President Obama needs a refresher course on Africa

By Gerald Caplan
2009-07-16, Issue 442

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/57760

* Gerald Caplan is the author of The Betrayal of Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

The American president made his first official trip to Africa last week when he visited Ghana for two days. In an interview Obama, with no false humility, stated that 'I'm probably as knowledgeable about African history as anybody who's occupied my office.' I'd say two things. First, the bar in that particular competition was not exactly set very high. Second, as the rest of the interview demonstrated, he's not nearly as knowledgeable as he thinks he is. Much of what he believes about Africa, and how it can get out of the many messes it's in, are simply wrong.

In his interview with allafrica.com, the president focused on internal African causes for the continent's woes, highlighting especially the need for good governance and ending widespread corruption. So, for example, he argues that 'you're not going to get investment without good governance.' That's simply wrong. For decades most foreign investment in Africa has gone to South Africa first, even under apartheid, and then to such oil-rich nations as Angola and Nigeria. In all cases, good governance played no role in investment decisions. Making an assured profit, regardless of the governance system, was the only criterion.

Similarly, Obama insisted that business won't invest where 'government officials are asking for 10, 15, 25 per cent off the top'. That too is wrong. Nigeria, Angola and South Africa show that, as do Kenya, Cameroon and the DR Congo, just to name obvious exceptions to his statement. In all cases, foreign businessmen have shown themselves only too eager to play the bribery card. If they didn't, those African government officials couldn't get away with demanding a cut off the top, which also means that high-level corruption in Africa couldn't – and doesn't – happen without Western complicity.

Obama says there is 'a direct correlation between governance and prosperity'. That's why he chose democratic Ghana for his first official state visit, rather than his father's country, Kenya. Heaven knows that the ruling parties in Kenya are brazenly corrupt and show little interest in anything other than enriching themselves and their supporters. Ghana, on the other hand, after years of bad governments following the CIA-instigated coup that overthrew the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, can now be said to be fairly stable and politically democratic. Obama knows lots of things. As he observed, when his father left Kenya in the early 1960s to study in the USA, the GDP (gross domestic product) of Kenya was higher than that of South Korea; today, South Korea is one of the world's great success stories, while Kenya languishes.

The UN's Human Development Index backs this up. In 2008, of 179 countries, Korea was ranked 25th, placing it among the rich developed nations of the world, while Kenya was 144th. But the president should look at these ratings more closely. Despite good governance, Ghana was ranked 142nd, virtually tied with Kenya among the bottom 20 per cent of the world's nations. Something else must be going on here that accounts for this situation, because Obama's analysis can't.

Here's the heart of his diagnosis, as his interview made explicit: While the international community 'has not always been as strategic as it should have been [regarding Africa] … ultimately I'm a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa … for many years we've made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neocolonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racist. I'm not a believer in excuses.'

Well, this is partially true. Africans have for decades been betrayed by a veritable pageant of monstrous leaders. But another truth is that the United States actively supported the very worst of these African tyrants, and if the US didn't, France did; that's called neocolonialism. This included, by the way, the apartheid government of South Africa, which, with the quiet backing of Britain and the US, only stopped destabilising much of the continent 15 years ago. The West also supplied many of the arms that were used in the terrible internal conflicts that have roiled Africa for so long. Even today, the US, Britain and France continue to remain close allies with many African leaders whose democratic credentials leave much to be desired.

The little-grasped reality is that year after year far more of Africa's wealth and resources pour out of the continent to the rich world than the West provides through all possible sources, from aid to investment to trade.

Beyond that, even if every African country was led by a saint, they could do nothing about the severe environmental damage that global warming – for which Africa has no responsibility whatever – is inflicting across the continent.

Even the best African leaders could do nothing about the destructive impact on African development of the present worldwide economic crisis, for which Africa has no responsibility whatever.

No African leader has the slightest influence on the drastic increase in food prices that is causing such suffering – including outright starvation – to millions of Africans.

Even a continent's worth of Mandelas couldn't change the massive subsidies Western governments provide to their agribusinesses. When they're in Ghana, the Obamas should do some comparison shopping. They may be taken aback to find that it costs more to buy a locally-bred chicken than one that's been shipped all the way from Europe, thanks to subsidies to European chicken farmers.

And nothing will now change the vast damage already done to Africa by the destructive neoliberal policies that were imposed on African governments by the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) over the past 30 years. Even today, while their rhetoric has changed, these institutions, deeply American-influenced, continue to insist on discredited policies that fail to promote growth while vastly increasing inequality.

At the risk of being pushy, I recommend that President Obama reads my little book, The Betrayal of Africa, which documents the twin burdens that actually account for Africa's situation – the continent's own wretched leaders combined with exploitative Western policies and practices. Unless he grasps this truth, his administration will become yet another in an endless line that has caused Africa more grief than good. And I'm confident that's not what he intends.

* Gerald Caplan is the author of The Betrayal of Africa.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.

OBAMA CAIRO, EGYPT SPEECH IN FULL.

OBAMA- TURKEY SPEECH

A look at Obama's latest executive orders

By The Associated Press – 3 hours ago
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gVkHCC0G9SdsUWnUmq_3GspQGTegD95SE4282

Text of three executive orders and a directive that President Barack Obama signed Thursday at the White House:

Executive Order Regarding Guantanamo Bay Detainees
Executive order requires closure of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, no later than one year from the date of the order. Closure of the facility is the ultimate goal but not the first step. The order establishes a review process with the goal of disposing of the detainees before closing the facility.

The order sets up an immediate review to determine whether it is possible to transfer detainees to third countries, consistent with national security. If transfer is not approved, a second review will determine whether prosecution is possible and in what forum. The preference is for prosecution in Article III courts or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), but military commissions, perhaps with revised authorities, would remain an option. If there are detainees who cannot be transferred or prosecuted, the review will examine the lawful options for dealing with them. The attorney general will coordinate the review and the secretaries of defense, state and homeland security as well as the (director of national intelligence) and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff will participate.

The executive order directs the secretary of state to seek international cooperation aimed at achieving the transfers of detainees.

The order directs the secretary of defense to halt military commission proceedings pending the results of the review.

Finally, the executive order requires that conditions of confinement at Guantanamo, until its closure, comply with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and all other applicable laws.

Executive Order Regarding Detainee Policy
Executive order creates a special task force, co-chaired by the attorney general and the secretary of defense, to conduct a review of detainee policy going forward. The group will consider policy options for apprehension, detention, trial, transfer or release of detainees. Other task force participants include the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security, the director of national intelligence, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The special task force must submit its report to the president within 180 days.

Executive Order Regarding Interrogation
Executive order revokes Executive Order 13440 that interpreted Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It requires that all interrogations of detainees in armed conflict, by any government agency, follow the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines. The order also prohibits reliance on any department of justice or other legal advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009.

The order requires all departments and agencies to provide the (International Committee of the Red Cross) access to detainees in a manner consistent with department of defense regulations and practice. It also orders the CIA to close all existing detention facilities and prohibits it from operating detention facilities in the future.

Finally, the order creates a special task force with two missions. The task force will conduct a review of the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines to determine whether different or additional guidance is necessary for the CIA. It will also look at rendition and other policies for transferring individuals to third countries to be sure that our policies and practices comply with all obligations and are sufficient to ensure that individuals do not face torture and cruel treatment if transferred. This task force will be led by the attorney general with the secretary of defense and the director of national intelligence as co-vice chairs.

Presidential Memorandum on Review of the Detention of al-Marri
The president instructed the attorney general, the secretaries of defense, state and homeland security, and the director of national intelligence to conduct a review of the status of the detainee Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri who is currently held at the Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C. This will ensure the same kind of legal and factual review is undertaken of the al-Marri case that is being undertaken of the Guantanamo cases.

Barack Obama 44th US president; inauguration speech in full.

Barack Obama has been sworn in as the 44th US president. Here is his inauguration speech in full.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and co-operation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labour, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and travelled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and ploughed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - that a nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defence, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the spectre of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honour them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have travelled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Obama's first economic lesson: blame Bush

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article5119348.ece

From The Times
November 10, 2008
Obama's first economic lesson: blame Bush
As in 1933, the President-elect faces a disaster not of his making. Today, however, he may be able to stabilise the depression
William Rees-Mogg

Next Saturday there will be a meeting of the leading economic nations, the G20, in Washington to review the world economic crisis. It is not clear how much Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, will be involved. He faces the same dilemma as Franklin Roosevelt, who was President-elect in 1933.

Herbert Hoover, the outgoing president, was engaged in negotiating the preliminaries for the World Economic and Monetary Conference that was to be held in London in July of the same year. By that time Roosevelt would be president.

Roosevelt blamed the slump on Hoover, and was determined to create his own policies to deal with the crisis. In his perceptive biography Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Conrad Black observes: “Roosevelt fundamentally thought that the focusing on foreign causes for the Depression was a scam and an evasion... He believed that efforts to lay great stress on the potential of international conferences to achieve much that would be useful were just attempts to shirk responsibility for the monstrous failure for which Herbert Hoover as President, and for eight years before that as Secretary of Commerce, was more personally responsible than anyone else.”
There is no reason to think that Senator Obama feels as angry about the economic policy failures of George W. Bush as Roosevelt felt about Hoover, but the political situation is the same. In 1933 the outgoing Republican Administration left the legacy of the Great Depression. By 1933 that had already cost them the presidential election of 1932; as the party of the slump they went on to lose the elections of 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948. Any competent professional politician in Roosevelt's position would have wanted to nail the Republican Party with responsibility for the slump. Mr Obama is a highly competent politician. He will want to avoid sharing responsibility for the greatest economic catastrophe since the 1930s. To start with, he will want to make sure of his second term. He will put the blame on the Republican Administration, and reasonably so.
The economic policies of the new Administration have not yet been established. The President-elect has a number of first-class advisers, people of judgment, courage and experience; yet the administrative team has yet to be appointed. During the Washington conference, Senator Obama will be well advised to listen to the visiting statesmen, as no doubt he will, but he can hardly be ready to enter into policy commitments.

During the conference one could expect Senator Obama to listen more than he talks. Quite simply, he is not yet the president; he has huge influence but no official authority. Nor is he indeed an economist by training. He will take his own big economic decisions, but he will want first of all to receive the advice he will be given by an administration that has not yet been formed.

In any case, the leading figures of the G20 countries are not themselves agreed on the best policies to pursue. The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, seems to want a second Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that created the postwar fixed-rate exchange system; the system lasted until 1971, when President Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold.
It is not clear which, if any, countries other than France now want to move back towards a fixed-rate system. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, blocked British entry into the euro, which is itself a fixed-rate currency. Mr Brown seems to want a new structure for the main global institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. However, the Washington conference does not contemplate a new world monetary treaty. Nothing can be decided at this stage on structural reform, nor could it be be a cure for a depression.

In the meantime, the economic situation is continuing to deteriorate, just as it did in the early 1930s. The worst period of the Great Depression occurred between the election of Franklin Roosevelt in November 1932 and his inauguration in March 1933. That was when the largest number of American banks had to close. There is no reason to think we have yet reached the bottom of this depression.

We do now seem to have reached the stage when a financial crisis transmutes into a general crisis of the economy. It is no longer the banks that are causing the greatest worry, but the potential collapse of the American automobile industry. The two largest manufacturers, General Motors and Ford, are asking Washington for funds comparable in size to the bailout of the banks. European car manufacturers are also suffering a disastrous slump in sales.

The recession is already spreading into the wider world of business, with large businesses having to lay off an increasing number of workers, and smaller ones shutting down. There are now foreclosures in almost every street. It is a time of many domestic financial tragedies in the US and in Britain.

In 1932 one of Roosevelt's advisers, the great American economist Irving Fisher, described the critical tipping point of a depression. “There may be equilibrium which, though stable, is so delicately poised that, after departure from it beyond certain limits, instability ensues... Such a disaster is somewhat like the ‘capsizing' of the ship which, under ordinary conditions, is always near stable equilibrium but which, after being tipped beyond a certain angle, has no longer the tendency to return to equilibrium, but, instead, a tendency to depart further from it.”
Senator Obama's first task is to stabilise the depression before it passes the tipping point, as it did in the 1930s. He rightly recognises how urgent this is. Yet he has one great advantage. He is genuinely a charismatic leader whom people will follow. The economic crisis calls out for a renewal of confidence. The whole world needs to believe that “Yes, we can”.

The Obama front....

Looking good so far, as far as exit poll projections would go, 195-76. Will have to wait for the official release on this one, you know once we're over the 270 threshold.

Karl Rove (http://rove.com/election) predicts the above illustration. :-)

02:32 ITV: 200-85

02:46 BBC: 200-124

03:01 SKY 207-129

03:52 SKY 207-141

04:00 BBC 262-141

04:01 BBC 273-141 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Obama is the US president-elect.

Verbatim president-elect remarks: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/05/election_night_remarks_of_pres.html

Obama speech video in full (17 minutes): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7710079.stm

5 minute youtube excerpt:

Obama's 30 minute ad 29.10.2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/28/obamas-prime-time-tv-comm_n_138767.html

Obama Germany Speech- MSNBC TV

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25835684#25835684

DNC Lawyers Rule Against Clinton

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stops at Mount Rushmore during a campaign swing through South Dakota. (By Elise Amendola -- Associated Press)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052803093.html?wpisrc=newsletter
By Shailagh Murray and Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 29, 2008; Page A06

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's prospects of persuading Democratic officials to override party rules and recognize all delegates selected in the Florida and Michigan primaries suffered a setback yesterday after lawyers for the party ruled that no more than half of those delegations could be legally recognized.

Democratic National Committee lawyers wrote in a memo that the two states must forfeit at least half of their delegates as punishment for holding primaries earlier than DNC rules allowed. Clinton (N.Y.) prevailed in both contests, although the Democratic candidates had agreed not to campaign in Florida and Michigan, and Sen. Barack Obama removed his name from the Michigan ballot.

The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is scheduled to meet Saturday to make a final determination on Florida and Michigan, which would have collectively awarded 368 convention delegates. But in the memo, party lawyers determined that full restoration, as sought by Clinton, would violate DNC rules, although it did note a loophole that would allow her to carry the challenge to the first day of the Democratic National Convention in late August.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters that the senator from Illinois is prepared to forfeit a portion of his delegate lead, as part of a compromise to resolve the Florida and Michigan flap. "We don't think it's fair to seat them fully," Plouffe said of the two delegations. But he added, "We're willing to give some delegates here" in order to put the matter to rest.

If the current delegate tally were to hold, Plouffe said, Obama could pull within about 10 delegates of the 2,026 needed for the nomination, assuming he wins the South Dakota and Montana primaries as expected on Tuesday. The Saturday meeting is likely to increase the threshold, possibly by several dozen delegates, but campaign officials said they are confident that uncommitted superdelegates will quickly move to endorse Obama, pushing him over the finish line as early as Wednesday morning.

Plouffe said the campaign is not stockpiling superdelegates to roll out en masse, as many political observers have speculated. "We announce superdelegates as they commit to us," he said. But he said mid-next week would be "a natural time" for those who have not picked sides to finally break.

Obama is already acting like a general-election candidate. He spent the past three days in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado -- three states that held Democratic caucuses months ago but that are expected to be swing states in November.

Clinton visited South Dakota yesterday, including a stop at Mount Rushmore. Obama aired a new TV ad in Puerto Rico, which votes Sunday, and will depart Friday on a final three-day swing through Montana and South Dakota. Clinton is expected to spend the weekend in Puerto Rico, the biggest delegate prize of three remaining contests, and where she is favored.

But her best hope for late gains is at the DNC meeting on Saturday. Clinton supporters are organizing a "Count Every Vote" rally outside the meeting site and have bombarded committee members with phone calls and Florida oranges to press their case.

Obama's campaign sent a mass e-mail to supporters yesterday, urging them not to descend on the event. Plouffe said the campaign could easily muster "thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people" to counter Clinton's turnout, but said he wants to avoid an "unhelpful scene at the close of the nomination fight."

DNC lawyers found that the Rules and Bylaws Committee acted within its rights by voiding the Florida and Michigan results, after Michigan moved its primary to Jan. 15 and Florida moved its to Jan. 29. They did so in violation of party rules that called for state parties that did not receive waivers from the DNC to schedule primaries no earlier than Feb. 5.

Speaking to reporters on a morning conference call, senior adviser Harold Ickes refused to rule out a legal challenge if the committee does not rule in Clinton's favor. "That's a bridge to cross when we come to that particular stream," he said.

Clinton also appealed directly to superdelegates. "When the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned by primaries. Ultimately the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee," she wrote in a letter to undeclared superdelegates.

Saturday's pro-Clinton event is being co-organized by the Women Count PAC -- founded by five top Clinton supporters, including longtime friend and fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell -- and a coalition of disparate other groups working under the umbrella of Count Every Vote '08.

Organizers said that they expect people to come from 26 states for the rally, as well as some major celebrity speakers, and that they are receiving logistical assistance or other support from the pro-Clinton United Federation of Teachers and Emily's List.

Count Every Vote '08 first came together in mid-March to lobby Democratic superdelegates on behalf of Clinton. Allida M. Black, project director and editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt papers at George Washington University, joined with Tompkins Buell to start Women Count PAC two weeks ago. They raised more than $250,000 and used the money to buy newspaper ads, including ones that ran in the New York Times over the weekend calling on female readers to attend Saturday's rally.

Vick reported from the Obama campaign.

As Obama looks victorious, a desperate Clinton argues on

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Clinton will campaign beyond Tuesday's West Virginia primary and take her fight for the Democratic presidential nomination all the way to the party's convention this summer if she or Sen. Barack Obama hasn't won enough delegates to clinch the party's nomination, her campaign advisers said Friday.
Clinton campaign strategist Geoff Garin and communications director Howard Wolfson, speaking to a breakfast meeting with reporters, repeated recent Clinton campaign assertions that the delegate majority is 2,209 to shoot down speculation that Clinton would drop out of the race after her expected defeat of Obama in West Virginia on Tuesday. Previously, Democrats had said 2,025 delegates would be needed to win, a number Obama is likely to reach on May 20, after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries.

The higher number would include the Michigan and Florida delegations, which have been barred from the Denver convention. Whether any portion of those delegations will be allowed will be discussed at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee rules committee scheduled for May 31.

The campaign's position comes as Obama's support among superdelegates — party officials and insiders who can vote however they choose — rises. Obama's aides said Friday that he'd picked up the support of eight new superdelegates, including one who'd supported Clinton.
Clinton also is lagging in the pledged delegate count and is short on campaign cash. Still, her advisers laid out a strategy in which her path to the nomination depends on wooing working-class, rural whites and seniors and pushing for the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida. Those delegates were banned after their states defied party rules and moved up their primaries.

"Senator Clinton does far better with blue-collar voters, working-class voters in general," Garin said. "Historically, those have been the key swing voters in the general elections, and we believe that the evidence is clear that Senator Clinton is the better candidate to win those votes for the Democratic Party in November."

Clinton was more direct about her approach in an interview Thursday with USA Today.
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she told the paper.
Then Clinton referred to an Associated Press article, saying it "found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening, and how whites in (North Carolina and Indiana) who had not completed college were supporting me."
At Friday's breakfast meeting, Garin and Wolfson suggested that Clinton's appeal to so-called "downscale Democrats" would give her longer coattails for congressional Democrats to ride on than Obama would.

They presented handouts that suggested that 20 freshman Democrats in Republican-leaning districts would have a better shot at re-election if Clinton were the nominee because she won 16 of the 20 districts during the primaries. "We believe the evidence is that Senator Clinton can do more to help Democrats win a bigger majority in 2008," Garin said. Clinton's brain trust continued to try to raise doubts about Obama's electability in the general election, pointing out that Clinton won big swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. Wolfson aimed to set the bar high in West Virginia for Obama. "What is the basis for the so-called presumptive nominee not competing in a state that would be a key swing state," Wolfson said. "If Senator Clinton wins West Virginia by 15 points after magazines, papers, television have declared him the nominee, what does that say about Senator Obama's ability to compete in states like West Virginia that we will need in our column? It's a problem that Senator Obama has essentially conceded the state." But not everyone was buying the Clinton campaign's logic. Clinton suffered a major defection Friday when superdelegate Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama. "After careful consideration, I have reached the conclusion that Barack Obama can best bring about the change that our country so desperately wants and needs," Payne said in a written statement. "He embodies the American ideals of hope, optimism and the ability to take on tough challenges in order to solve difficult problems." Wolfson said he didn't expect other members of the black caucus who supported Clinton to switch, but he added that "people are obviously free to exercise their conscience and support the candidate of their choice."
Clinton maintained a busy campaign schedule Friday, stumping in Portland, Ore., and Louisville, Ky. She's scheduled to attend a Mother's Day event in New York on Saturday.

Obama, meanwhile, was sounding more and more like a candidate who's looking toward accepting his party's presidential nomination this summer in Denver.
In a speech in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday, Obama didn't mention Clinton at all.
"There will be real differences on the ballot in November," Obama said in prepared remarks. "I believe it's time for Washington to work for your hopes, your dreams. And that's what I'll do every day as president of the United States."

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

The Money War Between Obama & Clinton -- Why It Matters

by Ashish, http://www.411mania.com/politics/columns/68588

Could money woes force Clinton out?
With all the talk we've heard for the past few months about convention floor showdowns, backroom deals, superdelegates tearing the party apart, etc. comes word from Newsweek that Hillary Clinton may have only raised $7 million in primary funds in March. How can that be when she claimed to have raised $20 million? Simple. Her rich donors are maxed out for the primary (people can only donate up to $2300 for the primary) and she got them to donate towards her general election campaign so she could inflate the total sum and hope people didn't notice that most of the money can only be used in a general election, a place she is unlikely to even get to.

She did the exact same thing in February to try and stop talk of her being finished. Remember how she shouted from the rooftops that she raised $34.5 million and how it was a record month for her? Turns out only $11.7 million of that could be used in the primary, according to Newsweek. The rest will only become available to her if she gets to the general election. But she needs the money now. The reason nobody noticed this is that candidates aren't required to disclose how much they raise in primary funds and how much in general election funds until 20 days after the month ends. So when she did report the full picture, that only a third of her February total could be used in her battle with Obama, the media didn't take notice. I won't even get into the fact that Clinton closed February with $8.7 million in debt. For comparison, Obama raised $55.5 million in February, $54 million of that can be used in the primary. How can he do this? Because he has over a million small donors (and growing daily) and basically none of them are even close to being maxed out, which means he can keep going back to them for more money.

The Newsweek story also exposes that Clinton, despite plugging her website everywhere and trying to get small donations recently in the same way Obama has been doing, has been unsuccessful and is relying on her usual assortment of wealthy donors who can't give her more primary money but gave her enough money for the general election to delay talk of her campaign running out of money for a few extra days. It doesn't make a difference to these wealthy Clinton donors because she will eventually have to give them all that money back if she doesn't get to the general election. Why does this matter? Fundraising is CRUCIAL in the general election and it's another reason why you'll see superdelegates continue to side with Obama. The old ways of raising money, relying on the extremely wealthy and putting together high-dollar dinners with the rich and famous, is a thing of the past now.

If Clinton only raised $7 million in primary funds in March, a month where she won the Texas and Ohio primaries and Barack Obama got saddled with the negative Rev. Wright story, it may indicate that this race won't end in fireworks and excitement, it'll end in a whimper as Clinton runs out of money.

The $7 million figure could be true because right now, Clinton is letting Obama outspend her 5-to-1 in Pennsylvania even as polls show her lead collapsing in the state. If she had $20 million to spend, she would put it all in PA, as it is a do or die state for her. Instead, what we're likely seeing is her put in everything she has, but that everything is far less than what she wants people to think she has. This is how campaigns usually end. The frontrunner begins to rack up huge financial advantages after cementing himself as the likely winner and it gets to a point where money results in too many advantages for said frontrunner for the other candidate to ever stop the bleeding. And eventually their campaign dies. If this money advantage persists, it'll catch up with Clinton sooner rather than later, if not in PA, then in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th. A loss in any of those three states will sink her.

If the Newsweek story is true, her only remaining option would be to donate massive amounts of her personal fortune to go on competing in a race that she is almost sure to lose. Her tax returns were released yesterday and showed that her and Bill have amassed over a $100 million since 2000, mostly from books they have written and Bill's speaking gigs. They will need at least another $30-$40 million over the next three months to even think about continuing in a legitimate fight against Obama, because in those same three months, he will likely raise near or over $100 million and already has a huge financial advantage going in. Clinton cannot be outspent 3-to-1 and 4-to-1 in every remaining state and think she stands a chance. She knows that.

Her bluff, reporting her March fundraising total to include general election funds which she will likely never be able to use (and will have to return), is something she had to do because had she come out and reported, say, a $10 million month, it would have completely demoralized her supporters in PA, NC, and IN, and would have accelerated the media's talk of her being finished (even more so than what the media is already talking about, which is that she has almost no chance to win). And I think she realizes that that demoralization has already started. Looking at her huge drop in PA polls, there seems to be a mix of Obama's advantage in ads and some of Clinton's softer supporters starting to lose faith and tell pollsters they just don't plan to vote, not because they don't support Clinton, but because it may no longer be worth the trouble to go vote for her. Again, this is how campaigns usually end.

Post Comment (7) | Email Ashish | View Ashish's 411 Profile

Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text

The Huffington Post | March 18, 2008 10:15 AM


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"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.


Read more HuffPost coverage and reaction to Obama's speech

Just Words

OBAMA

Obama Eats Into Clinton's Election Lead

Sky News:

Updated:08:22, Sunday February 10, 2008

Barack Obama won three more states in the latest battles for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Clean sweep for Obama
The Illinois senator triumphed by wide margins in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska - but he is still behind the delegate tally of his main rival Hillary Clinton.

His winning margins were substantial, ranging from roughly two-thirds of the vote in Washington and Nebraska.

In early results from Louisiana, he was gaining 53% of the vote, compared with 39% for the former first lady. He also took nearly 90% in the Virgin Islands.

SOUTH CAROLINA- VICTORY SPEECH

Its Obama time!

Great to learn of Obama's victory in Iowa early morning today, since hearing him speak at the 2004 Democrats Convention, I was hooked 'hook, line and sinker', not only celebrating his astute mind and approach to life but also where he comes from, my first blog on Obama OBAMA GETS VOTERS EXCITED, CONFUSED was almost a year ago today! more:
LATEST ON OBAMA
LATEST POLL SHOWS OBAMA & CLINTON TIED
Powell ready to jump on Obama bandwagon?
OBAMA'S NEWSWEEK INTERVIEW ON HIS IMPROBABLE CANDIDACY

Well, heres to making history! The american sports writer Red Smith wrote " Dying is no big deal, the least of us will manage that. Livings the trick." Hear! Hear!

Obama's Iowa victory speech below: Great stuff!

OBAMA'S NEWSWEEK INTERVIEW ON HIS IMPROBABLE CANDIDACY

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe
Newsweek

July 8, 2007 - NEWSWEEK interviewed Sen. Barack Obama on June 27 in Washington. Here are excerpts from that exchange:

NEWSWEEK: Cornel West said some pretty rough things about you.

Barack Obama: Have you talked to him lately?

I have.

OK.

And you won him over. How did you react when you read what he said? And how did you win him over?

Why don't I start it this way? I have not been in national politics very long. I've been in politics for a long time, but for many people I was an unknown commodity. So as certain stories circulated about me, or what my priorities were, or where I came from, not surprisingly people were willing to give credence to some of those assumptions. So with Cornel it was just a matter of calling him up, introducing myself and having a conversation.
In some ways that's a metaphor for what this campaign is about. Me introducing myself, having a conversation, and trying to cut through the noise that is created by political opponents or media that's looking for a good story or my own fumbles and gaffes, trying to make sure by the end of this process people have a good sense of what my history is, what my values are, where I want to take the country.
He's a pretty frank guy. He said, “You're not going to agree with everything I say, and I'm not going to agree with everything you say.”

Maybe you also said that to him?

I said that to him.

He had this whole Shakespearean line about “To thine own self be true.”

Yeah.

What do you say to that?

He's absolutely right. This is a very improbable candidacy, I think it's fair to say. And for me to win, it is important that those qualities that got me into politics in the first place—those values that led me to become a community organizer or a civil rights attorney, that passion for justice and fairness—that those attributes come through. And if I start sounding like everybody else, if I'm just another Washington politician then there's no reason for people to choose me as opposed to people who have been in Washington longer and play that particular game better than I can. So maintaining my voice through this process is critical and it can be a difficult task. There are a lot of forces at work designed to homogenize candidates and there's a premium placed on risk avoidance and not making mistakes. And what I'm trying to do is to say what I think and not be governed by a fear of making mistakes. That means I will make some mistakes.

Let me ask about one. Maybe you don't think it was one. You got into a tangle with your pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago, over your announcement and him giving the invocation prayer—in public, at least.

Tangle may be overstating it. But that's OK. It was a blip.

Looking back, do you think you maybe overreacted to some of the press about him being radical?

No. I think that was a pretty simple story. We were doing our announcement and a story came out in which he was sort of singled out as being more radical than he was. Given that we knew we had given 500 press credentials that day, I didn't want him placed in the position where he had to defend himself or the church without any kind of backup or knowing what he was going to get into. I would have done the same thing for my sister or a co-worker. So I guess it's conceivable I might have been overprotective and probably didn't anticipate that he might feel hurt by it. So we had a discussion about it and everything is fine at this point.

So I shouldn't read anything into the fact that he didn't show up when you spoke at the United Church of Christ meeting last month in Hartford?

No, no. He had a wedding. He was actually upset that he couldn't come. That was entirely a scheduling conflict.

I talked to your friend Kirk Dillard about your time together in the Illinois General Assembly and he related a story to me that goes back to the time when you were working on the racial profiling legislation. He says that he walked in on a confrontation between you and another senator in the bathroom, by your seat there on the back row, where he said you were being challenged forcefully on your toughness and questioning whether you really understood what it was to be a young black man on the streets of Chicago getting pulled over by the police. What's your recollection of that encounter, and what was your response?

You know, I don't remember that particular confrontation. I'm not disputing anything of what Kirk remembers. I just don't know exactly what he's referring to.
I think that there's always a tension between getting things done and how people experience issues in very visceral, emotional ways. And that's certainly true any time race is involved. What I'm constantly striving to do—whether it was on the racial profiling legislation, whether it was on the death penalty issues that I worked on in the state legislature, whether it was on some of the criminal justice bills that came up—was to see how could I be true to the core values of fairness and equality and move the ball forward. My experience tells me that we have a better chance of making progress on these issues when we can ground them in a broader appeal to America's aspirations and values than when we simply are shouting racism and trying to guilt people into acting.
Now that doesn't mean there aren't times for some righteous anger. But I strongly believe that Americans want to do the right thing. And if you can show them that racial profiling is neither a smart way to fight crime, nor is it consistent with our values as Americans, then we can get a bill passed. If you can argue to defenders of the death penalty that at minimum we should be able to agree that nobody innocent should be on death row, and by videotaping interrogations and confessions you are not only protecting the innocent person in custody but you are also protecting the police, then you have got a better chance of passing legislation.
So not everybody is going to take that same approach. But I like to say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We got those two bills passed.

To the death penalty legislation, one of the people you sat on the judiciary committee with was Ed Petka. From everything I understand about Ed Petka, including his nickname, “Electric Ed” …

Electric Ed. That's what they called him.

It sounds like he was a person who needed no small amount of convincing in terms of reforming the death penalty law. I know there were other people who were key to getting this done, but you played a crucial role in winning people round. Is there anything you can tell me about how your interactions with him, how you brought him round?

I don't remember the specific conversations I had with Senator Petka, or some of these other senators. What I think is always important to me is trying to see the world through the eyes of people you don't agree with. My starting point on the death penalty legislation was, if I'm a sincere believer that the death penalty is a deterrent, if I'm a sincere believer that people who have engaged in heinous crimes deserve the ultimate retribution, if I sincerely believe that generally police arrest people who are guilty, how do I look at the world? If I can imagine myself in their shoes, if I can see the world through their eyes, I can answer their objections in ways that are consistent with their values. So I can say to an Ed Petka that even supporters of the death penalty should have a deep interest in making sure that the innocent are not on death row. It undermines the credibility of the criminal justice system as a whole. You've been a prosecutor, it's much harder for you to be able to bring successful convictions if juries start thinking that evidence is concocted or coerced. So this is good for law and order and that's why we need to make progress on this one.

When you ran against Bobby Rush for the House of Representatives in 2000, you seemed to face in that race for the first time this question that had been with you throughout—this question of belonging, and could you really understand people in a certain place and area whose experience you hadn't shared growing up. But here it was being used politically against you. Did you learn something from that race about how to deal with that issue politically?

I have to say that aspect of the race probably has been thoroughly overhyped. I think people are trying to fit that into a narrative that isn't entirely there. Were there moments during the campaign where the suggestion was that the Harvard-educated, Hyde Park law professor wasn't keeping it real? Yes. Did that have any significant influence on the outcome of that race? No.
The issue in that race was, as I wrote about in my book, the fact that I didn't do a poll until after I had announced and discovered I had 11 percent name recognition and he had something like 95. And people just didn't know who I was, and as people got to know me we ended up moving from single-digit support to I think we ended up with 31 percent. Without any TV advertising, it wasn't bad. The problem with that race was not in execution; it was in conception. There was no way I was going to beat an incumbent congressman with the limited name recognition that I had.
So there weren't moments in that campaign where I anguished, “Oh goodness, is my black authenticity being questioned?” Most of those problems or issues were resolved when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. The fact that they have resurfaced in this presidential campaign says more about the country than it says about me. I think America is still caught in a little bit of a time warp: the narrative of black politics is still shaped by the '60s and black power. That is not, I think, how most black voters are thinking. I don't think that's how most white voters are thinking. I think that people are thinking about how to find a job, how to fill up the gas tank, how to send their kids to college. And I find that when I talk about those issues, both blacks and whites respond well.

You described your mistake as one of conception. Rush describes that race as your ambition coming up against his legacy.

Now that I think is fair, in the sense that he had been there a long time. He had a long track record. I may have believed I could do a better job in highlighting some issues, but I think that it was a young man's mistake. Just because you think you're smart, you think you can shake things up, then everybody else is automatically going to see that.

He also says he thinks to this day, he thinks you were put up to it by your advisers and people around you. You just decided on your own?

I don't necessarily mean paid advisers. I mean people around you.

I couldn't afford advisers.This is something that I think is important for people. Bobby may just be saying that because now that he's come out in support of me, he may want to relieve me of the burden of having run against him. But I haven't had a bunch of people plotting and planning on my behalf. I didn't know a soul when I moved to Chicago. As an organizer, I was pretty much out there on my own. I ran Project Vote without much supervision. I just haven't had a series of political operators who can give me advice. I've been going by my instincts of what I think is right.

Let's talk about the Father's Day speech you gave in 2005. Bill Cosby had said some similar things and taken a lot of heat. Did any of that cross your mind as you put this thing together?

Michelle says this is the kind of thing you talk about around the kitchen table.

But did you think it would have that kind of impact? Were you wary about people who had trodden that path before?

No. I don't know if we have a transcript of that speech, but I've talked about issues of responsibility in the past. I am always very careful in talking about the individual responsibilities of African-Americans, of fathers, of parents, to combine that with a discussion of our societal responsibilities, our collective responsibilities to adequately fund schools, to provide job opportunities in neighborhoods. So I talk about these things not out of shock value. And I also am not at all interested in what some conservative commentators are interested in, which is to use the issue of personal responsibility as an excuse for governmental inaction. As I write in my book, it is very much a both-and [approach] as opposed to an either-or approach. When you talk about it in those terms, then the African-American community is responsive. What they don't want is to hear the “pick yourselves up by your bootstraps” speech, and that's why we're going to cut funding for programs that are desperately needed.
I think it's important for Democrats to not miss the truth and I include myself in this, so I'm not attacking Democrats here, I'm talking about us, those of us who are progressives and care about these issues, it's important for us not to forget about the issue of individual responsibility because we're so caught up in the legitimate battles to make sure that our government priorities are on track.

One last thing. This is unprompted by a question, but it's prompted by the cut or the angle you guys are taking. I may be off base here. But the impulse I think may be to write a story that says Barack Obama represents a quote-unquote postracial politics.

That term I reject because it implies that somehow my campaign represents an easy shortcut to racial reconciliation. It's similar to the notion that if we're all color blind then somehow problems are solved.
I just want to be very clear on this so that there's no confusion. And on this I think Cornel [West] and I would agree. Solving our racial problems in this country will require concrete steps, significant investment. We're going to have a lot of work to do to overcome the long legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. It can't be purchased on the cheap.
I am fundamentally optimistic about our capacity to do that. And I do assert that there's a core decency in the American people and in white Americans that makes me hopeful about our ability to deal with these issues. But these issues aren't just solved by electing a black president.
I think there's a temptation to posit me in contrast to Jesse [Jackson] or [Al] Sharpton, and the thing I am constantly trying to explain is that I'm a direct outgrowth of the civil rights movement, that the values of the civil rights movement remain near and dear to my heart. To the extent that I speak a different language or take a different tone in addressing these issues is a consequence of me having benefited from those bloody struggles that folks previously had to go through. And so to suggest somehow that I'm pushing aside the past in favor of this Benetton future is wrong.

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