Barack Obama
Jul. 28th, 2004 02:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
barking_iguanaI haven't been posting, because I figured everything I was learning, most of you were seeing, too. But since I sometimes see stuff being posted 3 days after I first learned it, I suppose I should be sharing what I think is important. Anyway, seeing a new star (whom I've been reading about for some time on Daily Kos) who can represent my values in Washington is enough to get me back to writing.
He's just about a sure bet to get elected Senator from Illinois this November. And people are talking about him as a future President. If he ages well and doesn't fuck up, he's a better bet than anyone else to be Edwards' VP nominee in 2012, should Kerry win 2 terms. And might well beat Edwards in the 2012 primaries should Kerry win 1 term.
But that's a long time from now. Between now and then, he's going to have to show considerable finesse in how he relates to the old-line African-American Community, of which he is not a part. For more on that, here's what I wrote at in a dKos discussion on it.
The descendants of mainland slaves form a real ethnic identity to themselves. There have long been tensions between them and other African-descended Americans.
My personal experience of it was when working with Grace ******, the local NAACP leader who was active in my local Democratic Party when I was Chair of it back in the 1980s. She resented the degree to which "Islanders" (back then, mostly those whose families came from the Virgin Islands in the early 20th Century) were taking resources/credit/whatever that, in her eyes, rightfully belonged to the people who had been oppressed with slavery and it's aftermath here.
After Grace passed on, I gently asked others in the community if Grace's sentiments were unusual. I was told that it might have been unusual for her to let me overhear such things, but that the differences -- sometimes tensions -- were quite real.
Perhaps with the immigration in recent decades from both Africa and the Caribbean, such divisions have faded. But looking at New York City politics, for instance, I don't think so.
None of which makes Obama a bad candidate. But if he is portrayed to the old-line African-American community as "one of us", I think it will backfire. A message of "he will prove even to the most recalcitrant people in our land that leadership knows no color" should work fine. But as a Horatio Alger story, his is one of immigration more than African-Americanism. He and his advocates would do well to remember that.
E pluribus unum.He's a solid liberal, as shown by other parts of the speech, who hits the right notes to go beyond the liberal base.
Out of many, one.
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America- there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too.
We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
He's just about a sure bet to get elected Senator from Illinois this November. And people are talking about him as a future President. If he ages well and doesn't fuck up, he's a better bet than anyone else to be Edwards' VP nominee in 2012, should Kerry win 2 terms. And might well beat Edwards in the 2012 primaries should Kerry win 1 term.
But that's a long time from now. Between now and then, he's going to have to show considerable finesse in how he relates to the old-line African-American Community, of which he is not a part. For more on that, here's what I wrote at in a dKos discussion on it.
The descendants of mainland slaves form a real ethnic identity to themselves. There have long been tensions between them and other African-descended Americans.
My personal experience of it was when working with Grace ******, the local NAACP leader who was active in my local Democratic Party when I was Chair of it back in the 1980s. She resented the degree to which "Islanders" (back then, mostly those whose families came from the Virgin Islands in the early 20th Century) were taking resources/credit/whatever that, in her eyes, rightfully belonged to the people who had been oppressed with slavery and it's aftermath here.
After Grace passed on, I gently asked others in the community if Grace's sentiments were unusual. I was told that it might have been unusual for her to let me overhear such things, but that the differences -- sometimes tensions -- were quite real.
Perhaps with the immigration in recent decades from both Africa and the Caribbean, such divisions have faded. But looking at New York City politics, for instance, I don't think so.
None of which makes Obama a bad candidate. But if he is portrayed to the old-line African-American community as "one of us", I think it will backfire. A message of "he will prove even to the most recalcitrant people in our land that leadership knows no color" should work fine. But as a Horatio Alger story, his is one of immigration more than African-Americanism. He and his advocates would do well to remember that.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 06:47 am (UTC)Or was his mom American but not descended from slaves?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 07:26 am (UTC)Right. His Mom was White.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 06:53 am (UTC)Barack Obama
Date: 2004-07-29 11:48 am (UTC)I think the Obamas should have a son, name him Al, and teach him to play banjo.
Re: Barack Obama
Date: 2004-07-29 01:10 pm (UTC)Re: Barack Obama
Date: 2004-07-29 02:02 pm (UTC)Red and blue states
Date: 2004-07-29 06:31 pm (UTC)Now, we know *that's* a bit of an oversimplification...but it makes me think about how I would explain to an newcomer, in a reasonably impartial manner, just what the differences *are*. I might assume that I know all of them, but I probably don't. I might assume that everyone is in agreement on what the differences are, but that'd be pretty silly of me, wouldn't it?
So, for anyone who is interested in exploring this: how would *you* explain the Democrat-vs.-Republican stances to someone just learning about these parties?