Monsoon Martin's Election Night 2008 Comment

Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States tonight.

At 11pm, when the cable-news talking heads could finally retire their touch-screen floating maps and tentative conjectures, the projection was made.And I cried.

I, hard-hearted cynic, longtime sufferer of political malaise, was swept up in the moment.

It wasn’t just the euphoria that accompanies the triumph of a candidate one has supported, argued for, defended strongly, written about, donated to.This felt different.

The term “historic” is maddeningly overused by those who seek to endow the mundane present with the swelling significance of the past.It’s only as these events recede into history that we can take true measure of their impact, their place.

And yet, the election of a Black man as President feels like a watershed, a defining moment.A break with the sordid inequalities that predated our country’s birth and persisted long thereafter; an evolution into the best of what we always imagined this country could be.

Barack Obama’s election tonight and his inauguration will not solve all of our problems.Far from it.He faces a maelstrom of challenges—political, economic, foreign and domestic.

But he does so with the support of (it now appears) more than 50% of the voting electorate, and a groundswell of grass-roots engagement nearly unprecedented in modern politics.And even though I don’t agree with his every stance, his every utterance, I have the feeling he will do the extraordinary as President: he’ll listen.

Bradley Effect, Schmadley Effect: tens of millions of people of all backgrounds cast their ballots for an African American candidate today because they believed he was the best person for the job.That says a lot about us, to us—and to the rest of the world.

Congratulations, Senators Obama and Biden.

January 20th, 2009 is no longer only Bush’s last day—it’s also now Obama’s first.

Monsoon

Monsoon's "Obama Bucks" Campaign Racism Update

Habari mori,

What better way to start off your Monday than with a little old-fashioned, vintage, unadulterated, and almost unbelievable conservative racism? (Big-ups to Tim for letting me know about this story!)

It comes in the form of a little cartoon that appeared in the October newsletter of the Chaffey County Republican Women, Federated (a volunteer group in San Bernardino, California that is not directly affiliated with the state Republican party). It reads “Obama Bucks” and depicts Barack Obama as a donkey on a fictional food stamp. Obama’s ass-likeness is surrounded by—I shit you not—watermelon, ribs, Kool-Aid, and a bucket of fried chicken.

Diane Fedele, President of the Chaffey County Republican Women, Federated, (you can reach her by email here) insisted that when she created the newsletter and included the picture, she was just trying to make a connection to Barack Obama’s statement that McCain’s campaign is trying to scare people away from voting for Obama because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” Fedele insists that she just saw food arrayed around him and didn’t notice what it was, denying there was any intent to invoke longstanding African American stereotypes.

“It never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.” As Sigmund Freud didn’t say, “Sometimes a bucket of fried chicken is just a bucket of fried chicken.” And sometimes, it’s goddamned racist.

“I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended,” she said in her non-apology apology. “That clearly wasn’t my attempt.” “Clearly”? Really??

 The whole matter is complicated by the fact that the image was evidently created by a liberal blogger to satirize the bigoted attacks on Obama by small-government hating ultraconservatives. The image was apparently taken literally—as satire too often is—and forwarded among those fine citizens in the right-wing Nobama set. Eventually, good old Diane Fedele got ahold of the picture, plopped it in her little volunteer newsletter, and the rest is pure, racist gold.

Only 15 more days until the election…it’s almost over!

Monsoon

Monsoon "The Plumber" Martin's Final Presidential Debate Analysis

As entertaining and engaging as this third and final debate was on Wednesday night, I have to admit that I was “flipping” back and forth between MSNBC’s coverage and the Phillies-Dodgers game—and “flipping out” when the Phillies won the pennant with an impressive Game 5 victory. (The last time the Phils were in the World Series, I was in college; the last time they won the World Series, I was jumping up and down in my footy pajamas on the shag carpet in my parents’ living room.)

But now that I’ve had a proper frolic with the debate transcript and watched key clips online, I feel I can present an informed bit of analysis here.

Barack Obama went into the debate with a commanding lead in national polls (and those in swing states) ranging from six to sixteen points, so he’s essentially settled on a strategy of “running out the clock” and avoiding any mistakes—heaven knows, there are segments of the electorate that are still uncomfortable with the notion of voting for a Black man and are just looking for an excuse to switch allegiances.

The most striking contrast in the Hofstra debate, once again, was demeanor—and based on polling following the debate (58% of debate watchers in one poll rated Obama the winner, compared with 31% who felt McCain had the better showing), this is what most Americans responded to. John McCain projected agitation, bitterness, sarcasm, and frustration when Barack Obama would not wallow in the smear-sty with him. His eye-rolls, mock surprise, and furious scribblings on his notepad while Obama was speaking revealed a candidate who does not seem to be in control of his impulses and emotions.

On the other hand, Barack Obama was the epitome of cool. When McCain tried to goad him into the muck, when he made sneering comments and interrupted testily, Obama’s response bespoke a level, steady, and perpetually unflustered bearing. In this frighteningly uncertain economic climate, Americans are looking for—to use John McCain’s boating cliché, which I derisively referred to as a gardening metaphor in my previous post—a steady hand on the tiller. Based upon their appearances, their personal histories, and especially the foil of barking, sputtering rage provided by John McCain in the three presidential debates, Barack Obama is that steady hand.

While John McCain rudely and impertinently interrupted either moderater Bob Schieffer or Obama no fewer than twenty times throughout the debate, Barack Obama smiled indulgently (though this smile seemed a bit strained at times) at McCain’s attacks and paroxysms, then calmly but insistently offered his rejoinders.

There were some telling statements, exchanges, and recurring themes throughout the debate that may explain why many observers lauded Barack Obama’s performance—and yet, a feistier, more aggressive performance and a few zingers also led some to claim victory of Senator McCain. Not surprisingly, I beg to differ. Lemme splain.

John McCain was—like his Wasilla Chatty Cathy doll running mate—a one-note Johnny in repeating ideas, even when they had been successfully rebutted, and even when he sounded ridiculous doing so. Three examples of many: he described the American people as “angry” at least five times, clearly trying to tap into a wellspring of bitterness that might be directed at Obama; he thrice described his VP mate Sarah Palin as a “reformer” despite the fact that she was just found by an independent panel to have abused her power as governor in the Troopergate scandal; and he mentioned Joe the Plumber at least 17 times (that I was able to count) in insisting that Barack Obama was going to raise taxes and effectively make it impossible for small business owners to stay afloat—continuing along this line even after Obama had debunked McCain’s tenuous claims. McCain insisted that under Obama’s plan, “we’re going to take Joe’s money, give it to Senator Obama, and let him spread the wealth around. … [it’s] class warfare.” Surely most Americans realize that it’s not “class warfare” to provide tax relief for the working and middle classes while shifting some of the tax burden to the upper classes; it’s common fairness.

Another example of McCain repeating long-since-deflated stump soundbites was when he said, “We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.” In fact, according to various sources (including the excellent fackcheck.org), the U.S. spends less than half that amount importing foreign oil—the majority of it from “friendly” countries like Canada.

He also reheated that little chicken nugget about the “$3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium in his hometown” that Obama supposedly earmarked. Never mind that it was to overhaul the digital projection system at a science museum, part of a community revitalization effort undertaken with bipartisan support; Obama didn’t even dignify it with a response (though in this case, maybe he should have set the record straight). The lies, like the universe, are inscrutable, innumerable, and infinite in their scope.

Obama actually responded to the “spending freeze” proposed by McCain, describing it as a “hatchet” when a scalpel is needed: “Now, Senator McCain talks a lot about earmarks. That’s one of the centerpieces of his campaign. Earmarks account for 0.5% of the total Federal budget. There’s no doubt that the system needs reform and there are a lot of screwy things that we end up spending money on, and they need to be eliminated. But it’s not going to solve the problem.”

One of Barack Obama’s best “zingers” was tucked away in his response to a question about the economy, when he said that “the fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this latest crisis.” It successfully tied John McCain to the failed economic management policies of George W. Bush, and it alluded to McCain’s ridiculous assertions that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” even as the markets began their historic collapse.

Speaking of “zingers,” John McCain seemed to get one in about a third of the way through the debate. When Obama noted that “Senator McCain voted for four out of five of President Bush’s budgets,” McCain retorted, “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I’m going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.”

True enough: he is not President Bush, and in fact engaged in a bitter primary fight against Bush in 2000. He’s clashed with the administration on torture. But facts are facts, as Barack Obama noted: “So the fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.” I’d call that exchange a tie.

The real (bull)shit hit the fan, though, when Schieffer asked the candidates if they were willing “to sit at this table and say to each other’s face what your campaigns and the people in your campaigns have said about each other?” In daring John McCain to confront Barack Obama with the most dearly-held smears involving Fannie Mae and William Ayers, Schieffer gave McCain the chance to either score significant points with his lunatic fringe base—which has been clamoring for him to do just that—or bitterly disappoint his wing-nuttiest supporters.

First, McCain blamed Obama for the skanky campaign McCain had been running: if only you had agreed to the “town hall” debates I proposed, we could have had 10 of them already, and we could have avoided all this ugliness. I would ask: who is running the negative ads, Senator McCain? You, ass.

Then he repeated a bit of outrageously manufactured outrage ( see this clip ) that he first disgorged in a television interview earlier in the week. “A man I admire and respect—I’ve written about him—Congressman John Lewis, an American hero, made allegations that Sarah Palin and I were somehow associated with the worst chapter in American history, segregation, deaths of children in church bombings, George Wallace. That, to me, was so hurtful.”

Congressman Lewis released a statement reacting to the fact that supporters of McCain and Palin were shouting such epithets as “terrorist,” “kill him!” “off with his head,” and “traitor” at rallies, and neither candidate condemned or repudiated these frothing fascists—in fact continuing to make statements that might incite such remarks. In his statement, Congressman Lewis said, in part, “What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.” Unassailably true. He went on to discuss the climate created by the likes of George Wallace—who “never threw a bomb” but nonetheless incited others to violence. Congressman Lewis later said his comments were a little over the top, and Obama’s campaign had nothing to do with the release of his original statement. It’s disingenuous and cheap for John McCain to simper with false outrage at this alleged wound.

McCain, for his part, insisted that he’s always repudiated inappropriate outbursts (he hasn’t), accused Obama of being permissive with similar outbursts at his appearances (he isn’t, so far as I’ve seen, sniping “we don’t need that” when his supporters began to boo at his mention of Senator McCain’s name last week), and issued the following backhanded endorsement of his own base: “Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you’re going to have some fringe people. You know that. And I’ve—and we’ve always said that that’s not appropriate.”

McCain also whimpered that Obama’s campaign had been running “attack ads” on his health care plan, on his position on immigration, and on stem cell research. Senator McCain, these are not attack ads. These are issue ads. They deal with legitimate policy and platform differences, which should be the basis for the electorate’s decision-making process. “Attack ads” are personal: assailing a candidate’s morality, his or her patriotism, his or her ethics. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: those were attack ads. The pamphlets distributed by the Bush campaign in 2000 alleging that you’d fathered an illegitimate Black baby: those were attack ads. Willie Horton in 1988 was an attack ad, maybe the consummate one. And the ads seeking to connect Barack Obama with voter registration fraud in ACORN, with a domestic terrorist named William Ayers, with criminals: these are attack ads. (Obama noted that 100% of McCain’s ads were negative, which is true of the last few weeks, but a bit less so when examining the whole campaign.)

[I have to share a picture that depicts John McCain reacting in an almost unhingedly goofy way to walking the wrong direction offstage at the debate's conclusion.  I like to think he is actually retching and kecking because of the lies he's just told and the nasty, untethered turn his campaign has taken.  It has quickly become one of my favorite pictures in the whole wide world.]

Barack Obama’s response to these unsubstantiated smears and false outrage was to go on the offensive in an impressive way, seizing control of the debate’s tone. “Senator McCain’s own campaign said publicly last week that, if we keep on talking about the economic issues, we lose, so we need to change the subject.” In one sentence, he painted the McCain campaign as wildly desperate and cravenly unscrupulous. He also brought up the William Ayers issue, forcing John McCain to wield it, then masterfully and unequivocally undercut its relevance: “Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers.” He went on to dismiss ACORN, which “had nothing to do with us,” and which in fact is a non-story. He finished by talking about who he does associate with, insisting that these will be the people who have inspired him and who will shape his policies in the White House. When McCain interrupted, as he did often, reasserting his incorrect or incomplete information, Obama responded with a firm but unruffled “that’s absolutely not true” or “that’s just not so.” He laid the ethical smackdown: “And I think that the fact that this [Ayers issue] has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.” Boo-ya!

Obama’s most powerful statement along this line of discussion punctuated the Lewis matter and disabled McCain’s attacks: “The important point here is, though, the American people have become so cynical about our politics, because all they see is a tit-for-tat and back-and-forth. And what they want is the ability to just focus on some really big challenges that we face right now, and that’s what I have been trying to focus on this entire campaign.” He later reiterated a call to “disagree without being disagreeable,” no doubt calling many viewers’ attention to the sighing, mugging, histrionics of the disgruntled candidate to his left.

A few of John McCain’s statements went beyond mere condescension into outright belligerence, and in at least once case, racism. On NAFTA, he said, “By the way, when Senator Obama said he would unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Canadians said, ‘Yes, and we’ll sell our oil to China.’ You don’t tell countries you’re going to unilaterally renegotiate agreements with them.” This was punctuated by a Cheshire Cat grin and stageworthy eye roll for full effect.

Another time, when discussing the need to become independent of foreign energy sources, McCain said, “Well you know, I admire so much Senator Obama’s eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words. He said, we will ‘look at offshore drilling.’ Did you get that? ‘Look at.’ We can offshore drill now.” First of all, whether he intended it or not—and I’m loath to give McCain the benefit of the doubt, even in this case—calling Obama “eloquent” recalls the racist, paternalistic praise historically directed toward African Americans who speak “well,” using standard English, as “articulate.” Secondly, it’s just another example of McCain’s fearmongering: this smooth-talking Black dude is using euphemistic language to bilk you all.

More fearmongering, this time turning Obama’s health care plan into a nightmare of socialized medicine, bureaucratic gridlock, and six-month waits for surgery: “Senator Obama wants to set up health care bureaucracies, take over the health care of America through—as he said, his object is a single-payer system.”

Senator McCain also spent some time hammering away at base-pleasing ideas like curtailing government intrusion: “Hey, Joe, you’re rich, congratulations. Because what Joe wanted to do way buy the business that he’s been working for 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week, and you said that you wanted to spread the wealth, but—in other words, take Joe’s money and then you decide what to do with it,” he sputtered. “Now, Joe, you’re rich, congratulations,” he repeated inanely.

When Bob Schieffer brought up Roe v. Wade and the abortion issue, I was disappointed because I see this as a “wedge” culture war issue that has—at least in the past 25 years or so—been a distraction from more pressing national affairs in politics. But their exchanges revealed a whole lot about each candidate.

Obama hewed to his platform in declaring, “But what I ultimately believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision.” McCain, likewise, spoke of a “culture of life” and declared himself “proudly pro-life.” After McCain tried to stymie Obama by bringing up a couple of “present” votes in the Illinois legislature, Obama explained them away easily.

“With respect to partial-birth abortion, I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life, and this [bill for which Obama voted ‘present’] did not contain that exception.” He went on to say that he hopes the divergent viewpoints on abortion can be “reconciled.”

Senator McCain, rather than joining his opponent in exploring this spirit of reconciliation, attacked Obama for being well-spoken: “Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He’s health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That’s the extreme pro-abortion position: quote, ‘health.’” John McCain’s statement is breathtaking in its utter disregard for women’s health and right to choose. That’s right, Senator McCain, when you start guaranteeing exceptions for the “health” or “safety” of the mother, who knows what kind of guaranteed rights these women will want next.

The final topic of the night was education: Obama is for early childhood education initiatives like Head Start, offer teachers “higher pay” and “give them more professional development and support in exchange for higher standards and accountability.” I find this a little alarming because it seems to open the door for merit pay and testing, but he’s spoken against these two trends in the past, so I remain hopeful that Barack Obama will be an education-friendly President.

But McCain is even more alarming in his educational priorities (he’s for vouchers, hard) and his disdain for Head Start: “By the third grade many times children who were in the Head Start program aren’t any better off than the others.” In fact, a number of studies have been done over the past 40 years or so since Head Start was introduced, and the results have been mixed: in some cases, little discernible benefit can be found when comparing students who attended Head Start with those who did not. But: these studies are notoriously difficult to place methodological controls on, making their results less valid in measuring benefits and less reliable in predicting future benefits. In addition, there have been more than a few studies that suggest the benefits of Head Start participation are very real, in both the short- and long-term: vocabulary, phonemic awareness, self-esteem, healthful living, community awareness, and critical thinking have been shown to benefit in many children from Head Start programs. With a cavalier wave of the hand, John McCain made the chronically underfunded and underappreciated program seem like an utter failure and complete waste of resources.

It was in Barack Obama’s closing statement that I think he connected best with the independent and moderate Democrat voters he needs to win this election: “We need fundamental change in this country, and that’s what I’d like to bring. … But it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be quick. It is going to be requiring all of us—Democrats, Republicans, independents—to come together and to renew a spirit of sacrifice and service and responsibility. I’m absolutely convinced we can do it. I would ask for your vote, and I promise you that if you give me the extraordinary honor of serving as your President, I will work every single day, tirelessly, on your behalf and on the behalf of the future of our children.”

In eighteen days, we’ll see if the electorate will give him that chance.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's "Town Hall" Presidential Debate Analysis for 7 October 2008

My friends,

[a phrase I’m hereby retiring because it’s a gratingly ingratiating verbal tic of John McCain’s]

I haven’t written about the presidential election for some weeks (since the “Moose Shootin’ Mama” post, which just about depleted my life-force). Over all, I have to say I’m just goddamned sick of it all: the plans, the surrogates, the smears, the ads, the interviews, the debates, the pundits, the polls. What else is there really to learn about either of these candidates? I am flabbergasted at the notion that there are undecided voters left at all. I’d just like to see the election take place tomorrow and end this foolishness already.

All that said, I’ve watched all three debates thus far and will watch the fourth, as my political junkie-hood cannot remain unfed for long.

I don’t have much to say about the first two debates, especially given that so much has already been written and discussed about them. In the initial presidential debate, I thought Barack Obama acquitted himself very well, and that John McCain came off as a seething, petulant pee-pee-pants when challenged on his falsehoods; I also found it troubling that he seemed unable (or unwilling) to look his opponent in the eye when the ineffectual moderator Jim Lehrer tried to get the two to interact.

The Biden-Palin vice-presidential debate was such a farce that I can scarcely comment. It was like watching an infomercial for Mary Kay Cosmetics and C-SPAN coverage of a Senate debate on split-screen coverage. Sarah Palin’s relentlessly, manically folksy verbal tics (“bless their hearts,” “you betcha,” “Joe Six-Pack,” “shout-out,” ad nauseam) and the fact that she—brazenly, admittedly—refused to actually answer most of the questions asked of her just proved that she is incapable of leadership or nimble thought. Listening to her parrot the party line that had been drilled into her—and in that jarring, customer-service-clerk-at-a-Wasilla-Wal-Mart voice—was almost literally too much for me to stand.

I found tonight’s debate a little more interesting, though, and despite the fact that it was not all that “town-hall-y” at all, I’ll share some thoughts.

Barack Obama scored some points right away by noting that AIG executives (my former employer, again making me proud) had spent $440,000 on an extravagant junket after the company was “bailed out” by the US government, and calling for these executives to be fired. John McCain’s response was to try and ply the slimy trade of tying Obama to Fannie Mae (or was it Freddie Mac? Who can tell the difference?) in terms of fundraising and lobbying.

It was here—early on—that I feel Barack Obama asserted his control over the debate, and may have established himself as the winner. He answered the question that had been posed by an audience member, and then said, “And I’ve just got to correct Senator McCain’s history, not surprisingly.” He answered the F.M. charge (see? easier) effortlessly by alluding to McCain’s record of deregulation, then said, “But you’re not interested in hearing a couple of politicians pointing fingers at one another; you want to hear how the economic realities are going to affect your lives.”

[A note about quotations: these are based upon my fevered jottings during the debate—I haven’t examined a transcript—and are accurate in spirit if not in precise wording.]

What Barack Obama was able to do there was to make John McCain look desperate—like a candidate who would say anything to get elected, even distort the truth. Then he placed himself (but not McCain) above the political fray, positioning himself as the one candidate who wants to move beyond dirty politics and personal attacks. It was an absolute masterstroke.

The other aspect of Obama’s debating prowess I felt was especially strong tonight was his anticipation of McCain’s rebuttal arguments and casual decimation thereof.

John McCain seemed halting and awkward during the debate, and I think he continued to come off as erratic and inauthentic, which is painfully apparent to American voters. Maybe at one time, and in some situations, he was truly a “maverick”; but now, he seems unmoored and at the whim of political efficacy. As Gertrude Stein once observed about Los Angeles (but I think applies here in describing the candidate): “There’s no there there.”

McCain mentioned some sort of “pork barrel” earmark that Barack Obama apparently secured for his home district—a $3 million overhead projector for a planetarium in Chicago. I don’t know the full story here, but I think most people realize that politicians are elected to serve the best interests of their constituents—and they’ve learned not to trust McCain’s every word, so I’d wonder if this would truly fall under the umbrella of “wasteful” spending. The grizzly bear study McCain referenced in the first debate, for example, has come back to (sorry for the pun, but you’re welcome for the image) bite him in the ass: it turns out McCain voted for the study his own damn self. Finally, I just wonder if this is really going to resonate with the American people?

When asked what sacrifices each candidate would ask the American people to make in addressing the country’s problems, Barack Obama had a brilliant response: he said he wouldn’t tell the American people to “go shopping,” as GWB did after 9/11, but would instead ask the American people to look for ways to conserve energy and to seek volunteering opportunities, expanding programs like the Peace Corps.

Throughout the debate, I noticed that Obama stepped on the red lights—he exceeded time limits and the agreed-upon debate rules to get his points across. I applaud his tactics in taking control of the debate; unlike Sarah Palin, who undermined the rules and refused to respond to the questions at all, Obama used his overages to expound upon his ideas and debunk the allegations slung by McCain.

A few notes about McCain's gaffes/falsehoods: he again (falsely) claimed that he "suspended" his campaign to address the financial crisis, and referred to Barack Obama as "that one," as in, "you'd never know who voted for it--that one," about an energy bill.  "And you know he voted against it?  Me," he added with a shit-eating grin.  I'm not going to say "that one" was racist, but it at the very least revealed an irritable and dismissive temperament.

John McCain said that trying to define Obama’s tax plan is like trying to “nail Jell-O to the wall” in that Obama’s proposals keep changing. Here we go with the charming idioms again. (Note to self: try nailing actual Jell-O to an actual wall. I don’t think it would be as impossible as the idiom suggests, particularly if it is nice and firm.) McCain keeps insisting that Obama will raise taxes on all kinds of people (including 50% of small businesses) despite the inconvenience that the facts belie this notion. It’s the politics of fear: the big government, big spending liberal will take money out of your pockets. Meanwhile, the runaway spending of the Bush administration (defense contractors, mercenaries, in Iraq, the war itself, the bailouts, and on and on) has saddled the nation with its largest-ever deficit. McCain says, “Let’s not raise anybody’s taxes,” when any sane person knows it’s just not possible to do that and pay the country’s bills. Obama’s rejoinder—“The Straight Talk Express lost a wheel on that one”—had me cheering. In point of fact, Barack Obama’s tax plan calls for cuts to be enacted for 95% of Americans.

In terms of rhetorical strength, Obama effectively tainted McCain with the tang of the Bush administration’s policies, successfully linking the two at least three separate times.

Let me go back to John McCain’s demeanor for a moment. While Obama is answering questions, McCain is wandering around the stage, fidgeting, and even once or twice gesturing to someone offstage, doddering around distractingly. When McCain is speaking, Obama sits quietly. The contrast is striking.

Random observation: both McCain and Obama are left-handed. (The next President would be the eighth lefty—though the number is disputed—to hold the office, and the first since Bill Clinton.) Disclosure: I am left-handed, and once owned a pin that read, “Kiss Me, I’m Left-Handed.” I wore it to school at least once when I was in elementary school. True story: no one did.

McCain just said, “our wonderful Ronald Reagan.” I find that troubling and creepy and weird.

A significant contrast between the two candidates—and one that I think needs to be examined more closely by Americans who have a knee-jerk aversion to “liberal” policies—is the role of government in our lives. It emerged during a discussion of the candidates’ health care plans. According to John McCain (and Palin, in her debate), the government is a wasteful, soul-sucking, inept behemoth that intrudes into people’s lives. Barack Obama (rightly, I think) looks at government as an instrument of the people’s will: it is set up (on the local, state, and national levels) to carry out needed projects, to protect its citizens, to assist them in myriad ways, and to expand their opportunities. It’s admittedly imperfect, and sometimes bureaucratic to the point of gridlock, but it’s necessary, it would seem. Barack Obama said, “It is important for government to crack down on insurance companies that are cheating their customers.” John McCain wants to shrink government—he even said he’d look to eliminate some agencies and initiatives when addressing his first budget.

Obama said that John McCain “believes in deregulation in every circumstance.” Well-stated, and I think it’s proving difficult for him to shake this reputation. If the polls are any indication, McCain’s bungling of the financial crisis—and his shaky record on the economy, dating back to the Keating Five scandal—has not gone unnoticed by potential voters. McCain alleged that Obama will levy fines against individuals and small businesses that do not insure their children and workers, respectively. Obama answered, but as Brokaw went on to the next question, McCain sneered, “Are we going to hear the size of the fine?” He sounded aggressive, huffy, and foolish.

On to foreign policy: McCain said that “America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world” (ask the indigenous peoples of this land, Africans, Mexicans, and the Vietnamese about this, to name just a portion of those who would dispute this claim) and “we are peacekeepers and peacemakers” (peace through war: it’s 1984) the world over. McCain snidely asserted that Obama is not ready to be commander-in-chief: “We don’t have time for on-the-job training, my friend.” He also insists that a “cool hand on the tiller” is needed in deploying troops for humanitarian purposes (and later wraps up by saying we need a “steady hand on the tiller”), using a gardening metaphor that he’s trotted out many times before. I’m left shaking my head: old temper-tantrum McCain is the steady hand on the tiller?!

Obama answered McCain’s charges of inexperience on foreign policy in a brilliant way: “Senator McCain is fond of saying that I don’t understand. It’s true. There are some things I don’t understand: I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment.”

Senator McCain made a reference to his hero, Teddy Roosevelt, who actually said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” quoting an African adage to describe his foreign policy. Tonight, McCain said, “Walk softly … talk softly and carry a big stick. Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.” Huh? Not only did he botch the most famous quote uttered by his hero, but his assertion that Obama speaks “loudly” (Obama allegedly had announced that we were going to invade Pakistan, which he never said) is ridiculous when compared with the bellicose foreign policy of Bush (“bring it on,” anyone?) supported by McCain. Jeez.

A telling exchange: Obama said, “Just a quick follow-up…” and McCain barked, “If we’re gonna have follow-ups, then I’ve gotta have one too…” and there was crosstalk while Brokaw sought to reassure the pouty septuagenarian that he would, indeed, have his own follow-up. What a crotchety prick.

Obama used a mixed metaphor: “Senator McCain says I am green behind the ears…” It’s just “green” (inexperienced) or “wet behind the ears” (i.e., just born, with amniotic fluid still clinging to the fold between the ear and neck). “Green behind the ears” sounds like the first symptom of scurvy.

Obama called McCain on his “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” sung to the tune of “Barbara Ann,” at a rally to illustrate McCain’s “speaking loudly” about foreign policy matters. McCain responded that “I hate to get into this” at all but explained that he’d simply been “joking” with a veteran friend of his when he sang that. Joking about going to war: classy. I think on this one, he just sank himself deeper into his own pit of hawkish bullshit.

I’m losing patience and nearly consciousness by this point, given that I’ve been watching and reading their speeches, their debates, their position papers for what seems like several years now. It’s all flowing together into one great big river of red-white-and-blue verbal vomit. I’m ready for Barack Obama to stop campaigning and start governing.

Speaking of which, McCain just repeated a line from the previous debate and from countless speeches: “When I look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, I see three letters, K, G, and B.” In answering a question about avoiding a renewed Cold War with Russia, isn’t he actually advocating a Cold War? Almost pining away for the Cold War by invoking the KGB?

The final question is a great one: “What don’t you know, and how will you learn it?” apparently from some hippie in New Hampshire. The question had potential, but unfortunately each candidate dodged it (“What I do know is…”) and ended with his stump speech. McCain, after referencing his prisoner-of-war ordeal and military service, said he wants another chance to serve his country.

Over all, I don’t think McCain did anything to reverse the downward spiral of his poll numbers; Obama continued to look unflappable and “presidential.” And I am going to bed, more desperate than ever for this blasted election to happen already (27 days and counting!).

As always, I welcome your own observations and comments…

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Sarah "Moose Shootin' Mama" Palin Election Update

The latest news about Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—aside from the McCain campaign’s continued refusal to make her available for press conferences, as well as her suddenly uncooperative stance regarding the Alaska attorney general’s investigation into the scandal that’s become known as Troopergate—is that she’s got a new campaign song. (It seems the 80s girl-rockers Heart nixed the McCain campaign’s use of “Barracuda”—after Sarah’s nickname—when introducing her at events.)

Palin’s people have chosen a song written by Pat Garrett, local sheepskin merchant and country-western singer/songwriter who lives in Strausstown (in northern Berks County—again, the pride I feel here is almost vomitous) called “Moose Shootin’ Mama.”

I’m going to let that song title—and the fact that it was chosen as the theme song for a major party’s Vice-Presidential candidate—sink in for a moment while before I go on, because when I first read about this, I almost felt I could not continue. You may even want to get up, take a brisk walk, have a snack (no—you might want to head into this post on an empty stomach), and prepare yourself emotionally for the details.

“Moose Shootin’ Mama” will be played at rallies and appearances (and maybe even when she takes the stage for next Thursday’s VP debate, a la the tune accompanying a boxer as he makes his way to the ring) between now and the election—when hopefully it will be consigned to the scrapheap of election-season oddities and Sarah Palin fades back into Alaskan obscurity.

Pat Garrett, who has an amphitheater in Strausstown featuring country music performances, and makes area appearances (including the Pat Garrett Country Jubilee Dinner Show at Riveredge in November, a surefire barnburner), has written “topical” songs in the past, including “The Saddam Stomp” (sample lyrics: “We’re the USA, / and we’re on the way, / it’s gonna be a romp, / you’re gonna get stomped, / a-hey-hey”) and “The Monica Lewinsky Polka” (sample lyrics: “Hey Monica! / Oh Monica! / Put on your blue dress / and get under my desk / mm-hmm!”), among other songs.

[Alright, I made up the lyrics for the Monica song; I haven’t heard it and wasn’t able to find it. But I’m guessing they’re at about that intellectual level, anyway. The Saddam lyrics are all too real, as are the ones below.]

As much as I wish I could go back to the time before I read an article about this song, before I actually heard the thing—several times, because I needed to report it to you fine people—before I heard of Pat Garrett, and indeed, before I had ever heard of Sarah Palin…sadly, it cannot be. The bell cannot be unrung. The cows are out of the barn. Whatever. It’s all over.

Here are the lyrics for “Moose Shootin’ Mama” in their entirety. I swear they are real:

Well she’s a moose shootin’ mama

And she’ll help keep our country free

She’s a moose shootin’ mama

She’ll make a great VP

When she looks you in the eye

You know that girl just don’t lie

She’s a moose shootin’ mama

Yes, Sarah is the girl for me

She’ll help the prez keep our taxes down

And clean up Washington

Get them pork-barrel boys on the run

Man, this is gonna be fun

And it’s drill, baby, drill

Cause we’re paying way too much

Maybe what this country needs is a woman’s touch

It would be almost redundant to bother with a full-on explication of these lyrics, which manage to both praise and condescend paternalistically to the first female Republican Vice-Presidential nominee in history. Equally as redundant would be a point-by-point panning of the pungent awfulness of the song, riddled as it is with tired clichés and forced rhymes. But I can’t help myself: “drill, baby, drill”?! Breathe, Monsoon, breathe.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, check out the video of Pat Garrett’s interview and performance of “Moose Shootin’ Mama” on Fox 29’s “Good Day Philadelphia” or a video which features the song playing across a backdrop of Palin photos.

In other Palin news, I wanted to direct you to a webpage called “The Truth About Sarah Palin,” which has anecdotes, some alarming (and—be warned—kind of disturbing) pictures, as well as a fully annotated list of reasons (from legitimate, reliable sources) one should think twice before voting for a McCain/Palin ticket; it includes such breathtaking revelations as “She promotes aerial hunting of wolves and bears [from airplanes]” who “offered a bounty of $150 for each front leg of freshly killed wolves,” and “As mayor of Wasilla, she made rape victims pay for their own forensic evidence kits.” Damning stuff.

Finally, I have been reading and hearing about folks across this vast country who have “fallen for” Sarah Palin—they watched her speech, they see her interviews, and they’re drawn to her in ways (and for reasons) even they can’t fully explain. They’re turning up at rallies screaming like 11-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, and putting McCain/Palin signs in their yards. Setting aside theories sexist (they quite simply think she’s hot) and conspiratorial (the Republican Party embedded digital mind-control signals in the broadcasted speech), I think it’s important for Democrats—and all of us interested in electoral politics—to find out why.

I know Sarah Palin’s popularity is waning after the “bump” of her speech (and the fact that she was a shiny new object on the national stage)—her “favorable ratings” went down 10 points net in just a few days, perhaps due to the persistent lying of the McCain campaign, and perhaps because some Americans, instead of taking the campaign’s word that she’s “good people,” have stuck their heads up the butcher’s ass and seen the real bull’s … asshole? Head? The bull’s head is a t-bone? (Damn, how does that go?) Anyway, she’s still far more popular than seems reasonable to me, and she could (in my deepest, darkest nightmares, I must admit) tip the election.

And so I ask you this, my dear readers: Why? I’m looking for theories from Obama supporters, undecideds, and the indifferent. I’m also (and especially) looking for any Palin supporters reading this to email me with their reasons. Call up your Aunt Linda, who once supported Hillary Clinton but now supports the McCain/Palin ticket, and ask her: Why? I seriously need to know. Tell me. Make me understand. I’m not kidding. Spill it.

Thank you.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Open Letter to White People re: Barack Obama

National polls conducted since the end of the Republican National Convention have shown John McCain with a lead over Barack Obama as high as four percentage points, but that’s not even the aspect of the poll I found most alarming. Recent polling indicates that “whites” support McCain over Obama at a rate of 55-60% to 35-40% consistently—nearly 20 percentage points in most polls.

Now, I don’t trust polls, particularly in this election that features millions of newly registered voters, comprised of Democrats over Republicans at a rate of 2 to 1; and in which (mostly) young voters who have only cell phones are not being reached by traditional polling methods. But the resurgence of the McCain campaign since adding the Barracuda to the ticket is undeniable—there are (overwhelmingly white) people across this land who have been taken in by Sarah Palin’s “jus’ folks” persona and plainspoken convictions. (I have spent more than a little time over the past two weeks dissecting and directing vitriol toward Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—some have commented that my visceral reaction to her ascendancy has been “obsessive” and even “worrisome”—so I won’t belabor that point. At least not right now. Just prior to the election, I will present my list of reasons why not to vote for John McCain, for the undecided or McCain-leaning voters in my audience.)

And finally, I’m getting a little hinked out about the potential for the so-called Wilder Effect. This refers to the 1989 gubernatorial election in Virginia in which Democrat Douglas Wilder (African American) ran against Republican Marshall Coleman (white): polling in the days before the election indicated that Wilder would win the office comfortably, by at least a 9% margin; he actually won by a half-percent, a result so close it had to be verified by recount. It seems—as the theory runs, supported by post-election polling and studies—some white folks had told pollsters they would vote for Wilder, had walked into the polling place intending to vote for Wilder, but once the curtain closed, they just could not bring themselves to pull the lever for a Black man.

The fact that racism still exists in this country in many forms is as undeniable as the fact that many white people supported and continue to support the candidacy of Barack Obama—not despite or because of his racial heritage, but with indifference to it. But consider this: while current national polling reveals 5% of whites admit they would not vote for Obama because he is Black, exit polling after the Democratic Pennsylvania primary indicated that more than one in six white voters who chose a candidate other than Obama did so because of his race.

All of these factors have me and some other progressives contemplating the unthinkable fewer than 50 days before the election: that John McCain could actually end up winning the goddamned thing. And so, I need to have a chat with the white people who will decide this election—Hispanics are supporting Obama at a rate of 66% or higher, while African-Americans are going for the Democratic ticket at greater than 90% in most polls. Yes, white folks, it wasn’t enough to colonize this land and control its inhabitants, its corporate holdings, its commerce, and its government, its judiciary, for 400 years; now you’re going to be the key factor in deciding whether this nation, whose past is so stained with the wretched heritage of bigotry, will elect its first Black president. Whites, Caucasians, ofays, crackers, honkys: I’m talking to you.

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Dear White People,

It has come to my attention that despite Barack Obama’s historic campaign, despite the millions of people from all walks of life who support him, and despite the fact that Republicans have sent this great country shimmying down the shitpipe over the past seven-plus years, a nearly two-to-one majority of you say you will not be voting for the Democratic ticket in November.

I know some of you are scared. You’ve been worked up into a lather by right-wing talk show hosts, pundits, email chains, and your screwy Uncle Jed, who have all told you of the horrors that will be visited upon the American populace if Barack Obama should be allowed to take the Oath of Office.

My melanin-challenged friends, I need you to take a long, brutally honest look inside yourselves—down “in places you don’t talk about at parties” (Col. Nathan Jessup, USMC, in A Few Good Men)—and figure out just what’s stopping you from supporting Senator Obama. I have strong doubts that it’s because you feel passionate about the candidacy of John McCain, one of the least-compelling candidates I can recall.

It’s OK. Your old pal Monsoon is here to help you deal with the fallout from this potentially unpleasant journey of soul-searching. The reason I’ve contacted you, White America, is to reassure you about some key points that may have found their way into your subconscious “Why I don’t want to vote for that Obama guy” litany—either through your email inbox, impromptu discussions at the grocery store, or even through years of internalized messages about race and racism in America.

• One of the most persistent and pervasive rumors—10% of respondents in most polls report that they believe this is true—is that Barack Hussein Obama is a radical Muslim who took his oath of office as Senator from Illinois on a Koran instead of a Bible. As President, his “geographical allegiance” would be to Mecca—where adherents of Islam direct their prayers—rather than to the country he has been elected to lead. In fact, the rumors suggest, he is only seeking the presidency in the hope of waging global jihad from inside the White House. (Pundits on Fox News and CNN have even referred to him as “Osama” in an unforgivably Freudian slip.) Not that it should really matter in a country that prides itself on being a “melting pot” of diversity, tolerance, and freedom of worship, but Barack Obama has repeatedly stated he’s a Christian, and there is no credible evidence that he attended an Indonesian madrassa (radical Muslim school) as a youth. Do any of you recall the shitstorm that rained down on him for the incendiary comments of his pastor and longtime spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright? I think that pretty much seals it.

• Another tack in the “smearing” of Obama’s spiritual values goes something like this: Actually, he’s not a Muslim or a Christian; he’s an atheist who will infest the world with his godlessness and trample on the rights of Christians. Well, now this is damning, quite literally. In a country where 85%-90% of its citizens believe in God—and 60%-70% believe in angels—it is understandable that folks would want a President who shares their religious values. But it’s a crying shame, too, that Americans can’t look beyond this sort of thing and realize that a lack of religious conviction does not necessarily preclude an individual from exhibiting values like charity, empathy, and fairness. In fact, look at the example of born-again Christian George W. Bush, who has said repeatedly that God “speaks through” him and directs his decisions, particularly those that shore up U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Anyhoo, Barack Obama is an avowed Christian. End of story.

• Barack Obama, according to some widely distributed email chains, is the antichrist. He is the “King of South” (referencing Daniel)—since he is “from” Kenya, which is south of Jerusalem—who shall “shall do as he pleases, exalting himself and making himself greater than any god; he shall utter dreadful blasphemies against the God of gods.” The antichrist is described in John as a man who will have incredible charisma, who will gain the backing of millions of followers through his promises of bringing peace and instilling hope, and who will ultimately establish dominion over the entire world, turning God’s creation into a reeking hell, according to the emails. The Book of Revelation describes the fact that the antichrist will be a Muslim man in his 40s who will rule for 42 months (almost a full Presidential term). He will come mounted on a white female horse (and Obama’s mother had six African husbands—nice misogynistic conflation of a female horse with Obama’s mama, Ann Dunham, who seems to have actually been married just twice, and only once to an African man). Obama “hails from” Chicago, whose zip code is 60606 (see those three sixes?).  In point of fact, the book of Revelation does mention a beast, “[a]nd there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.” But there’s nothing about the “beast” (no mention of antichrist in the New Testament) being and in his 40s of Muslim descent, and nothing about a horse. In addition—oh, screw it. If you truly believe that Barack Obama is the antichrist, then you need more help than I can give you, or indeed than the finest psychiatric facilities can provide. Besides, everyone knows that the real antichrist is the incomparable überstar of stage, screen, and song, David Hasselhoff.

• Another popular argument insists that Barack Obama will favor Blacks over whites in his policy-making. (He’s even been “endorsed” by Louis Farrakhan, for god’s sakes.) If this were true, couldn’t it also be said that a white President, simply by virtue of his skin color, would ignore Black issues? (Kanye West’s observation that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” after the criminally negligent Katrina response notwithstanding, you see the point I’m trying to make.) In point of fact, Barack Obama has been assailed by many in his own community for failing to address issues like civil rights and poverty aggressively enough. The Rev. Jesse Jackson even commented into a “hot mike” that he’d like to “cut [Obama’s] nuts off” for making speeches insisting that Black fathers take responsibility for their children, a fairly conservative viewpoint. To be sure, Barack Obama’s diverse racial heritage makes him uniquely attuned to issues of race—his platform includes promises to strengthen civil rights laws and end racial profiling—but he’s not going to establish a D.C. (“Dark Country,” as Richard Pryor memorably fantasized about the District of Columbia) once elected. Barack Obama has been described as the first “postracial” candidate: he has garnered support for his policies and his abilities, not typically because of, or in spite of, his race. (Even his “race speech” in Philadelphia, perhaps his most famous address, focused on transcending rather than celebrating racial differences.) So: he’s not going to institute mandatory break-dancing lessons on the South Lawn or commission Ludacris to write a new hip-hop National Song "Starz and Stripez (Fo' Yo' Ass)" to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Play dates, scrapbooking bees, and Mary Kay cosmetics demonstrations will continue unabated. Banana Republic will remain open for business and fully stocked with khaki. John Tesh concerts will, unfathomably, go on as scheduled. Your Netflix queue will not be disrupted. Take a deeeeeep breath. There.

• In a related line of thinking, sky-is-falling types suggest that Michelle Obama hates her country, will wield too much power in influencing her husband, flaunts her support of terrorism by fist-bumping her husband, and will invite militant Black Power groups like the Panthers to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. It has been alleged (in footnoted diatribes, increasing their apparent legitimacy) that in her Princeton thesis she wrote that America was founded on “crime and hatred” and that white people are “ineradicably racist.” But thorough checks of her thesis have revealed that neither of these phrases appear anywhere in the thesis. Some think that, like her husband, she will “elevate black over white,” but no evidence exists to suggest this would come to pass. Surely, as I said above, she will advocate for some of the issues—welfare reform, poverty, affordable housing, crime—that disproportionately affect the Black community. But as she would be the first African American First Lady, it would be a squandered opportunity not to address these problems. Finally, regarding Michelle Obama, there’s the matter of her comment in February that “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” Okay, bad choice of words there, admittedly. But she was celebrating the fact that people of all races had come together behind her husband, a step many would have deemed highly unlikely prior to this historic election season.

• Some pundits and even ordinary folks like to paint Obama as an ivory-tower elitist because of his Harvard Education and the fact that his manner seems erudite and even aloof at times. He thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, the argument goes, and he has trouble relating to ordinary folks. (Some of you call him “arrogant” or “uppity,” an observation that has its roots in a time of more overt and limiting racism when Blacks had to stay “in their place.” Surely his affect is not more arrogant than that of Bill Clinton, yet few people have dwelt on his “uppity” manner.) First, to address the elitism: one does not work successfully as a community organizer in the most impoverished sections of Chicago, as Obama did, by being an out-of-touch elitist. Second, Barack Obama will not make you feel stupid—unless you are. Has it occurred to you that our President should be smarter than we are? He’s faced with entrenched, complex problems in every area of his governance—foreign policy, the domestic economy, healthcare, environmental stewardship, and more—so I’d just as soon see a guy with an egghead in the White House. (Not to beat a lame duck, but we’ve just suffered through seven and a half years of being led by a guy who graduated Yale with a C average, with seemingly no natural curiosity, who has led more with his “gut” than with his brain. And look how well that’s turned out.) Finally: the very notion that John McCain, who owns nine houses (so many that he’s lost count) and whose wife, Cindy, is worth at least $100 million, would call Barack Obama an elitist is absurd on its face.

• It has also been circulated that Obama refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and won’t wear a flag pin, and is therefore unpatriotic. He’s in the “blame America first” crowd and will not exhibit the love of country needed to govern correctly. Oh, here we go again with the slippery definitions. Specifically, what is patriotism? If wrapping yourself in the flag and a horrific national tragedy as you send thousands of inadequately equipped young people to die in (and mercilessly bomb) a sovereign nation, then cut veterans’ benefits, is patriotic, then President Bush surely is. If patriotism is standing by idly as more than 2,000 citizens on the Gulf Coast perish due to the ineptness of a grossly underfunded agency headed by one of your cronies, then let’s have a big “God Bless America” for W. again. If it’s patriotic to offer your buddies in big business tax breaks for outsourcing American jobs, moving plants abroad, and polluting the environment, then by all means, let’s hear it for G-Dub. I, on the other hand, prefer to define patriotism in the following way: a true patriot will be eternally vigilant in evaluating and criticizing his government; a true patriot loves his country too much to see it hijacked by the religious right and neo-conservative war-hawks. And finally: the pictures that purport to show Obama refusing to put his hand on his heart during the Pledge were actually snapped during the Anthem, and he’s singing. As for the flag pin, I can’t fathom a more trivial matter with which to concern ourselves during this dire time in America.

• I have heard that his tax plan will raise taxes on all of us to pay for his social programs, driving us into a recession; his economic plan will harm American businesses, hamstring the free market, and cost American jobs. Hello? The economic climate now—under a Republican administration—is not looking too rosy. For a supposed “conservative,” G.W. Bush has played fast and loose with the national treasury in funding a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat to the United States, subsidized companies doing business in Iraq, bailed out two mortgage giants and now the world’s largest insurer (AIG), etc. Obama’s tax plan would actually provide tax relief for 150 million working families and shift the burden onto the super-rich. He would also seek to hold companies accountable for unethical practices, tax windfall profits, protect workers’ rights to organize, raise the minimum wage, crack down on predatory lending (including credit cards), reform bankruptcy laws to favor consumers, and seek to maintain and create jobs in the U.S. by eliminating tax breaks for companies that shift their operations overseas or outsource. And he’d introduce much-needed regulatory controls to curb speculation in the market.

• According to critics, Barack Obama is a peacenik who wants to talk to our enemies without preconditions and will be hesitant to use military force. First of all, listen to the man’s speeches: to my personal dismay, he has said that he actually wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan while leaving Iraq; would attack Iran if necessary; and would consider any unilateral act of aggression against Israel an act against the United States, potentially answering that violence with military might. So while he’s certainly not in the category of a Richard Perle in terms of his hawkishness, he’s not nearly the effete, slow-to-act caricature that’s been painted in some quarters. And finally, just what in happy hell is wrong with talking to our “enemies”—I mean, really giving diplomacy a shot, unlike the charade that ensued in the first months of 2003 before the U.S. invasion of Iraq—before things get really out of hand? It’s not as if sitting and talking is going to make the U.S. look weak; it’s going to make us look prudent and deliberate, two qualities that have been sorely lacking in this country’s foreign policy.

• On a related note, some folks are bothered by the fact that Barack Obama’s candidacy has been embraced by people of all backgrounds living around the world. If people in the Middle East and throughout Europe love him, the “thinking” goes, that means he is going to collude with them in taking down the American system and way of life. Oh, here’s a doozy. His popularity is now a liability? In a recent television ad, John McCain’s campaign even tried to link Obama’s popularity in the U.S. and abroad to “famous just for being famous” figures like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. (How would McCain now explain the crowds who have been flocking to see—and have been forming a cult of personality around—his running mate, Sarah Palin?) You see, I thought it was good to be popular, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Barack Obama’s popularity stems, it seems to me, from a few key characteristics: his elocution, his relative youth, his promise of change, and the fact that his candidacy represents promise and possibility to those, here and abroad, who viewed America as hopelessly racist in its domestic policies and determinedly exceptionalist in its foreign policies.

• Speaking of his youth, many worry that he lacks adequate experience to be Commander-in-Chief; he’s only worked as a community organizer, taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago law school, was elected state senator, and now U.S. Senator. Well—and forgive me from dwelling on the current administration, but I’ve got some emotional brush to clear in purging myself of accumulated anger—we had an experienced guy and he didn’t work out too well. George W. Bush skirted Vietnam, ran some oil companies and then a baseball team into the ground, helped his daddy get elected, spent about five years as Governor of Texas, and then was appointed President of the United States by the Supreme Court in 2000. And what “experience” can really prepare one to be President? It’s the qualities of judgment and wisdom and a sensible, far-sighted approach to governance we can use to ascertain if a person will make a good leader. Barack Obama, in my view, has these qualities.

• While we’re on the subject: some denigrate his speeches as too “smooth” and polished. My friends, I think we could stand a President who is thoughtful and articulate after seven and a half years of cringing at the non-sequiturs of a nannering ninny. We’ve had a President for two terms now who reminded us of a guy we’d like to go bowling with. Now we need somebody who can actually process thoughts into intelligible words and sentences—never mind that he can’t bowl to save his life (rolling a 37 in Altoona back in a March campaign stop). Heck, maybe he’ll even tear out the White House’s bowling alley and install a basketball court when he wins. (Oh—sorry, white folks. Didn’t mean to scare you there.)

• To some, his lack of bowling prowess—his style was derided in some quarters as “dainty”—proves that he’s out of touch with the common man. Seriously? To me it just proves that he’s fallible. And do you really want a guy to be hitting the lanes for two, three hours each night to hone his skills? Shouldn’t he be reading, studying policy memos, deciding the fate of the free world—shit like that?

• He’s not going to take your guns, as NRA alarmists posit—you’ll still be able to shoot animals and intruders to your heart’s content. But he may take steps that will eventually remove some handguns and assault weapons off the streets of our most dangerous cities and towns—and that’s incontestably a good thing.

• He admitted to using cocaine, marijuana, and drinking alcohol to excess while in high school. Well, la-de-freakin-da. You just described more than half of teenagers nationwide, according to polls, at least with the weed and booze. And at least he admitted it. Jeez. And another thing: Barack Obama is a longtime smoker who has reportedly kicked the habit while on the campaign trail. Now that’s impressive self-discipline.

• It is often alleged that Obama is the “most liberal congressman in the entire U.S. Senate” – according to a study done by the National Review – but (again, to my dismay) this is patently false. His support for the Bush wiretapping bill and his unequivocal support for Israel are just two of many examples that bear this out. And since his days as a community organizer and perhaps even before, Barack Obama has displayed an almost obsessive commitment to building consensus. Indeed, his campaign has drawn record numbers of independents and even Republicans to support him, and there is little reason to speculate that he’ll morph into the spineless, godless liberal bogeyman of Ann Coulter’s worst nightmares.

• And finally, rest easy: Barack Obama will not use his gigantic lips to transport half of the citizens of Cuba to the United States to be granted political asylum. What—what??! Yes, my friends, according to an article in the Reading Eagle that was picked up by some national outlets, this was the brilliant statement made by Adam LaDuca, a senior at Kutztown University—ah, I fairly swell with pride that it’s in Berks County—on his weblog: he has “a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would).” In his defense, LaDuca insulated himself from charges of bigotry with the following caveat: “And man, if sayin’ someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we’re ALL in trouble.” (As we all know, prefacing an utterance with a clarification of its intent is always the most effective way to deflect the truth, a la: “I don’t mean to be racist, but why do Black people talk so damned funny?” or “I’m not a sexist or anything, but why doesn’t Hillary Clinton just go home, put on an apron, and bake me some cookies?”) Anyhoo, LaDuca—who, by the way, in a delicious bit of synergy, was the executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans—was forced to resign his post. LaDuca, you may remember, held an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” when he was president of the College Republicans at Kutztown—at which whites were charged more for cookies than Blacks. What. A. Guy.

Well, white people, I hope you’ve found this a worthwhile enterprise, and that I’ve succeeded in helping you purge some of the ugly misconceptions surrounding the candidacy of the next President of the United States, Barack Obama. (If you felt calm or even inspired when you read that last bit, or even peed a little with joy, then our exercise here has worked. If you felt panic or loathing, or even threw up a little in your mouth, then we’ve still got work to do.) Feel free to send this to your fellow Caucasians across the political spectrum if you think my message will help in their decision-making processes.

Please contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Monsoon

Update

on 2008-09-22 03:18 by Monsoon Martin

An AP/Yahoo! poll suggests that Obama's ofay problem may be even more significant than I posited above.  Though I disagree with the methodology of the study and therefore question both the reliability and validity of its findings, there are some potentially alarming indications here.  One such finding was, "Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice," which could be a game-changer if the election is anywhere near as close as polls suggest.

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Pennsylvania Primary Primer - 22 April 2008

My friends,

The day has come to get out and vote in the Democratic primary for the United States presidency. Our state is center stage—Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are on MSNBC talking about what may happen in Lancaster County, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading area, and how it would affect the chances of either candidate—in a primary for the first time in my memory.

I’ve written about this election before several times in this space, but let me reiterate here and now that I wholeheartedly endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Below are two lists: the first, a list of reasons to vote for Barack Obama; the second, a list of reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton. I have tried to be as succinct and straightforward as possible, and have based my comments on things I have heard and read from reliable sources.

Fifteen Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama

1. He was against the criminal, disastrous Iraq war from the start.

2. He wants to overhaul NAFTA and punish companies that outsource, both of which have damaged the base of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

3. He takes no lobbyist or PAC money; he would be at least less beholden to special interests. I believe he would stand up to corporate bullying and obscene profits in American life.

4. He is not a divisive politician who engages in bickering and backbiting, but a visionary leader who will bring people together.

5. His experience as a community organizer and activist bespeak his connection with the problems of ordinary people and his ability to negotiate in good faith. His election as President, given his diverse background and broad worldview, would immediately raise the dismal status of the U.S. in the eyes of many around the world.

6. His March 18^th speech on race and American life at the National Constitution Center is the most searingly honest and significant discourse on the topic in my lifetime.

7. His favorite TV show was “The Wire” and he would be the first president versed in hip-hop culture; he made a Jay-Z reference in a speech the other day, for god’s sake!

8. He has clear, substantive plans to tackle the problem of global climate change; as today is Earth Day, this should be in the forefront of voters’ minds.

9. He has stated he would create a prison-to-work incentive for former inmates transitioning back into society.

10. His views on education are progressive; he wants to abolish “teach-to-the-test” curricula and opposes vouchers.

11. He opposes death penalty in all but the rarest cases and is a proponent of legislation that makes it easier for innocent death-row inmates to win new trials.

12. He seems to genuinely have a sense of humor; that may seem like an insignificant trait, but I think it’d be pretty damned important if he wins the presidency.

13. He likes (and plays) the sport of basketball instead of being obsessed with tired, wanky pastimes of the rich and powerful like golf.

14. He voted against the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. As a colleague and I were discussing yesterday, he has the courage to disagree with his constituents on some issues rather than simply telling them what he thinks they want to hear. He will not insult the intelligence of the American people by pandering to the lowest common denominator. This is true leadership.

There are plenty of other compelling reasons to vote for Barack Obama, but these stand out for me as I sit here late on Monday night and contemplate the long-awaited primary battle.

If you’re still thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton—after all, you might say, some of the above are also true of her to some extent, notably numbers 8 and 10—I have compiled a list to try and sway your allegiance a bit. Again, all of these are based upon what I have seen or heard from reliable sources about Hillary Clinton.

Fifteen Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton

1. She voted for President Bush’s ill-conceived, ill-fated Iraq War, and has compounded the error by repeatedly reauthorizing funds to fight the war and refusing to acknowledge her error in failing to read the National Intelligence Estimate before her initial vote.

2. She voted for the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 in the hysteria following the 9/11 attacks.

3. She supported Israel’s brutal military assault on civilian targets in Lebanon and Gaza; she has said she would support large-scale U.S. “retaliation” against Iran if it or any of its proxies attacked Israel. And finally, she was the only Democrat to vote for the aggressive Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to authorize unilateral U.S. force against Iran.

4. She opposes the full repeal of the conservative, anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

5. She co-sponsored legislation that would have made it illegal to burn the flag of the United States, wasting precious congressional time on a symbolic issue around which she was pandering to conservatives.

6. She doesn’t seem to have any core convictions; she seemingly believes she is entitled to the presidency and will do anything to get elected. (Sure, this is an opinion. But it’s based upon what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s my weblog.)

7. She has engaged in unrelentingly dirty campaign tactics, seizing on minor gaffes and unrelated issues to obfuscate her own policy and leadership shortcomings; the day before the Pennsylvania primaries, her campaign released a fearmongering attack ad subtly linking Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden.

8. In an interview on “60 Minutes,” when asked whether Obama is a Muslim, she said he was not, then quickly added, “as far as I know.”

9. She lied shamelessly about the “harrowing” Bosnia plane landing in 1996, then lied to cover it up by claiming that her misstatements were out of fatigue rather than admitting they had been orchestrated to inflate the magnitude of her foreign policy experience while First Lady.

10. She served on the Wal-Mart board of directors and there is no evidence she challenged Wal-Mart’s fierce anti-union tactics; she served as a ruthless corporate attorney at the notorious union-busting Rose Law Firm. As a result of this history (and other factors), her populist rhetoric in the current campaign rings rather hollow.

11. She has been a cheerleader for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which has moved the party away from its progressive roots and toward a more centrist, pro-business platform.

12. She was a member of the College Republicans and in some substantive ways, has never left the party.

13. She supports the death penalty, almost without exception.

14. She unconscionably voted against a resolution against using cluster bombs in civilian areas.

15. She is a war hawk, a polarizing figure here and abroad, and has demonstrated a disturbing tendency to respond with indignation and rage when her motives or policies are questioned.

Thanks for listening…now get out and vote!

Monsoon

Monsoon Martin's Analysis of Barack Obama's Philadelphia Speech, 18 March 2008

Analysis of Barack Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, 18 March 2008

Senator Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday was billed as “historic” before a word of it was even uttered, and has received near-unanimous praise since its delivery. I thought it was a very, very good speech with a lot to admire, but there were a few things that trouble me.

[A couple of notes here: first, I invite you to comment on and argue with my ideas here. Second, I’ve added a couple of new features to the weblog, which I’m still figuring out how to use to its fullest potential. You’ll notice that at the very end of each posting are links that read “Email” and “Print”—these will enable you to (you guessed it) easily email to your friends and print out each posting!]

Being an English teacher, I’ll first approach the speech as a work of literature, evaluating its structure, its pacing, its symbolism and recurring themes. Then I’ll try briefly to foresee how the speech might impact the primary election, and how Americans will respond to it.

First, the speech began with a quote. If one of my students had begun a writing piece with a quote—even one that set up the thematic milieu of his speech, as Obama’s did—he or she would have been docked points. But here, it was effective to begin with “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,” because his speech then went on to discuss how “the American experiment” continues to work, sometimes falteringly, towards perfection.

Obama stood in front of six gigantic American flags in the National Constitution Center and romanticized the Constitutional Convention of 1787, whose resultant document was “a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.” Though the setting was so ham-handedly patriotic that it could have come out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film, Obama’s words softened the effect, talking as he did about America as a work in progress—citing protest, struggle, civil war and civil disobedience as part of the great history of perfecting this union. He also pointedly mentioned slavery as one of the Constitution’s—and our nation’s—great failings, and its eventual eradication as one of its great triumphs.

“This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign,” he went on, deftly connecting America’s past struggles—grassroots and governmental—with his own candidacy. “To continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” Obama went on to say that he has such faith in the ability of the American people to make change because of his own story, and went on to cite his oft-mentioned upbringing. “It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one,” he went on, citing the American motto “E pluribus unum.”

He moved then to an appraisal of his own campaign’s success at crossing racial lines and indeed transcending race: “Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country.” Obama lamented several times that commentators, pundits, and media figures seemed to be playing too great a role in determining what the American public is regarding as important in the race. “At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either ‘too black’ or ‘not black enough.’” In the last few weeks, he said, the primary elections have taken a decidedly “divisive” turn in their obsession with race:

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my 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. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

Now he’s obviously referring to the racially charged comments made by Geraldine Ferraro about a week ago and referenced in one of my recent postings. And “purchase reconciliation on the cheap” is one of many examples in this speech of brilliant turns of phrase. (Remember that Obama writes most of his speeches, and reportedly wrote almost every single word of this one; he’s an accomplished wordsmith in addition to being a spellbinding orator.) He also brought up his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as expected.

The words he chose and forcefulness with which he condemned and dismissed Wright’s statements is where I part company with the candidate a bit. He referred to Wright’s comments as expressing a “profoundly distorted view of this country … a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

Oh, Barack. Wright’s views about the culpability of American foreign policy being causally responsible for the September 11^th attacks; his suggestion that the CIA played a role, however distant, in fomenting the devastating crack epidemic in the inner cities; his criticisms of prisons and the justice system—these are views that are shared by plenty of intelligent, rational, clear-thinking individuals in this country and around the world. Granted, these are not mainstream views, but denigrating Wright’s views as “profoundly distorted” leave a very bad taste in my mouth as an Obama supporter.

And his simplistic appraisal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—essentially, that Israel can do no wrong, and Palestinians’ struggles are motivated solely by radical Islamic jihad or intifada—is alarming to me. (I had mentioned such concerns in my endorsement of Obama back at the beginning of February, and he’s shown me nothing to allay those concerns.) He may have scored a few points in distancing himself from rumors of being a Muslim, and attracted the fawning attention of Zionists, but his flip, absolutist summation of this morally and historically complex situation is unacceptable.

Obama got back on track, though, when he expressed a desire to move past a preoccupation with race and build unity in addressing a set of “monumental” problems: “two wars, a terrorist threat, a failing economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.” It’s his inclusion of healthcare and economic concerns that gives me hope that Obama will live up to campaign promises to retool NAFTA, punish companies who outsource workers overseas, pursue serial polluters and predatory lenders, and force the reevaluation of a system that elevates profits above people. (Well, he hasn’t said all that explicitly, but I’m hoping he’ll tackle some of these issues.)

After denouncing (or rejecting, or whatever) Wright’s “distorted” views, Obama then stops short of casting aside his former pastor and mentor altogether. After all, he said, “that isn’t all that I know of the man.” Wright is a reflection of the Black community, Barack insisted, and very much a product of the turbulent era in which he grew up. The Black church, he explains, is misunderstood by many outsiders because of its complex admixture of the contemplative and the exuberant, the holy and the secular: “The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.”

It was this passage that made me fall for Barack Obama all over again. Having studied African American culture for many years, I have often lamented that a lot of folks outside the community fail to grasp the complex forms of expression and variegated interactions inside the Black community. Black churches are houses of worship, yes, but many of them are also places of emotional release, of the struggle for social justice, of crass comparisons and exaggerations, of gossip and aid and tough love and mercy. Those who would dismiss Black churches—and by extension, the Black experience—as simple-minded, repetitive, overenthusiastic or inane are missing the richness and depth that has earned my profoundest respect and sustained my sincerest interest for more than 20 years.

“I can no more disown him,” Obama concluded here about Rev. Wright, “than I can disown the black community. He went on to very skillfully connect Rev. Wright’s ideas to the casual racial slurs of a relative:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Who among us does not have at least one stunningly ignorant distant relative who spouts racial slurs or anti-Semitic rants from time to time? Many of us even have a closer relative—a mother, a father, a sister, a brother-in-law—who is otherwise tolerant and sharp, but who once in a while lets a jaw-dropping homophobic phrase or embarrassing anti-Muslim stereotype slip? (I would not have been—nor am I generally—so forgiving or generous in dealing with racist white folks, but hey, he’s trying to run for President, here…) Speechmaking is all about getting the audience to identify with what the speaker is saying and feeling—where he or she is coming from. It’s an act of empathy, which is one of the most difficult things for a human being to do. I think he accomplished it here.

“These people are a part of me,” Obama stated pointedly—the patriots and the scalawags, the tolerant and the racist, the seekingly intelligent and the willfully ignorant. “And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Rev. Wright and others in his generation have experienced a great depth and breadth of the frustration and anger of the Black experience in this country—“the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through.” He cited school segregation, employment and real estate discrimination, and a “lack of economic opportunity” which all helped to “create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.” (Another beautifully turned phrase.) He made several references to the “anger” and “bitterness” of those years and wrapped up his discussion of Wright’s generation by saying of this anger: “[It] is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

(Small criticism: “among the races” would have been better there, given that we’re not just talking about Black and white, but people of multiple ethnicities and backgrounds who have to work out their differences.)

Next, he moved on to white people, and I think this section has the potential to be the most soundbited and most pounced-upon by conservatives and 527 groups. But I thought it was strong and strikingly honest—like nearly all of the rest of his speech—and will work well for him. “Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,” he said, and I think it’s quite possible that with that one sentence, he may have turned off the switch of racial animus in working whites all around this country. (Alright, maybe it’s not “off”; maybe if we could imagine the simmering and lingering racism of some whites as mood lighting, he may have dimmed it quite a bit right there.)

And he didn’t dismiss this resentment out of hand as merely inarticulate racism that needs to be discarded and buried; he acknowledged that there are legitimate experiences and sources of these feelings: “Politicians routinely expressed fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.” In one passage, he laid the smackdown on George H.W. Bush and his Willie Horton ad; while exposing the sniveling likes of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for the fearmongering half-wits they really are. Bravo, Barack!

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white,” he went on, “I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.” But the path before us provides a clear choice—remain stuck in the past or move together into the future. In this sense, it echoes Martin Luther King’s statement that “we must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Obama illustrated the choice in this way:

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.

“In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. … For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.”

Here I think he’s quite pointedly rejecting the dirty campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton and refusing to join her in the seamy muck of politics as usual in America.

“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.”

What a brilliantly succinct review of American politics over the past 20 years, at the very least.

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.

Obama went on to talk about the importance of addressing three other key issues in addition to education: healthcare, the economy, and ending the war.

The final couple of minutes of his speech, he told a story about a white woman organizing in a predominantly Black South Carolina district for the Obama campaign—a story that nicely illustrated the manner in which people of diverse backgrounds are coming together for real change in this election year, but which ultimately felt shoehorned in and somewhat forced.

But at this point, really, it didn’t matter. He’d already been dazzling, and he regained his stride in his final sentences: “But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two hundred and twenty-one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

Over all, I think Obama’s speech is one of the most important—and searingly honest—speeches about race made in my lifetime. And I think it’s going to be received extremely well by most Democrats and supporters of Obama.

But there are elements that are going to be picked apart and harped on. At one point, Obama seems to admit that he was present in the pews when Reverend Wright made some incendiary statements (though not for the ones being circulated in the videos). Some will jump on this as a contradiction of his earlier statements that he hadn’t been present for Wright’s remarks, and if he had been, he would have confronted him about them afterward. In addition, some of his comments about race—a subject that is rarely talked about openly in this country—may rankle some, particularly those he referenced in the speech as thinking that serious discussions about race are simply an instance of political correctness run amok.

The speech in history it reminds me most of is Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech, in which he urges unity for the sake of saving the union: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It’s a paraphrase of Matthew 12:25, and it’s a powerful and evocative phrase that influence many citizens’ views on the matter and led eventually to the Civil War.

Obama’s speech revived his campaign, solidified his frontrunner status, and likely comforted many “superdelegates” whose votes are ultimately going to decide the nomination. He may still not win Pennsylvania, but I think he’ll win the nomination handily.