Alice Walker & Obama, Spoken Word vid

Alice Walker. This is a wonderful piece, in part addressing "womanism", talking about the complexities of race and gender in America, and endorsing Obama. Choice quote:

"I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me."

Movement in polls
National Gallup poll has Obama above 50% for three days running, and today ten points above Hillary, with 52%-42%. Rasmussen also has Obama above Hillary for three consecutive days, now 47%-42%. Both polls are outside the margin of error. Pundits are suggesting that this means that 1) Obama has gotten past, at least for now, the Rev. Wright controversy; and 2) Hillary's claims about being under sniper fire in Bosnia have hurt her. Recent Pew poll finds that 30% of white Democratic voters see Hillary as "phony."

Movement in Delegates
Looks like Obama's getting a slew of superdelegate endorsements tomorrow--a senator from Minnesota and seven congresspeople from North Carolina. Also, little reported: the second step of the Texas caucuses took place at state senate district conventions. The tallies are still coming in, but it looks like Obama will have a 12 percent lead over Clinton, which means that he will gain 9 more delegates than Clinton, thus surpassing her 4 delegate lead from the primary votes; the upshot is that Obama will win Texas by 5 delegates.

The Pennsylvania Campaign
Bob Casey gave a surprise endorsement to Obama on Friday. Obama began his bus tour, doing small town hall meetings and local establishment visits. He also had a record-breaking crowd at Penn State, with 22,000 people in attendance (photos).

Spoken Word
This is a pretty funny, and moving, piece called "Damn You Barack Obama, You Pretty Mothaf**ker"

Rev. Wright had a letter in the NYTimes a year ago, which sheds some light...

And oh, we still have a long way to go. On the power of smears and ongoing racism among democrats...A new Pew Foundation poll shows that:

"White Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim."

On courting the right-wing media

Just a few interesting tidbits...

1. Strange bedfellows:
Hillary Wins Approval from Architect of Right-wing Conspiracy

Hillary sat for an interview with right-wing magnate, owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Richard Mellon Scaife, who "reassessed" Hillary, and now approves--10 years after he spent 1.8 million to discredit the Clintons.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell praises Fox:

"I think during this entire primary coverage, starting in Iowa and up to the present -- FOX has done the fairest job, and remained the most objective of all the cable networks. You hate both of our candidates. No, I'm only kidding. But you actually have done a very balanced job of reporting the news, and some of the other stations are just caught up with Senator Obama, who is a great guy, but Senator Obama can do no wrong, and Senator Clinton can do no right."

(My take: I guess Rendell wasn't watching those two weeks where Rev Wright was on a non-stop loop, when Fox and its associates worked to smear him with Farrakhan, when they tried to provoke fear by using his middle name, Hussein, when they compared Obama to Hitler, when they asserted that Obama would attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmedinejad, claimed he waffled on immigration and drivers' licenses, claimed he has a "patriotism problem," , claimed that he has "attacked the troops," ..and on and on like that. Not only have these stories been pushed on Fox, but they've been simplistically repeated on CNN and other mainstream media. The idea that Obama has gotten a free ride is ludicrous. Clearly, Hillary has also been put through the grinder by the media, but this notion that he's never been vetted or that the media has never investigated him is baloney.)

2. Another way to do the math
The key statement in this analysis:

"...consider if the race were being projected like on election night, where each candidate is given a percentage of the vote with a certain percent of precincts reporting. In this scenario, Obama has 1408 delegates and Clinton has 1251 with a total of 3250 delegates up for grabs. This is the equivalent of Obama having 53 percent of the vote to Clinton's 47 percent with 82 percent of precincts reporting...for Clinton to overcome that 6 percent lead with only 18 percent of the vote outstanding, she'd have to receive a whopping 27 percent margin in the last 18 percent. She's only achieved a margin that size once--in Arkansas."

Also, you may have noticed that the North Carolina delegation did not endorse en masse. There's varying reports about this, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Fragile Iraq, McCain and Clinton "Gaffes," Clinton and the kitchen sink

Sober news on Iraq
Violence increases between US and Shiite militia. Truce looks increasingly fragile.
It hasn't been reported much in the news, but one of the significant reasons that violence declined in Iraq over the last year was not only that we escalated the number of troops, but that Moqtada al Sadr declared a ceasefire. That ceasefire is the reason we see fewer bodies in the street, but now it looks like the ceasefire is fraying.

The Seriousness of the McCain "Gaffe"
Bill Maher remarks on McCain, his dumb remarks confusing Shia and Sunni, and his warrior mentality

Clinton under fire
Hillary says she "misspoke" about bosnia (fleeing from sniper fire).
The mainstream media pick up the story.
Did she lie, or misremember? Good commentary about Hillary and her miscalibrated "threat perception"

Hillary: Wright would not have been my pastor
All of a sudden, after not touching the story, Hillary decides today is a good day to resurrect the Rev. Wright controversy. To a seriously conservative newspaper, nonetheless--the one that accused her of murdering Vince Foster, owned by Richard Mellon Scaife

Other lovely comments from the Clinton Campaign
Carville defends calling Bill Richardson "Judas" for his disloyalty to Hillary:
Hillary claims "pledged delegates" aren't really pledged
Clinton finance committee member compares Rev. Wright to David Duke

Five Years of War, Truthiness, and Polls

Five Years.
OK. First for the horrendous fact that we've lost 4,000 soldiers in the war. Five years of it. And many thousands more, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis killed in the last five years in this war. More than 2/3 of Americans think going to war in Iraq was not worth it. And Dick Cheney says, "So?"

On Seeing the Consequences of War.
I saw an excerpt of and discussion about a new documentary called "Body of War" last night on Bill Moyers Journal. It looks to be exceptional--covering the struggles of a severely disabled Iraqi vet as he emerges as a political activist against the war. You can learn about it here.

Now...onto the election...
Last week's good news: Richardson endorses Obama, calls him a "once-in-a-lifetime leader"

Polls:

A Saturday Gallup poll shows Obama retaking lead over Clinton

They also find a striking gap in the public's perception of Obama and Clinton on the issues of honesty and trustworthiness.

Hillary's Truthiness:
Hillary has been saying that Obama had never been truly vetted by the media the way she has...but it turns out that she hasn't been vetted enough...

--her claim that she was against NAFTA from the beginning is now considered "ludicrous"
--her claim (trying to burnish her foreign policy experience) that her trip to Bosnia came under sniper fire is now shown to be outright fabrication, and a new little video showing this example of "truthiness" can be seen here.

The Progressive Fight
Here's a good essay about Obama and the fight for progressive change: "fighting fire with water"

Racism...
And, only for those with strong stomachs: a reminder about the kind of racism we're fighting, about the kind of change we want to see...

The Race Speech, Rev. Wright effect

Back again, with all the news you didn't have time to read :)

[PASSPORT since i first wrote this, news has broken that govt workers have illegallyobama; this apparently was a big scandal when something similar happened to bill clinton. while i am of course outraged and appalled, i also smell a good opportunity to talk about government spying, the FISA issue, and privacy concerns!]

Viral Politics, in the good sense.
First, let me say that it's ASTOUNDING that Obama's speech on race has been watched on YouTube close to 2.5 million times (I'm adding the two counts of the full text speech plus all the views of the excerpts...but the full speech has been watched 2.3 million times). Just for perspective...the clips of Rev. Wright vary from 15,000 to 125,000 views. Viral video, baby! WOOT! That's pretty amazing, given it's a 37 minute sociopolitical speech!

Polls since the Wright issue broke.
So you might be wondering how much of a hit Barack has taken over the whole Rev. Wright controversy. Right now, it looks from some surveys that he has been affected. But we are going to get a bunch of surveys tomorrow that will show how people have reacted to the Tues speech (many national surveys have a sample over three or four days, so you have to wait for the lag time!). Here's one interesting survey out tonight from FOX, showing that 57% do not think Obama shares Wright's views. And that's a FOX survey, so you can add some points to that for sure. Another interesting look at the responses in the swing states, esp. among independents and republicans, can be found here.

Moving on...to the important stuff
Ok, so Obama gave another speech today on Iraq, while campaigning in West Virginia...this time tying it to the economy. Here's a choice passage: been accessing the passport file of

"Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia. For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students. We could be fighting to put the American dream within reach for every American – by giving tax breaks to working families, offering relief to struggling homeowners, reversing President Bush's cuts to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and protecting Social Security today, tomorrow, and forever. That's what we could be doing instead of fighting this war."

More on Rev. Wright:
You might be wondering, are those clips of Rev Wright the only things he ever said anywhere at any time? Good question! Here's some vid of other Wright sermons

Reactions to Race Speech, McCain's madcap mixups of Al Queda, Sunni and Shia

It's been a very busy coupla days, so here's just a few highlights. I have to say, some of the personal stories about people's reactions to Obama's speech yesterday have been amazing. I hope you enjoy.

On the Race Speech

By now, I'm sure most of you have read or watched Obama's speech on race in America, but if you haven't yet had the chance, you can watch it and read it here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords/

In the blogs I read, there have been a number of interesting, and moving, commentaries

• Mainstream Editorials
• Blog and Journal reactions
• Author, with multiracial family, on the reaction of his white mother
• On Watching Obama with Strangers
• On Obama's Fearlessness, crossing the "Swiftboat Threshold"
• On reading the reaction of the right wing
  

The Iraq Speech
In all the hoopla, you may not have read or heard about Obama's speech today on Iraq. He went after McCain:

"Just yesterday, we heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades."

And then Clinton and McCain:

"Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a "Commander in Chief test" - not because of the judgments they've made, but because of the years they've spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country - a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington's judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.

"It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that's a contest that he'll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that's what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party - because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past. Nowhere is that break more badly needed than in Iraq."

The McCain "Gaffe"
Someone today astutely commented that if you make the same mistake three times in two days, even after being corrected at the microphone in front of the press, that it isn't a "gaffe" but a talking point. McCain has repeatedly stated that Iran is training Al Queda, and has mixed up Sunni and Shia, to boot.

Hillary's Records
The New York Times has taken the first crack at the newly released daily schedules from Hillary's tenure as First Lady, and states that the records do not support her claims to experience in critical areas, and that more than 4,400 pages are redacted.

"The documents offer no support for her claims, made during the presidential campaign, that she helped to negotiate the Irish peace accords or facilitated the flow of refugees in the Balkans. Neither is there evidence in them to back up her claim that she helped pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, the first legislation Mr. Clinton signed as president. The legislation, sponsored by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, sailed through Congress and landed on Mr. Clinton's desk 10 days after he was inaugurated. Indeed, on the day Mr. Clinton signed the bill into law, Feb. 5, 1993, there is no indication on that day's calendar that she attended."

Kos Makes Things Clear

Just going to cut and paste Kos on this one:

Clinton is losing.

Let's count the ways that Obama is winning:

1.) Pledged Delegates: (Using AP's numbers, with Obama's count in parenthesis)

Obama: 1,390 (1,411)
Clinton: 1,248 (1,250)

2.) Popular vote: I updated this post with results from Mississippi. I took out the Texas caucuses just to give this the best pro-Clinton spin possible, though I still think the caucuses are a separate contest and need to be accounted for. (Obama ended up winning Mississippi by over 100,000 votes.)

Obama: 13,614,204
Clinton: 12,801,153

3.) Primaries Won: There are 37 total primary contests. All Obama has to do is win three more and he notches the lead in these contests. He can do that easily with just three out of Montana, South Dakota, Oregon, Indiana, and North Carolina.

Obama: 16
Clinton: 12

4.) Caucuses Won

Obama: 14
Clinton: 3

5.) Overall contests Won: It's a 2-1 Obama advantage (includes territories and Democrats Abroad).

Obama: 30
Clinton: 15

6.) Red and Blue States Won (including DC, not including territories or Democrats Abroad):

Obama: 16 Red, 11 Blue
Clinton: 8 Red, 6 Blue

8.) Money Raised (through February)

Obama: $168 million
Clinton: $140 million

So that leaves the Clinton campaign with what, exactly? Big states! Big states! Big states! I addressed that one yesterday.

Team Clinton has nothing except schemes of coup by super delegate, which they apparently think they can do by insulting entire Democratic constituencies and most of our nation's states.

But really, what else do they have? Their campaign is losing by every metric possible.

Ferraro, the Substance of Obama, and Delegate Updates

OK--the news moves too fast for a busy girl to keep up with. This edition includes "no spitzer, none of the time"

Ferraro, Clinton, and the Substance of Obama:
You probably have all heard now about the comments made, and re-made, by Geraldine Ferraro, where she stated that "Obama wouldn't be where he is today if he was white." She claimed that protestations about her remarks were "attacks" on her "because she's white." Now she's demanding an apology from Obama's camp.

I've been absolutely shocked by this: she has tried to say that she was celebrating his popularity with black voters, but I see it as part of a larger pattern wherein Clinton and her surrogates have painted Obama as an empty suit--only this time, Ferraro is adding insult to injury by ALSO activating white resentment about affirmative action.

Clinton has said whole campaign is based on "a speech he gave in 2002," her camp has accused Obama of "copying" her policy papers, she's painted him as naive and young (remember Bill Clinton was 46 when elected...as Obama is now). And of course, her constant criticisms of him as "speeches, not solutions," style not substance, talk not action...you get the point.

For Hillary to allow this kind of racial wedge to be played, then, belatedly, to call it "regrettable," is abhorrent. Only yesterday, finally, when addressing a crowd of 200 representatives from Black newspapers, did she apologize and say she "repudiated" Ferraro's comments--but even that was weak. On Bill Clinton's comments in S. Carolina, equating Obama with Jesse Jackson: "You know I am sorry if anyone was offended." And on Ferraro? Here's her comments (note the strong stance, the leadership she displays ): "I certainly do repudiate [Ferraro's comment] and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn't speak for the campaign, she doesn't speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee."

All I can say is: I expect much more. I expect much more leadership on this issue from the leaders of the Democratic Party, Hillary included. And, unfortunately, I expect much more crap to come from Ferraro, since Clinton did not really put this to rest. Look at Ferraro's resignation: "I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen."

Unfortunately, all we've heard is from our national leadership. Keith Olbermann issued one of his "Special Comments" on the state of play in the Clinton campaign, but that's the most we've heard from anyone with a megaphone. Besides Obama.

In other news:

Obama calls Clinton out on faulty logic, cynical gamesmanship: this response to Hillary's suggestion that Obama be his VP was brilliant, but lost in the swirl of racialized crap.

Analysis of Obama's "Bad Week" (remember all the way back to March 4?) shows a net gain in delegates.

People play with colors! Here's a county by county map, with Obama in blue and Clinton in green (although i would take exception with including florida and michigan as is done here)

Clinton working to "poach" delegates. Hillary recently coined a new phrase "caucus delegates" as if they are somehow different than "primary delegates." This may be why: her campaign, it appears in some places, is trying to get caucus voters to change their vote... And this report indicates that they may try to initiate legal action regarding the Texas caucus.

Clinton Won't Play by the Rules. More unbelievable than "poaching," however, are Hillary's recent claims that the Michigan vote was a fair vote, even though she recognized earlier that Michigan wouldn't be counted, and even though Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot: now, she's saying this about the Florida and Michigan primaries: "The results of those primaries were fair and they should be honored." Yet the pledge states that none of the candidates will "participate" in those primaries--wouldn't claiming those votes in your column count as participating?

and let's give O'bama a little luck of the Irish!