Subscribeand for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
I am the son of a black man from Nigeria and a white woman from Bristol. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Churchill's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in Grenwich while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in England and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black Jamaican 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.
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.I'm not certain how that could be construed as 'real cheap politicking'. Care to elaborate?
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.
Cortex will probably delete this post, but nevertheless he can not silence the amazing phenomena which is Obama.That was a joke, right? Because I can't seem to tell anymore given the adoration I have been seeing.
Another suprising defender of Obama this morning on MSNBC — Gov. Mike Huckabee:I think it's premature in the immediate 24 hours following the speech to speculate on its historicality. But from its rich resonance across many unusual corners of the political landscape (including the many personal anecdotes in this thread and elsewhere), it's undeniable that Obama's speech was, in a very literal sense, quite remarkable. His speech was a salient moment in American political discourse, just as his 2004 convention speech was, but with a wholly different tenor. And any rhetorician would've given their left nut to have delivered one, never mind both of these speeches.
He was impressed by the speech and how Obama is handling the race issue. He brought up Jerry Falwell, and said that Falwell said plenty of things that his parishoners would likely not agree with, and that we shouldn’t hold someone accountable for every statment of their pastor. Lastly, he said that he grew up in the segregated south, and that a guy like Wright who has been discriminated against for most of his life, would rightfully have a “chip on his shoulder.”
[...]
Huckabee also said that had he gone through what he saw blacks go through he would probably be even more resentful.
Chicago Times: "The cheeks of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances."
In this reviewer's opinion, the only really coherent position on the abortion issue is one that is both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.
Argument: As of 4 March 1999, the question of defining human life in utero is hopelessly vexed. That is, given our best present medical and philosophical understandings of what makes something not just a living organism but a person, there is no way to establish at just what point during gestation a fertilized ovum becomes a human being. This conundrum, together with the basically inarguable soundness of the principle "When in irresolvable doubt about whether something is a human or not, it is better not to kill it," appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Life. At the same time, however, the principle "When in irresolvable doubt about something, I have neither the legal nor the moral right to tell another person what to do about it, especially if that person feels that s/he is not in doubt" is an unassailable part of the Democratic pact we Americans all make with one another, a pact in which each adult citizen gets to be an autonomous moral agent; and this principle appears to me to require any reasonable American to be Pro-Choice.
This reviewer is thus, as a private citizen and an autonomous agent, both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. It is not an easy or comfortable position to maintain. Every time someone I know decides to terminate a pregnancy, I am required to believe simultaneously that she is doing the wrong thing and that she has every right to do it. Plus, of course, I have both to believe that a Pro-Life + Pro-Choice stance is the only really coherent one and to restrain myself from trying to force that position on other people whose ideological or religious convictions seem (to me) to override reason and yield a (in my opinion) wacko dogmatic position. This restraint has to be maintained even when somebody's (to me) wacko dogmatic position appears (to me) to reject the very Democratic tolerance that is keeping me from trying to force my position on him/her; it requires me not to press or argue or retaliate even when somebody calls me Satan's Minion or Just Another Shithead Male, which forbearance represents the really outer and tooth-grinding limits of my own personal Democratic Spirit.
I guess it's probably because they're mostly under 40, or have never voted in a general electionGo fuck yourself.
I'm starting to become more and more convinced that Jim Webb needs to be his running mate.As attractive as this is, Webb has always struck me as a "party above self" guy, and it's undeniable that him leaving his seat would put the Democrats in a bind. Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see it, too, but the plain fact is that Webb put up a hell of a fight to win that seat, with a lot of activist help on the ground, and he undoubtedly feels like he has a duty to those people and that district. Does anyone know what would happen if Webb actually did this, in terms of special elections or replacement?
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"To hear it from the mouth of a white football coach, that's interesting. To hear it from an African-American man in the middle of one of the most contested presidential campaigns in generations, that's incredible. And only he can give it. Bill, Hillary, McCain, Kerry, Edwards, it's an interesting speech, but it's coming from the majority. Obama is speaking from the minority, downtrodden and beaten down, enslaved, lynched, discriminated, and ignored. He's saying to White America, of course we're angry, but it's time for all of us to move on.
It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.So I'd say that comes close at least.
Is there any other politician who could quote Faulkner and mention Youtube in the same speech?
it won't just go back to chaosGo back to?
Does no one else think that Obama is going to have a problem with running on a platform of constant and immediate troop withdrawal from Day 1 when he is running against a hawk like McCain?
In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right
But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Well, since we're comparing.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war... testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated... can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate... we cannot consecrate... we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be here dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us... that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom... and that this government of the people... by the people... for the people... shall not perish from the earth.
November 19, 1863
Ask that same question with 'even if that means the complete destabilization of Iraq' tacked on at the end,
Which is to say, and I hope Obama repeats it all the way to the white house: the Iraq war has made the USA less secure.
I think that many or most people are like me -- people who think we should not have gone, but now that we're here we should try to get things to as stable a position as possible before we flee.
"The release of 17,000 pages of then-first lady Hillary Clinton's daily schedule in the White House has raised questions about her ability to answer the 3 a.m. phone call she talks about in her commercials.
'Maybe because I have had the great honor and privilege of seeing that really hard job up close that I know that there is a big difference between speeches and solutions and talk and action,' Sen. Clinton said in her commercials before the Texas and Ohio primaries.
But the daily schedules released today show many of her overseas trips to be the standard first lady tourist fare, hospital visits and blinis with caviar.
On the day U.S. cruise missiles hit Serbia, the schedules show the former first lady was touring Egyptian ruins.
On the day when her husband announced attacks against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, the schedules show she stayed in Martha's Vineyard on vacation."
“The early days of 1996 were tense times inside the Clinton White House. On Jan. 4, the First Couple's top personal aide reported that she had stumbled upon Hillary Clinton's long-lost Rose Law Firm billing records—documents that had been requested by Whitewater prosecutors two years earlier. Ken Starr quickly subpoenaed the First Lady to testify before a federal grand jury, leading to her historic four-hour appearance at the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington on Jan. 26 of that year.
But anybody looking through Hillary Clinton's newly released White House records for clues as to how she handled this personal crisis will find … absolutely nothing. The more than 10,000 pages, released by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, purport to be the New York senator's daily schedules for her entire eight-year tenure as First Lady—the first major ‘document dump’ from the Clinton Library in Little Rock.
But the documents include only Hillary Clinton's public schedules, not her private calendar. And even those appear to be heavily redacted to exclude almost anything that might be of interest to historians and the inevitable posse of ‘oppo’ researchers. [more]”
"Barack Obama told CNN Wednesday the recent uproar over his former pastor's sermons has reminded him of the odds he faces in winning the White House.
'In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than than some of the other conventional candidates,' the Illinois senator told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive one-on-one interview.
Obama declined to speculate on whether the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah's Wright's sermons may damage him politically, but said his campaign does best when it doesn't follow the 'textbook.'"
"...[Safire is]...the first to acknowledge that our vocabulary shapes, as much as it reflects, the way we think about the world. The names of laws ('death tax,' 'Clear Skies Initiative') and the characterizations of would-be leaders ('bull moose,' 'amiable dunce') have unconscious effects on even the savviest voters. It's why spinmeisters stay in business and why a politician's word choice can make a legend (FDR's 'nothing to fear but fear itself') or break a career (George Allen's 'macaca' blooper in 2007)....[B]oth the wildly successful and the widely derided of American political argot are included in his 829-page dictionary. What began in 1968 as a Beltway junkie's labor of love has turned into an authoritative collection of whistle-stopping campaign slogans and vicious slings and arrows of partisan attacks that stretches all the way back to the Founding Fathers (who came up with terms like 'electioneer' and the party 'ticket')."*
"1. Destroy Obama so that the Superdelegates overthrow him and give her the nomination.
2. Destroy Obama so that, even if he wins the nomination, he will be so severely damaged that he loses the election, and the day after the election the Clinton people say 'see, we told you that you should have picked us,' and four years later, Hillary will be able to run again and get the nomination, if because of nothing else, because the party will feel sorry for 'cheating' her out of of it this time.
If we lose the election in the fall, it will be all Hillary's fault. It's time for Howard Dean and the party leaders to step in and stop Hillary before she starts a civil war (and one is coming) and destroys our party."
I think there are a lot of African-Americans who would love to be able to not worry about race, but somehow it encroaches upon them....and a reaction.
You know, it's the classic example -- and this is a common experience. I think most African-Americans will share it. If there is some horrendous crime out there, black people are always a little nervous until they see the picture, hoping that it's not a black person who committed it.
A white person never thinks that way, because you, Terry Moran, would never assume that if there is some white male who fits your description who, you know, went on a rampage that somehow people are going to think of you differently. Black people, they worry about that.
So that's an example of how those realities are different and it means that the African-American community views these things in a different way and feels as if talking about it is important.
Take a look at Hillary's comments and actions re: national security, in contrast to the bumbling by Obama. She can hold her own in any debate with John McCain about national security.
Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a “Commander in Chief test” – not because of the judgments they’ve made, but because of the years they’ve spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.Obama's March 19 Iraq speech
It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that’s a contest that he’ll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that’s what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.
Metaman's rehashing of the 1960s political term "Camelot" (which he seems to want us to view as a disparaging term)
"A day after federal archivists released 11,000 pages of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's schedules during her time as first lady, a federal judge today allowed a conservative group to question the National Archives about the process of dealing with requests for more documents.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson today authorized a lawyer for the conservative group, Judicial Watch, to question the archives about why it processes some requests before others. Judicial Watch is seeking Clinton's telephone logs.
There are hundreds of requests pending for release of records from the period when her husband was president. The archives has said it wanted to place Judicial Watch's lawsuit on hold for a year before the agency considers how soon to begin reviewing the telephone logs for possible release, a process the Justice Department lawyer estimated would take six to eight months.
The requests have taken on a greater urgency as Hillary Clinton battles for the Democratic nomination for president. On Wednesday, archivists released 11,000 pages of schedules, but the material offered little to support her assertion that her White House experience left her best prepared to become president.
The records show she was an active first lady who traveled widely and was deeply involved in healthcare policy, but they are rife with omissions, terse references and redactions that obscure many of her activities and the identities of those she saw."
MetaMan: Like I said, there's a daze of hypnotism about this guy.Wait, wait, wait. So you're saying all I needed to do was to read that article to truly understand who I'm voting for? Why didn't you say so earlier?! I'll do so right away!!!
MetaMan: Silly people.
MetaMan: Obama followers I've encountered are the ones who need rescuing, because their belief in a guy they knowo so little about is almost cult-like.
MetaMan: You are in for a goddamn shock if this guy gets elected.
MetaMan: I think most of the peoplep here need a persistent dose of reality
MetaMan: We haven't seen what Obama is really all about
MetaMan: Read this
Faint of Butt: Thank you, MetaMan, for responding to my questions. You've given me some useful information. In particular, you suggested that I read this article, which I have done, and with no reservations I say that everybody should read that article. It describes the pragmatic, reality-based positions and plans of Obama's economic and foreign policy advisers, and places them in stark contrast to the at-times pie-in-the-sky idealistic theories of the Bill Clinton administration and the by-the-numbers trickery of the post-Nixon Republican party. I now feel even more certain that Barack Obama is the best candidate to lead this country out of these dark times, and that it is absolutely vital he prevail over the dangerous influences of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. I have donated an additional $25 to the Obama campaign. Thank you, MetaMan!
MetaMan: You are perfectly welcome! Noe, at least, you know what you're voting for!!!
I would like to see the person with the largest amount of popular votes carry the day.
[The NY Times reports that] her long-shot candidacy has “grown a little longer.” That’s putting it mildly.There's more; the link is worth following.
[...]
Now that revotes in Florida and Michigan are off the table (Michigan’s legislature is mere hours away from recessing), Clinton is not going to win the popular vote. Period. Obama currently leads by 700,000 votes, or more than 800,000 if you count caucus estimates.
[...]
The fundamental fact [is] that Clinton can win only by overturning Obama’s pledged delegate lead—a truism that still has not gotten the traction it deserves. Ominous warnings about 1968-like riots aside, the prospect that Clinton would accept the nomination over the head of the people is fundamentally at odds with everything the party represents. She talks about wanting to enfranchise the people of Florida and Michigan. But then, inevitably, she would turn around and seek to revert the people’s decision, expressed through the pledged delegate count. Call me naive, but I find it inconceivable that the party would want this to happen, or that a candidate would want to win that way.
All this being a long way of saying, Hillary’s path to the nomination is not “narrow.” It’s barricaded. Yet still there seems to be a hesitation among the media to declare Clinton dead. Maybe it’s her zombielike ability to rise again—first in New Hampshire, then in Nevada, then most recently in Texas and Ohio. But people have to understand there will be no knockout blow, no head shot. Rather it will be a long, slow exit that causes pain to everyone involved.
The question is, who is going to tell Hillary it’s over?
Voter DisqualificationThere just isn't a very good way to put another vote together, and although there are clear political reasons why Obama would want to resist a revote, I don't think it's really fair-minded to lay the blame for that on him. Both MI and FL knew what they were doing when they sought an early primary, and they miscalculated, figuring that the primaries would be over by this point. That their selfish choice backfired should not be used to tar either candidate.
Although Michigan has always run open elections, which allow voters to vote in whatever primary they prefer, voters who participated in the Republican primary in January could not vote in the June election under the proposed law. This class of voters includes Democrats and Independents who chose not to vote in the invalid Democratic primary at the time because the majority of active candidates did not appear on the ballot and the results would not be accepted under party rules.
"The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has launched an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against voters who maliciously switched parties for the March 4 presidential primary.Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud? -- "As Ohio election officials investigate illegal crossover voting in the 2008 primary, questions arise on Limbaugh's role."
Elections workers will look for evidence that voters lied when they signed affidavits pledging allegiance to their new party. And at least one board member, Sandy McNair, a Democrat, wants the county prosecutor to review the findings.
...The investigation comes 10 days after The Plain Dealer reported that more than 16,000 Cuyahoga County Republicans changed parties before voting March 4.
After the election, some local Republicans admitted they changed parties only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November. One voter scribbled the following addendum to his pledge as a new Democrat: 'For one day only.'
Such an admission amounts to voter fraud, said McNair, who pushed for the investigation.
'I'm looking for evidence,' McNair said. 'I'm not interested in a witch hunt. But I am interested in holding people accountable, whether they're Democrat or Republican.'
Lying on the signed statement is a fifth-degree felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine."
He began to build a progressive narrative that Democrats, and the progressive movement more broadly, have had difficulty developing. He offered a progressive vision of patriotism, integrating a more traditional view -- referring to his grandfather's service under General Patton, and the military service of Reverend Wright -- with the notion that love of country is not blind love, that forming a more perfect union -- the essence of progressivism -- is part of what it means to love one's country.Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama:
[Obama] asked us to ponder the weight of our racially-divided past, to rise above it, and to seize the opportunity to carry forward the work of many patriots of all races, who struggled and died to bring us together.Richardson has been making the media rounds in recent weeks, alternately promoting the necessity for Democrats to honor the delegates representing the voters' will while promoting and defending the legacy of the Clinton administration during the 90's, an administration he had a large hand in. It seemed like he was vacillating between the two camps and Obama's speech finally pushed him over the top for Obama. His support might have been instrumental had it come earlier before Texas, but nonetheless still represents an unexpected "ripple" of the speech that will help Obama shore up Hispanic support in the general election.
[...]
As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words.
I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants--specifically Hispanics-- by too many in this country.
Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences—and place blame on others not like them.
We all know the real culprit -- the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration!
Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race.
Mrs. Clinton is fond of mocking her adversary for offering “just words.” But words can matter, and Mrs. Clinton’s tragedy is that she never realized they could have mattered for her, too. You have to wonder if her Iraq speech would have been greeted with the same shrug if she had tossed away her usual talking points and seized the opportunity to address the war in the same adult way that Mr. Obama addressed race. Mrs. Clinton might have reconnected with the half of her party that has tuned her out.The Republican Resurrection
She is no less bright than Mr. Obama and no less dedicated to public service. It’s not her fault that she doesn’t have his verbal gifts — who does? But her real problem isn’t her speaking style. It’s the content. Mrs. Clinton needn’t have Mr. Obama’s poetry or pearly oratorical tones to deliver a game-changing speech. She just needs the audacity of candor. Yet she seems incapable of revisiting her history on Iraq (or much else) with the directness that Mr. Obama brought to his reappraisal of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
On Monday she once again pretended her own record didn’t exist while misrepresenting her opponent’s. “I’ve been working day in and day out in the Senate to provide leadership to end this war,” she said, once more implying he’s all words and she’s all action. But Mrs. Clinton didn’t ratchet up her criticisms of the war until she wrote a letter expressing her misgivings to her constituents in late 2005, two and a half years after Shock and Awe. By then, she was not leading but following — not just Mr. Obama, who publicly called for an Iraq exit strategy a week before the release of her letter, but John Murtha, the once-hawkish Pennsylvania congressman who called for a prompt withdrawal a few days earlier still.
What if Mrs. Clinton had come clean Monday, admitting that she had made a mistake in her original vote and highlighting her efforts to make amends since? John Edwards, arguably a more strident proponent of invading Iraq in 2003 than Mrs. Clinton, did exactly that also in the weeks before her 2005 letter. He succeeded in lifting the cloud, even among those on the left of his party.
Instead Mrs. Clinton darkened that cloud by claiming that she was fooled by the prewar intelligence that didn’t dupe nearly half her Democratic Senate colleagues, including Bob Graham, Teddy Kennedy and Carl Levin. Even worse, she repeatedly pretends that she didn’t know President Bush would regard a bill titled “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” as an authorization to go to war. No one believes this spin for the simple reason that no one believes Mrs. Clinton is an idiot. Her patently bogus explanations for her vote have in the end done far more damage to her credibility than the vote itself.
That she has never given a forthright speech on Iraq is what can happen when your chief campaign strategist is a pollster. Focus groups no doubt say it would be hara-kiri for her to admit such a failing. But surely many Americans would have applauded her for confessing to mistakes and saying what she learned from them. As her husband could have told her, that’s best done sooner rather than later.
It’s too late now, and so the Democratic stars are rapidly aligning for disaster. Mrs. Clinton is no longer trying to overcome Mr. Obama’s lead in the popular vote and among pledged delegates by making bold statements about Iraq or any other issue. Instead of enhancing her own case for the presidency, she’s going to tear him down.
“You'll recall that earlier this month, the comedian Sinbad challenged Hillary Clinton's version of the dangers she - and Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow - faced together on a trip to Bosnia in 1996.
Today, the Washington Post is backing him up.
In a piece headlined ‘Sniper fire, and holes in Clinton's recollection,’ the Post ‘fact-checks’ Clinton's campaign-trail claims that she landed amidst sniper fire on that trip and that her group ran with its heads down.
In fact, the Post says, the airport where Clinton landed that day was one of the safest in Bosnia at the time. The article continues: ‘Had Hillary Clinton's plane come 'under sniper fire' in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including The Washington Post's John Pomfret, covered her trip. A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the first lady. 'As a former AP wire-service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened,' Pomfret said.’”*
"Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.
Five percent....For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring.
....When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.
Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?
The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.
....No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.
If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary."
Poll: Obama Regains Big Lead In North Carolina.
When I asked for other pastors to talk to, several gave me the name of Revered Wright...Younger ministers seemed to regard Revered Wright as a mentor of sorts, his church a model for what they themselves hoped to accomplish. Older pastors were more cautious with their praise, impressed with the rapid growth of Trinity's congregation but somewhat scornful of its popularity with young black professionals. ("A buppie church," one pastor would tell me.)
...Revered Wright smiled and led me into a small, cluttered office. "Sorry for being late," he said, closing the door behind him. "We're trying to build a new sanctuary, and I had to meet with the bankers. I'm telling you, doc, they always want something else from you. Latest thing is another life insurance policy on me. In case I drop dead tomorrow. They figure the whole church'll collapse without me."
"Is it true?"
Revered Wright shook his head. "I'm not the church, Barack. If I die tomorrow, I hope the congregation will give me a decent burial. I'd like to think a few tears will be shed. But as soon as I'm six feet under, they'll be right back on the case, figuring out how to make this church live up to its mission."
He had grown up in Philadelphia, the son of a Baptist minister. He had resisted his father's vocation at first, joining the Marines out of college, dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties. But the call of his faith had apparently remained, a steady tug on his heart, and eventually he'd eneter Howard, then the University of Chicago, where he spent six years studying for a Ph.D. in the histroy of religion. He learned Hebrew and Greek, read the literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the black liberation theologians. The anger and humor of the streets, the book learning and occasional twenty-five-cent word, all this he had brought with him to Trinnity almost two decades ago. And although it was only later that I would learn much of this biography, it became clear in that very first meeting that, despite the reverend's frequent disclaimers, it was this capacious talent of his -- this ability to hold together, if not reconcile, the conflicting strains of black experience -- upon which Trinity's ssuccess had ultimately been built.
"We've got a lot of different personalities here," he told me. "Got the Africanist over here. The traditionalist over here. Once in a while, I have to stick my hand in the pot - smooth things over before stuff gets ugly. But that's rare. Usually, if somebody's got an idea for a new ministry, I just tell 'em to run with it and get outta their way."
His approach had obviously worked: the church had grown from two hundred to four thousand members during his tenure; there were organizations for every taste, from yoga classes to Caribbean clubs. He was especially pleased with the church's progress in getting more men involved, although he admitted that they still had a way to go.
"Nothing's harder than reaching young brothers like yourself," he said. "They worry about looking soft. They worry about what their buddies are gonna say about 'em. They tell themselves church us a woman's thing - that it's a sign of weakness for a man to admit that he's got spiritual needs."
The revered looked up at me then, a look that made me nervous, I decided to shift the conversation to more familiar ground, telling him about DCP and the issues we were working on, explaining the need for involvement from larger churches like his. He sat patiently and listened to my pitch, and when I was finished he gave a small nod.
"I'll try to help you if I can," he said. "But you should know that having us involved in your effort isn't necessarily a feather in your cap."
"Why's that?"
Revered Wright shurgged. "Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what we're about. They feel like we're too radical. Others, we ain't radical enough. Too emotional. Not emotional enough. Our emphasis on African history, on scholarship --"
"Some people say," I interrupted, "that the church is too upwardly mobile."
The reverend's smile faded. "That's a lot of bull," he said sharply. "People who talk that mess reflect their own confusion. They've bought into the whole business of class that keeps us from working together. Half of 'em think that the former gang-banger or the former Muslim got no business in a Christian church. Other half think any black man with education or a job, or any church that respects scholarship, is somehow suspect.
"We don't buy into these false divisions here. It's not about income, Barack. Cops don't check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car. These miseducated brothers, like that sociologist at the University of Chicago, talking about 'the declining significance of race.' Now, what country is he living in?"
But wasn't there a reality to the class divisions, I wondered?...
Afterward, in the parking lot, I sat in my car and thumbed through a silver brochure that I'd picked up in the reception area. It contained a set of guiding principles - a "Black Value System" - that the congregation had adopted in 1979. At the top of the list was a commitment to God, "who will give us the strength to give up prayerful passivism and become Black Christian activists, soldiers for Black freedom and the dignity of all humankind." Then a commitment to the black community and black family, education, the work ethic, discipline, and self-respect.
A sensible, heartfelt list...There was one particular passage in Trinity's brochure that stood out, though, a commandment more self-conscious in its tone, requiring greater elaboration. "A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness," the heading read. "While it is permissible to chase "middleincomeness" with all our might," the text stated, those blessed with the talent or the good fortune to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the "psychological entrapment of Black 'middleclassness' that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing that they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'US'!"
My thoughts would often return to that declaration in the weeks that followed as I met with various members of Trinity. Reverend Wright was at least partly justified in dismissing the church's critics, for the bulk of its membership was solidly working class, the same teachers and secretaries and government workers one found in other big black churches throughout the city. Residents from the nearby housing project had been actively recruited, and programs designed to meet the needs ot the poor -- legal aid, tutorials, drug programs -- took up a substantial amount of the church's resources.
Still there was no denying that the church had a disproportionate number of black professionals in its ranks: engineers, doctors, accountants, and corporate managers. Some of them had been raised in Trinity; others had transferred in from other denominations.Many confessed to a long absence from any religious practice - a conscious choice for some, part of a political or intellectual awakenening,but more often because church had seemed irrelevant to them as they'd pursued their careers in largely white institutions.
At some point, though, they all told me of having reached a spiritual dead end a feeling, at once inchoate and oppressive, that they'd been cut off from themselves. Intermittently, then more regularly, they had returned to the church, finding in Trinity some of the same things every religion hopes to offer its converts: a spiritual harbor and a chance to see one's gifts appreciated and acknowledged in a way that a paycheck never can; an assurance, as bones stiffened and hair began to gray, that they belonged to something that would outlast their own lives - and that, when their time finally came, a community would be there to remember.
But not all of what these people sought was strictly religious, I thought; it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to. It occurred to me that Trinity, with its African themes, its emphasis on black history, continued the role...[of] redistributor and values and circulator of ideas. Only now the redistribution didn't run in just a single direction from the schoolteacher or the physician who saw it as a Christian duty to help thesharecropper or the young man fresh from the South to adapt to big-city life. The flow of culture now ran in reverse as well; the former gang-banger, the teenage mother, had their own forms of validation -- claims of greater deprivation, and hence authenticity, their presence in the church providing the lawyer or doctor with an education from the streets. By widening the doors to allow all who would enter, a church like Trinity assured its members that their fates remained inseparably bound, that an intelligible "us" still remained.
It was a powerful program, this cultural community, one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing. Still, I couldn't help wondering whether it would be enough to keep more people from leaving the city or young men out of jail. Would the Christian fellowship between a black school administrator, say, and a black school parent change the way the schools were run? Would the interest in maintaining such unity allow Revered Wright to take a forceful stand on the latest proposals to reform public housing? And if men like Reverend Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then what chance would there be of holding the larger community intact?
Sometimes I put such questions to the people I met with. They would respond with the same bemused look...Revered Wright had given me. For them, the principles in Trinity's brochure were articles of faith no less than belief in the Resurrection. You have some good ideas, they would tell me. Maybe if you joined the church you could help us start a community program. Why don't you come by on Sunday?
And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won.
posted by Artw at 9:35 PM on March 18, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]