Obama '08?

I'm as big an Obama supporter as anyone, but I really need to see him step his game up.

In that case, why don't you listen to the audiobook while you're getting to work? In my experience, working from primary sources is a larger time investment at first, but it generously pays you back in pundit gossip you don't have to listen to. But to each his own, of course.

These speeches Drum refers to -- they're campaign speeches. They're written for him, they're part of campaign strategy.

You keep talking about how well every voter can't be bothered with reading the book... sure, of course. YOU can't find time to read it? Hmm.

Or is it only Obama we cant properly talk about without having gone to his primary sources?

Did you read John Edwards' book? It was praised by Ezra Klein as excellently illustrating and embodying Edwards' motivations and experiences, laying out where he's coming from and what he stands for.

Why is it "Hmm"-worthy not to have read Obama's book, but not - I presume, unless we're going to form a book club - Edwards' or Hillary's (did you read that one?)?

Hell, you like it when I report back on what I found.

And of course, why just read Obama's book? If we can only truly judge a candidate when we've read his book, what about Hillary's, and Richardson's, and Giuliani's and Huckabee's?

Shouldn't I at least start out with the well-received book of my preferred candidate, John Edwards'?

Did you read Obama's book, btw? Sorry if you did and already wrote about it and I missed or forgot it - I'd be interested in what you thought.

sozobe wrote:

These speeches Drum refers to -- they're campaign speeches. They're written for him, they're part of campaign strategy.

And the policy plans? They're also written for him? The tax plan that shirks away from a structural overhaul? A plan on health care, arguably the most dominant issue in domestic politics now, that's cautious enough to end up being outflanked even by Hillary? Sorry, but those are not things you can blame misguided staffers for anymore.

If we were having an ongoing discussion about Edwards, and I kept questioning why you would support him, and you kept trying and failing to explain, and you said "if you read his book, I think you'd get it," that'd seem reasonable to me.

It's not "hmm-worthy" to say that you haven't read Obama's book -- it's "hmm-worthy" that you say you don't have TIME to read his book.

No, I dont have time to read any books written by politicians, US or otherwise. The polls and news-of-the-day stuff, silly but intriguing as it is, I do to relax over coffee, I'm a news junkie. And even if I'd deny myself that indulgence altogether, it would still take me weeks to read Obama's book (not to mention Edwards' etc), in the same time. So reading a politician's book would come on top of that - and thus either at the cost of time with Anastasia, time I go out, or time I read Eastern Europe/work-related stuff. No thank you.

Maybe Obama has figured out the new political zeitgeist before the traditional politicians and -- yes -- the skeptics in the press corps.

That's not that you don't have time to read, though

Did you read Obama's book, btw? Sorry if you did and already wrote about it and I missed or forgot it - I'd be interested in what you thought.

At any rate, I don't consider the health plan to be a major deficit, nor a cause for finger-pointing at anyone -- Obama or his campaign. I think it's at least fine, maybe very good.

In my experience, working from primary sources is a larger time investment at first, but it generously pays you back in pundit gossip you don't have to listen to. But to each his own, of course.

I'm saying that if you want to judge candidates, the most efficient way to do it is by reading primary sources by them rather than gossip columns about them.

I'm to lazy to type down page long citations. If you did read Audacity of Hope instead of letting poor Sozobe explain it to you, you'd be saving her an immense amount of work.

IT IS BLACK AND WHITE. As Dana noted, mainstream press coverage of the Jena 6 was pitiful at best, until it finally hit the major-media radar this week . And recent coverage seems to have disproportionately focused on Jesse Jackson's (possible) accusation that Barack Obama has been "acting like he's white" by not coming out more visibly on the Jena 6 issue. Jackson later backed down, saying that the statement doesn't really represent the way he feels about Obama, or that it was taken out of context. Obama put out his own statement on the case, saying it's not "a matter of black and white," but rather "a matter of right and wrong." He continued, "We should stand as one nation in opposition to this and any injustice."

I'm not going to endorse Jackson's race-baiting, but Obama's statement says a lot about the reality of racism in America today. Jena is about black and white. And if the actual events in Jena didn't make that clear enough, it's even clearer now that we have a black political candidate so worried about alienating white voters by identifying too closely with black causes that he feels he can't publicly call this a matter of racism, plain and simple. As our own Terence Samuel wrote just a few weeks ago, Obama might well be part of a new generation of African American political leaders that are post-civil rights. But even a post-civil rights candidate needs to be able to call out injustice fueled by racism when it exists. And in Jena, it exists.

But Obama is forced to operate as a presidential candidate in a country that's willing to accept his blackness, as long as he's not too black, which means he can't call it out. American voters are willing to vote for him as long as he doesn't try to challenge any of the underlying assumptions about who and what the United States is today, because the majority of Americans just don't want to think about the possibility that America is still a country hostile to its non-white citizens. They don't want to worry that a black president might make them cede some of the privilege they are afforded in white-dominated society. If they're going to even think about electing a black man to the presidency, he must assure them that he's not going to do anything to upset their sense of complacency and the illusion that America is a swell place for everybody nowadays.

And while the image of nooses hanging from a tree in Louisiana is a gut-wrenching reminder of the very overt racism that still exists in the United States, it's far more common to pretend to ignore race issues -- as is the case of Obama. It's easy to disassociate ourselves from Jena, to pinpoint that example of some of the very real, very major work that still has to be done, but then to write that off as an exceptional case. It's much harder to disassociate ourselves from the system of privilege and racism that Obama has to work within if he wants to win the Democratic nomination. Having a black political candidate among the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination serves as easy salve for the majority of well-intentioned, comfortable, middle-class white American voters. "Sure, there are still a few backwater rednecks in the South who hate black people," they think. "But us, we're good people. Look, we've even got an Obama '08 lawn sign!"

But the fact remains that if Obama came out with his proverbial guns blazing about the Jena 6, those same voters would probably do a little redecorating. And that is perhaps the most pernicious injustice.

Obama, a former civil rights lawyer who would be the first black president, issued a statement this month calling on the local district attorney to drop the "excessive charges" against the black teens. He said the case "shows that we still have a lot of work to do as a nation to heal our racial tensions," and he pledged to "monitor this case closely."

[...]

"We shouldn't have to have a national rally for people to recognize the injustice of what's been happening down there," said Obama, who had been asked by Harvey whether he was satisfied that Louisiana officials were trying to resolve the matter fairly. "The degree to which folks haven't stepped up, I think, doesn't speak well."

Jackson later said that his comment about Obama had been taken out of context.

On the radio program, Obama also singled out the Justice Department's civil rights division, which has come under fire from Democrats who say the Bush administration has shifted the agency's focus away from racial injustice.

"Unfortunately, we have not had a president or an attorney general that considers these issues priorities," the Illinois senator said. "And I guarantee you, when I am president, my attorney general will consider it a priority."

You really believe that the analysts I've been quoting here are akin to "gossip columns"? Klein, Cohn, Drum?

If Soz disagrees with that and, based on the book, has a different opinion about what Obama is like, then she is free to argue that of course, quoting or not quoting the book - thats what this forum is for. But its hardly something I force "poor Sozobe" to do, hello.