As Ohio prepares to vote on Tuesday for the candidates it would like to see running for the US presidency, Matthew Wells talks to Muslims in Cleveland who are impressed by Barack Obama.
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Among them are the 60,000 Muslims of the economically depressed Cleveland area.
They are mostly middle-class naturalised citizens, disappointed with the Bush administration's record and with a powerful sense that their religion has been misrepresented in the years since 9/11.
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Mr Samad is actively campaigning for Barack Obama, and trying to bring minority groups together, including the local Latino voting bloc.
'Media demonisation'
Building common-cause coalitions is one of the ways that Muslim activists believe they can make their votes - and their issues - count more.
That is certainly the view of another convert, who is playing a central role in educating Cleveland's Muslim population about the voting process.
Julia Shearson's ancestors may have arrived in the first wave of English settlers to America, but now she is dressed like millions of other Muslim women around the world, and running the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in the city.
She is well aware of CAIR's role as a lightning rod for criticism from right-wing advocacy groups who regard it as a cloak for so-called Islamofacism.
She rejects the conspiracy theories completely, but contends that Islamophobia - stoked by media demonisation - is a daily threat to all American Muslims.
moreOn stroking conspiracies, Hillary is put the test.
Posted March 3rd, 2008 at 8:30 am
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In a season full of Rorschach tests, I think this one’s a doozy.
As far as I can tell, this is pretty close to a perfectly fine answer. Kroft asks if she believes Obama’s a Muslim and she responds, “Of course not.” If she didn’t utter another syllable, there’d be no story.
Instead, Clinton added some qualifiers — such as, “As far as I know.” As Josh Marshall put it, Clinton sounded like she was adding some “iffy hedging.”
I’ve read and now watched a few times. And I suspect this is a case where different people will come away from seeing the exchange with very different senses whether she was hedging or whether people are pulling more equivocation out of her words because of the intensity and combustibility of the moment. <…>
For me it’s on the edge. And I find it surprising she would leave it on the edge.
I’d add that were it not for the sensitivity surrounding this issue, there would probably be no controversy at all. But Obama is the target of a coordinated smear campaign, which has led to widespread confusion. That some people close to Clinton and her campaign have helped perpetuate the lies doesn’t help matters.
Michael Crowley
added, “I doubt this was about anything more than verbal sloppiness. But particularly given the way people see a conspiracy behind every Clinonite utterance, Hillary should have dispatched this question with one crisp sentence saying it’s just not true.”
I’m inclined to agree, on both points — there was probably nothing sinister in Clinton’s qualifiers, but given the context, she could have chosen her words better.
moreIf not an "absolutely not," a simple "no" would have sufficed. This is where Hillary trips herself up and often appears insincere.
By Clive Crook
Published: March 2 2008 18:58 | Last updated: March 2 2008 18:58
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This truth about the human condition applies with particular force to politics. Mrs Clinton tries hard to fake sincerity – so hard it is painful to watch. Sometimes, in fact, I suspect that she really is sincere and only looks as though she is faking. Barack Obama, on the other hand, may actually be sincere – and if he is not, he fakes it so well it makes no difference. Elections are won and lost formany reasons, but if I had to point to just one in the present case, this would be it.
It is surely telling that the most effective moments in Mrs Clinton’s campaign have been those rare times when a real person has appeared to break through: the tears in New Hampshire, the moving and seemingly unaffected tribute to wounded soldiers at the end of the Houston debate the other day. But for most of the time she has veered from one false personality to another, often during the course of a single debate or interview. One moment she would be acting tough, the next warm; now aloof, now approachable; now a fun person, fond of a joke (that was the worst), now stern and serious. In every moment of repose came that scary rictus smile, to emphasise the lack of authenticity and remind one irresistibly of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
This, of course, is the very style of commentary that Mrs Clinton and her team blame for her predicament – full of pro-Obama bias, they would say, and devoid of analytical substance. That complaint does have some merit. Especially at the beginning of the campaign, when Mr Obama was just an interesting possibility, commentators were far too kind to him – declaring television debates in which he had been trounced by Mrs Clinton a close thing, for instance.
But mistakes in reporting this story did not all go in Mr Obama’s favour. The press has picked up the line that he is all style and no substance as eagerly as the Clinton campaign could wish. Mrs Clinton’s position on healthcare, for instance, is reverently acknowledged as a working blueprint, with every last detail nailed down. Not at all: it is a set of bullet points, no more detailed than Mr Obama’s outlined proposal. Mrs Clinton has not even said how her individual health-insurance mandate – the crucial difference, she tirelessly insists, between her plan and Mr Obama’s – will be enforced. And consider her “time out” on trade. Could you have a vaguer policy than that?
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How much this multiple personality disorder is a reflection of the candidate herself or of the people running her campaign is difficult to say. But the Democratic party itself must bear much of the blame. Its adulation of the Clintons went to her head. It bred complacency and a sense of entitlement. The campaign expected an easy win and had no real plan of action beyond Super Tuesday. Since the first Obama surge, Mrs Clinton and her advisers have seemed in shock, vacillating between insisting that everything is still on track and desperately reaching for another personality for the candidate to try on.
Mrs Clinton was never as strong a contender as her courtiers had led her to think. Her claim of vast experience – the crux of her campaign – was contestable at the very least. Once the campaign began, her husband was likely to be as much a liability as an asset, and so it proved. She proudly exemplified a kind of politics (“I’m a fighter”) that many Americans had had enough of. In Mr Obama she turned out to be facing an exceptional opponent, with all the novelty and authenticity she lacked. And then, if all that were not enough, her campaign, once rattled, was woefully managed.
moreIf anyone doubts this assessment, check out the blame game inside Hillary's campaign. Even Mark Penn, who received $10 million for his services, is claiming he's not responsible for the missteps.
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Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to John Edwards' now-dropped Democratic campaign, said: "At some point the candidate has to step in and bust heads and say 'Enough!'
"If there's fighting internally, the candidate has to step up and make it clear what direction she wants to go and stop this stuff dead in its tracks. Otherwise there's going to be a struggle for power and control right until the end. It's crippling."
Last month, after a series of defeats, Hillary Clinton chose a new campaign manager, replacing Patti Solis Doyle. But she left in place many senior people, including Penn and Ickes, who have been involved in incessant turf wars.
As the campaign faces a make-or-break moment, some high-level officials are trying to play down their role in the campaign. Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."
"I have had no say or involvement in four key areas -- the financial budget and resource allocation, political or organizational sides. Those were the responsibility of Patti Solis Doyle, Harold Ickes and Mike Henry, and they met separately on all matters relating to those areas."
linkIt's not just Penn, here is Bill Clinton stepping all over the notion that Hillary is more experienced:
Rounding out a long day of campaigning across Northern Ohio on Friday, the former president told audiences in small college gyms that he's still adjusting to life as a candidate's surrogate rather than as the candidate. "I always have a little trepidation at these events, but I love doing this because Hillary campaigned for me from 1974 until I left the White House," he told an audience in Wooster. "She never ran for public office until 2000, so as you can see I'm still a few years behind I'm trying to make up."
At his fifth and final event in New Philadelphia, Clinton broke away from the podium and was a bit more candid on the subject. "She never held any elected office, until she was elected to the senate in New York in 2000," he said. "She was a public servant all her life, but has a very unusual life and I think one of the most interesting misconceptions that is put out there is that somehow she is typical politician and her opponent, who's been in a lot more elections, is different. She is a lifetime public servant, but a recent elected official, and a darn good one."
Obama has run in six elections in the past 12 years, including his state senate days and a run for congress against Bobby Rush. This is Clinton's third race, including her two senate wins.
linkIn the end, Hillary is responsible for the management and tone of her campaign.
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