ProgressNow.org Daily News Digest

Obama Arrives in Style - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401151.html With a brief glance out his car window -- barely visible through cordons of Secret Service officers, black SUVs and security barricades -- the soon-to-be leader of the free world bid a brief hello last night to the town he will now call home and to his new neighbors: scores of spectators camped outside his temporary quarters at the Hay-Adams Hotel. There were no speeches, no ceremonies or official welcoming committees. Instead, Barack Obama, a man famous for his no-drama persona, arrived in the nation's capital in a similarly subdued fashion. His limousine pulled up to claps and cheers from crowds lining the blocks near the hotel and also the cries of protesters angry about the Gaza Strip -- a reminder of the vexing problems he will face when he takes office. Then, in seconds, he was whisked inside.

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Barack Obama’s Chicago home now empty, but a full plate awaits him in Washington—chicagotribune.c

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-obama-transitionjan05,0,6176911.story An emotional President-elect Barack Obama left his Chicago home and took up temporary residence in a grand Washington hotel on Sunday, his administration-in-waiting already burdened by scandal, war and congressional controversy. On his way to join his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha, already ensconced at the historic Hay-Adams Hotel, Obama admitted to reporters that his leave-taking from Hyde Park had a poignant moment. "I gotta say I choked up a little bit leaving my house today. Malia's friend had dropped off an album of the two of them together," Obama said on the plane conveying him to his new life and responsibilities. "They had been friends since preschool and I just looked through the pages and the house was empty and it was a little tough, it got me." As Obama journeyed to the capital, there were more hints of the immense challenges confronting the man poised to become the nation's 44th president on Jan. 20.

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Franken Looks Like a Winner, but Not Quite a Senator - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401308.html He's good enough, he's smart enough, and, gosh darn it, he's a U.S. senator? Not yet, but recent developments in the unending recount in Minnesota's Senate race have given entertainer Al Franken (D) a burst of momentum over Sen. Norm Coleman (R) and left national Democrats increasingly confident that the Gopher State will fall into their column sooner rather than later. Although Franken trailed Coleman on election night, the Democrat -- thanks in part to the ace work of election lawyer Marc Elias -- has gained steadily ever since. A hand recount of the nearly 3 million ballots cast turned the race into a dead heat, and the recent counting of 933 wrongly rejected absentee ballots (don't ask) yielded a 225-vote edge for Franken heading into today's meeting of the state Canvassing Board, in which a winner -- presumably Franken -- will be named.

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Minnesota canvassing board expected to say that Democrat Al Franken is winner in Senate race—chic

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-minnesota-senate,0,286737.story The state Canvassing Board was poised to certify the results of the recount in Minnesota's grueling Senate election in Al Franken's favor — but that doesn't mean the race is definitely over. The board was to meet Monday and was expected to declare which candidate received the most overall votes from nearly 3 million ballots cast. The latest numbers showed Franken, a Democrat, with a 225-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who led Franken on election night. But after the announcement, there will be a seven-day waiting period before an election certificate is completed. If any lawsuits are filed during that waiting period, certification is conditional until the issue is settled in court. Lawyers for both campaigns have laid the groundwork for lawsuits through public comments and legal maneuvering. In recent weeks, as Franken clung to a small lead, Coleman's lawyers promised a lawsuit over their claim that some ballots duplicated on election night wound up being counted twice in the recount.

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Six-way race for GOP chairman heats up - USATODAY.com

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2009-01-04-gopchair_N.htm Republicans plunge into another election campaign today, this one a six-way race for party chairman that has erupted into an argument over how to recover from an unpopular presidency and crushing defeats at the polls. Half of the candidates to lead the Republican National Committee (RNC) are Southerners: current Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan of Kentucky, South Carolina Chairman Katon Dawson and former Tennessee chairman Chip Saltsman. Former Ohio secretary of State Ken Blackwell and former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele are black. Saul Anuzis, the Michigan GOP chairman, is a Harley-Davidson rider, an ex-union member and the son of an autoworker. The RNC's 168 members pick a new chairman Jan. 28.

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Virginia Governor Kaine Said to Be Next DNC Chairman - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401139.html Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will become chairman of the Democratic National Committee later this month, serving as the top political messenger for Barack Obama's administration even while finishing his final year in the governor's mansion, several sources said. Kaine, 50, who emerged as a finalist for the job of Obama's running mate last summer, will operate from Richmond in a part-time capacity until January 2010, when he will become the full-time DNC chairman. Kaine is constitutionally barred from running for reelection. Kaine, a friend of the president-elect's, is a gregarious chief executive who is known to relish political combat and helped put Virginia in the Democratic presidential election column for the first time in almost 50 years.

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Former President Bush says he would like to see another son run for president—chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-another-president-bush,0,4686886.story Another President Bush? Perhaps so, says former President George H.W. Bush, who has already seen one son, George W., serve in the Oval Office. The nation's 41st president said Sunday that he would like to see a second son, Jeb, be president one day. Jeb Bush is the current president's younger brother and a former popular governor of Florida. He is mulling a run for Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla. Asked in a broadcast interview about Jeb Bush's consideration of the Senate seat, Bush 41 said: "I'd like to see him run. I'd like to see him be president someday."

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Obama defends choice of Pastor Rick Warren to speak at inauguration—chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-minister_fridec19,0,7480741.story Calling on Americans to "come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues," President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday defended his selection of conservative evangelical Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, a choice that had angered Obama supporters who see the minister as intolerant to gays. "We're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common," Obama said during a Chicago news conference. "There are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented, because that's what America is about," he said. He noted that veteran civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, would also speak at the inauguration. Warren's selection this week to give the inaugural invocation drew protests from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights group.

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Ruling Favors Democrat in Contest in Minnesota - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/us/politics/19minnesota.html?ref=washington In a boost for Al Franken, a former comedian and talk show host running as a Democrat for the Senate, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that counties could count additional absentee ballots, despite objections from the Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman.

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Minn. recount puts Franken two votes behind incumbent - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/19/minn_recount_puts_franken_two_votes_behind_incumbent/ Senator Norm Coleman saw his lead over Al Franken in Minnesota's US Senate race dwindle to two votes yesterday. Meanwhile, a key court ruling put hundreds of improperly rejected ballots in play, promising the recount will drag into the new year. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that improperly rejected absentee ballots be included in the state's recount. It ordered the candidates to work with the secretary of state and election officials to set up a process to identify ballots that were rejected in error. Counties must make a report by Dec. 31. The ruling was made as the state Canvassing Board nearly erased what had been a 360-vote lead for Coleman before the panel began its third day of reviewing disputed ballots yesterday.

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Study plays down ‘convenience voting’ - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/18/study_plays_down_convenience_voting/ Against a backdrop of a dramatic overall increase in nationwide turnout to the highest level in nearly half a century, the report by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University found that "convenience voting - mail voting, no-excuse absentee voting, early voting, and even election-day registration - does not help turnout and may hurt." Of the 12 states that saw a decline in turnout from 2004, 10 had some form of convenience voting, the analysis found, and of the 13 with the greatest increases, seven had no special provisions to make it easier to vote. Curtis Gans, director of the center, theorized that "all the devices which allow voters to vote during a period before Election Day have the effect of diffusing mobilization activities over several days rather than one day when the concentration of resources would have had the most effect."

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Time magazine names Obama ‘Person of the Year’; Paulson and Palin among runners-up—chicagotribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-time-person-of-year,0,3235846.story President-elect Barack Obama has won another contest: He's been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2008. The magazine has named Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gov. Sarah Palin and Chinese director Zhang Yimou as runners-up. Last year's winner was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Previous individual winners have included Bono, President George W. Bush and Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.

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In Minnesota Recount, Scribbles, Mice and Other Ballot Puzzles - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/us/politics/17minnesota.html?ref=washington T. PAUL — The Minnesota Canvassing Board — four distinguished judges and the secretary of state — huddled in a basement room here Tuesday to ponder the meaning of squiggles and stray marks on ballots, trying to solve the near deadlock in the Senate race between the incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman, and his Democratic challenger, the comedian Al Franken.

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Minn. board takes a crack at 1,500 contested ballots in Senate race - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/17/minn_board_takes_a_crack_at_1500_contested_ballots_in_senate_race/ Trying to resolve the last undecided US Senate race, members of a Minnesota state board started their work gingerly yesterday, squinting at contested ballots as they tried to figure out what some voters intended in the race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. The state canvassing board - made up of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, two state Supreme Court justices, and two Ramsey County judges - began inspecting as many as 1,500 contested ballots one by one, hoping to finish by Friday. Coleman leads Franken by 188 votes from more than 2.9 million ballots cast on Nov. 4. A Franken win would give Democrats 59 seats, when two independents who align with Democrats are included.

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Like Lincoln, Obama Will Ride the Rails To D.C. - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121502937.html Barack Obama has evoked Abraham Lincoln ever since launching his campaign at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. Now he plans to arrive in Washington the same way that Lincoln did in 1861, with a train trip that will include stops, speeches and crowds along the way. On Jan. 17, Obama and his family will start the day with an appearance in Philadelphia, where they will board a chartered Amtrak train. The train will stop in Wilmington, Del., where the Obamas will be joined by Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Then comes a stop in Baltimore before the group's arrival that evening in Washington. "He's replicating the last leg of Lincoln's inaugural journey to Washington," said historian Harold Holzer, author of "Lincoln President Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861." "This guy's reverence for Lincoln has no bounds."

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Recount in Minnesota’s US Senate race now goes to a 5-member canvassing board—chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-minnesota-senate,0,286737.story With the winner ofMinnesota's U.S. Senate race still a mystery, a five-member board now steps in to see if a winner can be decided between rivals Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The state canvassing board — made up of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, two state Supreme Court justices and two Ramsey County judges — was to begin inspecting as many as 1,500 ballots one by one on Tuesday. Coleman, the Republican incumbent, leads Democrat Franken by 188 votes from more than 2.9 million ballots cast on Nov. 4. A final winner is pending the canvassing board's decisions on the disputed ballots. By Monday, both campaigns had pledged to abandon many of the challenges lodged during the recount. The Coleman campaign said it would keep less than 1,000 of its challenges, while the Franken campaign said it would retain less than 500 — though in a legal brief, his lawyers asserted the right to restore another 339 "incident-based" challenges tied to disputes or errors that arose at specific recount sites.

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‘08 Voter Turnout Rate Said to Be Highest in 40 Years - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121402295.html Ahead of today's vote of the electoral college to certify Barack Obama as the president-elect, a George Mason University professor announced yesterday that voter turnout in last month's presidential election reached the highest level in 40 years, with a record number of Americans casting ballots. Final figures from nearly every state and the District of Columbia showed that more than 131 million people voted. A little more than 122 million voted in the 2004 presidential election. This year's total amounts to 61.6 percent of eligible voters, the highest turnout rate since 1968, when Republican Richard M. Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey, said Michael P. McDonald, a political science professor at GMU. It was the third straight increase in presidential election turnout, encouraging news for those who have warned about voter apathy. Four years ago, 60.1 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

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Few real mysteries found in Minn. Senate ballots - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121401639.html Jesus, Bob Dylan and Mickey Mouse will play a part in determining Minnesota's next senator. So will voters who scrawled the same name for every local race. And so will people who marked their choice not just with a darkened oval but with an X, too _ maybe for emphasis, or maybe for a do-over. Those ballots by people who took creative liberties, as well as thousands of others being challenged, are critical in the tight battle between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. A state board begins meeting Tuesday to decide their fate. But an Associated Press analysis of the more than 5,000 challenged ballots found that most of the votes have clear intent and no deficiencies for which they would be disqualified under Minnesota law. The AP's cataloguing includes many challenges that were later withdrawn by the campaigns and the roughly 3,500 that remained up in the air as of Saturday.

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Insight of presidential election insiders proves riveting - The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/12/insight_of_presidential_election_insiders_proves_riveting/ So, with just a few more weeks, could John McCain have pulled out a victory over Barack Obama? "No - we lost," McCain's chief pollster, Bill McInturff, said without hesitation before a packed auditorium last night at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. "We were happy it was over." It was the kind of blunt statement that, while unimaginable just weeks ago, has come to mark the ritual of presidential election postmortems: chummy get-togethers where top aides to the candidates sit together cordially, let bygones be bygones, and talk about what was and what could have been. The event last night, the latest in a series of postelection roundtables that Harvard has hosted for years, featured McInturff and former McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist who will follow the president-elect into the White House as a senior adviser. PBS's Gwen Ifill moderated. Despite their heated, and often personal, general election battle, the four men left all that behind last night in exchanging civil, frank banter over the nitty-gritty of this year's historic march to the White House. There were few juicy revelations, but the insider insights into such a closely watched campaign kept the audience riveted.

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At Sidwell Friends School, Obamas Will Encounter Parents From Clinton Campaign - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121103579.html President-elect Barack Obama missed being interviewed by David Gregory on "Meet the Press" by just a week -- the new host does not take over until Sunday. Maybe Gregory will catch Obama at back-to-school night at Sidwell Friends School, where, as of next month, both will be sending their children. And that could be one of Obama's easier encounters. Sidwell is not filled only with the children of the powerful and the ambitious and the wealthy, as was widely discussed when the Obamas were looking at elite Washington private schools. It is also home to some of the very strategists who once worked to defeat Obama's presidential bid (one or two of whom, despite the recent Obama-Clinton detente, are rumored to carry a lingering grudge). Obama's older daughter, Malia, is about to enter the fifth grade at Sidwell alongside the child of Lissa Muscatine, a speechwriter for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Numerous other Clinton loyalists are Sidwell parents as well, among them Mark Penn, the former Clinton chief strategist; Mandy Grunwald, the ad maker; Capricia Marshall, the senior adviser; and Beth Dozoretz, the prolific Clinton fundraiser.

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Joe the Plumber: Upset by McCain bailout support - USATODAY.com

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-12-10-joe-the-plumber_N.htm Turns out that "Joe the Plumber" isn't such a big fan of John McCain after all. America's most famous plumber said he was appalled by the Republican presidential candidate's reasons for supporting the government's $700 billion bank rescue plan, and he said they nearly caused him to abandon McCain. Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, who became a household name in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, said he asked McCain why he voted for the bank bailout and was stunned by some of the answers. "I was angry," Wurzelbacher told conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Tuesday. "In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him."

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Survey reveals voting disparities on Nov. 4 - USATODAY.com

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-12-09-voting_N.htm African-American voters waited more than twice as long as others to vote in last month's presidential election, and Hispanics were asked to show identification more often, a survey released Tuesday showed. Although Election Day ran smoothly for most voters, the survey of 10,000 people by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found at least one in four voters lack confidence that their votes were counted correctly. Major problems that had been predicted for Election Day never developed, unlike in 2000 and 2004, and the survey reflects that. Only 2% of those polled said they had a problem with their registration at the polls. Similarly, only 2% reported problems with voting equipment. More than eight in 10 voters said their polling places were very well run; seven in 10 said poll workers performed excellently; and less than 1% rated their service as "poor." Black voters, however, reported waiting in lines for an average of 29 minutes to vote on Election Day and 43 minutes to cast ballots before Nov. 4, as 34 states allow. That was more than twice the average wait for others: 13 minutes on Election Day and 20 minutes when voting early.

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Tuskegee Airmen Invited to Obama Inauguration - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/us/politics/10inaug.html?ref=washington When the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black force of elite pilots, emerged from combat in World War II, they faced as much discrimination as they had before the war. It was not until six decades later that their valor was recognized and they received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can give. Now, the roughly 330 pilots and members of the ground crew who are left from about 16,000 who served are receiving another honor that has surpassed their dreams: They are being invited to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as the country’s first black president. “I didn’t believe I’d live long enough to see something like this,” said Lt. Col. Charles A. Lane Jr., 83, of Omaha, a retired Tuskegee fighter pilot who flew missions over Italy. “I would love to be there, I would love to be able to see it with my own eyes,” he said, chuckling on the phone as he heard about the invitation. But, he said, he had a “physical limitation” and was not sure he would be able to attend.

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Search Ends for Ballots in Minnesota - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/us/politics/09minnesota.html?ref=us The City of Minneapolis has stopped searching for about 130 ballots that may be missing in the recount for a United States Senate seat. Now state officials are left to choose between two sets of tallies in the tight race between Senator Norm Coleman and his challenger, Al Franken.

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Cao’s Upset of Rep. Jefferson in Louisiana Gives Republicans a New Hero - washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/08/AR2008120803746.html Less than 24 hours after his upset defeat of a longtime Democratic congressman from New Orleans, Anh "Joseph" Cao found the weight of the entire Republican Party resting on his diminutive shoulders. The chairman of the Republican National Committee said Cao's election Saturday night showed that, even battered and bruised from political drubbings in the past two years, Republicans "still know how to win elections." House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was more blunt, issuing a memo Sunday declaring: "The future is Cao." Yet just three weeks ago, no one in the GOP establishment had even heard of Cao. They didn't know his improbable story of triumph -- how he fled war-torn Vietnam after the fall of Saigon as an 8-year-old refugee jammed into a helicopter. Now they've seized on his rags-to-political riches story, along with the victory last week of Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a special election in Georgia, as rare pieces of good news after the dismal November elections.

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