Mar 18, 2008 at 10:15 PM by Political Chase
I have not had an opportunity to comment on Barack Obama’s speech - too many priorities today — therefore, this is very brief.
I found his speech brilliant, reflective, bold, truthful, and distinctive. No politician, certainly at this level, has dared to address as controversial an issue as race with such candor. Bold, or better still courageous, because the stakes could not have been higher (politically), however the importance placed on speaking the truth clearly outweighed the perceived risks.
I, like others, do not know if the masses will capture what Obama said today simply because the speech was not laden with red meat or may have surpassed their ability to comprehend. Of course the Rush Limbaughs of the world would never find any merit or value in Obama’s speech. For those not having the capacity to comprehend, Kathleen Parker’s “grandmother” analysis is indeed classic.
What may be most telling about Obama’s predicament may be found in his reference to his white grandmother — her fear of black men on the streets and her stereotypical remarks about blacks. He said he cringed, but I’m betting he did more than that. Those remarks had to cut deep. A young boy who looks different from his immediate family is going to have identity issues of much greater magnitude than your run-of-the-mill “Who Am I?” questions all adolescents usually ask. His narrative of self-discovery and self-identification as an African American in Chicago begins there and the subtext is that his own source of emotional nourishment was polluted by a prejudice that was aimed indirectly at him. His grandmother — his surrogate mother at that point — rejected the black man he was becoming. The anger Obama heard in Rev. Wright’s church may not have felt so alien after all.
Astute observation or self-psychoanalysis?
Mar 18, 2008 at 8:02 PM by Political Chase
Barack Obama confronted the nation’s race issue head-on, tackling both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet campaign uproar.
The video has the entire address. A full transcript is available here or download the PDF.
Mar 18, 2008 at 6:29 PM by Political Chase
A few days ago I discussed Hillary Clinton’s divide-and-conquer strategy, where in summary, I posited that Clinton plans to win the Democratic nomination via super-delegates. However, a new USA Today/Gallup poll indicates Clinton may need to revise her strategy.
55% of respondents who "lean" Democratic say it would be "flawed" and "unfair" if Clinton lost among pledged delegates but prevailed with the help of super delegates. Moreover, of those that say it would be unfair, 28% were Clinton supporters.
(H/T Eric Kleefeld)
Mar 18, 2008 at 9:59 AM by Political Chase
Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post contrasting the outrage expressed over Barack Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Williams, and the acceptance, if not sanctification, of precisely the same remarks and sentiment made by right-wing evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and John Hagee. The right-wing evangelicals are asked to serve as high-level White House advisers, and endorse GOP candidates, whereas Williams and others like Williams, are demonized as American-haters and anti-American.
Mar 18, 2008 at 8:59 AM by Political Chase
I have written a few posts recently about how Clinton and Obama need to stop debating their opponents and start talking about the issues. Thomas Schaller at Salon has an excellent post calling on the Clinton and Obama campaigns to stop spinning.
Although, some some of my past posts have demonstrated heightened-frustration, and yes, anger, Schaller focuses with surgical precision on the campaigns’ electability claims, dissects them and deftly exposes how misleading to false the claims truly are. (Emphases and links in original.)
Memo to Clinton and Obama: Stop spinning
Quit arguing about who would be more electable in November. You both have strengths — and weaknesses — on the electoral map against John McCain.
By Thomas Schaller
Mar. 17, 2008 | Memo: To the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, and everyone working for those campaigns who sends me endless e-mails
From: Tom Schaller
Re: Whether or not your candidate is more electable than the other candidate, and whether primary and caucus results predict how your candidate would fare in the general election
Date: Today and, for the sake of our collective sanity, every day from this point forward
To begin with, let me emphasize that I’m kidding, kind of, about the sanity part. I really do enjoy the daily barrage of “electability” e-mails I receive from each camp. The relentlessness of the spin is awe-inspiring. Consider me impressed that at 3:07 p.m. on March 12, I got an e-mail from Team Clinton titled “Keystone Test: Obama Loses Ground,” about how Obama has lost all the big states except Illinois and will lose Pennsylvania too, and that two hours and 58 minutes later I received an answer e-mail from Team Obama titled “Spun Out.” “More than half of the votes that Senator Clinton has won so far have come from just five states,” it asserts. “And in four of these five states, polls show that Barack would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton.” Color me overjoyed that the next day the dueling e-mails began at 8:27 and hadn’t stopped at 7:55 p.m. I love the conference calls too. The Obama campaign did three on Wednesday alone, one of which summoned three Democratic governors and one senator from swing states that Obama has won to make the case of his electability.
The squabbling of the past week is understandable. We’ve moved past the issues portion of the contest into the championship round, which is all about which of the two Democratic candidates could carry enough swing states to beat John McCain. But I know the back and forth is getting to you. Otherwise on a Wednesday conference call with the national press, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wouldn’t have snapped, sarcastically, “Only states that start with the letter ‘N’ count,” belittling Clinton’s good luck in every “N” state except Nebraska and North Dakota. And on a call the next day, Clinton pollster and strategist Mark Penn wouldn’t have blurted, “Obama really can’t win the general election.”
So I’m offering my services as a mediator. In making your respective cases for electability, each of you has attempted to extrapolate evidence from the statewide primary and caucus results. And the evidence you’ve presented isn’t very convincing. Both of you can’t be wrong — one of the two candidates, logically, has to be less electable, even if the difference is infinitesimal. And maybe both of you are right. Maybe each candidate is electable enough, meaning capable of assembling a specific coalition of voters and collection of electoral votes that will be enough to vanquish John McCain in November. Maybe each candidate is capable, in his or her own way, of winning — or losing.
Read the rest of Thomas Schaller’s post…
