Free The Blackberry

John Podesta argues for liberation.

I've been working with Barack Obama since before the election, and I know that without his virtual connection to old friends and trusted confidants beyond the bubble that seals off every president from the people who elected him, he'd be like a caged lion padding restlessly around the West Wing, wondering what's happening on the other side of the iron bars that surround the People's House.

An off-line Obama isn't just bad for Barack. It's bad for all of us.

The president's ability to reach outside his inner circle gives him access to fresh ideas and constructive critics; it underscores the difference between political "victories" and actual solutions; and it brings the American people into a battle we can only win by working together.

The reason Obama will probably lose Blackberry privileges is the 1978 Presidential Reocrds Act, which was signed into law 24 years before the invention of the Blackberry. But surely there's a compromise here that can be reached through Congress that will enable Obama to get unfiltered information from friends and opinion makers. The laws need to keep pace with modern life, and we should want to welcome our President into it.

UPDATE: WIN! Obama will keep his Blackberry. But the legislation angle ought to be addressed.

Don't Call It A Comeback

During the primary, Hillary Clinton reacted to her surprise victory in the New Hampshire primary by saying "I found my voice." That's what's happening this week in the general election.



The commentary is so sharp and the messaging so pointed that the media really is covering it. And Democratic allies, for once, are piling on.

"One Senator -- John McCain -- woke up yesterday morning, surveyed the state of the U.S. economy, summoned the ghost of his fellow Republican, Herbert Hoover, and declared, 'The fundamentals of our economy are strong,'" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, before laying responsibility for the current woes in part on McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm.

"I served with Phil Gramm here in the Senate," he said. "The same Phil Gramm who, as a Senator, was responsible for the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for much of this crisis to occur. I like Phil Gramm, I don't like his economics. A respected economist at the University of Texas -- now that's where Phil Gramm taught, in Texas -- a respected economist at the University of Texas, James Galver said that Gramm was, and I quote, 'the most aggressive advocate of every predatory and rapacious element that the financial sector has,' and went on to say he is a 'sorcerer's apprentice of instability and disaster in the financial system.'" [...]

"Since President Bush has been in office, median income for working-aged Americans has gone down by over $2,000 after adjusting for inflation. Family income is going down. People are spending more for food," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The cost of gas, of course, is now off the wall. College education costs are up. How does that sound like a situation in which 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong,' according to Senator McCain? And the confusion in all of this is pretty easily understood.

"The truth is," Sanders continued, "that the fundamentals of our economy are strong if you are within the top 1 percent of our country. If you're a million or billionaire, you know what, Senator McCain is right. For those people, the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

I love Bernie Sanders.

The outside groups are starting to help as well, and while they exist on both sides, the fact that ours are playing off of this general narrative about conservative failure on the economy gives them a stronger resonance. And then there's the cultural wallpaper that we're starting to see more frequently, like this Hockey Moms for Truth ad:



Or the Palin Truth Squad:

With today's report that Democrats have "airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage" to find all the skeletons in Sarah Palin's closet before they come to life and overrun Alaska, the McCain-Palin campaign has launched the Palin Truth Squad to keep America safe from the truth about Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her cronies, and her inexperience. In keeping with the general strategy of the McCain campaign, the Palin Truth Squad will make sure that the truth about Sarah Palin is kept as far from American voters as possible.

"We're nervous about Sarah Palin's record of taking on library books, her ex-brother-in-law, and the atmosphere," said former Governor Jane Swift. "Sarah Palin's commitment to pork is becoming well-known, so we seek to distort the truth about it. We will not allow the left and the media to criticize the only mayor in Alaska who made rape victims pay for their own forensic exams. We know the truth and are committed to making sure that it doesn't cloud the mind of a single American voter."

And there are the #invented hashtag jokes exploding on twitter. You know the "I created the Blackberry" thing has reached a cultural tipping point when the Obama campaign is changing their sigs:

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burton
Sent: Tue 9/16/2008 4:07 PM
To: Ben Smith
Subject:

[snip]
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld, a miracle made possible by John McCain.

And even Sherrod Brown is in on it, quipping: "If he invented the BlackBerry, I blame him for having to spend too much time on my BlackBerry and not talking to my wife enough."

The momentum has shifted, in my humble opinion.

The Fundamentals Of McCain-Palin Lies Are Strong

People are really getting into the swing of chronicling the lies of the McCain-Palin ticket. Practice makes perfect, of course, and the team is giving us the equivalent of summer two-a-days.

Last night Sarah Palin retold a debunked lie about the TelePrompTer breaking during her RNC convention speech, when there is photographic and eyewitness evidence to the contrary.

Palin and McCain continue to tell the completely discredited story about Sarah saying "thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge To Nowhere, and McCain compounded it yesterday by claiming that Palin vetoed earmarks as Governor of Alaska, which you can't do.

But now we have the great Magilla Gorilla, the one that should get the "serial liar" meme cruising to the top of the charts.

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."

I think he's talking about spectrum policy which led to things like the Blackberry. The thing is that telecommunications is actually pretty poor in the United States. We're behind much of the industrialized world in broadband penetration and overall cellular signal strength. Also there's the little matter that Research in Motion, actual creators of the Blackberry, are in Canada.

I guess McCain is trying to disavow Holtz-Eakin's comment as we speak. But there's no reason to be so generous. Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet yet the label became a punchline for the entire campaign. McCain's top economic adviser taking credit for a range of telecom innovations should be met the same way.

Also, do you really want to tie yourself that close to the hated telecom industry?

UPDATE: Obama campaign comments:

"If John McCain hadn't said that 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' on the day of one of our nation's worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Love them coming back to hammering the "fundamentals" theme.

UPDATE II: Documentary evidence!