Obama: We don't need ACORN's help

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: CNN

(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama responded Tuesday to the McCain campaign's efforts to link him to embattled community organizing group ACORN.

"We've got the best voter registration, turnout, and volunteer operation in politics right and we don't need ACORN's help," Obama said Tuesday in Ohio.

The Illinois senator added that ACORN was not advising his campaign, and echoed campaign advisors who have increasingly accused the GOP of trying to suppress voter turnout as Election Day nears. "What I want to make sure of, though, is that this is not used as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression tactics that we've seen in the past. Let's make sure everybody is voting, everybody is registered, everybody is doing this is a lawful way," he said.

The Democratic nominee's comments came the same day that his campaign held a conference call with reporters about the McCain campaign's recent focus on voter fraud. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and general counsel Bob Bauer accused Republicans of trying to intimidate voters and sow the seeds of confusion as the historic presidential election approaches.

"They seem to be setting up a strategy here to make it harder to vote," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters on a conference call. "To create a situation where voters don't have confidence in the system."

"They are going to try to raise questions. You know, cry out and raise questions about fraud and try and create a smokescreen out there to confuse voters and perhaps to give cover to some of the activities they're going to be undertaking over the next three weeks."

The Obama campaign also took issue with the McCain camp's recent efforts to link Obama to ACORN, whose voter registration efforts have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks. "We have our own registration effort," the Obama campaign's general counsel Bob Bauer said on the call. "We register our own voters under our own standards and we do so successfully."

Bauer also denied that the campaign ever paid Citizens Services, Inc., an entity affiliated with ACORN, to register voters. "We have never paid ACORN a penny for registration purposes," said Bauer. The campaign's payments to Citizens Services, Inc. "were for canvassing in some of the larger primary states back in the spring - Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania," Plouffe said. "It was to augment our grassroots organization."


Sen. Obama talked about ACORN with reporters in Ohio Tuesday.

Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/14/obama-camp-gop-trying-to-intimidate-voters/#more-24467

[bluestateguy]

1. Does ACORN do GOTV? Have they followed up on all these people they registered?

If not, then he's right, ACORN is not needed once the registration deadline is over.

[democracy1st]

2. great to see Team Obama get on this K & R

[skooooo]

3. snap!

Obama's got that too!

[Magleetis]

4. Obama

nails it again. Correct answer Barack.

[fascisthunter]

5. Hey McCain Supporters... here's a bit more BLOW BACK...

from here I as well as many others, question your loyalty to democracy itself. We know you love to use that word a lot, especially when attacking countries that aren't a threat to you... so far you have proven beyond a doubt that you have no intention of respecting the word or it's true meaning and practice.

I question your loyalty to OUR Democracy and in turn your patriotism....

[mzmolly]

6. The thing I love about the Obama camp is that they respond to EVERYTHING in spite

of being ahead in the polls

:toast:

[MadMaddie]

7. Acorn brought the issues to the law

The people that forged names are the ones that committed crimes.

[SavageDem]

9. Exactly. ACORN has done a great job.

It's too bad that Obama feels the need to distance himself from this. ACORN has done a fantastic job getting the disenfranchised to exercise their rights as Americans. Just because a couple people out of hundreds of thousands happened to put incorrect - or possibly false - information on a few voter registration forms does not give license to vilify the entire organization. And, as has been noted, ACORN itself clamped down on the few cases where invalid information was submitted.

The real criminals we need to be watching for are the Republican operatives actively suppressing voters, intimidating voters, throwing away ballots, and rigging voting machines. How we let these a-holes continue to sow fear about non-existent voter fraud and let people remain unaware of the massive vote theft that has occurred for at least the last three elections is beyond me!

[Peace Patriot]

8. "...ACORN, whose voter registration efforts have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks."

This is just fucking disinformation. Yeah, it's come under "increasing scrutiny" -- with the Corpo/Fascist 'news' monopolies trumpeting every wild, unfactual piece of crapolo from McDrone and the Pukes--to no avail. Nothing was found. Nothing has ever been found that impugns this great organization's voter registration efforts. They flag their own registrations for election officials--anything that looks remotely in error or fraudulent--because it is ILLEGAL to register someone to vote and NOT turn in their registration cards. They are doing great work. They are registering people that others miss--the very poor, the homeless. These are people whom the Pukes do NOT want voting. And I am very disappointed in Obama and his campaign for "distancing" themselves ACORN, thus giving credence to these disgusting Puke/Corpo/fascist media attacks on ACORN, by saying "we don't need ACORN." What a thing to say! As if the homeless and the very poor are not disregarded enough already! And, by God, Obama & co. need every vote they can get, because they have NOT been vigilant, and have said not one word about, the Puke corporations that are running this election with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, in all the voting machines, with virtually no audit/recount controls. They should be encouraging and praising ACORN! Not saying, "We don't need ACORN." Jeez.

And while I'm at it, I want to vent about Obama saying that the government needs to help the "middle class," in this financial 9/11 that the Bushwhacks are pulling, and NOT the poor! What is this--a sort of 'Democratic' form of "trickle down"? Where are the poor in his speeches?

He apparently doesn't need them. The Pukes can just shred their votes, for all he seems to care.

FDR he is not. JFK he is not. RFK he is not. They were not afraid to advocate for THE POOR. What kind of "Blue Dog" game is he playing?

OK, I vented it. Sorry to be so negative. I like Obama. I just voted for him! I sent his campaign money, back when they were struggling--money I really couldn't afford. I want him to win. But I'm keeping my eyes open, too. I understand about the 'TRADE SECRET' code, and what dangerous gauntlets he must walk to get elected. "We don't need ACORN" just got under my skin. We, the people of this country, need to have each other's backs. We are all in great peril. That struck me as backstabbing, and I don't like it.

[jaybeat]

11. Helping the poor = raising your taxes to give it to a lazy bum

That's the perception, anyway. We have Ronald Reagan and 28 years of Republican class warfare to thank for that.

Read a great article in Salon about how the problems are affecting the poor and how little anyone is saying about it:

According to both Bernstein and Hederman, those at the bottom usually receive less attention in times of economic crisis. They are a politically insignificant group compared to the broad American middle class, and expressing support in policy terms for the poor, who are often seen as lazy recipients of the un-American handout, can be risky for a politician in a close election. “The poor have been pretty invisible on the political stage,” Bernstein says. “It’s usually only in boom times that we look at those issues closely, and people debate if there are policy failures or they are just lazy bums.”

More at: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/13/bottom_of_Bush_econ/

It's another side effect of the great Republican con-game. Just like how people don't like the idea of raising taxes on the rich, because they want to think that they'll be rich some day, people don't like to hear politicians talk about helping the poor, because no one wants to think of themselves as "poor"--even if they are! So "helping the poor" ends up being heard as "taxing MY hard earned money to help some lazy-ass welfare queen," but "strengthening the middle class" is something we can all get behind, because, hey, even if I drive a $60K car and have a condo at the beach (plus my 3000 sq. ft. suburban home), of course I'm middle class, and I need help, too! (I don't have any of the above, but I know people who do. I also know a single parent w/2 kids making $30K a year who would also consider herself middle class, even though she has no health care and might be eligible for food stamps.)

In the Great Depression, with 25% plus unemployment, losing your job was all it took to send you from middle class straight to the soup lines and living in a Hooverville shack. And everyone knew it. So "helping the poor" sounded great, because any of us might be in that boat, at any time. Now, with all the stuff that easy credit bought us, plus the (increasingly false) sense of security from the social safety net that's been developed (and largely decimated) since that time, the path from middle class to destitute can be a bit slower. But in our minds they are now *worlds* away. That old, bent over homeless lady, or that young single mother turning tricks to buy food for her kids--THAT could never be US... or so we think. So politicians can get us to vote ourselves to hell by promising good times for those whom we'd like to think we are like (why shouldn't the rich, and the rest of us, "get to keep more of our own money," like Bush said in a debate against Al Gore?), and they can torpedo their own campaigns if they let us think they will help those who, somehow, don't *deserve* it. Its Protestant work ethic rugged individualistic libertarianism combined with a sociopathic need to demonize the "other" as less than us, less than human, undeserving of help, compassion or a different economic system that doesn't create a great unwashed mass of "have-nots".

Perhaps, the turmoil ahead will awaken some to the lies they've been sold. Gang of Four may have said it best:

Blinkered
Paralyzed
Flat on my back

They said our world is built with endeavor
That every man is for himself
Wealth is for the one that wants it
Paradise--If you can earn it!

History’s the reason
I’m washed up

Blinkered
Paralyzed
Flat on my back

My ambitions come to nothing
What I wanted now seems just a waste of time
I can’t make out what has gone wrong
I was good at what I did

The crows come home to roost and I’m the dupe!

[tom_paine]

10. Sometimes I do despiar. Obama plays right into the Bushie Frame.

I don't expect him to "out" the Bushie Propaganda Op, though it's certainly easy enough for someone on his campaign to sit down and show him BradBlog's concise debuinking of what should not be possible in a free nation.

But there are more wys thatn to distance and disavow.

How easily our Democrats distance and disavow. Scattering like a flock of pigeons every time the Bushies run their Ops. tame bunnies.

I thought Obama could do better against it than Kerry or Gore, and he has...marginally so. WE NEED BETTER THAN MARGINALLY SO!

But if the economy had not gone kerflooie he'd be losing, I think.

(much as I hate to say it, and it doesn't speak so much ill of him as our National Hypnosis before the National Hologram)

Dear God, I do despair. Can ANYONE stop the Final Bushification of our nation? The ACORN Op shows just how deeply all levels of law enforcement have been corrupted and forgotten their pre-Bushification morality and now are more Nazified/Bushified than ever.

[stillcool]

12. I kind of like this statement..

"They are going to try to raise questions. You know, cry out and raise questions about fraud and try and create a smokescreen out there to confuse voters and perhaps to give cover to some of the activities they're going to be undertaking over the next three weeks."

[tom_paine]

13. True. I like it, too. Obama is most definitely marginally better than Kerry or Gore

when it comes to fighting Bushiganda.

To most, the difference looks tremendous because ANYTHING looks tremendous next to zero or close to it.

But "marginally better" is just not good enough to do anything more than give us a rest before the next Bushie Emperor comes along and picks right up where they left off like they were never gone.

I hope I am wrong about this, and I urge everyone to vote on Nov. 4th for OBAMA.

But I've gotta call it like I see it.

[Robbien]

14. Acorn is great and the GOP know that.

Which is the reason why they are being used by the GOP in this game. Two birds with one stone. Tarnish a good advocate for the disadvantaged and paint Obama with allegations of fraud.