Obama says Bush opens door for Democrats
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By DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star
OMAHA — Voters have “had enough” of the Bush administration and are ready for Democratic leadership, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday night.
“This is our moment to lead,” he told 900 Nebraska Democrats at the party’s annual Morrison-Exon Dinner.
“Enough of the broken promises,” Obama declared. “Enough of the failed leadership.”
When President Bush said in his 2000 campaign he was against nation-building, Obama said, “we just didn’t know he was talking about this one.”
Obama, whose star power lured an overflow banquet crowd to the Hilton Omaha, said an old Democratic nemesis, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, suggested exactly the right message for Democrats to exploit when he recently assessed GOP misjudgments.
“Had enough?” was the message Gingrich warned Democrats could exploit, Obama said.
Earlier, the freshman African-American senator — his father was from Kenya, his mother from Kansas — addressed an enthusiastic crowd of 1,000 cheering supporters at Salem Baptist Church in north Omaha.
“I’ve had enough of folks not telling the truth, manipulating intelligence, fudging numbers,” he said.
Bungling their way to “three-dollar-something gasoline,” he added.
While as much as a trillion dollars may be spent on the war in Iraq, Obama said, investments are lacking at home in “neighborhoods where rats outnumber computers and kids can’t walk home safely.”
The Bush administration, he said, has slashed funding for day care and after-school programs, and embraced a policy of “social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself.”
Obama told the Democratic dinner audience that, somehow, the administration believes “that if you say the words ‘plan for victory’ and point to the number of schools painted and roads paved and cell phones used in Iraq, no one will notice the more than 2,300 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at Dover Air Force Base.
“Well,” he said, “it’s time we finally said we notice, and we care, and we’re not gonna settle any more.”
Obama’s appearance highlighted an evening that brought all of this year’s major Democratic candidates together on the weekend before a primary election that has been dominated by Republicans.
While GOP races for the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate nominations have held the spotlight, Sen. Ben Nelson and Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Hahn have been awaiting the Republican winners.
Nelson, praised by Obama as “one of the most effective members of the U.S. Senate,” said he’s prepared for a contest that may ask voters to choose between “Main Street or Wall Street.”
Pre-election polling has tapped Pete Ricketts, the multimillionaire former chief operating officer of Ameritrade, as the leader in a three-man GOP Senate race that includes former Attorney General Don Stenberg and former Republican State Chairman David Kramer.
Ricketts has poured $4.7 million of his own money into the primary race.
“The people of Nebraska are not going to like the kind of spending they’re seeing in this Senate race,” Nelson said in an interview.
During his first term in the Senate, Nelson said, he has provided experienced leadership, demonstrated “independent-mindedness,” and not gotten “bogged down in partisanship.”
Hahn said he’s ready to begin “drawing the lines of demarcation” in the gubernatorial race once his opponent is chosen.
Gov. Dave Heineman and Rep. Tom Osborne are locked in what appears to be a tight struggle. Omaha businessman Dave Nabity is the third man in the race.
Later this month, Hahn said, he’ll be ready to roll out a series of proposals for property tax reform, health care reform and an initiative that weds business tax incentives with post-secondary education.
“I’ll keep this campaign on the sunny side,” Hahn said.
Obama’s appearance before the largely black audience on Lake Street in north Omaha was a celebratory affair, preceded by Gospel music and attended by parents with children in their arms.
In a brief reference to the dispute over Omaha school reorganization, Obama said; “There’s no reason there shouldn’t be adequate funding for every child in every school.”
But education depends on good parenting, too, he said.
“Turn off the TV, set out a place for children to do homework, go talk to the teacher and find out what’s going on,” he said.
“Too many of us aren’t parenting.”
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.
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