The new face of the Democrats?

Salon.com ^ | 3/30/2004 | Scott Turow

[refusenix]

March 30, 2004  |  CHICAGO -- I met Barack Obama, the new Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, eight years ago, at the home of mutual friends. Making introductions, our hostess suggested we had a good deal in common. Like me, Obama was an author -- he had recently published an autobiography, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" -- and he was a graduate of Harvard Law School, my legal alma mater. Unlike me, however, Obama was about to step into politics as a candidate for the Illinois State Senate from Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago and a stretch of poor neighborhoods that run west from there. I spent much of the evening speaking to Obama and his wife, Michelle, yet another Harvard Law School graduate, and bought Obama's book the next day, which I praised when we met again. In the ensuing years I have stayed in touch with him, observing the ups and downs of his political career.

At the moment, Obama's career is way up, the result of one of the more impressive political victories in recent Illinois history. Sixteen months ago, when he entered the U.S. Senate race here, the odds seemed decidedly against Obama, who was running in his first statewide contest and whose Kenyan last name rhymes uncomfortably with Osama. Yet on March 16, Obama captured 53 percent of the vote in a six-person field, more than double the vote garnered by his nearest competitor, Illinois' comptroller, Dan Hynes. Hynes, who comes across as quiet, competent and likable, had been elected statewide twice before, and as the son of the former Cook County assessor, he is a scion of Chicago's Democratic machine, whose apparatus was fully behind him throughout the campaign. Despite that, Obama outpolled Hynes even in Hynes' home ward in Chicago. Coming in a distant third in the race was Blair Hull, who made half a billion dollars in the brokerage business and who spent $29 million of it on the primary. As the result of an early TV blitz, Hull led in the polls, until a past that included spousal-abuse charges and chemical-dependency treatment sank him.

Barack Obama now becomes the national flag-bearer for Democratic hopes to retake the U.S. Senate, which the Republicans hold by one vote. He is hoping to win the seat being vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald, whose quixotic maneuvers in the Senate left him bereft of support at the end of one term. Handsome, poised, intelligent, Obama has already begun to attract national attention, as he moves toward becoming only the third African-American elected to the Senate in more than a century.

[dirtboy]

Back again, eh? After you misrepresented yourself when you first posted this. You first asked if "we" need to be concerned, and then it turns out you are an Obama booster. We do allow liberals here, but only honest ones. And that's why there aren't many liberals who get to post here.

Oh, and while you're at it and discussing Christian principles, be sure to look up the part about bearing false witness again. It appears you slept through that lesson in Sunday School.

[wjcsux]

Makes me pine for ol' Toiletman. Now THERE was a troll. No disguises, just in your face posting until he was booted. And highly entertaining abuse and personal attacks, instead of this lame-assed "echo chamber" bleating we get from the twits nowadays.

You are an od timer too! LOL! VivaLasVegas! and Ash were two other trolls who did the same. They don't make trolls the way they used to.

[dirtboy]

And we can't forget that "bubblin', bubblin" troll either. He raised being annoying to an art form.