Obama campaign courts women’s vote by exploiting Hillary Clinton’s strong leadership

Secretary Clinton speaks at the host breakfast to honor women entrepreneurs who attended the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in the Franklin Room at the State Department. State Department Photo by Michael Gross.

So I didn’t notice that President Obama began his midwest bus tour in the Twin Cities, the home of Katalusis, until Rick Stafford, an old friend from way back, posted on Facebook: “Had the opportunity to visit with President Obama today at the American Legion Convention in Mpls. My advice to him was to be very, very bold with JOBS, JOBS, JOBS ideas!”

Good advice, Rick, given the toll the economy is taking on Obama’s poll numbers.

Evidently the Obama campaign is struggling to ignite the electorate, even among ethnic minorities and core liberals. According to Peter Wallsten at the Washington Post:

President Obama’s campaign is developing an aggressive new program to expand support from ethnic minority groups and other traditional Democratic voters as his team studies an increasingly narrow path to victory in next year’s reelection effort.

The program, called “Operation Vote,” underscores how the tide has turned for Obama, whose 2008 brand was built on calls to unite “red and blue America.” Then, he presented himself as a politician who could transcend traditional partisan divisions, and many white centrists were drawn to the coalition that helped elect the country’s first black president.

Wallsten describes what the campaign plans to do about the tidal change in the electorate:

Operation Vote will function as a large, centralized department in the Chicago campaign office for reaching ethnic, religious and other voter groups. It will coordinate recruitment of an ethnic volunteer base and push out targeted messages online and through the media to groups such as blacks, Hispanics, Jews, women, seniors, young people, gays and Asian Americans.

The inclusion of women among those groups hit home:

A women’s page features a photo gallery of high-level female administration officials under the headline “Barack Obama’s Strong Leaders,” including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Here’s a news flash for the Obama campaign: Hillary Clinton took the job of secretary of state to serve her country, not to have her hard work and leadership exploited to win the women’s vote in 2012 by the same Democratic Party leaders who gave a thumbs up to the sexism and misogyny she endured in 2008; it's no thanks to them that Secretary Clinton is now the most popular politician in America. Um, that's the same female presidential candidate in 2008 that the DNC labeled as "too polarizing."

Corruption in the Land of Lincoln: Obama’s Reformist Image Tarnished

From left: Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley. Photo credits: John Gress/Reuters

Google the name of any major operative from the Obama campaign now serving on his transition team with the phrase, “Daley machine politics in Chicago,” and you’ll see that Obama’s carefully crafted reformist image was already tainted by the city he calls home before the indictment this week of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. I can name three members of Obama’s inner circle right off the top of my head who have long-time Daley connections: Michele Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod.

Last March, Ben Joravsky wrote in the Washington Independent: “Obama settled in Chicago a couple of years after {Mayor Harold} Washington died and this is the political universe he knows. His wife, Michelle Obama, used to work for the Daley administration. His campaign strategist, David Axelrod, ran some of Daley’s campaigns. Many of Obama’s closest advisers, like Valerie B. Jarrett, are Daley appointees and insiders — it would be hard to find big players in Chicago who aren’t. And last year, Obama mustered his oratorical powers to endorse Daley with a speech so reverential it made some of the senator’s fans cringe in embarrassment.”

Obama’s ties to the old politics of Chicago were never fully vetted by the media who continue to be under his spell. So it’s in the category of better late than never that Time Magazine’s Massimo Calabresi actually raises an eyebrow over the latest revelation of corruption in the Land of Lincoln.

Calabresi writes:

“On more than one occasion during his stunning press conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald bluntly said he has found no evidence of wrongdoing by President-elect Barack Obama in the tangled, tawdry scheme that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly cooked up to sell Obama's now vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. But for politicians it's never good news when a top-notch prosecutor has to go out of his way to distance you from a front-page scandal. And indeed, there are enough connections between the worlds of Blagojevich and Obama that the whole thing has the potential to grow beyond a colorful Chicago tale of corruption to entangle members of the Presidential transition team, to test Obama's carefully cultivated reformist image and to distract the President-elect just as he is preparing to take office.”

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