter would go for Obama were Edwards not in the race, or vice-versa; but there definitly is a pool of voters who distrusts Clinton and does not see her as fitting the change mantra who is splitting up between the two candidates, especially in Iowa.
This dynamic will be accentuated if Edwards wins Iowa and casts himself as the true alternative to Clinton -- then Obama will need to go full force against him. If Edwards loses the caucuses, he likely will fade by himself, which would make the Edwards versus Obama showdown nothing but a brief episode of primary season.
One last note on Edwards: He said yesterday he had talked to General Musharraf after Benazir Bhutto's assassination. I stayed away from the topic of Pakistan yesterday because it's really unclear if the events will have any impact on the presidential race, yet alone who it would benefit if it did."
Why on earth would we expect the corporate powers and their lobbyists -- who make billions by selling out the middle-class -- to just give up just because we ask nicely? Nobody who takes their money and defends the broken system is going to bring change. And, unfortunately, nobody who thinks we can just sit down and talk them into compromise is going to bring change either.
Compromise and conciliation is the academic theory of change. It just doesn’t work in the real world. Fighting for conviction is the historic reality of change.
The "defender of the broken system" is no doubt meant to be Hillary Clinton, but Edwards is now taking down Obama as naive in his view of how to bring about change -- calling his approach the "academic theory of change." Edwards is emphasizing the confrontation of FDR's era and of the Civil Rights era: "We fought for change, and we changed history." (Full script here. The message: Every progressive change in American history has been won through struggle -- not through conciliation and compromise.
Edwards's emphasis on the need to take corporate interests head-on has always been an implicit criticism of Obama's approach, but Edwards rarely feels the need to explicitly point out just how wrong-headed Obama is and use sound-bites like "academic theory of change."
This is especially interesting because it echoes Hillary Clinton's own criticism at the DMR debate two weeks ago: "Some believe you get [change] by hoping for it," Clinton said. And she has continued using that angle of attack on the trail in the past few weeks, so we now have two candidates aiming the same attack on Obama, the surest way to get something to stick.
Edwards v. Obama back-and-forth has been a late development in this campaign, but it took on a particularly vicious shape last week-end when the Obama campaign accused Edwards of being tied in with special interests for being unable to get the 527 supporting him to forgo the ads; and the Obama campaign's argument was helped today by the emergence of emails that were written between the Edwards and that camp, in what could cast suspicion on the campaign given that any coordination is illegal.
Edwards needed to switch from Hillary to Obama sooner or later. He needs a win or nothing in the caucuses at this point, and Obama and Edwards both have similar claims to outsider change. With Clinton weakened, Obama and Edwards are dividing up some of the anti-establishment vote and need to discredit each other to be able to go further ahead at this point. I am not saying that every Edwards voter would go for Obama were Edwards not in the race, or vice-versa; but there definitly is a pool of voters who distrusts Clinton and does not see her as fitting the change mantra who is splitting up between the two candidates, especially in Iowa.
This dynamic will be accentuated if Edwards wins Iowa and casts himself as the true alternative to Clinton -- then Obama will need to go full force against him. If Edwards loses the caucuses, he likely will fade by himself, which would make the Edwards versus Obama showdown nothing but a brief episode of primary season.
One last note on Edwards: He said yesterday he had talked to General Musharraf after Benazir Bhutto's assassination. I stayed away from the topic of Pakistan yesterday because it's really unclear if the events will have any impact on the presidential race, yet alone who it would benefit if it did."
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