 |
|
The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
Rumors and Race
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Even more than usual, today's story lines are ruled by rumors and race. And that's before we even get to John Kerry's NAACP speech, or his $2 million TV ad campaign aimed at black voters.
First, of course, the rumors: Will President Bush dump Dick Cheney? (The New York Times weighs in on the "buzz.") Will Hillary Clinton, allegedly furious over her convention snub, get a solo prime-time speaking role after all? (Two sources say she will. Two campaign aides, in oddly perfect unison, say, "News to me.") Is Kerry-Edwards folding their tent in Missouri, Arizona and the South? (Who do you believe, the campaign spokespeople or the ad buyers?)
Yet another rumor, this one laced with racial implications, was resolved late yesterday, when Mike Ditka declined the full-court GOP lobby to run for Senate in Illinois. (Ditka rules out Senate run)
The self-described "ultra, ultra, ultra conservative" Ditka's decision is good news for Democrat Barack Obama, who's poised to become the third black senator since Reconstruction and the only one serving in the 109th Congress.
Camp Kerry, facing anger among African-Americans over the almost all-white line-up of speakers it rolled out Tuesday, yesterday named Obama as the convention keynote speaker in Boston. Obama spoke last night with John Edwards at a Chicago fund-raiser, saying he thought a race against Ditka would've been "fun."
Courtesy of The New York Times, we learn this morning that the capital is "buzzing" with pre-convention rumors that Cheney will leave the ticket, denials from Bush-Cheney notwithstanding.
With all due respect, The Times is hardly breaking news here. Everyone from Terry McAuliffe to Terry Holt has heard this rumor, which writer Elisabeth Bumiller notably avoids ever characterizing as such: It's either a "conspiracy theory," a "rumbling," "buzz" or "speculation," you see, which are all at least one notch more credible than silly old rumors.
But The Times' decision to run the story, on its front page no less, will surely raise the volume and free up other papers and some networks to chew over this rum ... er, conspiracy theory. (Look at us, we're talking about it right now!)
Cheney told C-SPAN last night that Bush "made it very clear that he wants me to run again." For his part, Bush praised Cheney at Wednesday's stops, saying, "I'm running with a great American in Dick Cheney. He's a solid, solid citizen."
Moving onto Hillary, who sources say is letting others plead her case with convention organizers while she plays her usual role as consummate team player. ''No,'' Clinton flatly told an upstate New York radio interviewer when asked if she was mad she wasn't speaking more prominently. ''I've had many opportunities in the past.''
Judith Hope, the former chairwoman of the New York Democratic Party, backed down from threats to urge women to boycott the convention if Clinton wasn't accommodated. But that didn't stop her from distributing an e-mail, obtained by The Grind, that said she was "distressed" by the "omission."
''I urge you to contact the Kerry-Edwards campaign and the DNC today and tell them that, without question, Hillary Clinton has earned a place on the podium and that this omission needs to be corrected immediately,'' wrote Hope.
Party bigs tell The Grind that the issue will be resolved, probably with Hillary speaking in a more prominent, but not prime-time, slot. "Whatever the decision is, it will be made soon, before this weekend's out," one party official said.) For their part, Kerry-Edwards spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter and Debra DeShong replied to e-queries last night in a curious bit of campaign unison: "News to me," they both wrote, within minutes of each other.
(In a footnote for those who can recall the name of New York's senior senator, we should note that it also remains unclear what role Chuck Schumer will play at the convention.)
Kerry's shrinking ads
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reports today that Kerry has reduced his ad spending in Missouri, Arizona and throughout the South. Kerry's advisers say they aren't shrinking their political map, just saving resources for later and redirecting money to hotly contested states like Florida and Ohio. Bush's campaign calls the strategy a sign of weakness in Republican-leaning territory. (Kerry reduces ad spending in some markets)
Speaking of ads, the Kerry campaign announced yesterday that they're spending $2 million on a new round of spots featuring footage of Kerry hugging a black man wearing an earring. The ads are running on cable and in battleground states, as well as markets in other states with sizable black populations. The spots will run around programs with high black viewership or around outlets such as Tom Joyner's radio show.
And today, Kerry will address the NAACP in Philadelphia. For those Grind readers who have been disproportionately obsessed with the Ditka story or otherwise occupied for the past week, we should note that Bush, for the fourth year in a row, is not addressing the country's largest civil rights group because, he said, they've called him mean names.
Kerry takes direct aim at Bush's refusal to attend in his speech today. "I will be a president who talks with everyone -- those who agree with me and those who don't," he'll say, according to an advance copy of his speech obtained by The Grind. "I will be a president who truly is a uniter, not one who seeks to divide our nation by race, riches or any other label. I will be a president who shares the values of people of all colors who get up and go to work every day, try to raise their families in dignity and want to leave this world a better place for their children. I will be a president who when he is invited into your home, will always say yes."
Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt doesn't address Bush's decision to skip the event. But he says Kerry's "out-of-the-mainstream agenda," including votes against Laci's Law, which makes the killing of a fetus a felony, and against the ban on partial-birth abortion, runs counter to the issues that concern many African-Americans.
"Kerry's economic policies would raise taxes on minority small-business owners, whose numbers are steadily increasing as a result of the President's pro-growth policies. Under President Bush's leadership, a majority of minority families are homeowners for the first time in history," Schmidt says.
Later today, Kerry does an evening rally in West Virginia. Preparing for that, Bush-Cheney has released a letter signed by 21 Medal of Honor recipients, designed to remind veterans that Bush budgets have increased veterans' health care funding by more than 40 percent since he took office. And it was in West Virginia, Schmidt notes, that Kerry uttered his now infamous line, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Kerry plans to spend the weekend in Nantucket, which (and we've got to give Bush-Cheney researchers some kudos here) Schmidt claims takes a page right out of the Dukakis playbook. (Dukakis, it seems, spent four days in Nantucket in the days leading up to the '88 convention. The rest, of course, is history.)
Was Nader cursed?
And finally today, we close with another race-related story that remains in our sights today. Ralph Nader says he has not yet received an apology from Rep. Mel Watt, who Nader says called him a "f*****g arrogant white man" during their June 22 meeting on Capitol Hill.
"I had expected an expression of regret or apology from Congressman Watt in the subsequent days after he had cooled down," Nader wrote Tuesday in a letter to Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Elijah Cummings.
A spokeswoman for Watt, who some mention as a possible Attorney General in a Kerry administration, said the North Carolina congressman did not use any obscenity against Nader.
