« Cindy McCain Wants To Have it Both Ways | Home | As Usual, Einstein Was Right »
The Legacy of the Obama Phenomenon
By Steve Levine | May 10, 2008
Win or lose in November, this Associated Press piece raises some interesting questions about the meaning of the Obama phenomenon:
The entire nation and countless foreigners are absorbing a moment that had seemed decades away, if possible at all. Smart strategists and rank-and-file voters ponder how Obama rose so far so fast, and theories abound. Historians will sort it out someday, but Obama’s blend of oratory, biography, optimism and cool confidence come to mind most immediately.
It’s not just about him, of course. If America can seriously think of putting a black man in the White House, surely it must also profoundly rethink the relevance of race, the power of prejudice, the logic of affirmative action and other societal forces that have evolved slowly through the eras of Jim Crow, desegregation and massive immigration.
Maybe the toughest question is this:
Is Obama, with his incandescent smile and silky oratory, a once-in-a-century phenomenon who will blast open doors only to see them quickly close on less extraordinary blacks?
Or is he the lucky and well-timed beneficiary of racial dynamics that have changed faster than most people realized, a trend that presumably will soon yield more black governors, senators, mayors and council members?
Topics: 2008, Barack Obama, General, Politics 2.0 |
May 11th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Dumb white boys in West Virginia may think Obama is a Muslim terrorist who will take away their guns, but that kind is more likely to put their energy into white supremacist paramilitary fantasies or commenting at neo-Nazi forums about “negroes” than they are to vote.
Even in the deepest South, white conservatives will vote for black candidates who run against white politicians, on local and state levels, if they believe that the black candidate more closely reflects their personal values.
I didn’t think Clinton would reach into the bottom of Karl Rove’s bag of dirty tricks and use race as a wedge issue, but after the Jeremiah Wright debacle, conservative working-class whites are going to be skeptical of Obama’s bona fides as a patriotic citizen of the United States, much less his credibility as a moral leader.
I think he has the political skills to overcome these difficulties, but it will take more than his charm and dazzling oratorical performances to survive the onslaught of Republican swiftboating sure to follow when he wins the nomination.