Wow, my mouth is still hanging open after what I just watched and I only caught the last few minutes.
Tonight's edition of Anderson Cooper 360 featured a piece called 'The Obama Style of Politics'.
http://www.cnn.com/...
Here's the summary:
He's running on change... no more politics as usual. But has Barack Obama relied on old bare knuckle political tactics to win in the past... and clinch the nomination now? We take you back to his first run for office in 1996.
Watch 360° tonight at 10 ET
TOMORROW: Scott McClellan on his controversial new memoir.
I'm searching for video right now and the show will be re-broadcast at midnight, CST.
The part I saw was Drew Griffin reporting on how during Obama's state senate campaign, he challenged an opponent's nomination papers on the issue of signatures. The challenge was ultimately successful and the opponent did not qualify to get on the ballot.
The 'reporting' was clearly tilted and meant to imply that Obama's tactics were sleazy. They had an Obama campaign volunteer on who had worked on that campaign and he talked about how Obama was not happy about having to do it, but that he felt that rules were rules.
From CNN's companion hit piece online:
http://www.cnn.com/...
In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago's gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.
As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.
There is, sort of, an opposite viewpoint presented:
Obama's challenge was perfectly legal, said Jay Stewart of the Chicago's Better Government Association. Although records of the challenges are no longer on file for review with the election board, Stewart said Obama is not the only politician to resort to petition challenges to eliminate the competition.
"He came from Chicago politics," Stewart said. "Politics ain't beanbag, as they say in Chicago. You play with your elbows up, and you're pretty tough and ruthless when you have to be. Sen. Obama felt that's what was necessary at the time, that's what he did. Does it fit in with the rhetoric now? Perhaps not."
The Obama campaign called this report "a hit job." It insisted that CNN talk to a state representative who supports Obama, because, according to an Obama spokesman, she would be objective. But when we called her, she said she can't recall details of petition challenges, who engineered them for the Obama campaign or why all the candidates were challenged.
Yesterday, Anderson Cooper was 'shocked' by Jessica Yellin's comments that there was pressure from above when she worked at MSNBC to produce stories that were more favorable to the Bush administration in the run-up to the war. I guess this is his way of showing...hell, I don't know.
I will put up video and/or transcripts as soon as they are available.
UPDATE: They are also running with a piece on Obama's 'new pastor problem' and they may be re-running the original piece shortly.
UPDATE 2: Here's a little more information to provide some context.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
Alice Palmer...was aiming for a congressional seat in a special election being held to fill a vacancy.
To reassure her legislative constituents that they'd be in good hands..."She went out and recruited Barack."
But then Palmer lost the special congressional election. Suddenly, this well-liked community leader faced being out of office after four years in the state Legislature.
Palmer finally asked Obama to halt his legislative campaign so she could run for re-election. He refused.
"He was not about to withdraw. He had put a lot of energy and time into it," said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, a Democrat who represented the same part of Chicago as Palmer. "I thought it was pretty gutsy of him to stay in."
"Barack had already gotten a committee together, people had made commitments, and he had raised money," Friedberg-Dobry said. "This was a very strange time to ask any politician to go back to those people and say, ‘I changed my mind.’"
Well that's a horse of a different color, as they say. I am pushing fair use here, but I do want to add the end quote of the article:
"My guess would be that she felt he should have withdrawn, and she is bitter," said Black, a Palmer friend and campaign adviser. "Since he was younger ... he had more future opportunities than she might have."
Sound familiar? Honestly, you just can't make this stuff up.