MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Feb 05
Love0

The Lady is a Champ

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Barack Obama is winning some states but Hillary Clinton appears to be winning the significant ones. California is not in but, based on what’s gone on so far, I just don’t expect Obama to win there. I don’t know why I thought he could win in New Jersey and New York. Clinton not only won here but also in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

I know I sound ridiculous but, from this point on, Obama is running for vice president if he stays in the race. The sort of magic he packs shrivels in a vice presidency. Besides, with Bill as a virtual co-president, Mrs. Clinton won’t need anyone substantial as her vice president. Is there a Joseph Biden clone out West or in the South?

Obama could be President Clinton’s first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Feb 05
Love0

A Rip in the Fabric

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I found this New York Times story very fascinating. The Sanchez sisters’ story was affecting but the story that affect me the most was the one involving Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste.

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste, a married couple who met while serving in the Clinton administration, have actually started debating each other. Not just at their kitchen table, but in front of audiences across California and on television.

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Echaveste, who is a paid consultant to Mrs. Clinton, said in a joint telephone interview with her husband, who advises Mr. Obama. “You’re having a discussion and your husband is basically saying that your candidate doesn’t have a moral compass.”

With that, Mr. Edley broke in. “Or your wife is saying that your candidate isn’t smart enough to figure out where the bathrooms are,” he said.

“I never said that,” she replied.

The couple has relived some of the campaign’s most rancorous moments, such as when Ms. Echaveste, echoing Bill Clinton, told her husband that Mr. Obama was “naïve.” The word conjured up racial stereotypes for Mr. Edley, who is black, and has known Mr. Obama since he taught him in law school. “There’s the childlike Negro,” he explained. “There is the superficial but glib minstrel.”

Ms. Echaveste, who is Hispanic, now understands why her husband exploded in response. “Regardless of being dean of a law school” — at the University of California, Berkeley, where both teach — “he’s still in a box called being a black man,” she said. Still, she said, “I ought to be able to make that point and not trigger these reactions.”

And with that, Mr. Edley responded, his wife countered, and they started to debate once more.

This couple’s conflict played out for me this way:

I was open-minded about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for nomination and could have seen myself voting for her. Then, in a Jan. 13 appearance on ‘Meet the Press,’ she refused to answer Tim Russert’s question about whether Obama was qualified to be president. Obama has more years in elected office than she does and he’s the exact same age Bill Clinton was in 1992. So what is the problem? And this was going on at a time when Hillary and Bill were channeling Lee Atwater in South Carolina by turning Obama into “the black candidate.”

Call me sensitive, thin-skinned, but it became hard for me to support her after that. I started wishing John Edwards had been a stronger candidate, that his message had resonated with the voters more. I did not want Obama to benefit from my disappointment with Hillary Clinton.

So, this is where we’re at.

Feb 05
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Barack Obama

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In his own words at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.:

“ I have always been convinced that change in America does not happen from the top down. Change happens from the bottom up. So I believed that if we could get the voices of the American people to join together, people from all walks of life: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, North, South, East, West, rich, poor, young and old, we could gather our voices to challenge the special interests that have come to dominate Washington. But also challenge ourselves to be better. There was no problem we could not solve, there was no destiny we could not fulfill.

And I am here to report to you, New Jersey, that after a year of crisscrossing the country, after engaging in a conversation with the American people, my bet has paid off and my faith has been vindicated because the American people, they are ready to rise and create a new America. They are ready to turn the page and write a new chapter in the American story. I know this because I’ve been in a conversation with the American people and they are desperate for change, because the stories they tell me are all too often stories of hardship and stories of struggle.”

Feb 05
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Call Me Ishmael

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Mr. Reed blows down the house in this long Counterpunch post. Along the way, he scorches many others, including pundits:

“Having been educated at elite schools where studying The War of the Roses was more important than studying Reconstruction, the under educated white male punditry and their token white women, failed to detect the racial code phrases that both Clintons and their surrogates sent out- codes that, judging from their responses, infuriated blacks caught immediately. Blacks have been deciphering these hidden messages for four hundred years. They had to, in order to survive.“

Feb 04
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Promises

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I found out at the last minute that Barack Obama would be making a noon campaign appearance at the Izod Center (the former Brendan Byrne Arena) in the Meadowlands in Rutherford, New Jersey. My 10-year-old son really wanted to go but, thinking we would not be able to get in anyway, I insisted he go to school.

I ran some errands in the morning: took my laptop to be repaired, went to village hall to pay property taxes, then to the post office to mail bill payments. On a moment’s inspiration, I went to the gym. I hadn’t been for four months, since my soccer season ended in November. Did some strength training, which hurt but I was glad I went.

I suggested to my wife we take a drive to the Obama event, see if we could get in. She was game so we went.

We missed Newark Mayor Corey Booker’s full-throated speech. We could hear over the loudspeakers that old warhorse Ted Kennedy giving a vintage performance getting the crowd primed for Obama. Obama took the podium as we were taking our seats.

He gave the same speech I watched him on C-Span give to a St. Louis, MO campaign event, hit some of the same grace notes the very same way I had seen on television. I have seen so many Obama speeches now that I come to expect certain bits and I’m disappointed when I don’t hear them. But Obama rarely disappoints. There are new twists to some old themes but it’s still the same campaign speech.

My wife was still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Obama and was deeply disappointed by his handling of an issue the New York Times wrote about. I, too, am disappointed. It is cases like this that might put doubt in a person’s mind about whether Obama is a real change agent, as he claims to be.

Obama does seem to have a good heart and, because of his service in the Illinois state senate, I believe he has valuable experience. I like that he was a community organizer. That has largely fueled his campaign. He has done a good job against incredible odds and built unprecedented support among the young and across a broad section of our society.

His best moment of the campaign, surpassing even his Iowa caucus victory, was in his defeat in New Hampshire. Listen to his speech. A portion of that speech has even been set to music. Never mind the rich people in the video. Just Listen to the words.

I don’t know what my wife will do in the morning but I believe I will vote for Obama.

Feb 04
Love0

Nana says . . .

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Poet Maya Angelou says make for Hillary Clinton President of the United States.

She said recently: ‘I made up my mind 15 years ago that if she ever ran for office I’d be on her wagon. My only difficulty with Senator Obama is that I believe in going out with who I went in with.’

She announced her support in a poem she apparently gave to the Guardian, a newspaper in London. Here’s a portion of their story:

The 79-year-old poet was the centrepiece of Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 when she read her poem On the Pulse of Morning, playing on the idea of a new political dawn. Last week she handed this new poem over to the Clinton campaign.

Angelou says that she has had many long telephone conversations with Winfrey on the subject of Obama versus Clinton. ‘She thinks he’s the best, and I think my woman is the best,’ she has explained. ‘Oprah is a daughter to me, but she is not my clone.’

Here’s a portion of Angelou’s poem:

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.