Posted on 11/06/2006 4:45:02 PM PST by SJackson
Wisconsin is squarely in the eye of Obamamania this week with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama crossing the border to campaign for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, attorney general candidate Kathleen Falk and Congresswoman Gwen Moore.
Two years ago, when Obama showed up at Milwaukee's Martin Luther King Park to campaign for Moore and Sen. Russ Feingold, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel didn't even bother to run a story the next day. With every magazine and talk show in the nation now promoting the possibility of Obama becoming America's first black president, even the most oblivious local media have taken notice.
That's why I was surprised when I expressed excitement at the rising prospect of an Obama candidacy on my daily talk show in Milwaukee, which has a large African-American audience, and was immediately lambasted for being hopelessly naive.
Make no mistake about it. An overwhelming majority of the black community would be excited and energized by Barack Obama's candidacy and would turn out in unprecedented numbers to support him. They just can't bring themselves to truly believe very many of us white folks would. Call me a starry-eyed optimist as many callers did but I think they're wrong.
The source of all the skepticism among African-Americans is reality-based. It is based on the actual history of racism in this country from slavery up through an hour ago.
Black folks have seen black candidates used by white power brokers before. Several harked back to the excitement of the 1988 candidacy of Jesse Jackson, when he won 11 primaries and, for a short time, was actually the front-runner in delegates for the Democratic nomination.
Jackson was obviously far too exciting for the Democratic Party. The nomination eventually went to the thoroughly unexciting, but white, Michael Dukakis.
A couple of callers specifically recalled a white, female union worker interviewed on television during the 1988 Wisconsin primary on her way into her polling place and again as she left.
On the way in, she was excited about voting for Jackson, who had spoken at a rally of her union. When she left, she said at the actual moment of voting, she kept thinking about a black man in the White House, and she just couldn't do it.
Obama in 2008 isn't Jackson in 1988, even beyond the obvious passage of 20 years.
The first generation of black candidates for the presidency came directly out of the civil rights movement. They had long been demonized by whites for doing the necessary work of knocking down racial barriers and attacking white privilege.
Obama is the brightest star of the next generation of black political leaders who took advantage of opportunities opened up by the civil rights movement to excel at the highest levels academically and professionally.
As a brilliant graduate of Harvard Law School, Barack Obama does not need politics. Politics needs him. Intelligence has taken a beating in the last two presidential elections. The Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry were clearly much smarter than George Bush, the intellectually lazy son of a privileged political family.
Unfortunately, intelligence didn't come across as very voter friendly in either Gore or Kerry. Both came off as stuffy and smarty-pants. The not-so-smart Bush seemed more likable.
Well, after six years, not-so-smart isn't nearly as likable as it once was. It's been deadly for 2,800 American soldiers. The only people who have any reason to like Bush any more are millionaires and billionaires at tax time.
By 2008, we're going to be ready for intelligence in a presidential candidate again, especially in someone as genuinely likable and thoughtful as Obama.
It's not black people who are driving the media interest and voter interest in Obama as a presidential candidate. It's white people.
Obama himself probably would have preferred to build up a little more experience in the U.S. Senate before jumping into a national campaign.
But sometimes history requires a leader to seize the moment.
Momentum is expected to be on the side of the Democrats after the midterm congressional elections. But every other potential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards or Joe Biden seems to have more ties to the past than to the future. Obama isn't just pretty good for a politician. He is the kind of individual who would rise to the top of any field he chose. Let's be honest. Those are rarely the kind of people who choose politics.
Progressive whites have been waiting for a candidate like Obama for a long time. Not-so-progressive whites may be ready to support him as well, just to show the world, and maybe themselves, they're not racist.
The argument that it's too soon for Obama to run has a familiar ring in America. Deep in our hearts, we know it's long past time.
Funniest thing about his article is: I bet he thinks it's good.
Fine with me if I'm wrong, but I just don't think he deal to get a bigger sideyard, and a cheaper mansion, is going to stick.
Except virtually anyone could have won against Keyes.
I don't care who exposed it, I hope it sinks his career, he is an empty suit (and commie) of major proportions.
The Muslim American Society has a bio on him with an approving tone, but which does not mention religion
According to discoverthenetwork.org:
Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya who met while attending the University of Hawaii. His mother Anna, as Obama describes her in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was "a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism."So we have a father and stepfather who are "non-practicing Muslims", and a "secualr-humanist" mom who seems to have a thing for "non-practicing" Muslims, as evidenced by her repeated marriage choicesHis father, also named Barack (Swahili for "One who is blessed by God," and perhaps via Arabic and Semitic roots related to the Hebrew baruch, "blessed") Obama, left his rural Luo-speaking village and his Muslim father to become an "agnostic" and study economics abroad. His son was two when the elder Barack left the boy and his mother to return to Harvard University and then to Kenya, where he became a globe-traveling economist for the government.
When young Obama was six, his mother married an Indonesian oil manager, a "non-practicing Muslim," and the family moved to Jakarta, where his half-sister Maya was born. In this exotic Islamic country, wrote Obama's good friend, the liberal lawyer and best-selling novelist Scott Turow, Barack Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school."
Who are they kidding? Gore and Kerry are two of the biggest chuzzlewits I've ever seen.
Rezco raised 600k+ over the years for Barack Hussein Obama.
And Obama pulls a Claude Rains ?
When are they going to call him by his TRUE REAL NAME? Barak HUSSEIN Obama??
Wow....what a similiarity.
Hussien Obama finished in the top 20% of his class. Amazingly normal at best, although I guess Hussein is brilliant compared to Gore, who flunked out of divinity school, dropped out of law school, and Kerry, who had 4 D's his first year at Harvard. Bush had higher grades than both, and has 2 Ivy League degrees.
Libs are the eternal racists, and sadly the black community plays along. Hussein Obama's being promoting for racist reasons, as he's unqualified and without his skin color just another smooth talker with no accomplishments, and a hardcore liberal voting record he has to hide from. MLK would be furious what happened to his dream.
Judge Thomas and Condellezza make Hussien look like a shoeshine boy when comparing brains and accomplishments.
Condi, unlike these limousine libs, actually came from a middle class family. She has an IQ close to twice these clowns, and her achievements in life and politics to date will dwarf anything he does is in his lifetime. She was learning French, classical piano, figure skating and ballet at age three. She got her Masters in poli-sci at Notre Dame at age 20, and was teaching at Stamford at age 26.
I don't think it's a productive issue, but I believe the Luo, his dad, are largely animists.
We'll see, I don't mind if it sticks, but unless there's clear criminality, this will be forgotten.
The Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry were clearly much smarter than George Bush, the intellectually lazy son of a privileged political family.Where is the barf alert? Algore is not the intellectually lazy son of a priveileged political family? And Kerry is so smart that he is unable to insult the President without disparaging the armed forces in the process? This is a fool presuming to pass judgment on wisdom.
Cordially,
You must be a Photoshop master jedi. /s
I am convinced Obama is nothing more than a sock puppet for she-who-must-not-be-named.
--Well, Mod Rod may indeed get re-elected, ala George Ryan,
(Could the Illinois GOP possibly BE more lame???)--
That reminds me of JACK Ryan, too.
IIRC I stole if from Diogenesis.
Obama-gasm?
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