Day Fourteen, April 8

Right now, anyone who has their eyes on Obama is keeping at least one eye out for what will be happening in the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Two weeks from today, one of the largest remaining political contests the Democratic party has yet to wage will play its part in determining which Senator is going to be on the ballot in November. A month ago, the situation was looking rather grim for Obama in the aptly-named Keystone State, but as countless publications are reporting today, the Illinois Senator has done much to turn his own ship around.

In order to kick off today's post I chose this article, posted today on Forbes.com. Starting out by reminding us just how far ahead Senator Clinton was a month ago (17 points in a poll back in March!), blogger Paul M. Murdock demonstrates just how hard Obama has worked to gain a fighting chance in Pennsylvania. With latest polls showing Hillary ahead by a mere 6 percentage points, Obama is on the tail of the margin-of-error victory that could give him the majority of delegates up for grabs. Considering that he's been outspending his rival's campaign by a count of three-to-one, perhaps this updraft of undecided voters is less surprising after all.

The most inspiring thing about this charge that Obama has mounted in Pennsylvania is the fact that he's managed to do it mostly by recruiting from the type of voters that Hillary has previously been able to keep in her pocket in this race. By reaching out to the white, middle- and working-class vote, Obama is showing the people of Pennsylvania that he not only sympathizes with a state hit especially hard by the recession, but he is willing to fight for them. In a campaign that has placed the importance of no state above any other, making this sort of a comeback is no small feat. Obama's message of economic reform and affordable health care is no more appealing than in Pennslyvania.

In the long run, I think that this month will play a major role in making the economy one of Obama's core issues, which will undoubtedly work out in his favor (and more importantly, it's just what America needs). If the Obama campaign can bring the economy to the forefront of the debates this fall (or if the Federal Reserve does it for him), this will give him a huge edge on McCain, who is holding little more than military experience and his promise to stay the course in Iraq as his trump cards. In a quote from an editorial in last Friday's Boston Globe, Obama emphasized the economic crisis, saying, "there's some very concrete issues that have to be dealt with in terms of disparities in healthcare, or income or joblessness, legacies of the past. So we don't want to paper those issues over." Click here to read the entirety of that editorial, by author Derrick B. Jackson.

Day Four, March 28

Today on the drive to work I was listening to NPR, and caught the tail end of two political panelists (columnists from the Washington Post and New York Times) talking about recent developments, or lack thereof, in the race for Democratic presidential nominee. The final question that the host proposed to his guests was whether this year's presidential race would come down to the war in Iraq, or economic and domestic concerns in the U.S. Both columnists agreed that this year's election would "definitely" be decided by the latter, which was "good news for the Democratic party." Although all three presidential candidates have been reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of a recession in the American economy (or the increasingly obvious fact that we are already in one), any potential candidate for the presidency has no choice but to recognize that the economy is in trouble, and needs a shot in the arm to avoid seeing the bottom fall out of the housing market as well as to prevent the continued floundering of Wall Street on a weekly basis.

Yesterday, both Democratic nominees clarified their positions on how they plan to fix the economic woes the country is facing. Both Obama and Clinton took a rest from highlighting the differences between themselves for once, and turned their barbs against John McCain's own economicaly conservative policies, which Obama said "amounts to little more than watching this crisis happen.'' In a two-prong entry, today I'm including both a video capture of Senator Obama's speech yesterday at Cooper Union in New York that outlines his economic outlook in his own words, as well as a link to an article from The Guardian regarding both Obama's and Clinton's plans to repair the state of the union. Click here to read that article, written by Devlin Barrett and Beth Fouhy, of the Associated Press.

Obama's speech:


The speech itself is something to behold, but in the interest of immediacy, I've attempted to sum up the main points of Obama's plan here. My own grasp of economic frailty is limited (as I will soon demonstrate), but here are the six points that Obama says need to be taken into action to repair the economy:

1.) Any institution that is able to borrow from the Federal Reserve should also be called to answer to any guidelines that the Fed should deem appropriate for these institutions.

2.) General reform is needed in all regulated financial institutions. This is particularly relevant in the mortgage business, to prevent another housing calamity from occurring in the future. This applies for domestic institutions, as well as those that the U.S. is subject to overseas, both to stablize economies and to maintain competition between said institutions.

3.) It is time to restructure regulatory agencies to meet needs for the current U.S. marketplace. Many of these agencies are either being reorganized constantly or are still under the same guiding policies as they were decades ago, and adopting streamlined approach to increase their functionality.

4.) One of the main causes contributing to the current mortgage crisis is the fact that two-thirds of sub prime mortgages were obtained from companies that didn't adhere to the same tight regulations that banks are required to follow. Where these loans originate shouldn't matter, and regulations should be enforced across the board to protect homeowners.

5.) Heightened vigilance is needed in the stock market to prevent marketplace manipulation activities by traders. These type of activities should be liable for punishment from the Security and Exchange Commission.

6.) A financial market commission should be created to oversee the state of the economy and assess upcoming risks we are facing. Such a commission would meet regularly and advise the President, Congress and market regulators about economic risks ahead, so that action can be taken to combat potential problems before they grow.

A complete transcript of the Senator's speech can be retrieved here, from barackobama.com