While Barack Obama is accomplishing much on his international tour, those of us supporting him at home have much work to do to ensure that he becomes the 44th President of the United States.
I have been repetitive this summer about the importance of voter registration, and I'll repeat myself again in this diary. Obama volunteer kath25 has been leading a large voter registration drive in Texasm and in her diary How To Run a Voter Registration Drive, she writes about the drive's activities and what you can do in your state to register hundreds of voters.
Over the last few days the McCain camp has started to get desperate with all the good news for Obama. So what does a campaign run by the architect of negative campaigning do?
Do some good 'ole negative campaigning of course. Here's a recap.
Volunteers are spreading this lovely flyer on the streets of Berlin:
Patrick Ruffini, a Republican operative and often kind of a disingenuous hack, expresses outrage (outrage!) that an American candidate would release a flyer in a foreign language (Spanish?). As Obama should well know, speaking foreign languages (and in this case, encouraging them to use public transit, which is what the flyer says) is decidedly un-American.
A German blogger Sven posts at DailyKos more details from the neverending flood of coverage across Germany of Obama's visit. Following negotiations, Obama's address will be broadcast live on several German national television stations. A translation method doesn't appear to have been worked out yet.
Sven helpfully corrects my math. The 7 pm address in Berlin will be at 1 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, Thursday afternoon. And he also links to a German tabloid's graphic of the event layout:
The campaign pays for the setup estimated at €200,000 (about $315k), the state pays for security (with 700 police officers on duty) estimated at €250,000 (about $390k).
Here are my favorite photos so far of Barack's trip.
Barack Obama surveys Baghdad with General David Petraeus
Barack Obama and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai enjoyed a traditional lunch of mutton, chicken and rice washed down with a yogurt drink.
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama greets U.S. troops at Camp Arifjan, the main U.S. military base in Kuwait. He stopped there Friday en route to Afghanistan.
Favorite Video - Kuwait - Obama Hoops with Troops
(Click on photo to link to video)
Sen. Barack Obama, left, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, during a meeting in the West bank city of Ramallah, 23 Jul 2008
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) meets Israel's President Shimon Peres (not pictured) in Jerusalem July 23, 2008.
Obama calls Israel a "miracle," vows staunch support
US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) (2nd L) meets Israel's President Shimon Peres (2nd R) in Jerusalem July 23, 2008.
Holocaust flame … Barack Obama, wearing a white yarmulke, lays a wreath at the Holocaust museum, where ashes from concentration camps are buried. Photo: AFP
Berlin will be ready for whatever happens Thursday, with street traffic beginning to be blocked from the venue starting tomorrow. Seven hundred police officers will be on duty, and the city will be prepared for anywhere from ten thousand to a million onlookers. I don't expect a crowd of that size --- Obama's not going to compete with the size crowds European soccer championships receive --- but many will come out of curiousity.
It's hard to know what to expect. There's a possibility for some death penalty protesters --- a hot topic in Europe, which covers American executions closely and where Obama's statement on the recent Supreme Court ruling was headline news.
As for the choice of venue: The Victory Column, whose meaning shifted even while it was being built, ended up commemorating in 1873 a rapid series of three wars in which Prussia defeated each of its neighbors in turn --- Denmark, Austria, and then even more spectacularly, France --- in order to form, for the first time, a unified Germany.
But this historical significance is easily exaggerated, and the association with Prussia isn't pressing for most German onlookers. As with most public monuments, the Column has remained open to reinterpretation by new generations, just as the Brandenburg Gate evolved into a symbol of German unity and American solidarity only centuries after being built.
Most recently, the Column has served as the backdrop for Berlin's most popular mass festivals. The rave-music-themed "Love Parade" and celebrations following soccer championships are examples. And this is another reason the site is compelling. By far, this is the broadest, most accessible venue in Berlin, with the maximum ability to host crowds. The park surrounding the Column is comparable to Central Park in New York.
In the end, it's not the venue I would have chosen, but there's a clear view of the Brandenburg Gate, allowing the minimum amount of re-packaging so shortly before the event. We'll see what happens.
Can recent events give the MSM "analysts" the motivation to look deeper and more critically at the narrative that McCain is the experienced foreign policy and security candidate?
In case you've been taking a long Saturday nap, the big story is that Prime Minister of Iraq, al Maliki, has basically stated that Sen. Obama's 16 month timeframe for withdrawal is right. This was stated very clearly by him in the leading German news magazine, Der Spiegel: The title, subtitle and first sentence could not make it any clearer:
Summer. The dog days in American politics. Congress is out of session, people are supposedly on vacation and not paying attention to politics. Running mates are yet to be picked, conventions are still weeks away, and with them the start of the fall campaign. Polls are commissioned, with plenty of analysis of what they might mean for an election three months away.
Barack Obama surveys Baghdad with General David Petraeus
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama greets U.S. troops at Camp Arifjan, the main U.S. military base in Kuwait. He stopped there Friday en route to Afghanistan.
