Let’s Talk Obama

I have to say, this whole having audio on my blog thing is a dream come true. I absolutely love it. I try to pick relevant songs…but sometimes they will just be songs I just love.

But I want to use this space today to discuss some of the controversies surrounding Obama recently.

Let’s get right into it:

1. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity, and Obama as a secret muslim/Christian Zealot/Secularist (AKA the religious kitchen sink strategy, just throw every offensive term out there and see which one will piss off the most people)

This Rev. Wright certainly has some folks worried.

Instead of trying to deal with the hate that comes out of Fox News and Glenn Beck, I’ll just try and deal with the facts.

a) Senator Obama is a bible-believing Christian. Below is his testimony, which he described in a speech to the UCC convention in 2007:

“It’s been several months now since I announced I was running for president. In that time, I’ve had the chance to talk with Americans all across this country. And I’ve found that no matter where I am, or who I’m talking to, there’s a common theme that emerges. It’s that folks are hungry for change - they’re hungry for something new. They’re ready to turn the page on the old politics and the old policies - whether it’s the war in Iraq or the health care crisis we’re in, or a school system that’s leaving too many kids behind despite the slogans.

But I also get the sense that there’s a hunger that’s deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond any single cause or issue. It seems to me that each day, thousands of Americans are going about their lives - dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets, trying to kick a cigarette habit - and they’re coming to the realization that something is missing. They’re deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They’re looking to relieve a chronic loneliness. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long road toward nothingness.

And this restlessness - this search for meaning - is familiar to me. I was not raised in a particularly religious household. My father, who I didn’t know, returned to Kenya when I was just two. He was nominally a Muslim since there were a number of Muslims in the village where he was born. But by the time he was a young adult, he was an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. She had this enormous capacity for wonder, and lived by the Golden Rule. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution. And as a consequence, so did I.

It wasn’t until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma. In a sense, what brought me to Chicago in the first place was a hunger for some sort of meaning in my life. I wanted to be part of something larger. I’d been inspired by the civil rights movement - by all the clear-eyed, straight-backed, courageous young people who’d boarded buses and traveled down South to march and sit at lunch counters, and lay down their lives in some cases for freedom. I was too young to be involved in that movement, but I felt I could play a small part in the continuing battle for justice by helping rebuild some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

So it’s 1985, and I’m in Chicago, and I’m working with these churches, and with lots of laypeople who are much older than I am. And I found that I recognized in these folks a part of myself. I learned that everyone’s got a sacred story when you take the time to listen. And I think they recognized a part of themselves in me too. They saw that I knew the Scriptures and that many of the values I held and that propelled me in my work were values they shared. But I think they also sensed that a part of me remained removed and detached - that I was an observer in their midst.

And slowly, I came to realize that something was missing as well - that without an anchor for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And it’s around this time that some pastors I was working with came up to me and asked if I was a member of a church. “If you’re organizing churches,” they said, “it might be helpful if you went to church once in a while.” And I thought, “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called “The Audacity of Hope.” And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.”

It is a faith that he has written about in both of his books and that has been a palpable and verifiable agent in his life. His legitimacy as a Christian and legitimacy in reaching out to people of faith, including evangelicals, has the GOP and those who profit from using religion as a bludgeon scared. So they will try and condemn Obama and his faith. Evangelicals and born-again Christians especially should be weary when the media starts to make a man’s Christian faith deplorable…they’ve been saying the same thing about us for years.

b) Trinity and Rev. Wright

As you may have noticed above, Obama didn’t join Trinity after hearing one of the 2 or 3 clips that cable news has been playing of one of Rev. Wright’s sermons…no. It was his message on “The Audacity of Hope.” A sermon that, for Obama, spoke of how, with God, anything is possible.

A few points:

I have sat in the Chapel and heard ideas that I completely disagreed with, particularly when Pastor Al Cockrell was preaching. This only happened maybe five or six times, but I would be shaking my head when he’d say something I didn’t agree with. I didn’t feel compelled to express my disagreement. I didn’t feel it was my duty. I also didn’t feel like I had to leave the Church. I didn’t feel like I had to do this because my impression of Pastor Al was much different than that of the ideas he sometimes espoused. I have an overall opinion of Pastor Al that is very positive and I believe him to be a good and decent man of God who seeks to be grounded in the word of God.

Now, had I heard Pastor Al for the first times on one of those occasions he said something I disagreed with, I probably would have been hesitant to continue at that Church.

We are all imperfect vessels.

Now, after making this point, someone made the point to me that Trinity’s website had a mission statement that was deplorable and that, sure Rev. Wright may be ruthlessly characterized, but this stuff is on their website.

I looked at the website and this is the mission statement. You can view it for yourself here.

This is the “About Us” section.

The mission statement, to me, is not extreme or out of the mainstream at all. The two references to race are saying that they are not ashamed to be a black church and that they will work to eradicate color lines.

The about us section has that word that Glenn Beck loves to use to scare folks: liberation. As far as I can tell, the Black Liberation theology, in this context, simply is a theology that connects God’s will to the liberation of Blacks out of slavery. I don’t know about you, but I believe it was God’s will that blacks were freed.

Also, as Rev. Wright writes on the Trinity website:

“To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else.”

So my first point is that, if you understand history and the Black Church, then there is nothing offensive on that website whatsoever. Let me remind you that the United Church of Christ is a 99% white denomination, and that 99% holds Trinity up as an example. Trinity is one of the most respected churches in Chicago. Rev. Wright is a respected theologian and scholar.

Secondly, the idea that members of the church are unwilling to separate the political values of their Reverend with his biblical teaching is not a sound one. Imagine if we carried that over. That would imply that every Christian who watched 700 Club voted for Giuliani. That would imply that every Catholic is against the war in Iraq. I’m only on my second point and I am having a hard time not just dismissing this “controversy” as the most manufactured, ignorant and just plain stupid thing I’ve ever heard.

However, I have more points…

Third, imagine if we held every statement of belief of a Church or personal belief of a Christian, and made all sorts of crazy insinuation and assumptions about how that person would act as a public official. For instance, my Church has a statement of belief on its website that says the following:

“We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting conscious suffering
of the lost, and the blissful joy of the saved, which demand a literal Heaven and Hell.”
“We believe in the existence of a personal devil, the old deceiver, a liar from the beginning, who is still
working in the world to destroy the souls of men and that he and all his angels and all who receive not Christ as their Saviour will eternally perish in the lake of fire.”

“We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned, and thereby incurred not only physical death, but spiritual death, which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature and those who reach moral responsibility are sinners in thought, word, and deed.”

Now one can only imagine the types of assumptions about policies that one could make from those statements.

However, we know that there is a difference between the righteous reign and judgment of God and that of our own. We know that we understand humility. In other words, even if you find that a church that is almost all black supports black business and the betterment of black people, even if you find that to be surprising and reprehensible, to automatically carry those things over to Obama, even though he has never espoused such things, and THEN to carry over how he understands the mission and culture of his Church to how he understands his duties as President is foolish. He has been a U.S. Senator for years! He has a record! He won Iowa!

The choice is simple:

Do we want to choose our President by accepting the frames given to us by Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity. Do we want to accept that our choices for President have come down to a war-mongering hot-head, and a racist, elitist, manchurian candidate?

And then, like idiots, we complain about the polarization of politics. It’s our fault! We’re too lazy to accept anything other than characterizations that are made to offend our sensibilities. We have 50-50 elections not because of policy differences, but because half of the country hates unpatriotic people more than anything else and half the country hates uncompassionate, racist people more than anything else.

We have a war in Iraq, our planet is in peril, a health care crisis confronting the most vulnerable of us, open borders, an economy in recession, crime in our communities…And we’re going to pick our President on the basis of a wikipedia-level knowledge of a Church in which a candidate has attended? We’re going to pick our President based on how his last name sounds?

People, wake up!

Finally, this whole bitter thing. I could write more on it, but here is the quick opinion:

Obama likes to consider how Americans think and what problems confront them. He is an intellectual who likes to think and discuss. He considered the thoughts and lives of Americans well in the UCC speech posted above, he did so poorly in San Francisco.

It was a campaign mistake. It was a political mistake. Other than the fact that Obama thinks that our country needs economic policies that work, it has absolutely no implications about Obama or the policies he’d enact.

I am done for now.

Thanks for reading.

I hope to do my entry on the April 9 forum in the next few days.

Feel free to comment if you have anything remotely insightful to say or ask.

 

Dallas Morning News and Huckabee

Dallas Morning News endorses Huckabee again. I think it’s a good editorial and one that says a lot about the future of faith and politics, particularly when it comes to evangelicals.
Editorial: We recommend Mike Huckabee

A vote for Huckabee is a vote for GOP’s future

11:06 AM CST on Sunday, March 2, 2008

Whatever Texas Republican primary voters do Tuesday, John McCain is all but guaranteed to be the party’s presidential nominee. It is mathematically impossible for Mike Huckabee, the last remaining major GOP contender, to capture the nomination. The former Arkansas governor even turned up on Saturday Night Live recently to poke fun at himself for not going away.

Let’s be clear: Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, remains our choice for the GOP nomination. But Mr. McCain has racked up by far the most delegates and leads among Texas Republicans by a wide margin in recent opinion polls. Though he can’t clinch the nomination Tuesday, victory is undeniably close.

Aside from his long experience and personal courage, he has a solid record of fiscal responsibility and has been on the right side of campaign finance reform and environmental issues. And he was correct and principled to lead the fight for comprehensive immigration reform last summer. Still, his age – 71 – and his choleric temperament gave us pause, particularly when contrasted to Mr. Huckabee’s sunny-side-up brand of conservatism.

Also Online

Voter Guide: Comparing Republican presidential candidates

Win or lose in November, the GOP is destined to spend the next few years redefining itself. For many reasons, Reaganism, which made the GOP the dominant political party of the last generation, no longer resonates as it once did with the American public. The world has changed since Ronald Reagan’s election nearly 30 years ago, and the great man’s political heirs will have to adjust the GOP’s strategy and tactics to new realities.

To that end, Mr. Huckabee, 52, should be a top leader in tomorrow’s Republican Party. His good-natured approach to politics – “I’m a conservative; I’m just not mad about it,” as he likes to say – is quite appealing after years of scorched-earth tactics from both parties. He’s a pragmatist more concerned with effective government than with bowing to ideological litmus tests. For example, he has proven himself willing to violate anti-tax dogma to undertake investment in infrastructure for the sake of long-term prosperity.

Mr. Huckabee also is good on the environment, contending that the future of the conservative movement depends on embracing conservation and stewardship of the natural world. And he’s a compassionate conservative especially in tune with middle-class anxieties in a globalizing economy.

Though his social and religious conservatism puts him on the wrong side of abortion, gay rights and other key issues, that same deep-faith commitment inspires his dedication to helping the poor and to racial healing. He truly is representative of the next wave of evangelical chieftains and, if nothing else, will emerge from this primary season the leader of one of the most influential factions in the GOP coalition.

We look forward to having him around to help shape and lead the Republican Party beyond November. That’s why we encourage Texas Republicans to mark their ballots for Mr. Huckabee in the GOP primary: to demonstrate to the party’s elite that Mr. Huckabee and his vision have a solid constituency.

True, a Huckabee vote today won’t do much to determine the 2008 GOP presidential candidate. But it’s a good investment in the Republican Party’s future.

 

Contention: Finally Responding To Hillary Clinton Supporters

This was a comment on my blog last night:

“I am so glad that Hillary won the N.H. Primary. This is about the future of our country and who best can lead us out of the mess that George Bush has made. We need someone with experience, know how, contacts,
and with Bill along, it’s a two for one win.
So many people in this country keep up on the entertainment world and not the real world we live in. Obama’s programs benefit the minorities of this country and the rest of us will be paying their way AGAIN.
Go Hillary”

I think this brings up some majors points:

1. Barack Obama does not have the “experience” Hillary does. He does not have experience voting for the war, for standing idly by while NAFTA was passed, and he most certainly does not have the experience of being despised by the 47% of this country who says that they WOULD NEVER VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON.

2. Barack Obama does not have the “know how” of Hillary Clinton. He did not “know how” to fail to bring the country Universal Health Care with the full power of the bully pulpit behind her. What he did know was the quagmire the Iraq War would turn out to be. What he did know was what he stood for, rather than changing the justification and message of his campaign with every new poll Mark Penn does like Hillary knows. Please, don’t talk to me about Hillary’s “know how,” not to mention all of her “experience.”

3. Hillary does have some great contacts. She also has 47% of the American people as contacts who WOULD NEVER CONSIDER VOTING FOR HER. Tell me how she’s going to pass legislation, not to mention get elected, with that many people against her. Her potentially useful “contacts” will be neutered in the face of the easy job the Republicans will have shooting down her every effort.

4. Oh yes, Bill. Who, according to a poll last night, 58% of Hillary’s supporters would vote AGAINST her to vote for Bill. Mr. Excuses. Mr. Self-Pity. He is tanking his legacy. Like it or not, Bill committed perjury, and while he should not have been impeached, we should not be inviting him back into the White House. If you think Bill in the White House is a good thing for the country, you are misguided.

5. Your final accusation, that Obama’s programs will only benefit minorities, has no basis, which is probably why you didn’t elaborate. It is the racism that is the resort of dirty politicians. Bill Clinton will use African-Americans when it helps him, and dismiss them when it hurts.

6. I know, what a shame that a person should have to “pay their way.” I really hope Hillary takes on your rhetoric. That would just be awful, wouldn’t it? No, see, while some of you folks believe government has the responsibility to take care of you in spite of your actions, Barack Obama (and I) believe that Americans don’t want government to solve every problem and foot the bill. We just want a government who wants the American people to succeed as desperately as the American people are striving in that “pursuit of happiness.”

I do agree with one thing she said.

This election IS about who can help this country recover. That is why Barack Obama will win. We don’t need another eight years of politics over progress, rhetoric over action, and despite Hillary’s latest campaign configuration, Hillary and her politics exemplify “rhetoric over action.” The kind of politics that as long as you can justify to yourself that you’re right in your failure, than success doesn’t really matter. The kind of politics that is content with explaining away health care failures, and her husband’s infidelities, with the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Keeping red America pitted against blue America.

We need change. We need something new. Not just for the sake of change or for the sake of newness. No! We need change because what we’ve had for the last 4 decades isn’t working. It hasn’t worked for the American people! It hasn’t worked for the world! It hasn’t worked for white people, brown people, yellow people, purple people, people of faith, union-members, gay people, Republicans, Democrats, Independents…IT HASN’T WORKED FOR THE PROMISE OF AMERICA THAT SO MANY OF US BELIEVE IN! THE PROMISE THAT IS AT THE CORE OF OUR COUNTRY, THE FOUNDATION OF OUR DREAMS, THE WELLSPRING OF OUR HOPE!

That is why I support Senator Obama. Not because of his greatness, but because of his belief in the greatness of the American people.

 

Laying It Out

I have been silent on this blog on many major issues. Well that ends now as I will try to cover everything that has happened. This will be a fairly long entry and I hope it will cover all major issues. Feel free to leave a comment asking me to cover another issue.

THE RISE OF MIKE HUCKABEE

As some of you may remember, I predicted Huckabee’s rise before August, when he was polling less than 1% nationally and a little over 2% in Iowa. Huckabee has run his campaign using free media, church mobilization and his charisma. He has a message of common sense and traditional values. His Christian Values do not extend only to gay marriage and abortion, but to fighting poverty and believing in the common humanity and value of all Americans. He can not, as a Christian, out of political expediency, “grind his heel in the face of an immigrant child.”

Many stories and attacks are coming out against Mike Huckabee. Most do not have merit and the rest are a question of values.

Mitt Romney has thrown out the immigration attack, claiming Huckabee supported giving a tuition break and scholarship to illegal immigrants. The situation in reality, which doesn’t matter much to someone who is down 20-points in the first-primary state I guess, is that Huckabee wanted to allow all students to obtain a state scholarship if they met the criteria. It is not the fault of the child of an illegal immigrant that their parents took them over the border. America does not punish children for the sins of their parents. It is a choice between having teenagers who feel hopeless on the streets, committing crimes and wasting lives, and allowing them to reach the American dream that is available to all of us. Huckabee is getting criticized for choices and positions (by the way the same can be said for Obama) he held that were positions he held that reflected the needs and concerns of his district. In other words, say I am a Governor of a State that has no gun laws and my state has over 1,000 homicides a year as a result of gun violence. I may support a statewide ban on automatic weapons, such as the AK-47 that a teenager was able to attain to shoot people recklessly at that mall in Omaha. Now if I were to run for President, it would not be inconsistent for me to not support such a ban at the federal level because my concerns and responsibilities are different as President than they were as Governor of a State with over a thousand gun-related homicides.

Huckabee was from a state that needed highway projects desperately and had a budget deficit, and with the support of 80% of Arkansans he raised taxes (I believe it was a poll tax) in order to fund highway projects. I would much rather have a President who took action in the interest of his constituents rather than in the interest of preserving some futile ideology. We should choose a President who protects his constituents, not the ideological purity of his policies. I want a President who takes whatever position is necessary to solve the problem at hand.

I will cover Mike in my overall thoughts on the Republican nomination and in the following topic:

THE MEDIA

I have never been the kind of person who blames the media first. I love journalists. However, this cycle has brought out the worst in the media. The media is certainly going after Huckabee, and he is now in some serious trouble. MSNBC, particularly Chris Matthews, hates Christianity. They don’t hate Christians, just when Christians figure in their beliefs in their decisions. So MSNBC, CNN, AP and many others, not to mention the blogosphere, have spent the last ten days spending each day on quotes from two decades ago, or comments taken WAY out of context. They’re turning what would be non-issues to them, into discrete and not-so-discrete assertions that Mike Huckabee’s faith led to the rape and murder of a woman, illegal immigrants getting scholarships, and AIDS patients being quarantined. The last of those is the media’s favorite as of late. For instance, all the stories yesterday were about how Huckabee “stands by his 1992 comments about AIDS victims.” Which is a mischaracterization. Huckabee obviously does not support the policy NOW, but he does believe his comments in 1992 were defensible. These stories will continue.

FOX News on the other hand hates people who want to help others. I have said it before and I will say it again here: FOX News does not care about social conservatives. Sean Hannity does not care. Bill O’Reilly does not care. FOX News has one priority: Taxes. They realize social conservatives are a part of the Republican base, so they play up these tabloid issues about a “War on Christmas,” making Christians easy targets for MSNBC and seculars. I do not trust FOX News. I never trusted Pat Robertson. I do not trust most National Christian leaders. I trust Rick Warren, and I think Franklin Graham is a pretty good guy, with less sense than his father. I will not comment on Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani again, but it is an example of the priority of those who have used their prominence as religious leaders, and traded their souls in for power. I know that is harsh, but when you have Christian leaders not endorsing candidates who agree with them because they want to beat Hillary, that is a real problem.

But I digress…The moral of the story is, Huckabee is facing attacks from every side and has no refuge in the media. He has to rely on getting his message out any way he can and on the faithfulness of the supporters he has attained.

The media is doing this all over. To create a story, or to push a criticism, they omit and distort. They pretend as though Obama thought Oprah speaking out for him would seal the deal, they pretend as though John Edwards has never criticized his opponents…on and on. The media loves you when you’re the underdog, then kills you when you’re on top. There is no overriding liberal bias really…The real bias of the media is that they despise power.

The Democratic Nomination

My second prediction, that Obama would win the nomination is becoming more realistic as well. He is rising in the early states and the momentum is certainly on his side. But let’s take this state-by-state…

Iowa (January 3):

Iowa is literally a dead-heat between Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Obama has run a strong campaign there and has the organization to back it up. Clinton has convinced Iowans she is the “experience” candidate and that is very important to Iowans. Edwards has been campaigning in Iowa since 2002 and has very committed supporters and high favorability ratings. While health care is now a prominent issue, and Iraq is still in the background of all of this, the race in Iowa among Democrats is coming down to the intangibles: electability, leadership, change, honesty, likability, competence, etc. The issues only come into play as evidence of a candidates possession or lack of one or more of these qualities.

Turnout will be a major factor in the race. If there is low-turnout, Edwards will benefit. If there is high turnout it will be a showdown between Clinton and Obama with Obama receiving a slight advantage. The race is still extremely fluid at this point so these last three weeks are crucial, beginning with tomorrow’s debate. Last year, almost 50% of Iowa caucus-goers did not decide until the last three days before the caucus.

I will make a prediction which I will evaluate each week.

My prediction for Iowa is this: Obama 32 Clinton 29 Edwards 20 Biden 9 Richardson 7 Dodd 4

I expect Biden to surge a bit as he just put up his first ad in Iowa and he is a charismatic fellow. He is one of the most genuine people running. I met him last year and he is a remarkable guy. The best foreign policy man we have running. Richardson has the resume as does Dodd, but neither of them have the “it.” In 2004, either of them would have been great candidates, but in 2008, with Obama and Clinton, there is no oxygen left for underdogs.

New Hampshire (January 8):

Obviously, New Hampshire will be dependent on Iowa, as will all other primary states. The nature of the campaign will change dramatically depending on the outcome of the race. I like Clinton in Iowa because of how well her husband did there. I also think her organization is stronger, and I think the female vote will be better for her in NH. However, Obama is gaining. A new Rasmussen poll that came out today has him up three points in NH. NH also has a tendency to like the fresh face, the comeback story, and the change candidate. Obama also has the support of both of NH’s Democratic congressmembers and of the Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick. His organization is not lacking.

Here are my numbers:

Clinton: 35 Obama: 32 Edwards: 10 Richardson: 8 Dodd: 5 Biden: 4

I expect Dodd and Biden to drop out after NH. I think Clinton will win in NH because her organization is strong and her attacks will become more fierce after Iowa. However, NH is the state about which I am most uncertain, so do not be surprised if next week my views change.

Nevada (January 19):

Nevada is interesting because it is a new early-state. It’s voters are notoriously less engaged and turnout will be low. The culture and demographics are also strikingly different. Union support and hispanics are two key factors. I believe Nevada, more than any other of the 4 states will depend on the outcome of the states that precede it.

Clinton: 39 Obama: 33 Edwards: 17 Richardson: 11

Richardson will hurt Obama and Edwards by stealing votes from them, but Richardson will drop out after Nevada after the Hispanic support won’t work miracles for him.

South Carolina (January 26):

South Carolina is the big one. It will test so many things. The major test being who, if anyone, African-Americans coalesce around. It is the first test in the South for Hillary or Obama. This is the perfect state to lead into Feb. 5.

Remember that John Edwards won SC in 2004. This is the only state that he won.

I believe that when it comes down to it, Obama will mobilize Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Jr., Artur Davis and Deval Patrick…not to mention Michelle Obama, and that Obama will win the black vote resoundingly. This is important as the black vote is about 50% of the primary electorate.

My numbers:

Obama: 44 Clinton: 34 Edwards: 22

Edwards will drop out after SC. I believe Edwards’ support will go to Obama, but that has lately been up to debate. We may see the media delegitimize Obama’s win as a mere effect of him getting the Black vote. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina. The media will need to do this to make Feb. 5 seem epic.

So there you have it. As of right now, I believe Obama and Clinton will split the first states 2-2 and we will go into Feb. 5 with a two-person showdown.

Some X-Factors:

Gore: If he endorses anyone, it will be Obama. The question is: will he?

Drop-out endorsements: Who will Edwards endorse? Who will Richardson, Biden and Dodd endorse?

Kerry: If he endorses, it will be the kiss of death to the candidate that he endorses that Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean was last year. If anyone, I think Clinton will trot out a Kerry endorsement as a last-ditch effort to salvage her campaign.

Revelations: Rumors are swirling that the Clinton campaign has material it will release close to the Iowa caucus that is damaging to Obama. I can only see a late-breaking story hurting Obama. Everyone knows of the skeletons in Hillary’s closet.

Bill Clinton: What impact will he play as we get closer to the election?

Turnout: It’s huge.

Des-Moines Register Debate: It is tomorrow, Dec. 13. It will be huge. It’s on CNN at 2 pm.

Though I had hoped to complete the entry before the GOP debate, I guess I will have to cover the Republicans after their Des Moines Register debate this afternoon as I am now going up to the Hill for a luncheon with Congressman Chaka Fattah that I organized for our membership at the GW College Democrats. It should be a great event.

I also have some big news that I will post soon.

I hope to receive some thoughts, questions and/or comments on this post and find out what ya’ll think.

I will be back to post tonight or tomorrow about the GOP.

Thanks for Reading.

 

Senator Obama and the Baby-Boomers

Much has been made of Senator Obama’s argument that we must move on as a country from the bitter, destructive arguments that defined the generation.

The New York Times discussed this argument:

“Mr. Obama calculates that Americans of all ages are sick of the feuding boomers and ready to turn to the generation that came of age after Vietnam, after the campus culture wars between freaks and straights, and after young people had given up on what überboomer Hillary Rodham Clinton (who made her own announcement on the Web yesterday) called in a 1969 commencement address a search for “a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.”

In his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama is critical of the style and the politics of the 60s, when the psyches of most of his potential rivals for the White House were formed. He writes that the politics of that era were highly personal, burrowing into every interaction between youth and authority and among peers. The battles moved to Washington in the 1990s and endure today, he says.

“In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

Mr. Obama says he recognizes that the flashpoints of the 60s — war, racism, inequality, the relations between the sexes — still animate American politics and society and remain largely unresolved. And he acknowledges, as a child of a white Kansan mother and black Kenyan father, that his own prominence and prospects would have been impossible without the struggles of those who marched in Selma and Washington. But he argues that America faces new challenges that require a new political paradigm.”

I chose this quote because it shows that this argument is something the media has suddenly rediscovered, not something Obama has fabricated as a new argument against Clinton.

I believe this argument is one of the key reasons to support the Senator. He understands the role the next President of the United States could play.

Many have not understood the Senator’s generational argument. Some say that he is throwing away the baby-boomer vote but that is simply not the case. The country, including baby-boomers, are sick of the divisiveness and polarization, the politics of hate that has reigned as of late.

Senator Obama, in so many ways, is symbolic of a new era, a much needed era, of American politics. He is a candidate who will transcend race and Party, he is a man who has a strong, inclusive faith and more importantly, a strong conviction concerning religion and politics.

Senator Clinton on the other hand is defined by that politics. Her request for a 1 million dollar earmark for a Woodstock museum. That politics finds it necessary to justify what happened decades ago instead of focusing on the future. Instead of focusing on reducing abortions, baby-boomers find it necessary to fight the 1973 battles all over again. Instead of focusing on what is best for our military now, the baby-boomers treat Iraq as Vietnam part 2.

Senator Obama has had a great couple of weeks of press. His campaign is on a bit of a roll. Clearly, if he does not receive the nomination, it will not be because the country didn’t need him, but because they were to busy fighting the battles of the baby-boomers to realize it.

 

Iraq

Let’s talk about Iraq.

I recently watched a video that was posted on this blog and I guess if I agreed with the “stay the course” Republicans, the video would have revved me up and I would have loved it. However, I found the video to represent the hateful, ignorant, partisan, and anti-discourse rhetoric and frame of mind that characterizes the far right. The man in the video, in a segment completely devoted to Iraq, and on a show called “Black and Right,” claimed we were winning in Iraq. His evidence, apparently, was that more Iraqis have died than coalition forces. Obviously, that’s hogwash. Check the casualty counts of all of the wars of the 20th and 21st century…casualty count is not directly indicative of victory. Also, the man seemed to be a little confused. He seemed to believe that Iraqis killed translated to enemies killed. While he boasted of us liberating those people, like the heroes that we are (it’s a shame more of the Iraqis don’t see us that way), apparently the ones who died were just paying the price for the liberation that their countrymen are enjoying.

Now let’s be clear, unlike what that man in the video suggested, I don’t think our War in Iraq is faltering because I hate America, because I want the troops to die so that I could rub it into the faces of all those who presently support the war (because apparently, there’s no way someone could support something to begin with and then believe that it’s now a losing situation…you know, like if I support jumping into Lake Erie in January, it would be foolish of me to suggest that people get out of the water once they’re 80% numb)…No…I think that we’re in a rough shape in Iraq…BECAUSE WE’RE IN ROUGH SHAPE! If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have needed this “new” strategy of increasing our troops by a couple handfuls. I am willing to give this surge a chance, but I don’t think it will. This idea that people who don’t think current strategy is working, are hoping for failure, is complete farce. I don’t think 20,000 or so troops are going to help because it’s inadequete. The President knows it, too. He knows that he’s doing what he believes is politically feasible.

As Newt Gingrich pointed out, if we truly believe that Iraq is the central front of the War on Terror, then we damn well better be doing more than increasing troops by 15 or so percent. We should be adding 50-100 thousand more, so that when the insurgents move from Baghdad to Falluja, and from Falluja to Ramadi, we can stay where we chased them out of, and we can also take the fight to where they moved.

However, the American people, it is quite clear, are done with this war. It was poorly and weakly executed after we took out Saddam, and the President and this administration have no trust, no legitimacy, when they say that they now have a plan.

Considering this, I believe Senator Joe Biden has the best plan for Iraq. Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden has a plan that will get our troops out, which is a political necessity, but also partitions Iraq (Tommy Thompson just came out with a strikingly similar plan) in a way that makes sense. I can’t explain the plan any better then the Senator can himself: This website is a wonderful site put up by the Biden campaign. It includes the positions on policy issues of all major Democratic candidates. It does so fairly, by putting up videos that represent the best of all of the Democratic candidates’ arguments. However, if you’d rather just link to Joe Biden’s Iraq plan, here it is.

I would be proud of a Joe Biden Presidency. He would be my candidate if Iraq was the only issue I cared about. For everyone out there, Biden is worth a close look. He is a policy guy, not a social issues guy. He won’t go into office with any type of social issue agenda. He’d be a President of smart foreign relations, and sensible pragmatic domestic policy.

His plan for Iraq should be implemented regardless of who is elected.

I don’t say that because I want to see our troops fail. I don’t say that because I hate President Bush. (I don’t by the way) I say that because I want to see my country come out of this situation in the most positive fashion: laying the groundwork for a functioning, stable democracy in Iraq, and bringing our troops home so that we can be at full strength for any of the other number of threats we may face in the next decade.