Barack Obama or John McCain

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Michelle Obama in the City of Brotherly Love

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/gallery/A_D...lle_Obama_.html

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Obama Cuts Into Clinton's Delegate Lead Among Elected Officials

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama has pulled almost even with Hillary Clinton in endorsements from top elected officials and has cut into her lead among the other superdelegates she's relying on to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...refer=worldwide

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Obama and the Minister

By RONALD KESSLER

March 14, 2008; Page A19

In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Mr. Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1205452770...in_commentaries

Perhaps John simkin will ask Minister Wright to join the forum. He would fit right in.

Ronald Kessler is a Mockingbird hatchet man. This is a foretaste of what the Republicans (and even some pro-Isarael Democrats) have in store for our bold Barak.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

The Iron Lady

The Clinton campaign returns from the dead, again.

by Ryan Lizza March 17, 2008

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03...a?currentPage=1

Hillary’s strength has been in refining the art of attack.

This electability argument—that Obama can be easily caricatured, that he’s weak on national security, that he’s too liberal—is not so very different from the Republican case against Obama, although the charges might be more damaging coming from a member of one’s own party, especially in a bruising campaign that may last until the Convention this August in Denver.

Lizza is on to something here. Hillary, for all intents and purposes, has entered an alliance with McCain. Hillary encouraged the Republicans to ATTACK BARAK when she said McCain was the only candidate besides herself who was qualified to be Commander in Chief. The Republicans are in a no-lose situation: ATTACK BARAK is a good idea if he's to be the nominee, but its an even better idea if it helps make Hillary the nominee, as Republicans had always hoped she would be. John McCain probably can't galvanize "the base" on his own, but anti-Clinton fervor could help him do it. The right includes the nice folks on the hill who think the Clintons belong in a trailer park, but somehow seem to lack the same animosity towards that nice well-spoken Senator Obama. INSTANT KARMA WITH BARAK OBAMA.

It is tempting to say that the Clinton campaign’s plan is to burn the village in order to save it—that Hillary Clinton believes that Democrats, hypnotized by Obama, are making a historic mistake from which only she can rescue them. And it is tempting to add that this means the political destruction of the man who is still most likely to be the Democratic nominee.

Clinton may be criticized for staying too long in the race and for attacking Obama in ways that his supporters will consider nefarious and desperate. But no one is entitled to a Presidential nomination. As ugly as it looks now—and as ugly as it is likely to become—if Barack Obama becomes the Democrats’ nominee, he may thank Hillary Clinton for making him a better candidate. ♦

Hillary is going to destroy Obama and burn down the the party, but that's not so bad because Obama will then be a better candidate?

I wonder what the Superdelegates will make of this.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Of the 246 uncommitted superdelegates, 75 are women, 10 are governors and 100 are in Congress.

The delegates said they hoped to avoid being portrayed as party elites overturning the will of Democratic voters. They spoke of having some power broker — the names mentioned included Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee; former Vice President Al Gore; and Speaker Nancy Pelosi — step in to forge a deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/us/polit...3puwE4TiFaDxlEg

Meanwhile, the story of Obama's mother was the most emailed article in the New York Times last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/polit...&ei=5087%0A

[Guest David Guyatt]

I was about to say "amen" to David Gyatt's brilliant post til I read this. Just one more reason to not let McCain get this. Though the Dems seem determined to implode. Yes Ray I too am greatly enjoying your analysis and agree. Hillary and now Jerry; the "race" is indeed on. They will stop at nothing. I am ashamed to be a woman. After Hillary's little "McCain is better fit to be commander in chief" comment her true colors became clear to me- at last. She just gave him the election. And he'll give us 100 more years in Iraq, and the Gus Russo's of the world will receive classified docs while true searchers of the TRUTH will be told to get lost.

Dawn

There is no question that there are greater evils and lesser evils and of the two the lesser is obviously preferable.

But whoever wins the presidential champagne -- sorry campaign -- will still do the bidding of the wealthy elite to the detriment of the majority, because that is the nature of politics today. It is not truly representative or democratic, except in the original meaning of that much misused term.

When democracy was born in the city-state of Athens in the 5th century BCE, only male citizens who had reached the age of 20 years were eligible to vote. The bulk of the population, approx. 60% were slaves. Females of course, counted for another good percentage of the population, arguably 20%. Thus we end up with around 20% of the whole population of Athens having the right to vote.

Today most of the population can vote, except their votes aren't necessarily counted or included in the count. Besides which, it is only feasible to vote for the selected runner of each major party, namely two individuals.

Talk about having your choices shaped.

My guess is that, in reality, we are still at the approx. 20% level of the population who's votes actually count. Probably less.

When the day comes (if ever it does) that elections have meaning, I will exercise my right to vote. Until then it is nothing short of a Japanese shadow play

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Many voting for Clinton to boost GOP

Seek to prolong bitter battle By Scott Helman

Globe Staff / March 17, 2008

For a party that loves to hate the Clintons,

Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles...ost_gop/?page=1

[Gary Younge]

During his 1984 presidential bid Jesse Jackson vowed to choose a woman as his running mate - the only candidate to do so during the primaries. Having drawn in a new cohort of voters, he mobilised the "rainbow coalition" of blacks, Latinos, trade unionists, feminists, peace activists and gays to mount a credible challenge to the Democratic party establishment. Originally treated as a fringe candidate, he came in third with 20% of the vote. So even as the party sought to sideline him as an individual, they knew that he had awakened a constituency whose demands they would have to engage with.

Walter Mondale, the eventual nominee, chose Geraldine Ferraro as his vice-presidential partner - an important first for a major party and a big victory for the advancement of women in American politics. In the wake of her selection, recalls professor and activist Angela Davis, Jackson supporters wore buttons announcing: "Jesse opened the door, Ferraro walked through!"

Whether the relationship was quite so causal is debatable. But what is clear is that the nature of Jackson's candidacy was instrumental in creating the context in which choosing Ferraro was possible.

The notion that struggles for equality are interconnected and that we all rise together or can all fall separately is evidently one that was lost on Ferraro. Last week Ferraro, who is supporting Hillary Clinton, claimed that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is only leading in the Democratic primaries because he is black. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she said. "And if he was a woman of any colour, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

This is clearly ludicrous. True, like every other candidate, Obama has to run on his story, and race is an important part of that story. But if being a black man is such an electoral advantage, then how is it that they make up 6% of the population and only 1% of the senate (Obama)? As the recent controversy over his former pastor shows, for all the votes that Obama gets because he is black there are at least as many that he loses for the same reason.

But when it comes to the absurd notion that Obama is the candidate of privilege, Ferraro is sadly not alone. The last few months have seen a procession of older, white feminists claim that Obama's presidential ambitions represent both a setback for women and a victory for race over gender.

Most shocking, given her lifetime of thoughtful and impassioned activism, was Gloria Steinem, who argued in an article in the New York Times: "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House ... Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women."

Without acknowledging that black men in America were lynched for attempting to exercise their vote for almost 50 years after white women went freely to the polls, her argument was as selective in its accuracy as it was divisive in its effect. Steinem would later claim she was misunderstood. Given the clarity of expression for which she is renowned and that this was the central thrust of her piece, it is difficult to see how this can have happened.

Then came Robin Morgan, author of a famous feminist essay, Goodbye to All That, who revived her 30-year-old refrain for modern times. "A few non-racist countries may exist - but sexism is everywhere," she wrote. "So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?"

Recently a regional director for the National Organisation of Women (Now) told the Washington Post: "There are some people who promote Barack Obama because they want anybody but a woman. Would they like a white man instead of a black man? Of course. But they'll take a black man over a woman."

This attempt to play race off against gender as though they were bargaining chips is not new. In the wake of the American civil war a fierce debate raged over the 15th amendment to the US constitution, which planned to give the vote to black men but not any women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the nation's leading suffragettes, believed that to enfranchise black men was a licence for an explosion of sexual violence. In the feminist paper the Revolution, she wrote that, forced to chose: "We prefer Bridget and Dinah at the ballot box to Patrick and Sambo." Black men have, at times, been similarly exclusionary. "The only position for women in SNCC [the student wing of the civil rights movement] is prone," Stokely Carmichael once said.

Indeed, counterposing race and gender in this way is about as reductive and reactionary as identity politics can be. For a start, it relegates black women to a subsidiary role, treating them not as whole human beings but divided selves embodying binary identities that are in conflict and contradiction. Sometimes they're black. Sometimes they're women. Somehow they never seem to get to be both at the same time.

"I really believe the biggest divide in the world is men versus women, but most people don't seem to feel that way," says Marj Signer, president of Now's Virginia chapter. "A lot of people identify with race first, and so that can mean Obama. They forget about sexism." Or maybe black women just saw where Signer was coming from and decided to head in another direction.

To treat identities as monolithic and interchangeable in this way is deeply flawed. Class, gender, race, sexual orientation - you name the identity and it will have its own roots, dynamics and dimensions. Sexism and racism have different histories and operate in different ways. To try to simply exchange one for the other - even for rhetorical purposes - won't teach you much about either.

Ranking identities as though they belong in definitive league tables is an insidious process that seeks to privilege one person's experience and pain over another's. In these discussions context is everything. To compare and contrast the qualitative differences between how certain identities function can be instructive. But to rank them quantitatively as though one inherently takes precedence over the other - always and in all ways - is the first step towards fundamentalism.

This is the kind of competition for which there are not only no winners but, in this particular case, for which there is no need. Both Obama and Clinton are unworthy vessels for this kind of antagonism. Neither is standing on an anti-racist or feminist agenda. There is no suggestion that she would be any worse on race than he is or that he would be any worse on gender than she is.

Pitting underrepresented groups against each other in this way simply undermines any potential for building the kind of progressive coalitions necessary to eradicate the very obstacles to the emergence of more black and female candidates. If this is what the Democrats do to each other, just imagine what fun the Republicans will have.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...ections2008.usa

[Guest David Guyatt]

This is clearly ludicrous. True, like every other candidate, Obama has to run on his story, and race is an important part of that story. But if being a black man is such an electoral advantage, then how is it that they make up 6% of the population and only 1% of the senate (Obama)? As the recent controversy over his former pastor shows, for all the votes that Obama gets because he is black there are at least as many that he loses for the same reason.

Race, sex and al the other "isms" are arguments that miss the essential (and sadly) the enduring point.

The poor and those on low incomes (i.e., the underclass, the working poor, the working class and the lower middle class combined equal 85% of the population) make up a harrowingly significant percentage of the population that aren't effectively represented in the senate at all...

[J. Raymond Carroll]

"Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill," Chafee writes. "They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment, in my view."

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the lone Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war, calls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton one of the "Democratic Bush enablers" who failed to stand up to the president.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/123767

[Dawn Meredith]

Obama and the Minister

By RONALD KESSLER

March 14, 2008; Page A19

In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama's longtime minister, friend and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs and creating a racist society that would never elect a black candidate president.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Mr. Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1205452770...in_commentaries

Perhaps John simkin will ask Minister Wright to join the forum. He would fit right in.

Ronald Kessler is a Mockingbird hatchet man. This is a foretaste of what the Republicans (and even some pro-Isarael Democrats) have in store for our bold Barak.

There are two big problems here for Obama:

The good pastor, in his sermom, repeatedly said "God Damn America". McCain's people will play that sound bite non stop.

Also Obama knew for over a year that this pastor was a problem but kept him on his "religious advisory" team. (Since when do we need on of those???). Now Obama's judement is being called into question.

He's also been caught in some inconsistent statements. Another problem. He needed to have dealt with this stuff in a timely manner and shown leadership, as well as good judgement.

Now the comments the pastor made after 9-11 are things I happen to agree with But, that said, I am hardly the "average voter". Most people are horrified by this stuff. It's all over the cable news here.

Dawn

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Another reason to Support Barack: One of his great great (great?) grandfathers came from my home County of TIPPERARY

Obama claims luck, blood, nomenclature of the Irish

Posted by Sasha Issenberg March 17, 2008 09:30 PM

SCRANTON, Pa. -- It is hard to imagine a less friendly room than the one Barack Obama entered here Monday night: a tribal gathering of Irish-Catholic women with a dais full of Hillary Clinton supporters in a a place she claims as a hometown.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politi..._claims_lu.html

[J. Raymond Carroll]

another sad example how being associated with the truth will never work to get one elected in the USA....sadly. Only nice lies and cover-up will do - oh, and being firmly in the pocket of the Oligarchs.

OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

[Video http://www.breitbart.tv/html/64224.html ]

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/polit...&ei=5087%0A

Edited March 18, 2008 by J. Raymond Carroll

[Christopher Hall]

As expected, he has delivered another wonderful oration.

I hope that his emmisaries make the race-baiting behavior of the HRC campaign (including the statements of WJC analogizing Obama to Jessie Jackson) the issue that they should be.

And Gerry Ferraro accused Obama of playing the race card when she essentially called the Editor of the Harvard Law Review, who graduated Magna Cum Laude, an affirmative action candidate.

McCain, who would rather run against HRC, will attack him viciously, but the attacks over the course of the last couple of weeks have been the product of smears by the HRC campaign.

[John Simkin]

What an amazing speech. This is indeed the new politics. I only wish we had politicians in the UK making speeches as good as this. As he says, the easy thing would have been to disown Wright. Instead, he explains him. Or in the words of William Faulkner: “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.”