obama factoids

Here are some good Obama factoids for use with your right-wing brother-in-law (much more detail here):

• During the primary, McCain ditched every difference he had w/Bush to get nominated


• McCain went from voting with Bush for 90% of the last 8 years to 100% this year


• Many of McCain’s top campaign staff ran Bush’s campaign; his ‘town halls’ staged like Bush's


• The last time the GOP tried to package someone as a reformer during an election, it was Bush


• McCain never split w/Bush on Rumsfeld/Cheney, he said he would have hired them himself


• Obama bucked his party during the primary, opposing health care mandates, addressing the future Social Security solvency crisis, and advocating teacher merit pay


• Obama is endorsed by a long list of high profile conservatives and elected Republicans


• Not one high profile progressive or Democrat endorses McCain (CT Dems booted Joe Liebermann in 06)


• Obama bucked many of his own big donors during the primary to support the writers strike


• Obama worked across the aisle in the Senate with Republicans like Dick Lugar and Tom Coburn


• Obama pushed through strict ethics reforms against the will of many in both parties


• Obama has the strongest reform record of any candidate in modern history


• Obama pushed through the strongest ethics reform in his state for decades, The Gift Ban Act


• Obama pushed through the strongest ethics reform at the federal level in decades, The Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act, co-sponsoring and authoring numerous other reform bills


• McCain's single ethics reform accomplishment in 25 years is the McCain-Feingold bill


• McCain says he has never requested an earmark, but he asked for and received a $10 million earmark in 2006 and a $14.3 million earmark in 2003


• Obama pushed through a bipartisan bill making every earmark public knowledge


• Obama will cut taxes for 95% of Americans; his middle class tax cut is 3 - 8 times bigger than McCain’s according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center


• Obama’s budget adds up better than "we’ve seen in a Presidential candidate in a very long time"; his plan will leave 1.2 trillion dollars less debt than McCain’s (non-partisan TPC)


• McCain had to check with his staff when asked how many houses he owns and what kind of car he drives; he spends $250,000 a year on house servants alone


• US Troops overseas donated 6x more to Obama; our troops prefer his Iraq plan by 30 pts


• Obama always urged focus on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan while McCain/Bush focused on Iraq


• Obama correctly predicted that invading Iraq would increase terrorism; Obama, alone among all candidates in urging focus on Pakistan last year, was vindicated by the recent turmoil there


• Non-partisan Disabled Veterans of America scorecard: McCain 20%, Obama 80%


• The Obama Presidential campaign is the first in living memory where average Americans own the biggest share: more than 50% of donations to Obama have been $25 or less, 80% have been $100 or less, and 93% have been $200 or less


• "You would have to go back a century and a half to name an incoming president with so few debts to repay"


• Obama and the DNC accept no federal lobbyist or PAC donations; McCain and the RNC do


• McCain has 133 lobbyists working for his campaign; his top staff is mostly DC lobbyists


• McCain got 10x more Top CEO donations than Obama in return for corporate tax breaks


• McCain's flip in favor of drilling was rewarded immediately with big donations from oil execs


• Obama has served 12 yrs at the federal and state level (4 yrs US Sen + 8 yrs IL Sen)


• Obama co-sponsored 15 bills that became federal law and co-sponsored 570 bills


• Obama sponsored 823 bills and cast over 4000 votes in the IL Senate


• Obama would be the first President with 10+ yrs experience as a Constitutional Law Professor


• Obama spent 3 years as the executive in charge of a budget that went from $70K to $400K while serving as a local community organizer in Chicago


• Obama had 80 editors under him as President of the Harvard Law Review


• Obama's runs a campaign with over 2000 employees, more than the White House staff


• Obama got an International Relations specialty in college, later served 4 yrs on Senate Foreign Relations Committee


• Obama's combined time either in public service, studying foreign policy, or directly pertaining to Constitutional Law adds up to twenty-five years, as long as McCain has been in office


• Obama’s record of experience is more diverse and in touch with America than McCain’s, as Obama understands how things work at the local, state, and federal level; McCain has zero local or state experience, with all his experience in office taking place in Washington DC

I have found all the Republican mockery of Obama’s experience as a community organizer to be amusing. Yes, he was a community organizer for three years between the time he graduated from Columbia and the time he started Harvard Law School in 1985-1988. (When you graduate from college in four years, as Obama did, instead of six years, as Sarah Palin did, you have more time to do other things.) At a comparable stage in her life (in the midst of her higher education) Palin was a beauty queen, winning the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest and then finishing third in the Miss Alaska pageant. So how come you don't hear Republicans comparing Obama's experience as a community organizer with Palin's experience as a beauty queen?

More relevant, of course (which is why Republicans never mention it), is the 12 years Obama spent teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago (not up there with the University of Idaho, I admit, but still one of the best universities in the world) from 1992 to 2004, and the eight years he spent in the Illinois legislature from 1997 to 2004. (Obama’s district had a population of 210,000 at the time he represented it, which is about 40 times larger than the population of Wasilla when Palin was part-time mayor.) And, of course, Obama has spent four years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and two years traveling the country talking to voters.