Obama Senior Adviser: 'People Won’t Vote Based on the Unemployment Rate'

Because nobody cares about unemployment. Well, except for all those people who can't find work. This is arrogance on steroids.

Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, previewed the arguments the president and his team will sound 16 months before an election that could be a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy. While history has shown the unemployment rate to be a leading indicator of an incumbent’s success, Plouffe said Americans won’t base their votes on it.

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’”

So they'll voted based on their feelings, not the dire economic calamity brought forth by this failed presidency. So how do they avoid reality? Why, they must succumb to what promises to be the nastiest class-warfare campaign ever.

“So all of them are basically just bringing out the same old war horses,” senior adviser David Plouffe said yesterday at a Bloomberg Breakfast in Washington. “Let Wall Street kind of run amok, cut taxes for the wealthy, starve investment in things like education, research and development.”

So there you have it: Republicans want to starve education, give tax cuts to the wealthy and let Wall Street run wild. Sounds like a winning campaign to me.

“Their decision next year will be based upon two things,” Plouffe said. “How do I feel about things right now and then, ultimately, campaigns are always much more about the future and who do I think has got the best idea, the best vision for where to take the country?”

So it will be, do we move forward down the path of ruin, or do we go back "to the policies that got us in the mess in the first place"?

That's their campaign, folks. And don't worry if you can't find a job. Just get in touch with your inner feelings and realize that Obama's got your back or something.

Meanwhile, 68% of Americans think we're headed down the wrong track. But that won't affect anything. It's all about feelings or something.

Going Lame

These Democrats and their obsession with Sarah Palin is bordering on the comical. Unable to stem to runaway sales of her book Going Rogue with the weak imposter Going Rouge (Amazon ranking: 1,050), the publisher of a book from Barack Obama flunkie David Plouffe attempted a PR stunt in hopes of just outselling Palin for a single day.

Result? Epic fail.

Former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is getting his butt kicked by Sarah Palin at bookstores -- and the publishers of his "The Audacity to Win" have issued a plea to boost sales. Noting that Palin's tome, "Going Rogue," is "selling like crazy," Penguin posted a challenge on its Web site to "Beat Palin's Book for a Day." It said: "For just one day . . . let's try to make the sales of David Plouffe's [book] overtake Palin's." Yesterday, Palin was No. 1 on Amazon, with Plouffe at No. 231.

Plouffe's book has now actually inched up to 212. Good luck with those sales, knuckleheads.

With Hush Rush Strategy Exhausted, Who's the Next Target of the Obama Smear Machine?

Looks like the White House has begun to back off the daily trashing of Rush Limbaugh. I question the timing. Seems to come right on the heels of all those reports showing Democrats were overwhelmingly in favor of George W. Bush failing as president.

What, can't handle a little blowback, kids?

Beginning Sunday, the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.

Others involved in the planning included White House senior adviser David Axelrod; the DNC chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; and DNC Executive Director Jennifer O'Malley Dillon.

So, who's next on Obama's hit list?

Well, could David Petraeus be the next victim? It wouldn't take much for the left to simply dust off all their hit pieces from 2007, especially those character assassins at the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org. Consider this:

Petraeus going to Iowa, a state he doesn’t have previous ties to, is going to create a huge amount of buzz about his presidential ambitions because the Iowa Caucuses kick off the whole presidential nomination process. If he does, deliver the address—and Petraeus must know this—it will be seen as a sign that he is thinking about running in 2012.

Previously, it has been thought that Petraeus would not run against a president who had been his Commander in Chief. But there are reports of tension between Petraeus and Obama over both Iraq and Afghan strategy.

Very little is known about Petraues’s politics and no one knows how he would make the transition from soldier to politician. But if he did enter the race, it would shake things up dramatically. He would instantly become a top tier candidate and the most serious threat to Obama's chances of winning a second term.

It may be difficult trashing a military hero, but if they discover Petraeus is a solid conservative, they can just go to one of the media's favorite Republicans to do the dirty work.

Thanks to Jules Crittenden for the link.

Update: Oh, that Petraeus thing? All a joke, of course.

* This was meant as joke, though obviously it fell a little flat. Petraeus has no plans to go to Iowa that I'm aware, this year or next. I regret the confusion that has resulted from my clumsy attempt at humor.

Fucking hilarious.

Obama to 'Circumvent Media' By Using Media Clip Package

Wow, this is really lame. You have to chuckle at the inanity of it all. After Obama went on his media blitz Tuesday to sell the crumbling porkulus spending orgy, he realized people weren't paying any attention since his cabinet of tax cheats was busy imploding.

So being technically savvy and cutting edge beyond anyone's wildest dreams (they're the smartest ever, they said so), what do the geniuses come up with? A repackaged montage of clips from his interviews to be viewed online.

This is being sold as Obama circumventing the media to reach the broader swath of the great unwashed.

Here it is: President Obama’s first major effort to use his massive campaign email list and communications apparatus to get around the filter of the big news orgs in order to personally sell his agenda directly to the American people.

As noted below, Obama gave five interviews to the major networks yesterday, and tried to use them to sell his stimulus package. But the withdrawal of Tom Dashle [sic] dominated the coverage and blotted out his economic message.

Obama’s solution: Later this morning, David Plouffe and Obama’s reconfigured campaign apparatus, Organizing for America, will blast out an email to his 13-million-strong list with a new video featuring selected footage from the five interviews in which he pushed for his stim package.

Now if one is trying to circumvent the media, why are they using the media's own clips?

Why doesn't Obama simply record a direct message? What, is he too tired from two weeks on the job already to put together a coherent video presentation?

Or is it just easier (and more duplicitous) to splice together footage conveniently edited to make you look better?

Memo to Plouffe and the rest of the best and brightest: You're preaching to the choir with this. Those recipients of your blast email are already on board with this sham, or at least we think some of them are.

Don't you have the least bit of confidence that Obama could try and sell this bill with a direct appeal to the American public? Or have you lost confidence that your water carriers from the networks aren't cutting it any longer? Are the useful idiots no longer useful?

Oh, and it's pretty shameless to bypass the media by using their own material. Just saying.

Obama's Purchase of the Presidency Near Completion

Frankly, I don't want to hear any more whining from Democrats as to how bad the economy is. They sure seem to have plenty of money to throw around. Assuming, of course, this cash is coming from legitimate domestic donors.

Democrat Barack Obama more than doubled his fundraising record with a mammoth September haul topping 150 million dollars to use in the final stretch of his White House campaign, aides said Sunday.

In a video message to supporters, campaign manager David Plouffe said Obama now had more than 3.1 million donors each contributing on average less than 100 dollars.

"Because of your great generosity we had a record-breaking September," he said as he prepared to file the month's fundraising figures with the Federal Election Commission.

The Supreme Court ruled we can't check those dubious 200,000 registrants in Ohio, if you mention ACORN you're racist, and if every nickel of this $150 million came from Good Will, nobody will do anything about it.

John McCain may just be spitting in the wind.

John McCain suggested that his Democratic rival Barack Obama’s record-shattering fundraising haul will lead to scandal in their presidential race and future races, and he hinted that there may already be funny business going on with Obama’s legions of small donors.

Obama announced Sunday morning that he pulled in $150 million in September, which McCain described on “Fox News Sunday” as “completely breaking whatever idea we had after Watergate to keep the cost and spending on campaigns under control. First time, first time since the Watergate scandal. And I can tell you this: that has unleashed now in presidential campaigns a new flood of spending that will then cause a scandal and then we will fix it again. But Sen. Obama has broken it.”

The Republican senator from Arizona was referring both to Obama’s reversal on a pledge to participate a system that gave McCain’s campaign $84 million in taxpayer money but limited his spending to that amount, and also to recent news reports highlighting over-the-limit contributions to Obama given in under-$200 installments from previously undisclosed small donors. Some were fictitious and had listed names such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will.”

Federal election rules only require campaigns to report the names, addresses and occupations of donors when they have given more than $200 — and more than $200 million of Obama’s total fundraising haul is from such small contributions.

“We know that when you have unlimited amounts of money — in this case $200 million unreported — and there’s already been stories of people who have made small contributions multiple times and all that. I’m saying it’s laying a predicate for the future that can be very dangerous,” McCain told host Chris Wallace in a live interview from Ohio on Sunday morning, blasting the Illinois senator for not voluntarily disclosing his small donors, as McCain has done.

“There’s $200 million of those campaign contributions — there’s no record. You can report online now. Two hundred million that we don’t know where it came from. Lot of strange things going on in this campaign. The American people should know where every penny came from,” McCain said. “They know where every penny of my campaign contributions came from.”

Obama: Criticism of ACORN Is Meant to Suppress the Vote

We were wondering what took so long for them to spin the massive ACORN voter fraud around and claim it's a cynical ploy to suppress the vote.

The waiting is over. And they shamelessly lie through their teeth.

The Obama campaign was forced to defend their voter registration efforts today, after the McCain campaign continued to the link them to ACORN. Earlier today, the group acknowledged that there has been some voter registration fraud, but that state election officials are required to “weed out” bad applications.

Both campaign manager David Plouffe and general counsel Bob Bauer vehemently denied any connection between ACORN and their voter registration effort. “The case is ludicrous,” Bauer said about the Republican accusations, adding, “this campaign has never paid ACORN to register voters.”

Oh really?

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat's campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.

An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. -- a subsidiary of ACORN -- worked in "get-out-the-vote" projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.

FEC spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said it is not unusual for campaigns to amend reports, even regarding large sums of money.

But, said Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee: "Barack Obama's failure to accurately report his campaign's financial records is an incredibly suspicious situation that appears to be an attempt to hide his campaign's interaction with a left-wing organization previously convicted of voter fraud. For a candidate who claims to be practicing 'new' politics, his FEC reports look an awful lot like the 'old-style' Chicago politics of yesterday."

So Obama never paid ACORN to register voters?

Hmm. Somehow CBS failed to follow up.

He charged that the Republicans are “suppressing” and “intimidating” voters in various states, making it harder for people to vote.

“What this is, is a strategic and cynical ploy to in some ways to denigrate all these people who decided to participate in their democracy, to sow confusion out there in a deliberate attempt to try to decrease turnout,” Plouffe argued.

“This is just the start of what is going to be a deliberate and cynical attempt to try and create confusion, to challenge people inappropriately.”

That part sounds really familiar.

Come election day when GOP officials start blowing the whistle and challenging dubious voters, who likely will be getting paid to vote numerous times, you know what the reaction will be from most media outlets, notably the New York Times: Racism! Voter suppression!

And you know exactly that's what will happen nationwide. Then an army of Obama lawyers will be rushing for injunctions to keep polls open late. Mark it down.

In case the Obama team has a problem linking them with ACORN's voter registration fraud, maybe they can take it up with CNN.

A subsidiary of the group was paid $800,000 by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign to register voters for the 2008 primaries, and ACORN's political wing endorsed Obama back in February.

Seems pretty clear to me who's doing the lying here.

Poor Barry, now he's whining about distractions.

Obama replied: "first of all, my relationship to ACORN is pretty straightforward. It's probably 13 years ago when I was still practicing law, I represented ACORN and my partner in that representation was the US Justice Department in having Illinois implement what was called the 'Motor Voter' law, to make sure that people could go to DMV’s and drivers’ license facilities to get registered.. It wasn’t being implemented. That was my relationship and is my relationship to ACORN.

Figures this stooge was involved in the Auto Fraudo registrations, another boondoggle. He then parrots Plouffe.

"But what I want to make sure of, is that this is not used as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression strategies and tactics that we've seen in the past. Let’s just make sure everybody is voting, everybody’s registered. Let's make sure that everybody’s doing it in a lawful way."

In the past? Where? Like when Al Gore's lawyers suppressed the military votes in Florida?

Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit for the links.

Running Scared: Obama Backs Off Townhall Meetings With McCain

Hmm. What happened to all that bravado and bluster from The Great Orator?

Could it be he's panicking because his poll numbers are sinking like a stone?

Perhaps it's because he becomes The Wizards of Uhhhs when he doesn't have a TelePrompter in front of him?

Whatever it is, he sure looks chicken.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances before the political conventions, agreeing only to the standard three debates in the fall.

In May, when a McCain adviser proposed a series of pre-convention appearances at town hall meetings, Obama said, "I think that's a great idea." In summer stumping on the campaign trail, McCain has often noted that Obama had not followed through and joined him in any events.

On Saturday, in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the short period between the last political convention and the first proposed debate made it likely that the commission-sponsored debates would be the only ones in the fall.

"We've committed to the three debates on the table," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday in an interview. "It's likely they will be the three appearances by the candidates this fall."

Asked by The Associated Press if that meant Obama would not agree to any other debates, Psaki said, "We're not saying that." She said the McCain campaign had rejected Obama's proposal for two joint town hall meetings.

Lame. They can't even get their denials straight.

You know this boob doesn't want any part of McCain in a debate, since by the time they get around to him he'll have changed his position on every issue.