Al Jolson, Elvis Pressley, Bill Clinton, just to name a few.
I’m sure I meant something by that list. But just what I cannot tell you because I am not really sure. The list is not random, however.
It took me a while to get to this Newsweek article by David Gates but I am glad I read it. Mr. Gates wrote a questioning and intelligent article about a sliver of American culture that is unstintingly honest.
Photograph by Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald recorded a version of this song that is at once beautiful, sad, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. Today’s New York Times story about Sen. Barack Obama’s struggle with the issue of race in his campaign to become the Democratic Party nominee for president makes me feel all of those things.
Mr. Obama has largely succeeded in muting the issue of race in this campaign. He has succeeded in making the campaign not about his race, even as he has benefited from race (the whole ‘a credit to his race’ thing). The Clintons, Bill especially, recognized what was happening and quickly ended their subtle attempts to remind people that Mr. Obama is black. They, instead, took up a megaphone and blared it to anyone who would listen.
Photographs by Ozier Mohammed/The New York Times.
They earlier made the false claim to the New Yorker Magazine that Latinos don’t vote for blacks. When Sen. Obama won in Iowa, they became more daring and explicit in New Hampshire before going overboard in South Carolina.
Former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, (D-N.J.), was fond of saying (and I forget who he’s quoting here) that race is America’s original sin.
Nowhere is it more explicit than in this race. Mr. Obama’s campaign, as great as it has been, has had some significant failures. The deficits in his support now are testaments to those failures.
His seeming inability to craft a message that could appeal to lunch bucket, blue collar white voters is telling. It is my belief that Mr. Obama’s message benefits this constituency far more than the people who have been flocking to his campaign so far. He needs to find the language to talk to them.
As for Latinos, it is right that Sen. Obama has to work to earn their votes, just as he had to work (with no small amount of help from Bill and Hillary Clinton) to win over African-Americans. Latinos are diverse and not one single message will reach them. Again, reaching them is not an insurmountable challenge.
This just means Mr. Obama and his staff have to work harder to earn their votes. That is part of the promise of Mr. Obama’s movement. The solutions to our nation’s problems have to be deep and lasting. The blood, sweat and tears in this effort will only make sure both the achievements and the progressive coalition more enduring.
This is not to exclude Sen. Hillary Clinton. First, let me say that any other year I would be banging the drum hard supporting her. It is just a fluke that she is running at a time when her opponent is this remarkable man. She has taken some unfortunate steps in this campaign which she’ll ultimately have to atone for.
What must not happen is troglodyte John McCain winning the presidency.
That said, I will support Sen. Clinton if she wins the nomination. She will have the task of crafting the same progressive coalition, which I hope she is working on now, to carry her to the presidency.
This shows how little I know. I thought former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as Republican vice-presidential nominee answers all the problems that Sen. John McCain is having reeling in his party’s base. Mr. Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is now the president of the Club for Growth, thinks not.
Some have suggested Mike Huckabee. But that’s a legacy
of a hard fought primary season. Moving forward,
Mr. Huckabee on the ticket would be a disaster. The former
governor has a record of raising taxes and increasing
spending. Picking him would only make it more likely that
conservatives will sit on their hands come November.
Mr. Toomey would know better than I would, although you cannot discount that he and the group he heads have their own agenda. Club for Growth (CFG) bills itself as inheritor of Ronald Reagan’s “vision of limited government and lower taxes.”
It’s probably news to them that Reagan, among his many crimes against the American people, not only raised taxes, but he grew the size of government and the national debt beyond what was tolerable. Remember the national debt clock?
It took a Democrat, former president Bill Clinton, to erase the deficit and return sound fiscal management. Clinton left office with a significant surplus that another Republican president, George W. Bush, promptly squandered.
The Club for Growth advances this anti-government vision by supporting candidates for political offices who hew to its right-wing economic orthodoxy. It aggressively opposes moderate Republicans often to the consternation of GOP political leaders.
So who does Mr. Toomey think Mr. McCain should run with:
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence
Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm
Forbes Inc. CEO Steve Forbes
I don’t much about most of these people (Sen. Phil Gramm probably belongs in prison, so corrupt was he; and Mr. Forbes probably belongs in an insane asylum, probably a well-appointed one since he’s wealthy but certifiably insane) other than that they’re Mr. Toomey and Club for Growth’s suggestions for the GOP ticket.
Here’s my question: Should the Republicans be banned from a couple of election cycles, considering the horrible state that George W. Bush is about to leave our country?
All the comparisons of Barack Obama to the Kennedys, both John and Bobby, bring to mind the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen’s putdown of Dan Quayle. Quayle was fond of invoking the martyred young president whenever anyone questioned his qualification to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
The question came up again during the vice-presidential debate on October 5, 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska. Quayle felt put upon and whined that it was the fourth time he’d been asked the question.
“I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency,” Quayle said.
Bentsen, who was lying in wait for this very answer to the question, pounced.
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen said to a roar of applause.
This brings me to my examination of the comparisons of Obama to the Kennedy brothers.
Hillary Clinton seems to have been scared off, at least for now, questioning Obama’s qualification to be president (her ‘ready on day one’ is an oblique way of coming at the question but that doesn’t help her because of Obama’s counter about judgment and ‘being right on day one’) for fear she’d be accused of racism, especially since Obama is the same age her husband was when he ran for the same office 16 years ago. Obama, in fact, has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
And his expectations and that of his supporters have grown as a result of his success.
But, over at TPM Cafe, Jim Sleeper pointed to at least one remaining weakness that Obama still has: He has great support among the young, blacks, and educated and affluent whites. In that respect, he’s very much like JFK. He’s no RFK, however, because his message is not resonating with women, Latinos and working class whites.
Even with RFK’s widow Ethel supporting him, Obama lost these key demographic groups to Sen. Clinton on Super Tuesday. For all his vaunted rhetorical skills, Obama seems unable to inspire them, losing them to Mrs. Clinton so far this primary season. And she seems to have come by this constituency by default—by being the wife of Bill Clinton, who is believed to be a friend of Latinos and the working class—not anything that she herself is doing.
Race is not the reason Obama does not have these groups’ support. He needs to find the key to reach them if the true promise of his campaign is to be realized.
Novelist Toni Morrison who famously dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president” of the United States is now supporting Barack Obama.
In the remaining days before Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), is reaping endorsements like they’re going out of style. What I know is that, whether this pushes him over the hump in California or not, this is impressive. The L.A. Times said this in its endorsement:
An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation’s youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama’s mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama’s life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.
Wow! The Times finishes with this little ditty:
In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long — a sense of aspiration.”
Poor Hillary Clinton, (D-N.Y.). So she’s dutiful but stodgy and uninspiring. I mean it’s not as bad as what her rabid enemies usually say about her, but still . . . Imagine being married to that famous Cassandra, Bill Clinton? But to then run against Obama is worse than unfair. It’s cruel. Let’s say she wins the nomination (because, despite all the kudos Obama is getting, he still faces what seems like insurmountable odds). How do you run for the whole enchilada (with the tsunami of filth that the Republicans are readying to throw at you) knowing you ain’t the prettiest belle at the ball? You failed the inspiration test?
Wait. There’s more. La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country, which is based in Los Angeles, also gave Obama its endorsement. Although the paper called Hillary “extraordinary,” it knocked her for being “calculating” in opposing to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, the paper could not find enough nice things to say about Obama on immigration:
It is this commitment to the immigration issue which drove Obama to condemn the malicious lies made during the immigration debate, to understand the need for driver’s licenses, and to defend the rights of undocumented students by co- authoring the DREAM Act.
And, oh yes, they also think Obama is inspiring:
We need a leader today that can inspire and unite America again around its greatest possibilities. Barack Obama is the right leader for the time. We know that he is not as well known among our community and while he has the support of Maria Elena Durazo, Senator Gil Cedillo and others he comes to the Latino community with less name recognition. Nevertheless, it is Obama who deserves our support.
I have a radical proposal: Why not make Obama president and Hillary the prime minister. Someone’s got to run the country while Obama bats his eyes at its people, inspiring them.
Obama once said, in response to people (the Clintons) who said he’s in too much of a hurry to become president, that what they wanted was for him to wait until all the hope is boiled out of him.
It was a good line.
He probably did not realize that there was not going to be any waiting involved.
How sweet is this for Hillary. Send Bill out to bang Obama, then jump up and say, see, Obama can’t take the heat.
So what if the Democratic Party gets burned in the process? Who cares. Power. Corrupts. Absolutely.
So, last night, there was the evil dementor Newt Gingrish on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes decrying how Lord Voldermort, er, Bill Clinton, was trying kill off good little Harry (that would be Barack Obama) and it occurred to me, those are love taps that Bill is administering to Obama compared to what Republicans will do to the hopeful one when they get their hands on him.
Wow. That was a long sentence. I’ll try to curb that.
Bill Clinton, apparently, does not mind losing a little bit of respect if it means his wife gets to go back to the White House. Power corrupts. Absolutely.
I have said previously (as have others) that I believe Barack Obama is Bill Clinton’s truest heir.
The New York Times has a curious story today that I am still thinking about. I am not sure what I think about the strategy.
I know that I am happy that the Clintons are not ceding the ‘black’ vote’ to Obama. The most gratifying aspect of this campaign to me has been Obama’ run as a candidate who happens to be black, rather than as the ‘black candidate.’ For that reason, he has had to work hard to earn black support, which he still doesn’t have, not totally. Black women, for instance, may still end up supporting Hillary (because I may not return to this subject, consider this in the meantime).
Hillary, at first, did not think she would have to contest for the ‘black vote,’ such was the reservoir goodwill built by Bill Clinton over the course of his political career. Bill Clinton was no less exploitative of African-Americans in his political career than other Democrats. And the party during his reign still took African-Americans for granted. But, even if short of tangible gains for blacks, Bill Clinton was at least empathetic.
That was a change from the open hostility that Ronald Reagan in particular and Republicans in general have exhibited, something that continues today in some of the coded and overt gestures that the current crop of Republican candidates are making on the campaign trail.
Which is why Obama should have to explain better his apparent Nevada apostasy regarding Reagan and the gibe about the Republican Party being the ‘party of ideas.’
Reagan and those ‘ideas’ that the Republican Party continue to traffick in demonized African-Americans and devastated cities, preyed on communities of color , and the imperiled the poor during the past generation. It is not enough to say “I want me some’ Obama Republicans.’ ”
I remember some of the reasons the so-called “Reagan Democrats” deserted the party to vote with Republicans. I am not going to discuss them here but the consequences of that decision are still being felt today.
In any case, Hillary knows she’s in a race now and she’s truly fighting. I hope to take the cudgel to Obama some more on this subject but the person I want to talk about is Bill Clinton and his struggle for a tone against Obama.
Clinton has been too emotional, too hot, and some of his language too freighted for me not to wonder why he seems so bothered by Obama. This is a contest and Bill, of all people, should enjoy the arena and this battle. But he does not seem to.
Ok. I have to run now. I want to think more about this.
