up-date on potential Democratic VP

A very brief addition to the two possibilities mentionned earlier. 

We're hearing a lot of talk of :

• Tim Kaine, all the more so since we are now in the state that elected him governor: Virginia.  He has been campaigning in Virginia with Obama these last couple days. Remember Virginia might be an important battleground State since it might swing from the Republicans to the Democrats.  This picture was taken yesterday on highway 29 between Amherst and Charlottesville: the Obama yard sign is home made and I saw a couple from the road; they were possibly put up for Obama's visit to the State or may have been there for longer. 

• Evan Bayh, a former Governor and current Senator from Indiana.

For a very short summary of why these men are likely or not to be chosen please refer to Ken Rudin's summary analysis on NPR's website. 

When Barack Obama will announce his decision his supporters will be the very first ones to know since the campaign will send them an email or a text message before making a press release. This strategy is very much in line with the grassroots' campaign image it is trying to uphold.

conservative talk in America

Two things have truly struck me here :

1. The importance of the conservative radio and TV media. The sheer quantity of networks is quite amazing. In Savannah, Georgia we could choose from around 5 or 6 christian radios. On TV, the most ubiquitious networks are Fox News and Headline News:  motels, restaurants, coffee shops are often tuned to these networks. 
   
2. The hashing out of the very same subjects over and over again. I'll simply give two examples of this : 

• Headline News is a conservative Cable news network that has been broadcasting the very same story almost non-stop since we got here two weeks ago: a three year old girl has disappeared in June and the search for her only started 3 weeks later when her mother reported that she was missing. The mother is now under investigation and the family embroglio has only added more morbid suspense to the story which is still unfolding. This story seems to have struck a chord with a certain public eager to hear about bad mothers, poor parenting, pathological liars and bounty hunters.
• The big story on the Christian radios, conservative newspapers and on Fox is that of Obama's record on abortion. I believe that the story was unearthed and thrust in the public eye with a book : The case against Barack Obama by David Freddosso ( read a short review). All the conservatives are very wary of Obama's convictions and policies on the issue of what they have termed "partial birth abortion". This is a procedure used for late-term abortions and some babies have survived. Obama spoke against a bill in the Illinois legislature that would have protected these premature babies. A similar Act was then passed by the US Senate with an anonymous vote. Some conservative commentators paint Obama as a baby killer (Ann  Coulter on Fox last night was very vocal about it) and Obama says his position has been misrepresented ( in a very short interview after the Rick Warren event). 

These two stories are being repeated over and over again, ad nauseam.

Who will it be and when will we know?

The media are very impatient to find out who will be on the both tickets. 

Obama is expected to announce this week rather than wait for the Democratic convention which starts on August 25. Waiting could have been an option because there is some anxiety among the Democrats that Hillary Clinton supporters might cause some trouble : her name will be placed into nomination, thus giving a chance to her delegates to support her through a roll-call vote. Some fear that this will cause trouble. This afternoon I was hearing commentators compare the 2008 Convention to that of 1968 that ended in dreadful violence on the streets. Making the announcement during the convention would probably have drawn attention away from the Clinton supporters. 

Who's on the top of the list? 

Joe Biden, despite his clumsy comment on Obama at the beginning of the campaign. 

Katheleen Sibelius, the governor of Kansas (although some I've heard the idea that Obama would not chose a woman other than Clinton, in order not to antagonize her supporters. 

McCain will announce his Vice-Presidential choice on the 29th, just before the start of the Republican Convention on September 1st. 

More about that when we get closer to the date. I'll just say that the idea that John McCain might pick a running mate with a pro-choice record has been bandied around. 

But now the issue of abortion is taking the center of the stage in the campaign and I think that McCain can't compromise his standing with the religious voters. 

mini-summary

Here are just a few words on yesterday's much advertised, awaited and commented event. Actually the candidates only appeared on stage together for 30 seconds. The format was two hour long interviews with Rick Warren. Obama went first and was followed by McCain. 

My impression was that Obama tried to please the evangelicals without completely alienating his more liberal base while McCain was on an all-out seduction campaign. He gave the exact answers that would please the religious voters : "Life starts at conception" for instance but gave no explanation on how this belief might influence his policies. McCain's answers were very direct and straightforward and peppered with personal stories from his time in a Vietcong prison camp (none of which were unknown, it was his usual spiel). 

Obama answered the questions with much ( too much?) subtlety and nuanced his opinions and policy proposals. Will he be able to seduce the young religious voters? 

Got to go, more later...

Tonight's debate

Tonight for the first time, Obama and McCain will be on a stage together answering questions asked by Rev. Rick Warren, a famous evangelical minister and leader. 

I believe this highlights the importance of the evangelical voting block that Obama is wooing and McCain needs to retain if he is to maintain the thirty year old Republican coalition. The simple fact that there is such a debate is a clear proof of the crucial weight that this group of yet undecided voters now wields. 

Many evangelicals, especially among the young are disappointed by the Bush years and are now engaging on issues other than abortion and same-sex unions. They have added global warming, poverty and healthcare on their agenda and may thus consider a wider span of problems. 

Around 65% of evangelicals say they support McCain but they are wary of the candidate who once called them "agents of intolerance". They will certainly not mount get out the vote operations as they did in 2000 and 2004 when they were galvanised by George W. Bush. 

The big story these last four days has been a controversial book on Obama by right-wing activist Jerome Corsi who led and encouraged the "Swiftboat" campaign against John Kerry. His avowed aim is to help defeat the Senator from Illinois as he did the 2004 Democratic candidate. The book and the false claims and exagerations it contains have been constantly discussed on most cable news networks. 

How would the Obama campaign respond to the book? By not taking it seriously they might put Obama's candidacy at risk of being "swifboated" as liberal  journalists now say. 

 You may want to read the first chapter of Obama Nation; leftist politics and the cult of personality and for a summary of the controversy read this.

The book is at the top of the best-sellers list of the N-Y Times, one of the questions this raises is : who is reading it? Undecided voters or activist opponents of Obama? 

what's in the news in America?

The biggest stories are : 

1. Former Democratic candidate John Edward's public admittance and repentance over his affair with a former consultant employed by his campaign. 

2. Some new light is being shed on the poor way in which Hillary Clinton's campaign was managed. 

A few pictures from an Austin neighbourhood where Obama is extremely popular : I saw no less than ten houses with Obama signs on two blocks. 

Austin is a very liberal city, and thus offers a stark contrast with the rest of Texas. On a day trip to the hill country, in a rural area an hour away from Austin, we came across several Ron Paul signs : apparently the libertarian Republican had quite a following there. 

Until yesterday I had not come across a single McCain sign, but in Natchez, Mississippi, at last I caught a glimpse of a McCain T-shirt. 

Do you think yard signs come free? No, the campaigns have been charging around $7 to people who want to advertise their political leanings. 

In Austin and New Orleans, the people I have been speaking to were enthousiastic about the Obama campaign, but in the more rural areas, such as the Cameron parish in Louisianna, I believe people will support the Republican candidate. Louisianna is a traditionally Republican State (remember that Bobby Jindal is the governor and was considered a potential VP for McCain a couple months back, before he got himself in trouble over the pay rise that the legislature had granted itself). McCain's support for the policy of drilling for oil just off shore of the coast will certainly win him votes in this State which relies very heavily on oil. Many people work on off-shore platforms and the money from the oil compagnies certainly benefits everyone.  

The African-American population represents roughly 18% of the total State population and racial issues are still extremely sticky here. 

I'm now in Mississippi and will try and report anything of great interest as I go along. I've noticed that the price of gas is here on average ten cents per gallon more expensive than in Louisianna. 

More reports when I have the time.