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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Candidates prepare for showdown in Oregon The presidential race’s punch-drunk prizefighters are staggering into Oregon, where both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will bring markedly different aspirations to their campaign appearances. Obama, fresh off a big win in North Carolina and a near draw in Indiana, is coming Friday and Saturday to Oregon, a state that can deliver him the majority in the total of available pledged Democratic delegates. “That will happen on the night of May 20,” said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, referring to the primary election date of both Oregon and Kentucky. Speaking with reporters on a conference call, he said it will be “an incredibly important moment in the campaign when Sen. Obama clinches a majority of the delegates — which is an expression of the will of the voters in this contest.” Clinton, who campaigns in Central Point today and Portland on Friday, will revisit the state that remains her last, best hope for a “game-changing” primary win. Unlike the remaining states of West Virginia and Kentucky, where Clinton leads in the polls, Oregon is a battleground state where Obama is expected to do well. An Oregon win for Clinton could keep alive her dimming hopes of convincing superdelegates she’s their best choice to bring the Democrats’ fight to Republican John McCain. “Her message has got to be a message of viability and a message of electability ... that she’s more electable against John McCain,” said Melody Rose, chairwoman of the Portland State University Political Science Division. Oregonians will hear for themselves how the two candidates are approaching their state. Oregon’s role in the marathon primary season’s final weeks came into sharper focus after Tuesday’s vote tallies. Obama won big in North Carolina, adding 17 pledged delegates to his lead over Clinton. Her narrow win in Indiana gave her four delegates more than Obama’s Hoosier State total. The net results: Obama now holds a 172-vote lead among the pledged delegates — his biggest lead so far and 33 delegates short of clinching an overall majority among pledged delegates. Despite Clinton’s increasingly uphill climb to claim the nomination, she made clear Tuesday night and again Wednesday her plans to bring the fight to Oregon and the remaining states. “I’m staying in this race until there is a nominee, and obviously I’m going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee,” Clinton said at a news conference in West Virginia, which votes Tuesday — one week before Oregon Democrats finish their balloting. Despite national news outlets’ reports of behind-the-scenes pressure on Clinton to step aside, the Oregon campaigns for both candidates said they remained on course to aggressively court voters and — indirectly — Oregon’s 52 pledged delegates and the eight superdelegates who remain publicly uncommitted. “We are assuming Sen. Clinton is going to continue the contest unless we hear otherwise,” said Nick Shapiro, Obama’s Oregon spokesman. While Obama’s Oregon campaigners say they expect Obama to focus on “the concerns of Oregon,” the candidate himself gave every indication he will be shifting more attention to an increasingly likely showdown with the Republicans’ presumed nominee. “At this defining moment in history — a moment when we’re facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril — we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term,” he said in a North Carolina victory speech. Obama’s upcoming campaign appearance, while overlapping with Clinton’s, also nearly brushes with the opponent he may face as the Democratic nominee. McCain is scheduled to make a touch-and-go fundraising visit Monday afternoon at a Portland International Airport hotel. As the two campaigns have slogged through one of the longest primary seasons in history, they’ve become experts at competing in polling-place elections. But as they focus on Oregon, they must make adjustments to compete in the only state that votes exclusively through the mail. The Obama campaign brought in as its Oregon state director Rob Hill, who learned the ways of Oregon’s unique voting method four years ago, when he held the same job in Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s campaign. “In other states we’ve had a final day, if you will, when you switch to a get-out-the-vote mode,” Shapiro said. “But here in Oregon, where people are doing both for three weeks, you have to do both.” Shapiro said the Obama campaign has harnessed its vast pool of volunteers to help run its dual persuasion and “get out the mail” campaigns for the final three weeks of the election. That strategy was on display last weekend and will continue in the coming days, he said, as volunteers and paid staff put on more than one hundred canvassing events — going door to door to remind those with newly arrived mail-in ballots to fill them out and return them. Clinton’s Oregon campaign has been organizing canvasses, too, as it did last weekend in all 36 counties. Her Oregon state director, Clay Haynes, said the campaign has analyzed more than 2 million voting records since Oregon’s first statewide vote-by-mail election in 1996 to determine how to focus its voter-persuasion and ballot-return messages. Haynes declined to give specifics, but Oregon’s vote-by-mail patterns over the years have shown that older citizens and women dominate early voting, with younger, male and undecided voters responsible for the late surge of voting in the final days before Election Day. As more and more ballots are returned, Haynes said phone-banking to reach those voters who still haven’t voted will become more effective and door-to-door canvassing will be less so. “There’s not the density of voters who haven’t returned ballots as time goes by,” he said. “You have to pass by an increasing number of doors.”
Poster Comment: I will be going to see Barack Obama tomorrow when he is at the University of Oregon. I will be working helping get out the vote for him as Oregon votes by mail as usual in this primary. Then before the start of July, I'll change my registration back to Pacific Green and continue to work to help make sure Oregon helps elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#1. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
I understand your dedication, and admire it. Now, can you answer a question for me? Why do you feel that Obama represents any real hope at all? Considering the total control of the media by corporatist interests, the Trilateral commission, the obvious control of our economy, the media and our government by well connected elites... why do you feel that Obama represents any actual hope whatsoever?
I am crashing, it's 3:30 AM here, but I have an answer I will give you tomorrow when I am a little more awake. I will say though one of the things we have to be careful about in watching for and dealing with voter fraud we all know is there, the people's passion for democracy, even with the way we do the presidential election, must be sustained as a strong and biting hunger as much as possible. People need hope and to have faith, they need to have enthusiasm for the process, so that if they are ripped off and know about it, they are in the proper degree of passion to conduct a hanging party over it. They are less likely to do something about it if they are resigned to it and cynically just expect it anyway with a 'what's the use' attitude. ;-)
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#2)
The three choices of the globalists ensure that voter fraud is less of an issue. Their victory is ensured.
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