Obama as the Anti-Christ

I jokingly had a thought to myself the other day, I'm sure someone, soon enough, will make the argument that Obama is the anti-Christ. Well, not a moment too soon, a voter interviewed in the NY Times has come to just that conclusion:

A case in point came in Great Falls, Montana, where Obama took verbal whacks at John McCain, to loud applause. Afterward, you wander up to Justin Schultz, a 30-year-old fellow in a camouflage baseball cap who is standing with three friends.

What you think of Obama?

Schultz, who works maintenance at this arena, shakes his head. “I don’t think much of him at all..”

Why not? “He’s keeping something secret,” Schultz says.

Perhaps against your better judgment, you push a touch further. What do you mean?

He leans in close and, as his friends nod in unison, confides. “I think he’s the anti-Christ.”

He adds: “It’s just a gut feeling.”

No doubt.

Democratic Party Corruption

Watching the Democratic Bye-Law Committee deliberate on Michigan and Florida. I think it's ridiculous to present this circus as part of a democratic process. The committee is full of Clinton Superdelegates including Harold Ickes, the Clinton campaign's senior adviser, asking questions as though they are neutral observers. It couldn't be clearer that Hillary Clinton is the establishment. Clinton superdelegates are asking, I would say, 80% of the questions-all of them weighted in Mrs. Clinton's favor. This is corruption at its best.

Here's a list obtained from 2008 Democratic Convention.

Co-Chairs - no endorsement
Alexis Herman (co-chair, Washington , D.C. ) - Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor
James Roosevelt, Jr. (co-chair, Massachusetts ) - Bill Clinton's Assoc. Comm. of Social Security

Members - Clinton supporters (13)
Hartina Flournay (DC)
Donald Fowler (SC)
Harold Ickes, Jr. (DC)
Jaime Gonzalez, Jr. (TX)
Alice Huffman (CA)
Ben Johnson (DC)
Elaine Kamarck (MA)
Eric Kleinfeld (DC)
Mona Pasquil (CA)
Mame Reiley (VA)
Garry Shay (CA)
Elizabeth Smith (DC)
Michael Steed (MD)

Members - Obama supporters (8)
Martha Fuller Clark (NH)
Carol Khare Fowler (SC)
Janice Griffin (MD)
Thomas Hynes (IL)
Allan Katz (FL)
Sharon Stroschein (SD)
Sarah Swisher (IA)
Everett Ward (NC)

Members - no known endorsement (7)
Donna Brazille (DC)
Mark Brewer (MI)
Ralph Dawson (NY)
Yvonne Gates ( NV)
Alice Germond (DC) - DNC Secretary
David McDonald (WA)
Jerome Wiley Segovia (VA)

Update I: Donna Brazille (I paraphrase): My momma told to me to play by the rules.... and she taught me changing the rules of the game in the middle or the end of the game is called CHEATING!
Video Here:


Update II: The final results ended up netting Mrs. Clinton 24 full delegate votes. For a moment there, I thought the Dems were about to disgrace themselves.

The Spectre over the Campaign: Enough Verbal Tomfoolery

It's been a fear--unspoken in the public square, but much discussed in private--that Senator Obama's groundbreaking campaign puts his life in danger. It was widely discussed within the African-American community and political circles. It is thought that it was Mrs. Powell's security concerns that prevented her husband, General Powell, from running for President. Senator Obama was the earliest candidate to receive Secret Service protection for obvious reasons. By comparison, John McCain did not ask for or receive protection until he had become the presumptive nominee of his party.

Further complicating his groundbreaking status as a black candidate, Senator Obama's charismatic personality and inspirational campaign have tied him to several mythical figures in American politics--Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy and, occasionally, Ronald Reagan. What, I wonder, do all these men have in common? Ronald Reagan was the only one of these men to survive an attempt on his life.

It is therefore unconscionable and way beyond the pale, for anyone to feign ignorance on the genuine fears around Senator Obama's security. Governor Huckabee was the first to make light of these fears by making what can only be termed an idiotic joke at, of all places, the National Rifle Association convention. He followed it with an apology and few in public impugned any ill intention on his part. Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton submitted her bizzare reference to RFK's assassination in justifying her continued presence on the campaign trail. Many, but not all, fair-minded people considered it an ill-considered choice rather than an ill-intentioned one. Mrs. Clinton, however, denied the need to apologize to Mr. Obama. Now, a Fox commentator in a bid to correct her misstatement of Obama as Osama, thought it wise to throw in a joke about the need to eliminate both men. She has followed through with an apology.

Enough of this foolishness. It is well documented that most assassinations are credited to people who are insane. These, therefore, are people who might read more into these slips of the tongue than the speaker intended. Of all the culprits, the only one who has not seen it fit to recognize the danger of her words is Hillary Clinton. She needs to acknowledge that the outrage at her comments came out of a genuine place of fear. And to everyone else out there including the Obama campaign, please stop comparing the Senator to bunch of dead men, no matter how inspirational they were.

Classless Acts: The Clintons and their Offending Tongues

As you can see from this video and following her at best careless and at worst malevolent statements on the RFK Assassination last week, Hillary Clinton, her husband, and her campaign continue to show themselves as being completely without shame and devoid of any moral character. Rather than taking responsibility for the inane reference that she made to the assassination and acknowledging the valid concerns that people of all political stripes have about Senator Obama's safety, they have taken to blaming the Obama camp for the whole issue. In addition to the comments you see in the video above, Senator Clinton has written an op-ed in the New York Daily News in which she states,

I realize that any reference to that traumatic moment for our nation can be deeply painful - particularly for members of the Kennedy family, who have been in my heart and prayers over this past week. And I expressed regret right away for any pain I caused.

To be clear, Senator Clinton's initial statements were not offensive because she somehow reminded us of an assassination that happened 40 years ago but because she tapped into the clear and present danger of a future attempt on her competitor's life. Rather than acknowledge this, she and her advisers insist the uproar is as a result of the Obama campaign's political shenanigans. The Obama campaign, has however been very magnanimous, describing her words, simply, as "unfortunate." Obama has, himself, stated he thought that Mrs. Clinton meant no harm, although I'd love to hear Michelle Obama's take on the issue.

Michael Tomasky has an article here about Clinton's utter inability to apologize. I agree with his diagnosis if not his psychoanalysis. In my opinion, this absence of a moral compass and penchant for massaging the truth is a deep character of both Clintons and would be a tremendous liability to America in the White House.

Sexism and the Presidential Campaign

Sexism has become the topic du jour on the campaign trail. I just spent an hour listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation address this topic and the Senator said the following in an interview with the Washington Post,

"It's been deeply offensive to millions of women.... I believe this campaign has been a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. But it certainly has been challenging given some of the attitudes in the press, and I regret that, because I think it's been really not worthy of the seriousness of the campaign and the historical nature of the two candidacies we have here."

Later, when asked if she thinks this campaign has been racist, she says she does not. And she circles back to the sexism. "The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head," she said. "It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists."

There is no doubt that Mrs. Clinton has endured sexist comments and treatment from some corners. I am sure that, because of ingrained attitudes in this society, she has probably faced challenges that a man would not have. Since I am not a woman, I probably cannot see many of the things that women--particularly other women her age--see and connect to aspects of their own struggles.

HOWEVER, to try to direct such frustration towards Senator Obama is particularly unreasonable. Furthermore, the nature of a groundbreaking candidacy is that you confront and disprove myths and try to overcome deeply seated prejudices. This is what Senator Obama has been trying to do. Any sexist attack she has faced has not come out of the Obama campaign so I think it is entirely unfair for her supporters to take out their frustration on him. I have seen enough of the Clinton's "strategery" to not be cynical about why this has suddenly become an issue.

Here are some of the more ridiculous complaints about sexism:
1. Obama is sexist because he pulled her chair out at one of the debates. (Remember, he was making an attempt to be courteous because he had been accused of snubbing her on the Senate floor).
2. He is being dismissive by being too nice to her now; yet, he'd better not alienate her supporters by attacking her.
3. Commentators sometimes refer to her as Mrs. Clinton and him as Senator Obama.

Come on; let's not have short memories here. Mrs. Clinton has run her campaign with a very sharp tone and has unleashed ferocious attacks on Obama, not to mention some underhanded insinuations. Much of the negativity that she receives has to do with her personality and not her gender. I truly believe that Mr. Obama has been more courteous to her than he would have been to a male competitor; after all, what black man wants to be accused of attacking an older white lady....oh wait, did I just make a sexist remark?

Make Room in the White House...

... for a new dawn. It will be quite a powerful moment in America's history if this is the family in the White House. Photo Credit: Doug Mils/NY Times.

Update I: Lola Adesioye, in her Guardian column, writes of the symbolism of Obama's candidacy to young black America,

Obama has gone to some lengths to avoid being pigeon-holed as "the black candidate". However, the significance of a man who looks like them, has a message that they identify with and provides a relevant role model, is not lost on young African-Americans who have turned out to vote in record numbers this year. According to the Pew Research Centre, Obama's youth vote has been particularly high in states which have significant black populations such as Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Alabama.

Rebeca Walker has a column about the power of this same image for her and her son. She writes,

Watching Obama tonight reminded me of how important it is to give our children glimpses of greatness in whatever form we can, and how each moment builds on the last. During Obama's speech I thought of all things I want to make sure my son knows.

Barack Black Eagle

Sen. Obama was, today, adopted into the Crow Nation. I thought this was quite touching and a meaningful gesture towards the First Americans. I certainly hope that progress will be made on the policy end of things to improve the lives of the original Americans.

Obama Book Club

What's that Mr. Obama's reading as he gets off his campaign plane in Montana? It certainly looks like Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Hmmh, interesting. Should the American President believe in a Post-American World? Well, I think it's healthy that he's at least taking in this perspective. It'd be interesting to find out what he makes of Zakaria's thesis. I wonder if anyone in the MSM, the other campaings, or the book publisher is going to pick up on this.

There's a review here in the NY Times, from which I excerpt the following:

This is a relentlessly intelligent book that eschews simple-minded projections from crisis to collapse. There is certainly plenty to bemoan — from the disappearing dollar to the subprime disaster, from rampant anti-Americanism to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will take years to win.Yet Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the “rise of the rest.”

The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China, trailed by India. China’s is indeed the most incredible success story in history — a tale of almost 30 years of growth in the 7-to-10-percent range that seems to defy the laws of economic gravity.

“America remains the global superpower today, but it is an enfeebled one.” It has blown wads of political capital, but it is still better positioned to manage the “rise of the rest” than its rivals.... America will be in trouble only when China becomes home to tomorrow’s hungry masses yearning to be free — and to make it.

You can read the first chapter here. And in this 2007 column, Zakaria writes about Obama.

Wolf Blitzer and the Unity Ticket

What's with CNN's Wolf Blitzer and having an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket? Remember he was the first one to propose this at a debate--the Los Angeles debate. Since then he keeps pushing the issue, all the while claiming this is what most Democrats want. he asked John Edwards, on today's Late Edition, if Clinton should be the VP. It's one thing to ask a well-intentioned question, it's another thing to keep repeating the same question at every available opportunity so that it becomes conventional wisdom. It seems to me that Blitzer is himself advocating the unity ticket. By the way, expect Obama to face some serious pressure to have Clinton on the ticket when he achieves the nomination.

Some Thoughts on the Middle East

Disclosure: I realize this is a hot button issue for many who are emotionally invested in the Middle East. It's a topic that requires nuance, a constant balancing act, and verbal gymnastics to avoid being labeled as a supporter of terror or anti-Semitic; however, the Middle East's centrality in the political debate makes it fair game and requires some perspective.

THE US AND ISRAEL
1. Israel is an ally of the United States and we have every right to defend it with all our military might; however, Israel is not (or at least should not be) an extension of the United States. Our policies should not be conflated even if they do overlap. It seems to me that the lines, in this election have become quite blurred.
2. Support of Israel does not mean blind, uncritical support; it is important that the United States be committed to justice on behalf of the Palestinian people. The US can only continue to be a moral authority in the region if it is seen as a fair abritator. Not only can this be done without comprising Israel's security but, I believe it will eventually lead to greater security for Israel. George H. Bush, unlike his son, was much more cognizant of this.
3. I recognize that Israel is continually faced with an existential threat and that threat is one that few nations can understand--she is surrounded by adversaries; the Jewish people have been traumatized by centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe, America, and the Middle East; the Jewish people have experienced the unspeakable terror of the Holocaust; and are attacked constantly by by Hamas and Hezbollah rockets. That awareness must, however, be balanced with an awareness of the Palestinian people's incesant suffering.
4. Israel, without doubt, has the strongest Army in the Middle East and is the Middle East's only nuclear power. She has the capability to respond with overwhelming force if need be. That strength must tempered by justice.

THE US AND HAMAS
1. Hamas is a stated and unquestionable enemy of Israel; however, it is not a declared enemy of the United States--it has never directly attacked the United States or stated an intent to do so.
2. Hamas came into being as fallout from Israeli occupation and the First Intifidah. Military action might solve an immediate problem but it creates other problems.
3. Hamas came into political power in Gaza strip because of a democratic election pushed by the United States, as well as the inadequacy of Fatah as a political entity. That strengthening, in my opinion, came also due to a strategic weakening of an already flawed Yasir Arafat by Ariel Sharon. Anyone remember the methodical reduction of Arafat's headquarters to rubble?
5. It is necessary for politicians to be intellectually honest by not conflating Hamas with Al-Queda. They are not the same organization even if analogies can be made.
6. Hamas is a reality on the ground that will have to be dealt with eventually. I do, however, respect Israel's desire not to negotiate with Hamas until certain conditions are met.

THE US AND IRAN
1. Amedinajad is not the state of Iran just as Bush is not the United States. Let's stop conflating leaders and their nations. If Saddam Hussein was Iraq, then our troops would be home.
2. Iran's army is at best a second rate military. We spend (several times over) the defense budget of all the nations of the world combined. We are not negotiating from a position of fear. Iran, on the other hand, is facing a country with an army on two of its borders--Afghanistan and Iraq, a country that has declared Iran is part of an axis of evil, and that has (accidentally) shot down one of its passenger airlines killing 290 of its citizens.
3. I say all this simply to echo what Robert S. McNamara said, you must empathize with your enemy in order understand what motivates him/her.
4. This is not to, in anyway minimize the existential threat faced by Israel by a nuclear armed Iran. But lest we forget, Israel is the Middle East's only nuclear power, The United States has over 6,000 nuclear weapons and we are the only nation ever to have used nuclear weapons.

GEORGE BUSH AND THE MIDDLE EAST
1. Upon assuming power, George Bush COMPLETELY ignored the Middle East conflict. He was making an attempt to distance himself from Bill Clinton's foreign policy.
2. George Bush suggested, on the eve of invading Iraq, that somehow that invasion was going to magically bring peace to the Middle East. A delusion if there ever was one.
3. The destabilization of Iraq has significantly strengthened Iran in the Middle East and thrown the region off-balance.
4. The war in Iraq has severely reduced our effectiveness in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden is likely to outlast Bush's term in office.

Now the question is "what is the best way to bring peace to the Middle East?" The first is by being intellectually honest with ourselves. The second is by being fair yet firm in securing peace for all. Justice looks the same regardless of what side of the fence one is born on; all human life is, after all, valuable.

Update I: Senator Obama had a useful interview here with Jeffrey Goldberg about his stand on the State of Israel. Here are some excerpts.

I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience.

That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it’s a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds. But the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world.

I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now, and that won’t lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article.

Update II: Thomas Friedman about the US's role in the Middle East has a useful article here from which I quote the following:

Personally, as an American Jew, I don’t vote for president on the basis of who will be the strongest supporter of Israel. I vote for who will make America strongest. It’s not only because this is my country, first and always, but because the single greatest source of support and protection for Israel is an America that is financially and militarily strong, and globally respected. Nothing would imperil Israel more than an enfeebled, isolated America.

But what matters a lot more is that under Mr. Bush, America today is neither feared nor respected nor liked in the Middle East, and that his lack of an energy policy for seven years has left Israel’s enemies and America’s enemies — the petro-dictators and the terrorists they support — stronger than ever. The rise of Iran as a threat to Israel today is directly related to Mr. Bush’s failure to succeed in Iraq and to develop alternatives to oil.

Update III: Jeffrey Goldberg has a useful op-ed in the Sunday NY Times based on the above mentioned interview. Here's an excerpt.

There are some Jews who would be made anxious by Mr. Obama even if he changed his first name to Baruch and had his bar mitzvah on Masada. But after speaking with him it struck me that, by the standards of rhetorical correctness maintained by such groups as the Conference of Presidents and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, Mr. Obama is actually more pro-Israel than either Ehud Olmert or Ehud Barak. (To say nothing of John McCain and President George W. Bush, who spoke to the Knesset last week about external threats to Israel’s safety but made no mention of the country’s missteps.)

This is an existentially unhealthy state of affairs. I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within.

Update IV: For some thoughts on dealing with Hamas, see Joe Klein's Time column here.

Full-Blooded American

Obama Loses West Virginia. Such shocking news. Of course this was to be expected. This Financial Times article gives some interesting perspective on SOME West Virginian's beliefs about Senator Obama. I think this one is absolutely the cream of the crop.

Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president.”

Such people seem almost impossible to reach. ABC news had a lady who insisted Obama was a Muslim; the reporter insisted that the Senator had announced he was a Christian, but the old lady said she didn't believe him. How does one deal with people with this.

Despite all this, I wish Obama had campaigned much harder in West Virginia, although I realize he would still have lost and the idea that he campaigned and lost would have been used against him. Still, I think it looks bad to appear to dismiss the state.

Update: Kathleen Parker, in her RCP column amazingly tries to justify the racist statement above as being about values not race even though nothing has been used to describe racial purity so much as "blood."

Update II: Talking Point Memo has an analysis that says Obama's problem is not a Blue Collar Problem but an Appalachian one. Check it out.

Smear Campaign Redux

Today's NY Times opinion page features a column by commentator Edward Luttwak on how the muslim world is going to lose their affection for Obama once they find out he is a Christian. Have no doubt, the main point of the article is not what it claims to be. The real reason for the article is to imply that no matter what he says, Obama is a muslim because his father was a muslim. The key paragraph is this one,

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Luttwak makes some flimsy argument about Obama being an apostate under Islamic law for whom execution is the Islamic punishment. Again, the only reason is to get the idea out in the American psyche that Obama is a muslim. Luttwak is an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which as far as I can tell is non-partisan.

Since when did we select our presidents based on what the standards were in other countries. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had Madeleine Albright or Condoleeza Rice as our Secretaries of State because they would have to represent us in muslim countries like Saudi Arabia where women don't have the same rights. This is a continued attempt to portray Obama as different than "us," as "other."

Update: This is now the second most emailed article on the NYT. I believe the NYT really should have been more critical about the intent of this column.

Update II: Others are also recognizing that this is another round in the smear campaign. Here's one take from the Huff Post. And another from fellow blogger, The Stopped Clock.

Slicing and Dicing

Donna Brazil and Paul Begala got into it recently on CNN. This debate is really quite interesting because Brazile and Bagela are really two of the more likable and sensible pundits on the air. As Brazile correctly articulates, dismissing one person's coalition and emphasizing another's is implying superiority of one over the other. As I stated in my earlier post, why hasn't Hillary won (or really worked hard to win) the black vote. Hillary followed up this tense debate by making her, by now, widely circulated comment about her white support.

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Peggy Noonan, in her Wall Street Journal column, was one of the many commentators to denounce these words and Begala's comments. I think the Clinton camp really needs to stop this nonsense. Her supporter, Carole Simpson, on today's Larry King Live, blatantly said whites would not vote for Obama in November, arguing, in effect, that America is too racist to vote for a black candidate. To his credit, Clinton supporter Lenny Davis disagreed. And what does Paul Krugman do in his latest column? He chastises the Obama camp and Donna Brazile for her comments in the video above while blaming Obama for not winning over whites. This column is so willfully blind of Mrs. Clinton's damaging actions that I have to respond to its inanity. He writes,

There’s just one thing that should give Democrats pause — but it’s a big one: the fight for the nomination has divided the party along class and race lines in a way that I believe is unprecedented, at least in modern times.

Ironically, much of Mr. Obama’s initial appeal was the hope that he could transcend these divisions. At first, voting patterns seemed consistent with this hope. In February, for example, he received the support of half of Virginia’s white voters as well as that of a huge majority of African-Americans.

But this week, Mr. Obama, while continuing to win huge African-American majorities, lost North Carolina whites by 23 points, Indiana whites by 22 points. Mr. Obama’s white support continues to be concentrated among the highly educated; there was little in Tuesday’s results to suggest that his problems with working-class whites have significantly diminished.

Okay, Krugman. Do you suppose your candidate might have had anything to do with that? Do you think you should perhaps also mention that your candidate started out with 40% support in the African American community? He continues,

So what can be done to heal the party’s current divisions?

More tirades from Obama supporters against Mrs. Clinton are not the answer — they will only further alienate her grass-roots supporters, many of whom feel that she received a raw deal.

Nor is it helpful to insult the groups that supported Mrs. Clinton, either by suggesting that racism was their only motivation or by minimizing their importance.

After the Pennsylvania primary, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, airily dismissed concerns about working-class whites, saying that they have “gone to the Republican nominee for many elections.” On Tuesday night, Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist, declared that “we don’t have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics.” That sort of thing has to stop.

Yes, and so do your candidate's attempts to encourage those racial divisions by suggesting that she alone can win the white vote. The blatant decontextualizing of Brazile's comments, which you can view above, has made me lose any respect I might have had for Krugman. As you can see from the video, Brazile is arguing, exactly against the division of the electorate into racial categories and saying one was more important than the other! The sooner Mrs. Clinton steps off the stage, the sooner will be able to bridge those racial gaps.

Sean Hannity's Bitter Obsession

Just catching up with the TV coverage of the IN and NC elections. I've been watching Fox for the past 30 minutes. Sean Hannity seems to have been thrown off balance by Obama's NC victory and the close contest in Indiana. Literally, every sentence out of the mouth of Sean Hannity and the others is about Rev. Wright. I really hope that the American people show themselves to be above this sort of meaningless and thoughtless politics.

Invisible (Wo)Men

Well, with the victory in North Carolina and the magnificent showing of Gary, Indiana's black electorate, it is clear that the black vote cannot be ignored. No one has asked Senator Clinton why she hasn't won much of the black vote or challenged her to try to earn it as they did Obama for the working class white vote. Is she supposed to win the general without the black vote? There is not a single argument that's been made about the importance of the white working class vote that can't be made for the black working class vote. Furthermore, in much of the dissecting of the electorate that has been happening, no one has asked what African-American voters want beyond having a dark-skinned president.

Update: See this Houston Chronicle article about how Obama isn't winning some "key voting blocks," which reinforces my thesis. She's losing the Afro-Am vote by 9 to 1. If you're going to take Obama to task then take her to task as well.

Update II: Another interesting take from the Guardian.

Obama in the Niger Delta

Politico.com's Ben Smith, quoting Reuters, is reporting that Obama has inadvertently sued for peace in the Niger Delta. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) announced they were considering a call for ceasefire by the Senator because "Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem." The only problem, the Senator had not said anything! He did, however, take the opportunity to make a call for reconciliation.

Senator Obama does urge an end to the violence in the Delta region and encourages all parties to establish a process for addressing the relevant issues and grievances in order to create the conditions for peace and economic development.

Well it just shows, that taking a posture of reasonableness can indicate to the rest of the world that America is open for conversation. Something that won't be achieved by Senator McCain singing "bomb, bomb, Iran" or Hillary Clinton threatening to "obliterate Iran." It also show the unrealistic expectations for Obama. Everyone is (or was until recently) projecting their dreams on him. For the complete Reuters story click here.

The Fallacy of Polls

Two polls being are out today reporting almost contradictory things about the effect of the J.Wright controverse. The first by USA today proclaims that "Flap over pastor hurts Obama." They report:

Barack Obama's national standing has been significantly damaged by the controversy over his former pastor, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, raising questions for some voters about the Illinois senator's values, credibility and electability.

Another report coming from the NY Times reports "In Poll, Obama Survives Furor." They continue:

A majority of American voters say that the furor over the relationship between Senator Barack Obama and his former pastor has not affected their opinion of Mr. Obama, but a substantial number say that it could influence voters this fall should he be the Democratic presidential nominee.

I'd advise any candidate to take all polls with a pinch of salt. I don't understand how polling a thousand or so people is supposed to give an accurate read of a couple of hundred million.

A Thousand Words

It's amazing how images can be used to reinforce a subliminal (or explicit) message. This is three-part image of Jeremiah Wright from this NY Times story. I wonder what message is been sent here.

BTW Wright's Press Club spectacle and Obama's denouncement seem to have (i) given people permission to dismiss any valid thing Wright had to say (ii)allowed extremists on the right to ridicule any expression of grievance by the African-American community. You only need to spend an hour on conservative talk radio to find this out. In that sense, JW was completely lacking in perspective on the opportunity inherent in this historic moment to better weave the African American experience into the national narrative.

He also had no idea how many people were working to defend his legacy and how he made a fool of us and his parishioner for having extended him the respect due an elder.

The Obamas on Today show