Just in case the details of the Obama campaign weren't presented frequently and forthrightly enough in the extensive policy section of the Obama campaign website...the regularly updated Obama campaign blog...the 18 multi-hour televised democratic presidential debates (make that 20 after next Tuesday)...the dozen or so issue-based democratic presidential forums...the vast multitude of television and print interviews with Senator Obama...the vast multitude of television and print interviews with campaign spokesmen (most often including campaign manager David Plouffe and campaign endorsers Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Claire McCaskill, and hopefully no longer including the infamous State Senator Kirk Watson, who proves that apparently all politicians from Texas are morons)...the hundreds upon hundreds of campaign events ranging from dinner discussions with voters to town hall Q&A sessions to stadium rallies (with the caveat that most post-election victory rallies are used for celebrating, well, victory, as opposed to presenting 5-point tax plans to 20,000 people fired up after your umpteenth straight primary win)...the immeasurable amount of campaign literature dispersed, campaign emails sent, campaign television and print advertisements run......just in case, I present The Blueprint For Change: Barack Obama's Plan For America, 64 pages of details.Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Blueprint For Change: 64 Pages of Details
Just in case the details of the Obama campaign weren't presented frequently and forthrightly enough in the extensive policy section of the Obama campaign website...the regularly updated Obama campaign blog...the 18 multi-hour televised democratic presidential debates (make that 20 after next Tuesday)...the dozen or so issue-based democratic presidential forums...the vast multitude of television and print interviews with Senator Obama...the vast multitude of television and print interviews with campaign spokesmen (most often including campaign manager David Plouffe and campaign endorsers Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Claire McCaskill, and hopefully no longer including the infamous State Senator Kirk Watson, who proves that apparently all politicians from Texas are morons)...the hundreds upon hundreds of campaign events ranging from dinner discussions with voters to town hall Q&A sessions to stadium rallies (with the caveat that most post-election victory rallies are used for celebrating, well, victory, as opposed to presenting 5-point tax plans to 20,000 people fired up after your umpteenth straight primary win)...the immeasurable amount of campaign literature dispersed, campaign emails sent, campaign television and print advertisements run......just in case, I present The Blueprint For Change: Barack Obama's Plan For America, 64 pages of details.
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Obama doesn't do town hall Q&As, the speech you see after primary victories is the exact same stump speech he gives at every campaign stop, and Obama's ads are 30 seconds long, hardly long enough to delve into issues (especially when at least half of the ad is about "hope"). As for the rest, most voters don't see those, and I think it's incumbent upon the candidate to educate the electorate. The information is available for those who seek it, but not to the vast majority of voters who only see him in one of the three aforementioned ways. And it also raises questions about the priorities of the candidate.
But I'll be sure to dive into this 64-page document, as will most voters.
There are many videos available of Obama doing Q&A sessions with groups of voters, and also discussing specific policies with larger crowds. Just because you don't see them reported on cable news doesn't mean they're not happening. Here are a few:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Y2b7DQlofL4&eurl=http://my.
barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
b3GLyuVzIn8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
vcI0njqh1iw
As for the voters not "seeing" the rest of the listed opportunities, I find that hard to believe given the millions of website and video and news article hits, not to mention online donations, that have taken place. I guess hundreds of thousands of people just go online, donate $100, and quickly close the website without reading anything further. And, again, the millions of viewers that have tuned in to dozens and dozens of debates, both cable news aired and issue-based forums, seems to have been overlooked here.
This, of course, glosses over the fact that the degrees of truth in the comments you make apply equally to the Clinton campaign (30 sec. campaign ads like 'Night Shift', the "he won't debate" ads in Wisconsin, and the various other personal, non-issue addressing adds; Hillary spending the bulk of her stump speeching levying criticisms at Obama and rhetorical discussions about the "dangerous times" we live in, again non-issue based focus). Clearly, the entire Democratic primary has been less policy-oriented since both candidates are close to one another on many positions, and the media has been a major factor in choosing to heavily focus on the non-issue angles of the campaigns, but that is a far stretch from claiming Obama has little substance and details in his campaign. Plus, insofar as it is a reality that American voters are less than informed about policy when they vote for politicians (and it is certainly a reality), that is also not something that can be uniquely attributed to the Obama campaign (is it any more informed when a voter makes their vote on the basis that "it's time for a woman to be president"?)
And, I'm pretty sure that every speech and debate of Senator Clinton's ends with "make sure to log on to HillaryClinton.com"...I guess she wouldn't agree that such sources of information don't factor into educating the voters.
But the people who go on the campaign websites, you must admit, are a small subset of voters. And Clinton's stump speech in the recent past has focused much more on policy aspirations than his has, though I haven't heard her stump speech in a little bit. Obviously the same is true in terms of TV ads, I just don't think Obama deserves credit for using those as a way to inform voters or something.
Anyway, I never said he doesn't have any positions or anything -- that's obviously not the case. My point is that I don't think he talks about them all that much. By your own admission, his stump speech is light on them -- the speech you see him giving on TV after wins is the same speech he gives everywhere. It was widely reported that Obama rarely takes questions at campaign events -- might be because they're too big, but all the same -- and the sit downs with voters aren't really "town halls". And Hillary Clinton tells people to go to her website because she wants them to donate. I'm sure she'd be happy for them to look at the issues too, but that's the reason she repeats the website so often.
I'm not saying Obama doesn't have substance, but I don't think that's been his focus in this campaign.
Well, your argument may be about the Obama campaign's focus, but that's not the Clinton campaign argument (which is what the post was rebutting in terms of not providing details). The Clinton campaign has been saying Obama is just speeches with no substance, and that he doesn't provide any policy details; that's not about whether he's focusing on substance, that is making the claim that he has NO substance. As I pointed out, he both has substance and there are a multitude of avenues through which issues have been discussed in the Obama campaign.
Again, I don't think websites can be written off as some small subset of voters when hundreds of millions of dollars are being raised through them for both candidates (and, it is the websites in conjunction with the various other avenues of discourse that I mentioned). And, as far as the stump speeches you refer to, you have to separate the daily campaign events from the victory/concession speeches. Like I said before, the Obama campaign has hosted dozens of town hall meetings (which involve around a few hundred people or so and Obama giving opening remarks and then Q&A...these are on video, they are a fact, and I'm just not sure where you get that "Obama doesn't do town hall Q&A's"; maybe there was an article that reported there are less Q&A events than big rally events, but that doesn't mean Q&A's aren't happening, and quite frankly for both Clinton and Obama they both discuss the broad policy themes of their campaigns even in those big rally events...health care, the war, social security, tax cuts, etc.). And, the dinner sit downs with a handful of voters are completely separate events.
I think the Clinton campaign spin that Obama just gives lofty speeches all day and hasn't addressed substantive policy during this campaign is just patently false. Sure he gives rhetorical speeches (just like she does), and yes they're more often and more prominent because he's been winning week after week of primaries and thus often receives huge crowds which are not good places to outline point-by-point policies. Which is exactly why there are plenty of daily campaign events of a smaller nature, including Q&A's and dinner events and tours of factories or schools, and the press conferences, and the website updates, and the 20+ debates and forums where issues are more substantively fleshed out, etc. (this brings us back to my post).
That is the reality of the campaign, but it's easy for the Clinton campaign to categorize the Obama campaign as "just rhetorical speeches", because that is what the media covers most often as they are the most newsworthy...and, of course, on a completely separate topic, even if it all was true, that strategy hasn't been doing much good for her lately, has it?
By the way...we have to do our Oscar picks! lol
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