Obama as Lincoln (as Bobby) in Indiana

In Plainfield, Indiana Saturday, Barack Obama closed his informal speech (20 min., followed after this by 45 min. of questions and answers) with these words:

Let me just close my initial remarks by talking about bringing this country together. You know, Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most — gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis. Right after Dr. King was shot. Some of you remember reading about this speech. Some of you were alive when this speech was given. He stood on top of a car. He was in a crowd mostly of African Americans. And he delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed. And he said, at that moment of anguish, he said, we’ve got a choice.

He said, we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes. And we can decide to walk down this road together. And remake America once again.

And, you know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks - because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech at the convention in 2004, there is no Black America, or White America, or Asian America, or Latino America. There is the United States of America.

But I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been this shift. You know, that you’ve been seeing in the reporting. You’ve been seeing some of the commentaries of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you heard some statements from my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject, although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly had — but if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked.

And it just reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. That this country wants something different.

I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment.

We cannot forget about our past, and ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget them. We have to acknowledge them and lift them up and when people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them.

But what you also have to do is remember what Bobby Kennedy said. That it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America. And that we have to do not just so that our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is the only way that we are going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care divided. We cannot create an economy that works for everybody divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about. That’s why you are here. That’s why we’re going to win this election. That’s how we’re going to change the country.

Friday's Feeding Frenzy

Gee, I missed it. I didn't have time to see any TV Friday, and missed the whole feeding frenzy over the suddenly publicized remarks of Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., when he was the pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. I did read Obama's HuffPost post on it, in which he denounces the remarks being cited, and later that Wright has been dropped from any relationship to his campaign.

I don't know what excerpts were on TV but the one posted here, which I listened to, seemed a response very early in the campaign to the supposed charge within the black community that Obama was not "black enough." While Wright's rhetoric might seem excessive and even offensive in some contexts, there's nothing in it, frankly, that isn't true. Or let's say closer to the truth than most Hillary speeches. And according to Hillary standards, it's not an ad hominem attack anyway, but a historical reference. In any case, it's a good window into how significant elements of the black community see things from their perspective. Always instructive to white people, who think their perspective is not only the right one, but the only one.

Judging from some posts here and there, Wright made some other biased or otherwise crazy statements, putting him closer to the league of those preachers backing McCain. The fact that Wright may be getting all the heat instead of them probably makes one of Wright's points: it's different if you're black. You're still the Other.

The Two-State Travesty

In other absurdity, everybody's running around frantically trying to figure out how to deal with Michigan and Florida--re-vote? How? When? Who Pays? Other solutions? Split 50-50? And not to serve democracy so much as to save the state politicians who got those states in this mess in the first place. If these delegations don't get seated at the convention, these folks lose power within the party and look real bad to their constitutents, who sooner or later are going to realize that this immense screw-up is their fault.

Meanwhile, Hillary’s positions keep changing so fast that reporting can't keep up with them. Thursday it was that the votes in Michigan and Florida should stand, because in Michigan it was the other candidates’ choice to take their names off the ballot. This is just one more instance of Hillary sounding exactly like George Bush, on FISA and Iraq. There’s always a new assertion, always involving tortured logic (if any) and in defiance of the facts, but everybody reacts to it. And neither of them have any shame about doing this. How can Hillary look in the mirror and not see Bush staring back at her, grinning?

Civil War, Yes We Are

It's happening, and no one knows where it will take us. Except that if Democrats manage not to self-destruct, the resurrection of identity politics may be enough for Republicans to destroy their chances in 2008.

While the Ferarro affair continued to echo, the seriousness of the situation in the black community was becoming more obvious in the media. From the LA Times:

This is a virtual race war, politically," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers of the Azusa Christian Community church in Boston, one of the country's leading Pentecostal ministers.

In the close contest between two popular candidates, strong emotions are often spurred by nuance and competing interpretations of comments and events. Rivers said black voters were especially offended by Clinton's suggestion this week that Obama could join her on the ticket as her running mate."Blacks aren't going to sit back while the winning candidate is told to sit at the back of the bus," he said, adding that the Democratic Party and Clinton risk handing the election to the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

Bishop Charles E. Blake of Los Angeles, as leader of the Church of God in Christ, which claims 6 million members nationwide and abroad, presides over one of the largest Christian denominations in the country. He said in an interview that black voters could come to feel so disheartened that "their whole motivation for participating in the political process in this election would be greatly reduced."

The anger, which is not by any means restricted to the black community, is fed by the growing suspicion that none of this is accidental: that the Clinton campaign is fomenting a race war as a political calculation, especially in Pennsylvania. That impression is helped by Ed Rendell, the governor of the Commonwealth who supports Clinton, repeating his view that some whites in PA will not vote for a black man. The point isn't whether this is a true statement, but that it is a repeated one, which encourages those so disposed to express their prejudice to feel entirely justified in doing so.

Not everyone in PA is taking this lying down. An editorial in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette--which I am therefore proud to say I used to write for--said this:

The question that has to be asked is the degree to which Ms. Ferraro's remarks are in response to advice Mrs. Clinton may be receiving from some of Pennsylvania's professional politicians to the effect that people here might be susceptible in advance of the April primary to the sort of argument she is peddling.

If that is what they are telling her, they are wrong in telling her that Pennsylvanians will respond favorably to a racist pitch. We are not like that. As we make this important choice for ourselves and for the country, we will not consider a candidate's race or gender as the principal factor in the choice we make. Mrs. Clinton should give Pennsylvanians credit for sound judgment, not appeal to what she might believe are our prejudices...

Mrs. Clinton should have fired Ms. Ferraro immediately. What Ms. Ferraro said simply validated all the claims that the Clinton campaign constitutes a return to the dirty-tricks politics of the past.

PA is in the position to end this, but they didn't start it. Now it's become clear that nearly a quarter of the vote Hillary got in Mississippi was Republican crossover--which the exit polls suggest was 1)mischiefmaking at the behest of Rush Limbaugh and 2) white racism being expressed. The combination likely cost Obama up to 10 earned delegates. The racist component in Ohio's exit polls is there for all to see, and there's suspicion it was a factor in Texas. (Here's a more detailed analysis of Mississippi exit polls.)

Now I count among fellow alarmists Countdown's Keith Olbermann, whose Special Comment lambasted the Clinton campaign for, among other things, giving "Congresswoman Ferraro nearly a week in which to send Senator Clinton`s campaign back into the vocabulary of David Duke..."

Yet even the day after this, in the midst of her strongest attempt at an apology, Clinton again linked Obama and Jesse Jackson in the same sentence, marking him as Bill Clinton has done in South Carolina, as the Black Candidate.

Now the aspect of the Clinton 3AM commercial that I wrote about last week has become part of the dialogue:

As Karl Rove has proven and as Orlando Patterson pointed out in the New York Times, campaigns and their messages are often more about image than substance. Was it an oversight or a design that the children sleeping safely in that 3 a.m. ad were white? Isn't everyone in politics astute enough to know these days that everyone who needs protecting isn't white?

Or as I wrote here at American Dash on March 5: If you deconstruct Hillary's "3 AM" ad, it appeals to the fears of white women for their children (the only people in the ad are white women and white children), and what are they afraid of? Is it really about the experience to make sound decisions in a crisis? Or is it about white mom protecting her children against threatening dark-skinned men?

If you believe that ad really is only about national security, then you probably believe that the Willy Horton ad was about the criminal justice system.

Ferraro couched her own racially divisive and racist comments in the context of feminism, repeating the line that another 70s womens lib leader, Gloria Steinem coined, that sexism is more prevalent and virilent in America than racism. I'll leave it to another woman of my generation to express my point of view--she does it very well--but here again there is the political calculation: there are many older white women voting in Democratic primaries, especially in PA. And there's nothing like this remnant of identity politics, particularly when led by affluent white women who claim to be among the most downtrodden group in America, that turns off Democrats and turns away Republicans.

It's gotten so extreme that I've seen an even more nefarious theory: that Clinton, in the likely futile attempt to get this year's nomination, doesn't care if she helps elect John McBush in the process, because that way she can run in 2012--especially if she can destroy her most powerful rival, Barack Obama. (It's at the very end of this otherwise informative set of links.)

You know, it would seem pretty far-fetched, except...it's about a Clinton.

Civil War

I hope I'm being alarmist about this, but I'm afraid that I'm not. Today the Clinton campaign became officially based on racial division. You can read the statements back and forth on the Ferraro matter. The key is the refusal by the Clinton campaign to "repudiate and reject"and especially to sever Ferraro from her official role in the campaign.

This is about more than Clintonian hypocrisy (the reference of the "repudiate and reject" language, from the debate where Clinton insisted Obama do both when a black supremacist said nice things about him.) It's about setting the white and black races against each other.

Before Iowa, African Americans were not supporting Obama in overwhelming numbers in the polls. When he started winning white votes, they took another look. Now they are watching this campaign closely. They see what happened to a young white Obama advisor who called Hillary a monster, even though she tried to get it off the record, and Clinton people (off the record) have said far worse of Obama. Even though her role was unpaid and informal, the Clinton campaign demanded she be fired, and she "resigned" immediately.

Now they see what happened when an official of the Clinton campaign makes racially inflammatory remarks, not once but twice. That the Clinton campaign did not sever her from the campaign, and then Clinton's campaign manager made accusations against the Obama campaign for its demand that she be severed, was a direct insult to Obama, his campaign, and to African Americans, and to other people who are deeply committed to equality and social justice, and who see this as a social horror.

Today was a primary election day, and the cable networks had their panels of experts, which include African Americans. The black men among them were visibly angry. I expect any black man--and especially any black man who has achieved a white collar, middle class life--is going to be angry. They've heard these insinuations before. Now it no longer matters whether any individual black person thinks Hillary has a better health care plan or might make a better commander in chief. They will circle the wagons around one of their own. Because they are defending themselves.

The Mississippi results seem to me to show what I started seeing in the Ohio results and exit polls: that racial polarization was happening more and more. Black people are circling the wagons around Obama. White people who are inclined towards prejudice are being given permission to express it. You can see it for example in the 70% of Clinton voters in Mississippi who don't want Obama on the ticket at all.

Racial polarization is a winning strategy if you are just counting numbers, because if you can get all the black people to vote for the black candidate and all the white people to vote white, the white candidate wins because there are still more white people voting.

But we're not talking about numbers, although apparently that's all Hillary cares about at the moment. We're talking about starting a Civil War within the Democratic party, and the ground on which it will be fought is a familiar one: Pennsylvania. Only it won't just be Gettysburg. It will be the whole state.

It will eventually be the whole country. I saw a comment somewhere that observed that black talk radio is already treating Hillary with the same fear and contempt as Bush. If it appears that racism is taking the nomination away from Obama, black voters will desert the Democratic party, the nomination won't be worth anything, John McCain will win Pennsylvania and the election, and the Democratic party will be in shambles.

This country has come a long way since the Civil Rights days of the 1960s. It's harder to be racist through ignorance. But racism, like fear of the dark foreigners, can be incited, and it takes on a life of its own when social pressure can't keep it in check.

Some say that Obama would have to face this anyway, because the Republicans would foment racism. But they would do so against the Democratic Party candidate. They would be up against all Democrats. Now it is far more dangerous, because it's happening within the Party, and it is racial, not political.

There is nothing rational about this, so rational analysis is not enough. The Clinton campaign seems consumed by the battle, unable to make reasoned judgments. Even if this gets resolved somehow, I fear for the party and the country if they take over.

If the immediate danger of irrational racial polarization isn't recognized immediately, and if party elders don't put a stop to it immediately, we could be at the beginning of something that will be impossible to control later on. And we'll see the country's future disappear before our eyes.

The Soul of the Party

At this moment, thanks to the racially divisive comments of Geraldine Ferraro and the Clinton campaign's response, the soul of the Democratic party is in peril, and along with it the chances for any Democrat to be President in 2009.

The Clinton campaign is encouraging racial polarization, and the results in Ohio, Texas and now even in Mississippi show that it is happening. If it continues, the Democratic party will destroy itself and in the process, its future and the future of the country. It's really as simple as that.

Right now, I fully expect that party leaders--including Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore and John Edwards--are calling the Clinton campaign and insisting that they sever ties with Ferarro. If the Clinton campaign does not immediately do so, these and other important adults within the party must separately or together declare for Obama and end this campaign before it does more damage.

President or Bust

Hillary's campaign has been ending for some time now, but after the apparent resurgence on one particular day in March, there was an opportunity to seize the momentum. If, as it appears, they blew that chance, it is probably because of their one new initiative since Tuesday: several mentions by both halves of Billary to the effect that Obama would make a great v.p. for Hillary.

It was clever, or you could make it case that it was. It might confuse or entice people who like them both, or don't know which one they might like if they paid much attention, which they'd rather not bother to do. And it was yet another way, perhaps more subtle than others, for Billary to belittle and demean Obama, to express their true belief that in every way, he's an upstart, not fit to shine Hillary's halo. And the racial references are inevitable--as every black person in America knows.

But like a lot of what Billary has done this year, it's too clever by half, and it's in the process of backfiring. The doubts and the questions began to creep into the media over the weekend, so they were ready when Obama addressed it on Monday. He separated the three obvious issues, and turned them all into ringing applause lines for his Mississippi campaign audience. (Video is here.)

He pointed out the novelty of the person in second place offering the v.p. to the person in front place in the contest for the Presidential nomination. This allowed him to recite his game stats: first in states won, first in popular vote, first in delegates.

He pointed out the hypocrisy. He quoted Bill Clinton on the qualifications for v.p.--that the person selected must be ready to assume the office, including the role of commander in chief. And yet, Obama says, at the same time as they say they want me for v.p., they're saying I'm not ready to be commander in chief. Which allowed him to talk about why he is ready.

Then he ended the discussion--he's not running for v.p. Which allowed him to reaffirm he is running for President and why. A perfect sequence that gives him the opportunity to forcefully state his message and his rationale, and the reasons to vote for him, in a context that has people paying attention. The evidence of how successful this was for him Monday was simply that on a day in which one of the more shocking stories of the year broke--Governor Spitzer, Mr. Clean, patronizing the kind of prostitution ring he used to bust--Obama's comments in his speech commanded headlines and time on the news shows.

And it looks to be a gift that keeps on giving, because once again, the inherent contradictions in the offer flummoxed Clinton spokesbeast Howard the Wolf--the best answer he could come up with is that it's true Obama isn't qualified now, but he might be by the time the Dem convention is held this summer.

Sometimes I quote opinion pieces because they persuaded me, and sometimes because they confirm an intuition I had separately, but they express it better than I might. It's the latter case for a New York Daily News column by Michael Goodwin. He sets up the basic Clinton gag (a show biz term; Obama uses one with a different origin, the "oakey-doke"):

It's a dream team all right, as in dream on. It's a fantasy because, in the Clintons' pitch, naturally, she is on top of the ticket and Obama is her No. 2. That's rich of her, considering that Obama leads in both the delegate race and the popular vote. Forget those pesky voters - Hillary has declared herself the winner!

Shades of the subprime mortgage mess there. She's like a con artist trying to sell a house she doesn't own. Based on the votes so far, she should have suggested herself as the vice presidential running mate.

Ah, but because these are the Clintons talking, we must parse their words to find out what they're up to. No problem. This scam is fairly clever, but too obvious. The offer of a joint ticket looks like an olive branch, but it's really a knife aimed at cutting Obama down to size. In the words of one Clintonista, "It's a way of belittling him" by suggesting he's not ready to be President and would lose the general election as nominee to John McCain.

It's the same attack she has been using all along, though now it's presented as a compliment. And a generous one, too, because the offer implies she will take him under her wing for eight years. How sweet.

Then comes the part that first occurred to me--as to what this proposal really says about the state of the nomination race:

In truth, it's a sign of her desperation. Hil and Bill suddenly are hot for a joint ticket because they know the cold delegate math. Obama picked up seven delegates to her five by winning the Wyoming caucuses Saturday, and now leads by about 120 total delegates.

Goodwin goes on to state the rationale--that Clinton has to get close enough, one way or another, to convince super-delegates that she's more viable in November, even if he's slightly ahead in earned delegates. That's a conventional argument and probably does reflect the strategy. But the word that rang true to me was "desperation." Clinton knows she cannot win the nomination on her own, nor could she possibly win the general election without Obama's voters. The Clintons are essentially admitting they can't do either without getting--or stealing--Obama's supporters. And they're saying they can't get them without Obama. This offer was a clear sign of desperation.

This does not make the Billary strategy any less disgusting, since it depends on tearing down the likely nominee, which risks handing McCain ready-made weapons, and thereby risking Democratic defeat in an election that should be theirs. But it is an admission that dissing Obama's supporters will certainly mean Democratic defeat in November.

Eventually, super-delegates are going to have to understand that their party will throw away not only this election but any opportunity to become a true majority party, if they lose the millions who have responded deeply to Obama, and just as significantly, to his message and his movement. They want that kind of change, and they want it now. The only sure way to keep Obama's supporters enthusiastically in the Democratic party, is to nominate Obama for President. That's all there is to it.

And as further evidence of his fitness to be commander in chief, Obama (obviously having read my memo from yesterday) brought together some demonstrably experienced foreign policy and military folks who were highly placed in previous administrations, including Bill C's, to confirm that Obama is ready.

When asked if Clinton's v.p. trial balloon was "patronizing," the Sec. of the Army in the Carter administration (who is black) preferred to call it just plain old "surrealistic."

And if the Clintonians are unclear on who is ahead for the presidential nomination, the NBC-compiled numbers as of Monday are: Obama with 1,379 earned delegates to Clinton's 1230. (This is without some Texas caucus delegates, and about 10 others still to be determined. Obama's own count gives him 6 more delegates, and Hillary one more.) Clinton's lead in super-delegates has shrunk to 254 to 216 by NBC's count (these are a little subjective.) It includes a super-d from North Carolina Obama picked up Monday. By NBC's count, he's still ahead by some 111 delegates total.

Update: In the week of the March 4 contests until the Mississippi primary, Obama gained 14 delegates on Clinton. This includes the March 4 results, and Clinton's 3 popular vote victories.

This is how Hillary brought peace to Northern
Ireland. Her mission to Bosnia--with Sinbad--
and other dubious claims to "experience" in
foreign policy and national security are the
subject of several news stories this weekend--
for example, one in the Chicago Tribune and one
by the AP. Their conclusion of Hillary's leadership:
not so much. Her claims? "Silly."