Posted on 10/05/2006 6:19:24 PM PDT by blam
The black senator who could challenge Hillary
By Alex Massie in Washington
(Filed: 06/10/2006)
A black senator with only two years in office has emerged as the outstanding star of the Democrats' campaign for next month's mid-term elections.
Senator Barack Obama is bringing hope to Democrats
Kenyan-born Barack Obama, 45, is already being touted as a challenger to Hillary Clinton for the party's presidential nomination.
Another scenario sees him as Mrs Clinton's running mate, raising the possibility of a first female president and first black vice-president in one fell swoop in 2008.
Mr Obama is disproving the adage that Washington is "Hollywood for ugly people". He is the Denzil Washington of Capitol Hill, bringing glamour to the staid hallways of the US Senate, and was this week given the ultimate glamour accolade: the front cover of Men's Vogue.
Accompanied by pictures taken by Annie Liebowitz, photographer to the great and glamorous, the magazine's article is headlined, simply, "Barack Obama: The Path to Power."
Mr Obama has been careful not to declare himself a non-runner in the presidential stakes, but ever since he delivered the best speech heard at the Democratic convention in Boston two years ago, he has been tagged for greatness.
"What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land," argues John McWhorter, a leading black intellectual.
A civil rights lawyer, Mr Obama was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is known for a charisma some observers would say is on a par with Mrs Clinton's husband Bill, the last Democrat president. He was elected as a senator for Illinois in 2004 by a landslide.
He grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, and promises the prospect of a national reconciliation on racial issues.
The prospect of an Obama candidacy is especially appealing to those Democrats desperately searching for an alternative to Mrs Clinton, the front-runner to win her party's presidential nomination.
I thought that his father was Kenyan and that he was born in the US. Doesn't his being born in Kenya disqualify him from running for president? Or was he born to a foreign service worker or something like that?
You go OssamBobama - Hell, ask Orca what the hell his name is
Hitlery needs to put him on top of the ticket and her as Vive President. A short time after they are elected Obama has a serious accident and
False. His father was from Kenya, and his mother was from Kansas (he was a professor and she was his student, IIRC). He was born in Hawaii. I don's know if he ever even travelled to Africa before he became a Congresscritter.
No, the reporter is just an idiot.
Is Obama a Muzzie? Does anyone know?
And what would Mr. McWhorter have to say if Barak was a Republican?
Was he born here or in Kenya? If he was born in Kenya any presidential discussion should cease.
I agree 100%.
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (born August 4, 1961) is the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois.
Probably the same thing. John McWhorter is on our side, one of the good guys.
There is no way in hell Hillary would ever pick Obama as her VP. It would be the Dukakis/Bensen problem x10.
That said, I think Obama can win the primary in '08 should he run, and if he does, he'll be a much, much, much tougher opponent.
Even more unfortunate than Osama!
"Alex Massie lives in Washington DC from where he writes for The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday among other publications. He has long cultivated an affection for sporting causes that are always almost, but not quite, lost - of which the Washington Nationals are only the latest example."
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