In the last week, Mr. Obama has taken calibrated positions on issues that include electronic surveillance, campaign finance and the death penalty for child rapists, suggesting a presidential candidate in hot pursuit of what Bill Clinton once lovingly described as “the vital center.”
Mr. Obama has executed several policy pirouettes in recent weeks, each time landing more toward the center of the political ring. On Wednesday in Chicago, he confirmed that he would not fight a revised law that would extend retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government spy on American citizens. (He had previously spoken against immunity provisions in an earlier version of the bill.) And recently he backed away from his own earlier support for campaign finance spending limits in the 2008 election.
“The issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security of the American people,” he said.
he publicly supported the death penalty, even as he called the justice system flawed and urged a moratorium on executions.
“I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

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What Hillary Did for Women | The American Prospect

Tags: hillary, candidate, democrat, 2008, election, feminism, politics on 2008-06-05 -All Annotations (0) -About

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it is inconceivable that the lady governors would be receiving anything close to a fair hearing had Clinton not first demonstrated how hungry a large segment of the Democratic base is to see a woman president. Neither Napolitano nor Sebelius endorsed Clinton, but both must feel some debt toward her path-breaking campaign, which raised their own national profiles.
Characterized as a homogenous, angry mob of washed up, white, middle-aged women, the "Count Every Vote" rally was actually quite diverse.
we have largely looked past the positive influence Clinton's candidacy has already had on the role of women in politics. Over the course of this historic, thrilling, aggressive primary election, we've seen more female pundits than ever before writing and speaking about presidential politics.

Clinton has single-handedly changed the contours of our public debate about gender and politics, and even the roster of that debate's contributors. That's good for women, good for democracy, and good for progressivism. So Hillary Clinton, thank you.

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