Morning News

July 14, 2008

Speaking to more than 2,000 members of the National Council of La Raza in San Diego, the Illinois senator said he intended to give tax credits to small businesses that provided their employees with health insurance.

"We know that small businesses are the engines of economic prosperity in our communities, particularly Latino communities," said Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The plan would "help more employers provide health benefits for their workers instead of making it harder for them, as Sen. [John] McCain would do."

He would give a credit of up to 50% on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees, according to a statement from his campaign.

On Sunday, Obama credited "my friend Hillary Clinton" for being the original champion of the tax credit idea — an acknowledgment that drew the warmest applause from the crowd during his speech.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Sen. Barack Obama promised Sunday he would make immigration reform a top priority of his first year in office if he is elected president as he chided Republican John McCain for backing away from his own comprehensive immigration bill.

Obama addressed the four-day National Council of La Raza convention, which has attracted more than 20,000 people to the San Diego Convention Center.

…“I know Senator McCain used to buck his party on immigration in fighting for comprehensive reform and I admired him for it and joined him in it,” Obama said in his speech. “But when he was running for his party’s nomination, he abandoned that courageous stand and said that he wouldn’t even support his own legislation if it came up for a vote.”

“I think it’s time for a president who won’t walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform just because it becomes politically unpopular,” the Illinois senator said. “I will make it a top priority in my first year as the president of the United States of America.”

Obama also denounced recent immigration raids.

“The system isn’t working . . . when communities are terrorized by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing,” he said.

…Obama said he supports stronger border enforcement, stiffer penalties against employers that knowingly hire people who are in the country illegally. He also favors a temporary guest worker program and an opportunity for the estimated 12 million current illegal residents to obtain citizenship as long as they pay a fine, learn English and wait in line behind legal residents.

“That way, we can reconcile our values as both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws,” he said.

…During his speech, Obama condemned the often harsh tone surrounding the immigration debate as insulting to Latinos.

“They’re counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric that is filling our airwaves – rhetoric that poisons our political discourse, degrades our democracy and has no place in this great nation,” Obama said. “They’re counting on us to rise above fear and demagoguery and pettiness and partisanship and finally enact comprehensive immigration reform.”

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Sen. Barack Obama collected the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers Sunday and promised to fix "the broken promises" of the No Child Left Behind law — which he said has done little besides label schools and students as failures.

Obama addressed the AFT, the nation’s second largest teachers union, via satellite just after its 3,000 delegates overwhelmingly endorsed him during their convention at Navy Pier.

Speaking from San Diego, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee called for more funds for special education and for programs that allow school districts to afford incentive pay for teachers who take on difficult assignments.

…The AFT, which has 1.4 million members, was an early backer of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. To orchestrate the new endorsement, union leaders brought Clinton to the convention on Saturday to urge a united front behind Obama.

John Ost, director of political mobilization for the AFT, said the endorsement frees the union to dispatch staff and around 700 volunteers in a nationwide effort for Obama. He said the union concentrates on lobbying its own members, not the general public.

The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, has also endorsed Obama.

….McCain, he said, recycles "tired rhetoric" about vouchers and school choice. "We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them," Obama said.

From the Indianapolis Star:

The election is four months away, but for now the score in Indiana is Barack Obama, 6; John McCain, 0.

Zero campaign offices, that is.

Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has opened five campaign offices — in Evansville, Fishers, Fort Wayne, Muncie and South Bend — and will open a sixth in Bloomington on Monday.

Jonathan Swain, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign in Indiana, said plans are to have 25 to 30 campaign offices in the state.

It’s part of a push by Obama to become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Indiana’s electoral votes since Lyndon Johnson did so in 1964.

In addition to the offices, Obama has run campaign ads in Indiana — one of 18 targeted states in which he has done so — and has brought in staff to run the campaign here.

From the Des Moines Register:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is off to a more aggressive campaign in Iowa than John McCain, despite the Republican having clinched the nomination three months earlier than his rival.

Obama has 15 campaign offices open and staffed in Iowa, while McCain is still plotting where to locate about half as many.

…But Obama’s organizational advantage - in part the product of his winning caucus campaign - and the Democrats’ favorable voter registration trend has some national observers taking Iowa off the list of toss-up states.

"It’s in the realm of possibility that McCain could pull an upset in Iowa, but it’s unlikely," said Larry Sabato, director of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. "Obama has had strength in Iowa from the beginning, which we saw on January 3. And McCain, Iowa’s just not his state."

Iowa is among 18 states listed as top targets by both campaigns in the effort to cross the 270 electoral-vote threshold required to win.

In the past two presidential elections, few states were determined by narrower margins than Iowa. A difference of 4,000 votes put the state in Democrat Al Gore’s column in 2000 and roughly 10,000 put it in the Republican George Bush’s four years later.