Special Comment by Keith Olbermann: "McCain should know better..."

McCain Says It Is Not Important When Troops Come Home From Iraq

When John McCain was asked in an interview yesterday if he had a better idea when U.S. Troops might be able to come home, he responded: "No, but that's not too important."

Please watch both of these clips and pass them on to your friends.

zjm

Commentary: Best woman for the job could be a man

KULA, Hawaii (CNN) -- Let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief, shall we? Now that we've got our nominee, Hillary can get some rest, Obama can read his daughters a bedtime story, and the rest of us can relax knowing our relative peace won't be shattered by another primary-related explosion.

Goodbye Reverend Wright and Bosnia tarmac snipers. Goodbye bitter working-class voters and hard-working white people. See you in November John King and the magic CNN map.

But what now?

Obama has gracefully accepted the victory banner, and a lot of Hillary supporters, especially women, are walking off the field as if they've lost a war. I understand their frustration, but the truth is they didn't lose, not by a long shot. Their candidate is stronger than ever, with 17 million votes under her belt, and the public discussion about the role of gender is more nuanced and compelling than it has been in decades.

The next woman candidate will have a better shot at the White House because of the tireless efforts of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But with a Democratic house divided, now is the time for healing, and this can only happen if Hillary's staunch female supporters let go of the reverse-sexist ideology that women are inherently better, wiser, and more compassionate leaders.

They will have to acknowledge that sometimes the best woman for the job is actually a man -- if it's the right man. Obama's vote against the war, marriage to his female mentor, outstanding record on reproductive choice and a host of other progressive issues, and his uncanny ability to inspire people all over the world suggest he's just that.

It is time to turn the page on myopic gender-based Feminism and concede that while patriarchy is real, so is female greed, dishonesty and corruptibility. It's time to empower the feminisms embodied by millions of women and men who care about everyone, including, but not limited to, women.

These are the feminists who wanted the first Clinton's welfare reform to include real jobs for women, with real wages and real benefits. They wanted trade agreements like NAFTA to empower female workers in other countries, not make them easier to exploit. They also want to exhaust diplomatic means before threatening to bomb entire civilizations to dust in response to hostile challengers to U.S. supremacy.

These people -- male and female, young and old, black, white, yellow and brown, self-identified feminists and adamant rejecters of the term -- move from a place of passion, hope, and yes, pragmatism.

They realize Obama will need to assemble a stellar team to move his vision forward. And they plan to hold him accountable for his positions on all of it: racism, sexism, socio-economic disparities, the environment, education, health care, a living wage and any other obstacles to the ideals of equality upon which this great nation was founded.

Clinton supporters aren't the only ones with work to do. I spoke at Harvard a few years ago on the necessity of ending divisiveness and relying more on the human capacity for openness as a baseline for true progress. This position is necessary not only in feminist circles, but in the primal fight or flight mechanism of our own minds.

As angry as some Obama supporters might be, as disheartened as we may feel, the only way out is to believe in the power of human beings to rise to the moral imperative.

Judging by the state of the world, we may not get another chance.

Rebecca Walker is the founder of the Third Wave Foundation, a feminist group that works nationally to support young women and transgender activists. She's also the author of four books, including her latest, "Baby Love." Read her blog on theroot.com.

John Cusak On Bush, McCain and Our Choice

For most of my lifetime the two-party system in this country has been serving up candidates that can best be termed 'the lesser of two banalities, if not evils.'

When speaking at my college back in the early seventies, comedian Dick Gregory remarked: "The problem with choosing the lesser of two evils is that all you wind up with is the evil of the evil."

This election is different. The choice between Barack Obama and John McCain is stark. Actor John Cusak has produced a fabulous and important commentary for MoveOn.

Please pass this on to your friends.

- zjm

New Poll Numbers For Obama Dispel Clintonian/Media Assertions

'Katie Couric: Today's Worst Person in the World"

"Good Campaign"

Obama revamped campaign tactics

by Lisa Van Dusen

In a post-primary analysis in the New York Times the other day, erstwhile Clinton strategist Mark Penn ended an exploration of what went wrong with the kicker, "And sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign."

From the day after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus and attention was turned to the differences between his campaign and the frontrunner's, it was clear that he and Hillary Clinton were running very different operations.

Those differences were apparent in the candidates' own public pronouncements, in the messaging from their surrogates, in their spending decisions, in their street-level tactics and, most of all, in the apparent difference of opinion in the two campaigns on the exact location of the lines you just don't cross.

For the past three decades, at least since television became a major factor and especially since the 24-hour cable cycle has taken over, there has been a list of unofficial campaign rules that cover a multitude of landmines from Supreme Court appointments to pancakes: Never wear hats, never operate heavy machinery, never, ever wear a hat while operating heavy machinery, never play a game that isn't fixed, never come out against a tax break, all fast food is political . . . there are about 30 more.

These have been compiled through so many self-immolations that they've become gospel. Obama has not only knowingly broken many of them (most recently, he recklessly flouted that no-pancake rule, based on Gary Bauer's unceremonious triple-gainer off a stage in New Hampshire in 2000 while trying to catch a rogue, airborne flapjack), he has done it with such grinning disregard for the rule book and everything it represents that million-dollar-a-month consultants such as Penn must be wondering what the weather is like in some of the friendlier emerging democracies.

In South Carolina, the Obama campaign sent white foreigners door-knocking in black working-class neighbourhoods and black volunteers into wealthy white areas. They put Upper East Side socialites and Harvard students on the phone banks to sell an African-American candidate to rural white Southerners wary of outsiders. They refused to buy votes and pack rooms with "street money," especially for the black community, despite the fact that that's how it's always been done.

Obama won South Carolina partly because the old-style, tactical campaign he was up against was derailed by those tactics when Bill Clinton started pushing race buttons. It didn't happen in every state, but at other key points along the way, there were moments when one campaign behaved the way campaigns have always behaved, only this time it backfired.

The superdelegates who put Obama over the top last week were declaring a preference for a new kind of politics even, or maybe especially, as practitioners of the old kind. They know that to millions of young people who've become involved this time, the new kind is the only kind they know, and the old kind already looks like history.

Hillary Clinton did run a good campaign, according to the old rules, and if it hadn't worked, especially in certain states, she could not have stayed in so long or finished so impressively.

Of all the explanations for what went wrong, from the neglect of caucus states to the deliberate aura of incumbency to the huge consultant bills, it may be that the changing definition of "good campaign" covers most of them.

United Auto Workers Endorses Barack Obama For President

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The UAW International Executive Board has unanimously voted to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president, the union announced today.

"After a historic primary campaign which activated and mobilized millions of voters, our union is proud to endorse Sen. Barack Obama," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "He has inspired our country with a positive vision for a better America -- and with concrete plans to turn that vision into reality.

"From the streets of Chicago to the state legislature in Springfield, Ill., to the halls of the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama has been a voice for dignity and justice for working people. He has a strong program for a safe and secure America, which will protect our citizens and help our country prosper in a new century.

"On every issue that counts, we can count on Barack Obama to stand with our members, our families and our communities. He has pledged to rebuild America's manufacturing base and to assist the auto industry as we re-tool toward a cleaner, more modern transportation system. "Sen. Obama supports free choice in the workplace; he will fight to deliver quality, affordable health care to every American; and he understands the need to change our trade policies so that U.S. workers and U.S. companies can compete fairly in the global economy.

"As president, Barack Obama will unite our country -- and the active and retired members of the United Auto Workers will be proud to work with him to change our country for the better."

The UAW, one of America's largest and most diverse labor unions represents more than 1 million active and retired workers in automobile manufacturing, aerospace, construction equipment, health care, higher education, public service, gaming and other industries.

Obama Speaks Out on the Economy: "It is time for something new - time for a change"

Obama to Staff: 'Let's Go Win The Election!'

'They Said This Day Would Never Come'

The Book to Buy

It's The Obama-McCain Show

Paired together, this road trip could rival Hope and Crosby, or even Borat and Azamat

By Lisa Van Dusen | Sun Media |Sunday, June 8, 2008

The buddy/road trip movie has been one of the most enduringly successful formulas in Hollywood precisely because it combines the most sure-fire elements of the corny screenwriting canon: A kooky odd-couple embarks on a narrative arc fuelled by a quest for something; a Holy Grail, stolen diamonds, the leadership of the free world.

Of all the strange buddy bedfellows in history, John McCain and Barack Obama are really no stranger than Hope and Crosby, Grodin and DeNiro or Borat and Azamat.

The elevator pitch that an old, white, hotheaded war hero embarks on a tour of America with an unflappable, swaggering young black idealist is so rife with possibilities, all you'd have to say is, "It'll make Planes, Trains and Automobiles look like Love Story!" and you'd have your development deal.

The idea of a string of town hall meetings between now and August with the presumptive Democratic and presumptive Republican nominees ("Ladies and gentlemen, the world's hardest working candidates: The Presumptives") not just appearing on the same stage in a non-debate format, but possibly travelling on the same plane now looms on the horizon like a mirage of bipartisan harmony after weeks of intrapartisan toxicity.

There is something quintessentially American, in the best possible sense, about the idea of McCain and Obama taking their you-say-tomahto show on the road, not in a debate format like the historic Lincoln-Douglas series of 1858, but something less formal.

It conjures Capra-esque scenes of small-town caravans with mothers pushing strollers, scuffy boys dragging little red wagons, senior citizens in walkers ... black, white, old, young, Republican, Democrat and Independent, all wanting to see the oddest political couple since Nikolas and Carla.

The backstory here, and there always has to be a pre-existing conflict so that the road trip starts off with a palpable sense of tension, is that McCain and Obama were friendly when the hotshot senator arrived on the Hill from Chicago in 2004, but then they had a fight.

In early 2006, Obama promised to co-operate with McCain on lobbying reform legislation and then backed down under pressure from the Democratic leadership, prompting a knee-to-the-groin response exceptional in its chippiness, even by McCain standards.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU

"I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman senator," McCain wrote in a letter that became the talk of the town, "and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, senator."

By Washington standards, it was an old dog/new dog territorial marking exercise, likely fuelled by spotlight envy, given that the media, who McCain once jokingly referred to as "my base" because of his generally positive coverage, had scurried in one giant, organic, haloed scrum to his new rival.

Since then, the two have made up, resuming a friendly cross-the-aisle relationship. But with all that change vs. experience, new vs. old, old school vs. Ivy League pressure lurking just below the backslapping and handshaking, the potential is there for a pretty good fight scene (hopefully more akin to old brawler Will Danaher vs. young pugilist Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man than Borat vs. Azamat).

Based on a plan John F. Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had discussed for the 1964 campaign (they had also talked about using the same plane), the idea of McCain-Obama town halls with no media moderator has been rumoured for a few months, so both campaigns have had plenty of time to think about it.

Town halls have worked brilliantly in previous campaigns, usually as a way for underdogs to showcase their policy chops and feed the notion of a dynamic alternative to a tired incumbent.

In 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore used their town halls to sell the two-wonks-for-one idea, only they took the bus, which, given what we know about the two of them now, must have included a few slapstick, odd couple moments.

After nearly eight years of exploited polarization under the Bush administration followed by the past few months of strategic electoral balkanization during the primary process, a little bipartisan mojo could be a very welcome plot twist for America.

And as buddy movies go, it could make for excellent summer entertainment.