During a Obama campaign conference call with reporters yesterday, Senator Claire McCaskill said it would be “inappropriate and awkard and wrong for any of us to tell Senator Clinton when it is time for the race to be over.”
She said the decision is Clinton’s alone.
Here’s the complete conference call (McCaskill’s comments are around -18:00):
Also featured on the call was Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
Here is the Clinton campaign’s conference call also from Wednesday:
Obama is scheduled to speak here in the Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University tonight around 9:00. They’ve set up his podium on one end of the basketball court. Around half-court is the riser set-up for TV networks. The back court is filled with dozens of tables for up laptop reporters.
TUESDAY, MAY 6 - ELECTION DAY!
Clinton is running commercials on North Carolina TV featuring poet and author Maya Angelou. In the ad, Angelou, who is black, says she believes she has found “the best person to be President of the United States.”
If Barack Obama wins the North Carolina primary Tuesday, it will not be a small feat historically. The headline of the local paper tells the story: “Race Still Influences Voters, Poll Finds”. The article gives some context:
Racial issues have shaped North Carolina politics since the Reconstruction era. In 1880, The New York Times detailed county-by-county violations of white Democrats keeping black Republicans from voting. In Wilmington in 1898, whites rioted and forced blacks from their homes after a local election, the only known political coup in U.S. history.
In more recent years, former Gov. Terry Sanford lost the Tar Heel Democratic presidential primary in 1972 to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist who made his name fighting school integration.
And then there was the Harvey Gantt/Jesse Helms U.S. Senate race of 1990. Helms, the Republican incumbent, was in a close race with Gantt, Charlotte’s first black mayor, until airing a last-minute ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter and blaming the job loss on affirmative action.
On the current TV ads (see below):
In the Democratic gubernatorial race, state treasurer Richard Moore linked Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue to the Ku Klux Klan in advertisements.
The N.C. Republican party aired commercials tying both Perdue and Moore to the Rev. Wright despite requests from McCain and the national Republican establishment to hold its fire.
“Although both parties claim they don’t, they have racial overtones,” Bacot said of the ads.
From the mouths of North Carolina voters:
Greg Gallagher, 52, a construction worker who lives in Pamlico County, was so uncomfortable hearing about Obama’s pastor that he worries about the candidate himself.
“The more I know, the less I like him,” said Gallagher, who is white. “You listen to this guy — it’s not going to pull people together. It’ll break them apart.”
Bev Barksdale, 48, a bartender in Oriental who worries most about health care, said she e-mailed Clinton last week advising the senator that black voters in Eastern North Carolina will come out for Obama.
“I said, ‘You need to come further east.’ In the counties, people are uninformed, uneducated and black,” said Barksdale, who is white. “I’m not a racist, but I think a lot of black people are coming out to vote because of the race issue.”
Like Gallagher, she would vote for McCain or not at all before casting a ballot for Obama. She said he has too little experience, and she doesn’t think he’s willing to pledge allegiance to the flag.
“That is huge to me,” she said. (Obama has led the pledge in the U.S. Senate.)
In Kinston, Daniel Adams, a 30-year-old scientist, recently switched his registration from Republican to Democrat (”It’s like someone who’s just finished AA,” he said jokingly.)
A native of Eastern North Carolina who has lived and worked abroad, Adams has grown used to — if frustrated by — the racism he hears from extended family. They always vote white, he said.
“I think race always plays into decisions, especially with politics, especially in the South,” said Adams, who is white. He wanted to break that mold. And so for the longest time, Adams liked Obama’s idealism.
“I once thought he could change the country,” said Adams.
But he has lost some faith in Obama now, wondering how the man could sit for 20 years in Wright’s pews. Adams will vote for Clinton in the primary.
SUNDAY, MAY 4
Entering the final 48 hours before the important North Carolina and Indiana primaries on Tuesday.
Here is the negative ad being run by the North Carolina Republican Party. It is officially attacking the Democratic candidates for governor, but the real target seems to be Barack Obama. The ad is running now. It seems like the NCGOP would prefer if Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary.
Three days before Election Day, there were already lines today outside of polling places in North Carolina.
North Carolina has what they call “One-Stop Early Voting”, meaning a resident who is qualified to register to vote may register In-Person and vote at a One-Stop Site in the person’s county of residence during the One-Stop Absentee Voting period. The One-Stop Voting period extends from 19 to 3 days before Election Day. Today was the last day before Tuesday’s actual Election Day.
In Greensboro today, lines spilled outside of the polling place located in a recreation center in a park. The park was scheduled to be the site of a rally and barbeque featuring Hip-Hop artist and actor Mos Def, an Obama supporter, but organizers informed us that Mos Def missed his flight and was unable to attend. But that didn’t stop throngs of college students from still coming out to vote today.
FRIDAY, MAY 2
We’re heading to North Carolina for the days leading up to the important Democratic primary this Tuesday between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
