Politics Politics

It looks like quite a few people are still very interested in what our soon-to-be president and his wife have to say.

He's still provoking tremendous excitement across the globe, including among African-descendant people in Latin America (thanks, HBR!), and in particular in Brazil (from left, singer Toni Garrido, actor and model Walter Rosa, actor and MC André Ramiro, and actor Rocco Pitanga, photo: João Laet, Agência O Dia). Though black and brown French people and Britons are energized by Obama's victory, France's lone black governmental minister remains pessimistic that a French Obama is possible with the current political crowd. Yet his French enthusiasts have formed committees to discuss and push for change, and have the support of France's first lady, Carla Bruni Sarkozy. In the UK, it's not likely anytime soon, given the political system and comparatively smaller black and brown populations, but some believe the electorate would be ready.

There's a subset in this country, however, who aren't happy at all at the election results (just as they weren't by the very prospect of Obama's candidacy or victory), and are acting out in horrid ways. It's imperative that while we respect people's free speech rights, the authorities do not write off as "knuckleheads" or "aspirational," that is, take lightly the threats against the president or anyone else, or dismiss violent or deadly acts by these folks. As the Oklahoma City bombing 13 years ago demonstrated, domestic terrorists can be as great a threat and as deadly as foreign ones.

We're hardly in a post-racial world; this is part of what poet Brian Gilmore eloquently argues in his Bookforum review of historian David R. Roediger's How Race Survived U.S. History and law professor and my college classmate Ariela J. Gross's What Blood Won’t Tell, books that Brian says "chart the ongoing legacy of the legal apartheid system in the United States." Not that I need to say this, but no one should be celebrating the end of "race" or racism, two terms that unfortunately that often elided into one another to efface the latter and misrepresent the former.

Back to President Elect Obama, I'm trying not to focus too much on the ideological-political casts of his appointees (I've been disappointed by some of the picks, like Rahm Emanuel, and heartened by others, like Mona Sutphen), or get too caught up in the drama involving any mention of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's role in the new administration. Certainly I think she'd be an excellent Secretary of State, or really anything he appointed her too, because she's brilliant and dogged to the point at times of ruthlessness, but then several of the people whose names have been bandied about for this post could serve with distinction. The real issue as I see it is would this post be enough for Hillary? Then again, short of the presidency, what would a comparable platform? One person he pray he does not pick is Colin Powell, has irrevocably disgraced himself through his active participation in putting us in Iraq. His endorsement of Obama was great, but that was more about his own atonement. Another, and this goes without saying of course, is John McCain--President Obama, just say no, seriously. With regard to his larger staffing process, I sincerely hope he is considering many more new faces and fewer of the Clintonistas, and lots of Latinos and Asian Americans, since he won among both groups overwhelmingly. There's a reason the vote totals in California, New York, Illinois, New Mexico, and other states weren't close at all.... His first two choices for the US Supreme Court should be Elena Kagan and Harold Hongju Koh. Sí se puede!

I'm glad to see that it's increasingly unlikely that the longest-serving Republican Senator, now a convicted felon, will not be heading back to Washington. This means no Palin appointee, including herself, and a moderate-progressive Democrat, Mark Begich, will be holding the junior Alaska seat for at least the next 6 years. Al Franken remains in limbo, though the way things are looking incumbent Norm Coleman could be facing not just a recount but a judge and jury fairly soon. I keep getting emails from Jim Martin's campaign about the runoff in Georgia; the voting begins today.

The Clintons-Macbeths

In response to some of the recent events in the Democratic primary campaign, I sent the following quotes to a dear friend of mine, a retired married woman who lives on the East Coast and is supporting Barack Obama's candidacy. Back in the 1990s, I first jokingly raised the analogy of the Clintons and the Macbeths; I don't claim any originality for it since I would imagine Shakespearean scholars, students and enthusiasts could find analogies for almost anyone and anything in the rich trove of his collected works. Part of what motivated it was an annoyance at something the Clintons, whom I admire but also consider to be one of the most ruthless duos on the political horizon, had done, and part of it was my ongoing fascination with Shakespeare's play, whose drama, structure and language never fail to enthrall me. (I feel the same way about Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Richard II, and a number of his other works.)

I still would argue that mapping the Shakespearean principals onto the junior Senator and her husband, the former President, is problematic, but I also think that one could very well pull all sorts of passages out of that place to describe some of their (behavior). So here goes (the act and scene are given in parentheses at the end of each quote):

Lady Macbeth:
(Speaking to Macbeth/Bill, but also speaking of her own ambition)
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great Glamis,
That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round. (1.5)

Lady Macbeth:
(Calling for the courage to carry out the drugging, so that Macbeth/Bill may do their enemies in)
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!' (1.5)

Lady Macbeth:
(After reading a letter/email from Macbeth/Bill, exciting her to visions of power)
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant. (1.5)

Lady Macbeth:
(Talking to Macbeth/Bill about what they'll do to poor Duncan/Obama or anyone else who ends up in their lair)
O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. He that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. (1.5)

Lady Macbeth:
(Her sheer ruthlessness, laid bare)
Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me. (1.5)

Macbeth:
(Her ambivalent husband, describing his feelings about the matter)
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. ...
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. (1.7)

Lady Macbeth:
(Speaking to Macbeth/Bill, urging him, as she will, to go on)
We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail. (1.7)

Lady Macbeth:
(Her general principle)
Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (3.2)

Now after reading those excerpts, don't you want to go see the play performed? Admit it!

Obama Sweep + Dems Kowtow + Australia Apologizes + Ronald K. Brown's Moves

Barack Obama (at right, USA Today, Rick Bowmer, AP) swept all three--the Potomac--primaries today, but most incredible, just incredible to me, was the Obama blowout in Virginia today. It wasn't a caucus, the state has a lower percentage of Black voters than some of the other Southern states (Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, etc.) that he's won, and while it has trended purple, Virginia is still quite conservative. I know this personally from the years we lived there.

Hillary Clinton's campaign thought she had a chance in the Old Dominion. Yet Obama won Virginia by a huge margin, 63%-37%, basically winning in every region (Northern Virginia, the Tidewater, the Blue Ridge mountains, the border counties with North Carolina, the southeast coastal areas) except the southwest, and also posted these numbers, according to the NBC exit polls: he won among Democrats 59-41, he won among independents 66-33, he won among Republicans (!) voting in the Democratic primary 70-26. He won among White male voters 55%-45%, among Black voters 90%-10%, and among Latinos 55%-45%. Among White women, he lost to Hillary Clinton 42%-58%.

But most remarkably, he received 274,000 more votes than her, and combined, they outpolled all the Republicans on the ballot (McCain and Huckabee, as well as Ron Paul, and the ghosts of Romney, Thompson, Giuliani, etc.) by 479,230 votes. That is nearly half a million more votes, or about the margin by which Gore defeated W in 2000. I think this bodes very well for Obama, very well for the Democrats in general, and ill for McCain, the presumptive nominee, and whomever he picks as his running mate. McCain in fact received yet another scare from Huckabee. Voters are obviously both energized and fed up, and these higher Democratic vote totals (save for Alabama and Georgia, I believe), both in the primaries and in the caucuses, are a harbinger of November's results.

But let me not stint Maryland or DC. In Maryland, as I type this entry (about 75% of the precincts are reporting), Obama is winning by a 60%-37% margin over Clinton, who alone has received nearly as many votes (220,000 vs. 225,000) as all the Republicans combined; Obama is ahead with about 359,700 by himself. One of the best stories out of Maryland is the victory of progressive Democrat Donna Edwards over Albert Wynn, a teddy bearish corporate sellout who had repeatedly voted against his constituents' interests again and again (cf. Bankruptcy Bill, etc.). Nearly two years ago I highlighted her primary run against Wynn, which she lost, but thanks to online supporters, she was again able to compete, and she did it! The House will have won less DINO and one more Democrat whose platform directly addresses the needs and dreams of her constituents.

In DC, Obama defeated Clinton 75% to 24%. I think it's fair to say this was the least surprising outcome of all.

These vote margins have given Obama enough delegates to tie or pass Clinton, depending upon who's counting/how they're counted. The next state up is Wisconsin, which Obama should win, and then it's on to Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the first two of which Clinton is banking on. But I'll save that discussion for another day. For now, once again, congratulations Senator Obama!

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Now the bad news: today the Democratic-controlled US Senate capitulated (again) to George W. and Dick Cheney, and voted 68-29 to give the telecommunications industry retroactive immunity as part of a bill vesting the president with expanding powers to spy on American citizens.

(W spokesdissembler Dana Perino even accidentally admitted today that the telecom companies spied on US citizens. Because they were "patriotic.")

It also shuts down pending lawsuits against the telecoms, possibly ensuring that we might never learn what the W administration was up to with its spying, not only after the September 11, 2001 attacks, but, as a trial involving former Qwest executive Joseph Nacchio has shown, as early as a few weeks after W and Cheney took office. In fact, Helen Thomas's question about this earlier spying led to Perino's unplanned candor. (And we should never forget the dramatic Joseph Comey testimony about the administration's attempts to force John Ashcroft, on his sickbed, to sign off on activities so troubling that he refused to do so, and which Comey also refused to do.)

One of the chief toadies this time was Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, who all but turned procedural back flips to deny the advancement of the Justice Committee bill, which did not include telecom amnesty was scrapped in favor of the Intelligence Committee bill, which gave the telecoms everything they wanted, and to ensure that any Democratic challenges, led primarily by former presidential candidate Chris Dodd and Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, were defeated. The other was the pusillanimous Jay Rockefeller, who, assuming the role of a ventriloquist's dummy, repeatedly recited RNC and Bush administration propaganda on the floor of the Senate, which was apparently persuasive enough (or cover, either way) for Democrats to join in on the "surrender to terror" and give Bush a huge valentine. This bill, as Glenn Greenwald noted today, is so outrageous that it actually empowers Bush the right to ignore its statutory effects if he so deems it necessary.

The Republicans, unsurprisingly, voted in Bush-enabling lockstep (and yes, that includes those "moderates" like John Sununu and Olympia Snowe), as they have done since 2001, while the Democrats could only muster 29 votes in opposition. Nominally, of course, they control the Senate; in reality, they remain marionettes for corporate lobbyists and the W Gang to run ragged as they see fit. Barack Obama voted no, as did his fellow Illinoisan, Dick Durbin, both of New Jersey's Senators, and the handful of other consistently liberal members of the pathetic, phantom majority (Dodd, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, Murray, Cantwell, Boxer, Brown, etc.).

Hillary Clinton did not cast a vote.

At this point, this egregious farce will become law unless the House stands firm when the bill goes to conference, as it did not approve telecom amnesty. I should add, not that it matters a dime, that polls have shown a clear majority of Americans do not want the telecoms to be given retroactive immunity. There are laws already on the books protecting them if they act in good faith, but apparently, as we've seen again and again since 2000, the laws of this country do not apply to this president or his cronies. Nevertheless, the folks at Firedoglake are trying to get people to contact their House representatives via petition. Please do go this route, but even better, send a fax or letter to your Representative, telling her that you do not want the telecoms to receive immunity. W's lawlessness, which will probably never be punished, should still be investigated by a court of law.

As for the US Senate, just go here, find your Senators, and praise them or rant by phone, fax or email. (Praise if they've done the right thing for a change always is important too.)

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Australia has finally decided to apologize to its Aboriginal peoples for decades of sustained state, individual and symbolic violence, and social, political and cultural discrimination and marginalization. New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has asked the Australian parliament to approve an apology he will deliver at tomorrow's opening session. The apology states in part that "We [the Australian state] apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians." The text is particularly aimed at the "Stolen Generations," those thousands of Aboriginals and mixed-race children who were stolen from their families and raised by whites as part of the state's white supremacist social policy, which, in 1930s Northern Territory "chief protector of the Aborigines" Cecil Cook, aimed to "breed out the color."

Unfortunately, the apology appears to be mostly rhetoric and no action; the Aboriginals will receive no reparations, remuneration, nothing, at least no time soon, beyond the Labour Party's earnest words, which also include a bit about "a future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and nonindigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity," because, as you might have guessed even if you know nothing about Australia, by every social index measure, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are worse off than white Australians. Mmm hmmm, sounds familiar.

One thing this news brought to mind was the concept of apologies, what they aim to achieve, especially beyond the symbolic, and why it's so difficult for some people to utter or issue them, or why they think that grudging ones (cf. David Shuster to Hillary Rodham Clinton) or non-apologies are sufficient. Here's an extremely brief piece by Jess Perriam on philosopher Aniello Ianuzzi's discussion of the philosophy of apologies. Ianuzzi says:

"Increasingly in today's society, it's perhaps becoming harder still because in many ways we're becoming a more individualistic society and also in many ways the black and white between right and wrong has become very much blurred."

"Therefore people don't generally believe they're wrong anymore."

Dr Ianuzzi gives this the definition of 'moral relevatism' and explains it like this, "We believe we have the rights and abilities to make our own definitions of right and wrong, and therefore we can impose our views on others."

"The ego gets in the way and then of course, sorry becomes that much harder."

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On a happier note, today the New York Times's Felicia Lee (one of my favorite reporters from that paper) focuses on the work of one of the major contemporary choreographers, Ronald K. Brown. Lee provides some history on Ron's company, Evidence Dance Company, which he founded in 1985 at the age of 19, and goes on to talk about the often groundbreaking work he's done over these last 23 years, emphasizing in particular the ways in which the African Diaspora is central to his work. Accompanying Lee's article is a fine photo essay (say what you will about the Times these days, but its photo slide shows rarely fail to catch the eye). Below, Ron, foreground, rehearsing his piece "Upside Down," with members of his troupe. On Tuesday night, Evidence opens its annual New York season at the Joyce Theater. (Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)

A Super Tuesday for Hillary and Barack

I meant to blog on the Super Tuesday results, but I had too much on my mind and docket to finish the post I began (I've just posted 2-3 posts I'd partially begun, and the one on the Kara Walker show is coming), but let me congratulate both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton on their victories two days ago.

What most grabbed my attention was the far larger turnout (was it 14 million vs. 8 million?) for the Democratic primaries and caucuses versus those of the Republicans, and the disparity held not only in the Democratic or Democratic-trending strongholds like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Connecticut, but also in Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia. In Missouri alone, the Democrats drew 230,000 more voters than the GOP. I see this as an excellent sign for the fall, provided the eventual Democratic nominee (be it Clinton or Obama) can match or exceed these numbers against the likes of McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Another fascinating outcome was that Obama won all of the "caucuses" except New Mexico, and many of the Republican-leaning states in the south and west (save Tennessee), while Clinton won most of the traditional "blue" states on the east and west coasts. The question is, can she win some of the states he did in November, or, if McCain is GOP candidate, can Obama win over enough Latinos in states like California and New Jersey if he's the nominee to sail to victory, and what about any of those southern states, like Arkansas or Georgia? I don't think either candidate has a chance in some of the longtime Republican-leaning spots like Utah (unless Huckabee is on the ticket) or Idaho, but the pair, if they formed a joint ticket, could bring in a number of states the Democrats must win in order to take back the White House. She energizes women voters, working-class voters, Latinos, he excites Black folks, highly educated liberals and moderates, some former Republicans, and lots of young people. I can't see Clinton running as his VP, for a host of reasons, but I also wonder if he'd take the VP slot, which would turn him into even more of a target down the road for the GOP.

The Obama victory and general success for both candidates in Missouri was especially pleasing to me. I'm not even 45, but I thought I'd probably have to make it to 65 to see a black candidate win a primary in my native state, which has its own particularly complicated and often nasty racial history. It entered the union in 1821 as a slave state, was one of the lesser known but bloodiest battlegrounds during the Civil War (and even had Confederate government in exile), tried its best to mimic the Southern states in post-Reconstruction hatefulness, and even gave the US a president who'd served in the Ku Klux Klan (though he also was the very person who integrated the military and turned out to be better on racial issues than many of his predecessors). The state is often more like Arkansas (though larger and richer) than other states it borders, like Illinois and Iowa, and old attitudes have tended to die slowly and hard(ly). In effect Missouri is several different states: a conservative, Catholic-and-Lutheran midwestern agricultural state (northern Missouri), a Bible-belt Southern evangelical state (southern Missouri), a small-town, moderate state with a sizable state university (central Missouri), a state with two large, wealthy and diverse urban-suburban metropolitan centers (Kansas City and St. Louis, and their surrounding counties, which extend into nearby Kansas and Illinois, respectively). Hillary Clinton won all but 7-8 counties in the non-urban parts of the state, but Obama's margins in just St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and Boone County, the home of the University of Missouri-Columbia, were large enough that he was able to win the whole shebang. Together, as I note above, they received 230,000 more votes (many from "independents") than the GOP, which has dominated Missouri politics in recent years. (Cf. the Blunt family, Kit Bond, etc.) Again, I think this is a marvelous sign, though the real test will come when one of them is nominated and must run against the Republican nominee, likely to be John McCain, who barely edged out former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. He is the one I expected to gallop away with votes, so perhaps the economy, the war, and so on, are affecting Missourians, the proverbial people in the "heartland's" bellwether state, more severely than I thought.

This brings me to my last point: as much as I loathe this most incompetent, corrupt, ignorant, and lawless president in our history, I have to thank him in part because his awfulness has, I think, driven even some of the most willfully resistant people to consider electing someone utterly unlike him and many in his party. Whether his awfulness, which continues every single day he stays in office, will be enough to defeat his ideological soulmate, John McCain, I don't know. But I do know that while Clinton probably could have gotten some traction thus far no matter who the Republican in office was, his sheer horribleness has probably helped people look past the issue of race while in the voting booth, if even temporarily. I'm not saying this is the sole or even a major reason, but I would venture that Bush's record of destruction and disaster has helped, in some ways, to reset people's compasses. Has it been worth the price we've paid, nationally and internationally. I can't say yes. But if there's any good to come out of these last eight years, either Clinton or Obama in the White House, with a more liberal and progressive US Senate willing to push more liberal and progressive legislation, while also finally investigating and punishing the criminals who preceded them, would be optimal.

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Speaking of targets, Chris sent me this link to Robin Morgan's blistering piece, "Goodbye to All That (#2)," on the gross misogyny and sexism in the campaign. What do you think?

Afronetizen posts author Uzodinma Iweala's critique of the race, and its (lack of substantive) discussions of the role race (and I'd add gender) is playing, both in the campaigns and in this society. Again, what do you think?

The Winters + Obama's SC Blowout + Eugene Sawyer RIP

I wake up screaming. Well, not actually (and I must credit C for that phrase, which applied to a very different situation a very long time ago), but rather I do wake up wondering how I've made it so far through these winter days that vie to outstrip each preceding one in terms of persistent gloom and sunlessness, the cold that seems to issue from one of hell's antechambers, the endlessly ramped up schedule of tasks and responsibilities.... One of my students wrote to say the other day that he was suffering from "the winters," and asked permission to miss class--his winters, unfortunately turned into the sort of flu that has been laying out number of people of late--and I totally understood. The winters indeed.

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Several longtime correspondents (an old friend, one of my mentors) and some new ones have written me enthusiastically about the Obama campaign (at right, Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, at his victory celebration in South Carolina, Getty Images), championing in particular success in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he finished second, and, on Saturday night, the blowout in South Carolina. (He received 55% of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 27% and John Edwards's 18%.) They've all made great points about his ability to win over young voters, the enthusiasm he inspires (which had frothed up to a mania a few weeks ago), and his appeal, based on the Iowa voting breakdowns, to white voters. One noted, as some news accounts and pundits also have, that he received more votes than the top two Republicans, McCain and Mittens, combined--shades of his Illinois US Senate primary victory, where his vote total alone exceeded that of all the Republicans combined--while another pointed out that for the fourth straight contest, not counting the Michigan balloting, the Democrats have drawn more voters than the Republicans, in part because of interest in Obama. Disgust with George W. Bush would also have something to do with it, but I do agree that Obama is generating a lot of excitement, and his victory in South Carolina was pretty stunning, because of the margin of victory, because of the demographic breakdown of his votes, because of what it might say about possible outcomes there or in more moderate Southern states, like Virginia and Arkansas. None of my correspondents seem in the least worried about Obama's rhetoric--beyond the brilliant speeches, and his victory speech in South Carolina was one of the best I've ever heard him give--or his policies, whatever they may be, they don't seem troubled by his overt use of Republican discourse or ideological and policy vagueness, they don't think that Republican smear machine, coupled with the establishment media (I'm always trying to find the right name for these folks), will wring and wrack him in the same way that it did Gore and Kerry. They all seem more concerned with the strategies and actions of the Clintons, who, no surprise to me, are fighting with lead gloves to ensure Hillary's nomination.

I guess I should be more concerned with the Clintons' actions, especially their racialization of the campaign, exemplified most recently by Bill Clinton's Barack Obama = Jesse Jackson and "black candidate" comments last night, but to me, what Obama, if he's going to be the nominee, needs more than anything is to experience the sort of political fight, complete with racist commentary, smears, distortions of his legislative and personal record, what have you, that he'll be encountering in the general election. Anyone who thinks the Republican Party and its surrogates in the establishment media are going to play fair, especially if the party's choice, Mittens, gets the nod, or the media's beloved McCain, somehow becomes the Republican nominee, has been asleep these past two decades. The Republicans know how to jack up racist and socially-based appeals like there's no tomorrow, and time and again, voters have shown they are gullible enough to fall for it. I know this sounds cynical, and I'm trying not to be, but as I keep saying, I hope Obama's team, and the candidate himself, is gearing up for what's coming. Whining, demanding fairness, and trying to appeal to better angels and angles doesn't work most of the time with these folks. They are ruthless, and if they weren't, we'd never have been plagued with the worst president in US history (and yes, that includes the abysmal roster of James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce, etc.). Whether Obama's really battle-toughened yet isn't clear to me, but I am coming to grasp that his sustained highminded, above-the-fray pose, which he dropped recently to deal with the Clintons' tactics, does appear to have tremendous appeal across partisan lines, and not just to the punditocracy, who have been looking for any reason to go after the former president Clinton, and continue their attacks on Hillary. He has been mentioning a bit more policy in some of the clips I've seen recently, and he did openly state that it's the politics of Washington today and the policies of the current administration that he wants to change, whose rejection he represents, so maybe there is hope.

As 1,000 and more articles have already noted by now, the real test will come on February 5, when he'll be competing in two dozen states, only a few of which--Alabama, Georgia, and Tennesee--have demographics like South Carolina (though all three are considerably larger). There's Illinois, which he should win without breaking a sweat, but also the diverse behemoths of New York and California, and a range of other states like Massachusetts (where the dual Caroline-Teddy Kennedy endorsements might help), Minnesota, Delaware, and Connecticut, where he has a good opportunity to do well, and others, like Missouri, Alaska, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, where he may not. I'm especially curious to see how my conservative native state, Missouri, votes, especially since its Democratic junior senator, the very moderate Claire McCaskill, and former moderate Democratic Senator, Jean Carnahan, have endorsed Obama and are now actively campaigning for him. I'm as curious about New Jersey, which I think I once read is the one of the most ethnically diverse and balanced states in the US, and could be swayed by Hillary's proximity as much as by an energized youth vote and higher turnouts among African-American voters and Latinos, if they chose to vote for Obama over Hillary Clinton. (I filled out my absentee ballot and have mailed it off, a process that New Jersey has streamlined considerably in the last few years.)

So we'll see how it turns out. I'm on the edge of my seat. Really.

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I haven't checked many blogs today, but I didn't see much mention of the passing last night of Eugene Sawyer (at left, CBS file photo) who was Chicago's second Black mayor, serving from 1987-1989. Sawyer, an Alabama native, represented Chicago's 6th Ward on the Chicago City Council from 1971 until 1987, when he was chosen by the council to serve as Mayor after the sudden death of the remarkable Harold Washington. The City Council session that selected him was contentious, and I can recall even now that Sawyer was not the first choice of many of Chicago's Black political class. Many of Washington's supporters wanted councilman Timothy Evans, now Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, named mayor, while many of Washington's fiercest opponents supported Sawyer. Sawyer eventually received 29 votes to Evans's 19, and on December 2, 1987, he was sworn in as mayor. In his brief tenure, he not only managed to ensure a period of political calm, but maintained many of Washington's priorities and saw several enacted, including gay rights legislation and affirmative action opportunities in city contracts. He was defeated in the 1989 by Richard Daley, who has been the mayor ever since, and left government service thereafter. Sawyer was 73 years old.

Dems' Race Flap + Obama & Latinos + MDI Car + Living Longer w/ AIDS

I've received and read a lot of emails and posts about the racial (and to a lesser extent gender) imbroglios that the Clinton and Obama camps have been engaging in, all of which end up harming Obama, in my opinion, to Clinton's and ultimately the Republicans' benefit, in that any talk of "race" (as well as "racism") magnifies his blackness (which "race" chiefly signifies in this society) among non-Black voters and allows him to be cast as the too self-consciously "Black" candidate, or "angry Black" man, or or racial "whiner," while also deflecting attention from his opponents issues and problems and from substantive critiques of his positions, policies and record. (The most cynical reading would be that even if the Clintons piss off Black voters, they would assume Blacks have no place to go, beyond voting by not voting, in the general election, and perhaps that's a risk they want to take.) You can argue that Obama's set himself up for this by his careful straddling of the politics of race, offering differing faces to differing crowds, while gliding over racism as an abiding societal issue via a nearly post-identitarian (and post-"issue") discourse, but I think he and his advisors assume that this may be the best or most effective route, and it appears to have worked so far, so we'll see soon how it turns out as things play out. Either way, the emergence of intra-party rifts over identity politics creates dangers that the Republican Party will not hesitate to exploit, so Obama's call for ramping down the rhetoric is a good sign, though he, the Clintons, their surrogates, and the party in general will nevertheless need to address the tensions.

Alongside this mess, there's the broader gantlet that Obama faces, which I've written about before. Today I read that "liberal" columnist Richard Cohen offers the newest volley in the anti-Obama game of religious, racial and ethnic smears by trying to link him to Rev. Louis Farrakhan, via Obama's South Side Chicago church and minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I think the aim here is to scare White people, but particularly Jewish voters. Personally I think Obama could tamp this down immediately by framing the response in crude terms, such as, "What do these people attacking my church and faith have against Christianity, or the Judeo-Christian tradition?" which is the sort of thing I'd expect out of Mike Huckabee's mouth. At the same time, it would probably be very effective. If Obama won't do it, find an ordained surrogate to go that route; isn't that what's been going on so far, with the various comments from Jesse Jackson Jr., Andrew Cuomo, Charlie Rangel, and, of all people, Robert Johnson?

There's the ongoing issue of the Manchurian Muslim email, originally generated by a right-wing nutcase, then furthered by right-wing commentators and eventually people affiliated with the Clinton campaign; it continues to circulate and will probably transmogrify in ways we cannot even imagine if he wins the nomination. (Chris Matthews managed to take things to a new realm of bizarrie when he stated on TV that Obama's mother and maternal grandmother were Muslims.) No matter how often this thing gets debunked, it'll keep surfacing. In light of the last week, I'll just repeat what I've written to anyone discussing Obama's electoral prospects, which is that I hope he and his advisors--like the Clintons, if Hillary gets the nomination, or Edwards--are ready for much, much worse.

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And then there's this: today the New York Times, following some weeks after other news organs (Raw Story, for example), is telling us that Obama's going to have problems with Latino voters, because he's Black. While this wasn't the case in his US Senate race in Illinois (either in the Democratic primary or the general election), and while the Latino populations differ by region, reporters Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer report that Obama's being Black may cause problems among Latino voters. To quote them:

Mr. Obama confronts a history of often uneasy and competitive relations between blacks and Hispanics, particularly as they have jockeyed for influence in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama. There’s always been tension in the black and Latino communities. There’s still that strong ethnic division. I helped organize citizenship drives, and those who I’ve talked to support Clinton.”

Javier Perez, 30, a former marine, said older Hispanics like his grandmother tended to resist more the notion of supporting an African-American, a trend that he said was changing with younger Hispanics.

“She just became a citizen five years ago,” Mr. Perez said. “Unfortunately, that will play a role in her vote. I do think race will play a part in her decision.”

Interestingly, Carrillo doesn't say, "a Black person," but "a person of color," which could easily include a Latino, like Bill Richardson, which points to broader issues beyond Black-Latino relations (cf. above). For activists like Rev. Al Sharpton, Obama's problem is that he's run a "'race-neutral campaign'," and yet this appears to matter little to those who would foreground his Blackness, no matter how he plays it. Yet the article isn't all doom: on the other hand,

In California, Mr. Obama has won backing from Latino lawmakers, some of whom had supported Mr. Richardson, but winning rank-and-file voters will be hard, said the State Senate majority leader, Gloria Romero, Democrat of East Los Angeles.

“Do we have a long way to go?” she asked. “Absolutely. I think there are some tensions on questions of immigration and jobs. But I believe that we have moved forward in a way that the community will embrace an African-American president.”

She said the solution to overcoming the tensions was discussing economic problems of middle- and lower-class blacks and Hispanics like the mortgage crisis, an issue that first Mrs. Clinton and now Mr. Obama have been raising more frequency.

“I don’t think eating tacos,” is effective, she said with a flick at Mrs. Clinton. “We need to address what unites us. The key is not to raise the wedge issue.”

I wonder how true this will be. Nevada will provide the first test, but I think it's too soon to write off Latino support for Obama everywhere, even if some places (California and Texas, say) prove tougher than others (like New Jersey and Connecticut).

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Commentator Biodun's excellent "The Third Rail of Identity Politics in the US" is here.

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Given how recalcitrant the Detroit automakers are proving to be in terms of raising fuel standards and producing vehicles that compete with the best that Japan, Korea and other countries now offer, and given the overall bleak economic situation in Michigan and other parts of the upper Midwest region, I was thinking that perhaps the autoworkers' unions, or even a group of ambitious workers and concerned citizens and government officials might undertake a fact-finding mission to ensure that this revolutionary product, Frenchman Guy Negre's MDI compressed-air car (photo at left, Maycha.blogspot.com) which Tata, the Indian carmaker, is set to produce in sizable numbers later this year, is also being produced in the backyard (or front yard) of the Big Three.

If the "air car," as it's also being called, takes off globally, promises to upend the current discussion about automobile fuel emissions andefficiency, energy conservation and global warming. Its lightness helps conserve energy, and Negre says that it produces near-zero pollution on city streets and very low emission levels on the highway. The car does require a period electrical charge, and can be fitted with fuel tanks if needed, but for city driving it need not have the latter. Even its assembly would mark a shift from current practices (and back to an earlier mode of production); Negre envisions local factories using local materials, thereby helping to cut down on energy use in manufacturing process. The suggested price is $7000. According to Buzzfeed, it's already in 12 countries, so why not the US too? Talk about a great gift to the people of Detroit--and the US as a whole....

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About a week or so ago I posted on the New York City Health Department's report on the rise of HIV seroconversions among young men of color. Keguro and Kai chimed in, and shortly after they did so, I noted the following report, which I've been meaning to post about for days now. It's intimately linked, I think, to the Health department's findings: reporter Jane Gross's "AIDS Patients Face Downside of Living Longer."

It opens

John Holloway received a diagnosis of AIDS nearly two decades ago, when the disease was a speedy death sentence and treatment a distant dream.

Yet at 59 he is alive, thanks to a cocktail of drugs that changed the course of an epidemic. But with longevity has come a host of unexpected medical conditions, which challenge the prevailing view of AIDS as a manageable, chronic disease.

Mr. Holloway, who lives in a housing complex designed for the frail elderly, suffers from complex health problems usually associated with advanced age: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, kidney failure, a bleeding ulcer, severe depression, rectal cancer and the lingering effects of a broken hip.

Those illnesses, more severe than his 84-year-old father's, are not what Mr. Holloway expected when lifesaving antiretroviral drugs became the standard of care in the mid-1990s.

The drugs gave Mr. Holloway back his future.

But at what cost?

That is the question, heretical to some, that is now being voiced by scientists, doctors and patients encountering a constellation of ailments showing up prematurely or in disproportionate numbers among the first wave of AIDS survivors to reach late middle age.

The article goes on to discuss the challenges the various people profiled experience, and given the number of people living with HIV and AIDS today, and living longer, this got me thinking about the notion of AIDS as a "chronic" disease, and, from my perspective, the lack of discussions and narratives, especially in terms of the conventional media's public discourse or popular culture, about the long-term effects of HIV seroposivity and the lives and experiences of long-term PWAs. I understand why; these topics are ones that few people other those involved in HIV education, prevention and treatment, and people living with HIV/AIDS, probably are interested in. But given that the notions that drug cocktails approximate a cure and AIDS is just another chronic, indefinitely manageable illness have taken hold, perhaps that there should be more discussion on what the various challenges of living with HIV and AIDS over a long time-span are now and will be in the future.

Hillary & the Ghost Gain NH

Ye goode folke of New Hampshire showed that they were not going to led around by the nose, not by enthusiastic young Iowans or their evangelical counterparts, not by the sexist, Clinton-hating media, not by the legions pollsters to whom they sold at least one good New England yarn (Barack Obama up by 9 points). Actually, the working-class and elderly female voters of the Granite State demonstrated via the ballot that they haven't given up on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (at right, Chicagotribune.com)--was it the debate? the tears? Bill's outburst? the attacks on Obama?--no one else should either. Those Clintons are tenacious folks! The New Hampshirites gave her enough of a margin to eke out a win over Senator Odreamy (who won Cheshire County, home of the city of Keene, naturally), and remind the rest of the country that this primary season isn't over yet. While I doubt I'd have voted for Clinton in this particular contest, I'm glad that she won in part because I do want Obama to recognize it's not going to be a crowd surf to victory, as his comments and the emails from his campaign acolytes suggest, and because her victory upsets the media's all-too-premature prediction of her campaign's end. The gasbags were really feasting on her breakdown, proposed campaign reshuffle, Bill's tirade, all of it. On the other hand, she and Bill had better watch the nasty crap and white ops they were planning on Obama, because not only the GOP, but the media, have shown that she'll be an even more inviting target if she gets the nomination. As it is, the 16-year media assault on her husband, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other major Democrats, has already hit her hard, so just as Obama ought to watch the right-wing frames, she should be careful about rhetoric about his fickleness and effectiveness. She's already being portrayed as a cuff-holding weathervane as it is.

On the GOP side, the media fave, 71-year-old warmonger John McCain (who looks like a ghost to me) finished first ahead of the Man Who Keeps Falling to Earth, Mitt Romney. According to a figure I read on someone else's blog, Romney's spent more than either Clinton or Obama, and has yet to finish above second, but he has money to burn, so he'll probably hang around until it's clear that the Southern preacher and ex-gov, Mike Huckabee, has the lock. (A fast fact: only one GOP president has ever been born in a former Confederate state--they're all from the Northeast, Midwest (mostly Ohio), or West--Dwight Eisenhower, who was born in Texas; with Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky native, they're the only two Southern-born Republicans presidents. The Decider Guy, like his father, was born in New England.) Rudy Giuliani finished just marginally above Ron Paul, and I know the word is he's waiting around till the delegate-rich super-primary day, but he should do us all a favor and drop out now. BE. GONE. He is not positioning himself as the socially moderate--though viciously racist--Republican he was as New York mayor, but has kept only the crazed neocon part, and there are already enough of those in the Republican field, so why stay on? I know Fox News and many GOP business types love him, but surely they see he's not going to beat out a former POW warmonger; a multimillionaire flipflopper; and a guy who's suggested hosting revivals on the White House lawn. Right? Maybe Huckabee can offer us a preview down in South Carolina, say in Columbia or Greenville or somewhere else. I think people should see what they might be getting. Then he can jam with a rock band and give a speech about how he's not a primate. Or something equally colorful!

Yesterday, a claque of bipartisanophiles met in Norman, Oklahoma to chatter about how they want to hold the 2008 election hostage unless the nominees--meaning the Democratic nominee, meaning Hillary Clinton--pledge to be bipartisan, whatever that's supposed to mean, or else they're going to unleash liberal Democrat-passing-as-Republican-but-now-independent Mike Bloomberg on us. Since he's a multibillionaire and his business is thriving so he could easily spend $500-750 million on a vanity campaign and enthrall the punditocracy, draw lots of moderate Democratic voters (or more than the few moderate Republicans out there), and perhaps throw the race to the GOP, who've demonstrated over the last seven years that their right-wing ideology is a complete and abject failure in every way, except for effecting a net transfer of even more wealth to global conglomerates and the mega-rich. Not that the Democrats in Congress haven't enabled them at every step, because they have, but then isn't that bipartisanship? Isn't that the very bipartisanship that got us into Iraq and permitted the lies about 9/11 and warrantless wiretapping and the outing of a covert CIA agent and legalized torture, without any penalties or a real threat of impeachment, and passed the Patriot Act and the bankruptcy bill and Cheney's energy bill, and abandoned New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and...well, I guess the Pro-Bipartisans are convinced we must have more of the same. More, more, more. Except that Obama is promising a bipartisan revel that will CHANGE the mess we find ourselves in and pass progressive legislation. Not the proto-fascist stuff we've seen. Hmm. Cognitive-dissonance meter registering strong wave effect.

So let's see if these jerks, led by former Senator David Boren, a dear frien of the Bushes, decide to act out. In the meantime, congratulations to Hillary.

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And then there's this very important case looming at the Supreme Court. You see, W hasn't failed at everything. He has managed to pack the courts, including the Supreme Court, with hardcore right-wingers from now till Kingdom come, as my relatives used to love to say. Another reason not to ever grow complacent.