Move along, folks, the Lieberman hanging’s canceled by Obama executive order - Obama,Barack
The new White House chief of staff-designate Rahm Emanuel is a Chicago-style representative known for his tough politics, his tough language and the occasional unfriendly finger gesture.
But just weeks before the start of the historic Barack Obama administration, the last thing the boss-elect wanted was a public hanging of Connecticut’s sort-of Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman for his outspoken support of the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin the last several months.
There was some support for revenge (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) among those (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) who wanted to slice away Lieberman’s committee chairmanship of Homeland Security and membership on the important Armed Services Committee with McCain and Hillary Clinton.
It was the Democratic Party, you may remember, that started this fight by supporting an insurgent primary challenger of Lieberman in 2006 over the senator’s support of the Iraq war in general and the Bush administration’s troop surge in particular.
The insurgent won the primary but was blown away in the general, where Lieberman ran as an independent and drew on his longtime statewide name recognition as a former attorney general and senator who suits the state’s moderate-to-conservative Democratic mind-set. And the Republicans tacitly supported Joe by putting up a nobody and not supporting him.
So jolly Joe returned to the Senate and the Democratic caucus, where his vote was the leverage that gave the party the 51 votes necessary to control that body.
It’s one thing to support the war. It’s another, however, to support Republicans, which Lieberman did big time, even speaking in prime time at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
With a newly-enlarged Democratic majority now, Joe’s lone vote is less important. It came time to take him to the woodshed during this week’s brief congressional session before another vacation. But how would that look as a pre-inaugural first step for a new administration pledged to change the way Washington doesn’t work?
So Lieberman keeps his Homeland chairmanship, his Armed Services membership and loses a minor subcommittee chairmanship, which is like detention for a week. And life goes on.
Lieberman told reporters he appreciated colleagues’ respect for his "independence of mind."
"That’s who I am," said the 2000 Democratic party vice presidential nominee.
The overwhelming majority of Democrats in the caucus wanted to keep Joe on, Reid said, looking like he was not a member of that overwhelming majority but got the word from Chicago. "It’s all over with," he said.
A little rump-session drama that may give an inkling of the Obama-Emanuel style to come. (For an entertaining video of a roast of Emanuel and his kick-em-between the legs political style, click here and see what Obama had to say about him way back in 2005.)
– Andrew Malcolm
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Photo credit: Chris O’Meara / Associated Press
Poll: Obama Voters Grossly Uninformed - Barack Obama
Scary.
Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.
Zogby Statement on Ziegler poll.
Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.
The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film “Blocking the Path to 9/11″ and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice..
And of course there is a lot more at HowObamaGotElected.com.
Ticket Replay: Obama-backer Oprah bans Sarah Palin from her TV show - Barack Obama
This weekend The Ticket is republishing some items from the recent 2007-08 political season. This one originally appeared in this space on Sept. 5, 2008. (Sarah Palin has still not been on the Winfrey show):
Oprah Winfrey, the billionaire TV talk-show diva who is supporting the Democratic presidential nominee, says she will 
not allow the Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on her daily show, which is widely viewed by women.
The 44-year-old Palin is the first female nominee on a Republican presidential ticket in the party’s 164-year history, though she is little-known outside Alaska, where she was elected a reform governor in 2006.
Palin, a former high school basketball star and beauty pageant contestant, is the mother of five, an outdoorswoman and part owner in her husband Todd’s commercial fishing business.
This past year Oprah endorsed Barack Obama for president. It was the first time she b
ecame publicly involved in politics.
Oprah emceed numerous rallies for the freshman Democrat senator in key caucus and primary states, drawing large crowds, donations, media coverage and many new volunteers. She also hosted a lucrative fundraiser at one of her homes, near Santa Barbara. But she has so many we can’t count ‘em.
Oprah’s political involvement, as noted previously by…
…The Ticket, hurt her in TV ratings, though she remains clearly the most-watched such show.
Many commentors on Ticket items expressed resentment that Winfrey, who made her fortune off appealing to women, would desert the first serious female candidate to vie for her party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton, another Democrat, in favor of a male candidate, Obama. She also did not have Clinton on her program during the campaign.
TMZ, the widely-read celebrity website, asked Winfrey about having Palin on her program to describe her life and views to other American women.
In a post earlier today, TMZ said Winfrey replied, "There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show."
According to TMZ, Winfrey also said: "At the beginning of this presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates."
Winfrey also said she would "love" to have the Republican candidate on her show, but only after the Nov. 4 election, which pits the Illinois Democrat Obama against Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
Winfrey has had Obama on her program two previous times, in January 2005 and again in the fall of 2006 shortly before he announced his presidential candidacy.
What do Ticket readers think? Is this fair? Would you watch an Oprah show with Palin and/or Obama? Do you still watch Oprah’s program in the first place?
– Andrew Malcolm
Photo credits: Associated Press
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Ticket Replay: CNN’s Toobin reveals what ‘analysts’ prefer to watch - Barack Obama
This week The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from this past political season. This humorous item (or, humourous if you’re reading this in Canada) originally appeared in this pace on Oct. 6, 2008. Check back here in a couple of hours for a follow-up item that makes this one even worse:
You know how you watch these presidential and vice presidential debates on television, as a near record number of us did last Thursday with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and millions more will tomorrow night from Nashville with John McCain and Barack Obama?
And then afterward the networks switch to what seems to be a palpably proliferating panoply of pundits who tell us all instantly and precisely who won, who scored and lost points and what it all means for America’s future? And they keep consulting open laptops for their perceptive notes and quotes?
And sometimes you wonder who appointed them and what makes them think they know more than you?
Well, maybe they don’t. The brilliantly observant folks over at Gizmodo.com were watching CNN’s political palaverers, including here on the nearest end the big legal expert Jeffrey Toobin. Here’s a photo of the panel during coverage of last Thursday night’s vice presidential debate:
But the clever Gizmodo.com folks didn’t leave it there. They examined the photo more closely.
To see what shocking image they actually found, click on the "Read more" line below.
Ooops, Toobin wasn’t even watching the debate. He was pontificating about it, but not watching it at all.
He was watching the baseball playoffs on his laptop. See the embarrassing enlargement of the first photo here:
Do you suppose the other CNN "analysts" were watching Fox News to crib their insights? Here’s the full Gizmodo story.
– Andrew Malcolm
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Photo credit: Gizmodo.com
Why Sid Voorakkara’s vote for Obama matters more than yours - Barack Obama
America strives to uphold the proposition that all men, women and votes, are created equal. But the archaic Electoral College requires that a group of extra-equal Americans cast their ballots before a president can officially take office.
That’s where Sid Voorakkara and 54 other Californians come in.
The nonprofit health advocate and former Democratic political operative from San Diego will travel to Sacramento on Dec. 15 to cast his Electoral College vote for Barack Obama, who captured all the state’s 55 electoral votes by getting way more popular votes than the Arizona guy and Alaska gal on Nov. 4, as The Ticket reported last night.
(A refresher for our many loyal Ticket readers abroad and some at home who didn’t do too well in American Government:
(A state’s Electoral College votes are the total of that state’s elected U.S. senators (two each) plus the total of its U.S. House members re-apportioned every 10 years by population. The latter ranges from the minimum of one in Montana and Alaska to 53 in California.
(Yes, we know, it is arcane. But, hey, it was very hot in Philadelphia when the Founding Fathers argued this all out back in the 1700s.)
Few people will actually notice the official …
… Dec. 15 balloting, thinking that the new president was elected back on Nov. 4.
The California Democratic Party has released the list of merchants, politicians, union activists and others pledged to complete the constitutionally-required ritual that will turn the freshman Illinois senator into America’s 44th president.
Among those assigned to cast a ritual paper ballot are Shasta County Supervisor Mark Cibula, California Professional Firefighters President Lou Paulson, Indian gaming advocate and tribal executive Mark Macarro, Rep. Maxine Waters’ daughter Karen and Voorakkara.
The electors represent each of California’s 53 congressional districts, with two others named for the entire state. They’re chosen by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, House members and — in districts with Republican House members — by the most recent Democratic congressional nominee.
The 37-year-old Voorakkara got his nod from 53rd Congressional District Rep. Susan Davis. He worked at the Democratic National Campaign Committee and his wife, Jennette Lawrence, once worked on Davis’ congressional staff.
Both Voorakkara and his wife now are trying to effect policy closer to the front lines, in jobs that seek to expand access to healthcare.
Voorakkara recounts that he was talking to Davis staffers about how the Electoral College works when one asked him if he would be interested in serving as an elector.
"I am thrilled and honored to be part of this," he told The Ticket, "particularly with the historic nature of this election."
Electors will meet in each state Capitol on Dec. 15 to tabulate their votes.
The California group will complete separate paper ballots, first for Obama and then for Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
The separate votes are designed to avoid the confusion of too many Johns.
Four years ago, one Minnesota elector marked the wrong ballot and inadvertently named Sen. John Edwards, rather than Sen. John Kerry, for president.
Though electors are expected to vote for their party’s nominee, they are not legally bound in all states to do so.
In 1988, one elector cast a presidential vote for Lloyd Bentsen, choosing the Texas senator and vice presidential nominee over the Democrats’ actual presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor.
A District of Columbia elector, in a protest against the district’s lack of voting status in Congress, declined to vote for anyone in 2000.
Although such renegades have not altered the official outcome in the Electoral College, they’re not really appreciated by party chieftains, who call them "faithless electors."
Bob Mulholland, a campaign advisor to the California Democratic Party, said the state Capitol’s tule fog is a more likely bugaboo than wayward electors.
"Sometimes it gets so thick that planes can’t get in here," Mulholland said. "In 1996, we were missing a couple of people. So I was standing there giving instructions and the other electors named me to be a replacement [elector] for Bill Clinton.
But Mulholland didn’t minimize the occasion. "It’s really a very important moment," he said. "People can get very emotional about it."
– James Rainey
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Photo: Associated Press
Do I have to pay extra if I’m buying a turkey that Sarah Palin watched get slaughtered - Dem, Ill?
Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer
Sorry, that sound you heard last night was me screaming. I was having that dream again. The one where I’m a turkey being put to my death and Sarah Palin is standing in front of me laughing. I’m assuming you’ve seen the now-famous video from yesterday. No wonder she needed that $150,000 from the RNC for new clothes. Her old clothes were probably still covered in blood from last Christmas, when she blew Rudolph’s head off.
I mean, seriously, does no one listen to my advice? If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: When you give a television interview in front of helpless warbling birds being fed into a wood chipper make sure to put down your hot cocoa. Otherwise you just look ridiculous.
And while Sarah Palin was starring in her own version of Fargo her former opponent Joe Biden was celebrating a birthday. He turned 66. And his hair plugs turned 4. By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that Madeleine Albright jumped out of a cake.
Speaking of Madeleine Albright, that reminds me, the world continues to wait with bated breath – or in my case, yawning – to find out if Barack Obama will nominate Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. Everyone thinks it’s going to happen. Because you know the old saying, “keep your friends close and your enemies in the most influential job in your administration.”
And then there is the economy. Which is bad enough without having to endure the news conferences in which Nancy Pelosi refers to Harry Reid as “Mister Leader.” Yeah, I get that he’s Senate Majority Leader but would you mind ratcheting down the devotion a tad because I just ate. Thanks. Anyway, the more Nancy and Sun Myung Moon talk the more my 401k keeps tanking.
Which is not to say anyone else is really doing anything about the economy. President Bush is too busy filling up his moving van with those little bottles of White House shampoo and President-elect Obama is too busy going through Bill Clinton’s receipts from the Shanghai Hooters.
And the worse the economy gets the crankier my dog Sammy gets. If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “maybe if I was hypoallergenic I could get out of this dump.” Plus, she’s started robbing convenience stores again.
At least it’s Friday, though. That makes me feel good.
As does the knowledge that I’m not a turkey and Sammy isn’t Sarah Palin.
Ticket Replay: Inside Obama’s victory rally, the historical setting - Obama,Barack
During the next week or so The Ticket is republishing some of our favorite items from the 2007-08 political season. This one originally appeared in this space and in The Times’ print edition on Nov. 11, 2008:
When those 200,000 or however-many Barack Obamians gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park late Tuesday and early Wednesday to celebrate the election of America’s first African American president, they were literally and figuratively standing on historic ground.
Democrats celebrated their black candidate’s victory in a 319-acre park named for a Republican president, Ulysses S. Grant, an Illinois native who was the final Union Army general of the many named by President Lincoln, another Illinois Republican, to crush the Confederacy and end slavery.
Grant Park was also the site of the 1968 self-immolation of Obama’s Democratic Party in violent antiwar (and witnesses testified) police riots that besmirched the city’s name for a generation.
It also shook Cook County’s long-running Democratic machine, then headed by Mayor Richard J. Daley and now not coincidentally headed by his son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, brother of William Daley, now not coincidentally a member of an Obama transition team.
Today’s Mayor Daley is political patron of both Obama and his newly-announced White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a city….
…congressman who not coincidentally was schooled in hardball politics throughout the 1980s by the mayor’s minions and then cadged free lunches from local journalists in exchange for the political gossip he proferred.
That was before Emanuel became Bill Clinton’s national finance chairman for the 1992 election.
But back to Grant Park. The city once ended at Michigan Avenue, where Lake Michigan began.
But when the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — that was not started by a cow kicking a lantern — killed hundreds and destroyed four square miles of Chicago over three days, the famously rapid rebuilding began only because the rubble was simply dumped in the lake as landfill. No need for environmental impact statements back then.
That became Grant Park — and a fitting metaphor for the Republican Party that Obama celebrants danced on it much of the night.
John McCain, the Republican of many comebacks, who survived a North Vietnamese missile, nearly six years of torture and isolation in a POW camp, a savings-and-loan scandal, defeat at the hands of George W. Bush, an inept initial campaign staff that spent him into oblivion in 2007 and younger GOP competitors with far more resources.
But he could not survive the legacy of that same Bush, an unhealthy dose of ageism, the financial meltdown and his own Apple Dumpling Gang staff, which squandered the Sarah Palin phenomenon.
People forget that, before the Wall Street walloping, the McCain-Palin ticket was ahead in some polls.
They remember Palin’s poorly handled interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. They forget the 100 others she did around 132 events in 105 cities in 25 states between Aug. 29 and Nov. 4.
Some folks ask why Palin was not on the Sunday talk shows? But, by the way, where was her VP counterpart, Joe What’s-His-Name from Delaware, who was so gagged after his Hillary Clinton-might-have-been-a-better-VP-pick-than-me comment that he didn’t meet with the media for the last seven weeks of the campaign? Who complained?
The quick-learning, leak-proof Obama team (lead by chief strategist David Axelrod, who covered the Daleys and Chicago politics for years for the Chicago Tribune) was much better at communications strategy and staging, Greek columns aside, than the McCain crews, who, like their fighter-pilot boss, flew by the seat of their pants in no straight lines.
In a way, it’s surprising in hindsight that McCain did as well as he did. But the Arizonan’s lasting political legacy may be less his admirable endurance and steely perseverance, and more the ruinous reality that he and Bush leave their party now completely leaderless, except for some governors and a few surviving congressmen who haven’t lost or been indicted yet.
This weekend, the winner, who dropped his nickname 
Barry for his given name Barack, plots a historic transition from his headquarters in a windy city named by Indians for a smelly wild onion, shecahgoo.
The loser, meanwhile, is barbecuing at his Arizona country home — one of them anyway — while in the true Washington tradition of losers, his aides anonymously leak allegations about Palin’s personality and knowledge to tag her as the real reason for defeat in 2008.
Oh, one other thing: Later this very month, Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has scheduled a speaking visit to somewhere called Iowa in preparation for 2012. He’s the eloquent 37-year-old former House member and son of an Indian immigrant who came to graduate school in the United States.
His father had a son here and named him Piyush, a favorite name from his homeland. That son later changed his name to a more American Bobby after a character on “The Brady Bunch.” He has three cute children with his wife, Supriya.
Does any of this sound familiar?
–Andrew Malcolm
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Photos: Grant Park Rally, Kamil Krzacznski / EPA; Associated Press; Sarah Palin by Stephan Savoia / Associated Press.
First, by golly, Sarah Palin; now, you know, Caroline Kennedy - Obama,Barack
Just listen.
It’s only fair since so many of us had so much fun with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s informal speech during her first five minutes of fame, that we also get some yuks from Princess Caroline Kennedy’s, you know, reliance on "you know."
It seems, dontcha know, that New Yorkers are gonna hear this a lot in coming days, at least until Gov. David Paterson decides who’s getting Hillary Clinton’s about-to-be vacant Senate seat as she steps up to secretary of State in Barack Obama’s new Cabinet after the inauguration.
You know you don’t need to keep count in this hilarious video. A little buzzer does it for you.
You betcha you’ll enjoy it, you know.
– Andrew Malcolm
Hat Tip to Glenn Reynolds via Howard Mortman.
Ticket Replay: Sarah Palin finds Obama pretty ‘cool’ and she didn’t buy those clothes - Dem, Ill
For the next week or so The Ticket will occasionally republish some of our favorite items from the past political season. This one was originally published Nov. 11, 2008, after Gov. Sarah Palin’s lengthy post-election interviews with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin thinks president-elect Barack Obama is a pretty "cool" guy and she can work with him, especially on alternative energy and energy independence issues crucial to her state.
Obama phoned Palin during the recently concluded campaign and they had a pleasant conversation.
"He was cool, too," Palin told Greta Van Susteren as the governor prepared a Sunday meal in her lakefront kitchen. "He was, like, ‘Good luck–but not that much luck.’"
Palin spoke at length openly in her Alaska gubernatorial office and her suburban home with Van Susteren in the first of a two-part "On the Record" program shown Monday on the Fox News Channel; Part II comes Tuesday night.
The "news" part of the interview is that the 44-year-old mother of five, who rallied the conservative base for the John McCain Republican ticket but not the hoped-for female crossover of Democratic women, did not rule out — or in — another national campaign come 2012 "or four
years later."
"If there’s an open door in ‘12 or four years later and if it’s going to be something good for my family, my state, my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door. But I can’t predict what’s going to happen."
On the Republican defeat: "The American people spoke and it’s the will of the voters that it was not our time and our message was not the message of change that the majority of voters wanted, so be it. Now, that chapter’s closed. Now let me, let John McCain do all that we can along with our supporters to help unite the nation and progress under a new administration."
On her vetting: She was impressed with how much McCain knew about her when they first met. "They even knew my City Council votes back in ‘92."
On her campaign staff, some of whom have been leaking derogatory allegations about her in recent days: It was strange to suddenly have to put her entire faith in people she’d never met but they were "very experienced, very sharp."
About allegedly not knowing Africa was a continent. Not true. Didn’t happen. She’d long been familiar with the continent since, among other things, getting Alaskan investments out of Darfur. Same on allegedly not knowing that NAFTA includes Mexico and next-door Canada, which has considerable trade with Alaska.
On the media: Many of its members often seem eager to believe the worst about her without fully checking, taking at face value online assertions such as she was not the birth mother of Trig or that as mayor she tried to censor books that hadn’t been published when she was mayor. And how much longer it seemed to take for the truth to catch up to the initial false reports.
On criticism of her: No problem. It comes with the political territory. Her family is used to it, too, from local and state politics. Well, wait, there was one moment in Philadelphia when her 14-year-old daughter Willow asked about protesters wearing T-shirts calling Palin a crude word for female genitalia.
On the clothes for her and her family: She never ordered any. Never asked for any. They were waiting when the family arrived at the Republican National Convention and belong to the Republican National Committee.
Palin said she’s never set foot in a Nieman-Marcus or Saks, kept none of the purchases and prefers her own closet of clothes.
–Andrew Malcolm
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Photo credit: Stephan Savoia / Associated Press
Ticket Replay: Hillary Clinton talks of Joe Biden (and Obama - Obama,Barack)
For the next week or so The Ticket is occasionally republishing some of our favorite items from this past political season. This item, which at the end showed some political prescience on The Ticket’s part, is from Aug. 23, 2008, reporting on Hillary Clinton’s initial public reaction to the selection of Joe Biden, instead of herself, as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate. And speculates on John McCain’s then-imminent VP selection, which came six days later.
We’ve also added here as a contextual reminder a video from the primary season of Clinton deriding Obama, now, of course, her about-to-be Cabinet boss.
DENVER — As Barack Obama let the suspense build this last week over his vice presidential pick — and a spate of new polls showed a virtual dead heat in the race for the White House — the chattering classes indulged in one last bout of speculation about a Democratic "dream ticket."
With that prospect now officially dead, Hillary Clinton today issued the following statement:
"In naming my colleague and friend Joe Biden to be the vice presidential nominee, Barack Obama has continued in the best traditions for the vice presidency by selecting an exceptionally strong, experienced leader and devoted public servant.
"Senator Biden will be a purposeful and dynamic vice president who will help Senator Obama both win the presidency and govern this great country.”
Regardless, as Democrats descend on Denver, taking the temperature of Clinton supporters — now that their party’s ticket does not include her, one of her supporters, or a woman — will be one of the main media preoccupations.
As John McCain’s choice of a running mate nears, we also would not be surprised if one last burst of attention focuses on women that he might choose, such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
See Clinton video below.
– Don Frederick
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With a Hat Tip to ExtremeMortman.com
Photo credits: Associated Press
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