Obama Arrogant? No, McCain is the Arrogant One

The media narrative now is that Obama is "arrogant" and "presumptuous". He is being compared by the McCain campaign to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton--as a mere celebrity, shallow with nothing of substance inside.

Of course, many of us see the barely veiled meaning in these code words...Obama does not know his place. How dare he go to Berlin and speak as if were president! Who does he think he is? Who is this uppity young black man? HOW DARE HE?!?!

I decided to share one of the best articles I've read about this whole phenomenon. It's by Paul Jenkins and it really lays out what I believe has been going on for the past 18 months--first of all in the primaries and now in the general election in terms of the way Senator Obama has been treated and also how he has been perceived.

Obama Still Does Not Know His Place
Paul Jenkins

When Barack Obama started running for president, he was widely described as arrogant for daring to take on the Clintons after just two years in the Senate, despite the fact that polling at the time showed him to be the only threat to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

Eighteen-months later, we are told by the McCain campaign and its traditional media parrots that Obama is at risk of looking "presumptuous" for his recent trip abroad, even as he has registered a small but significant bounce in the polls upon his return, presumably for doing what most of us expect of a presidential candidate.

The man who slayed Democratic royalty, who has raised more money than any political campaign in US history, drawn record-breaking crowds in the US and abroad, who has been ahead of John McCain since widespread general election polling began four months ago, this man is presumptuous for thinking he has a good shot at becoming president and should therefore get to know his potential counterparts and visit the sites of US military activity?

Most candidates Obama's age will be charged sooner or later with youthful conceit for taking on their elders, no matter how guilty those elders are of mismanaging the country. It happened to some extent to Bill Clinton, and surely to others before him. However, it is hard not to see in the ongoing attitude towards this presidential frontrunner, just three months before the election, something more uncomfortable that is not simply a matter of age, but one of race.

Throughout the primary there was a growing sense of disbelief in the Clinton camp that this young'un (older than Bill was in 1991 when he started running, mind you) really thought he had a shot at this. Bill, in particular, showed little patience for Obama's "fairy tale" campaign, eventually going ballistic because, in his own version of "some of my best friends are," he did not understand that even he, whose office is in Harlem, may be condescending towards African-Americans, and towards this African-American in particular. Perhaps more perniciously, some long-time African-American political and business leaders joined in with some of the worst stereotyping of the campaign, seemingly upset at the upstart who dared to go where most of them had not.

Now McCain is recycling some version of this superciliousness, heavily aided by a traditional media still so easily scared into thinking it is not tough enough on Obama. McCain can hardly hide his rage at this uppity kid who thinks he can hobnob with world leaders just as he does -- who thinks he has more judgment than a septuagenerian war-mongering former prisoner of war. And who sees no reason to wait his turn when barely 1 in 10 Americans think the country is on the right track, thanks to his elders' enlightened leadership. In a weird echo of the Clinton attacks, McCain smirks his way through one sarcastic comment after another, his face twisted in hatred and disbelief. Not only is Obama "presumptuous," he also "doesn't understand." It is never clear what Obama doesn't understand since he actually has not gotten his facts or, so far, his analysis wrong, as opposed to McCain whose errors in fact and in judgment are so numerous as to make one wonder where he has been for the past 20 years (poring over Cold War era reports on Czechoslovakia? Hanging out at the Iraq-Pakistan border? Plotting to bomb-bomb-bomb bomb-bomb Iran?). McCain is the most arrogant of Senators (not a light charge), yet even by his standards the tone he adopts towards Obama is so densely patronizing that here too it is hard to dismiss it as purely a matter of age gap. McCain's joke of an economic advisor, Carly Fiorina, is now also laying it on thick: she is glad that Obama is consulting with experts. This from the woman who nearly ran a Fortune 100 company into the ground and whose candidate knows so little about economic issues after three decades in Congress that Fiorina is reduced to repeating that McCain "has been understanding [economic issues] for months."

That Obama is actually able to listen to facts, absorb them and analyze them should be a good thing. We assume that those skills came in handy throughout his life, not least at Harvard, where he graduated near top of his law school class. This, of course, now makes him an elitist, as he would not be expected by the old DC guard to possess any such competence (charisma perhaps, analytical ability no.) Both McCain (894th out of 899 at Annapolis) and George W. Bush revel in their under-achieving school days, as if this made these scions of hyper-privilege any closer to real people. This tactic clearly succeeded well enough for Bush to be elected president twice, and McCain to be nominated once. But there is a sense that American voters may not be taken in again and that they may actually enjoy as president someone who isn't an inbred moron or a senile fratboy.

Obama's partner in elitism, his wife Michelle, is in extreme tongue-biting mode. This is a shame, but it is inevitable, as she too is under the kind of scrutiny that would make Cindy McCain's face melt back into some approximation of reality. It is widely understood that Obama is more deserving of close examination than McCain because she is more actively involved in her husband's campaign than Cindy is. This of course is a lie: McCain has campaigned extensively for her husband and, were it not for her family fortune and her private jet, he wouldn't even have come close to being nominated. The truth is that Obama is expected to play a certain role: strong, angry, overbearing, and every one of her statements is demeaningly parsed in that light. If every word uttered by McCain were analyzed and reported to fit the stereotype of the rich, spoilt, husband-stealing white woman that she is, all would be fair. But instead, we get adoring glances, little examination of her actual role and an occasional hiccup about Michelle Obama's lack of patriotism.

What angers John McCain and bemuses many traditional observers is how unflappable Barack Obama remains in public, no matter how condescending the attacks. There is little doubt that the thick skin he grew over decades came in handy as he started to run for president. The past 18 months surely were not the first time Obama was baited for being black, for being white, for being Muslim, or for not being from "here," and it must be fascinating, although not unexpected, for him to see these patronizing attitudes resurface at this stage of his life. For the rest of us, what is fascinating is to witness how these old-school mindsets are backfiring on those who hold them, making them look less wise, more prejudiced, less fit to lead and altogether completely unappealing. And to witness that in America in 2008, it is perhaps not a bad thing not to know your place.

Do Your Research

It never ceases to amaze me how gullible people are.

I can't tell you how many people I have met who are filled with misinformation about Senator Obama. "He refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance--he even said so in his book!" Yeah, that's what someone said to me over dinner after a soccer tournament last weekend. She told me she had actually read his book "Dreams From my Father" and that he had said he refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Well, you know, I read that book and I don't ever remember him saying that in his book. Ever. I had a discussion with her about this and she was adamant. Then she mentioned some picture where he was standing with his hands at his side and everyone else had their hands over their hearts. Hmmm, sounded like she had received some email to me.

So I did a simple Google search, and of course, up comes a bunch of pages dispelling the rumor. The picture was NOT about the Pledge of Allegiance. It was taken at an event and it was during the National Anthem, and somehow someone spread an email rumor that Obama refused to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge, then that morphed into he refused to SAY the pledge, and it went viral. There was NEVER anything written in his book saying this, and he always puts his hand over his heart when he says the Pledge. And he DOES say the Pledge.

But why are people so willing to believe this garbage? Why don't they just do a Google search? Do they believe every email chain letter about every potential computer virus that comes their way and pass it on everyone in their address book? Are they that stupid? Or do they do their research to see if it's a hoax? And if so, then why not do the same thing when they receive this CRAP about Obama?

I truly think it is because they really want a reason not to vote for him, so if they hear something negative about him, they don't want to know the REAL TRUTH. So they don't bother to research it. They just pass on lies without doing research. Which to me is rather despicable.

I find it interesting that I have never received ONE negative email about Barack Obama. I never received the Muslim one, or the Pledge of Allegiance one. I guess people know better than to send me anything like that because I've been known to speak out when I've received any kind of email that smacks of intolerance. Thank goodness, less spam.

If you support Obama, or even if you're just open to seeing what Obama is about, then please don't just take any of these scurrilous rumors about Obama at face value. Do your research. Go to Google and type in a couple of keywords, like "obama pledge of allegiance" or "obama muslim" or whatever else you're concerned about. You'll find the answer you're looking for.

Senator Obama is one step closer to the nomination!

After probably the worst couple weeks of Senator Obama's campaign, with the Wright scandal front and center in the headlines, Obama being accused of "elitism" and his loss in Pennsylvania, Senator Obama rebounded with a decisive victory in North Carolina and a performance in Indiana which has virtually ensured his nomination in August.

Senator Clinton needed to win big in Indiana, but only won by two percentage points. It is widely believed that her holiday gas tax proposal, which was opposed by most economists as well as Obama and viewed by him as "pandering" did not help her in either the Indiana or N.C. primary and in fact, may have hurt her.

As usual, the political analysts looked at the exit polls to see how different demographics voted. It is interesting that during this year, race and class have become very important factors in the voting. I cannot recall the analysts talking about "downscale white voters" or the "white working class voters" as much as they do during this election.

I was driving home from the dentist, and I decided to listen to Michael Medved, a conversative radio talk show host, just to see what he had to say about last night's primary results. (It's important to know what your opponents are saying!) Frankly, he disgusted me. He called Obama "dead man walking" and he said that working class whites would NEVER vote for him, that they were Reagan Democrats and they'd all end up voting for McCain in the general election. It sounded like he just KNEW this, and he took it for granted. These are people that were supporters of Hillary Clinton.

If he really feels this is the case, I would really like to know WHY. I know that there is a certain contingent of people who openly admit that they just will not vote for an African-American person, and clearly this is based on racism, pure and simple. I would like to hope that this is a small minority of people. But would there be other reasons why Medved would say working class whites would NEVER vote for Obama? Would they really go against their own best interests and vote for what amounts to a third Bush term? Or is this just right-wing rhetoric? Obama's and Clinton's positions on the issues are much closer to each other's than they are to McCain's when it comes to ecomonic policies, the war, health care, abortion, gay rights, you name it. Clinton herself has said that she would support Obama if he were to be the Democratic nominee. So why would a voter be willing to support Clinton and not Obama, if their own candidate is willing to support Obama? I'd be interested in people's opinions on this.

I think it's important to have these conversations because only then can we come to a greater understanding about people who are different from us. To think that race and class won't be a factor in the general election is to be shortsighted. We've already seen from this primary season that both of these issues have become part and parcel of this campaign season and I have a very strong feeling that in the general election it will get even worse.

John McCain's Free Ride

Why is the media giving John McCain a free ride? During this week alone, John McCain made several gaffes during his trip to the Middle East during which Joe Leibermann had to correct him. He sought an endorsement from a controversial preacher, Reverend Hagee, who has made incendiary remarks about Catholics, gays and women. He compared the Jewish holiday of Purim to Halloween. And a staffer of his was fired for creating an attack video of Barack Obama. Yet where is the 24/7 media outrage? Where are the headlines that we were bombarded with and the pundits weighing in hour after hour, as they were after Rev. Wright's remarks were revealed? If Barack Obama had made this many errors, I guarantee you this would have gotten airplay around the clock.

Dan Abrams of MSNBC pointed out that the media has been playing softball with John McCain and I agree. I think it's patently unfair. If the media is going to investigate every relationship between a candidate and the people they surround them with, they need to do it on both sides. And when a candidate makes a blunder, if they're going to call one candidate out (like FOX News did with Obama's "typical white person" remark, which was taken out of context), then they should be "fair and balanced" and do the same with ALL candidates, which of course they don't.

Obama's History-making Speech

I was moved beyond words by Barack Obama's speech today. He spoke with honesty and authenticity about the state of race relations in America. He truly has a unique perspective as a biracial man who has lived in virtually every corner of America, and has relatives of every race. He understands the resentments of both black America and white America.

My concern is that will white downscale working-class voters hear his words with open minds? Clearly, Pat Buchanan still couldn't hear the words. While all his colleagues on msnbc GOT IT, he still sounded like a cranky old bigot. And my fear is that there are a lot of cranky old bigots in America.

I just finished reading an article by Tim Wise, who writes a lot about white privilege in America. He actually wrote a lot of things that have been going through my mind. Check it out:

Uh-Obama: Racism, White Voters and the Myth of Color-Blindness
By Tim Wise
March 6, 2008

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write, at least not as soon as I am now compelled to write it: It may well be the case that the United States is on its way to electing a person of color as President. Make no mistake, I realize the way that any number of factors, racism prominently among them, could derail such a thing from coming to fruition. Indeed, results from the Ohio Democratic primary suggest that an awful lot of white folks, especially rural and working-class whites, are still mightily uncomfortable with voting for such a candidate, at least partly because of race: One-fifth of voters in the state said race was important to their decision, and roughly six in ten of these voted for Hillary Clinton, which totals would then represent her approximate margin of victory over Barack Obama.

But having said all that--and I think anyone who is being honest would have to acknowledge this as factual--we are far closer to the election of a person of color in a Presidential race than probably any of us expected. Obama's meteoric rise, from community organizer, to law professor, to Illinois state senator, to the U.S. Senate, and now, possibly, the highest office in the land, is something that could have been foreseen by few if any just a few years ago. Obama's undeniable charisma, savvy political instincts, passion for his work, and ability to connect with young voters (and not a few older ones as well) is the kind of thing you just don't see all that often. The fact that as a black man (or, as some may prefer, a man of biracial background) he has been able to catapult to the position in which he now finds himself makes the accomplishment even more significant. It does indeed mean something.

But this is where things become considerably more complicated; the point at which one is forced to determine what, exactly, his success means (and doesn't mean) when it comes to the state of race, race relations, and racism in the United States. And it is at this point that so-called mainstream commentary has, once again, dropped the ball.

On the one hand, many a voice has suggested that Obama's success signifies something akin to the end of racism in the U.S., if not entirely, then surely as a potent political or social force. After all, if a black man actually stands a better-than-decent shot at becoming President, then how much of a barrier could racism really be? But of course, the success of individual persons of color, while it certainly suggests that overt bigotry has diminished substantially, hardly speaks to the larger social reality faced by millions of others: a subject to which we will return. Just as sexism no doubt remained an issue in Pakistan, even after Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister in the 1980s and again in the 90s (or in India or Israel after both nations had female Premiers, or in Great Britain after the election of Margaret Thatcher), so too can racism exist in abundance, in spite of the electoral success of one person of color, even one who could be elevated to the highest office in the world's most powerful nation.

More importantly, to the extent Obama's success has been largely contingent on his studious avoidance of the issue of race--such that he rarely ever mentions discrimination and certainly not in front of white audiences--one has to wonder just how seriously we should take the notion that racism is a thing of the past, at least as supposedly evidenced by his ability to attract white votes? To the extent those whites are rewarding him in large measure for not talking about race, and to the extent they would abandon him in droves were he to begin talking much about racism--for he would be seen at that point as playing the race card, or appealing to "special interests" and suffer the consequences--we should view Obama's success, given what has been required to make it possible, as confirmation of the ongoing salience of race in American life. Were race really something we had moved beyond, whites would be open to hearing a candidate share factual information about housing discrimination, racial profiling, or race-based inequities in health care. But we don't want to be reminded of those things. We prefer to ignore them, and many are glad that Obama has downplayed them too, whether by choice, or necessity.

Erasing Race and Making White Folks Happy
The extent to which Obama's white support has been directly related to his downplaying of race issues simply cannot be overstated, as evidenced by the kinds of things many of these supporters openly admit, possessing no sense of apparent irony or misgiving. So, consider the chant offered by his supporters at a recent rally--and frankly, a chant in which whites appeared to be joining with far greater enthusiasm than folks of color--to the effect that "Race Doesn't Matter, Race Doesn't Matter," a concept so utterly absurd, given the way in which race most certainly still matters to the opportunity structure in this country, that one has to almost wretch at the repeated offering of it. Or consider the statements of support put forth by Obama supporters in a November 2007 Wall Street Journal article, to the effect that Obama makes whites "feel good" about ourselves (presumably by not bothering us with all that race talk), and that Obama, by virtue of his race-averse approach has "emancipated" whites to finally vote for a black candidate (because goodness knows we were previously chained and enslaved to a position of rejectionism). Worst of all, consider the words of one white Obama supporter, an ardent political blogger in Nashville, to the effect that what he likes about the Illinois Senator is that he "doesn't come with the baggage of the civil rights movement." Let it suffice to say that when the civil rights movement--one of the greatest struggles for human liberation in the history of our collective species--can be unashamedly equated with Samsonite, with luggage, with something one should avoid as though it were radioactive (and this coming from a self-described liberal), we are at a very dangerous place as a nation, all celebrations of Obama's cross-racial appeal notwithstanding.

What does it say about the nation's political culture--and what does it suggest about the extent to which we have moved "beyond race"--that candidate Obama, though he surely knows it, has been unable to mention the fact that 2006 saw the largest number of race-based housing discrimination complaints on record, and according to government and private studies, there are between two and three million cases of housing discrimination each year against people of color?

What does it say that he has failed to note with any regularity that according to over a hundred studies, health disparities between whites and blacks are due not merely to health care costs and economic differences between the two groups (a subject he does address) but also due to the provision of discriminatory care by providers, even to blacks with upper incomes, and black experiences with racism itself, which are directly related to hypertension and other maladies?

What does it say that Obama apparently can't bring himself to mention, for fear of likely white backlash, that whites are over seventy percent of drug users, but only about ten percent of persons incarcerated for a drug possession offense, while blacks and Latinos combined are about twenty-five percent of users, but comprise roughly ninety percent of persons locked up for a possession offense?

Why no mention of the massive national study by legal scholars Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen, which found that at least a third of all businesses in the nation engage in substantial discrimination against people of color--hiring such folks at rates that are well below their availability in the local and qualified labor pool, and well below the rates at which they are to be found in non-discriminating companies in the same locales and industries? Indeed, according to the Blumrosen study, at least 1.3 million qualified people of color will face job discrimination in a given year. Or what of the study of temporary agencies in California, which found that white women who are less qualified than their black counterparts, are still three times more likely to be favored in a job search? And what are the odds that he'll be likely to mention, to any significant degree, the recent EEOC report, which notes that in 2007 there was a twelve percent jump in race-based discrimination complaints in the workplace relative to the previous year (almost all of which were filed by persons of color): bringing the number of such complaints to their highest level since 1994?

As Obama talks about change and making the "American Dream" real for all, why is he unable to mention the fact--let alone propose specific remedies for it--that thanks to a history of unequal access to property and the inability to accumulate assets on par with whites, young black couples with college degrees and good incomes still start out at a significant disadvantage (around $20,000) relative to their white counterparts? In fact, the wealth gap between whites and blacks--with the average white family now having about eleven times the net worth of the average black family--continues to grow, even as income gaps for similarly educated families with similar background characteristics have shrunk.

And why such muted discussion about the way that, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, government at all levels and across party lines has engaged in ethnic cleansing in New Orleans, failing to provide rental assistance to the mostly black tenant base for over a year, plotting to tear down 5000 perfectly usable units of public housing, failing to restart the city's public health care infrastructure, and even ordering the Red Cross not to provide relief in the first few days after the city flooded in September 2005, so as to force evacuation and empty out the city? While Obama has spoken much about the failures of the Bush Administration during Katrina, openly discussing the deliberate acts of cruelty that go well beyond incompetence, and which amount to the forced depopulation of New Orleans-area blacks, has been something about which he cannot speak for fear of prompting a backlash from whites, most of whom, according to polls, don't think the events of Katrina have any lessons at all to teach us about race in America.

Surely, that Obama is constrained in his ability to focus any real attention on these matters, suggests that whatever his success may say about America and race, one thing it utterly fails to say is that we have conquered the racial demons that have so long bedeviled us. And to the extent he must remain relatively silent about these issues, lest he find his political ascent headed in a decidedly different direction, it is true, however ironic, that his success actually confirms the salience of white power. If, in order to be elected, a man of color has to pander to white folks, in ways that no white politician would ever have to do to people who were black or brown, then white privilege and white power remain operative realities. Obama's ascent to the Presidency, if it happens, will happen only because he managed to convince enough whites that he was different, and not really black, in the way too many whites continue to think of black people, which according to every opinion survey, is not too positively.

Transcending Blackness, Reinforcing White Racism: The Trouble With Exceptions
Obama's rise has owed almost everything to his ability--and this, again, coming from people who support him and are willing to speak candidly--to "transcend" race, which is really a way of saying, his ability to carve out an exception for himself in the minds of whites. But this notion of Obama "transcending race" (by which we really mean transcending his blackness) is a patently offensive and even racist notion in that it serves to reinforce generally negative feelings about blacks as a whole; feelings that the presence of exceptions cannot cancel out, and which they can even serve to reinforce. To the extent Obama has become the Cliff Huxtable of politics--a black man with whom millions of whites can identity and to whom they can relate--he has leapt one hurdle, only to watch his white co-countrymen and women erect a still higher one in the path of the black masses. If whites view Obama as having transcended his blackness, and if this is why we like him so much, we are saying, in effect, that the millions of blacks who haven't transcended theirs will remain a problem. To praise the transcending of blackness, after all, is to imply that blackness is something negative, something from which one who might otherwise qualify for membership ought to seek escape, and quickly.

Note, never has a white politician been confronted with questions about his or her ability to transcend race, or specifically, their whiteness. And this is true, even as many white politicians continue to pull almost all of their support from whites, and have almost no luck at convincing people of color to vote for them. In the Democratic primaries this year, Obama has regularly received about half the white vote, while Hillary Clinton has managed to pull down only about one-quarter of the black vote, yet the question has always been whether he could transcend race. The only rational conclusion to which this points is, again, that it is not race per se that needs to be overcome, but blackness. Whiteness is not seen as negative, as something to be conquered or transcended. Indeed, whereas blacks are being asked to rise above their racial identity, for whites, the burden is exactly the opposite: the worst thing for a white person is to fail to live up to the ostensibly high standards set by whiteness; it is to be considered white trash, which is to say, to be viewed as someone who has let down whiteness and fallen short of its pinnacle. For blacks, the worst thing it seems (at least in the minds of whites) is to be seen as black, which is no doubt why so many whites think it's a compliment to say things to black folks like, "I don't even think of you as black," not realizing that the subtext of such a comment is that it's a damned good thing they don't, for if they did, the person so thought of would be up the proverbial creek for sure.

In what must prove among the greatest ironies of all time, for Barack Obama to become President, which he well may accomplish, he will have to succeed in convincing a lot of racist white people to vote for him. Without the support of racists he simply can't win. While this may seem counterintuitive--that is, after all, what makes it ironic--it is really inarguable. After all, according to many an opinion survey in the past decade, large numbers of whites (often as high as one-half to three-quarters) harbor at least one negative and racist stereotype about African Americans, whether regarding their intelligence, law-abidingness, work ethic, or value systems. Without the votes of at least some of those whites (and keep in mind, that's how many whites are willing to admit to racist beliefs, which is likely far fewer than actually hold them), Obama's candidacy would be sunk. So long as whites can vote for a black man only to the extent that he doesn't remind them of other black people, it is fair to say that white people remain mired in a racism quite profound. To the extent we view the larger black community in terms far more hostile than those reserved for Obama, Oprah, Tiger, Colin, Condoleezza, Denzel and Bill (meaning Cosby, not Clinton, whose blackness is believed to be authentic only by himself nowadays), whites have proven how creative we can be, and how resourceful, when it comes to the maintenance of racial inequality.

By granting exemptions from blackness, even to those black folks who did not ask for such exemptions (and nothing I have said here should be taken as a critique of Obama himself by the way, for whom I did indeed vote last month), we have taken racism to an entirely new and disturbing level, one that bypasses the old and all-encompassing hostilities of the past, and replaces them with a new, seemingly ecumenical acceptance in the present. But make no mistake, it is an ecumenism that depends upon our being made to feel good, and on our ability to glom onto folks of color who won't challenge our denial let alone our privileges, even if they might like to.

In short, the success of Barack Obama has proven, perhaps more so than any other single thing could, just how powerful race remains in America. His success, far from disproving white power and privilege, confirms it with a vengeance.

Barack Obama is not Muslim

How many million times does that have to be said before it gets through people's heads? My God, I have seen so many comments on blogs, on 60 Minutes, EVERYWHERE! Do people think he's lying? There have been investigations done! He is not Muslim. They interviewed the headmaster of his elementary school. It was not a Muslim school. It was NOT a madrassa. What I find interesting is the people that are most gullible are those who choose not to educate themselves. They're like little lemmings who just follow the crowd and jump over the cliff because all the other lemmings are jumping over the cliff. Please, please, please people...EDUCATE yourselves! Don't believe every email that comes into your Inbox! It's like the people that forward every virus hoax that comes along before verifying it. It absolutely amazes me how many people choose to believe this about Obama without doing their homework, and then when he says he's not Muslim, would rather believe the rumors than believe him!

At the Democratic caucus, one woman there was voting for Clinton because she was worried about Obama and his being a Muslim when he was a child and how that would affect his judgement. Four of us at the table told her that it was not true, that it was just a rumor that was being spread about him. Yet she could not be persuaded that it wasn't true. She was absolutely convinced. What is wrong with these people? Do they WANT to believe this about him for some weird reason?

I read his first memoir, "Dreams of My Father". This was written in his first year after graduating from Harvard Law. There was not one mention of being Muslim. NOT ONE. He did mention the Christian church he belonged to. This was way before he even considered running for President. Isn't that enough proof right there?

The really disgusting thing about this is that the scurrilous email that apparently has been going around is really offensive to Muslims because it suggests that there is something wrong with being a Muslim.

Republicans use his middle name, Hussein, repeatedly. They know that it's code for "Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, therefore he is anti-Israel, or pro-Palestinian or soft on terrorism." It's gotten to the point where the Republican National Committee has now said, "Don't use Obama's middle name."

Stop the bigotry!

McCain vs. Obama

Thinking about the strong possibility of a general election where John McCain faces Barack Obama, one cannot help but notice the contrasts between the two. It will be the largest age gap between presidential candidates in American history. There will be the inevitable distinctions drawn between change vs. experience, fresh vs. tested, liberal vs. conservative. But there is another distinction that is extremely obvious, and this is something that not only gives Obama's campaign its energy, but tends to drag McCain's campaign down. Frank Rich wrote about it in the New York Times:

The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama
By Frank Rich

THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

Senator Obama’s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain’s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols, played the past to Mr. Obama’s here and now. Mr. McCain looked like a loser even though he, unlike Senator Clinton, had actually won.

But he has it even worse than Mrs. Clinton. What distinguished his posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male. Such has been the inescapable Republican brand throughout this campaign, ever since David Letterman memorably pegged its lineup of presidential contenders last spring as “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.”

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.

The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven’t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama vanquished the Democratic field, including a presidential-looking Southern white man with an
enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment
is now almost ho-hum.

Given that the American story has been so inextricable from the struggle over race, the Obama triumph has been the bigger surprise to many. Perhaps because I came of age in the racially
divided Washington public schools of the 1960s and had one of my first newspaper jobs in Richmond in the early 1970s, I almost had to pinch myself when Mr. Obama took 52 percent of
Virginia’s white vote last week. The Old Dominion continues to astonish those who remember it when.

Here’s one of my memories. In 1970, Linwood Holton, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a Richard Nixon supporter, responded to court-ordered busing by voluntarily placing his own children in largely black Richmond public schools. For this symbolic gesture, he was marginalized by his own party, which was hellbent on pursuing the emergent
Strom Thurmond-patented Southern strategy of exploiting white racism for political gain. After Mr. Holton, Virginia restored to office the previous governor, Mills Godwin, a champion of the state’s “massive resistance” to desegregation.

Today Anne Holton, the young daughter sent by her father to a black school in Richmond, is the first lady of Virginia, the wife of the Democratic governor, Tim Kaine. Mr. Kaine’s early endorsement of Mr. Obama was a potent factor in his remarkable 28-point landslide on
Tuesday.

For all the changes in Virginia and elsewhere, vestiges of the Southern strategy persist in some Republican quarters. Mr. McCain, however, has been a victim, rather than a practitioner, of the old racial gamesmanship. In his brutal 2000 South Carolina primary battle against Mr. Bush and Karl Rove, Mr. McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was the target of a smear campaign. He was also pilloried for accurately describing the Confederate flag as a “symbol of racism and slavery.” (Sadly, he started to bend this straight talk the very next day.) He is still paying for correctly describing Jerry Falwell, once an ardent segregationist, and Pat Robertson, a longtime defender of South African apartheid, as “agents of intolerance.” And of course Mr. McCain remains public enemy No. 1 to some in his party for resisting nativist overkill on illegal immigration.

Though Mr. Bush ran for president on “compassionate conservatism,” he diversified only his party’s window dressing: a 2000 Republican National Convention that had more African-Americans onstage than on the floor and the incessant photo-ops with black schoolchildren to sell No Child Left Behind. There are no black Republicans in the House or the Senate to stand
with the party’s 2008 nominee. Exit polls tell us that African-Americans voting in this year’s G.O.P. primaries account for at most 2 to 4 percent of its electorate even in states with large black populations.

Mr. Obama’s ascension hardly means that racism is kaput in America, or that the country is “postracial” or “transcending race.” But it’s impossible to deny that another barrier has been surmounted. Bill Clinton’s attempt to minimize Mr. Obama as a niche candidate in South Carolina by comparing him to Jesse Jackson looks more ludicrous by the day. Even when winning five Southern states (Virginia included) on Super Tuesday in 1988, Mr. Jackson received only 7 to 10 percent of white votes, depending on the exit poll.

Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book “Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D.
Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in
American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.

Even by the low standards of his party, Mr. McCain has underperformed at reaching millennials in the thriving culture where they live. His campaign’s effort to create a MySpace-like Web site flopped. His most-viewed appearances on YouTube are not viral videos extolling him or
replaying his best speeches but are instead sendups of his most reckless foreign-policy improvisations — his threat to stay in Iraq for 100 years and his jokey warning (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ version of “Barbara Ann”) that he will bomb Iran. In the vast arena of the Internet he has been shrunk to Grumpy Old White Guy, the G.O.P. brand incarnate.

The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and
the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.

Mr. McCain could get lucky, especially if Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and unites the G.O.P., and definitely if she tosses her party into civil war by grabbing ghost delegates from Michigan and Florida. But those odds are dwindling. More likely, the Republican Party will face Mr. Obama with a candidate who reeks even more of the past and less of change than Mrs.
Clinton does. I was startled to hear last week from a friend in California, a staunch anti-Clinton Republican businessman, that he was wavering. Though he regards Mr. McCain as a hero, he wrote me: “I am tired of fighting the Vietnam war. I have drifted toward Obama.”

Similarly, Mark McKinnon, the Bush media maven who has played a comparable role for Mr. McCain in this campaign, reaffirmed to Evan Smith of Texas Monthly weeks ago that he would not work for his own candidate in a race with Mr. Obama. Elaborating to NPR last week, Mr. McKinnon said that while he is “100 percent” for Mr. McCain and disagrees with Mr. Obama “on very fundamental issues,” he likes Mr. Obama and what he’s doing for the country enough to stay on the sidelines rather than fire off attack ads.

As some Republicans drift away in a McCain-Obama race, who fills the vacuum? Among the white guys flanking Mr. McCain at his victory celebration on Tuesday, revealingly enough,
was the once-golden George Allen, the Virginia Republican who lost his Senate seat and
presidential hopes in 2006 after being caught on YouTube calling a young Indian-American Democratic campaign worker “macaca.”

In that incident, Mr. Allen added insult to injury by also telling the young man, “Welcome to
America and the real world of Virginia.” As election results confirmed both in 2006 and last week, it is Mr. Allen who is the foreigner in 21st century America, Mr. Allen who is in the minority in the real world of Virginia. A national rout in 2008 just may be that Republican Party’s last stand.

Thoughts on being a leader...

I found two quotes that I feel really sum up quite nicely why Barack Obama is clearly heading toward the Democratic nomination for President of the United States...

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams

"What Mrs. Clinton has that Mr. Obama does not have, Mr. Obama can get. What Mr. Obama has that Mrs. Clinton does not have, she can never get." - Alec Baldwin

And They Say The Young Are Apathetic

Check out this video...this interviewer picked the wrong Obama supporter to try to railroad.

http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/video-interviewer-picks-the-wrong-obama-supporter-to-try-to-railroad/

After watching the video, check this second video out...Derrick talks a bit more about his background and gives an even more impassioned argument as to why he is supporting Obama. Whereas the first video talks more about policy, this one is more of his emotional response. Excellent.

http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/video-obama-supporter-derrick-responds-to-his-video/

I am hard pressed to find anyone who can articulate their position as well as this young man! These are Obama supporters! Yeah!

Comparing Obama and Clinton's Campaigns

Last night I was having a passionate discussion with family members about the obvious reasons Obama should be the Democratic nominee. As I thought back over our conversation, another reason crossed my mind. Look at the way their campaigns are going.

Obama's campaign has been bringing in millions of dollars, mostly from small donors. He has inspired voters from all walks of life, all races, all ages, to become involved. He has done something that hasn't been seen since John F. Kennedy, and that is inspire a nation. HE IS A LEADER. That is what a President is. His campaign is a well-oiled machine that has run with integrity, and without the help of lobbyists. If he were President, it would be fair to assume his Administration would run this way as well.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has run out of money. She has already had to loan her campaign $5 million out of her own personal fortune. Her campaign manager has resigned. She has taken money from lobbyists. She has attacked Obama and her husband was chastised by Democratic party leaders for his attacks as well. When her people are questioned, they spin and spin and never answer questions directly. Would it be fair to assume that her Administration would run this way as well? It appears as if her campaign is falling apart, and she truly appears like a desparate woman. She also seems to be hinging her nomination on a few big states, whereas Obama obviously can garner votes from all over the country.

I also recently discovered that in New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign misled female state senators to sign a letter attacking Obama's women's rights record. After the New Hampshire primary, the senators appologized for misleading people about his record and took issue with the Clinton campaign's practices. This incident left great division among women's rights activists in New Hampshire.

When women's rights came under attack in South Dakoat, women's rights activists asked all the senators in Congress to write a letter and help fundraise on their behalf. Obama was the only Senator who did so. Clinton did not.

Clinton has also tried to mislead voters about Obama's commitment to helping victims of sexual abuse, an issue on which he has been a strong advocate.

So why are so many middle-aged women voting for Clinton? Is it just because they desperately want to see a woman in the White House? I feel that is not the right reason to put a person in the White House. I would love to have a woman in the White House, but I truly believe that you need to choose the right PERSON, and not just vote for them BECAUSE they're a woman. I believe, and I think millions of people agree with me, that Barack Obama is the better PERSON for the job, regardless of race or gender.

Thoughts on caucusing

Yesterday was the second time I've caucused, and it was a great experience. I loved getting together with other people and talking about politics. This was an extremely important event because the results of the caucus was going to determine the delegate count for Clinton and Obama, and right now, they are in a race for delegates. The turnout for this caucus was double the turnout of the 2004 caucuses. I honestly attribute this to the inspiration of Barack Obama, who is influencing people to get involved all across the nation.

However, I also wondered, why are there so many who don't caucus? Yesterday morning, there were so many people who said to me, "Have fun at the caucus today!" I thought to myself, these people are Democrats, why aren't they going to the caucus? Don't they want their voices to be heard?

The fact of the matter is, many people don't like politics, or don't care that much about politics. They are uncomfortable talking about politics, or thinking about openly discussing why they prefer one candidate over another. Maybe they feel they cannot articulate why. Maybe they have other work responsibilities (although the fact that it was on a Saturday afternoon would make it more accessible for those who work during the week). Maybe some believe their vote won't make a difference.

So what happens is that those who are highly motivated, and usually more educated about the issues, are the ones who attend the caucuses. Obama has tended to attract the more educated voters, and as a result, has done well in the caucuses. Personally, I like the fact that people can discuss their votes openly. It was interesting at yesterday's caucus how one Clinton supporter at our table actually believed that Obama had a childhood background as a Muslim and was afraid to vote for him because of that. Even though we told her it was all rumor and not fact, she did not believe us and was absolutely certain that these rumors were true! I think this open discussion actually is a great forum for talking about these issues.

I think another issue, and this has been talked about in quite a few blogs, is the fact that when a person votes openly in a caucus, that peerson would be less likely to want to expose any prejudices. They're held accountable for their votes. They're less likely to say, "Well, I'm not voting for Obama because he's black," whereas in the privacy of the voting booth, a scenario like that is more likely to happen. Who wants to be seen as outwardly racist?

Even though primaries are more convenient, and are more inclusive of the general population, I would hope that everyone who votes educates him or herself on the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates and makes an INFORMED decision. I truly believe that those who go to the caucuses have at least thought long and hard about who they want and do not take it lightly. The fact that Obama beat Clinton in Washington by 2-1 voters speaks volumes.

I'm an Obama Delegate!!!!!

Today was the Democratic Caucus in Washington State. My precinct caucus was held in the gym of Woodmont Elementary School, where my children attend. The gym was already packed when I arrived at 12:50 PM. I ended up being the caucus chair for my table, which meant I led the caucus for the people sitting at my table, who were from my immediate neighborhood. Of the 22 people at our table 14 voted for Obama and 8 for Clinton. Which meant we were allotted 3 Obama delegates and 1 Clinton delegate (plus 3 alternate Obama delegates and 1 alternate Clinton delegate). Then we had a discussion in which people spoke up for their candidate, trying to persuade others to switch their vote. In the end, the Obama folks were able to get two people to switch their vote from Clinton to Obama; however, it didn't end up in a change in delegate count.

I am going to be a delegate to the legislative district caucus in April! I am so thrilled! Go Obama!

In other news today, my daughter, Karina, was selected to be on the U-10 Development A team for the Federal Way Reign Select Soccer Club. Go Karina!

Barack Obama Rally

Today I went to the Barack Obama Stand for Change Rally at the Key Arena in Seattle. It was one of the most awe-inspiring events I've been to in my life!!!! The arena was filled with an energy and excitement that was palpable. Even outside, just arriving, people were running into line, as if they just couldn't wait to hear from this man who is inspiring a nation to come together to change the way the things are done in our country. We waited a long time in our seats, watching Obama videos overhead, doing the wave, watching a crazy dance-off between two women in the stands. And finally, when Obama finally did enter the arena, there was a deafening roar, as if Obama were the biggest rock star on the planet. Key Arena was filled to capacity, 18,000 people, and there were 3,000 people out in the plaza who could not get in, listening to him speak through loudspeakers. Incredible. He speaks without notes, and when he talked about hope, that hope does not preclude being a realist, that hope is what gave slaves freedom, hope is what gave women the right to vote, hope is what gave African-Americans the right to sit at the same lunch counter as whites, my eyes started welling up. Things do not begin to change without hope.