NewsTrust - Presidential Election 2008 - Most Recent Stories

The Transformation

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Michael Sokolove - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - In the end, she believes they ended up voting out of a different kind of fear — fear for their own economic survival. Self-interest trumped racism. “They had to ask themselves if they wanted a really smart young black guy, or a stodgy old white guy from the same crowd who put us in this hole,” she said.

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Bush's legal legacy to give Obama tough choices

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Marisa Taylor, Michael Doyle - Nov. 09 (News Report) - WASHINGTON -- When Barack Obama becomes president in January, he will confront the controversial legal legacy of the Bush administration. From expansive executive privilege to hard-line tactics in the war on terrorism, Obama must decide what he'll undo and what he'll embrace. The stakes couldn't be higher. On one hand, civil libertarians and other critics of the Bush administration may feel betrayed if Obama doesn't move aggressively to reverse legal policies that they believe have violated the Constitution and international law. On the other hand, Obama risks alienating some conservative Americans and some - but by no means all - military and intelligence officials if he seeks to hold officials accountable for those expansive policies. These are some of the legal issues confronting him: -How does he close the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba? He's pledged to shutter it, but how quickly can he do so when it holds some detainees whom no administration would want to release?

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The Fall: John McCain’s choices

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - By David Grann - Nov. 09 (Special Report) - A defining moment of the “old” John McCain—as many Americans, even some of his friends, have begun to refer to him as he was before his run for the Presidency in 2008—took place in February, 2000, during his first bid for the White House, when he was challenging George W. Bush for the Republican nomination in the South Carolina primary. McCain had recently upset Bush in New Hampshire and was in a buoyant mood, vowing that, like “Luke Skywalker fighting the Death Star,” he would not only defeat Bush but reform a party corrupted by “big money” and, as he later put it, “agents of intolerance.”

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Christian right regroups after Obama victory

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Eric Gorski - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - Pundits declared evangelicals among of Election Day's losers. Conservative Christian leader James Dobson confessed he was grieving. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said religious right leaders "kept their own flock in line, but the majority of Americans were unmoved." But few are writing obituaries this week for the Christian right, which has been wrongly considered dead after setbacks like the demise of the Moral Majority and crumbling of the Christian Coalition.

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GOP gears up for 2012

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Jonathan Martin - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Votes are still being counted in some races in last Tuesday’s election, but no matter: Talk of the potential Republican field in the 2012 presidential election is already underway. Too early? Too bad — just look around. Two potential candidates will be in Iowa before month’s end, multiple prospects — almost certainly including Sarah Palin — will make high-profile appearances this week at the Republican Governors Association meeting, and Newt Gingrich’s name has already been floated in a Bob Novak column. For a party anxious to move past a brutal election up and down the ballot, and especially a presidential campaign it would just as soon forget, it’s not too soon to start thinking about "next time," as the pros call it. Now officially, of course, any talk of a presidential run is verboten.

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GOP gears up for 2012

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

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An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Deborah Howell - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

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We Blew It

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Weekly Standard - By P.J. O'Rourke - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy. An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.

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Obama likely to tap fresh faces, old hands

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

San Francisco Chronicle - By Carolyn Lochhead - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Washington -- Look for a mix of fresh blood and old Clinton hands in the Obama administration, with a handful of Bay Area Democrats in lead positions and many Californians throughout. Insiders say the watchwords are "best and brightest," or at least, "competence." And President-elect Barack Obama's transition team issued a code-of-conduct memo forbidding media leaks and financial conflicts. Speculation is centering on Silicon Valley Democrat Steve Westly for the newly high-profile job of energy secretary to push the valley's vision of a 21st century economy based on alternative fuels. Some see Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a technology czar. Schmidt is on Obama's economic transition team and seems set to play a role in his administration. Two prominent UC Berkeley academics and former Clintonites also on the economic team seem destined for big roles, too: Haas Business School dean and economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson and public policy Professor Robert Reich, former secretary of labor. Look for clusters of top appointees, especially in economics and foreign affairs. Sub-Cabinet appointees can be more important than their bosses in making policy. Obama may also follow the recent tradition of appointing someone from the opposing party in a top job to emphasize his postpartisan image. In the past, these have proved more symbolic than real, but an exception would be keeping the widely liked Robert Gates at defense. Gates would be "a nice bridge" between administrations, said Washington lawyer John Plebani, who is close to Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and transition co-chair John Podesta, though he was quick to say the transition team is staying tight-lipped and he has spoken to neither man in a week. Still, Plebani said keeping Gates at least for a year or so "makes a lot of sense." Gates knows how to run the bureaucracy and could provide political cover in exiting Iraq and continuity in a treacherous arena.

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Battle Plans: How Obama won

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - By Ryan Lizza - Nov. 09 (Special Report) - Last June, Joel Benenson, who was Barack Obama’s top pollster during his Presidential run, reported on the state of the campaign. His conclusions, summed up in a sixty-slide PowerPoint presentation, were revealed to a small group, including David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, and several media consultants, and, as it turned out, some of this research helped guide the campaign through the general election. The primaries were over, Hillary Clinton had conceded, and Obama had begun planning for a race against Senator John McCain.

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Alaska On eBay? Election Numbers Update

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Shannyn Moore - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - You don't have to be a coroner to smell a corpse. Alaska needs an election autopsy STAT. The stench persists. When Democracy's infected, there is nothing benign about it. I know Alaska. I know we keep voting for self-professed corrupt bastards. I know it took the FBI to start scrubbing the corruption out of our state legislature. I sat through the trials of men who had sold their votes cheap to big oil.

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Dissecting the Changing Electorate

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Marjorie Connelly - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - One way to consider Barack Obama’s success last Tuesday is to consider John McCain’s failure. By virtually every electoral measure — including age, sex, race, religion, income and region — Mr. McCain lost ground won by George W. Bush four years ago. For Mr. Obama, the opposite happened. He performed better than John Kerry did among nearly every voter group — significantly better, in some cases.

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The Other Winner

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Matt Bai - Nov. 09 (Special Report) - There was a moment last summer when Howard Dean’s tenure as chairman of the Democratic Party seemed on the verge of a colossal failure. The party’s nomination process, which was supposed to have been settled by March, was devolving into a rolling civil war without end, and Democrats grumbled that Dean — who might have stepped in and sorted out the mess before it got to the con-vention floor — seemed reluctant to intervene. Of all the various party entities that raise money, only Dean’s national committee was getting clobbered by Republicans. For years, Democratic Congressional leaders had been mocking Dean’s “50-state strategy” — his plan to rebuild local parties in every state, especially in rural areas of the South and West, by hiring organizers rather than saving that money for television ads in perennial battlegrounds like Florida and Ohio. Now they whispered that his incompetence might cost them the White House.

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California Youth Defeat ‘Lock ‘em Up’ Politics

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New America Media - By Raj Jayadev - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Eclipsed by the enormity of a nation voting in a black President, and a statewide cultural war over gay marriage, is that fact that California registered one the most dramatic and significant shifts in attitude over incarceration policies in state history this past election. The quintessential “tough on crime” initiative, Proposition 6, was overwhelmingly rejected by voters across the state, a count of 70 percent to 30 percent, and did not win a majority in a single county. With little news coverage, and no commercials on either side leading up to the election, the trouncing of Prop. 6 was a near unadulterated reflection of California's new mind-set on criminal justice policies. The numbers point to a repudiation of “lock 'em all up” politics that has dominated the state for decades.

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After the victory, what next?

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Rupert Cornwell - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - History's turning points come in many guises. Some, like the implosion of the Soviet Union, unfold in slow motion. Some, like 11 September 2001, are split seconds of cataclysmic horror. Then there are those like last Tuesday evening, in the gizmo-laden TV studios where, the instant the polls closed on America's west coast, the networks announced that Barack Hussein Obama, half-Kenyan by birth and without even a full Senate term behind him, would be the next President of the United States. Oddly, the endgame itself was almost routine, compared with the two-year roller coaster of a campaign that preceded it. The eve-of-vote polls were correct; the much-bruited "Bradley Effect" did not materialise, and on the night itself, the result was crystal clear at least an hour before the anchors called it at 11pm eastern time.

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The GOP's deep hole

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Norman Ornstein - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Reporting from deep red South Carolina the day after the election, Anne Hull of the Washington Post wrote: "On the road, cars still had South Carolina license tags that said 'In God We Trust.' The utility pole on U.S. 29 was still tacked with the 'Jesus Saves' sign. ... The textile mills were still empty, and dogs still barked at the ends of their chains. ... But everything was different." In so many respects -- culturally, ethnically, sociologically, internationally -- the election of Barack Obama has altered the landscape. It also has changed the political terrain, making the path for Republicans to return to majority status in the electorate daunting -- an uphill climb akin to scaling Mt. Everest. Without pitons.

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Obama reviews Bush orders on stem cells, drilling

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Stephen Ohlemacher - Nov. 09 (News Report) - John Podesta said the president can use such orders to move quickly without waiting for Congress to act, highlighting the extraordinary powers a president can wield beyond signing legislation approved by Congress. Podesta said people should expect Obama to use those powers to reverse many policies of the Bush administration.

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Ten quick lessons from the US election

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - For the US political junkies out there, the BBC's Nick Bryant provides "Ten quick and easy lessons" from this break-the-rules election.

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How He Did It

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - Nov. 09 (Special Report) - In some ways, running for president was a preposterous idea for someone who had served as a two-term state legislator and had spent only two years in the United States Senate. But Obama, a careful student of his own unique journey, could see the stars coming into alignment—the country was exhausted by the Iraq War (which he, alone among leading candidates, had opposed as "dumb" from the outset). As Obama saw it, the conservative tide in America was ebbing, and voters were turning away from the Republican Party. People were sick of politicians of the standard variety and yearned for someone new—truly new and different. Another politician with a superb sense of timing, Bill Clinton, perfectly understood why Obama saw a golden, possibly once-in-a-lifetime, opportunity. The former president believed that the mainstream press, whose liberal guilt Clinton understood and had exploited from time to time, would act as Obama's personal chauffeur on the long journey ahead. "If somebody pulled up a Rolls-Royce to me and said, 'Get in'," Clinton liked to say, with admiration and maybe a little envy, "I'd get in it, too."

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Iraqi leaders welcome Obama but assert themselves

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - By Peter Graff - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - The election of a U.S. president who wants to withdraw American troops from Iraq as soon as possible should surely make it harder for militants to whip up fury against the "occupiers". For that reason at least, Barack Obama's poll victory could bring a honeymoon of sorts in Iraq. The incoming U.S. president's plans for withdrawal from Iraq have already cheered up Washington's friends and confounded some of its foes. The prospect of a new U.S. relationship with the wider Middle East, especially Iran, could also smooth out the remaining months of a six-year-old military campaign launched by the government of President George W. Bush. But as Obama takes the helm in what both sides hope will be the final phase of the war, he will find a stronger, more assertive Iraqi government that is not always going to accept U.S. policies, even from a president they like.

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The path out of the wilderness

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By John P. Avlon - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - Legendary newspaper columnist James Reston laid down the law more than a half -century ago: “The decisive battleground of American politics lies in the center and cannot be captured from either of the extremes, and any party that defies this principle does not improve its chances of national power or even effective opposition but precisely the opposite.”

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Now comes the hard part for Barack Obama

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Times - By Tony Allen-Mills - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - As the first African-American children to take up residence in the White House, Malia and Sasha Obama can look forward to a gilded life of elite schools, the finest healthcare, unbounded career opportunities and – for now at least – perhaps the most exciting prospect of all: the new puppy their father has promised. When Barack Obama’s captivating children skipped into the limelight alongside him as history was made in Chicago last Tuesday night, Sasha, 7, waved happily at the ecstatic crowd as Malia, 10, strode serenely alongside their mother Michelle.

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Who's who on Obama's new team

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Nov. 08 (Special Report) - Since winning the US presidential election, Barack Obama has wasted little time assembling a team to help him govern. The BBC News website has put together a guide to the new faces so far named in the administration. CHIEF OF STAFF: RAHM EMANUEL - Rahm Emanuel is no stranger to the White House. He served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton and developed a reputation for forceful negotiation and unwavering loyalty. In 2002, after leaving the White House, he was elected to the House of Representatives, representing Illinois's fifth congressional district.

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The End Of Vietnam In American Politics

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By John Zogby - Nov. 08 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama's win over John McCain marks the third straight defeat of a candidate who served active duty in Vietnam. The electoral dynamics may have been very different in 2000 and 2004 than they were in 2008, as were the war records and even the political parties of Al Gore, John Kerry and McCain. But each of them lost to men who never served in Vietnam.

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'No More Mr Nice Gay' as Mormons face vote backlash

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Guy Adams - Nov. 08 (News Report) - Daniel Ginnes carried a banner declaring: "No More Mr Nice Gay." Brian Lindsey held up a sign billing Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as a "prophet, polygamist, paedophile." Hundreds of others simply chanted: "Mormon scum." More than 2,000 gay rights protesters marched on a Mormon temple in Los Angeles on Thursday, throwing the church and its followers on to the front line of the battle over California's decision to ban same-sex marriage. Earlier this week, 52.5 per cent of voters in the supposedly liberal state decided to back Proposition 8, a ballot measure that adds 15 words to the constitution, saying that: "Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California." The development marked a massive setback for gay rights and left 18,000 couples, who had married in the five months since California legalised same-sex weddings, in legal limbo. In the large and traditionally laid-back gay community, it also left a sense of injustice. Proposition 8 passed with the assistance of a $70m (£44m) campaign largely funded by out-of-state donations from Mormons. "It's taken something like this to make us realise the need to be more aggressive and angry and active," said Mr Ginnes, a graphic designer from West Hollywood. "People didn't think they were going to lose the vote, so they didn't realise it was worth fighting for.

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