Frequent Portrayal Of Black Presidents In Hollywood Blockbusters, Advantage For Obama

A slew of African-American presidents portrayed in film and television has helped US voters get used to the idea of electing the country’s first black commander-in-chief, analysts say.

Whether it’s a seven-year-old Sammy Davis Jr in the 1933 comedy Rufus Jones for President or Morgan Freeman in 1998’s Deep Impact, Hollywood has been installing blacks in the Oval Office before anyone had heard of Barack Obama.

But academics believe the increasingly frequent portrayal of black presidents in blockbuster films or hit television shows has helped to make the electorate more receptive towards Obama than they otherwise might have been.

John W. Matviko, author of The American President in Popular Culture, believes that Obama’s overwhelming popularity amongst young voters may be partially explained by the Hollywood factor.

“Part of Obama’s popularity amongst the younger demographic might be because there have been some very positive portrayals of black presidents. So the idea of it has become commonplace, and not really an issue anymore,” he said. Since 1972’s The Man, starring James Earl Jones as what is viewed as the first major screen portrayal of a black president, only a handful of films and television series have had similar roles.

Actor Dennis Haysbert, who played one of the most high-profile black presidents during two seasons on the hit television show 24, told the Los Angeles Times that he was in no doubt his character has helped change mainstream attitudes.

However, Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University, says, “Hollywood might have played some role in shaping attitudes towards Obama, it was more likely that the Illinois senator’s popularity was rooted in his own personality." (DNA News)

An Obama Presidency - Whose Race Problem?

Lots of Americans Accept Obama. But Will The World?
"Will Americans vote for a black man?" I've been asked this question by foreigners of various origins a dozen -- or maybe three dozen -- times since the U.S. presidential campaign began for real in January. Now we have the answer: Yes, Americans will vote for a black man. Which means that it is time to turn this rather offensive question around: Will foreigners accept a black American president?

I realize that this, too, may seem like a rather offensive question, particularly if one believes everything that one reads in newspapers. Germany, to take one random example, is at the moment experiencing something like its own version of Obamamania. The media appear to see the Democratic candidate as what a Der Spiegel journalist calls "a cross between John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr."; the German foreign minister has been heard chanting "Yes, we can!"; and Obama T-shirts can be spotted in the hipper quarters of Berlin. This sort of enthusiasm isn't unique to Germany: British, French and even Polish newspapers splashed Obama and his candidacy on their front pages this past week, most accompanied by laudatory articles that solemnly proclaimed, "America has changed."

But has Europe changed? And have Asia and the Middle East changed? I hate to put it so crudely, but -- European newspaper reporting to the contrary -- racism is not unique to the United States. The situation of ethnic minorities in Europe and Asia is completely different from that in the United States, and in many ways our societies aren't comparable: Most nonwhite inhabitants of European societies are recent immigrants, not descendants of former slaves, and the particular circumstances of, say, the black Christian population in Arab-dominated Sudan are unique.

Nevertheless, it is safe to say that there is a distinct dearth of nonwhite politicians in Europe. The Indian caste system has an element of skin-color discrimination built in. Arab societies have their own history of trading in black slaves, and the existence in the Arab world of prejudice against black Africans is no secret. Periodically, African students in Moscow are beaten up on the street. Though it is certainly more severe in those countries that actually have large nonwhite populations, unreflective racism exists even in parts of the world that have barely any darker-skinned or nonnative inhabitants. Japan has been singled out by the United Nations for racist treatment of foreigners. And while some of the stares that black Americans say they get on the street in Warsaw or Prague reflect simple curiosity, some, I'm told, contain an element of hostility, too.

A President Obama wouldn't have to worry too much about angry stares from people at bus stops, of course, and it is fair to assume that prejudices harbored by the odd foreign leader would vanish in the presence of the American president. In the rosiest scenario, an Obama presidency -- or merely an Obama candidacy -- might even force a broader international discussion of race. Andrew Sullivan wrote eloquently last year about the way in which Obama's face, by itself, will help change America's image around the world. By the same token, candidate Obama -- merely by being who he is, and looking the way he does -- could begin to change European, Arab and Asian attitudes about race. Millions of Africans would surely treat an American president of African descent as "their" president, just for a start.

But in the meantime, do not be surprised if there is some backlash as well. A hint of what might be hiding behind those enthusiastic headlines emerged last week in Obamamanic Germany, where a Berlin newspaper, Die Tageszeitung, put a photograph of the White House and the headline " Uncle Barack's Cabin" on its front page. The editors argued that their intention was satirical, but since the same newspaper has also referred to the current U.S. secretary of state as "Uncle Tom's Rice," it is clear that they understood the nastiness of the "Uncle Tom" connotation perfectly well.

Listen carefully, too, when foreigners start worrying about Obama's lack of foreign policy experience. Though this is a legitimate concern, I occasionally catch a racist undertone in this kind of conversation. "How could a black man possibly understand European/Middle Eastern/South Asian politics?" is what my interlocutors sometimes in fact seem to be saying.

The correct response, of course, is that plenty of white men don't understand European/Middle Eastern/South Asian politics, either. But not everyone, everywhere, is going to understand that. Foreign coverage of U.S. politics always reveals a lot about foreign countries, but never more so than in this election season. (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post)

***** I don't know about the rest of the world, but Malaysians will embrace an Obama presidency without reservation. It is only when accepting an Obama-like figure as our own leader that serious objections will crop up and the contentious question of race and religion will rear its ugly head.

Barack Obama Wins Democratic Nomination

Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday, capping a rapid rise from political obscurity to become the first black to lead a major U.S. party into a race for the White House.

A surge of support from uncommitted delegates helped give Obama the 2,118 votes he needed to clinch the nomination and defeat rival Hillary Clinton, a former first lady who entered the race as a heavy favorite.

Obama will be crowned the Democratic nominee at the convention in August and will face Republican John McCain in November's election to choose a successor to President George W. Bush.

"Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another," Obama said in remarks prepared for a victory celebration in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the site of the Republican convention in September.

"Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States."

Obama's win over Clinton, projected by U.S. networks, came in one of the closest and longest nomination fights in recent U.S. political history. Five months of voting in 54 nominating contests concluded on Tuesday night with votes in Montana and South Dakota.

Clinton, who would have been the first woman nominee in U.S. political history, won in South Dakota, adding to the more than 1,900 delegates she gathered during the campaign. Her aides gave mixed signals about her immediate intentions, but said she would not concede on Tuesday night.

Facing defeat, Clinton told New York members of Congress that she would be open to becoming Obama's vice presidential running mate, and her backers began to turn up the pressure on Obama to pick her as his No. 2.

Obama, 46, is serving his first term in the U.S. Senate from Illinois and would be the fifth-youngest president in history. He was an Illinois state senator when he burst on the national scene with a well received keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.

For the full report from Reuters, Click Here

Hillary Baggage Too Much For Obama

There is a growing effort by the Clintons — led by Bill — to convey a sense of entitlement for Hillary's newly minted vice presidential ambitions. The theory seems to say that she has earned the designation by her strong showing in primaries throughout the nation, particularly by her recent victories in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana.

Her supporters are demanding a place on the ticket as their right after a bruising primary season.

But ever since Aaron Burr rose from a vice presidential candidacy to contest Thomas Jefferson for the presidency in the House of Representatives, the person who came in second in the balloting for president lost his entitlement to anything.

There are no more rewards for second place. No silver medals in the presidential race.

A less arrogant argument from the Clintonistas is that Hillary's presence on the ticket is vital to its chances for success in November. Noting that a Democrat must carry the very states she has won, the theory is that a VP slot for Hillary would make Obama so much more attractive to these voters that his election would be inevitable. (Disregard that Obama carried some states that would look nice in the Democratic column as well like Illinois, North Carolina, Washington State, Missouri, Connecticut, and Wisconsin.)

But Hillary won these later primaries largely because the poison spewed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright led racially fearful voters to turn on Obama and find peril in his associations. Will Hillary running for vice president make Obama any whiter? Or Wright less offensive?

Let's not mistake racial fear of Obama for personal popularity for Hillary. Most of the blue-collar working class whites who backed Hillary Clinton, particularly the men, can't stand her.

Faced with a choice between race and gender, they decided to hold to their fear of the former and overlook their unease at the latter. One wonders if all these police officers and firefighters and construction workers would actually vote for Hillary against McCain were she the nominee. Wouldn't these Reagan Democrats continue their lifelong exodus from the Democratic Party and back the Republican instead?

In any case, it is a far fetched hope that Hillary's presence on the ticket would so ease their fears that they would back Obama in November.

Hillary Clinton will not help Obama win a single vote.

The feminists who supported her will all vote Democratic with the fear of McCain's likely judicial appointments uppermost in their minds. They are party regulars whose support for Obama would be automatic and axiomatic. Those more recent converts to Hillary, driven by fear of a black candidate with a nutty preacher, are not going to be assuaged by Hillary's presence on the ticket.

Bringing them into the Democratic Party fold is Obama's problems and must be his highest priority. He cannot subcontract the job to Hillary.

And Hillary comes with unique baggage all her own. Her very presence on the ticket makes all of the unanswered questions about Bill Clinton to the fore. They suddenly become relevant and answers become imperative.

1. What did Bill Clinton do for the $15 million he was paid by the emir of Dubai?

2. What did he do for the Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who he brought with him to Kazakhstan and introduced to its president after Giustra gave his foundation, which he controls, $100 million?

3. What did he do for InfoUSA, the direct mail list company that sold lists of vulnerable elderly people to criminally convicted telemarketers so they could scam them?

4. Did Bill Clinton know that Hillary's brothers were being paid to secure some of the pardons he granted on their recommendations?

Obama doesn't need this kind of trouble. Bringing Hillary on the ticket brings Bill with her, these days a loose cannon at best, a self-destructive narcissist at worst. (Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, Newsmax.com)

Rude Awakening For The Clintons

This was never supposed to happen.

The winner of the biggest states, the battleground states, the most electorally rich states, the more representative primaries (rather than exclusive caucuses), the contests of Democratic voters only, and likely the popular vote as well is probably headed for the history books instead of the nomination.

Hillary Clinton’s end in the 2008 race, as with so many events in her life, is painful and poignant and drenched in drama. The math is unfair, and Hillary has finally found her best, winning self. But the Clintons are hearing a deafening silence from a party they once ran . Some close aides and friends are asking Hillary to relent, warning her extended campaign is deepening a racial divide in the party that could imperil its chances of winning the presidency. Bill and Hillary Clinton won’t hear of it, insisting there is still a chance. Yet the chance won’t come from their electability argument, only a rival’s implosion or tragedy — Democrats once asked to defend Bill Clinton for lying under oath are not willing to overturn the rules for his wife now.

Life is what happens when we make other plans, and Hillary Clinton’s long-held plan is on its death bed. We will never know how many years Clinton has spent in silent, meditative, disciplined waiting. But as a new senator in 2001, she oozed an almost obsessive intention and deliberation. She took no interviews, stood in the back of the line at Senate press conferences, and insisted on speaking little or last. She was deferential, humble and shrewd. She played it smart with Democrats and Republicans alike, reaching out to former impeachment foes and Republican critics in bipartisan legislative compromise and, privately, in prayer groups.

But calculation, calibration or even religious patience still cannot stop fate. Having raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, Clinton has driven her campaign more than $30 million in debt and had to loan it millions in personal money. In the process, Clinton has let an unprecedented juggernaut dissolve while her opponent, who had only a pipe dream, triumphed in a battle between hubris and hope.

Barack Obama proved that winning is indeed a science, of breaking down voters and opportunities for victory — district by district, county by county, town by town and block by block. He mastered the rules of the Democrats’ very strange game. Team Obama owned the map, finding delegates where they could and stopping at nothing to get them. He not only won more delegates than Clinton in states she won, like New Hampshire, Nevada and Texas, but netted the same amount of delegates from the Idaho caucuses that Clinton picked up in her 10-point win in Pennsylvania. The vote totals are staggering — approximately 20,000 in Idaho compared to more than 2 million in Pennsylvania.

Team Clinton could have competed aggressively against Obama at the very same game; they had the money and influence and party activists to do so. They sure had a leg up on time. With the help of her husband; the alleged greatest mind in the party, Mark Penn; Harold Ickes; Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell; and Terry McAuliffe ( two men who had operated the party machine), how could Hillary have ceded this advantage?

Hillary, should she be making more plans, should follow the footsteps of Al Gore, the only person since Adlai Stevenson to be welcomed back by the Democratic Party after losing. When the Supreme Court ended Gore’s White House dream, he delivered his best speech, conceding that “no matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out.”

When it’s all over the Clintons can talk of glory, and of party unity, but they can’t say this was never supposed to happen. (A.B. Stoddard, The Hill)
Interesting read: Backing from Japanese town named Obama!

Obama's Delegate Count Grows

It's all about the math.

Despite Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 41-point margin of victory in West Virginia this week, the delegate endorsements -- plus support from a large labor union -- kept rolling in for Sen. Barack Obama yesterday, moving him ever closer to the number that really matters: 2,026.

By day's end, the senator from Illinois had picked up eight new delegates, giving him a total of 1,895, compared with 1,718 for Mrs. Clinton. That means Mr. Obama is 131 delegates short of securing the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Obama's attempts to woo blue-collar voters also got a boost when the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union, which previously had endorsed former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, announced it was "enthusiastically" supporting Mr. Obama.

In a statement, the union said Mr. Obama was "clearly the candidate who can best lead our nation out of the dark period of economic decline created by the Bush administration's allegiance to Wall Street profiteering at the expense of worker prosperity."

Four delegates pledged to Mr. Edwards, who endorsed Mr. Obama on Wednesday, also threw their support to Mr. Obama, as did four superdelegates: Reps. Henry Waxman and Howard Berman of California; Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington; and Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen. Mr. Cohen is a superdelegate whose endorsement is personal and doesn't represent a change in position by the union, which remains uncommitted, a spokesman said.

All in all, yesterday's announcements seemed destined to dent Mrs. Clinton's argument that her West Virginia win keeps her candidacy alive as she heads into the final five primaries -- at least in the eyes of the remaining 230 undecided superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials who may ultimately decide who is the nominee.

In theory, the superdelegates are free to vote as they please at the convention in late August, but in this unusual campaign, many have already cast their lot with one or the other candidate.

"The numbers don't lie," said Anthony J. Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, who noted that after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries 10 days ago, 40 superdelegates -- including three former party chairmen -- broke for Mr. Obama, compared with 11 for Mrs. Clinton.

"A number of superdelegates have, based on the math of the delegation selection process, concluded that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee and are starting to make an effort to bring the nominating process to closure," he said.

"There's no way she wins the nomination," added Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, noting he expects a steady rather than overwhelming rush of superdelegates moving to the Obama column in the near future.

"He [Obama] may have understandings with a lot of superdelegates about coming out for him after every contest -- about 10 or 15 at a time -- to play on the notion of the inevitability of his nomination. He's going to get them ultimately, but they are going to let her play out the next two weeks."

Actually, next Tuesday's primaries may allow Mr. Obama to finally claim a majority of pledged delegates, making it easier for him to clinch the nomination without relying too heavily on undecided superdelegates, many of whom have expressed reluctance to act as final arbiters in the nominating process.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to win the Kentucky primary, which has 51 delegates at stake, and Mr. Obama is expected to win in Oregon, with 52, but Mr. Obama needs only 25 total from the two states to give him a majority of the 3,253 pledged delegates. He's expected to do that easily.

Then there's the John Edwards factor. With four of the 19 delegates pledged to him from the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries now in Mr. Obama's column, attention has switched to the remaining 15.

If they come on board for Mr. Obama, some political analysts believe, that will undercut Mrs. Clinton's argument for including delegates from Florida and Michigan, who were disqualified by the Democratic National Committee after holding their primaries earlier than party rules allowed.

Even if those delegates -- 185 in Florida and 128 in Michigan -- are distributed between the candidates based on the party's rules of proportional allocation, the extra Edwards delegates would still give Mr. Obama a majority of pledged delegates overall, NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, argued on MSNBC's "First Read" Web site yesterday.

In Pennsylvania, only four superdelegates remain undecided, all of them congressmen: Jason Altmire, D-McCandless, Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, Tim Holden, D-Schuylkill, and Robert Brady, D-Philadelphia.

It would "take a miracle" for Mrs. Clinton to secure the nomination now, said Mr. Altmire.

"But I'm going to give her the next two weeks to play out the process," he said, adding he wouldn't formally endorse a candidate until after the final primaries June 3. "I'm waiting out of deference to my district, which voted for her, but after June 3 it will be a very quick decision. A lot of other superdelegates are in the same position I am."

Still, he had harsh words for the Clinton campaign's claim Wednesday that her West Virginia victory shows she is the best candidate to take on Republican John McCain in the fall.

"How do you make the case that you're the strongest candidate in the fall," Mr. Altmire asked, "when you didn't even win your own primary? How do you say you'll run a better campaign in November when the person you lost to ran a better campaign than you did? In the end, it's a political campaign, and he ran a better one, which is why he won."

Clinton campaign officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Next Tuesday's Oregon and Kentucky primaries are followed by Puerto Rico's on June 1, and Montana's and South Dakota's on June 3, with a total of 189 delegates in play. (By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

The Clintons - Seeds Of Destruction

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.

(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)

But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.

The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.

Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.

Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.

Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.

Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.

Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”

It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.

So class is not a Clinton forte.

But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.

The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame. (Bob Herbert, New York Times)

Why Won't Hillary Drop Out?

She's going to lose, and by at least as much as she's losing now. What's in it for her?

(By Andrew Tobolowsky)
Here is what I really do not understand: why is Hillary Clinton still running?

Because I currently live 6 time-zone hours from the United States, news doesn't happen while I'm awake. So a couple of mornings I woke up at 5:45 am, because I had something to do, to see that the Mavericks lost by a lot and Hillary won by a little. It was not a good morning.

Not because it matters…well the Mavericks matter…but because it was just barely enough of a victory to keep the deluded Clinton campaign going.

Despite the "massive victory," of something like eleven delegates in the biggest state left, and the one in which she had by far the biggest lead, whittling Obama's lead all the way down to around 140, it is not even an uphill battle. It is an impossibility. She can't come closer than about 130 in pledged delegates and the number of super delegates she needs is edging closer to 80% of the remaining.

SHE must know. And she's in debt, and every minute that she remains in the race helps John McCain. It's a classic "if I can't have it, no one can have it," situation, yet we all know this is a woman who has dealt with adversity before with some dignity, even if we don't personally like her. What's in her head? What's making her do it?

To people like me, she habitually claims that it is borderline immoral not to wait to hear the rest of America speak, that she owes it to them somehow. It may be true that, in a best of seven playoff series for example, once you've lost four games be it in game 4, 5, or 6, you owed your fans better. But that doesn't mean you get to try to give it to them.

So WHAT is she doing?

I don't wish to be petty, though to that depth I will sometimes descend, but in that regard, the most revealing quote from her was this: "I believe I have to win. I feel like that's my task."

In all fairness, that's something that could be taken at least one, possibly two other ways, but it's hard with how far she has demonstrated she will go, how little attention she has paid to her real situation, to avoid the suggestion that this is a kind of quest for her."My task" has disturbing messianic undertones. Her task in what, life? She was MEANT to be president? The voters disagree. At this point it is clear, and will remain clear, no matter what happens, no matter who wishes it could be different, that the voters disagree.

Or perhaps, it's only as me auld father said it was. After having suffered through eight years with Bill, refusing to divorce the philandering wreck, she feels like this is her reward. But you don't get the presidency just by deserving it, especially not on a personal level.

I know her arguments, so do you. Electability, she says. I personally can't stand the idea of it, that someone could win an election and yet not be the choice, that the future of her campaign is predicated on allowing a government body to say that it knows better than the American people which is a terrible precedent even when it serves your purpose…which is something which you really shouldn't be okay with it, which will come back and bite you in the ass…Electability is a concern for the voting populace to decide like any other, and I reject the whole notion that anyone else has a right to it, as should YOU Hillary fans, who should be first fans of keeping the shreds of democratic power which remains in your hands intact…

But the more important thing is that it isn't an issue. I recognize, for example, that Ohio is an important race, but even Hillary's ability to beat Obama in Ohio doesn't REALLY say anything about her ability to beat McCain there, or the ability of the democrats to win there…but I can concede Ohio, despite, as noted above, the philosophical repulsion I have for the notion of stealing elections for strategic reasons (where do you let them stop strategizing for you?). But can anyone on Earth say, with a straight face "I'm sorry, I want the superdelegates to go for Hillary because Obama can't beat her in big states like California, New York, and Texas. Because even though no matter what happens California and New York will go massively blue and Texas massively red, uh…Uhhhhh…."

Also it would seem pretty obvious that one has to guess that the person is more electable who can win more votes and that's Obama. And it would seem like the person who can bring more disillusioned, disenfranchised voters, voters who previously have not voted, to the polls, would be more electable, and that's Obama. Even in Pennsylvania, and even according to CNN, Obama won voters who were unregistered as late as January, or had switched parties by then, by a massive 59%-39% margin. Who's a uniter and not a divider? Incidentally, Pennyslvania hasn't gone blue since 1988.

Look, Hil fans. Hillary is a distinguished public servant, a good speaker, and an intelligent person. I don't blame you for LIKING her, for thinking she's the best candidate, for WISHING she would win. I know if Obama were losing, I'd be upset, I would stick around his campaign for as long as possible. And I know there are a lot of ways in which Obama rubs Hillary fans wrong; in many ways he is her antithesis. Hers is the rhetoric of a democratic status quo (I do NOT say status quo, Hillary will not keep George Bush's legacy alive), his of a kind of Kennedyian possibility which so many candidates try to channel, which so often fails to materialize.

They're not THAT different. They're both career politicians to an extent to which is not normally recognized, neither has often done very much else in their lives. Hillary was a lawyer, and a law professor, then first lady of Arkansas, then the United states, then America. She's had eight years in the senate. Obama's been in the Illinois state senate since 1995, and a US senator for 4. They both, really, have experience. And I understand, again, why Hillary voters wish that Hillary could win.

But there is a border beyond which this is short-sighted, and an inability to show sense here becomes less and less commendable. You can want her to win, but she's not going to, and it's time to decide what to do about it.

Consider that here, in her last, best hope she picked up less than 8% of the delegates she needed to win, a gain that will be absolutely annihilated in North Carolina, and consider what a truly divided nation, indeed a truly divided democratic nation, will do if the winner is not the won who had their voice, but the one decided in a smoky room in Washington…consider that even that scenario is so unlikely it borders on impossible, realize all you can do is close the gap enough, and stoke inter-party hatred enough to make it real easy for the nation to make a choice in the inevitable Obama-McCain race. Consider, that's all.

When the country's future is in your hands it is not enough to do simply what you want to do. It's too important to be that heedless. I blame no one, again, for liking Hillary, for wanting Hillary to win, for being committed to Hillary. But you are, right now, a participant in our nature's future, and I urge you to act in a way compatible with the reason which makes nations great. Hillary knows it, and so do you. If you can't stand Obama, vote for McCain, that's what democratic choice is about. But move above the knee-jerk reactionism, assess the situation, and realize the facts. As an electorate we can be better than we are, we can make more informed decisions, we can become participants in a process which produces reasonable results by forcing it to conform to the expectations of a reasonable people.

Reason says Hillary is going to lose. Listen to your head, not your heart, and don't split the country into a third part for the sake of someone else's refusal to bow to what she knows perfectly well. Don't participate in that refusal. We're all better than that. And this country's more than divided enough as it is with that big ol' gap running down the red-blue center, without our collective stubbornness forcing the crack wide.

Again, to forestall probably 90% of the people who were going to post responses to this column, this is not about voting for Obama. Doing the right thing is not voting for MY candidate. This is about voting for THE candidates, Obama or McCain. Only an excess of stubbornness on the part of Hillary Clinton and on the part of a (not by too much, admittedly) minority electorate is keeping this gap open. Even if McCain wins, I hope I comport myself with the respect due fellow Americans who, by now, have much of the rest of the world against them anyway…and begin to heal the wounds of the last eight years. But Hillary can't win, and this is a divide we actually CAN dispense with.

The American electorate will be treated with respect, by politicians, when it demands respect by being respectable. When it refuses to be manipulated, or scared, when it uses discretion and sense, and when it demands accountability. America will get the politicans she deserves when she steadfastly refuses anything else, when it will no longer let wool like Hillary Clinton be drawn over its eyes. America will get the politician she deserves when she proves she deserves them. If we can get there, we can start to heal a dangerously divided country. And that's, I think, all there is to it. (411mania.com)

French Kiss For Obama

(By Eric Margolis, Edmonton Sun, Canada)

The more things change, say the French, the more they remain the same. But France of 2008 is no longer the distant 1950s France of my youth. I admit nostalgia.

In those days, most French refused to speak English, a process they found undignified and painful. Today, the new globalized generation loves English. France is becoming bilingual. Even France's entry into the Eurosong competition is -- mon dieu! -- in English.

Paris taxi drivers, who once sought to install plates in their rear seats to electrocute passengers, have become shockingly polite. Retailers and waiters actually seem pleased to see you. The French have discovered a new happy pill.

Wine and bread consumption, once staples of French life, are way down. French are drinking less but better wines. Oppressed French can't smoke in bars and restaurants any more. Youth live on junk food. The wonderful old smoky, black and white France of my youth, with her riots, Edith Piaf and Yves Montand, army plots, silly Left Bank intellectuals, and weird little Panhard and Simca cars has vanished.

Europeans are fascinated by the U.S. presidential race. During two weeks of TV and radio broadcasting, the No. 1 question I was asked is who will win the U.S. primaries and November vote.

LANDSLIDE

If all non-Americans had a vote -- I've always favoured a one-tenth vote for non-Americans -- then Barack Obama would win in a landslide. Like North Americans, most Europeans really don't know much about the experience-light senator, but what they see, they like beaucoup. You can feel a passion here for Obama that is quite remarkable.

He is, of course, the non-Bush. But so is Hillary Clinton, yet she inspires surprisingly little support even though hubby Bill, for reasons that elude me, was widely admired abroad. Hillary is regarded simply as an avatar of the Clinton political machine which, however formidable, is seen as empty of substance, and dedicated only to power and money.

The three Americans most respected internationally are Obama, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. They are seen as representing America's best qualities. They are also a potent antidote to the rednecks, holy rollers, and totalitarian neocon ideologues who hijacked the Republican Party -- my life-long party -- and blackened America's name around the globe.

Obama is widely seen abroad as the candidate who can end the shameful Bush era and return America to a moderate, productive role in world affairs. He is expected to end the Iraq war and Bush's militarized foreign policy, and reintegrate the United States into the company of law-abiding, environmentally conscious nations, of which the European Union is now the leader.

Obama comes across to Europeans as dignified, decent, eloquent, and truthful -- qualities notably lacking in Bush and Dick Cheney who often represent some of America's cruder instincts and synthetic patriotism. Much of the world would hail and admire America for electing a man of colour, but even more so, one who appears to capture so much of what is great and admirable about the United States.

There are fears here the bitter Clinton-Obama contest may ruin both candidates, leading to four more years of Bush under John McCain.

TOUGHEN UP

But it may also benefit Obama. He needs to toughen up before facing the ferocious Republican attack machine that sunk war veteran John Kerry's campaign under a torrent of "swiftboat" lies. McCain is a gentleman, but not so Carl Rove's character assassins in waiting.

Obama could sharply improve America's highly negative image as a determined enemy of the Muslim world. Not because his father was Muslim, but because of his image of fairness and sensible foreign policy proposals calling for open dialogue instead of confrontation.

If Americans want to lower the terrorism threat against their nation, electing Obama is a good way to start.

It's distressing listening to the rich McCain and Clintons label Obama an "elitist" because he is intelligent, and poised. Next, they will brand him, "too French."
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UPDATE: Urban Perspectives: Why phenomenon Obama just might take Penna.