>>> "James Heartfield"
So, listers, help out someone who is looking in from
outside the US
If I understand it right, Obama's appeal is a kind
of Blairite (or even Clintonite) transcendence of the 'old politics'. His core base is black and young, but to show that he is of a different stripe, he has to distance himself
from race politics.
^^^^" CB: Distancing from "race politics isn't a different stripe from Clinton. It was the Repuclicans who have been playing race politics espcielly since the Nixon Souther strategy. Reaganite Reps centrally rely on racist politics, fomenting racism among white voters. Clinton didn't want race in the race against the Republicans.
Maybe you mean distancing from "Black core base".
Better "distancing" himseelf from himself since he _is_ Black. Even better distancing himself from
a Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton sure loser type candidate.
Jesse Jackson had a "Rainbow Coalition" theme by
the way, so he didn't run a "Black campaign". Try to follow this. Jackson ran as a left social democrat ( non-Clinton). But in the US racist twisted dialectic, a candidate - White or Black; see Kucincich only able to get 5% with the most trenchant and obviously pro-working class program of anybody-
who tries to appeal to the mass of white workers ( brain warped into Reagan Democrats for 28 years) on the basis of that pro-working class program are rejected as "trying to help Black people, welfare cheats,
affirmative action " and all that crap. It's an astonishing testament to the mind control of US ruling class propaganda over the masses of White workers. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Talk about showing everybody racism as the main
way that the US ruling class divides the US working class. It is starkly obvious.
Anyway, all these definite pronouncements about the "nature" of Obama are just premature. It is _uncertain_ how O will turn out. The word "hope" includes by definition uncertainty. That's part of why it is an accurate term here, that and the fact -which
I have said repeatedly since O won major White votes in Iowa - that large numbers of White people
are voting for a Black candidate for President makes the word "hope" or "promising" sober and accurate.
Not _certainly_, but possibly some good things could come out of the Obama adventure. O is he best risk
for Americans, clearly as compared with Clinton and McCain. What's wrong with the anti-O position is that it is stated with such certainty or likelihood that
nothing good can come from the O "move", ignoring
the previously highly unlikely result of so many White
people supporting a Black person for President; and their sticking to supporting O through Rev. Wright, media twisting the "bitter' comments from actually sympathetic to the working classes plight to make
them seem "elitist"; , the Clintons trying hard to bring out racist attitudes. Large minorities of White voters
have doggedly stayed with O. At this point it is actually better that we had Wright and the Clintons test the anti-racist revolve of White Americans.It has "vetted" Americans vis-a-vis O on the key issue of race.
I say with Michelle O , I never have been so
proud of Americans.
By the way,
"Michelle O"
Michelle, ma belle, These are words, That go together well
^^^^
Hillary hoped to play up her experience, but that
has been boxed in to an appeal to older voters
against younger, and to white working class voters, afraid of change.
^^^^
CB: Yes, Clinton's "experience" in the context of O's
"change" challenge is the same as "same ole same ole" .
O just implies, "experience means no change ,
exactly what I'm running against". So, Clintno's theme plays straight into one thing he's winning on. Many are tired of the "experience" they have been having.
McCain is _real_old, "experienced", a real non-changling..
Mike keeps point to the poll showing most won't vote for somebody McCain's age.
Of course, it is uncertain that the change will be at all or will be for the better (duh). But it seems many or most people - and quite rationally,not maniacally at all- want to roll the dice on change. It's rational as a first logical step in that the only way to get out of the current
mess is _some_ kind of change. So, Clinton's
"experience" position is a loser coming right out of the shute.
^^^^^^^
Is that right?
And is it right that it would be too problematic for the superdelegates to overturn Obama's majority of the committed delegates?
Does that mean an election between Third Way Obama and McCain pushing a kind of old, white resentiment against change?
^^^ CB: ( This is the opposite of the sense of "resentiment". The "white' tradition is the non-slave tradition here)
And obviously, literally _all_ the previous experience at the Presidential level is with "White". Black is
inherently a profound change in the US. Everybody
knows that in their gut. The notion that the
racial "identity" of the President can make no difference on this is wrong.
O's identity/character has the added dimension of having grown up in Hawaii, some in Indonesia and
a father from Kenya ( though absent, O's grew up
with significant consciousness of this). He is unusually cosmopolitan for an American is another source of
promise( not certainty)
It is not certain that O won't find a 4th Way or at
least 3 and ½. He may find how to put some substantive diplomacy into foreign policy for example.
For one thing, the US pragmatically needs it. It can't continue indefinitely to hold the whole world at gunpoint. It's insane to crank up a neo-Cold War with Russia, confront Iran.
Bill Richardson , Mexican American O supporter,
recently met diplomatically with Chavez, I believe.
This higher than average American character
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