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Race Over? - The Atlantic (January/February 2009)
Image credit: Davis Turner/EPA/Corbis A few days after the presidential election, as Barack Obama’s senior staff went into post­-campaign hibernation, I logged onto my AOL Instant Messenger account at about 7:30 a.m. to find that David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, was one of the few live ...
Dems and Obama split on taxes
thehill.com — The first rift between the Obama White House and congressional Democrats began to open Thursday as lawmakers... pushed back against the extent of the president-elect’s proposed tax cuts. Democrats on Capitol Hill questioned the lengths to which Barack ... (more) Dems and Obama split on taxes
A Times / Atlantic Smackdown
marcambinder.theatlantic.com — Writing in the January/February edition of the Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn concedes that while the prospects for the... New York Times to go out of business are "slim," the economics are downright scary: Earnings reports released by the New York ... (more) A Times / Atlantic Smackdown
Obama Team Has Confidence In Panetta
marcambinder.theatlantic.com — Despite the premature leakulation of Barack Obama's decision to nominate Leon Panetta to head the CIA, Obama... aides are confident that whatever nerves were twinged in the pre-borted roll-out will be calm.  "I think he's going to be fine," senior ... (more) Obama Team Has Confidence In Panetta
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From The Magazine: The Race Code
The Atlantic Politics Channel — ... Race doesn't matter, Barack Obama's top advisers argued during the presidential election. At least, that's what they said in public. Behind closed doors, however, Obama's campaign worked methodically to woo white voters without alienating black ones--and vice versa. ...

Race, the Economy, and the 2008 Election
The Monkey Cage — Over at Pollster, and very much apropos of the post Andy links to below, Mark Blumenthal links to this piece by Marc Ambinder, which talks about the Obama campaign’s strategy to deal with his race. The thrust of Ambinder’s piece is that once Obama’s team realized he had captured the black vote, they were free to appeal to white voters. In particular, they could appeal even to those white voters who demonstrated a degree of racial aversion by trying to capitalize on their economic situation: These voters were ...

The DNC's Post Election Analysis
The Atlantic Politics Channel — ... Belcher, who I interviewed for my January Atlantic article on politics and race, views the average voter as a mostly rational figure whipsawed by crosspressures, and his analysis set to figure out the relative force of those pressures. What was it that tilted folks from one side to the other? ...

Post-Racial?
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Blumenthal praises Ambers' new piece on how the Obama campaign approached race. Cornell Belcher, one of Obama's pollsters, gives his take: Belcher resampled the white voters whose racial animus he had measured before. More than half had voted for McCain, but not by an overwhelming margin. Belcher concluded that Obama might have done better among them had he not been black. In 1992, Belcher noted, 85 percent of voters who said the economy was bad broke for Bill Clinton. In 2008, in a verifiably worse economic climate, only 66 percent of voters who said ...

Correction
The Atlantic Politics Channel — ... My  "Race Over" incorrectly identified a pastor who attempted to secure money to help turn out the vote for President-elect Obama.  Rev. Anthony Evans of the ...

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