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Obama Stepping Up Mentions Of His Mother?
An intriguing observation from MSNBC's First Read:
Obama has really stepped up the mentions of his mother. It happened at the debate Tuesday night, when he told the story of his mother and health care. Then right after the debate, the campaign launches this ad that's as much about his mother as it is about Obama. There are more pictures of a young Obama with his mother than any ad that he's aired to date. It's a big reminder that Obama is biracial -- something many Democrats believe helps him with some older voters who might be struggling with the race issue.
Seems like the mentions of his mother -- both when discussing her illness and in the new ad, which stresses that she taught him the value of hard work -- are more about emotionally connecting with struggling folks than they are about reminding people that he's biracial. Interesting, though.
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Great catch. He's trying to humanize himself. We've all got moms. This is a good way to fight back against the McCain camp depiction of hims as a terrorist monster.
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October 9, 2008 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Beat me to it. The subliminal message is that McCain is attacking Barack's mother.
Next up: McCain attacks Barack's mother for having sex with a black man.
Impossible? If he doesn't, I'll emulate Olbermann and send ten bucks to Alaska Special Olympics.
October 9, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here I thought that Obama was hatched from one of godzilla's eggs, having been fathered by Bin Laden, and schooled in a madrassa in the Hindu Kush Mountains where he was tought the Koran and explossives. He later moved to the south side to join Rev. Wrights Christian church (the Rev. Wright being secretely an Islamic moolah). Prior to this he moved to Chicago at the age of 8 to join Ayer's terrorist group. Oh, yeah, and also, Obama is a liberal too.
Ouch.
October 9, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm fine with all the other stuff, but this is a dealbreaker.
October 9, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
ROTFLMAO
October 9, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't overlook the fact that McCain's ads have presented Obama as a threat to older white women. This presents a counterpoint to that - Obama's mother was a white woman and he was not a threat to her but a defender, and he wants to help women like her.
That stirs up positive feelings in middle-aged and older men, who were raised to be protective of women, and as well as older women who voted for Hillary.
October 9, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ad works on multiple levels, as any good ad should.
October 9, 2008 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is interesting.
Also an important note is Obama's continual attack on McCain's health care 'plan'. By mentioning his mother, Obama reminds folks who are uninsured, or under-insured, that his plan will help them -- not tax them.
Another example of the Obama campaign talking about real issues instead of personal attacks.
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October 9, 2008 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's all about getting folks to see that he's not a stranger to adversity. The problem is most of the folks whose brain waves are high enough frequency to get it already got it. The hard infrared types will think he's a Muslim terrorist regardless.
October 9, 2008 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Greg on this one. I believe that Obama's mother brings the human "I feel your pain" element to the campaign. That through his mother, Obama has a better understanding of the everyday struggles of the middle-class. It becomes a positive reinforcement of Obama's understanding of fighting insurance companies and his humble upbringing.
I don't believe that his mother being white would have a calming effect on the older voter simply because it helps to remind them that his parents were a biracial couple -- not really a comforting thought to the older voter who tends to be very leery of such things.
October 9, 2008 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's also a reminder that he is American, counter to what whispering campaigns are saying....
October 9, 2008 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think the racial dimension of all this -- though it's only one dimension -- is unmistakable. And that's a good thing.
It's hard to imagine for us, who have been living and breathing this stuff for many months, but a lot of people out there literally cannot answer McCain's rhetorical question, Who is the real Barack Obama? We think by now everybody knows about his white mother and grandparents, but they don't. Some of them don't even know he's really a native-born American. That's not what it says in their e-mail.
Race is an issue in this campaign, for good or ill. So is the broader and vaguer topic of "Americanness." I think the Obama camp is smart to do what they're doing. They should keep playing ads like this all the way to Nov 4 (or until there is some credible evidence that all the undecided voters have gotten the message).
October 9, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
While it may highlight an empathetic side or emotional connection dont downplay, the I'm WHITE TOO Factor!
It appeals to people on a common sense level, if this guy half white raised by his white mother and grandparents; how could he white people?
Does he hate himself? It just makes people think about it for a moment...
October 9, 2008 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're talking about a block of voters that aren't going to vote for Barack "Hussein" Obama no matter what. The FNC/Hannity knuckledraggers that you're seeing at the Palin rallies would refuse to recognize reality if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face and started to wiggle. They're set in their ways and "gosh darn it, that's the way they likes it".
October 9, 2008 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
WORD
October 9, 2008 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, a recent Ben Smith post suggests that there is an undeniable contingent of racist undecideds.
October 9, 2008 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't start counting on those votes just yet. Considering that ~25% of undecideds don't vote any ways and add on top of that that they're freakin racists; I'd say you'll be lucky if 10% of those show-up at the polls.
October 9, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I also noticed in the debate that he unashamedly admitted they were on footstamps at one time. I think that is great inspiration for people who are on some type of temporary gov services and feeling like a failure, maybe, because there he is...now he's running for President of the USA!!
October 9, 2008 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Footstamps? Is that some new program that provides shoes to people?
October 9, 2008 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, it's a program where everyone gets to walk in Cindy McCain's shoes so they can see what's it's like to be an heiress with private planes, multiple houses and a total dependence on narcotics.
October 9, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
...or walk in Moose Woman's red heels...
October 9, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was watching the 2nd debate on CNN.
I was glued to the squiggly lines tracking undecided voters reactions. I noticed the women always responded to Obama well but the men were more subdued..Then Obama mention his Mother and the Line for the Men shot up and surpassed the women's responses. That was the only time I saw that happen for him.
I think someone in the campaign also noticed that.
October 9, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
What man amongst us can't relate to a guy loving - and respecting - his mom? Especially any of us who has lost a parent to illness.
October 9, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama might win women voters. He has really been connecting with them on a base level lately. At the debate, he knocked it out of the park with the women undecideds, pushing their little CNN dials through the roof for much of the time he was speaking. Specifically it was the caring, knowledgeable presentation he made on health care, his sense of understanding the problems people are facing. Now he follows it up with the beautiful presentation of his American story, the struggles of his single mother.
This stuff works. This is just a perfect retort to the slurs and hate being ginned up Frau Palin and her Brownshirts. Directly contrasting the optimism and positive energy with fear and hate. Devastating. The choice could not be more clear to America at this point. It is Obama, his knowledge, his demeanor, his calm, that has been the steady hand on the tiller as of late.
This is the sound of the deal being closed, my friends.
October 9, 2008 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
He has to humanize himself...
I was listening to C-SPAN this morning driving in and some of the statements I heard from some people were insane.
One lady slowly worked her way into a frenzy and by the end of the phone call was talking about Obama blowing everything up and everyone needed to be worried.
Are people like this being sincere or are they truly this concerned? She sounded seriously panicked.
Is this what the Palin rallies and right wing talk radio are doing to people? If so, it's a shame they feed into peoples fears so much they turn them into nervous wrecks.
October 9, 2008 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those people have been like that all their lives. Reagan, Limbaugh and now Palin just give them permission to reveal their ugly IDs to the world, and talk radio gives them a forum.
Don't worry about the ones who are exposing themselves in public; worry about the ones at home, listening and nodding while they clean their guns.
October 9, 2008 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's pretty bad. Did people act like this when Clinton got elected? What are eight years of Obama going to be like when you've got these wacky Chicken Littles sweating about the Dark President?
Can somebody help me out here? I was only 13 in 1992.
October 9, 2008 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't recall Clinton being attacked in quite this manner. Lots of people hated him, of course, and still do, but I don't remember this level of insanity. I think it had to do with his being a Southern white man....these people don't trust Democrats but at least a Southern white one was somewhat more acceptable. If I am remembering wrong, someone please correct me.
October 9, 2008 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, at the time it sure seemed out of control: charges of drug trafficking, murder, homosexuality, etc. Maybe in retrospect it doesn't seem that bad, but there were some people that were just beside themselves with how evil the Clintons were.
October 9, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it was more a class issue in 1992. Blueblood private school New Englander versus Bubba from Arkansas. Not enough to work the crowd into a violent frenzy but enough to turn up noses and harumph.
October 9, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
No. Bush I ran a fairly respectable campaign and we hadn't gotten in to full Rovian politics just yet. Remember too that Limbaugh and that crowd formed after Clinton got in to office. The only similarity that I can recall is that there as a Bush in the White House and the economy was in the toilet.
October 9, 2008 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, let's not get carried away marking on a curve. Bush II is Caligula, which makes Bush I Tiberius, which is to say, he was no Emperor Augustus (and certainly McCain/Palin would be Nero to Bush II's Caligula). He was manifestly sexist and rude to Ferraro in debates, he pulled that jingoistic "pledge of allegiance" bullshit at the Repub convention and saturated us with that appeal-to-the-cretins nonsense throughout the Atwater-run campaign...and he's the guy who brought you Willie Horton. He was also unapologetically ignorant and homophobic to AIDS activists at a NYC appearance I attended. I'm tired of Bush I getting passes from fuzzy recollections simply because he's somewhat less of a fuckwad than his son. Never forget these are some of the most fucking privileged lockjaw Greenwich WASPs ever, yet they let top-drawer education wash right over them to become bigoted anti-intellectual troglodytes.
And the anti-Clinton backlash was instantaneous and vicious, most conspicuously triggered by the promptly-put-forward gays in the military flap...on which occasion SERVICEMEN were unapologetically making threatening statements about what they would do if he set foot on their base. Let's not doubt the toxicity of the rhetoric being thrown around by this jackass bitch, who's too lacking in insight to have any idea what she's playing with.
October 9, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I understand the "grading on a curve" issue, but that's basically what the poster was asking: "was it as bad". Bush I being rude, insensitive or just plain out-of-touch does seem quite mild compared to what's passed as campaigning since. I remember Buchanan's '92 RNC speech and how that entire thing was put on like a revival meeting, but it still didn't have that Huey Long undertone that's prevalent today. A lot of the other issues you raise were after Clinton took office -- which, to me, signaled the beginning of full Rovian scorched-earth politics spearheaded by the Gingrich "revolution".
BTW, I loved all the Roman references...very apropos.
October 9, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
October 9, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I only picked up on the flute bit during the SNL "talent" section...did Tina Fey just grab that out of the air, or is it actually alleged that Palin is capable of playing the flute (when not breeding, conniving or field-dressing moose)? In which case, yeah, I'm sure she could play it while the country burned...or engage in some other similarly clueless, non-constructive behavior, as is her wont.
October 9, 2008 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I remember when a man fired gunshots at the White House during the Clinton years - another actually crashed a small plane into the White House.
Yeah, the rightwing nutjobs really do get into a frenzy when a Democrat takes the helm.
October 9, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just a few comments:
Re: "He's trying to 'humanize' himself..."
Obama is not an alien life form and we black folks are are fully 100% homo sapiens. I get what you're trying to say, but object to the language used. It speaks again to the "otherness" which truly has no place in our society as well as our politics.
Perhaps it's because I live in a hotly contested state, but I have seen just about every Obama ad (and all of McCain's sleaze, too) this campaign cycle. I don't think Chuck Todd has.
"It's a big reminder that Obama is biracial -- something many Democrats believe helps him with some older voters who might be struggling with the race issue."
Greg's assessment is a little closer to the mark on this one. Older voters are among the generation -- the seventy-somethings -- who did not approve of interracial dating, interracial marriage, interracial children, integrated schools, integrated neighborhoods, integrated employment.
Stanley Ann Dunham probably caught hell initially from her Kansas born and bred parents who would not have approved of their daughter marrying a black African. (Remember also, that this was a time when most Americans' views of Africa were shaped by Tarzan movies or John Wayne as "great white game hunter" taming the land and the "savages" led by the British and Dutch colonialists, who were the only "acceptable" Africans.) Reminding that generation of sexually co-mingled races would not be a plus.
Chuck Todd and First Read's analysis -- especially on matters of race -- are almost always wrong. That is a direct consequence of the consistent lack of diversity in political reporting and analysis which is pervasive in both new and old media.
October 9, 2008 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jade: Thank you for a not-heard-enough perspective.
My own 70-something white parents' strong support for Obama may be giving me a rose-colored view of this issue.
October 9, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
The picture of Obama with his grandfather is great. What grandparent watching that ad wouldn't think it's sweet?
October 9, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love Barack Obama. I would seriously jump in front of a bullet to save this man's life. World get read... a BETTER America is coming your way... led by our next President of the United States, BARACK OBAMA.
October 9, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
PPP poll: +8 in VA, taken just before the debate. I think Obama is doing fine.
October 9, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Hotline national tracking poll jumps 5 points for +6 lead. Maybe Obama won the debate.
October 9, 2008 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
We'll probably get an even bigger jump tomorrow when the Monday sample (which was the one everyone was complaining about) cycles out and is replaced with another post-debate sample.
October 9, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
come november 4th, obama would have defeated the strongest democratic family in his own party, a war hero during a time of two wars, while 4 years prior he was spending time in springfield il as a state senator, he is black and has a middle name hussein. If this isn't a great country, i dont know what is
October 9, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely correct goodstuff. In no other country is this even possible.... It wont even be close on election day.. The reverse of the Bradely effect will happen. Whites for whom it is socially unacceptable to say they support Obama will go in the voting booth and vote for the the most qualified candidate....
It's a beautiful thing.
October 9, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
God Bless America!
October 9, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Better God save The Republic after what Bushies harrowing hounds of hell have done to it,,,, and leave it in tatters for someone else to either (a)exploit, or (b) renew and rebuild,,,,,, any guesses on who's who ?
October 9, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
What I like about this ad is that it connects with people about a real issue that millions of Americans have.
Pre-existing condition not being covered!!
Anyone who has tried to get coverage and hears that line becomes enraged and outraged at the very idea that being sick is a reason not to cover you!!
Obama by bringing this up as what his mother had to deal with while ill with cancer and then dying is a powerful message of empathy..it says I GET IT!
My MOMMA DIED because of that stupidity. She died FIGHTING to get them to PAY!! I was THERE and it HURT. I UNDERSTAND YOU!! I know what it feels like to have a love one SUFFER and be POWERLESS!!
It ain't about being white/black but being a SICK HUMAN BEING.
Very powerful...this is like Biden's personal tragedy...very emotional for millions. They hear Obama's heart crying at the thought of the suffering and his loss of his mother too.
Human suffering transcends race.
October 9, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I remember, even before Clinton was sworn in, seeing all those Impeach Clinton bumper Stickers..They had it out for him from the get go. And they were vicious. I remember a fist fight almost broke out on the House floor. I think it was Bob Dornan (B-1 Bob. He was cursing out Clinton in a speech..turning red and spitting.. A democrat start walking towards him to shut him up..Others restrained him.
I hope it never gets that again
October 9, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's not so much the reminder that he's bi-racial -- it's the reminder that his background is more "middle american" than "ghetto."
October 9, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's also a little something for the ladies - like, hey remember, I was raised by a single mom!
October 9, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I also think this is a direct counter to the new McCain/Palin tactic of asking, "Who is this guy?" Obama provides the moving answer that he is as American as apple pie baked in a red, white, and blue middle-class oven. I really like all the hot buttons this ad hits--biography, patriotism, family-orientation, sacrifice, ethics, etc. Great ad!
October 9, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't discount the power of photos of his mother for seniors. It's not just that Obama's momma is white, it's that in the shots from the 1960s, she looks just like the children of so many seniors. The more Obama pushes his mother and his grandparents into the light, the more older Americans will be able to connect to him. "He could be our grandson, and if these fine members of the Greatest Generation could accept him, why can't we?"
October 9, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bringing "Mom" into the conversation is always a good idea, regardless of the reason.
October 9, 2008 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, what's that lyric from "Evita"...
"One praises Truth, one's mother's light,
Politics, the art of the possible!"
October 9, 2008 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
This whole strategy works well and positive on so many different levels...as a latecomer to the Obama camp, the more I learn, the more impressed I am.
His story all by itself sends a subtle message that race only matters if people let it. I've known families who, faced with their daughter getting pregnant by some black guy from a foreign country, would have kicked her out without a dime, written her out of the will, scratched her name out of the family bible and forbidden mentioning her ever again. The fact that his didn't, but instead embraced and supported their child and grandchild sends the message that hate is a choice--that need not be made.
October 9, 2008 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink