Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have lately begun dropping hints that she is staying in the race because they have access to some disastrous information in Senator Obama’s closet that will emerge as an “October surprise” that will totally destroy his run for the White House.
My question is, if she did indeed have access to any information, (which for the record I don’t believe for a second) if she considers herself a patriot and champion of the people, wouldn’t it be prudent thing to meet with Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (so her actions wouldn’t be perceived as having any racial overtones) and lay her concerns out to them. This group could then meet with Senator Obama and provide him with an opportunity to explain the information, or at the very least provide him with a noble way to exit the race, while sparing the party any potential election disaster. Wouldn’t this be the decent thing to do?
The fact that Hillary has not chosen this route reminds me of the Spike Lee commercial “You got nothing!” What it appears she has learned very well is, when in doubt take a page from the Republican handbook and play the fear card, she should be ashamed.
“Rise oh fallen fighters, rise and take your stance again, cause he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”
I found myself taking great comfort from Marley’s song last night as I watched the returns from Pennsylvania, not that I expected Senator Obama to win. After all the Governor of the state had already said quite comfortably that there are people in his state that will not vote for an African American. The ease with which he made the comment spoke volumes, especially as we move forward into this brave new century. The idea that the more things change the more they stay the same comes easily to mind, especially when you consider that I work daily with people who probably feel the same way.
Oh don’t misunderstand, there is absolute civility in the workplace, we even manage to joke and socialize during company sponsored events, but at the end of the day we all retreat to our own enclaves and that is where all efforts of reaching out and bridging anything even resembling genuine friendship ends.
Senator Obama faces a huge challenge because he is asking people to look inside themselves and trust him on levels that they have been reluctant to do because some people still perceive him as the “X” factor, the unknown whose agenda might be suspect. The fact that the Clinton’s and the media have gone to great length to paint the Senator as someone who has not been thoroughly vetted has certainly not helped and in fact has given voice to the very persons who cling to their own enclaves for security. Case in point I work with a young woman who has told me she never reads anything and only gets her news from me or her husband. I cannot tell you how frightening that is in 2008, yet these are the people who will decide who will run this superpower.
For those of us who are nursing our disappointment, it’s not only because Senator Obama lost, we expected that given the demographics; rather it is because this type of closed, change resistant mindset still exists in a world that is changing rapidly, at a time when we need a statesman who can bring out the best in all of us and help us restore this country’s stature in the world. In short we just wish people could give themselves permission even for a moment, to listen with objective ears to what is being said and then ask themselves what exactly they find to fear in Senator Obama’s message.
I have been watching the media, I must admit with some amusement as they fall all over themselves to use the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King this past week, to say something about the state of race relations in America. I wonder if all these talking heads have stopped to take a long hard look in their own backyard and ask themselves why aside from Oprah who owns her show, an appearance by Soledad O’Brien, or Lester Holt hosting the news on the weekend, there is not one person of color or even another minority hosting a news show on television.
Could it be that we are still such political neophytes that we are not capable of handing complex issues such as politics or policies. Or could it be that it all boils down to job security, after all acknowledging the disparity exists means it will have to be addressed and that could mean accepting the idea that there is after all someone equally qualified to do a job that traditionally has gone to a specific demographic. I have to admit I am not all that impressed with the media and don’t see that I will be until I see faces and voices that truly represent America and that for me could start with them taking the beam out of their own eye.
Isn’t it interesting that when Senator Obama hits back at all the criticism being leveled at him by the Clinton campaign the media jumps all over him for not running the type of dignified campaign he has promised, yet when he doesn’t strike back they assail his as being too passive.
For example the day after Clinton’s adviser blasts Senator Obama for not distancing himself from Rev. Wright, the Obama campaign releases a photo showing then President Clinton with Rev. Wright at the White House and gets accused of dirty politics.
Personally I don’t think Hillary was prepared to have someone like Senator Obama meet her head on but the good thing is now the African American community is getting a real education and hopefully won’t be taken in so easily by some saxophone playing perpetrator who charms them with platitudes while they skip joyfully to his songs like mice after the pied piper.
So Clinton has apologized for comments made by Geraldine Ferraro. And I don’t suppose that Hillary understands that by apologizing to a “black audience” she will be perceived as pandering to the African American community, which in some people’s minds will only underscore Ferraro’s comments. Why couldn’t’ she have made her comments while campaigning to a larger mixed audience in Pennsylvania, that would have appeared more sincere, or could it be that she did not want to be perceived by her white supporters as making concessions to the black community.
By speaking to a specific audience she has provided additional fodder to those who already agree with Ferraro’s despicable remarks and also provided me with an additional reason I would never in good conscience vote for anyone as calculating as Hillary Clinton.
Comments made by Congressman Rep. Steve King are exactly the type of hate mongering that demonstrates the huge gulf between Republicans and other intelligent, reasonable people. On a talk show the Congressman asserted that based Senator Obama’s pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein were all causes for serious alarm. According to Rep. King:
“The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror,” King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.
Rep. King also hinted at what he thought the rest of the world would be thinking to see Obama as President, an insight I can’t imagine how he would have acquired given his party’s typical “us against the rest of the world” mentaily. He might, however, as well have completed his sentence by saying precisely what he was hinting at; that seeing a black face as head of a country that claims historical figures such as Patrick Henry, George Washington and the Founding Fathers would almost certainly be blasphemous. He might as well have completed his thought because at the end of the day we know exactly what he meant.
The problem with this type of Republican paranoia is that they miss the entire picture. In a country where black people have a history not too far removed from slavery and where the lines of disenfranchisement and second class citizenry are still clearly visible; the overwhelming sense of anger that one thinks would have led to treachery has not manifested itself in any meaningful way. Indeed given an opportunity, most African Americans only want to claim their part of the American dream so they can provide for their families and create some type of posterity. What in that is to be feared somehow escapes me. Black people and white people in the United States know their histories are inextricably bound, more so than in most other countries and in many ways Senator Obama embodies that reality.
This one candidacy in many ways strips away many of the stereotypes that have been pervasive on both sides of the racial coin and has instead shown us the best in both of us. In short the reality of a Barack Obama clearly shows us what a unified America can be. Rep. King’s remarks are clear proof of a train of thought that is embarrassing, ignorant and increasingly irrelevant in a world where a new day is dawning and that is moving forward in the 21st century.
My friends will tell you that after working for a Congresswoman and having seen the inner workings of a political office, I was so turned off that I had nothing to do with politics or politicians. The spectacle of the last 7 years under the current president and the inability of the new democratic majority in the house to bring about any meaningful changes, only underscored my feelings that regardless of who occupied the White House, the rest of us were doomed to be little more than a convenient pool of powerless, nondescript automatons, with the sole responsibility of keeping the republic afloat through our hard work and adherence to the laws.
Patriotism I decided was something preached by corporations through public service ads to appease the masses, even as they shipped jobs overseas and closed factory doors and politicians nothing more than sycophants who benefited from the connections they made in office. All that changed when Senator Obama entered the race.
At first my perception of him was very cynical, but then encouraged by friends I started reading about and finally listening to him and as I did I could feel the cynicism giving way to something that felt like excitement.
Here was someone who was actually acknowledging the fact that he was talking to real people and using words like “we” and “together” and “change.” The real decision maker for me, however, was when he said he did not take money from lobbyists. As someone is originally from the Caribbean and having seen what Bill Clinton along with his lobbyists from Chiquita and Dole did to the banana dependent economies of the small Caribbean states, I knew Senator Obama was someone I could throw my full support behind, because under his watch and with his respect and understanding of other countries and their cultures, I am convinced something like that would have never happened.
I believe he is a good man, I believe he is a decent man, I believe he can do a great deal to respect the regard with which this country was once held in the international community, but most importantly I once again believe.
Did anyone else feel that seismic shift last night. I live here in Alabama and I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that someone whose father was African, a fact which still gets you ridiculed in some circles, won the Democratic primary in, of all places Alabama.
The fact is after attending the 11,000 strong rally for Obama a couple of weeks ago in Birmingham I was filled with cautious optimism, but this was even more than I could have imagined.
I read today that Joe Wilson, husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame has endorsed Hillary Clinton. That’s fair enough, it is a free country and people are free to express their opinions and preferences. What disappointed me, however, especially after vocally supporting him and his wife over the past months, was that in endorsing Hillary he attempted to totally discredit Senator Obama by pointing out, for example that he had not engaged Europe in any meaningful way. One wonders with his credentials and his abilities being challenged, how Barack ever got through Harvard Law or even got elected to the senate. Clearly he had no friends in high society or anyone to “mark his identity” so one would have to believe that he got to where he is now through hard work. Why then is he being held to such high standards considering the present occupant of the White House, aside from a trip across the border, had not traveled outside the United States, embarrassed himself by asking the President of Brazil if his country “had any black people” and has still not gotten his mind wrapped around the correct pronunciation of the word “nuclear.”
Mr. Wilson went on to extol Bill Clinton’s and by extension Hillary’s foreign policy experience, especially in Africa, without of course once mentioning Rwanda which happened during Bill Clinton’s tenure, or the banana issue in the Caribbean that essentially destroyed the economy of several small states and in which he was clearly involved. If Mr. Wilson is going to talk foreign policy experience then everything should be put on the table not just the one’s that compliment the Clintons.
I guess my point is there is no one in this election who hits all the notes exactly the way we would like them to, so we engage in point and counter point, with an eye towards finally tuning out all the pundits, commentators and highly placed supporters and engaging in the beauty of this entire process, making our own personal choices.
I’ve had the opportunity to see the Senator twice and maybe it is his idealism that has appealed to me, or maybe it’s just the fact that after walking through these long, dark 8 years where we have felt marginalized and powerless, while the henchmen of the present administration have run roughshod over civil liberties, spied on us, played fast and loose with the truth or downright lies; why divisive politics will not do for me because all I really want to do is exhale and fill my lungs and life with something new and fresh.
I am most disappointed in these so-called black leaders like Rangel, Lewis and Young. What they have to realize is that they took the fight to one level now it is up to another generation to move it forward and instead of as Dylan said ” Standing in the doorway and blocking the hall” they should gracefully pass the baton on for the “times they are a changing”. Unfortunately while they saw the light they were not enlightened and their involvement with MLK now seems like youthful enthuasism and profiling rather than a strong will and desire for change.
