Blogs For Victory

This is a campaign stuck on stupid:

Is the Obama campaign really this cash-strapped? We know his supposedly legendary fundraising operation is hurting. Heck, if the New York Times is willing to admit it’s hit a rough patch things must really be bad, but is it so tight that he can’t spare a few bucks worth of stickers and signs for some little girls?

Michelle Walsh is a Girl Scout leader in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Her 2nd grade girls work hard at selling cookies and building crafts. But Walsh sometimes tries to go a step further. She wants to teach the girls about civics, specifically this Presidential race. Walsh decided a way to get the girls really excited about the campaigns would be to give them trinkets from each of the candidates. So she called John McCain’s campaign which immediately sent over a box filled with stickers and signs. Then she called the Obama campaign and it left her scratching her head.

The Chicago Tribune reports the Obama camp took Walsh’s call and then directed her to the campaign website where she could buy all the trinkets she wanted. Bumper stickers for $3 a piece. Yard signs run $8. That was a bit steep for the budget of a Girl Scout troop.

Walsh figured there must have been some mistake so she called the Obama campaign office again. She told the woman on the line about John McCain’s generosity and this time she was placed on hold. When the woman came back to the phone she apologized, but said they weren’t going to be able to help. The staffer said the Obama campaign needs every penny it can get. So she directed Walsh to another spot on Obama’s website where she could print out pages that the girls could color. Nice.

Instead, Walsh called the newspaper, which got on the phone with the Obama camp and got a much different answer. Something about a phone call from a member of the media enabled Team Obama to find a few extra bucks in the campaign chest to afford a box of goodies for the girls. Touching.

Memo to Team Obama: When the Girl Scouts call for a little free swag, you give it to them…heck, if you can work it in, you have Obama deliver it in person.

Part of the narrative of Obama was just how great his campaign has been – firing on all cylinders and he bested the unbeatable Hillary Clinton….except for a few odd pundits out there (like, well, myself) no one expected Hillary to be rejected and Obama to get the nomination (I was telling all and sundry that Hillary would not get the 2008 nomination as early as 2005, and I predicted Obama on the inside track for the Democratic nomination in September of 2007)…so the story became just what a genius the guy is. Except for the tiny, little, nitpicking facts that Obama (a) didn’t secure a first ballot majority of pledged delegates, (b) lost all the big State primaries, (c) ended the primary season with a string of humiliating losses, (d) gave in to Hillary’s demands at the convention and (e) threw all his early associates under the bus, the story of the Boy Genius is rock solid.

Obama has ridden a wave of upper class white liberal support – which showered him with money, worked the caucus States for him, made sure the media said nothing but nice things about him and which was bound and determined that, come what may, the anti-Bush be nominated. Obama was least like Bush amongst all the Democratic contenders and had been against Iraq from before Day One. It was a cinch the wealthy liberals would fall for him – and wealthy liberals can create quite a stir…but they are out of touch with mainstream America, and there really aren’t all that many of them relative to the numbers needed to actually secure 270 electoral votes.

And yet it was still Obama’s race to lose – and so far he’s now turned near-certain victory into a dog fight where he’s at a disadvantage in an otherwise still-pro-Democrat year. Credit McCain for a brilliant bit of come-from-behind campaigning and his superlative VP selection, but don’t forget that Obama never was all he was cracked up to be. Obama might still win this thing, but any thought that he’s other than a mediocre politician is entirely out the window.