Really interesting notes taken by Frameshop’s Jeffrey Feldman during Barack Obama’s speech, today at the DNC’s winter meeting [my emphasis] …

(Crowd goes wild…they love this guy–no music, just endless cheers)

Congratulates Dean for victory.

* Proved that progressive, “common sense” message is not restricted to one region. It can sell everywhere.
* We are going to compete everywhere
* Sometimes you feel like you’re a part of a “reality TV show” Obama is trying to address the problem of stardom.
* Obama has a very distinct way of speaking. I never noticed it until now. The contrast with Dodd is huge. Obama does not sound like a politician so much as a community leader. Very noticeable.
* “Campaigns should not be about how we can make each other look bad, but about how we can do some good.”
* Rivals are not each other or the other party, but “cynicism”

(this is the theme in the final chapter of my book, BTW…and it is a theme from Teddy Roosevelt…)

OK…this is a big statement he is making: laying claim not to issues, but to the nature of politics itself. He is talking at length about “cynicism.”

* Cynicism makes our politics small.
* If we spoke the “truth,” we would not be afraid to speak
* “We internalize our fears, we edit ourselves, we censor our best instincts.”
* We have “lost faith” in the political process. “We don’t really think we can transform this country.”
* “We don’t have time to be cynical” (the “wasting time” frame–very important)
* “This is not a game” (keeps pushing this theme)
* “We owe it to the American people to do more than that.”
* “We owe them an election where votes are inspired.”

(this is a great speech)

* “We have always been the best when we aim high” (Kennedy’s frame)
* “Let’s have a serious discussion…” (variation on the “conversation” frame)

I am just now noticing that Obama is a mix of bold statements about principles and relatively cautious statements about policy promises. Interesting mix.

The crowd goes wild again, this time about his statements about Iraq.

* “Let’s have an honest debate about how to end this war in Iraq.”

This is a “here are the rules of the game as they should be” speech. He’s trying to take on the whole system of doing politics, doing media–he wants to establish ground rules for the whole system. This is what makes this speech distinct–he’s framing the entire idea of politics, not just in it, he is saying how it should be.

A campaign against “cynicism.” This would be the correlate to the “audacity of hope.”

* “We’ve had a lot of plans. What we’ve had is a shortage of hope.”

And he’s done.

Oh, boy. I don’t know if it’s really possible to relay the energy that literally explodes in the room when people cheer for this guy. Like the response to seeing Elvis or The Beatles, maybe? That’s close.

I’d hate to have to follow that if I were running in ‘08. Incredible stuff.

Sen. Barack Obama tries to flesh out his record with an election fraud bill …
The Hill - Washington,DC,USA
Barack Obama (D-Ill.) yesterday added election fraud to the spectrum of weighty issues he has covered since informally launching his presidential bid, …

Yesterday’s voter-deception bill, which would allow injunctive relief for individuals targeted by fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls during the run-up to Election Day, earned plaudits from civil-rights groups and the co-sponsorship of Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the Democratic Caucus’s No. 3 and a backer of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2008.

Obama acknowledged the greater megaphone he commands as a presidential contender, observing that the Democrats’ new majority status also allows him to expand his legislative reach with some confidence of floor time and success. 

Having openly declared for 2008 makes “you guys [in the media] pay more attention to what we’re dropping,” Obama said, “but it’s gratifying that we can pay attention to critical issues.”

Obama weighed in late Tuesday with an Iraq measure that would require a start to troop withdrawal by May and an end to the process by March 31, 2008 — mere weeks after the presidential showdown of the “Super Tuesday” primaries. That hard date for drawdown goes a step beyond Clinton’s rhetoric on the war, while matching one of her goals by allowing for troops to move out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.

Obama’s Iraq bill is an outgrowth of his November speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where he called for a timetable to begin pulling out troops but stressed that flexibility to suspend redeployment would be crucial if Congress and the Iraqi government certified that a U.S. presence was still needed. Obama’s opening for postponement of troop withdrawal did not stop liberal stalwarts from hailing his bill yesterday.

“His proposal to set a deadline for withdrawal is an important distinction from other proposals that include an open-ended commitment,” Tom Mattzie, political director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement. “Without a deadline, it is hard to get out of Iraq.”

Civil-rights lions at the People for the American Way (PFAW), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) also marshaled behind Obama’s election-fraud remedy. PFAW will partner with Obama for a voter-suppression event next week, and LCCR executive director Barbara Anwine was glowing in her praise for Obama.

“There are a thousand issues he could highlight, but to really hammer this one will make it at the forefront of the presidential debate,” said Anwine, whose passionate call for an end to intimidation tactics that target minority voters earned an “amen” from Obama.

One source close to the Obama campaign said the senator’s full plate, topped by Senate testimony Tuesday on global warming, shows voters what is important to him.

“There’s an old saying in Chicago politics: Good policy is good politics,” the source said.

Obama’s international background an asset, not a flaw
San Jose Mercury News - San Jose,CA,USA
Barack Obama, if he runs and wins, will be the first African-American to live in the White House. Few know that, if that happens, he will also become the …

Far from being seen as a detriment to his presidential candidacy, Obama’s prior exposure to a foreign culture should be counted as an asset.

At the same tender age as Obama’s when he was in Jakarta, I was in Moscow attending a Soviet elementary school. I remember my teacher frowning at me when, on the anniversary of Lenin’s death, unlike my Russian classmates, I couldn’t manage to cry. My parents, my sister and I could have lived in the building that housed the American Embassy — a “golden ghetto.'’ But my father wanted us to learn the Russian language and experience Russian life. I am grateful that he did.

The idea that Americans, children or adults, should wrap themselves in familiar cocoons and avoid encounters with anything strange, including Indonesian Islam, is worse than just bad parenting. It is a willful parochialism that the United States as a country cannot afford. Not in this post-Sept. 11 world. Not if we wish to engage with that world as it actually is — rather than as we might, in fearful isolation, imagine it to be.