U.S. Iran-Peace Project
2008 Presidential Campaign Analysis
www.usiranpeace.com
January 21, 2008
By Webster Brooks, Former Independent Vice-Presidential Candidate
Hartford, Connecticut — In one week, the future of Barak Obama’s presidential hopes and his Purple Revolution will be decided by South Carolina’s Black voters who make up 47 percent of the state’s electorate. Obama must not only win the South Carolina primary but carry the state’s black vote by a five to one margin to ignite the national black vote for the February 5, Super Tuesday showdown featuring elections in twenty states.
With his narrow defeat in New Hampshire, Barak Obama lost the chance to knock Hillary Clinton out of the race early. Now, his only chance to win the nomination encompasses a long bloody primary with Clinton that goes all the way to the Democratic Party convention in Denver and a bruising delegate fight. To survive the long primary war and win the nomination, Obama must consolidate 80 percent of the Black vote, maintain his majority of independent voters and hope that John McCain clinches the Republican nomination early.
The fractious issue of race, long deferred in the Democratic primaries has finally surfaced with a vengeance, largely spurred on incendiary comments about Obama by the “honorary Black presidentâ€? come-to-Harlem Bill Clinton. While race may emerge as the most compelling factor driving South Carolina’s Black vote, African-American support for Obama will require jettisoning the Democratic Party’s Civil Rights establishment to join Obama’s Purple Revolution–a coalition of moderate Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans.
Like all insurgent movements, Obama’s Purple Revolution must storm the fortress of the Democratic Party establishment led by the Clintons. Although Obama is running against Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton has sundered the traditional role of former presidents assuming all the dignity of a roving attack dog stalking Obama and pouting to the press. Since Bill Clinton’s election as president in 1992, the Clintons have exercised dominion over the national Democratic Party machine. Bill and Hillary Clinton have raised more money for the Democratic Party, its candidates and causes than anyone. They have controlled the Democratic National Committee, and presided over a vast patronage network that rewards friends and punishes adversaries with malice and regularity.
Within the Democratic Party’s special interests universe, the Clintons have exercised dominion over the Democratic Party’s women’s caucus, Hollywood’s limousine liberals, New York’s Democratic Party financial district moguls and most especially the Black Civil Rights establishment.
So formidable is the Clinton’s grip on the Democratic Party that should Obama edge out Hillary Clinton in delegates awarded through the party primaries and caucuses, he may still lose the nomination due to the extraordinary number of non-primary super-delegates voting at the Democratic Party National Convention; yet another stronghold of the Clintons. Super-delegates include 235 Democratic House members, 49 U.S. senators, 28 governors and other party luminaries that comprise 16 percent of the total convention delegates.
On the road to South Carolina the presidential campaign now moves into Phase Two, as both candidates engage in a mad scramble, crisscrossing America in search of 2,025 delegates needed to secure the party’s nomination. Delegates will be awarded by proportional representation, with a minimum 15 percent threshold of a state’s total vote required in order to receive convention delegates. Thus, winning and losing states becomes relative as long as the delegate counts remain fairly close. While “fightingâ€? John Edwards has vowed to run all the way to the convention, his support is likely to diminish as the race increasingly becomes a fight between the Clinton establishment and Obama’s ascendant Purple Revolution. If Edwards stays in the race and captures the requisite 15 percent of the vote in key states, which camp his delegates side with could be another critical unknown in a race that remains very much up for grabs.
Barak Obama is offering the Democratic Party and the American electorate an opportunity to turn the page on the bitter era of partisanship and political rancor that has paralyzed Washington. Although America’s electorate is tilting towards the Democrats, if the Republicans nominate John McCain the Democratic Party will be confronted by an opponent with broad appeal to America’s vital center. If Republicans nominate Mitt Romney and Democrats crown Hillary Clinton as their nominee, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will surely enter the presidential race as a formidable independent threat. Having lost the last two presidential elections with candidates that lacked sufficient appeal to the center, Democrats can nominate the polarizing Hillary Clinton at their own peril.
As for Black America, the majority of African-American voters can join Obama’s Purple Revolution or opt for the politics of the past. On January 26, Black voters have a date with destiny. Let freedom ring at the ballot boxes of South Carolina.
Since the national, editoralising media, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC, has forgot that all good reporting starts with questions rather than a comentary, I’ll ask the questions. Does any Democrate, regardless of race or gender, really feel that Obama’s praise of Reagan’s vision of change for the country is appropriate? Especially when comparing it to Bill Clinton’s vision, or as Obama feels lack of. Should there be a compairison between their years of service fighting for civil rights, education, and health care for the poor? And do you feel that Obama should contrast Reagan’s visionary presidency policies to those of Bill Clinton’s visionary policies when it comes to things like the economy, balanced budget, and tax surplus, and how they affected the black and low income voters of South Carolina? Do you think it was a thoughtless means of appealing to the white concervative independent voters of South Carolina? Do you think it was politically motivated or fair he would use Nixon, possibly the most disliked President in modern history, in the same breath as Clinton? And finally, do you think Obama can have it both ways in South Carolina, appealing to the conservative independent voters, and the less fortunate, low income voters?
Yes. I believe that Obama’s praise for President Reagan’s vision was proper, after all, President reagan revolutionized Republican part by bringing in “Joe lunch bucket” democrats into his own party. Senator Obama was merely saying that compared to those two: Clinton and Nixon, Reagan did make changes for the country. Senator Obama was correct with what he was saying. Both Clintons also have made similar remarks about President Reagan. Bill Clinton was deliberately exploiting the public for campaign purposes.
Senator Obama is a remarkable leader this country needs at this special time in history.
I don’t know what Senator Obama was attempting to achieve with his praise of Ronald Reagan, but if he really believed what he said, then he is as ignorant of history as our current president, and forfeits any claim to being “the remarkable leader this country needs at this special time in history.”
As John Edwards has correctly noted, “Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, … we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party,” Edwards said.
Paul Krugman further destroys the Reagan myth by pointing out that “the Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans.
By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before  and the poverty rate had actually risen.”
No, Diana, Senator Obama’s praise for President Reagan’s vision was not only improper, it wasn’t even accurate.
Black voters in South Carolina should vote for whichever candidate they believe is the best, regardless of race.
Besides, a vote for any of the current Democratic candidates is a step in the right direction compared to the disastrous path our incumbent Decider has taken us.