Thursday, March 20, 2008
Photos from Obama Students in Texas
I just got access to a set of pictures from one of the students I sponsored to go down and campaign for Obama in Texas: Wendi from California. I am so jealous -- I wish I could have been there.
Check them out:
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Nation: Obama is the New Politics
From the Obama blog:
A must-read in The Nation...
If you understand the risks Obama undertook, you can see the beauty and pain in what he did. He could not back away from the risks without betraying himself and all those people who are part of him. On the other hand, he was putting at risk his own great promise as a politician. In psychological terms, what's extraordinary is his refusal to split off himself and his own experience from those others. So he embraced them, knowing the risks. Then he tells us--audaciously--that we are capable of doing the same. Yet most of us do the opposite in everyday life, defining ourselves in contrast to the others we are not, idealizing our own selves by demonizing the others. Obama knows all this. He still insists we can do it. He has seen it happen in life...
...If people have the opportunity to hear him in full and think about it, they will recognize the strength it took for him to open his arms this way, casting aside all defenses and evasions. With the hope and everything else he stands for, this guy is one very strong character.
Obama is the new politics, I believe, whatever happens this year. His way of talking and thinking will shape the future because I think he has got it right about the country.
Share the speech that everyone is talking about with your friends and family.
Everyday Southern Folks React to Obama Speech
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan and the DailyKos for this gem of an anecdote:
I've watched the speech again since this morning, and it didn't disappoint, but just at that moment I stopped watching it ... and started watching the people around me. The young black man. The elderly white couple. The two white women, one college-aged, one in her late-20s. One middle-aged white woman. Two white men, one college-aged, one in his late-30s. One Asian couple. All of them were watching the speech. Rapt. Nodding.
Gradually, the twentysomething white woman went back to her laptop, but kept smiling when Obama would say something important. The elderly white couple whispered in their Southern accented way: "He's really good... He's saying good things... He's a good young man..." The young black man chuckled when Obama said that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America, but was otherwise simply watching. And at one point, the middle-aged white woman asked one of the dealership folks, in another thick, thick Southern accent if she wouldn't mind turning up the volume, because she really wanted to hear this speech.
She, this white Southern woman from the suburbs, wanted to hear this speech, delivered by a Black man with a funny name running for President. And she was nodding.
But she wasn't the only one.
Huckabee Defends Obama, Wright
This is really amazing. On Morning Joe this morning, Mike Huckabee discussed the Rev. Wright flap that Obama addressed in his speech yesterday. Huckabee was thoughtful, rational and forthright. I can understand why a lot of people gravitated to him in the campaign. I don't agree with most of his views but he always came across as a generally honest, affable guy.
Here's the video, his comments at around 3:25 (transcript below):
Transcript (hat tip DailyKos):
HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.
Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS...HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?
HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.
HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.
And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going "boy, there is some deep resentment there."
Newspapers React to Obama's Speech
Here are a few quotes posted at the DailyKos that sums up a wide swathe of favorable newspaper reaction today to Obama's profoundly courageous speech yesterday:
There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.
SEN. BARACK Obama's mission in Philadelphia yesterday was to put the controversy over inflammatory statements made by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his spiritual mentor and pastor for 20 years, behind him. But Mr. Obama (D-Ill.) went deeper than that. He used his address as a teachable moment, one in which he addressed the pain, anger and frustration of generations of blacks and whites head-on -- and offered a vision of how those experiences could be surmounted, if not forgotten. It was a compelling answer both to the challenge presented by his pastor's comments and to the growing role of race in the presidential campaign.
BARACK OBAMA could have made a much shorter speech. He could have protected his campaign yesterday by denouncing and rejecting his former pastor, Rev.Jeremiah Wright, as a crank. Then Obama could have rushed on, hoping that someone else's scandal would push his own out of the headlines.
Instead, Obama took the opportunity to engage the question of race in America, starting a bold, uncomfortably honest conversation. He asked Americans to talk openly about the deep wells of anger and resentment over racism, discrimination, and affirmative action. It's a call to break out of the country's racial stalemate and finally reach a new national understanding.
Obama's Speech - Profoundly Not Status Quo
This piece from The Huffington Post pretty much sums up many of my reactions to Obama's speech yesterday:
Obama Cracks My TV in Half by Adam McKay
It didn't make sense. A politician responding to a TV news scandal during an election and he's not on the attack or the defensive. Instead he's asking us to look at the forces that shape our feelings on race and understand them. My first reaction was to call DirecTV. Clearly my antenna was out of alignment and picking up old broadcasts of the Outer Limits or Playhouse 90 that are bouncing back to earth from Jupiter. Or maybe that California roll I ate was a week old and I'm unconscious on my living room floor and chemicals in my brain are sloshing towards the wish fulfillment part of my frontal lobe.
But it happened. Barack Obama spoke like an enlightened leader from 2008 instead of like the fake cowboy from 1885 that most politicians evoke or like a pharmaceutical salesman talking about change, but "not that much change" at a team building exercise in Tahoe. In other words, he didn't pass the buck to save his own ass. It was a monumental moment in modern American politics. He didn't distract, deflect, or attempt to frighten. He didn't accuse, declare war, or get angry. He didn't game play, scape goat, or blame. Can you imagine? We need to engrave this shit onto a commemorative coin fast.
Corporate tabloid news coverage, the influence of lobbyists and opinion polls have turned our politicians into the biggest group of hacks since the writing staff for Real People disbanded in the eighties. It's been all button pushing and gamesmanship for our representatives over the past twenty years. Anyone who stepped out of line (Howard Dean, Jimmy Carter, Paul Wellstone) was either written off as boring, naive or nuts. All real issues faded to the background and instead "gay marriage" and "tax breaks" and "military photo ops" became the go to bag of hack political tricks. And our newspapers and TV news shows loved it because it took the discussion away from anything constructive and instead veered it towards juicy programming (Governor is Gay! Congressman involved in Three way! Do Gay Flag Burners Want to Pick Up Your Kids on the Internet?! etc.) and the corporate agenda.
But today's speech was different. It felt like a noise I had never heard but someone once tried to describe to me. It was somewhere between a good episode of The Wire and a John Dos Passos novel. It had perspective. Barack Obama was talking about the future of man and whether or not we will continue to fight each other because of random colors (flags, skin, etc) or whether we will solve big problems together like we have done before (medicine, space travel, democracy). Will we evolve or will we skirmish...? Tilt your head the right way when you listen to the speech. I'm pretty sure it's there.
And then as Obama finished I had to laugh. "Man this must have fucked Wolf Blitzer's shit up" I thought. He spends all of his time trying to avoid constructive discourse and discrediting those who do... This must have made him feel like he was on the tilt awhirl with a belly full of funnel cake and Stroh's. I haven't see his response but I'm sure he turned to the speech into a tactical move on Obama's part. If he didn't and was actually thoughtful about it then Hallelujah.Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Speech Reviews: A More Perfect Union
I just re-watched the Obama speech from earlier today. It was truly transformational. You know why people are knowing Hope again? Because a man of this level of intelligence, charisma, discernment, wisdom and poise may become our President.
Here is a round-up of the reactions to his speech, circulated earlier by the Obama campaign. Amazing.
Atlantic (Andrew Sullivan): Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.…I have never felt more convinced that this man's candidacy - not this man, his candidacy - and what he can bring us to achieve - is an historic opportunity. This was a testing; and he did not merely pass it by uttering safe bromides. He addressed the intimate, painful love he has for an imperfect and sometimes embittered man. And how that love enables him to see that man's faults and pain as well as his promise. This is what my faith is about. It is what the Gospels are about. This is a candidate who does not merely speak as a Christian. He acts like a Christian. … I love this country. I don't remember loving it or hoping more from it than today.
Fox News (Major Garrett): I think the two things that struck me most about this speech, Jane, is I’ve watched a lot of speeches in my political career, and I know from politicians who work on the national stage, they ask themselves two questions when they see someone else deliver a major speech. The first question is, “Would I have liked to deliver that speech myself?” And two, “Could I have delivered it myself?” I think the answer to the first question for this speech today would have been almost a universal “Yes.” The answer to the second question for most politicians probably would have been “No.”
Political Wire (Taegan Goddard): Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race this morning showed off exactly why he's become the Democratic front runner for the presidential nomination. He's absolutely willing to challenge the conventional way of how politicians approach controversy. In my opinion, it was the best speech so far in this campaign.
MSNBC (Joe Scarborough): Illinois senator Barack Obama delivering a speech that, in many ways, was sweeping, some would suggest stunning. Anybody that expected Obama to play it safely today was wrong.
Atlantic (James Fallow): … People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.
The Nation (John Nichols): Barack Obama could have responded to the controversy that has been ginned up with regard to comments made by his former pastor will a safe and predictable speech. The "smart" strategy -- which was counseled by some Obama allies -- would have been to have the Democratic presidential contender focus in on concerns about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.'s comments on foreign policy and then distance himself from the offending sentiments. But Obama did not do the politically "smart" thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm.
MSNBC (Joe Watkins): I thought it was an excellent speech. I mean, if anybody can deliver a speech, it's Barack Obama. He has a mastery of words. And what he said, really, I think, was excellent. It brought people together. He was able to distance himself from the terrible remarks that his minister made without completely dissing his minister or his relationship with this minister, this man who has been like a father figure to him over the years. I thought it was very, very well done, very delicately done, done with great passion, great feeling, and that it called America to its better angels.
Atlantic (Marc Ambinder): I do think that Obama's speech was a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric. Politically, analytically and emotively, it hit many high notes. His acknowledgment of white working class resentments (busing) and about the perception that there's been no racial progress, his willingness to stick by his friends, his grasp of history, his sense that our views of race are cramped and caricatured... all of that is something that even those who disagree with the substance of his speech, can, I think, appreciate.
Wall Street Journal (Christopher Cooper): From a political perspective, Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race in America this morning in Philadelphia was extraordinary.
The New Republic (Michael Crowley): Brilliant, beautiful, inspiring--but perhaps not what crass electoral politics demanded of him.
MSNBC (Ron Allen): I can say that I was just amazed at the candor and the directness, and I hope that this does, in fact, and I would think this is going to lead the country to ask itself a lot of questions about the issues that he raised, whether you're black, white, Latino, whatever, Asian, American. It seems that he hit on just about every aspect of the American dilemma as it's been called that we've been struggling with as a nation for many of the last many, many, many decades.
New York Times (Katharine Seelye): Mr. Obama is delivering a sweeping discourse on race in America. He is getting a very warm and positive response from the audience, with murmurs of agreement at each new passage and an increase in applause as he builds toward the end. Audience members are nodding their heads at each other.
MSNBC: (Washington Post’s Sally Quinn): Well, this may be hyperbole but I think this is probably the most important speech on race since Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech because it opened up this conversation to our country in a way that has never been opened before. I can imagine -- the exciting thing about it is, imagine what is going to happen in schools and offices and dinner tables all over this country today and from now on where people are actually going to be having a conversation about things that they were never -- felt that they were allowed to talk about.
MSNBC: Joe Scarborough: Nancy Giles, let me ask you to follow up on Sally's comments. Was this one of the most important speeches on race, in your opinion in the past 45 years since Martin Luther king's "I had a dream" speech? Nancy Giles: Yes. Simply, yes.
Talking Points Memo (Greg Sargent): In the speech Obama goes big big big, quite consciously presenting his personal story -- and candidacy -- as both symbol and realization of American history.
Politico (Ben Smith): It's quite a speech: autobiographical, embracing complexity, and answering questions about Wright…Throughout, he insists on things that you don't get much of in politics: context and nuance.
Atlantic (Matthew Yglesias): I think Obama's speech was pretty brilliant.
MSNBC (Pat Buchanan): Well, you know, I thought it was it an excellent speech. He’s an extraordinarily good speaker, and it was extremely well delivered. And so I think – and it's going to appeal to an awful lot of folks.
CNN (Roland Martin): … No, what I think what he did in this was speak to the good of Trinity, the bad of Trinity, the good of America, the bad of America and say, we all, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian, should be focused on a more perfect union for the United States of America.
First Read (Aswini Anburajan): His tone throughout was quiet and thoughtful. The same speech could have been delivered in a fiery tone. But Obama chose one that was quiet and thoughtful. It did little to lessen the impact and may have added to the weight of his words.
Earlier: Video of Obama's Speech on Race and Politics
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