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The DNC rolled out its first ad on John McCain, marking the five-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. It highlights John McCain's association and approval of an Iraq policy that has cost more than one trillion dollars, sacrificed the lives of nearly 4,000 Americans and left an entire country in peril.
By Andrew Wahl of
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Sampled here are black voters, Democrats, independents and Republicans.
No matter what Obama said, there will always be someone who complains, "That's not good enough." Based on the circumstances, Obama hit it out of the park with that speech.
As we post each morning, here are the political buzz stories headlining the newspapers and blogs before you head to work today:
More posts today.
As we post each night, here are some of the political clips making their rounds on the blogs tonight:
More clips tomorrow.
Already, the pundits are trying to spin this speech in every which way, as if white working class Democrats don't have a mind of their own and can't realize that Obama is a transformative figure in modern politics. Well actually, Obama's speech is already the 7th most watched video on Youtube (might even be better by the time you read this). If you look at the comments, they are just about nothing but positive. From coffee-drinking expresso-heads to so-called 'Reagan Democrats,' people are embracing what Obama spoke about today.
Hats off to Obama for having the guts and conviction to say what he did. He proved yet again that is is not just presidential, but will be a great president.
"A More Perfect Union" -- by Barack Obama (March 18, 2008)
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.â€
Twohundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands acrossthe street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words,launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers andscholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean toescape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration ofindependence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through thespring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventuallysigned but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’soriginal sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies andbrought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allowthe slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and toleave any final resolution to future generations.
Ofcourse, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded withinour Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal ofequal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised itspeople liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should beperfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would notbe enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women ofevery color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens ofthe United States. What would be needed were Americans in successivegenerations who were willing to do their part – through protests andstruggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war andcivil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gapbetween the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of thiscampaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, amarch for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and moreprosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this momentin history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challengesof our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our unionby understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold commonhopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from thesame place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards abetter future for of children and our grandchildren.
Thisbelief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity ofthe American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived aDepression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a whitegrandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworthwhile he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools inAmerica and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am marriedto a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves andslaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of everyrace and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as longas I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is mystory even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me themost conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into mygenetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of itsparts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout thefirst year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary,we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely raciallens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitestpopulations in the country. In South Carolina, where the ConfederateFlag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americansand white Americans.
This is not to say that race has notbeen an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, somecommentators have deemed me either “too black†or “not black enough.†We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before theSouth Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for thelatest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white andblack, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only beenin the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in thiscampaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one endof the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy issomehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely onthe desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation onthe cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, ReverendJeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have thepotential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrateboth the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offendwhite and black alike.
I have already condemned, inunequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have causedsuch controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know himto be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreignpolicy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could beconsidered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I stronglydisagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’msure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, orrabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarksthat have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out againstperceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distortedview of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, andthat elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know isright with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle Eastas rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel,instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies ofradical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were notonly wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity;racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a setof monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a fallingeconomy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastatingclimate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino orAsian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given mybackground, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there willno doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are notenough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place,they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if allthat I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons thathave run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or ifTrinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures beingpeddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react inmuch the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that Iknow of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man whohelped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me aboutour obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift upthe poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who hasstudied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminariesin the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that servesthe community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing thehomeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services andscholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those sufferingfrom HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out,a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….Andin that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot ofthat cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, Iimagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the storiesof David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’sden, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, andfreedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that hadspilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, onthis bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of apeople into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials andtriumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more thanblack; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us ameans to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shameabout…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with whichwe could start to rebuild.â€
That has been my experience atTrinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country,Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor andthe welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Likeother black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughterand sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping,screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. Thechurch contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierceintelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes,the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the blackexperience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, myrelationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he hasbeen like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated mywedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations withhim have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms,or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy andrespect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and thebad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I canno more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helpedraise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman wholoves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman whoonce confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street,and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnicstereotypes that made me cringe.
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 aresimply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose thepolitically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and justhope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wrightas a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed GeraldineFerraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring somedeep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that Ibelieve this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would bemaking the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offendingsermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify thenegative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact isthat the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfacedover the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in thiscountry that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our unionthat we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simplyretreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to cometogether and solve challenges like health care, or education, or theneed to find good jobs for every American.
Understandingthis reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. AsWilliam Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact,it isn’t even past.†We do not need to recite here the history ofracial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselvesthat so many of the disparities that exist in the African-Americancommunity today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on froman earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slaveryand Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferiorschools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Boardof Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now,helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black andwhite students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks wereprevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans werenot granted to African-American business owners, or black homeownerscould not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, orthe police force, or fire departments – meant that black families couldnot amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black andwhite, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so manyof today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economicopportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that camefrom not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to theerosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for manyyears may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so manyurban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walkingthe beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – allhelped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue tohaunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright andother African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age inthe late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was stillthe law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination,but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were ableto make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece ofthe American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who wereultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. Thatlegacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young menand increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners orlanguishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism,continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the menand women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliationand doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and thebitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public,in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voicein the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger isexploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or tomake up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally itfinds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in thepews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger insome of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truismthat the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sundaymorning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often itdistracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us fromsquarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents theAfrican-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bringabout real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and tosimply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots,only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists betweenthe races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments ofthe white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americansdon’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’reconcerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it fromscratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to seetheir jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime oflabor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreamsslipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition,opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreamscome at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to aschool across town; when they hear that an African American is gettingan advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college becauseof an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’retold that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehowprejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the angerwithin the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressedin polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscapefor at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative actionhelped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploitedfears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts andconservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claimsof racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injusticeand inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these whiteresentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middleclass squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing,questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washingtondominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies thatfavor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments ofwhite Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, withoutrecognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widensthe racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve beenstuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics,black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we canget beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with asingle candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faithin God and my faith in the American people – that working together wecan move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we haveno choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing theburdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It meanscontinuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect ofAmerican life. But it also means binding our particular grievances –for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to thelarger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling tobreak the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, theimmigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking fullresponsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, andspending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teachingthem that while they may face challenges and discrimination in theirown lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they mustalways believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative –notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’ssermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand isthat embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief thatsociety can change.
The profound mistake of ReverendWright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress hasbeen made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible forone of his own members to run for the highest office in the land andbuild a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor,young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But whatwe know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That istrue genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives ushope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union meansacknowledging that what ails the African-American community does notjust exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy ofdiscrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while lessovert than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not justwith words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and ourcommunities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairnessin our criminal justice system; by providing this generation withladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have tocome at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health,welfare, and education of black and brown and white children willultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then,what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all theworld’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we wouldhave them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tellsus. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake weall have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit aswell.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accepta politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We cantackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in thewake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodderfor the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on everychannel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, andmake the only question in this campaign whether or not the Americanpeople think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his mostoffensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter asevidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate onwhether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general electionregardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But ifwe do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking aboutsome other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at thismoment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not thistime.†This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that arestealing the future of black children and white children and Asianchildren and Hispanic children and Native American children. This timewe want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’tlearn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’sproblem. The children of America are not those kids, they are ourkids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how thelines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks andHispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power ontheir own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who cantake them on if we do it together.
This time we want totalk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for menand women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged toAmericans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. Thistime we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not thatsomeone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that thecorporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than aprofit.
This time we want to talk about the men and womenof every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, andbleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how tobring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized andnever should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll showour patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving themthe benefits they have earned.
I would not be running forPresident if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what thevast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may neverbe perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it canalways be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feelingdoubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hopeis the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefsand openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you withtoday – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr.King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baiawho organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She hadbeen working to organize a mostly African-American community since thebeginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtablediscussion where everyone went around telling their story and why theywere there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine yearsold, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work,she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file forbankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do somethingto help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their mostexpensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what shereally liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else wasmustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way toeat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, andshe told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined ourcampaign was so that she could help the millions of other children inthe country who want and need to help their parents too.
NowAshley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told heralong the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks whowere on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming intothe country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in herfight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story andthen goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supportingthe campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bringup a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black manwho’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks himwhy he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He doesnot say health care or the economy. He does not say education or thewar. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. Hesimply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.â€
“I’m here because of Ashley.†By itself, that single moment ofrecognition between that young white girl and that old black man is notenough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs tothe jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where westart. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so manygenerations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred andtwenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document inPhiladelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Here are some of the top political clips making their rounds on the blogs at this hour:
More clips tomorrow.
FOX News is upset at Barack Obama for not appearing on the show FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. This weekend they premiered a segment called "," in which they mentioned the consecutive days since the Democratic candidate first said he would come on FOX News Sunday. To this day, he will has not:
"Many of you have sent us e-mails asking why the senator won't comeon 'Fox News Sunday' and face tough questioning," Wallace said towardthe end of the hourlong broadcast. "It has now been 730 days, 13 hours,53 minutes and nine — no, 10 seconds and counting since Obama agreed tobe a guest on 'Fox News Sunday.'"
"Tune in next week for the latest," he said.
Maybe there is a reason behind that. Maybe FOX News is a biased news network, and Obama doesn't want any part of it. Ever thought of that?
Here are the top political clips making their rounds on the blogs at this hour:
More clips tomorrow.
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