As my regular readers know, I’ve not really given much attention on my blog to the presidential campaign happenings. It’s not that I haven’t been watching what’s going on – I have. I’ve watched many of the debates. I’ve kept up with the primary results and delegate tabulations. I’ve listened to what “they” say and what “their” poll says, etc. I’m very interested, but at the same time I’m more interested in local politics because I believe that true change…revolutionary change bubbles up from the people…it doesn’t trickle down from the White House.
However, in watching the democratic presidential hopefuls, I must admit that at times excitement has found me – particularly as Mr. Barack Obama has and is experiencing success. (I can’t tell if this is the same feeling that I get when I see Black folk competing on television game shows. I know I know…I’m trying to figure it out.)
He trounced his opponents thoroughly in the South Carolina primary and just today picked up the endorsements of Sen. Ted Kennedy (along with a ringing endorsement from Caroline Kennedy) and African American author, Toni Morrison – who a decade ago called Bill Clinton “America’s first Black president” (big joke)
Winners are attractive and I can’t help but notice the tug at times from the Barack Obama riptide. Everyone loves a winner.
Everyone, that is, except ex-presidents who occupy their time by running for office for a third term supporting his wife’s run for the presidency. Bill Clinton is really showing his true colors. Hopefully, his recalcitrant behavior toward Barack Obama is helping Black folk bury his Arsenio Hall saxophone-playing PR stunt back in the deep recesses of our minds never to be resurrected from the dead.
It’s quite interesting watching “mainstream” media try to make sense of Barack’s success. I watched the other day as the Scarborough guy and the pundits were talking about how much of a connection Obama seemed to enjoy with the South Carolina crowd during his speeches. They said he was more relaxed and prone to leave the script of his stump speech to follow where the enthusiasm of the crowd took him. I’m glad the brotha gotta break and was able to just talk to his folk. I’m sure they were “talking back” to him as good as any warm Black Church on a Sunday morning.
Despite his steady progress of his campaign, Bloomberg.Com says:
A problem for Obama may arise in states with smaller black populations than South Carolina. In that contest, he captured an overwhelming majority of the vote of African-Americans, who comprised more than half of the Democratic electorate, while only getting about a quarter of the white vote. Edwards came in third with 18 percent of the primary’s vote.
Uh – hello?! Iowa anyone? Last I checked Iowa wasn’t a state were you’d find a heapin’ helpin’ of human beings whose skin had been kissed by the sun and whose roots ran deep in Mother Africa. Care to ‘splain that TV-talking heads?
Of course, Super Tuesday is the big day. We’ll have a better grasp then on how this democratic nomination process might settle.
Until then…I must admit…it’s fun watching Barack shake ‘em up.
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So… I’ve voted Republican for more than a decade. My first choice is Mike Huckabee because of his stance on social issues like abortion. But Obama has truly inspired me — and if Huck isn’t the nominee — I’ll be working for him.
I have voted in every presidential election I have been able to participate in. However, I have NEVER been this excited about an election. I have been so inspired by Obama’s message, I have started volunteering for his campaign. I never thought I would have time for one more thing! Nevertheless, it was refreshing to get in on the grassroots level on yesterday, encouraging others to register, knocking on doors, etc…
Barack is turning things upside down, and I am lovin’ it!
Yes he is. I haven’t work in a campaign since working for the late Robert Clay (my mentor) helping Jill P. Carter in her first run. Now that I live in Rocky Mount North Carolina fate has found a way that I’m the Chairperson of Rocky Mount Citizens For Obama. It is an exciting time. I’m having fun and I have hope again. It is good seeing Black and White together working for a new America. We need to ride this as far as it will carry us. Plus use it as a springboard to help with our local politics wherever we find ourselves. As Malcolm X said it is either the BALLOT or the BULLET, lets use this Ballot in 2008 for some meaningful change!
I finally see why people are so excited about Obama, but I’m not sure I’ll even vote this year–which would be the first time since I wasted a vote for Hubert Humphrey in ’68 after working on LBJ’s campaign as a college freshman (too young to vote) in ’64 only because I’d been convinced Goldwater was too racist to support. I’d been registered as a Democrat from ’68 to whatever year it was Carter was elected. Since then, I’ve been Independent because I neither trust, believe in, nor intuitively support any political party. Nevertheless, I’ve always trudged out to vote, usually for third party people. I voted for Perot twice because I knew as a businessman he would at least make sure people who worked for him would pull their load. But, after the 2000 fraud-u-selection, I decided the Panthers were right. This procedural ritual gives quaint reassurance to Negroes that “The White Man” would conduct processes, but Justice would not be an outcome of their procedural obeisance to their Constitution.
Now I look at Obama and hear between the lines in order to get any kind of message. I am not a Christian, so keeping Hope alive does not grace my table. I think he’s a nice guy and he has a brown wife–a remarkable statement about his humanity in these days of flow-haired sistahs and dime-a-dozen Rev’ns. But, frankly, I’m more inspired to make the trek to the polls by John Edwards than Barack Obama. Edwards, at least, recognizes and openly addresses the gut-level issues that deal with life on the streets and dusty yards of America in corporate servitude. Now that Edwards is out, I could vote for either a woman or a “Black” man…but I may choose none of the above since I live in Maryland, one of the Democratic lemming-states where we’re all expected to dive off the cliff in harmony with whomever the Donkey Bosses pre-select.
Ahh well. Perhaps my unease comes from a prescient echo of the locking-and-loading I heard when Obama won Iowa. I know some rednecks who will never tolerate the possibility of a Brotha hosting formal dinners at the White House. Perhaps we’ll all learn soon enough why the Russians appreciate Putin. At least they can believe his innuendo, knowing there will be no Justice, only more Winter; so bundle up, baby. Get used to it. It’s gonna be cold outside no matter what you do in the booth.