Campaigns

David Sedaris on Undecided Voters

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

An excerpt from the New Yorker:

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

An Orgy of Negativity in Michigan Supreme Court Race

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Law.com (thanks to Mike McBride again!):

Michigan’s Supreme Court race has turned into the nation’s nastiest judicial campaign, according to a nonpartisan organization that monitors judicial races.

Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, said recent and numerous television ads in the race between Republican Chief Justice Cliff Taylor and his Democratic challenger, longtime trial judge Diane Hathaway, have created an “orgy of negativity.”

The ads have depicted Taylor as asleep on the bench and a “good soldier” of big business, and Hathaway as a goldbricking, terrorist sympathizer who gives light sentences to sexual predators, according to Brandenburg.
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WSJ Endorses Obama

Matthew L.M. Fletcher3 Comments

What?!?!? The Wall Street Journal endorses Obama?!?!?

Yes.

Here is the editorial (H/T here):

Every vote for a nonincumbent Presidential candidate is in some sense a risk, given the power and complications of the job. But in both his lack of experience and the contradictions between his rhetoric and his agenda, Barack Obama presents a particular leap of hope. It is a sign of how fed up Americans are with Republicans that millions are ready to take that leap even in dangerous times.

To his supporters, such as Colin Powell, the first-term Senator has the chance to be “transformational,” the kind of gauzy concept that testifies to Mr. Obama’s unusual appeal. His candidacy is certainly historic, and that isn’t simply a reference to his Kenyan father and American mother. One secret to Mr. Obama’s success is how little his campaign has been marked by race, at least not by the traditional politics of racial grievance. He has run instead on a rhetorical theme of national unity, a shrewd appeal to voters weary of the polarizing debate over Iraq and the Bush Presidency.

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DFP on Michigan Supreme Court Race: Hathaway vs. Taylor

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the Detroit Free Press:

The race for a single eight-year term on the Michigan Supreme Court finally began to live up to expectations in the closing weeks of the campaign 2008 election, as relative quiet gave way to a barrage of advertising and accusations.

On one side is Chief Justice Clifford Taylor, a Republican who has been on the court since his appointment by former governor John Engler in 1997. On the other, Wayne County Circuit Judge Diane Hathaway, whose surname is judicially familiar in southeast Michigan but was a second choice for Democrats when the party’s preferred nominee declined to run.

Behind both candidates are well-heeled special interests for whom influence on the Michigan Supreme Court is of great importance. Business is backing Taylor; attorneys, especially plaintiffs lawyers, and unions want Hathaway.

Since losing their majority on the court during the Engler era, Democrats have tried and failed repeatedly to regain control of the high court. Although no incumbent justice has lost an election since 1984, state party officials said early on that beating Taylor was their second highest priority behind carrying Michigan for Barack Obama this year.

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First Americans Can Carry Michigan for Obama

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From Bryan Newland:

Aanii,

My name is Bryan Newland. I am a Bay Mills Ojibwe and a volunteer with the Obama 2008 campaign. This Tuesday, November 4th, is Election Day and we are making a big push to increase Native voter turnout here in Michigan to carry Senator Obama into the White House. In order to do this, we need your help.

Senator Obama has put together a comprehensive platform on Indian issues and has been endorsed by more than 100 tribal leaders across the United States, as well as Indian Country Today. Senator Obama has pledged to appoint an American Indian policy advisor to his senior White House staff to give Indian Country direct access to the President. He has voiced strong support for strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship between the United States and Indian tribes and has pledged to protect and strengthen tribal sovereignty. You can find out more about his Indian Issues Platform at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/firstamshome. I also encourage you to join our Facebook Group: Michigan Natives for Obama.

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Mother Jones on Obama and Indian Country

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Go Wizi!!!!

From Mother Jones (H/T Indianz):

If Barack Obama wins New Mexico on November 4, he may want to thank Wizipan Garriott, the vote director of what the Obama campaign calls its “First Americans” voter outreach program. The effort targets the politically neglected but heavily Democratic Native American vote, which Obama strategists believe could be critical to putting some historically red states into play for Obama.

The Obama campaign is reluctant to discuss the details of its ground game, but it’s clear the campaign’s Native American outreach strategy is extensive. The campaign has two Chicago-based staffers devoted to coordinating the nationwide effort, and Garriott has recruited locals on reservations around the country to serve as paid organizers. Montana, Alaska, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Mexico have all been targeted at points in the campaign.

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Michigan Tribal Voter Initiative

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From Indianz:

Michigan tribes are hoping more of their members turn up to the polls on November 4.

The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe is part of the Native Vote initiative of the National Congress of American Indians. The tribe has been helping its members get registered and informing them of their rights — including the right to vote with a tribal identification card. “I look at this as a federal identification, like a passport when you go across to Canada,” spokesperson Joe Sowmick told The Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun. “This is considered a valid ID that is recognized by the state and the federal government.

Su Lantz, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, is the NCAI Native voter coordinator for the state. “In Indian country, we’ve done a lot to get the vote out,” she told the paper.

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Jeffrey Rosen on a “Judicial Apocalypse” if McCain Elected

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the New Republic:

During every presidential campaign for the last two decades, liberals have predicted an apocalypse in the Supreme Court. In their dire visions, as many as four justices are always about to retire, meaning that a Republican victory would turn the court radically to the right and lead to the certain overturning of Roe v. Wade.

In each of the past three elections, of course, these hyperbolic predictions have turned out to be wrong. Since 1996, Roe has been supported by a comfortable 6-3 majority, and the Court, controlled by two relatively moderate swing justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and now Anthony Kennedy, has remained fairly centrist. All of this had led some Court-watchers, including me, to conclude that the stakes for the Court in most presidential elections are less dire than many liberals fear.

Not this time. This year, for the first time since the New Deal era, a single election really does have the power to transform the Court–at the very moment that voters, rightly concerned about the tanking economy and the war in Iraq, are looking the other way. Given the fact that the older justices are liberal rather than conservative–and that the oldest, John Paul Stevens, is 88–it’s hard to deny that nominations by John McCain would change the Court far more dramatically than those by Barack Obama. An Obama victory would maintain the current balance of the Court, while a McCain Court could create a solid conservative majority.

What’s at stake is not only Roe v. Wade, but issues directly tied to the current concerns of the public: among them, Congress’s power to regulate the economy as well as limits on the president’s power to act unilaterally in the war on terrorism. Although McCain claims to favor justices who will defer to the political branches, the most likely Republican nominees are hardly consistent advocates of judicial deference. Voters who are hoping McCain will nominate relatively moderate judicial mavericks should think again.

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Message from Barack Obama to Indian Country

Matthew L.M. Fletcher5 Comments

Obama: A full partnership with Indian country

By Barack Obama

For 20 months now, I’ve traveled this country, often talking about how the needs of the American people are going unmet by Washington. And the truth is, few have been ignored by Washington for as long as American Indians. Too often, Washington pays lip service to working with tribes while taking a one-size-fits-all approach with tribal communities across the nation.

That will change if I am honored to serve as president of the United States.

My American Indian policy begins with creating a bond between an Obama administration and the tribal nations all across this country. We need more than just a government-to-government relationship; we need a nation-to-nation relationship, and I will make sure that tribal nations have a voice in the White House.

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Article on Todd Palin’s Grandmother

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Anchorage Daily News:

HOMER, Alaska — Like many Alaska Natives of her generation, Lena Andree, Todd Palin’s 87-year-old Yup’ik grandmother, grew up living between two worlds.

Her father was a Dutchman, Glass Eye Billy Bartman, a sled dog freighter in the Bristol Bay region and caretaker of the Alaska Packers saltry on the Igushik River.

Her mother was full-blooded Yup’ik, growing up in a sod-roofed barabara in the now-abandoned village of Tuklung, somewhere on the tundra between Dillingham and Togiak.

Growing up in two worlds along the Igushik River in Bristol Bay, Lena Bartman spoke broken English with her father and more fluent Yup’ik with her mother,. Later she would make a career as a translator, bridging the cultures of Dillingham, speaking English with the doctors and storekeepers and pilots, and “speaking Native” with the residents.

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