Obama

There is obviously a lot of energy/environmental news today. I don't have time to write up every candidate right now like I did with McCain, mostly because I am working on building out a new feature on the candidates and the issues. More on that later this week.

For now, here is a brief overview of the weekends news, when it comes to the candidates and the environment.

Today, Barack Obama announced a new energy proposal in New Hampshire. It is modeled off of California's goal to lower carbon content in all fuels in the state. Arnold's "10 by 20" executive order set a goal of reducing the carbon intensity of fuel for passenger vehicles by 10 by 2020.

The Obama campaign said its effort would take that plan nationally. Specifically, Obama wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 5 percent in 2015 and 10 percent in 2020.

"It will take a grass-roots effort to make America greener and end the tyranny of oil," Obama said. Earth Day this Sunday, he said, "should mark the beginning of a nationwide effort to harness our technology, our ingenuity and our will to achieve energy independence in our time."

Obama's plan counts on new limits to force increased production of renewable biofuels, such as corn and cellulosic ethanol, which naturally have lower emissions. The plan would create incentives for increased research, investment in cleaner fuels and flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol.

The campaign says a national fuel standard would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 200 million tons in 2020 compared with 2007 levels” the equivalent of taking about 32 million cars off the road in 2020. The campaign also estimates the annual consumption of gasoline derived from foreign oil imports would drop by about 30 billion gallons in 2020.

Obama is all ready on the record in favor of raising the fuel efficiency standards. As covered earlier, he is a co-sposoring a bill in Congress along with Feinstein and Boxer. The passage of both would mean a cut of 583 million tons of green house gasses by 2020. That is the equivalent of taking about 96 million cars off the road.

With Earth Day coming up on Sunday, expect the other candidates to spend a lot of time talking about the environment. Hopefully, a few more will step forward with new policy proposals. It is fantastic to see California being used as a model for the rest of the nation.

Conventional wisdom about the presidential primaries has completely changed in the last three months. All of the DC insiders thought that Clinton and McCain would clean up in the money and march all the way to the nomination for their parties. Nothing could be further from the truth. The DC punditocracy are changing their rankings and pondering a wide open race.

The Hotline rankings for the Democrats are out and there is no leader. They have Obama and Clinton tied, with Edwards just a hair behind.

There is no Democratic front-runner. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all have a plausible claim on the nomination.

The usual metrics are all jumbled. Clinton leads the money race, leads in New Hampshire, and tops the national polls. Obama leads in South Carolina, in media love, and in enthusiasm. Edwards has the tightest message, the best organization in Iowa, and the lead in Iowa.

The Washington Post focuses on the money race, which is only one of the factors that Hotline takes into account.

I am outside at my neighborhood cafe, hopped up on ice tea with free refills and wireless. It is that time again. Enjoy the linky goodness.

We are getting a second wave of coverage on campaign contributions today. California was Obama's biggest donor state. Clinton pulled in more here overall $5.1M to Obama's $4.2.

Speaking of donations and locations...the NYT has been having fun with datamashups. They have combined a pretty map with candidate donations. You can see where in the country they are raising the most money from. Its fun to play around with and has a zip code lookup.

Bill Clinton charmed Carla Marinucci at a recent fundraising event in SF.

Tommy Thompson sure put his foot in his mouth today, saying that Jews have a 'tradition' of 'earning money'. Think Progress has the video, Atrios the snark.

A CNN national poll shows the race tightening up in both parties. Clinton and Guilani have lost ground since last month's poll. Speaking of national polls, Chris Bowers thinks they are inflating Clinton's lead.

McCain is having a little trouble with his pronouns and taxes. Hotline has the goods.

The Obama needs substance meme is spreading. I have been contributing to that admittedly, though others have the same issue.

The LADN has a decent profile of Richardson this weekend, titled Richardson walks tightrope as top Latino candidate".

It was a relatively quiet day today on the presidential front. The biggest story was on foreign policy, more specifically the Iraq war.

The big winner (at least on the blogs) from the MoveOn Iraq Townhall was Richardson, who came out strongly for pulling all troops out of Iraq. Edwards stepped up and mostly agreed with that stance today. Bowers explains the difference between Richardson, Edwards and Clinton.

Obama and McCain are going back and forth on the Iraq War. McCain tried to attach himself to one of Obama's statements and he was having none of that.

Edwards is going on a rural tour next week, but not coming to Cali.

Clinton is getting kudos for her defense of the Rutgers basketball team, with a message on her website and email to her list.

On a related note, I recently signed up for emails from Clinton, Obama and Richardson using the forms on their website header (I was already on Edwards and Dodd's list). Not one sent me a welcome message and a request to take some sort of action or collect more information. Come on now people, you should know better. The first 24 hours is your best chance to really form a relationship with your new subscribers. They really should have an auto email system for the newbies. The only email I have gotten from them was Clinton's on Rutgers. Nothing from Obama or Richardson yet.

Time for a tour of the most interesting news articles on the Presidential race today.

• LAT says Clinton and McCain have lost their front-runner status. They of course base most of their analysis on the fundraising totals, which is only one measure of success at this stage of the game. The article really is a vehicle to talk about how engaged and active the Democratic activists are this early in the game.
• Every major newspaper needs at least one article on how the candidates are using social networking sites to engage the youngins. The SDUT takes its turn.
• Bloomberg cover's Edwards' wooing of labor. Edwards put a lot of time and effort into attracting the support of unions since his 2004 primary loss. We will see how much it pays off for him as endorsements are made later on.
• New York has officially joined California on Feb 5th. This obviously helps both Clinton and Giuliani, though New Yorkers definately have a different perspective on Rudy than the rest of the country.

  I think journalists need to decide on its nickname. Is it Super-Duper Tuesday or Tsunami Tuesday? I like the latter personally.

• Guess where Richardson spent his Easter? If you said North Korea you would be correct. He is there with an American delegation negotiating the return of the remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War.
• Edwards likes California's ReadyReturn so much that he wants to see it become a national program. He is calling for the IRS to use data it already collects to complete 50 million tax returns for people.
• Obama will be on Letterman tonight. Oh and Hill is sending Bill for some CaliCash next weekend.

Obama is starting to leak some details of his universal health care plan in response to recent criticism. He was in Iowa yesterday giving a talk specifically on health care. Here are some of the concepts that would or might be included.

• Federal subsidies for uninsured Americans to enroll in the same insurance programs as federal employees.
• Modernization of medial records to electronic systems to save money
• Early detection of chronic illnesses
• Greater emphasis on child wellness programs
• Did not say if his proposal would require a tax increase.

This is a start and I expect a few more details will trickle out in coming weeks. Obama's goal is to ensure all Americans are covered by 2012. It is an admirable goal for sure, but the devil is in the details. Here is a few excerpts from his speech.

"We shouldn't just put more money into a system that isn't efficient," Obama said during a meeting with about 100 people in Mason City.

[snip]

"We can save huge amounts of money and put that money into providing basic health insurance or subsidies to purchase health insurance for those who don't have it," Obama told about 400 supporters and Democratic activists in Fort Dodge. "We can create universal health care in this country."

Obama is also featuring a video from a community meeting on health care in NH. It is a bit buggy for Apple/Firefox users.

Next week expect an overview of Edward's proposal, plus information on the rest of the candidates statements on health care.

In the 2008 campaign, affordable, universal health care for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how. We have the ideas, we have the resources, and we will have universal health care in this country by the end of the next president's first term.

That is Barack Obama speaking back in January. The quote is featured at the top of his Obama's health care policy page, which is a curious choice. Obama says that "we have the ideas", but right now he doesn't have any. In many respects he is like Arnold, promising policy down the road.

He has built up an amazing campaign in a very short period of time, but Obama has been lacking the depth of answers of his campaign rivals. It has been noticeable on the trail and not just to the experts. LAT:

That seems to be most voters' attitude towards the rest of the Bush presidency and at least a partial explanation for the early interest in the 2008 election. Primary fever has hit California now that we have on of the earliest dates in 2008.

Working Californians is going to do some work around the February 5th primary here in California and I will get to do some blogging. Our focus naturally will be on quality of life issues. Before we get to that and as I get up to speed, this thread will bring you the best of what I have found around the internets today. Enjoy!

• The Field Poll is out with their numbers. Chris Cizzilia of the WaPo has an excellent breakdown of the numbers, including the internals.
• The WaPo has a severely underappreciated video series. Today's on the Edward's first campaign appearances since the cancer announcement is fantastic.
• The news of the day is Obama's incredibly strong fundraising quarter. The story is almost as much about the dollar total as the huge number of donors to the campaign. 100,000 donors is simply unheard of at this stage in the game.
• Field released its Republican numbers. No really big surprises there. Giuliani has a strong lead over his rivals.

  Field also ran head to head matches between the Democrats and Republicans. Obama, Clinton and Edwards all would beat Giuliani in the general election. They would all beat McCain too, but their lead is smaller. California is still a blue state. See Frank Russo for more.

• kos adds up the first quarter fundraising in both parties. Democrats lead $78M to $51M.