The Obama
campaign is getting back to the basics this week,
talking about the economy, swing states, and shoring
up the Democratic base. The campaign also finally
sits down with Philadelphia Gay News, making
good on that blank page publisher Mark Segal
infamously ran alongside the publication's interview
with Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The Obama
campaign is sticking with the issues this week. After losing
last week to a full-bore discussion of Sarah Palin and
lipstick and pigs (not necessarily in that order),
Sen. Obama has spent the week driving home messages
about the dire economy in his speeches while his surrogates
reached out to interest groups one by one, swing state by
swing state with LGBT concerns resting right at the
nexus of both.
Not only did the
campaign hold a conference call with reporters Wednesday
designed to remind the LGBT community that Sen. Obama backs
repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy, the Illinois senator finally granted an
interview with the Philadelphia Gay News that was set
to hit stands Thursday.
Among other
things, he hit the military theme again, telling PGN
he would not use an executive signing order to
overturn the ban.
"I want to make
sure that when we reverse 'don’t ask, don’t
tell,' it’s gone through a process and
we’ve built a consensus or at least a clarity
of that, of what my expectations are, so that it
works,” Obama said. “Although I have
consistently said I would repeal ‘don’t ask,
don’t tell,’ I believe that the way to
do it is make sure that we are working through a
process, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of
what our priorities are going to be. That’s how we
were able to integrate the armed services to get women
more actively involved in the armed services.”
In an interview
earlier this year, Sen. Obama told The Advocate that
he would not use support for repealing the ban as a
"litmus test" for choosing his Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The PGN
interview could be considered a PR move of sorts for
Sen. Obama in a battleground state where he may have
ruffled some LGBT feathers. During the heated primary with
Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign declined to
speak with PGN, prompting publisher Mark Segal to run
the paper's interview with Sen. Clinton alongside a
blank space where Sen. Obama's interview would have
gone. Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes are considered
critical to Democrats in November -- many pundits say Obama
cannot win the election without winning the state and recent
polls show him in a dead heat with John McCain there.
The campaign also
dispatched Vice Presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden,
who hales from Scranton, to Pennsylvania earlier this week,
mainly to court white blue-collar workers, a
demographic that helped deliver the state to Sen.
Clinton during the primary, and Catholic voters, who have
been getting a barrage of messages from conservative bishops
warning them against voting for candidates who show
support for abortion rights (i.e. Barack Obama and Joe
Biden).
While the
military served as a vehicle for wooing LGBT voters this
week, elsewhere the Obama campaign happily pivoted to
the economy after news that financial firm Lehman
Brothers collapsed and the Federal Reserve bailed out
insurance behemoth American International Group.
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Eleveld is the political editor of The Advocate.