'Bama's secret weapon in 2012 election

[BAK]

 

[BAK]

 

[Roulette]

She is a bit too public for a secret weapon. lol

 

[BAK]

She is a bit too public for a secret weapon. lol

Just wait and see how important she is to 'Bama's campaign

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

Just wait and see how important she is to 'Bama's campaign

Bubu, promise me one thing. That, if Obama loses you are not going to cry racism.

 

[Roulette]

Just wait and see how important she is to 'Bama's campaign

I know she is, I was just underlining the oxymoron between Public and Secret... never mind.

 

[BAK]

Bubu, promise me one thing. That, if Obama loses you are not going to cry racism.

Racism pamoja na kuwa imepungua sana lakini ipo. Nani alitegemea Bama ashinde 08? Tulikuwa tunasikia kwamba, "America is not ready for a Black president." lakini Mwanaume akafanya vitu vyake.... akishindwa sitalalama kwamba ni ubaguzi bali watu hawaamini kama sera zake zinafaa kupewa awamu nyingine ya miaka minne....lakini hilo la kushindwa kwa sasa hivi silioni maana opinion polls zinaanza kuonyesha kwamba baada ya kushuka hadi 36% sasa amepanda na kukaribia 50% hivyo itakuwa ni kampeni ya patashika nguo kuchanika ila naamini kabisa 'Bama atapewa awamu nyingine ya miaka minne.

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

Racism pamoja na kuwa imepungua sana lakini ipo. Nani alitegemea Bama ashinde 08? Tulikuwa tunasikia kwamba, "America is not ready for a Black president." lakini Mwanaume akafanya vitu vyake.... akishindwa sitalalama kwamba ni ubaguzi bali watu hawaamini kama sera zake zinafaa kupewa awamu nyingi ya miaka minne....lakini hilo la kushindwa kwa sasa hivi silioni maana opinion polls zinaanza kuonyesha kwamba baada ya kushuka hadi 36% sasa amepanda na kukaribia 50% hivyo itakuwa ni kampeni ya patashika nguo kuchanika ila naamini kabisa 'Bama atapewa awamu nyingine ya miaka minne.

Miezi kumi kwenye American politics ni a lifetime! Na opinions ni snapshots za muda tu na kwa sasa hazimaanishi chochote.

Ila nafurahi kusikia kuwa kama akishindwa hutalalama ubaguzi.

 

[BAK]

Miezi kumi kwenye American politics ni a lifetime! Na opinions ni snapshots za muda tu na kwa sasa hazimaanishi chochote.

Ila nafurahi kusikia kuwa kama akishindwa hutalalama ubaguzi.

Huo ndio ukweli lakini wakati mwingine huwa zinabaki hivyo kwa kipindi chote cha kampeni. Mie nilidhani kwamba uchaguzi huu ungekuwa ni rahisi mno kwa Republicans lakini haitakuwa hivyo na dalili zinaonyesha kwamba mshindi anaweza asijulikane mpaka alfajiri ya November 7, 2012.

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

Huo ndio ukweli lakini wakati mwingine huwa zinabaki hivyo kwa kipindi chote cha kampeni. Mie nilidhani kwamba uchaguzi huu ungekuwa ni rahisi mno kwa Republicans lakini haitakuwa hivyo na dalili zinaonyesha kwamba mshindi anaweza asijulikane mpaka alfajiri ya November 7, 2012.

Si kazi ndogo kumshinda incumbent president. Bill Clinton mwenyewe anamshukuru Ross Perot. Bila Perot kuna uwezekano Bill asingeshinda maana hata ushindi wake haukuwa wa majority bali wa plurality!

Kwa hiyo if anything Obama is still the favorite just by virtue of his incumbency. But of course that doesn't mean he couldn't lose. The fact is it is just not that easy to unseat a sitting president. But we'll see come Nov. 7.

 

[BAK]

Obamas book reveals tensions between first lady and chief of staff

Michelle Obama clashed with Rahm Emanuel over the course of her husband's presidency, according to The Obamas which says White House was dogged by in-fighting and chao

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 January 2012 03.03 GMT
• Article history

Michelle Obama believed her husband was let down by his advisers on healthcare reform, according to new book The Obamas Photograph: Cory Lum/EPA

The first lady Michelle Obama spent her first two years in the White House jockeying with the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, over her husband's affections and feuding over the course of the Obama presidency, according to an explosive new book.

The Obamas, by the New York times writer Jodi Kantor, uses substantial access to White House insiders to paint a portrait of the administration that is more chaotic and troubled with in-fighting than has previously been understood. The first two years of the administration, Kantor suggests, were marked by a tug of war between the first lady and Emanuel.

In an early peek of the new book, the Huffington Post reveals that Michelle Obama had "doubts" about Emanuel being given the top administrative job in the White House even before they moved in in January 2009.

Once in situ, her apprehensions appeared to be justified, at least from her perspective. Emanuel barred Obama, Kantor says, from sitting in on the early morning staff meetings that kick-started the day. She was cut-off from the inner circle and isolated in her first lady's premises.
According to the Huffington Post, Kantor writes that aides referred to the East Wing as "Guam – pleasant but powerless."

"Michelle and Rahm Emanuel had almost no bond; their relationship was distant and awkward from the beginning," the HuffPost quotes from the book. "She had been skeptical of him when he was selected, and now he returned the favor."
Kantor's analysis is that for Emanuel, first ladies were always problematic – stemming back to his fractious relationship with Hillary Clinton in the 1990s.
The Obamas author can claim credibility for his book from the 33 interviews he conducted with White House staffers (though the Obamas themselves did not participate).

Though he portrays Michelle as a slightly lost individual clammering for a role, he also records a number of successes she notched up against Emanuel in their vying for the president's attention.
In 2010 Emanuel offered to resign as chief of staff, Kantor claims, after a series of newspaper articles were published suggesting he was the only person left in the White House holding the Obama presidency together. The resignation offer, which Obama refused to accept, came at the culmination of heated disputes over healthcare reform in which the chief of staff came head-to-head with the first lady.

According to the book, Michelle was unhappy about the horse trading that Emanuel was leading to push the reform bill through Congress. Kantor writes: "The chief of staff was trying to convince the president to scale back his health care efforts, but the first lady wanted him to push forward. Emanuel wanted to win by the standard measures of presidential success: legislative victories, poll numbers. Michelle Obama had more persona criteria: Was her husband fulfilling their mission?"

When the chips were down, the president sided with his wife. "Barack Obama had made a choice in the contest of the worldviews that surrounded him, between his chief of staff's point of view and his wife's. His decision to pursue the healthcare overhaul later seemed to mark the beginning of the end of Emanuel's tenure in the White House."

Kantor also suggests that Michelle won a similar battle with Emanuel over immigration reform. Again in 2010, she wanted her husband to stay true to his own political story and champion comprehensive immigration reform.

Emanuel, ever the pragmatist, thought a push on immigration would be pointless as there was no way in the run-up to the midterm elections that any legislation would pass Congress. In the outcome, the first lady persuaded Obama to deliver a speech on the issue, which then came to nothing.
"The first lady fumed," Kantor writes. "She took it as more proof that her husband's advisers were poorly serving him. The speech incident confirmed her worst fears, and by that point, several aides said, Michelle was bluntly telling her husband that he needed a new team."

Emanuel quit the White House in October 2010 to run for the post that he now holds as mayor of Chicago.

 

[BAK]

[h=1]Michelle Obama rejects claims of backroom conflict at White House[/h]First lady rebuts 'angry black woman' allegations in new book as election campaign gains momentum

• Esther Addley
  
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 January 2012 22.00 GMT

Michelle and Barack Obama. The first lady has dismissed claims she is 'frustrated and insecure'. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

She is a brooding, "unrecognised force" in the White House, a new book claims; in frequent conflict with her husband's aides and quick to impose her disapproving views on the presidential staff.
Not so, according to Michelle Obama, who spoke out yesterday to dismiss the allegations, saying this was merely the latest attempt to paint her as "some kind of angry black woman".
The first lady chose to speak out following the publication of The Obamas, an unauthorised biography of the president and his wife by the New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor.
The book blames a "deeply frustrated and insecure" Mrs Obama for frequent tension within her husband's inner circle, and details ill-tempered run-ins with his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former press secretary Robert Gibbs.
But in an interview with CBS News, Mrs Obama said she and Emanuel had "never had a cross word". "I don't have conversations with my husband's staff. I don't go to the meetings. Our staffs work together really well. So if it were ever an issue it would go through that channel anyway.
"I guess it's just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here," she said. "That's been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I'm some kind of angry black woman."
Kantor's book, which she says is based on interviews with 33 White House staffers, describes a "grim situation" in early 2010, after the Democrats lost Edward Kennedy's seat on the Senate to the Republicans, with "a president whose agenda had hit the rocks, a first lady who disapproved of the turn the White House had taken, and a chief of staff who chafed against her influence".
It claims Mrs Obama, whose husband will seek re-election in November, let it be known she felt the administration's "rudder isn't set right", to which Emanuel reacted "indignantly", and that she was furious when he promised her presence at an event without consulting her, responding by refusing to commit to campaigning for the midterm elections later that year. Emanuel left his position in September 2010 and was later elected mayor of Chicago. Mrs Obama said he and his wife were "some of our dearest friends".
Asked by the CBS reporter Gayle King if she had felt frustrated or unhappy in her position, she said: "I love this job. It has been a privilege from day one … If there's any anxiety that I feel it's because I want to make sure that my girls come out of this the other end whole. But me and Barack, we're grownups, all the ups and downs, we take it on."
On another occasion detailed in the book, Gibbs is alleged to have "cursed" the first lady, after another staffer said she had been unhappy with his response to a claim in a book, denied by Mrs Obama, that she had told Carla Bruni-Sarkozy that living in the White House was hell.
Asked about the incident, Mrs Obama said: "I'm sure we could go day to day and find the things people wish they didn't say to each other. People stumble, people make mistakes." Gibbs, she said, was "a trusted adviser … and remains so. He's been a good friend."
Mrs Obama had initially "bristled" at the confinements of her new role, according to Kantor, having given up her own career during her husband's campaign. An early plan to return to the family home in Chicago had to be abandoned when the security demands of their position made it impractical.
Kantor writes that she also "wanted everything to be flawless and sophisticated" as, according to a former aide, she felt "everyone was waiting for a black woman to make a mistake". But, she writes, she grew into her role, becoming more confident and popular as her husband's political agenda faltered at times.
Speaking to King, Mrs Obama did not dispute that her time in the office had been a "learning curve", particularly when it came to issues she has campaigned on, such as childhood obesity. "You start out with these ideas but you have no idea whether what you want to do with them is going to go anywhere. So then you're a little hesitant, you're careful, you're doing more planning and learning than you are doing."
The first lady had agreed to the interview before Christmas, King said, and she spoke with one eye on her husband's re-election campaign, saying: "If I take my 'Michelle-the-wife' hat off, we need this man in office, and he's doing a phenomenal job." Asked about those who felt disappointed by his presidency so far, she said: "They just don't know. This campaign is going to be about making sure people understand about what's been accomplished, I think people are confused … about how much has been accomplished, but that's what you do in a campaign."

 

[BAK]