Posts by Ari Melber

Sen. Barack Obama took a few moments to discuss his grandmother’s death on the campaign trail on Monday, and then he swiftly returned to focusing his message on closing arguments and GOTV.
His campaign also released a statement to traveling reporters, but otherwise avoided the topic on Monday night. There was no press release for broader [...]

CHICAGO, Ill. — Walking through Sen. Barack Obama’s national headquarters last night, it was striking to see how quiet things were on election eve.
The downtown office building was filled with operatives working late into the night, though the ranks were thinned because some people were deployed to the field. But most people looked remarkably calm. [...]

Sen. Barack Obama briefly discussed his grandmother while calling voters during a campaign stop Monday night, but he did not mention that she died.
From the pool report: “Obama made calls to voters on cellphones. On his fifth call, as he was tossing a tiny red and blue football into the air, he referenced his grandmother [...]

On election eve, Sen. John McCain announced his condolences to Sen. Barack Obama on the passing of his 86-year-old grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham. But other GOP officials spent Monday attacking Obama for his recent trip to visit Ms. Dunham.
The California GOP filed a last-minute complaint, contending:

Sen. Barack Obama is ending this campaign just like he started it — as the coolest guy in the room.
Obama’s calm vibe is a recurring theme in campaign coverage. Flying on his plane this season, I have often been struck by his relative serenity amid his hard-working aides, amped supporters and the constant surveillance of [...]

On this last day before the election, Sen. Barack Obama is urging voters to relive some humiliating history. Speaking in Jacksonville, Fla., Obama will remind voters of the infamous declaration that Sen. John McCain made in the very same location about six weeks ago, according to a preview of the attack released by Obama’s [...]

If you upload it, they will watch it.
That was the simple premise of the Obama campaign’s dramatic intensification of its YouTube outreach in the homestretch of this long race.
New data shows the campaign’s official YouTube channel is breaking records, topping 2 million viewers a day at its peak.  That number does not include the millions [...]

On Halloween, the Obama campaign uploaded another appeal targeting young voters on YouTube, this time starring Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
“You should be worried,” he tells college students, but “President Obama” would address key priorities for young voters, from renewing the economy to helping loan repayment for graduates who do public service. After Schmidt’s brief [...]

The Obama campaign says it has passed another organizing milestone.
Writing from Chicago on Sen. Barack Obama’s social network, MyBo, Amy Hamblin reports that supporters have posted a whopping 200,000 events, with volunteers steadily “blowing past one milestone after another.”  The pace of event organization has dramatically accelerated, Hamblin noted, since the campaign only passed the [...]

Speaking on the Friday before the election, Sen. Barack Obama criticized a last-ditch attack from the McCain campaign, casting it as a revealing touchstone for how differently the two nominees view their political obligations.
The new McCain ad knocks Obama for his past praise of the GOP nominee. But Obama told an Iowa rally that while [...]