After being in the room with the boys during Senator Jesse Helms campaign in 1990, when the much ballyhooed (or infamous) ‘white hands’ ad was written, I’ve been telling myself, ‘Don’t you touch Reverend Jeremiah Wright with a ten foot pole.’ But, anyway, here goes.

For several months I’ve been saying there’ll only be one real issue this fall. The war. But, now, I suspect Rev. Wright’s single-handedly changed the election. If Senator Obama is the Democratic nominee there’ll be two issues. The war. And race.

Politically, Senator Obama has carefully run as a mainstream Democrat. Yes, he’s liberal. But that’s okay if you’re a Democrat running for President. At a time when President Bush’s popularity is low it’s better than just okay. It’s credible. And viable. This year a liberal could win.

But Rev. Wright is nowhere near the mainstream. And Republicans are pointing to the videos of Rev. Wright saying American policies in Palestine caused 9/11 and AIDS is a government plot to kill black people and saying: Look at this. Wright’s way beyond liberal. And Obama may be too.

This puts a bit of tarnish on Obama’s ideological image.

Even worse for Obama, culturally, Wright has changed the role of race in Obama’s campaign.

Here again, Obama has remained carefully in the mainstream. He’s articulate. Reasonable. Graceful. He’s Sidney Portier. Not some 60’s radical and certainly not Lewis Farrakhan.

But Rev. Wright’s videos put Senator Obama in the middle of a piece of African-American culture that doesn’t look mainstream at all. And the side-effect is simple: The racial drumbeat around Obama’s campaign has raised an octave. And despite all the liberal swooning about Obama’s speech in Philadelphia, he hasn’t dealt with it very well.

He tried, at first, by saying: I don’t agree with Rev. Wright.  

But then he added: But I understand “the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, bitterness and biases of the black experience in America” and because I understand the bitterness that caused Wright’s statements, even though I disagree, I “can no more disown him than I can the black community.”

And that ‘but,’ politically, is going to be a killer.

I think most people can understand why, say, a Tuskegee airman who was told 1941 or ’42 he wasn’t fit to fly fighter planes could feel bitterness. But, the point is, he had already, unequivocally, demonstrated his love of country and patriotism by just volunteering to fly those planes. He may be, justifiably, angry but no one doubts his patriotism. And that’s what’s missing in the videos of Rev. Wright – one tangible, real, and unequivocal proof of a similar love of country.

And Obama in his much heralded speech didn’t give voters much help. He told them why Wright is bitter. But examples of Wright’s patriotism were nowhere to be seen. Subsequently, Obama’s critics cut him no slack at all. They said his talk about racial healing was no more than a political smoke screen – that he was dancing a two-step, disagreeing with Wright in one breath but defending him in the next.

Then, after his speech, Obama slipped again. When he landed in Fayetteville that afternoon the first words out of his mouth were, ‘We have to stop the war in Iraq.’ He said, in effect, ‘I talked about this enough. Let’s move on.’

Now that may buy him a few months relief in the Democratic primaries. But, it won’t last. And it won’t elect him President.

Senator Obama faces a moment of truth. Race has stepped out of the wings and onto the stage of this campaign. Wright isn’t going away. This debate isn’t going away. It’s just beginning. And Obama has to win it. He says Rev. Wright’s extremism is the result of is racial bitterness. He’s got til November to convince people he’s right. But, first, I suspect, if he can, he has to show people there’s more to Rev. Wright than just being extreme and bitter.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Well, the City Council has gotten serious about raising ‘impact’ fees – taxes on new homes and buildings – and there’s bad news for churches, schools, and people buying houses in Raleigh.

For instance, The News and Observer reports the new tax increase will cost Wake Cross Roads Baptist church $20,256 – when it expands.

And the Council is increasing taxes on a major research university – like N.C. State – if it expands even more. 324%.

So that’s the bad news.

The City Council’s increasing taxes on praying, learning and owning a home.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

We warn our kids to beware of who their online chat friends really are.  Maybe the same caveat should apply to politics.

Ryan Teague Beckwith writes in the N&O today about North Carolina’s first online debate – between Bev Perdue and Richard Moore.  It’s sponsored by the BlueNC blog.

Question: How do we know it’s the candidates – not staff or consultants – who are doing the debating?

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

The Young Democrats haven’t been this hot in North Carolina for 30 years.

Long ago, being in the YDs was a logical step into politics.  Both Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt were state YD presidents – and used the office as stepping stones.

But, with the decline of grassroots politics, the importance of the YDs declined over the decades.

Not this year, thanks to the presidential primary.  The YD convention had a plethora of big names – Chelsea Clinton, James Carville, Cory Booker, even John Edwards.  Edwards probably never went to a Young Democrats meeting when he actually was a young Democrat.

It just goes to show the value of North Carolina being in play in the nominating process.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

You know a campaign is getting rough when the consultants start attacking each other.

As part of its effort to stop the NEA ads for Bev Perdue, the Moore campaign sent out emails with N&O clips linking the NEA to disgraced lottery-lobbyist Kevin Geddings and to Perdue adviser Mac McCorkle.  The NEA helped pay for pro-lottery ads in 2005 – ads produced by Geddings.

Question: What was the relationship between Moore campaign manager Jay Reiff, Geddings and McCorkle when they were all working for Governor Easley and for the lottery in both North and South Carolina?

This could get truly nasty.

How much is the presidential primary overwhelming other races?

Here’s a sign: Who would have guessed that an openly gay candidate for United States Senate in North Carolina would go virtually unnoticed?

But that’s the case for Jim Neal in his race against Kay Hagan.

That a U.S. Senate race is basically being treated as a down-ballot contest – something like the race for Lieutenant Governor – is a sign of how dramatically the Obama-Clinton contest has changed our political chemistry.

We’re not accustomed to this.  Back when our presidential primary did count – like in 1976 and 1988 – that primary was on a different day from statewide races.

What Hillary Clinton called the “fun part” has started in the Governor’s race.  Richard Moore and Bev Perdue are going at each other full-bore on TV.

Over college tuition, of all things.  Who guessed that would be the burning issue this year?

Why?  Because tuition sums up a host of middle-class economic anxieties.  And it’s the best the oppo researchers could come up with when told to find a vote against families and against education by two Democratic candidates.

Perdue’s attack on Moore’s ties to “Wall Street’ reflects another trend I’ve blogged about: Democratic voters’ increasingly anti-corporate attitudes.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

A campaign that plays the electability card is by definition a campaign that is losing.

Voters never elect a candidate because they think he or she is more electable in the fall than their opponent.

There is a logical disconnect: The candidate who is losing usually argues electability.  Voters don’t see how the loser can be more electable.

Mike Easley and Charles Sanders tried it against Harvey Gantt – in 1990 and 1996, respectively – and it didn’t work.

It didn’t help that electability was a code word for “he’s black.”

In 1980, George Bush argued that Ronald Reagan couldn’t win in the fall.  In 1992, Bob Kerrey said the Republicans would crack open Bill Clinton like a soft peanut.  That same year, in the Democratic primary for Governor here, Lacy Thornburg said the Republicans would do the same thing to Jim Hunt they did in 1984.

So the electability argument won’t work for Hillary Clinton now.  It won’t work for Richard Moore, either, even if Democrats worry whether Bev Perdue’s campaign can keep her out of sight and out of trouble all the way through November.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Perhaps someone can shine the light of open-government on this question.

Debbie Crane, former PIO at Health and Human Services, is being praised as a paragon of open government.  She spoke at the Sunshine Week program at Elon University.

Yet Crane says she told ex-Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom NOT to talk to The News & Observer about what the Easley administration said or did not say back when the mental health reforms passed.

Where is the openness?

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

That is what Vice President Cheney said when asked about the American people’s opposition to the Iraq War.

Funny, that’s exactly what I think about anything Cheney says or believes.  So?

The Democrats’ strategy has to be to ask the American people if they want four more years of Bush-Cheney-McCain.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Make it official: Barack Obama has won the Democratic presidential nomination.

He won it with his speech on race last week.  He swept away any chance the superdelegates will overrule the results of the primaries and caucuses.

By disarming his critics over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – even Clinton had to praise his speech – Obama closed the door.

Ever since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, the Democratic Party – whatever its other failings – has had the courage to stand up for civil rights.  Not to stand up for Obama now would betray that history.

Short of pulling an Eliot Spitzer – or a David Patterson – Obama cannot be denied the nomination.

That is not to say, of course, that we’ve heard the last of race.  The Southern Strategy that Nixon and Strom Thurmond cooked up 40 years ago – in response to the Democratic Party’s courageous stand – has become second nature to the GOP by now.

Is John Edwards contemplating another race?

The state party announced that Edwards and James Carville will be keynote speakers at the Young Democrats annual meeting March 29.

Immediately touching off speculation that Edwards may be thinking of another run for President (assuming Democrats lose this year) – or challenging Senator Richard Burr in 2010.

That, after all, is the Senate seat Edwards held.  Like 1998, when Edwards won, 2010 is a non-presidential year – always best for Democratic Senate candidates in North Carolina.

Just like John Edwards’s “two Americas,” today we have two Democratic parties: the Obama party and the Clinton party.

If you want to know where this kind of split leads, read about Kennedy v Carter in 1980, Ford v Reagan in 1976 and McCarthy v Humphrey in 1968.  This is a formula for defeat in November.

The longer the fight goes on, the rifts grow deeper, the feelings more bitter and the time for healing shorter.

Democrats are fractured along racial, gender, age and class lines.  Obama gets most black voters; Clinton, most whites.  Obama voters are younger; Clinton’s, older.  Women like Clinton; men, Obama.  The upscale “Starbucks” voters swoon for Obama, the Dunkin’ Donuts crowd soaks up Clinton.

If Obama gets “robbed” of the nomination by superdelegates, his acolytes will be angry.  If women are “robbed” of their rightful time by misogynistic men, they will threaten to stay home.

It is a fairy tale that some Big Shot Democrat can sit the candidates down and resolve this.  Like who?  Howard Dean?  Nancy Pelosi?  Al Gore?  Could one of them persuade Obama or Clinton to say: “Gee, you’re right; I should step aside and let Barack/Hillary be the nominee.  Well played, old sport.”

While the negatives pile up on both Obama and Clinton – for convenient use by the Republicans in the fall – John McCain gets a free ride.  If there was ever a fraud who deserved unmasking, it’s Maverick McCain, Mister Ethics and Integrity, Mister Stay-the-Course in Iraq, Mister Independent, Mister Closet Progressive, Mister Straight Talk.   

For months, I’ve told my Democratic friends this is our election to lose.  And I’ve told my Republican friends not to worry; we’re perfectly capable of blowing it.

We are well on our way.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Richard Moore’s campaign has taken heart from the new Public Policy Polling survey that shows him trailing Bev Perdue only 44-34.

Skepticism is in order given the wild swing from PPP’s last poll, which had Moore behind by 27 points.  PPP attributed the change to Moore’s new ad.  But one ad, not long on the air, likely did not make that much difference that fast. 

Regardless, after a puzzling period of quiet, the Moore campaign is turning up the heat on Perdue.  He is challenging her on not debating more, he is positioning himself to attack her and he is doing all he can to tie himself to Barack Obama.  He was at Obama’s event in Fayetteville.

When did you last see a Democratic candidate for Governor of North Carolina cling so tightly to the coattails of a Democratic presidential candidate?

Perdue’s strategy has been to never let Moore get to the left of her.  When he opposed Duke Energy’s Cliffside plant, she opposed it.  When he endorsed Obama, she endorsed Obama.  He called for raising the minimum wage (a Democratic primary perennial), so she called for raising the minimum wage.

Now she better get ready to hit back when he hits her. 

 Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Depending on who you talk to, Democratic leaders in the state Legislature either bent – or broke – the rules to pass the lottery.

I’m no authority on Parliamentary Procedure, but the issue seems to be whether the lottery bill was a revenue bill that should have been voted on twice on two separate days, rather than twice on one day (which is what democratic legislators did).

As a result, several organizations opposing the lottery have filed a lawsuit and if they win we’re shed of ‘powerball’ and ‘scratch cards,’ at least, until the legislature rushes back to town.

What is more interesting is the Circuit Courts ruling in the case.

The court declared – two to one – that the Lottery Bill, which generates hundreds of millions of dollars in income to the state, is not a revenue bill.

The court used a lot of legal wrangling about ‘pledging the states credit’ and the difference in revenues and taxes to thread a legal needle. But how could hundreds of millions of dollars paid into the states coffers not be revenue?

It’s a mystery that defies common sense.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

City Councilman Rodger Koopman has a unique way of analyzing Raleigh’s problems with laser-like precision.

For instance, yesterday, at the City Council meeting, he announced to support the troops in Iraq…Raleigh should ban garbage disposals. He said: “If you support the troops, be willing to suck it up just a little bit.”

Now, there’s a bit of unique thinking.

I’ve spent most of my life working with two materials: words and politicians.  I’ve written about politicians, and I’ve written for them.  As Jim Hunt’s main speechwriter his first two terms and frequent contributor the second two terms – along with dozens of other politicians I have worked with – I’ve probably written as much political BS as any human alive.

I’ve read and studied a lot of political speeches – mostly American Presidents and politicians.

But I don’t think I’ve ever read a better speech than the one Barack Obama gave about race on Tuesday.

No, one speech does not mean he should be President.  But that one speech does reveal qualities that would be nice to have in a President, especially after eight years of George Bush:  empathy, intellectual honesty, the fearlessness to challenge common assumptions on both sides of the political and racial divide and a fierce quest for what is right in America today.

Don’t just listen to a clip.  Read the whole thing.  Click here.

It may be just words, as Hillary Clinton would say.  But it’s good words.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Richard Moore’s newest ad boasts that he has been “challenging the most powerful corporations.”

He sounds like John Edwards, who blasted “corporate Democrats” in his campaign.

And Moore is not the only one.

Anti-corporate rhetoric is blooming among Democrats this spring.  Even Hillary Clinton, who used to be on Wal-Mart’s board, has chimed in.

It’s a far cry from the pro-business positioning of Democrats like Bill Clinton and Jim Hunt in the 90s.

The rhetoric reflects the tough economy and the corporate excesses of recent years.  The rough talk could presage rough political seas for businesses – in Raleigh and in Washington.

Moore’s ads are probably the first of a one-two punch – with the second punch aimed straight at Bev Perdue’s jaw.  Given how far ahead she is in the polls, Moore probably has to attack her soon – and hard.

He could attack Perdue’s ties to business, though that might be a hard sell for a man who has raised money from Wall Street.

John Edwards helped save Bill Clinton a decade ago.  Could he do the same for Hillary Clinton this year?

After his election to the Senate in 1998, Edwards went to Washington with zero experience in public office.  He had barely voted, let alone served in office.  He had spent most of his adult life in courtrooms.  So he walks into the Senate, and the first order of business is … a trial!  Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.

Edwards immediately distinguished himself with a dispassionate and masterful summary of the facts, concluding that Clinton’s actions did not justify removal from office.

Arguably, his very election over Lauch Faircloth – an impeachment champion – helped turn the tide for Clinton.

Today, Hillary Clinton is locked in an increasingly desperate battle with Barack Obama.  She badly needs to change the chemistry of the race.  And Edwards, the third-place finisher, has not yet endorsed.

Word is that Edwards does not like the Clintons, but he thinks Obama is too weak to be President.

Suppose he were to say that publicly – and endorse Clinton?

The Clinton campaign has three messages now: She is ready to be commander-in-chief; she can fix the economy; and she can win in November.

No one in America could testify more powerfully to those three arguments than Edwards.  No one could do more to boost Hillary.  No one could do more to stop Obama’s march to the nomination.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

The Obama bandwagon slowed down this week.  It’s tough being out front and taking incoming fire.  And the shelling will get worse as more people see the videos of Obama’s pastor.

The Clinton campaign still has hope.  But, for all their kitchen sink strategy, there’s one argument they haven’t used: When you look only at states that held primaries – not caucuses – who won the most delegates?

Should her campaign say – as is probably the case – that Obama has a delegate lead only because his supposedly upscale, pointy-headed supporters with their flexible schedules were the ones who could go to the lengthy, complicated, obscure caucuses?

Given how close the delegate count is – and how overwhelmingly Obama won the caucus states – Clinton might, in fact, be the primary winner.

This, of course, begs the question of how the experienced politicians at Team Clinton got out-organized in the caucuses.  Maybe they were too busy dumping on each other and eating the doughnut budget.

The “primary winner” case is more persuasive than either candidate’s argument that their various victories in various states portend anything for the November election. 

Clinton says she won the big swing states.  Obama says he won states all over the country.

Doesn’t mean squat.  Those victories came in primaries and caucuses limited to Democrats, and sometimes Independents.  Unfortunately, Republicans and conservatives get to vote in the fall.

This race is not over.  Stay tuned.

When former House Speaker Richard Morgan filed to run for Superintendent of Public Instruction, Republican Ed Kennedy reared back and hurled a mud ball at him, then someone posted it here on Talking About Politics.

To call Mr. Kennedy’s letter to Mr. Morgan mean-of-spirit understates his eruption.  He had an arm-waving tantrum.  Calling Richard Morgan ‘abhorrent,’ ‘outrageous,’ ‘a traitor,’ ‘not a real Republican’ and ‘hate monger.’

Why?  It goes back to the 2002 Speaker’s race.

Six years ago, the State House had sixty Republicans and sixty Democrats.  The Democrats nominated Jim Black for Speaker.  The Republican Caucus split into two camps, one led by Leo Daughtry and the other by Richard Morgan.  Each nominated their own candidate.

Since no one (of the three candidates) could get 61 votes, the three camps began negotiating to reach an agreement to share power by electing a Republican and a Democrat to serve as Co-Speakers.  After 9 deadlocked votes, on the 10^th ballot the Democrats rejected an agreement with Daughtry’s camp and said, in effect, they didn’t like it much but they would vote to elect Black and Morgan.

29 of the 59 Republicans in the House agreed, voted for Morgan and Black, and ended the deadlock.  And that, I suspect, is what Mr. Kennedy is calling the greatest act of treason in NCGOP history.

But was the 2002 Speakers election really an earth-shaking, life-changing cataclysm?   The party didn’t suddenly abandon its ideological moorings and change positions on, say, illegal immigration.  Mr. Daughtry was a moderate to conservative legislator.  Mr. Morgan had been allied with the conservative, or Helms, wing of the Republican Party for two decades.  There wasn’t an ideological upheaval where Republicans suddenly started voting to pull out of Iraq. 

So, why did they split?  Part of the answer lies in previous struggles between the two camps in the House.  And part was distrust.  But, either way, the issue wasn’t about whether House Republicans should be conservatives.   

At least not until the 2004 and 2006 primaries, when Daughtry’s partisans begin calling themselves ‘real Republicans’ and their opponents RINO’s – Republicans In Name Only.  That did sound like the differences between the two camps were ideological.  But, while claiming to be purging the Republican Party of heretics, the Daughtry partisans also attacked conservatives. 

One example.  I have known Representative Robert Grady for thirty years.  He was a conservative before I ever met Jesse Helms.  How conservative?  In 1972 Robert served as Senator Helms’ Campaign Chairman in the last place on earth any sane person would want to lead a campaign for Jesse Helms – at UNC.  In 1976, when Leo Daughtry supported President Gerald Ford, Robert Grady led Ronald Reagan’s campaign in Onslow County.  He supported John East, Lauch Faircloth, and Senator Helms every time they ran for office.  In 1984 he was the first Republican elected to the State House from east of Raleigh.  And, over the next twenty years, he established a conservative record. 

In 2002, he voted with Daughtry’s camp – not Morgan’s – nine times, then on the tenth ballot voted to end the deadlock.  For that, in 2006, Leo Daughtry’s partisans attacked him.  Politics isn’t kickball and I generally accept the proposition that elbow-throwing and exaggeration go with the turf.  But calling someone who supported Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan a Democrat in disguise is nothing but a good old-fashioned smear.

Back in 1976 when Reagan first ran for President there were people who called themselves ‘real Republicans’ who blasted Helms supporters, claiming we were destroying the Republican Party by opposing an incumbent Republican President, Gerald Ford.  I’m beginning to suspect Mr. Kennedy – and the new generation of ‘real Republicans’ – may be cut from the same bolt of cloth.

Claiming a candidate – who, say, opposes illegal immigration, supports the war on terrorism, and opposes gay marriage – isn’t a ‘real Republican’ because he didn’t support Leo Daughtry is a pretty strange definition of Republican. I’ve had my disagreements with Richard Morgan, too, over the years.  But he’s no liberal. And no Democrat.  And as far as civility and good manners go when it comes to debating Mr. Kennedy… he’s winning that contest hands down.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Democrats spent 40 years engineering the perfect presidential nomination system.  Instead we engineered a perfect train wreck.  

We now are in perfect position to blow an election that should be ours.

We have two strong, popular candidates for the nomination.  Neither has put the race away.  They are tired, frustrated and getting madder at each other every day.  Their supporters are getting more and more bitter.  And the party is about to fracture on racial and gender lines.

Here is how we got here:

• After the 1968 Chicago convention, the party went on a reform bender: Cut the bosses’ power, and empower the grassroots.  The result was George McGovern and the 1972 debacle.  North Carolina got a Republican Governor – and Jesse Helms.

• In 1982, the commission chaired by Governor Hunt – with David Price as staff director – created the superdelegates.  The superdelegates’ job was to pick a winner.  They picked Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states.  North Carolina got another Republican Governor, and Helms beat Jim Hunt for Senate.

• Over the years, the party replaced winner-take-all primaries and caucuses with proportional representation.  The result – when you have two strong candidates like now – is that neither can win without the superdelegates.

• During the last four years, so as not to be left out of the nominating fun, states front-loaded primaries and caucuses.  The result is that Obama rode his wave to an insuperable lead after Super Tuesday in early February.  But he could not win outright.

If we lose in November – thanks to 40 years of reforms – you can count on one thing:  We will have another set of reforms to get it right next time.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Governor Easley has taken two steps back – and one step forward – in his confrontation with The News & Observer.

Last week, the Governor poked a stick in the N&O’s eye at a press conference – especially when he evaded Pat Stith at the Capitol.  He also maintained – evidence to the contrary – that his administration opposed the mental health reforms.

Not good.  Stith promptly wrote that the Easley administration previously had told a DHHS official to lie to him.  Executive Editor John Drescher wrote a column comparing the Governor to Mark McGwire and calling him Governor Meltdown.  Associate Editor Steve Ford – in the unkindest cut of all – said Easley is no Jim Hunt.

This weekend, the Governor backed off.  He said he will take some share of the blame for reforms gone wild.  He and Dempsey Benton seem determined to fix the problems.  Easley blamed his Capitol sidestep on his security detail, and he gave an N&O reporter a 30-minute interview.

All good moves, albeit clumsy and late.  It doesn’t pay to rile up the N&O pit bulls, especially Stith.  Believe me, I’ve been there.

But Easley created a new flurry by saying he “chunked” a hand-written note from Carmen Hooker Odom, the main player in this mystery.  The N&O and the Press Association already were pursuing the charge that emails were deliberately deleted.  And questions still swirl around Debbie Crane and Secretary Odom.

This was all unnecessary.  A Governor faces enough problems without actively seeking out more.  Cooler heads need to prevail at the Governor’s Office. 

The strategy is simple:  Take your share of the blame.  Focus on real people who need help.  Come up with a sensible fix.  Talk to legislators, experts and advocates.  Talk to the media; don’t hide.  Do the right thing. 

Because this story will go on.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Follow this. The governor orders the press spokesman (Debbie Crane) at the Department of Health and Human Resources fired. But tells his press office to say her boss, Dempsey Benton, was the one who made the decision to fire her. Because she’s dishonest.

Secretary Benton then tells the press the only reason he fired Crane was because he was ordered to by the governor’s office. And adds, that she’s honest.

The governor’s press office then says Benton is wrong. It was his decision to fire Crane.

Then the governor’s chief of staff, undercutting the press office, says Benton is right. That he told Benton to fire Crane on the governor’s instructions.

Things are out of hand. They get worse.

Ms. Crane tells the press that two of the governor’s aides, Sherri Johnson and Renee Hoffman, ordered her to destroy emails (apparently about the Mental Health Care Crisis) so the press wouldn’t see them.

The governor aides, Johnson and Hoffman, promptly vanish. Their assistant, poor Seth Effron, gets rolled out onto the end of the limb to deny it all.

The press makes short work of Seth.

Then the governor has his legal council conduct a five minute investigation into the missing emails. The legal council promptly announces there is “absolutely no evidence” Johnson and Hoffman ordered them destroyed. The press, incredulously, says: ‘So you’re telling us you asked Johnson and Hoffman if they destroyed emails and they deny it?’

Long pause. Followed by a stream of mumbo-jumbo. Finally, the lawyer says, ‘You’d have to ask Johnson and Hoffman.’

Who have vanished. So the press can’t ask them.

In the meantime the Governor says he ‘vigorously’ opposed the Health Care Plan all along. And his former Health and Human services chief – who said the plan was wonderful in 2001 – vanishes.

Finally, the governor tells the press he had no idea the state’s Health Care Plan had resulted in $400 million wasted tax dollars, a long list of abused patients and 82 avoidable deaths – until he read it in the News and Observer. But consider this: Surely, sometime, somehow, during the last seven years, someone with an abused child in a state mental healthcare ward wrote the governor to complain. So, how could he not even have had an inkling something was wrong?

The Easley Administration is in melt-down in front of our eyes.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

Watching Fred Smith zing Pat McCrory in the governor’s campaign is getting to be entertaining.

At a debate last Saturday, railing against illegal immigration, GOP frontrunner McCrory said the federal government should build a $150 million prison in Charlotte to lock the rascals up. Then he added that there are so many illegal immigrants in Charlotte’s jail, they don’t have enough cells for the real criminals. Smith shot back:

“Pat, if you don’t have a place to put criminals in Mecklenburg County, it’s because you used money to build a new basketball arena.”

McCrory said that was a low blow. Then dug the hole deeper, adding the hotel-motel taxes that paid for the new basketball arena, by law, had to be used for tourism related expenses.

Imagine the next debate.

Smith says: ‘Pat, you’re saying it’s not your fault Charlotte built a basketball arena. When it needs a jail. You say it’s the laws fault. So, tell me, did you oppose that law?’

If McCrory’s answer is anything but, ‘Yes. And here’s how and when,’ Charlotte’s basketball arena may turn out to be the next hot issue in the Republican primary for governor.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

The Richard Moore and Barack Obama campaigns have more in common that just that Moore endorsed Obama.  Both seem to be debating the same question: Attack her?

Obama’s debate is more open in the national media.  His campaign clearly was thrown off balance by Clinton’s “kitchen sink” attacks.  Now they’re trying to decide whether – and how – to hit back without losing Obama’s halo.

Moore’s debate – assuming there is one – is out of sight.  But it is a reasonable inference.  He has been off the air recently, while Perdue is on heavy.  Public polls have shown him falling behind her 52-25.  If Moore’s campaign isn’t considering attacking her, it should be.

The answer is the same for both campaigns: Yes and yes.  You cannot win in politics without drawing a sharp contrast with your opponent.

Obama can do it in a way that keeps his new-politics image.  That’s not hard.

Moore doesn’t have to worry about that.  He never positioned himself as above politics-as-usual.

What normally cripples campaigns – especially first-time candidates – is the internal debate.  The campaign pros want the candidate to go negative.  Typically, his or her spouse, family, friends, law or business partners, etc. object.

They’ll say: “Voters don’t like negative ads.”

Wrong.  Voters SAY they don’t like negative ads.  But they remember every one of them.

These debates rarely go on when the candidate has run and lost before.  One time is enough to cure them of cold feet.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.

According to the newspaper last Monday morning a sexual revolution is underway in China.  Quote: ‘The simple but tidy rooms in the no-tell hotels in the Beijing University district pulsate with sex.’ 

Now, there