Japi's Blog

Obama's First Presidential Campaign Commercial

Barack Obama released his first commercial for the Presidential Campaign.  It re-introduces Senator Obama to the public. 

I hope it opens people's eyes and hearts to the message of his campaign.... the minute-long spot shows the democratic nominee in an honest and calm demeanor.

Senator Obama's campaign also announced today that they would not use public funds for the Presidential run.  He is the first Presidential campaign to forgo these funds since the early '70s when this funding was established.

Obama's campaign has over 1.5 million individual donors and most of the donations are of less than $100.  By using only donated funds, Obama's campaign does not have spending limits. 

Maybe I'm naive or there's something I don't understand, but by not taking public money.. isn't this good?  Senator McCain is slamming Obama for this move... but the Republican 527 groups will be spending quite a lot of money to run negative ads - this move allows Obama to be able to match the money spent by these groups to be able to counter those ads.

It's going to be a very interesting campaign.

Hillary Finally Does It Right

After months of bitter Democratic primary battles... Hillary Clinton gave an great speech to put her support behind Barack Obama. 

I don't know if it's a good idea for Obama to put her on the ticket as the running mate... I think she can help bring more votes, but her campaign has been very different from Obama's and I don't believe she is an agent of change... she has a lot of old-time Washington politics baggage PLUS her husband. 

So I think it would be better to ask her to lead the healthcare reform for Obama or something along those lines.

But if she were placed on the ticket, I would still vote for Obama-Hillary.

Here's a short snippet of her speech this past Saturday: