Barack Obama

Bookmark this page to stay up to date on ThePhoenix.com's latest coverage of Barack Obama. ThePhoenix.com endorsed Obama prior to the Massachusetts Democratic Primary. Columnist and political consultant Steven Stark has been covering the horse race in his Presidential Tote Board column since February of 2007, and also in an accompanying blog. In March of 2007, Stark was among the first to predict, while Hilary Clinton was still firmly ahead in the polls, that the odds favored an Obama nomination. In September 2007, in a widely-circulated essay, Al Giordano cursed Obama for making him (and other dyed-in-the-wool radicals) care about presidential politics again, while offering an eerily prescient examination of Obama's revolutionary fundraising techniques. More recently, Steven Stark examined the Obama camp's cautious approach to the DNC, and argued that the convention could actually hurt Obama's visibility. ThePhoenix.com's David S. Bernstein is in Denver covering the Democratic National Convention. You can follow his live updates, Talking Politics blog posts, and columns at our Election 2008 homepage.

Latest Articles

For Mayor: Vote Flaherty + Yoon

Boston District City Council: Henriquez, Ross, ciommo, LaMattina
Boston’s mayoral candidates are running campaigns that are variations on a theme.
By EDITORIAL | October 30, 2009

Committee Doubting Thompson. Plus, The Bish, Rush, and more.
After reading Sunday’s front page BeloJo story, “Support for R.I. Judge not unanimous,” your superior correspondents have to suspect that everything — absolutely everything — is thoroughly politicized.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | October 28, 2009

Harvard ‘ACT UP’ show gets rise from right-wingers

Tea Baggers Meet the Tea-Baggers Dept.
Taking a detour from directly bashing President Obama, right-wingers are now hot and bothered by a Harvard art exhibit. And they have an Obama administration foil toward whom they can channel their bile.
By GREG COOK | October 28, 2009

Can the Rhode Island tea party brew a revolution?

The movement strives to be a coherent force for change. But is it just blowing steam?
The Rhode Island Tea Party, local wing of the national uprising against all things Obama, has some reason for hope.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 21, 2009

Review: Astro Boy

Partisan politics rain down like meatballs
Five-year-olds who attend MoveOn.org rallies in between tee-ball and bath time are sure to love the new David Bowers–directed interpretation of Osamu Tezuka’s flagship character.
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 21, 2009

Rhode Island’s pride is showing

Finally, some good ‘news!’ Plus, Brown slips, the Patriots slide, and more
There was much to-do and flexing of cultural muscles and civic pride as Our Little Towne placed in the top 10 in many prestigious categories in Travel & Leisure magazine’s 2009 survey of “America’s Favorite Cities.”
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | October 16, 2009

Afghanistan: Just say no!

Plus, Obama and the Nobel
The idea that the war in Afghanistan has reached a critical junction, a “now-or-never” moment that requires an additional 40,000 troops to win, is rubbish.
By EDITORIAL | October 14, 2009

Interview: Bill Maher

Bill Maher's new rules to live by
"If liberals act like pussies, then they are pussies."
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 15, 2009

Course correction

Out of school and out of work? Don’t enroll in a grad program just yet — adult-education coures could do (and land you) the job.
So it unfolded on Facebook, the story of this down-on-his-luck recent graduate in possession of a bachelor’s degree in the liberal arts from a respected area school.
By VANESSA CZARNECKI | October 14, 2009

Orthodox caveman

Maine’s GOP is suffering from a muddle in the middle
Wanted: a right-wing wacko to run for governor of Maine.
By AL DIAMON | October 14, 2009

Khazei, Like a Fox?

Insiders don’t think Alan Khazei has a chance in the US Senate race. But progressive activists could make him an underdog with bite.
If there is to be a candidate in the Massachusetts US Senate race who inspires the sort of grassroots, progressive following that propelled Governor Deval Patrick into office three years ago — an insurgent candidacy, if you will — it figures to be idealistic public-service advocate Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year and founder of Be the Change, Inc.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | October 16, 2009

Latter day taint

How Glenn Beck is driven by Mormonism — and why his fellow faithful (including Mitt Romney) should be worried
Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck was a small-market DJ with a drinking problem, no friends, and bleak professional prospects. Today, he’s a Fox News superstar averaging 2.4 million viewers, an inexorably successful author, and the leader of a popular movement that condemns government in general and President Barack Obama in particular.
By ADAM REILLY | October 10, 2009

Burn, baby, burn

The Olympics, zipper-gate, stimulus money, and why Coakley must investigate City Hall
The Phoenix opposed President Barack Obama's efforts to help Chicago win the 2016 Summer Olympics on the grounds that doing business with the International Olympic Committee is always bad news for the host community.
By EDITORIAL | October 07, 2009

Are progressives winning on the Web?

Action Speaks!
Action Speaks!, the panel discussion series at Providence art space AS220, continues its fall run with a chat about the state of community organizing.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 07, 2009

Lie of the land

Lying liars, and the end of accountability
In his new film, The Invention of Lying , Ricky Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a pudgy everyman who lives in Anytown in a utopian world where lies don't exist — until he tells one.
By MIKE MILIARD | October 07, 2009

Boston public-school apartheid?

Think busing was a problem in this town? Some are labeling charter schools as Boston's newest educational battleground
At the Edward W. Brooke School in Roslindale — a kindergarten-to-eighth-grade public charter school — the push to advance graduates to elite secondary programs begins in fifth grade.
By CHRIS FARAONE | October 15, 2009

Review: Capitalism: A Love Story

Moore of the same: Capitalism fails to make a prophet
In his new film about the Wall Street meltdown, Michael Moore — surprise! — denounces capitalism and its exploitation of the working class. Not that he's above doing a little exploiting himself.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 29, 2009

Disclosure: not a dirty word

Menino's shame and Kerry's blunder. Plus, Olympic follies.
The City Hall e-mail scandal that has scored headlines in recent weeks exemplifies Mayor Thomas Menino's antagonistic — almost contemptuous — attitude toward public accountability.
By EDITORIAL | September 30, 2009

Has Obama learned from Clinton’s mistakes on health-care?

Action Speaks!
Action Speaks!, the always-enlightening panel discussion series at the Providence art space AS220, is back at it with weekly chats through the end of October.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | September 30, 2009

Protestors head to the G-20 summit

Global Outrage
As President Obama prepares to ask representatives of the world's largest economic powers for more money to help reverse the global recession, thousands of activists will take to the streets to protest the policies of the G-20 and its members, who are meeting in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 23, 2009

Freedom isn’t free

Press Releases
Campaign-finance reformers often object to the idea that money equals speech. But even for progressives, it does indeed.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 23, 2009

Politics on the ground

AJ Schnack opens the Camden International Film Festival with Convention
Convention , the opening-night feature at the fifth annual Camden International Film Festival, is a logistical triumph that chronicles a logistical triumph. AJ Schnack, the director of the Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son, organized a group of nine filmmakers to capture the breadth of the August 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | September 23, 2009

You're all guilty!

In his new book, Three Felonies A Day , Harvey Silverglate dissects the corrupt justice practiced by federal prosecutors
Silverglate's thesis is as provocative as it is simple: justice has become sufficiently perverted in this nation that federal prosecutors, if they put their minds to it, could find a way to indict almost any one of us for almost anything. It is a truly radical notion.
By PETER KADZIS | September 28, 2009

The Olympic (shell) games

There are billions of reasons why every debt-saddled American should hope that the US does not get the gold in 2016.
It’s been 13 years since the pageantry and spectacle of the Summer Olympic Games — and the mythical economic boon that goes with it — has graced US soil. But we’ll find out next week if, in a secret-ballot vote in Europe, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will award the 2016 Games to Chicago, the American city competing for the bid.
By ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE | September 25, 2009

Snowe: A party of one

Party politics
US Senator Olympia Snowe has maneuvered herself into a position where she is the only hope Democrats have of getting a "bipartisan" agreement on healthcare reform.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 16, 2009

Community appeal

The Café at Pat's is a classic local spot
It is tricky to manage the transition from cult of personality to a rationalized institution.
By BRIAN DUFF | September 16, 2009

10 years later, we told you so

Ten years of being right (well, mostly)
Like many in the alternative press, we pride ourselves on being ahead of the game. Sometimes, of course, that means we're wrong about what might be coming down the pike — that's part of the risk of being "out front" and not just reacting to the news as it happens.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 16, 2009

Terpsichore's delight

A season of foot (and body) work
There's no end to variety to the fall's dance season, from a Boston Ballet classic to Hawaiian hula and "extreme action" acrobatics.
By DEBRA CASH | September 14, 2009

The whole truth

Tomes from the 'fact' department
It's the economy, stupid. Or maybe politics or literature. Fall non-fiction goes wide and deep, so plan for some marathon reading.
By BARBARA HOFFERT | September 14, 2009

Vote Yoon

It is time for Boston to debate its future
Barring supernatural intervention next Tuesday, incumbent Thomas Menino is expected to top the ticket in Boston's four-candidate mayoral preliminary. The final vote will take place November 3.
By EDITORIAL | September 17, 2009

Today's Event Picks

[THEATER] Frost/Nixon at St. Lawrence's Good Theater

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