This morning, Bruce Springsteen endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States. Here is the letter that he posted on his website.
Dear Friends and Fans:
LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”
At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.
After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.
Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.
In 2004, Bruce passionately endorsed John Kerry and played some great shows for him in the final days of the fall campaign. Alas, there is no President Kerry, but given the fact that Obama has had some trouble “connecting” with working class voters (I don’t believe this, but it’s out there in the media narrative), this endorsement from the Boss should help solidify some of that blue-collar support.
Here’s video from that 2004 event in Madison, Wisconsin.
U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is “a lie” and God and the
nation’s founding fathers did not intend the country be “a nation of secular laws.”
The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will “legislate sin,” including abortion and gay marriage.
Harris made the comments — which she clarified Saturday — in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.
Separation of church and state is “a lie we have been told,” Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is “wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.”
This woman wants to be a United States Senator? We (the royal we) should all chip in, rent a 15-passenger van from Hertz and take Sen. George Allen (R-VA) and Katherine Harris on a long drive around America. You know, meet some nice people, see the historic sites and hopefully learn something about real America and about real Americans. These two career politicians are divorced from reality.
There they go again. The Republicans running Thomas Kean’s campaign for U.S. Senate in New Jersey are now outwardly saying that they’re producing a swift-boat like film trashing Democrat Senator Bob Menendez. This is disgusting and truly astonishing that they’re so willing to admit to this brand of trash politics.
Mr. Kean’s chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be “very similar” in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.
Nevertheless, the Kean campaign will challenge that biography in “a long-form film,” Mr. Leonardo said, just as commercials broadcast in 2004 attacked Mr. Kerry’s military record. Those commercials, relying on claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, purported to expose Mr. Kerry’s military decorations as exaggerated or fraudulent. Although the premise and many elements of the Swift boat advertisements were strongly disputed, as a whole they were seen as successful in hobbling the Kerry campaign.
The media, obviously more aware of this type of slash and burn politics, is already fact checking these accusations- something that took much longer for them to do during the ‘04 cycle.
Mr. Kean’s charges are not, however, supported by the public record and were repudiated by independent authorities including the four assistant United States attorneys who prosecuted Union City officials of that era for racketeering and corruption. There is no truth, those former officials say, to the Kean campaign’s charge that Mr. Menendez made a deal to keep himself out of prison.
This is disgusting and I hope the Menendez campaign is ready to fire back.
by then Secretary Tom Ridge to tone down his critcism of security failures prior to the election. “Rather than acknowledging the vulnerability, efforts were made to deride us and to dismiss our criticism,” Ervin says. More on ABC’s Nightline tonight.
