Politics

While Obama may have thought he was unifying the Democratic Party by denouncing his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., he may have been hurting it at the same time.

Many Americans were shocked and appalled when they heard snippets of Wright’s sermons, which claimed that the U.S. was attacked because it commits crimes of terrorism against its people. Though his comments were inflammatory, they were not out of the norm for African-American churches.

Wright was an influential part of Obama’s life. He presided at Obama’s wedding, baptized Obama’s two daughters, and preached to Obama in church for decades. Obama once said that he could not condemn Wright any more than he could criticize his own grandmother, who also said provocative things.

Obama may have thought it would be advantageous to separate himself from Wright as it becomes less clear who will win the Democratic nomination. However, should he be the nominee, it is likely that either the Republicans or Swift Boats would use this as an example of flip-flopping.

Obama stands strong on the fact that he never supported the war in Iraq, yet his choice of people he supports in his life vacillate more. 

I voted for Obama in the primary elections, yet like his position with his former pastor, I am becoming less sure of my support.

American Rhetoric considers her one of the top 100 speakers in American history. Below is the link to one of her speeches. You could always expect humor and emotion from her words, and this speech at the DNC is no exception.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/annrichards1988dnc.htm

Have you ever seen GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK? It’s a movie about Edward Murrow, a journalist during the ’40s and ’50s who basically single-handedly got the USA to question the Communist Red Scare in this country.

Well, the NYTimes has finally stepped up and made great journalists like Edward Murrow proud. Last Sunday, they published an article exposing how the Pentagon briefs military analysts before they go on air to tell us the news. They, in essence, have a say in what the military analysts say to the public — in short, the analysts we’re depending on to tell us the honest un-agendad truth about the war, are in fact not doing so at all.

So, on Friday, all briefing was halted and Congress is now investigating the Pentagon’s “briefing” process.

Check it out here.

The 2008 presidential election marks a turning point in history for country, no matter who the Democrats nominate. For the first time ever, we could have a woman nominee or an African-American bidding for president. Though these are both monumental achievements, the campaigns and press have set up a fight that is not going to find a winner: which group is more oppressed – women or African-Americans?

Barack Obama, however, is doing his best not to make race an issue in this campaign. Some have dubbed him “post-racial,” through which he is able to ascend the issue of race and just be seen as a candidate.

Just when the press was beginning to focus on the candidates’ issues, from NAFTA to health care, race was thrown back onto the playing field with the allegations that Obama sides with his inflammatory former reverend, Jeremiah Wright, who voices many anti-White America exclamations in his sermons. In his speech addressing race, Obama said that Wright’s comments were “were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems.”

In the speech that first thrust Obama into fame, his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he said, “There is not a black America and a white America… There’s the United States of America.”

Hillary’s camp hasn’t gotten off without scandal. A few weeks ago, former U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro’s inflammatory comments to a California newspaper brought the gender issue back into the limelight. She said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” A few days later, Ferraro resigned from Clinton’s finance committee.

If the media truly wants to see Obama as being “post-racial” or see Clinton as a modern woman that can take on the presidency, they should reject the race and gender cards and refocus on the issues – helping the American people choose the best candidate to be the Democratic nominee.

Leading up to the primaries this year, we saw many candidates running for president, with more announcing their candidacy every time we turned on the television. These races have led to record-breaking fundraising, as well as unprecedented spending. With figures like these, it is no surprise that the media has been focusing on the horserace of the campaign instead of emphasizing the candidates’ issues.

However, as the nation honed in on the horserace, so did the candidates, and some of them turned to negative campaigning. Nothing new to politics, negative campaigning has had a varied effect on political races. But with this race in particular, the candidates that fully engaged in negative campaigning did not fare as well.

For example, John Edwards, as much as he touted his policies, spent just as much time shooting down the other candidates in the Democratic Party. He clearly set him self up as being opposed to Hillary Clinton and the way she goes about politics. When it came to Barack Obama, Edwards said that he agrees with Obama’s messages of hope and change, but that he was the better candidate to fully implement those notions. It wasn’t what he said, it was the way he said it that didn’t come off so well. He was argumentative in his manner, making it seem more like a fight than a campaign.

I was lucky enough to get to meet Edwards when I was in Manchester, New Hampshire right before the primary up there. I was seated in the front row of This Week with George Stephanopoulos when Edwards appeared on the show. This was a prime spot to notice what the candidates said with the microphone off and on. When the camera was rolling, the first thing Edwards wanted to say to Stephanopoulos was bashing Clinton. As soon as the show went to a commercial break and the men turned their microphones off, Edwards leaned in to Stephanopoulos and asked, “So what did you really think of the debates last night?”

Stephanopoulos responded, “I agree with what I said last night. I thought you won it.”

“So you really think I did better than Hillary?” Edwards inquired. That was the last of what I could hear before the stage crew bustled around getting ready for the next take.

Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, have been less negative lately as they were in the past few months of the campaign. As they bickered less, their ratings have gone up, making it a closer race than before. Consequently, Edwards dropped out of the race, unable to garner enough support to justify continuing.

On the Republican side, the candidate most employing negative tactics was Mitt Romney. During the debates, he just picked fights with the other candidates. In fact, most media stories about him were about his attacks and attack advertisements. Either that, or the money he was spending to keep up with the other candidates who were spending less time badmouthing each other and more time fundraising. Not surprisingly, Romney just dropped out of the race, as well, because he was not doing as well in the primaries as his competitors.

Negative campaigning is as old as campaigning itself, but with this election, voters seemed turned off by it. Perhaps it finally will be an election based more on the issues than the horserace.