Did you know that Obama?

Question

Did not win his first election, for Illinois state Senator, by being the best candidate?

The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama won by having his campaign workers systematically challenge hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of his three opponents. When they were done, Obama was the only person left on the ballot to vote for.

All perfectly legal

But pretty underhanded for a messiah, don't you think

Answer 1

Obama Offers a Beautifully Packaged Lie

Robert Tracinski Fri Aug 29, 3:30 PM ET

There was a fair bit of talk about Bill Clinton's speech Wednesday night to the Democratic convention, and Peggy Noonan even went so far as to declare that "The Master Has Arrived." But she is wrong. When it comes to political oratory, the master arrived last night at Invesco Field. Bill Clinton can give a glib speech, but there has always been something missing from his delivery. Try as he might--and he really did try--he was never able to convincingly fake sincerity. Barack Obama can fake sincerity, and that, more than the words of a speech or the pageantry that precedes it, is the key to his power as a speaker.

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His speech last night was brilliant and perfect. It is too bad that the whole thing was a lie, which depended on the smoothness and apparent sincerity of Senator Obama's delivery to lull the listener into a state of credulity and prevent him from asking too many questions.

Here's an example that is small but revealing. Obama led with the best sales pitch he has to offer: that he is not George Bush. But of course, Obama is running against John McCain, not Bush. So he attempted to justify the substitution by claiming that "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." This statistic has been used throughout the Democratic convention, but it makes no sense. Bush is not a member of Congress and casts no votes there--so how can you compare his voting record to that of McCain?

But don't examine this folly; ask only what it accomplishes. It allows Obama to run against an unpopular president who will not defend himself because he is not actually in the race.

When it came to making the positive case for himself, Obama's first goal was to address the public's concerns about his background, particularly his patriotism and how much he identifies with American values. So he drew, not from his own biography, but from that of his family.

[I]n the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships....

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work....

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me.

In addition to identifying himself with the lower-income, blue-collar types who have so far refused to vote for him, Obama is also painting himself as someone with uncontroversial, traditional American values, someone who believes in fighting for your country and improving your life through hard work and perseverance.

This is supposed to make us forget that Barack Obama launched his political career under the spiritual guidance of a pastor who delivered far-left tirades calling on God to d**n America--and he launched his first campaign under the patronage of a former domestic terrorist. Theirs are the stories that also shaped Barack Obama--but he wants to write Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers out of his biography.

Worse, he wants us to stop asking questions about this sort of thing.

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain. But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

It's awfully generous of Obama to refrain from questioning the patriotism of a war hero. The real purpose of this statement, of course, is not to protect McCain but to protect Obama. Its purpose is to declare off-limits any further questions or discussion about his past association with Wright, Ayers, and all of the other shady characters from Obama's past.

On another area where he is particularly weak, foreign policy, Obama decided that the best defense is a strident offense. He projected a righteous self-confidence intended to make his viewers forge

Answer 2

Yep. He's a typical anything to get elected kinda politician. Seems that all there are in the Dem party.

Answer 3

yes this is true, and you want to know even more about his hypocrisy?

then i highly suggest you all take a good look at this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b1LtsfK...

hes a liar and a hypocrite, who will say ANYTHING to become president.  

Answer 4

where is your source link?

Answer 5

Nobody is more afraid of the remotest chance of Obama getting into the White House, but I don't need half-truths to back my support of McCain.  Your story is only partially true.  Obama was asked to run for a position that was being vacated by a woman who was going to run for another office.  She was an incumbent and would have won hands down if she had run against Obama.  He agreed to run in her place.  Turns out she did NOT win her election and asked him to bow out so she could run (with not even the slightest chance of losing to him) for her old position.  He refused, as was his right, and she  quickly tried to grab the nomination by getting the necessary signatures.  As in all elections, Obama contested the signatures and found the usual dead people, non-existent people, etc.  He won, she lost.  That's all there is to it.  Perfectly legal and ethical.

  Let's just rely on the PLETHORA of REAL issues that make McCain the better choice.  

  McCain/Phalin '08  

Answer 6

K THANK! LOL

OBAMA/BIDEN 2008

Answer 7

The messiah is Jesus Christ, injecting the bible or religon in your argument is a sign of being inept as a voter and very un-American.

Your KKK wants Obama to win look at this link

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080808/ap_o...

Answer 8

That's what we call qualification for the job in Dem lingo.

Answer 9

rules is rules and he exposed his opponents for the cheaters they were

Answer 10

That is true.

But, it was the timing factor that made this move a success.

about 2 weeks before the election he presented his challenge and this eroded his opponents signature base count forcing them to become ineligible for the election.

Yet to date not a single signature he challenged has been invalidated. He goal was to make his opponents miss the election.  (Joe McCarthism)

Obama won his first election unchallenged.

His second election was won by blackmailing the republican challenger. That one is just a juicy and underhanded.

Sort of same the way Sadam Hussein came to power

tcw

Answer 11

Look up the word, "old style, corrupt, Daley Machine politician", and there will be a picture of Obama there.

Answer 12

yes he challenged the signatures, but why would you support someone who was doing fraud in doubling or faking signatures?

and by the way, republicans call him Messiah, because they like to use the lord's name in vain apparently. That's what you are doing, you do realize that, don't you?  

Answer 13

Hummmm, all legal, resourceful and accomplished what he wanted. Sounds like the kind of go getter this country needs.

By the way, is smears the only thing the republicans have to promote the right wing? I guess that's probably why they are 9 points down in the last poll. Give me solutions to the nations problems, then I will start listening.

Answer 14

That is normal procedure, seriously, that is one of the jobs campaign workers do.  You would be surprised at how many phony signatures emerge during elections.  Dogs names, childrens names, alot of deceased folks names etc..

Answer 15

Would you expect anything less from a democrat?

Answer 16

I think that Obama has never won a contested election for office. (He won the nomination for the Democratic presidential candidacy, but not the election for office.)

When he ran for senate, he ran against Alan Keyes, a place holder candidate with no chance of winning.

Answer 17

everything is fair in love and war.

Answer 18

Took some real digging, But I did find your link in the archives of the Chicago Tribune. Enjoy people, This is one two-faced politician. There's no change from this man, just plenty of emotional-trigger words spilling out of his mouth.

Edit: After reading some of the other answers, thought I'd throw in some quotes from the link below and from another answerers' link;

ThaMan2131, Go ahead and vote for McCain. After four more years of George Bush's economic policies, four more years of a war nobody wants and four more years of a man who really doesn't look like he's ready to be president, people will be begging for anyone but McCain. We've had eight years of republicans running things and even your fool eyes can see the results. Vote your fears and vote your racism and you'll see destruction, the like that has never been seen before in America.

{that was from a comment forum- does that sound like some of his supporters are making threatening promises to you, or am I delusional?}

America has been defined in part by civil rights and good government battles fought out in Chicago's 13th District, which in 1996 spanned Hyde Park mansions, South Shore bungalows and poverty-bitten precincts of Englewood.

It was in this part of the city that an eager reform Democrat by the name of Abner Mikva first entered elected office in the 1950s. And here a young, brash minister named Jesse Jackson ran Operation Breadbasket, leading marchers who sought to pressure grocery chains to hire minorities.

Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.

But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.

Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.

**************

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.

But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

Yeah, right.... change my wazzoo!

Answer 19

yep! and his second election he did the same thing. only he couldnt get them all.

He caused one candidate a divorce and then 3 months later it came out that he was wrong. too late then!

he claimed his candidate was in a brothel in england having s*x with 3 women and another man.

3 months later, it was discovered that one of obamas campaign people printed the news article from his computer as the paper in england had no such story.

Answer 20

Which is worse...this or the fact that he hangs out with terrorists?

Answer 21

this is also something the democrats wont listen to. all they do is listen to what they want to hear.  

Answer 22

So what ?????????????????????????

Answer 23

Source please?  If its true that shows hes pretty shady.  Nothing new to Chicago politics though.

Answer 24

He removed an awful lot of registrants who did not exist, yes.