2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

Okay reading that broke my brain.

both:

He then joined the United States Marine Corps and later transferred to the United States Navy where he worked as a cardiopulmonary technician.

Mack, the correct answer to the question "was Jeremiah Wright in the Navy or the Marines?" is, "who gives a damn what some America-hating racist demagogue did between when he got out of school and when he started attracting thousands of America-hating racist supporters?"

Posted by: bgates at March 18, 2008 04:04 PM (z6drm)

jesus fucking harold christ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120588322321046835.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/18/AR2008031802594.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/09/07/PH2007090702320.gif

"Ms. Ferraro was, at worst, saying that Mr. Obama is helped because many Americans want to vote for someone who is black."

hahahaha fuck this guy

Noncompassionate conversatism

also lol dems be vaugely populist shocka

the number of people who would vote for somebody just because he/she is black is probably roughly equal to the number of people who would vote for somebody just because she is female

i eagerly await the wsj's 'revelation' that homie was a community organizer that 'men like us have fought against for nearly a century'

cavalcade of stupid editorials continue

http://www.slate.com/id/2186845/

deej are you giving us a cross-section here or am i to understand you're seeking out the stupid/frustrating ones

stop the presses mickey kaus is a big prick

When even Joe Scarborough on MSNBC says "What Barack Obama did today was historic," and Chris Matthews says "I've never heard a speech so free of BS on race as I have in the one by Barack Obama today," then something is up.

Around the blogosphere, reaction was generally positive to Obama's speech in Philadelphia. James Fellows of the Atlantic, who lives in China, watched it and was very impressed:

This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.

At Tapped, the American Prospect blog, Kate Sheppard compared it to Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech:

King's speech may have been more powerful rhetorically, but this speech really laid down the complexities of race in America in a way that someone with Barack Obama can appreciate in unique ways.

More reaction...

Fellows's colleague at the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan - an Obama supporter - was effusive:

It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

Eve Fairbanks at the New Republic's The Plank put the speech into the context of Obama's campaign:

I do think Obama defined his candidacy more in terms of race today, but I guess from my perspective that's a good thing. His calls for 'change' always left me a little cold: change what? After hearing his speech, the 'what?' feels clearer.

Ana Marie Cox on Time's Swampland blog wonders if the speech worked:

Who was Obama talking to? Who was listening? Would any working class white person change their mind after listening to this speech? Would anyone who had decided that Obama has been tainted by Wright now be swayed to vote for him?

On the progressive-left blogosphere, reaction was more muted than in the conventional media. At OpenLeft, one poster headlined it "incredible," and commented: "His biggest gamble is to treat the subject with the depth and seriousness and complexity that it deserves."

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD struck a different note, and was highly critical of what he saw as the politics behind the speech:

What Obama wants to do is pivot it back to Clinton vs Obama, and get the Republican attack on him through Wright off the table, so he's equated Wright and Ferraro multiple times in the speech.... This is pretty ugly and unfair though of Obama, to equate statements by Ferraro with Wright. Obama goes on and on about how great a person Wright is, without a single kind word about Ferraro, just rubbing it in further. I believe the campaign has reached a new low.

Over at the National Review's The Corner - always a harbour of differing opinion - there are some strong reactions or counter-reactions. Charles Murray - that's right, the author of The Bell Curve - posted:

Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant - rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.

But several others at the Corner were less impressed. Stanley Kurtz replied:

Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism - all under the guise of achieving national unity.

Over at Daily Kos, a series of open threads on the subject racked up over 2,000 comments from readers. One, from a reader in Britain, read:

Here in the UK, that speech could never have been made. While racism certainly exists here, it is never acknowledged in the way that Barack Obama just did in his speech. I am heartened by seeing such an honest and heartfelt examination of the issue, and have never been as proud of my country as I was today, watching from abroad.

lol worldnetdaily haaaaaaated it

awesome

SPECIAL OFFER
Blacks exploited by their own leadership
Civil-rights establishment makes lucrative career out of keeping racial strife alive
--Shop.WND.com

my old roomate used to refer to WND for all his 'analysis'

pundit on today's Talk of the Nation whining about "well why didn't he address this BEFORE"

even clinton was saying complimentary things about this speech, and she hadn't even HEARD it

this is a gimme for her. all she has to do is smile politely and she comes out ahead.

this is keeping him in the news cycle and her out of it, though

Pundits still be whinin'? Who knew?

What a bunch of UGH. Not surprised at all when RW get all entitled about needing 'explanations' and 'repudiations', then get their fucking explanation etc, cue reconfiguration of goalposts. They didn't like that explanation and want another one. Nothing Barack Obama does is ever going to satisfy these people.

Reading the comments upthread has made it seem like all these conservative pundits have moved their goalposts to a moon made of cheese.

like until akm mentioned it, asking "what did hrc think of this" hadn't even occurred to me or (i imagine) a lot of people (?)

xp

up until today i think hillary was perfectly happy staying out of this news cycle. PA's a long ways away. as for the conservative pundits, nothing brings out the sharpened knives like overt threats to the natural order.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/black_guy_asks_nation_for_change

From a Guardian commentator:

That's why the speech exemplifies the deepest virtue of Obama's campaign, which is its stand against the politics of picayune bullshit.

Americans have endured election after election in which endlessly amplified talking heads have harped on risible questions of style and shallow analysis of dubious microtrends (Microtrends, of course, being the title of a book by Hillary Clinton's chief strategist). Who can forget all the blathering about Al Gore's embrace of earth tones and the implications for his masculinity? Or speculation as to whether John Kerry's windsurfing would sink him? George Bush had to drive the nation into multi-fronted catastrophe before we stopped hearing about what a fine beer-drinking companion he would make (and that despite the fact that he's a teetotaling recovering alcoholic.)

why is it I still laugh at the Onion despite the fact that it's the same joke over and over again

Also @ person upthread incredulous re. jocks having to learn the difference between Shia and Sunni - or black 'charismatic' churches, for that matter - in HS. It's a crime when they don't. What's school for? YMMV but I have no doubt that potentially divisive issues such as race and religion can be turned into 'teaching opportunities', even for morans, as this was my experience:

By far the most influential {religion studies] program now in use is that developed by Lee Smith and Wes Bodin of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Originating in a suburban system near Minneapolis, their course on world religion grew out of a controversy about school holidays. The local community, approximately one-third Lutheran, one-third Jewish and one-third Roman Catholic, was sharply divided. The high school elective course that Smith and Bodin developed has significantly improved interfaith relations. Its carefully crafted materials (filmstrips, tapes and texts) are used nationwide -- indeed, throughout the English-speaking world. Funded by three successive grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the project was able to develop class-tested materials and to enlist the support of recognized historians of religion.

An important aspect of Smith and Bodin’s material is their encouragement and support of pluralism. Each student is expected to be what he or she is religiously; there is no advocacy. At the same time, clergy in the communities where the course has been used report that younger members of their congregations come to them, seeking information.

At the beginning of the Minnesota course, Smith and Bodin ask students to identify religious agencies (synagogues, churches, hospitals, schools), places and persons that they know in their local community. The list turns out to be a long one. Why should all that it represents be taboo in the American public-school curriculum, when it is so deeply a part of American life -- past and present? The NCC’s Kelley reported that recently a leading born-again Christian remarked in public that a great door had been opened by the Supreme Court’s decision on teaching about religion, but it has not yet been walked through. There will have to be more recognition of the need to walk through that door before major dilemmas are overcome.

believing that the education of children is for liberals to control 2

Conflation of unstated liberalism with basic common sense part 2957463

Also @ person upthread incredulous re. jocks having to learn the difference between Shia and Sunni - or black 'charismatic' churches, for that matter - in HS. It's a crime when they don't. What's school for?

I wasn't incredulous that they have to learn the difference. I was incredulous that not knowing the difference between rival sects of Islam reminded you of high school jocks, of all things. I mean, yes, many probably don't know the difference, but when are they ever talking about it? "Oh fuck bro, I totally meant 'Sunni' when we were talking earlier about the problems in Kurdistan."

An excellent response by Michael Crowley, probably the best I've read yet.

LOLs. Though in my school it was more like "Shauvot? Is that Jewish for Sabbath, dude? Do you get a free day for that one too?"

i can't help but wonder if mlk would've been raked by the media we've got today. seriously, watching the morning news was kind of sickening today. "he didn't distance himself enough from wright" blah blah.

wtf?

sure, i still think the speech was no mlk glory hallway-lou-yeah, but damn.

i have a question for america: do you have a butthead friend that says stupid or at least very opiniated/controversial shit? do you disown that person?

i mean, because i have a load of ultra-conservative family and friends. some of my in-laws are downright embarassing southern bama buttheads who think michael savage is a genius, but are they occasionally funny and actually really nice people? yeah. do i respect their advice on some things? sure. even tho they're lunatics as far as national politics goes, that's not a reason to cut them totally out of my life.

i'm having a really hard time getting the story fed from the media. don't people get that being a politician means sort of well... being polite to people who are on your side 75% of the time, even tho their pretty weird on that other 25%?

nonstory elevated.
m.

ugh, proofreading is not my friend. i disowned that asshole.
m.

yeah msp i think that's what the "he's like family" line was trying to convey - we've all got at least a couple of family members who are shitballs insane when it comes to politics but we don't disown them

lol http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/play.shtml?mea=229108

i just did slate's delegate calculator with the highest estimate for clintons 26 pt lead in pennsylvania and it still leaves her 110 delegates behind obama

I wasn't incredulous that they have to learn the difference. I was incredulous that not knowing the difference between rival sects of Islam reminded you of high school jocks, of all things. I mean, yes, many probably don't know the difference, but when are they ever talking about it? "Oh fuck bro, I totally meant 'Sunni' when we were talking earlier about the problems in Kurdistan."

This happened all the time when I was in college.

i can't help but wonder if mlk would've been raked by the media we've got today.

No doubt in my mind. Just watched this agitprop doc, War Made Easy, which features a clip of MLK's 'Beyond Vietnam' speech in '67. He called the US government the "leading purveyor of violence in the world." THAT King would be demonized (and was condemned then). And get "distanced" by Obama, you know.

^^^^ hi dere missing the point of Obama's speech, namely that we aren't living in the sixties and we've progressed beyond sixties rhetoric.

arizona state, right? xp

xp: No, not missing it. The US is still the leading purveyor of violence in the world.

And get "distanced" by Obama, you know.

I think you'll find his Wright response is a little more nuanced than that.

Um, my point wasn't that King said something that was incorrect, my point was that the media response to King's statements would have been different and would have generated a different political response because it was a different era.

Simon, I read it. He "condemned...the statements... that have caused such controversy." Joe Lieberman, who Barry endorsed in the '06 CT primary over Ned Lamont, has said way more fucked-up shit than the Rev has. Just not "controversial."

Yes, Dan, I accept that.

and I know Lieberman isn't Obama's rabbi, so please don't go dere.