Chicago Daily Observer

ennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, an all-out Hillary supporter, now supporting Obama in a state that will be key to McCain’s fortunes a month from now, continues to be a loose cannon.

It was Rendell who previously put on the table the subject that for much of the primary and general election race has been verboten; how many points will Obama lose to the voters who, often against their own best interests, refuse to vote for a black man.

Had Hillary been the nominee no one would doubt that Rendell would be the surrogate par excellence. The same cannot be said for his performance today on ABC‘s This Week with George Stephanopoulos”

Bill Ayers was the subject of a video clip (Sarah Palin denouncing Obama for his association with Ayers, who has confessed to participation in domestic bombings while a member of the Weather Underground in the 1960s).

According to Michael Sneed in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times, mayoral brother William “Bill” Daley is “steamed” over a new John McCain ad that blasts Barack Obama by linking him to supposed Obama buddies, “convicted felon” Tony Rezko, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who carries “a legacy of federal and state investigations,” as well as Illinois Senate president Emil Jones, Jr. (“under ethical cloud”). But first on the list of sinister associations—even before “his money man” Tony Rezko—is Obama’s “economic adviser,” whom the voice on the ad tells us is not only the “Mayor’s brother,” but also one of those creatures so prevalent in McCain’s upper echelon—a “lobbyist.”

The ad seems sleazy and unfair—although none other than the New York Times which McCain campaign senior adviser Steve Schmidt declared yesterday “completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for” Obama, fact checked it and, under “accuracy,” declared that it contains “nothing that is outright wrong.”

If anyone doubted something I’ve written repeatedly on this page—that Bill and Hillary Clinton prefer to see a McCain victory on November 4th, so that Hillary can run unencumbered in 2012—just get a load of Bill today with the ladies of “The View,” and in other interviews, as he prepared to open his Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

He could not have been sweeter in his tributes to John McCain and, especially, to Sarah Palin. Although using the word “hot” in relation to her was probably not the most politic word choice. “I come from Arkansas, I get why she’s hot out there,” Clinton said. “Why she’s doing well.”

The timing could have been better for Salem State College, in Salem, Massachusetts, 21 miles outside Boston. Or, who knows? Maybe the timing couldn’t be better.

The public university pays big bucks to big names for its 26-year-old lecture series. (Speakers have included former presidents—Carter, Bush I, Bill Clinton—major writers—Maya Angelou, Tom Wolfe—major media figures—Walter Cronkite, Thomas Friedman—activists—Jesse Jackson, Gloria Steinem.)

Ask random passersby on an street corner to name the democrats’ nominee for president. Among those who follow politics at all, 99.9 percent will answer, “Obama.”

If Heidi Li Feldman, a blogger and a professor of law (and philosophy) at Georgetown University Law Center, and Marc Rubin, a blogger, veteran ad man, and movie and TV writer—head writer for “The White Shadow”—happened by, they would say there is no nominee yet, that the two ended the primary/caucus season in “a virtual tie,” in Feldman’s words, neither of them having the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim the prize. 2118 are needed; Obama got there only with the help of superdelegates who are free, Feldman says, to change their minds until they actually cast a vote at the convention in Denver late next month. That’s when, if Feldman and Rubin, who co-founded and are the only official members of The ... Read More...