Obama and Christie on the cover, around the world
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y.—”I enter New York City the same as I would enter the D.M.Z. in Vietnam, with much trepidation and caution,” said Jim Wilson, a Vietnam veteran and Mitt Romney die-hard, who has logged hundreds of thousands of miles following his preferred candidate across the country.
“I do not understand that environment. I do not feel comfortable there, and yes, I do carry a knife. They throw vegetables at the truck.”
Wilson, in shorts and knee-high white socks, was smoking a pipe and already packing up his white Chevy Silverado for the next journey, even before Tuesday night’s presidential debate had officially begun. He said he had driven through Manhattan, but scoffed at the idea he might have stopped off on his way to Hempstead.
“Kiss my ass, I didn’t stop in that dump,” he said. “I thought one time when the traffic was backed up, which it always is, I saw an American there. Turns out he was Jamaican with a white mask on.”
Much was made of the presidential debates straying to a non-swing state, but the version of New York presented to the hundreds of visitors and press was a particular slice of Long Island, the hermetically sealed campus of Hofstra University, not at all the “dump” Wilson fears so much.
Obama lost, every pundit agrees. So now what? Former Obama campaign adviser Blake Zeff has some thoughts.
What are yours?
“I thought we were in charge of the hope and you were in charge of the change … You want us to fix it? Look, if you make a Facebook page, we’ll like it. It’s the least we can do. But it’s also the most we can do.” - Seth Meyers responding to Obama saying you can’t change Washington from the inside
"I can’t resist a basketball analogy: we are in the 4th quarter, we’re up by a few points, but the other side is coming strong and they play a little dirty. We’ve got a few folks on our team in foul trouble. We’ve got a couple of injuries. And I believe that they’ve got one last run in them, and I’d say there’s about seven minutes to go in the game. And Michael’s competitiveness is legendary, and nobody knows better than Michael that if you’ve got a little bit of lead and there’s about seven minutes to go, that’s when you put them away. That’s when you stop any momentum they have. You don’t let them up from the mat. You don’t give them any hope that they might pull this out. You don’t leave it to a lucky shot they might make from half-court at the end. You go ahead and you pour it on. You might press them a little bit. You might put Pippen and Jordan on the front court, trap them a little bit; have Horace come in. You don’t let up. That’s how the Bulls won six. That’s how we’re going to win this election."
— President Obama in New York last night at his “Obama Classic” fund-raiser.
Metallica manager helps Obama super PAC improve its New York numbers
Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting President Obama, reported raising $4.8 million in July, with a slight uptick in donations from New York, where the group has previously struggled, thanks to a handful of six-figure donations from an architect, a private-equity executive, a biomedical researcher, and the longtime manager of Metallica.
Who should play against Obama during the president’s basketball game fund-raiser?
Let us know what you think. Howard Megdal has his own suggestions…
As the nation’s most popular governor, Cuomo has the potential to be an especially productive surrogate for President Obama. He could appeal to white ethnics in swing states, or rally the social liberals who admire him for having been out ahead of his party (and his president) on same-sex marriage, or perhaps headline a few fund-raisers with the wealthy New York donors who have stocked his own campaign coffers and funded the super PAC-like group dedicated to running pro-Cuomo advertising.
Assuming he wants to do any of that.
"It’s not a question of being in favor or against or how you define marriage. It’s just from a civil point of view, government should not get involved with who you love, who you live with, who you marry. And I was pleased to see the president enunciate the similar view, and my hope would be that Governor Romney also evolves and understands that in this country there are people who are violently opposed to it."
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand predicted that Obama would eventually endorse same-sex marriage in an interview with the Advocate last year, saying “we could get a very strong public statement out of him.”
“Should the Supreme Court overturn this law, it would be so far out of the mainstream that the court would be the most activist in a century,” NY Sen. Chuck Schumer on “Meet the Press” yesterday.
One of Obama’s NY bundlers is accused of fraud.
