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Title: Obama Will Name Bayh his VP Choice on Wednesday
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URL Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bil-b ... ll-name-bayh-his_b_116752.html
Published: Aug 5, 2008
Author: Bil Browning
Post Date: 2008-08-05 14:10:48 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 246
Comments: 15
NOTE: I originally published this on my home blog, The Bilerico Project. I'll keep updating the story over there as more tips come in. I'm going to put my neck out on the line by making a prediction. Barack Obama will announce his vice-presidential choice Wednesday morning It will be Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. While Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza has positioned Bayh at the top of the heap for a few weeks now, after getting tips to Bilerico-Indiana and making some logical conclusions the choice is obvious. Why? Multiple reasons - including an inside scoop from an Obama staffer on an upcoming event. Here's my reasoning: The Olympics start on Friday and run until the Democratic convention starts. He won't want to compete with the Olympics for press coverage. He'll announce before the Olympics starts. If he announces on Wednesday morning, he'll get coverage all day and be on the news cycle until the Opening Ceremonies knock him off the top spot. Barack Obama is coming to the state on Tuesday afternoon for a campaign stop in Elkhart, Indiana. He'll be attending with Evan Bayh. The press has been told to plan on staying until Wednesday afternoon/evening. Why would he spend so much time in Indiana with nothing on his public calendar? Staying around Indiana allows Obama and Bayh to travel to Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio - all important states in this election. When you've just announced your VP, those are states you'll want to visit - especially since Bayh's reputation will help the most in those states. The website ObamaBayh08.com is taken. For a tiny sliver of time late last week, you could type in the URL and you'd be forwarded to another site. Where do you think it took you? The Democratic Party website. I just got an invite from the Obama campaign to attend an appearance on Wednesday that isn't on Obama's official calendar. Why not? The campaign said, "I can't tell you what the event is about, but we want to make sure you have a ticket so you can cover it for the Bilerico Project. We want Bilerico Project to be there for this one." So what do you think? Is my thinking flawed or have I reached the logical conclusion? By the time you add in the case for Evan Bayh -- foreign policy experience, former Clinton supporter, popularity in the Midwest, not a media whore, experience as a popular former Governor and his youth and good looks -- it seems like a slam dunk to me.
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#13. To: christine (#0)
Wall Street Journal Article For Bayh, Shot No. 3 at No. 2 Spot Committee Seats, Red-State Support Complement Obama By CHRISTOPHER COOPER and DOUGLAS BELKIN August 6, 2008; Page A4 Officially, Barack Obama will deliver an energy-policy speech Wednesday to citizens in Elkhart, Ind. But the focus of the political chattering class will be on the man sitting shotgun at the event: Evan Bayh, the Indiana senator thought to be on the likely Democratic presidential nominee's short list of vice-presidential candidates. The scion of a prominent Hoosier political family and a former two-term Democratic governor of a deep-red state, Sen. Bayh is viewed by many as an ideal complement to the Illinois senator, who has a charismatic stage presence but a short political résumé for a presidential candidate. Understated in demeanor and rarely demonstrating a passion for showboat political issues, Sen. Bayh may lack flash. But he sits on the powerful Senate armed-services and intelligence committees, enjoys an easy rapport with Midwestern crossover conservatives and displays a fund-raising knack extending beyond his home constituency. Sen. Bayh has raised $10.9 million between 2003 and 2008, with 77% of his cash coming from out of state. Sen. Bayh is also a known commodity. He was under consideration for the No. 2 job -- and presumably vetted for the position -- by the previous two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry. It was with Mr. Gore, one former Bayh aide said, that Sen. Bayh had his best shot of making the ticket. The connection to Mr. Gore -- and by extension, to the Clintons -- provides another potential benefit of an Obama-Bayh matchup. Sen. Bayh has ties to former President Bill Clinton from when the two were governors. He sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee with Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose bruising primary battle with Sen. Obama continues to evoke hard feelings among her supporters and threatens party unity. "Sitting next to someone on a Senate committee has sparked more than a few deep friendships," said Anita Dunn, a political adviser for Sen. Obama who served as an adviser to Sen. Bayh during his Senate campaigns. An early Obama adherent, Ms. Dunn said she wasn't surprised when Sen. Bayh allied himself with Sen. Clinton, whom he described as having "a spine of steel." During the Indiana primary, he offered his own staff to help put her over the top in her race against Sen. Obama, who had a huge ground staff and an advantage in Indiana districts around Chicago, where he is well-known. "There's a Democratic political machine in Indiana -- it's called Evan Bayh," Ms. Dunn said. The Indiana Democratic Party was in shambles when Sen. Bayh sought and won his first statewide office, secretary of state, in 1987. His father, Birch Bayh, a liberal Democrat and former U.S. senator, had been out of office since losing a re-election bid in 1980. Backers see kismet in the fact that Birch Bayh's campaign slogan when he ran for president in 1976 was "Change We Can Believe In." That is also Sen. Obama's slogan. Birch Bayh was a darling of liberals, having been the chief architect of the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed to muster enough support to get ratified, and the 26th Amendment, which extended voting rights to 18-year-olds. He also championed Title IX, landmark legislation that included forcing equal opportunity in school athletics for females. Evan Bayh, by contrast, voted in favor of a failed amendment that would have banned flag-burning and legislation that would have kicked Russia out of the Group of Eight leading economic nations. What upset many liberals the most was his vote to authorize the Iraq invasion and his subsequent co-chairmanship, with likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain, of the Iraq Liberation Committee, a neoconservative group that pushed hard for war. Sen. Bayh now says he regrets his early support of the Iraq war and has no recollection of the committee. "I don't remember any meetings, any conversations, any anything," Sen. Bayh said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Obviously my name was linked to it, but other than that there's nothing that can be said." Supporters note that his overall record hews closely to the Democratic line and sometimes goes beyond it, such as when he voted against the confirmation of conservative Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Sen. Bayh made perhaps his biggest political impression as governor. He developed a reputation as a fiscal conservative, ushering through the biggest tax cut in recent state history and passing what he considers the signal legislation of his career: a bill that extends free tuition to grade-school students who pledge to stay out of trouble. The initiative passed over the objections of a Republican-dominated statehouse. "He was a governor who tried to not ruffle feathers," said Murray Clark, chairman of Indiana's Republican Party. "It's helped him; he's made very few enemies." What few political enemies Sen. Bayh does have cast him in terms that hark back to the latest Democratic vice president, Mr. Gore, often branded an automaton by detractors. Sen. Bayh's critics include Paul Helmke, a former mayor of Fort Wayne who ran unsuccessfully against him for a Senate seat in 1998. "As a debater, I felt like I was in the 'Twilight Zone' show. You want to reach over and slit the arm to see if there's flesh and blood or just wires," said Mr. Helmke, who is now the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "One of my big accomplishments was at one point [in the debate], he started to sweat." Ms. Dunn, the current Obama adviser, dismisses such criticism. "Is it boring to win five times as a Democrat in a state that's overwhelmingly Republican?" Ms. Dunn asked. "Obviously, the people of Indiana think there's something exciting about him." A person on Sen. Obama's staff has said no vice-presidential announcement will come Wednesday in Indiana. Sen. Obama has told reporters not to put too much stock in rumors about candidates. Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com and Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com Associated Press Evan Bayh, right, could be a vice-presidential candidate for Barack Obama.
#15. To: All (#14)
Fobama/Bilderberg Bayh Globalism Scorecard
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#14. To: TwentyTwelve (#13)
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