Now that Barack Obama is the Democrat Party’s “presumtive nominee”, it’s time to address the real roadblocks he’s going to face in the general election.
According to The Washington Post, (and my own observations) racial hatred is still commonplace in America.
For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”
Naturally, Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive. But let’s be brutally honest, we all know people at work, at church or in our families who harbor racist views.
Once the Republican hate machine starts running commercials that paint Obama and his wife as radical, uppity blacks, moderates are going to move toward McCain and in all likelihood those moderates in working class states like Pennsylvania and Ohio will deliver the White House to the Grand Old Party, once again. I’d like to be wrong, but that’s how I see it unfolding.
Hill’s spitting fire in Ohio. The former First Lady doesn’t like people to criticize her. You’d think she’d be used to it by now, but maybe it’s not something one gets used to.
With both candidates claiming victory, I had to click through several sources today to get a sense for last night’s winner on the Democrat side. Finally, I found this MSNBC report which says, “it looks like Obama, by the narrowest of margins, won last night’s delegate hunt. By our estimates, he picked up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Clinton; the Obama camp projects winning by nine delegates (845-836). He also won more states (13 to Clinton’s eight; New Mexico is still outstanding), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York).”
Yet, Clinton maintains a slight delegate lead going in to the next round of primaries.
2025 delegates are needed to be nominated.
[UPDATE] The troubling thing about the race being this close is the fact that Democratic Party super-delegates will likely decide the nominee. Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation says the Democratic Party uses an antiquated and anti-democratic nominating system that includes 842 “super-delegates†– un-pledged party leaders not chosen by the voters, free to support the candidate of their choice, and who comprise more than forty percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.
In a clear attempt to protect the party establishment, this undemocratic infrastructure was created following George McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972. It was designed to prevent a nominee who was “out of sync with the rest of the party,†Northeastern University political scientist William Mayer told MSNBC.
Fall Saturdays in South Carolina are known for big hits and rough play. But not in January. January is more genteel. Except for yesterday. Yesterday, as the votes were counted in the Presidential primary, all the sporting analogies came out.
John O’Connor at The State got in on the action with a racing allusion.
Barack Obama left the Democratic field in his red clay dust Saturday, easily winning South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary.
Second place finisher, Hillary Clinton jetted off to Nashville, wanting to put South Carolina behind her, quick like. Despite his third place finish in the state he won four years ago, John Edwards pledged to continue to fight for those with no health insurance, the poor and those worried about their jobs.
“Your voice will be heard in America and it will be heard in this campaign,†Edwards said.
Obama supporters, such as former Gov. Jim Hodges, said the margin of victory bodes well for later states. Obama’s win, he said, cannot be written off as Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 S.C. caucus victories were. Sadly, for Bill Clinton, he did suggest just that yesterday afternoon, mid-route.
“It was a first round knockout,†Hodges said. “(Jackson) didn’t win like this. Nobody’s won like this.â€
Tomorrow is the South Carolina Democrat primary. I have the opportunity, along with many other citizens, to vote for the Palmetto State’s native son, John Edwards. His daddy worked in the mill. You might have heard.
It certainly does not appear that he’ll be elected President, but Edwards would make a great VP or Attorney General, in my opinion. So, a vote for Edwards tomorrow is a vote to keep him in the race, where he can win delegates and wield some bargaining power as the field heads to the nominating convention.
I like Obama too, but I don’t buy that he’s a real change agent. I see him as more of a player, a careerist, willing to say and do what needs to be done to get ahead. In other words, he’s like the Clintons.
Of course, I’d prefer to cast my ballot for Cleveland’s radical dreamer, Dennis Kucinich, but sadly he withdrew from the race the other day.
A political reporter showed up for work yesterday. His name is Glen Johnson and he works for Associated Press. While covering the Mitt Romney for President campaign, Johnson tripped up the candidate, not with a line of questioning, but with a direct challenge as to the truth in a Romney claim.
Romney said he didn’t have any Washington lobbyists running his campaign (the presumption being that others do). Johnson begged to differ. “That is not true. Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist,” said Johnson. The fact that he did so publicly inside a Staples store in Columbia, South Carolina with cameras rolling, confounded the man who would be President. And it angered his travelling press secretary, Eric Ferhnstrom, who scolded Johnson repeatedly, saying, “Don’t get argumentative with the candidate.”
Ferhnstrom’s response is maddening and outrageous. What would Mencken say?
How about, don’t lie to the press unless you want everyone to know about it.
I’ve never been one to favor the incompetence argument when it comes to our present day administration. I’ve always figured they’re doing exactly what they want, and that it must take considerable skill to do that in Washington, even if it’s not readily apparent to the layman. But a good documentary film can jar a stance from the arms of its carrier. No End In Sight by Charles Ferguson is such a film.
After getting his Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T., Ferguson conducted postdoctoral research at MIT while also consulting to the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms.
In 1994, Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, one of the earliest Internet software companies, with Randy Forgaard. Vermeer created the first visual Web site development tool, FrontPageâ„¢. Â In early 1996, Ferguson sold Vermeer to Microsoft, which integrated FrontPage into Microsoft Office. After selling Vermeer, Ferguson returned to research and writing. He was a visiting scholar and/or lecturer for several years at MIT and Berkeley, and for three years was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.
In other words, this guy knows his shit and so do the long line of ultimate insiders who detail for Ferguson the many mistakes made in Iraq by the Bush League. It’s scary stuff.
According to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, leaders of the American Indian Movement, including activist and actor Russell Means, dropped in on the State Department and the embassies of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and South Africa last week seeking recognition for their effort to form a free and independent Lakota nation.
The new nation is needed because Indians have been “dismissed” by the United States and are tired of living under a colonial apartheid system, Means said during a news conference held at Plymouth Congregational Church in northeast Washington.
“I want to emphasize, we do not represent the collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America to ensure our poverty, to ensure the theft of our land and resources,” Means said, comparing elected tribal governments to Nazi collaborators in France during World War II.
Rodney Bordeaux, chairman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said his community has no desire to join the breakaway nation. Means and his group, which call themselves the Lakota Freedom Delegation, have never officially pitched their views to the Rosebud community, Bordeaux said.
Members of the new nation would not pay any taxes, and leaders would be informally chosen by community elders, Means said. Non-Indians could continue to live in the new nation’s territory, which would consist of the western parts of North and South Dakota and Nebraska and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. The new government would issue its own passports and drivers licenses, Means said.
Bolivian Ambassador Gustavo Guzman, who attended the press conference out of solidarity, said he takes the Lakotas’ declaration of independence seriously.
“We are here because the demands of indigenous people of America are our demands,” Guzman said.
I wonder if the Lakota Freedom Delegation would consider taking on dissidents who believe in their cause.
