Posted on 11/26/2004 5:15:56 PM PST by CrosscutSaw
CHICAGO -- Chicago's media gossip columnists are abuzz with news about Illinois' new political sensation, U.S. Senator-elect Barack Obama. Friday night, Obama will be featured on "Late Show" with David Letterman.
CBS released a portion of tonight's transcript, and the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan teased readers this morning by publishing part of the interview which will air Friday night at 10:30 PM CST:
Letterman: " . . . Now was there a guy running for Senate, maybe an incumbent, maybe not, I think a Republican, and he had a problem because he and his wife would go to strip clubs and have sex."
Obama: (laughing) "Well, that was --" (audience laughs)
Letterman: "Did I dream that? Does any of this ring a bell?"
Obama: "I, uh -- there were some issues, some allegations." (audience laughs)
Letterman: (laughs) "Yeah."
Obama: "But we didn't touch that stuff."
Letterman: "I see."
Obama: "We took the high road, and --"
Letterman: "Now is this who you were running against, or he dropped out, right?"
Obama: "Yeah, he dropped out -- yeah, the Republicans, you know, they seem to have a lot of fun given all their moral values stuff." (Letterman, audience laugh) "They enjoy themselves."
Letterman: "It sounded like fun to me."
The former state senator told Letterman that not only did he receive a congratulatory phone call from the President, he recently had breakfast with Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
(Excerpt) Read more at illinoisleader.com ...
?????
Has as much charisma to a certain class of people, and his goals are about the same, BTW how come he ran away from his moselm father and white mother.
Remember he is also friend with JJ and the daley mob leader.
Very attractive candidate all in all.
All I need to know about him is a daley mob politician and demo rat from illinois.
Scusi.
Senator elect I mean.
He was also very critical of President Bush during his Senate campaign, especially of foreign policy and the war in Iraq.
He smells of winner.
Nobody knows much about him. The daley connection is bad. It seems though that anyone who wanted to mmake gains in Chicago politics has go through Daley.
The party just shot itself in the foot in IL with Ryan, who was already down by 20 pts in the polls BEFORE his "scandal" and then the disaster from MD.
Why not?...... the rest of the freshman Senators did. Something wrong with that?
On Thursday, the new senators breakfast at the White House with the president and vice president. For lunch, Obama has a date with Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.), whose decision not to seek re-election opened up the seat for Obama.
His political positioning and rising star should be unsurprising because for much of his life Obama has been a "First Black," gaining attention most notably for being the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. But in Chicago's well-established African American political community, which prefers its leaders homegrown, Obama has struggled against criticism from some blacks who mocked his Ivy League education, biracial heritage and African name, painting everything from his smooth speech patterns to the multiculti neighborhood where he lives as anything but "authentically" black.
The stinging loss in 2000 to a lackluster, unpolished and largely inarticulate Bobby Rush, who was successful in painting Obama as an over-educated, elitist outsider, led to a retooled image for Obama in this campaign. The revamping of Obama's image has made it difficult, if not impossible, for his presumptive African American political base to see him as anything but theirs.
He makes fun of his name ("My name is Obama, not 'Yo Mama'") but speaks little of the prominent, long-dead Kenyan father for whom he was named. Although the "African Committee to Elect Obama" in Illinois has held fundraisers for him, they are largely on the margins of Obama's campaign. He speaks little of a childhood spent in Indonesia and Hawaii and offers little about the white mother who raised him. He said recently that his mother, now deceased, recognized that "he was a black man in the United States and my experiences were going to be different than hers."
"My view has always been that I'm African American," he said recently. "African Americans by definition, we're a hybrid people."
Campaign commercials make reference to his historic appointment at the Harvard Law Review but his status as an alum of Columbia and Harvard, and as a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago, are downplayed.
Played more prominently is Obama's early work as an organizer, registering 100,000 African American voters in Chicago in the early 1990s. He now touts his membership in one of the city's most popular black churches, Trinity United Church of Christ — something that clearly endears him to older, more traditional black voters. He has also leveraged political relationships with people like Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and others who haven't always supported him in previous races. He has a lovely African American wife (let's face it, sisters wouldn't have it any other way) and two gorgeous daughters whose presence is prominent in campaign literature.
On paper, the strategy has worked. Through an already strong network of black professionals and liberal whites, Obama has built a campaign that appeals broadly to urban voters and those in predominantly white-collar counties and rural areas downstate. He has a healthy lead going into today's primary.
"He was always a part of us but somehow it seemed to be a secret before. White people are always looking for somebody black who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and can tell the Horatio Alger story," said Chicago political consultant Delmarie Cobb. "That doesn't play well in the black community because we've always done that."
"What makes him attractive to white people is that he's biracial. But he has never distanced himself from the black community, even when others tried to distance it from him," she said.
Oddly enough Rush, the former Black Panther, is still singing the "he's not one of us" song and is supporting Blair Hull, a white, independently wealthy trader. This time the baiting has fallen on deaf ears and it is now Rush who finds himself on the outs with black Chicagoans, who are suspect of his support for a rich, white man who has never held elective office.
Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, one of the most powerful black elected officials in the state, said at a recent prayer breakfast for Obama that politicians like Rush will eventually regret that they were "on the wrong side of history."
"Barack Obama is our son. All of the other candidates combined do not have his intellect," Jones said. "This is our son and our son deserves a chance."
Whether he realized it or not, Jones had invoked the most African of sayings in urging black Chicagoans to vote for Obama: I am because we are and because we are, I am.
I'll bite why did he run away from his parents?
I find it a little interesting that Jesse Jackson's son i.e., (Jnr) didn't run for this seat.
Any way, this Dude, Obama, is going places because what remains of the Democratic party is so dependent on the black vote that he will be an automatic choice in a national election. I mean where's the left's Powell, Rice, Paige, Thomas, etc? Where are they? Still being repressed by the mind slave-owners in the Democratic party ably abetted by the likes of the NAACP, Jesse, Sharpton, and the remnants of the "Civil Rights" movement. I don't like this guy Obama and it is because the media has fawned over him - to me, any person who has the media's affection IS to be despised.
Anyway, the media, both local here in Illinois and National, are really making a "star" out of this guy. Not only does he get glowing coverage, but if you notice almost everytime you see a picture of him it is shot at an upward angle.
Something sure smells about this guy and the media coverage he has been getting. He is being annointed by the liberal media as their new superstar. There is already talk of him being President in the future.
Watch out for this guy--he's as liberal as they come.
I'm so tired of hearing about this Obama A-Hole that I could vomit.
Just because he gave a good speech at the Democratic Convention. Way over-rated and the idolatry, on the part of the Democrats ,is a bit excessive.
"He's hard not to like. Very attractive candidate all in all."
Why when I look at this guy do I think, "Obama is to poltics what the Backstreet Boys are to music"? This guy is too polished, too slick, very not genuine.
He looks like he won some sort of contest to get to be the candidate (and I don't mean the primary) - like he was selected by some higher political authority, like a casting call, like he had to read for the part.
This article made it sound like President Bush not only congratulated him by phone, but invited him to breakfast with the Vice President and Karl Rove. Why Carl Rove?
I hope it's true that it was just referring to the "new senators breakfast at the White House" and not a special meeting like it's being portrayed. Also, I hope the President personally phoned all Senate winners to congratulate them. not just Obama because he's the new liberal "darling."
But even the way this is being reported in the Chicago area media is making him look a lot more "important" than he really is (or should be, anyway).
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