Comments on No He Didn't

Was Obama thinking of season 2 of The Wire when writing the first paragraph of this excerpt?

I thought it was a great and eloquent speech. Did you notice he wasn't looking at teleprompter? He wrote this himself, which is why he was able to memorize all 4500 words.

He could've listed some of the social issues like sexism and homophoebia. But considering the speech was almost 40 min long. I don't think he wanted to keep the public waiting any longer.

I've also noticed that Obama's good at giving an overview of what he's thinking one day then later explaining it. I think that's a great strategic move on his prevent the Hillary campaign from stealing his lines or attacking him on it all at once.

Absolutely right on in his veiled nod at Hillary's tactics. The best way I have heard it phrased is that those who want a candidate who can rise above politics as usual and chart a new path for the country - a risky proposition assuredly - are going for Obama.

Those who want someone who can just win in the current cynical political trenches (where race-baiting is an established tool)side with Hillary.

No better time to hope, IMHO, but there will be blood - still - in this fight.

one of the biggest reasons I tend to dislike arguments based upon a binary of race (black/white; black/hispanic) or gender (male/female) is that economic injustice is often a common thread.

so while whites or males have historically been powerful, it isn't inherently because of their whiteness or their maleness. it is because they have the economic power.

i have this debate with my girlfriend all the time.

her counter is that the economic power is a result of the advantages of the sex, which is true -- you can have a whole infinite loop whereby one causes the other which causes the other etc..

but when you take power itself as a commodity--or as foucault put it, when you take an economy of power--i think you have a keener insight into the complexities of a society that is made up of multiple centers of power that don't necessarily act in concert but the ebb and flow of their overall affect colors the total landscape.

so in effect, it isn't that men are bad and women are good, as it is so simply stated by people like erica. it isn't that white is bad and black is good or vice versa. it is that our interactions with various economies of power--race, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc.--all add and subtract from our own experience.

what was so interesting about obama's speech was that he worked that complexity of thought into his overall position.

he sympathized--and helped give voice to--the experience of being a black man in a black church. he humanized and multiplied the depth of the type of person wright represents.

at the same time, he eloquently and simply encapsulated a common white experience. that, as so succinctly put, being the immigrant experience whereby the mythical white privilege that is so often thrown in white peoples' faces has been notably absent from their own subjective experience.

to move beyond the limitations of binary thinking, the discourse has to evolve from the old ways of thinking into a more inclusive and complex mode.

jon stewart said it really well last night, that someone had the audacity to speak to the american people as if they were adults.

it's true.

it's true. he didn't actually solve racism in this speech. or any modern major social problem. i'm a little disappointed as well.

Obama's playing poker.

Clinton's playing chess.

In Chess, you win a state (square).

In Poker, you get as much of a state (pot) as you can.

Since he was 20 points down in PA before, any increase just increases his delegates.

here's a dig of omission: he criticized wright and ferraro for their counter-productive views, and reinforced the message that he is different. without saying clinton's name, the message was clear.

I thought the same thing about the lack of any mention of gay rights, but I figured it was for two reasons:

1) The speech was about race and how it has channeled itself into our politics, and to throw a bone to every disenfranchised group would have diluted his original intent.

2) Most everyone in the country can agree racism is bad and steps should be taken to ameliorate the situation. Sadly, far fewer people feel that homophobia is bad, which is the necessary first acknowledgment before any kind of significant progress can be made. My hope is that after Obama is elected he'll address the gay rights issue more specifically, once they're aren't socially conservative votes on the line.

One of the best lines from the 1998-ish movie "Bulworth" was something along the lines of: "White people have more in common with black people than they do with rich people."

The line was immediately followed by insane cursing and rapping from Warren Beatty. What a great movie.

While this is a very strong analysis, Josh, I have to wonder if "the lunch-pail crowd" actually tunes in to C-SPAN and sits hunkered in his Archie-Bunker to watch a forty-plus-minute speech on Race in America. Did they even see it? Were these snippets offered up in the recaps on Fox News or even Obama-sympathetic MSNBC?

(Obamatons, hold your fire, I'm an Alternate Obama delegate in the 43rd and a strong supporter.)

Professor Obama is an impressive speaker on so many subjects, especially this one, as he can speak not only from a "nuanced understanding" but perhaps a more objective one of the Boomer Years, impressing the college-educated white voters... the votes he's already getting large majorities.

But Barack the Man can also from personal experiences as a bi-racial man, as he did in this speech. Candidate Obama might benefit more from the latter than the former if he wants to attract the NASCAR dads that all the pundits say he needs (and worrying his own party, including Clinton who keeps carping on his electability based on that appeal).

He needs to tear a page from (Bill) Clinton's old playbook and remake it into "I Feel Your Anger," craft it into a shorter stump speech, forgo the huge area "rock-star" events packed with the Obama-converted and get his ass back to the rust-belt of Pennsylvania (that he seems to have given up on) and explain directly to the "lunch-bucket" boys (and those who are OUT of jobs) in smaller gatherings (without the Fox filters) about the anger behind Wright's words, about the pain of being forsaken by a country or an economy or an industry or an employer, and make the connection necessary to win everyone's votes and make Hillary eat her words.

If "It's The Economy, Stupid," he has to speak to the Stupids and speak their language.

ask King & X what this kind of talk gets you in America.

its 40 years later, but step lightly, BHO. i want you to win.

@11-- good point.

King wasnt killed until he 1) voiced a moral objection to the Viet Nam war, and 2) indicated he was going to take his Civil Rights Struggle (relatively isolated geographically and in percentage of the populace) and apply it to the much larger group of the American Underclass; he was killed just before his scheduled Poor Peoples' March.

such a simple argument to knock down - who has been leading the race since she announced she was running (even before he announced he was in it) ??

he wasn't talking about her use of racial issues. i take him at his word(s) on this one.

"her momentum in Pennsylvania" - i almost giggled

He's talked about gay rights quite a bit, and in places where he couldn't count on support or cheering. I've mentioned I've admired his courage for that before. This speech wasn't about sexuality, it was about race (though it was also courageous).

And good for him for slamming exploitive campaigning. If he makes that sort of tactic costly, maybe other politicians will use it less. That's just fine with me.

Oh no.... now I'm REALLY worried about about asassination. The minute MLK and Malcolm X started talking about the intersections between class and race they were offed. I'm crossing my fingers that doesn't happen to Obama.

Comparisons to MLK and JFK are invidious. I watched most of Kennedy's speeches on TV in real time when I was a kid, and I was at the "I have a Dream" speech in DC in 1963, saw MLK speak live on one other occasion, and in real time on TV several times.

Obama's speech was different. It lacked the soaring rhetoric of JFK and MLK, but was more effective because it spoke directly to people's feelings and daily experiences. Because it dealt directly with the visceral, it enhanced rather than detracted from the emotional and the intellectual angles.

This speech was pure unadulterated political genius. It blew anything JFK ever did out of the water. It spoke to *my* daily experience as a white kid in an all-black neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Don't look for this speech to make an instant smash with everybody as it did for many of us. It will have to percolate through to the people who didn't hear it yet, or who didn't get it the first time.

When it does, it will acquire even more significance. People will be quoting it for years, and certainly right up till November. There were damn near more great bumper sticker one-liners in that speech than there are bumpers to put those stickers on.

I was for Obama already because Gore and Edwards are out, he's not Hillary, and because I'd vote for a yellow dog if it ran as a Democrat.

But now I'm *really* for this guy. I think yesterday's speech pretty much closed the deal. He's the next president, ready or not, and he's going to need our help. So let's get to it, OK?

You know what I'm sick of? Any strides that Hillary makes in this process is dismissed. She couldn't have possibly won Ohio because she's bright and a good candidate. No, it has to be Archie Bunker types living in Ohio. No, wait, it's because of Rush Limbaugh. Give me a break.

I thought NAFTA and Goolsbee had something to do with Ohio's preference for Clinton.

i had to look 'invidious' up in the dictionary.

i that's the wrong word.

Gay people didn't get a nod because he'll exploit us for his political expediency but he'll throw us overboard when it comes to signing the legislation. No doubt it will be because of "the roll his religion plays in his life". Clinton has a solid record of siding with gay people and speechs are nice but they aren't worth a whole lot. I've seen this before.

my mom was an adult already during JFK times and she says Obama is way more authentic than he was, fwiw.

@20- If that's true, why did he confront the African American community on their role in homophobia in MLK's church on MLK day? How is it 'politically expedient' to risk ticking off a part of your base by confronting them on their prejudices?

Where is Hil's speech on the gays? Oh right, there isn't one. He didn't need to shout out the gays when every headline was about race, something not discussed for too long in this country.

And Obama needed to "clock" Hilary. He is running against her, hello!

@20-- "Clinton has a solid record of siding with gay people."

You mean Hillary? The woman who's for repealing only PART of DOMA and not all of it?

Surely you don't mean Bill of the Don't Ask/Tell/Pursue debacle and DOMA non-veto?

With friends like that...

@20 - That fear is understandable, but it's not a useful way to think about political discussion. I witnessed this same attitude during a congressional campaign I worked on in 2006. I spoke with many members of the gay community who refused to believe that my candidate really supported their rights because she didn't campaign on the issue. What they ignored was that she was running in a majority Catholic district (this was in New Mexico). What was really farcical about this is that my paycheck was being paid by the Human Rights Hampaign, who endorsed her because she was a strong supporter of gay rights.

Obama has made it clear previously that he is in favor of gay rights. But while that's a popular position around here, it could kill his chances nationally. So he chooses not to bring it up every time he has a chance. That's not an indicator that he doesn't care. It's an indicator that he cares enough to get elected, so he can do something about it instead of just talking.

What a candidate does or doesn't say about an issue is not necessarily a good indicator of what they'll do when they get into office. Bush, Cheney, et al. are of course great examples of this. But that doesn't always mean it's dishonest. And it's not always a bad thing.

*Campaign

I am not an idiot. I swear.