When Obama wins....

You know how they talk about how TV totally changed politics? And then how the Internet changed politics because of blogs and stuff? I feel like this election has really reached a new Internet, media peak. The sheer numbers of weird memes and things... as evidenced by the fact that I've posted about most of them. Anyway, here is the latest (a little late)... When Obama Wins.

Obama in an unmoderated debate

I have to agree with Hendrik Hertzberg here. When Obama spoke at Google last year, his speech was good, but his Q&A was better. I think a town hall format, or a non-moderated debate format, would highlight some of his assets very well. He's quick on his feet.

(tip to Justin for the link)

P.S. Yay for Edwards and NARAL endorsements!

Obama's religion

The thing that has bugged my dad the most about Obama's campaign (although he is a supporter) is Obama's constant reiteration that he is Christian. (We're a non-religious family so that tends to rub us the wrong way; although intellectually obviously we don't care, sometimes you have that gut reaction to someone where you want them to believe the exact same things that you do.)

I've been telling him all along that he has to repeat that fact because generally you don't get elected in this country if you are anything but Christian, but lately I've changed my tactic to "if he doesn't keep saying that, people will keep talking about how he's Muslim." It's seriously fucked up. So hear hear, Alex Balk, for this comment.

"Just too extreme for NC"?

I wanted to post this yesterday but Blogger was down for a scheduled update or something. It always goes down at like 4pm PST, which I don't think the people of Blogger realize is the worst time for it to be down because it's the end of the work day here and you are always sort of stalling for time because you can't start a new project at work but instead are just trying to do little things. At least, I am. However. Back to it.

So the news of yesterday is that the North Carolina Republican party plans to run an ad starting Monday that shows clips of Reverend Wright and says Barack Obama is "just too extreme for North Carolina." It's ostensibly against the two Democrats running for governor there, but obviously it's not really, and it's more useless shit. What's interesting about it is that McCain is denouncing the ad and saying that "There's no place for that kind of campaigning, the American people don't want it, period." I thought this was pretty fascinating because that piece on McCain in the David Foster Wallace book I mentioned a while ago on this blog talks about how smooth McCain and his team were in 2000 as far as subtly negotiating the negative aspects of campaigning, in order to benefit from others' negativity and gloss over his own. Sadly I loaned the book to my mom, so I can't find the spot, but it was nevertheless the first thing I thought of when, at the gym today, I saw some bit on CNN saying that McCain can look like a friendly teddy bear by denouncing the ad, but that he will still benefit from the ad being out there because a) it's already out (God bless, or is it God damn?, YouTube), and b) it's not like he really has much right to complain about it I guess. Of course his campaign vehemently denied that charge, but it's still pretty fascinating.

Another reason I'd like to see Obama go up against McCain this November is that I really think that it might lead to a more civil campaign than if Clinton was in the race, just because too many people hate her and because she's such a lightning rod for all this quibbling shit.

The ad has been taken down in a few spots (like the New York Times' Caucus), but you should probably be able to see it over at Wonkette. It's classic terrible campaign ad.

Race in PA

So, this will surely bring out the comments, or the peanut gallery, or you know, the two people I have reading this who post a lot when I talk about things like this (you know who you are):

Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 54 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

Just fantastic. Right before I read this, I had been thinking the obviously stereotypical although still partly true thought: "doesn't success among white working class voters in rural areas probably mean success among the more racist sections of our society?"

According to these exit polls quoted in the Times, the answer to my question is essentially yes. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here's my favorite person ever, Nora Ephron, on the subject:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men. How ironic is this? After all this time, after all these stupid articles about how powerless white men are and how they can't even get into college because of overachieving women and affirmative action and mean lady teachers who expected them to sit still in the third grade even though they were all suffering from terminal attention deficit disorder -- after all this, they turn out (surprise!) to have all the power. (As they always did, by the way; I hope you didn't believe any of those articles.) To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them: the outcome of Tuesday's primary will depend on whether they go for Hillary or Obama, and the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

I had to add that last quip at the end because Nora's acerbity when it comes to men just warms my cold heart.

(Before you say it, yes, I know that like 90% of black voters vote for Obama. So I get that this is a two way street. But I reserve the right to be indignant about this kind of example of enduring racism in this country.)

(Two more posts on the subject here and here.)

Obama's post-debate thoughts

Obama bites back. He's right, too.

More on the speech...

I'm still processing all this to-do over Obama's speech yesterday. I know I really liked it, and I agree with the commentators who are saying that it's historic, honest, etc. I know it's getting a lot of coverage but there's no sign of what it may do to him (or for him) in the polls or in Pennsylvania. But mostly I almost feel like it's not even getting the credit it deserves. I don't think it matters if it helps or hinders him in the long run, because even if he doesn't win, it is a great speech and an incredibly important one.

I want to quote my dad here just for good measure and because it's true:
I think it's interesting that some people in this country are all of a sudden pissed off that some politician has a preacher that supports him, that then says something stupid. What the hell? this is the kind of stuff that has been going on for years now. without the anger this particular story has brewed up.
Bush has been getting advice from crackhead, thieving liars, for the last seven plus years. Of course this is when he's not getting advice from his imaginary friend.

Alright, enough about that. I'll get back to blogging non-political things.

Hear-hear!

Mr. Obama seemed to be arguing not only for his own candidacy but also against the often-reductive nature of presidential politics.

--Jodi Kantor, the New York Times

Not this time.

Barack Obama's speech on race today is really good. It was partly a disavowal of the controversial Rev. Wright's beliefs, and I think it did a decent job of that. But it went far beyond that. It was direct, it was compassionate, it was extremely well written, and it was just generally awesome. It also did a good job of addressing the issue of race without highlighting Obama so much as the candidate of a certain race, or however you want to put it. It wasn't about his background or his ability to unite people because he has a diverse heritage, but about clear sightedness and empathy. I wish I could have seen him deliver it live.

Plus, I really liked how he candidly addressed some of the bigger controversies of recent times (Ferraro, and the issue of whether he was "too black" or "not black enough," the idea that his "candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap") without seeming to jab at anyone, just being honest. Some highlights:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’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 has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

It goes on. Really a great speech. Rumor is he wrote it himself.

P.S. Just found this:

I will be watching it later.

Obama

I can't lie, Obama fans definitely make the most fun designy cool shit. If you haven't already, see here and here (could go here, but the page is overloaded).

And just for fun:



Keep crossing your fingers.

(via)