Clint: Another amazing feature of this piece: It spends its last third chewing over where the non-campaign will rent an office.
Clint: Answer: No one knows, but likely spots are:
Clint: 1) Near or in Washington, where, you know, the candidate (i.e. incumbent president) lives
Clint: 2) Chicago, where the last campaign was.
Clint: Before reading this, I was thinking Hawaii or maybe Elkhart.
Greg: I think they may be kind of sick of him in Elkhart by now.
Greg: Both those choices sound kind of nefarious to me though.
Clint: How so?
Greg: It’s either “inside-the-Beltway politics” or “Chicago-style politics.”
Greg: Will be good for journalists to have clichés at the ready though.
Clint: Yeah, and credulously passing on this whole notion that renting space in Northern Va is somehow “better” than being in DC is, well…
Clint: hard to take credulously.
Greg: On that point, see this
Greg: Anyway—one thing in the story that might have been news, but really wasn’t, was the role that Organizing for America might play in “the re-elect.” Or in actually governing.
Clint: Yes! That would be interesting.
Greg: Fortunately, Charles Homans (who did the last CJR cover story on climate change and weathermen) just wrote about that for Washington Monthly
Greg: I’m not sure if it got a SIREN though
Clint: He is an excellent reporter, siren or no.
Clint: One last thing, and I’m guessing we’ll be done here.
Clint: this passage: “Other central figures are likely to be DNC Executive Director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon; her husband, Patrick Dillon, who is deputy White House political director and is likely to bring his extensive gubernatorial contacts to Chicago; Mitch Stewart, executive director of the DNC’s Organizing for America; Jon Carson, national field director of Obama for America; and White House political director Patrick Gaspard.”
Clint: So you are telling me that senior DNC staffers and senior White House political advisors are “likely” to have big parts in the reelection campaign of the incumbent Democratic party?
Greg: Not just big parts — “central” parts.
Clint: Still, I’m a little worried here… This graf is totally unsourced.
Clint: How Game Change-y.
Greg: Yes. An author’s note on sourcing would have been appropriate.
Clint: But perhaps a little self defeating, no?
Messina is running the campaign? What, you guys don't remember that Messina is the former CoS to Max Baucus? You recall Max, don't you? Max destroyed Health Care Reform & turned the Democrats into laughing stocks. Obama took his White House lottery winnings & invested them in Max Baucus. IF this is true this is why Obama must not be the nominee in 2012. He'll lose.
#1 Posted by Hadassah Weinreb, CJR on Wed 24 Feb 2010 at 05:23 PM
Come on!!! Obama has been in office 13 months as of last week. LBJ told everyone he would not run again after he found he didn't know how to get out of Vietnam and Bobby Kennedy was breathing down his back. He had been in office as President for 6 years and had 20+ years in Congress. He was worn out mentally and physically. It's a good thing he didn't run and win, he would have given his presidency to his VP--Humphrey who was also dying of cancer. Obama is battling with both the rockheaded Republicans that hope he will lose in every way possible and with wimpy Democrats that can't see past this weekend. If either of you had his job you would have left on or before June of last year just out of frustration. He lets everyone shoot off their mouths to the public, make fun of their competitors to give you and other commentators something to talk about and he is trying bring together a society with people who can't work in groups, think he and" the guys" are planning to kill all white males west of the Appalachians and you argue about whether he will run for office i n 2012. If more of us don't start working together there won't be any more of a united USA than there is a united EU. The states each talk about doing it their way; yet brag at home about all the money they got from the Treasury to help their state. EU bragged about working together until Greece fell apart with sales that are loans to Goldman Sachs and all the other expect Germany only to help--not the other 24. That's togetherness?? Why must Obama do thus all by himself???? If we listen to many representatives, we will all have our own little country run by our own governor with no money, not aid for unemployment, no jobs except within your area--Is any one planning to move to North Dakota to work or to Nebraska with all its corn?? If it becomes its own state, there will be very little left in Nebraska but Life Insurance. The state workers in Lincoln will be unemployed and so will the federal ones in Omaha since NASA would leave. I hope you like to farm or do cross country skiing in 20 degree below winters and wind-swept summers. Come back down to earth and try to see what Obama and others are trying to do for all 320 million of us--white,brown, yellow, red, mixed and male or female. Your high horses are out of style. There must be some other ideas you can discuss for 2010 and worry about 2012 or 2016 LATER!! Since is PERFECTION a quality any of you can show?? Neither can he for some strange reason. Ask Michelle!!
#2 Posted by Patricia Wilson, CJR on Thu 25 Feb 2010 at 03:43 AM