Obama Mulls His Jew-mentum
Illinois Senator Barack Obama is still mulling delivering an address at the upcoming plenum of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (in Washington, D.C. from February 24-28), but the speech still isn’t a done deal, according to a source who spoke to the Forward this morning.
The senator may decide to speak before a Jewish group or Jewish supporters in Chicago or organize his own event in Washington before next month’s conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Camp Obama’s strategy, according to the source, is to have the Illinois senator give a major policy speech on Israel before the Aipac event, in order to generate a bunch of stories with Obama at the center. If he waits until the Aipac meeting, he’ll end up competing directly with Hillary Clinton and other candidates for media coverage.
What’s keeping Obama from making up this mind? Likely, our source believes, both scheduling issues and pressure from his peeps in Chicago to do it there.
