Barack Obama gave a good speech on race, but it's being argued that it was designed to distract attention from much more damaging non-racial aspects of his THEOLOGY. See:
http://christianprophecy.blogspot.com/
False Prophet, you can peddle your socialist-baiting shit elsewhere.
I think the American people are utterly disgusted with the past 7.5 years. ReThug smears may not work this time because they have caused so much damage to America that it is obvious to everyone.
Posted by gay veteran at March 19, 2008 04:45 PMthanks, gay vet-
i didn't even check the link.
Posted by Turkana at March 19, 2008 04:49 PMI guess I have no idea why so many people are rushing to give such over-the-top superlatives to Obama's speech? What did he say that President Clinton didn't say over 13 years ago, or that Americans haven't been saying to each other in countless conversations every day forever? As far as I can tell, the main points were that black people feel aggrieved because centuries of racism have left the black community in a bad place, and white people feel aggrieved because they have to take the blame. We should try to talk to each other and work this out. There's nothing very new or interesting in these common observations and obvious solution.
Frankly, this was a political damage control speech dressed up in high rhetoric, but nothing more. He gave it because the Wright fallout is damaging his campaign--without that selfish motive, he doesn't give this speech. Had it not been for that, his campaign would still be combing through every remark made by anyone who supports Clinton, looking for some remark they can twist out of context to make her look like a racist. If he really wanted to heal the racial divisions in this country, he wouldn't have been making them worse all this time.
Posted by Orange at March 19, 2008 04:53 PMI read the speech, and I agree that mostly it was a good speech and said things I agreed with. However, for it to not just be words it needs to agree with his actions and I would have been a lot more impressed if Obama had condemned all the accusations of racism that started with the SC primary and not let racism seperate us. I don't know if it was a delibrate stratagy, but even if it wasn't, he could have stopped it and made accusations of racism not an issue in this election. I believe that he didn't do that because it was winning him votes.
Posted by Cindy at March 19, 2008 04:57 PMTo put it a different way: the ability to give a speech like that doesn't in any way convince me that Obama is prepared to become President. He should stay in the Senate and mature.
Posted by MarkL at March 19, 2008 05:17 PMI agree with Orange. Those who support Obama held it high as another great moment. Being a liberal I could nod my head, but not being an Obama supporter, at the end I said so what. I think those who have voted Republican and were attracted by Obama's non-partisan schtik, were turned off by the Wright sermons and decided to look somewhere else to put their vote. I don't think Obama will recover because Wright stirred the divisions that Americans avoid taking responsibility on a conscious level. Many Americans are willing to vote for a black guy who sounds white and convince themselves that racism doesn't exist in them. But if the black guy sounds too much like Malcolm X (Wright), all bets are off. I would have supported Obama in November if he had not used the race card in SC and afterwards. Interestingly, he used the race card with finesse and it's the race issue that's come back to bite his butt.
Posted by Prabhata at March 19, 2008 05:19 PMTurkana, I'm sure you and others realize that right-wing trolls are here to divide us
Posted by gay veteran at March 19, 2008 05:32 PMNot to blogwhore in an unseemly fashion, but rather a seemly one, my take is here. If you look at the detail of Obama's campaign tactics, it's clear the fine words are just that: Words.
Posted by Lambert Strether, Philadelphia, PA at March 19, 2008 05:35 PMgay vet,
certainly- just didn't recognize that one.
Posted by Turkana at March 19, 2008 05:35 PMWhat I found interesting is that the congregation was cheering on the hate speech of Wright.
It reminded me of the black college students cheering the OJ verdict.
Wright sure has helped the GOP, is he another one of Cheney's cousins?
Posted by TIKI AL at March 19, 2008 05:45 PM"Frankly, this was a political damage control speech dressed up in high rhetoric, but nothing more. He gave it because the Wright fallout is damaging his campaign--without that selfish motive, he doesn't give this speech."
Bingo. If Obama had given this speech six months or a year ago, I'd have a different reaction, but he didn't.
Posted by tdraicer at March 19, 2008 06:10 PMok people, you can be for Hillary and still acknowledge that Obama gave a great speech, those two things can exist at the same time
Posted by gay veteran at March 19, 2008 06:21 PMCindy wrote: I don't know if it was a delibrate stratagy, but even if it wasn't, he could have stopped it and made accusations of racism not an issue in this election. I believe that he didn't do that because it was winning him votes.
Spot on.
Posted by Orange at March 19, 2008 06:39 PMIf Obama had given this speech at the beginning of his campaign or at any point before the Wright issue reached up to bite him I might actually respect the speech.
If he hadn't denied only a couple days earlier what he openly admitted in his speech -- he was aware of Wrights more outrageous comment -- I might respect the speech.
If he hadn't run on being a different kind of politician and then been that old type of politician I might respect the speech.
Courage and integrity are doing the right thing when no one is watching.
Posted by SeaMBA at March 19, 2008 06:45 PMGreat speech but what took so long? The race is JUST bubbling up? WTF? He could have done much, not just for the country but especially for the Democratic party. His campaign stood back and let the Clintons get tarred with being racist. He did it because it was working for him in the primaries. Now that his ass on the line he give an "historic" speech. How do you justify that?
Obama has all this special skill that he doesn't seem to employee until he has to save his own ass.
Am I missing something?
But what is not clear is whether this dialogue can take place during a presidential campaign, or even within the context of politics. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were not politicians. Similarly, and on a completely separate issue, Al Gore did not become an international icon until he was out of politics.
Nice post, Turkana - I was thinking along these same lines. And not to knock it, but when did healing the great racial divide replace getting out of Iraq as a priority?
Posted by iamcoyote at March 19, 2008 06:52 PMCindy and Orange. Just how does playing the race care help Obama get votes? Amazing! Anyone with a tiny bit of logic knows that Obama being the "black candidate" does not help him. Lets see, it would gain him exactly 12 percent of the vote in the country. Explain to me how you win with 12% if the vote when the remaining 88% hates you?
Posted by angryman at March 19, 2008 06:59 PMThe Clintons are not racists. However, they did employ an age old tactic that southern politicians have employed since the dawn of time and they lost. This is all while saying that Obama was playing the race card...kinda funny when you think about it.
Plus I didn’t see Hillary running out to support Obama during the Rev. Wright crap. Its politics, when your opponent is digging a whole...you know the rest.
the question that has hounded me for the last two days is
did obama answer any of the very legitimate questions about race, and about the misuse of american government power overseas
which the rev's speech- "god damn america" - raised. (the speech title is obviously a play on the words "god bless america" -
not an uncommon rhetorical device?
my sense is that with this speech, as with speeches in other difficult situations, obama delivered the "obama speech" -
a general and hopeful "let's all get together and make things work".
but at least some of the rev's declamations about misuse of american power
deserve an answer.
and obama had no answer to these questions.
so
while his speech may be lauded as, and may actually be, a great speech on race,
it may also have been another clever,
generally-stated diversion
by obama
from the issues the rev's speeches, and his legitimate anger, raised.
in my opinion, we did misuse, and grotesquely so, our political, informational (general info gathering + spying), and military power in iraq.
we were really there to corner the second largest oil reserves in the world.
we were there to fight for a basic resource (oil) our leaders wanted us to fight for.
obama does not address any of this in his speech.
but i suspect he was keenly aware of this deficiency
because he then delivers a second address on foreign policy matters, said to be heavy on the military theory side of things.
right now i'm thinking of obama, as i have previously, as a very clever and capable
ducker and dodger
not necessarily a bad thing for a president to be.
but not exactly the left-wing version of the "straight talk express" we have been led to expect, either.
Posted by orionATL at March 19, 2008 08:47 PMThe Republicans were always going to frame Obama as a scary black man. Jeremiah Wright's sermons are just a convenient excuse. Had Wright not come along, they would have found another.
Posted by nerdoff at March 19, 2008 08:58 PMBy the way, I find this whole episode extraordinarily sad. Not because I'm rooting for Obama--I am--but because I feared it was always going to happen. If, in the end, Obama is brought down because he's been succesfully framed as a scary black man, my worst suspicions about America will have been confirmed.
Posted by nerdoff at March 19, 2008 09:12 PMPlus I didn’t see Hillary running out to support Obama during the Rev. Wright crap. Its politics, when your opponent is digging a whole...you know the rest.
Actually, Her Evilness said "I'm very glad he gave the speech. It's an important topic."
What a monster, eh?
Posted by Blue Jean at March 19, 2008 09:12 PMDukakis was still a decent individual afterwards, just not our president. AlGore felt he had to reinvent himself after every debate that many of y'all thought he had 'won'. Hell, all AlGore had to do was win his home state, but, that's too much to ask. All AlGore had to do was win Clinton's home state, oh, too much to ask his 70% approval rated president for help. Florida shouldn't have mattered to a popular administration.
I take it the 527's weren't engaged in the battle against President Bush? Didn't have all that bad news come out in 2004 for source material? Didn't smell blood in the water for that same bad news.
Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri:
Florida's only a swing state if Clinton is the nominee.
Iowa's only a swing if Obama's the nominee.
Funny thing, if Obama's the nominee, NJ becomes a swing state.
As for "the speech", it was great for a racial discussion, for that it's quite a piece of work. As for answering the 'Wright' problem, it did nothing but raise more questions and create a lot of doubts. He's said different things in a matter of days...he's provided that "Gary Hart" moment with the speech.
Posted by peter at March 19, 2008 09:38 PMAngryman--first of all, while the African American vote is only 12% of the national total, it's a much larger fraction of the Democratic primary vote. Locking in a huge majority here while splitting the rest of the vote leads to victory in the Democratic primary.
Second, believe it or not, a lot of white people don't like racists either, and if you can successfully paint your opponent as a racist, you're going to do pretty well.
Obama dishonorably pushed the false smear that Clinton was appealing to racism, and pushed it as hard as he dared. Only when the Wright business threatened to undo him did he suddenly think we needed to open a dialogue. Frankly, what I want from him is an apology, not a lecture. After everything he's done, I resent his superior attitude and the notion that he has anything to teach me about racism.
Posted by Orange at March 19, 2008 11:40 PM"By the way, I find this whole episode extraordinarily sad. Not because I'm rooting for Obama--I am--but because I feared it was always going to happen. If, in the end, Obama is brought down because he's been succesfully framed as a scary black man, my worst suspicions about America will have been confirmed."
Nerdoff: just out of curiosity, does it also sadden you that Hillary has been brought down by the successful framing of her as a scary, calculating, conniving, racist bitch? And, if so, does that confirm any suspicions about America you might have?
The key sentence in your article is the one regarding the republicans rebranding our candidates and allowing them to be smeared day in and day out in the press. This is why some of us have been so disturbed by the overzealousness of supporters of both Obama and Clinton who have refused to repudiate the ugliness in the media regarding one candidate or the other. It is as Somerby says, when you don't stand up all the time, regardless of your personal views. you are paving the way to the past. All of us, Ko's, Josh Marshall, Taylor Marsh, Huffington, Jeralyn Merrit etc. must challenge the media daily. Bias against all candidates not just our favorites must not be allowed to stand.
Posted by Ann at March 20, 2008 06:19 AMI think that this speech was a "jump the shark" moment for Obama.
Just this morning there is a news story on Yahoo that Hillary is now leading Obama in a national poll done by Gallup.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/ts_nm/usa_politics_gallup_dc
FWITW: (To me, polls aren't very useful, but this might be useful to Obama-anians, who have quoting polls left and right)
Excerpt below:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has moved into a significant lead over Barack Obama for the first time in weeks in the race for the party nomination, according to a Gallup poll.
The March 14-18 national survey of 1,209 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters gave Clinton, a New York senator, a 49 percent to 42 percent edge over Obama, an Illinois senator. The poll has an error margin of 3 percentage points.
Gallup said it was the first statistically significant lead for Clinton since a tracking poll conducted February 7-9, just after the Super Tuesday primaries. The two candidates had largely been locked in a statistical tie since then, with Obama last holding a lead over Clinton in a March 11-13 poll.
Gallup said polling data also showed presumptive Republican nominee John McCain leading Obama 47 percent to 43 percent in 4,367 registered voters' preferences for the general election. The general election survey has an error margin of 2 percentage points.
The Arizona senator also edged Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent but Gallup said the lead was not statistically significant.
Hillary is not going to be the nominee, yet she continues to damage Obama, weakening the Democratic party's chances in the general. Just this morning we learn that she is arguing to the superdelegates that the Wright controversy makes Obama unelectable. Hillary is damaging her own party. In my book that makes her a "scary, calculating, conniving, racist bitch."
Posted by at March 20, 2008 08:00 AMTurkana:
An excellent piece of writing coming from a Hillary supporter. You have shown spirit of a true Democrat.
Obama showed he is bold enough to touch the so called Third Rail of politics. The question is, IS USA ready to do so?
Posted by suresh at March 20, 2008 10:43 AM1. "Nerdoff: just out of curiosity, does it also sadden you that Hillary has been brought down by the successful framing of her as a scary, calculating, conniving, racist bitch? And, if so, does that confirm any suspicions about America you might have?"
2. "Hillary is not going to be the nominee, yet she continues to damage Obama, weakening the Democratic party's chances in the general. Just this morning we learn that she is arguing to the superdelegates that the Wright controversy makes Obama unelectable. Hillary is damaging her own party. In my book that makes her a "scary, calculating, conniving, racist bitch.""
____________
Well, then. OK. You've proven several points. Those democrats who stood by silently (or, worse, joined in) while the MSM and the blogs smeared, mocked, and ridiculed Clinton hardly get to complain now that democrats aren't standing up for their own, do they? I certainly don't revel in the takedown happening to Obama now, but I can see how some democrats have become so alienated from him and his campaign that they aren't energetically pushing back for him.
Ya reap what ya sow, baby. Many people tried fruitlessly to convince Obama and his supporters to rein in the Hillary hate and the misogyny for this very reason - not very good listeners, are they?