Obama To Test Appeal In Hollywood
Sen. Barack Obama received rock-star treatment in San Fracisco from Democratic donors Tuesday. Later in the day, he wenr to test his appeal in Hollywood — a political stage long owned by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
As 42nd president and first lady, the Clintons were the toasts of the town, mingling with the glitterati and using Hollywood mansions as staging areas for fundraisers. As a presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton is counting on the movie industry as a base of support.
Obama apparently has other ideas. On Tuesday, he held a rally in Los Angeles, followed by a fundraiser for himself hosted by Steven Spielberg and others.
Hollywood is abuzz about who's going to win the gold — not the Oscar but the political pot of gold Hollywood liberally dishes out each presidential election, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. That's why Obama is in town. A glitzy fundraiser with top-tier stars paying $2,300 each is expected to raise more than $1.5 million for the first term senator.
Almost everyone assumed the deep affection and deep pockets Hollywood had for Bill Clinton would transfer to Hillary Clinton, adds Whitaker. Instead, the monied people are hedging their bets. Director Steven Spielberg is throwing fundraisers for Obama and Hillary Clinton.
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"We are here because this country is at a crossroads," Obama said to a crowd of more than 1,000 in San Francisco on Monday night during a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer. "It is at a crossroads internationally. It is at a crossroads domestically."
In the biggest applause line of the night, Obama condemned the war in Iraq, saying it "should have never been authorized." He said America was less safe because of it.
"We see al Qaeda gaining strength," he said. "We see Afghanistan sliding back into chaos."
Obama's message, that America can transcend its racial and political divides, is a powerful draw to the politically active Democrats who pay attention to races at this early stage.
His lack of involvement in authorizing the Iraq war — he was not yet in the Senate when Congress voted on it in 2002 — may help him in a contest against Hillary Clinton.
Obama's hopeful insistence that deep divisions can be overcome is underscored by his own conflicted biography. He has written a best-selling memoir about growing up as the son of a white American woman and a black man from Kenya.
He told the San Francisco crowd that people had grown cynical about government after years of negative campaigning. But he said last November's elections that saw Democrats take over both houses of Congress was a harbinger of change.
Obama, 45, also spoke of the nation's fraying health care system. Just as he mentioned that the country has 46 million uninsured people, a man in the audience leaned against a tray full of used wine glasses, which crashed to the floor.
"Hopefully, nobody gets hurt," Obama said quickly.
When it was clear that no one had, and with the audience laughing, he quipped, "I hope you have insurance."