During the wake of the Jeremiah Wright scandal, I worried that much of Obama's long-standing efforts to reach out to evangelical voters might be undone. But the campaign has kept at it, drawing surprise from evangelical pastors and favorable comparisons with the flat-footedness of the McCain campaign.
"I've never seen anything quite like it before," said evangelical author Stephen Mansfield [...] "To be running against a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and to be reaching into the Christian community as wisely and knowledgeably as (Obama) is -- understanding their terms and their values -- is just remarkable."
This month, the Illinois senator held a closed-door meeting in Chicago with almost 40 Christian leaders, including evangelical heavyweights such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, publishing magnate Steve Strang and megachurch pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes.
An adviser to the Obama campaign called the meeting a "Nixon Goes to China" moment. Many of the attendees came away impressed, even though much of the meeting revolved around questions about Obama's positions on abortion and gay marriage.
[Publishing magnate Steve] Strang wrote in a blog, Obama "won over the loyalties of many."
"He came across as thoughtful and much more of a 'centrist' than I would have expected," Strang wrote, adding that he hopes McCain will host a similar gathering.
The goal, of course, is not to win over a majority of evangelical voters, among whom poll after poll continue to show overwhelming support for Republicans, but Obama might just have found a way to chip away at a significant part of the Republican base.
Pollster.com has the details of a new poll of Latino voters in Swing States conducted by Pacific Market Research. Obama leads among likely Latino voters by a margin of 63-24, with 13% still undecided. His margin is even larger among registered voters generally.
Obama does well among Latinos across many states. In California, he leads 66 percent to 20 percent; in New York, 65 percent to 20 percent; in Texas, 61 percent to 22 percent.
Combining data in the four southwestern states expected to be key battlegrounds -- New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada -- Obama leads McCain 57 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters.
In Florida, where about half of Latino voters are Cuban-American, Obama has 43 percent to McCain's 42 percent. The poll's margin of error is 3.5 percent.
In 2008, the Latino vote is expected to increase to 9 million or roughly 8 percent of voters. By comparison, 7.6 million Latinos voted in 2004 and 5.9 million in 2000.
Nationally, Obama maintains an overwhelming two-to-one (close to three-to-one) margin over McCain among Latinos, while the two candidates remain tied in Florida, probably due to the particular demographics of the Latino population there, where Obama perhaps still faces skepticism among Cuban-Americans.
As part of its Fifty-State Strategy, the Obama campaign has pledged to deploy staff to every state in the Union. But pundits are watching closely to see where closely trusted and experienced staff members end up, which led to one surprise this week:
Team Obama has assigned one of its most valued campaign staffers to the state, reports the Indianapolis Star. The staffer, Emily Parcell, was political director for Obama in Iowa, where the Illinois Senator secured a huge win that essentially put him on the path to the nomination.
The Obama campaign says it shows they're taking the state seriously. However, as Taegan Goddard notes, political experts think that the Obama team doesn't really believe this and is merely messing with the minds of the McCain team.
Like New Hampshire a traditional bastion of conservative government surrounded by bluer states, Indiana has been trending slightly more blue in recent cycles. And let's not forget that there are several crucial House races and a key Governor's race there this cycle.
His aides and advisers said they did not believe Obama necessarily has a serious chance of winning in many of the traditionally Republican states, but rather that he can at least draw Mr. McCain into spending time and money there while also swelling the rolls of Democratic voters and supporting other Democrats on the ballot.
Some voter registration efforts in key parts of the state might give McCain a run for his money and might secure the three new House Democrats elected from Indiana in 2006. And who knows, boosting African-American Democratic turnout in Northwest Indiana might just put a little fear in the powers that be in Indianapolis to change the way they govern.
These are sensible choices for a presidential nominee to make who isn't interested not only in winning but in building a congressional mandate to pass his agenda, we're just not used to politicians making (or having the resources to make) these kind of long-term, far-sighted calculations.
It looks like the Obama campaign only narrowly beat McCain for fundraising in the month of May. The Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet has the details of altogether healthy campaign finances, but disappointing nonetheless:
Cash on hand $43,147,333
Primary cash on hand $33,263,856
The month of May:
Total raised $21,901,101
Total primary raised $21,211,417
General election raised $689,683
General elec. raised to date $9,883,476
Debt: $304,162
While Obama's fundraising has almost certainly surged since the end of May, now that the primary is over and Democrats will be able to combine their fundraising efforts, this should bring home the magnitude of the challenge facing Obama, especially now that he has left the public financing system.
On a side note, it's worth noting that on top of his healthy stash of 34 million in primary dollars, he also has already raised $10 million towards the general election.
All the same, a classic bad news dump for a late Friday night?
UPDATE: The New York Times notes that the campaign spent $26.1 million in May.
After McCain's change of heart this week, House Democrat Rahm Emanuel saw an opening, asking McCain whether he'd be so open to offshore drilling in the Great Lakes as well:
"The Great Lakes are not just a natural treasure; the Great Lakes are the economic engine that drives the Midwest, the source of drinking water for more than 30 million Americans and the site of recreational opportunities for millions of families," Emanuel writes in a missive to McCain's Senate office. [...]
Congress passed a permanent ban on drilling in the lakes in 2005 and McCain isn't likely to suggest drilling in such a habitat.
But that doesn't stop Emanuel from closing: "I hope your newfound stance on offshore drilling will not be followed by support for drilling in the Great Lakes."
Emanuel also does McCain the favor of reminding him of the swing states bordering the Lakes, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. A minor tactical move, but a smart one --- that brings home the debate to those who live in America's heartland.
Decisions are being made about which states to focus on, and Obama is making clear the kind of campaign that opting out of the federal system and choosing grassroots financing will allow him.
It's a great ad, able to seem more natural and less contrived. Chris Cillizza is probably right that it's a quiet way of addressing concerns about his background by highlighting his Kansas roots, professing his patriotism, and laying out his roots across racial lines:
How much will it cost? Where will it run? Marc Ambinder has his estimates:
i'm estimating, more than 1.5 million per week; if he's saturating the airwaves, the figure is closer to $3 million.
The ad will air in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia, per the campaign.
Note the provocative references to welfare reform and tax-cutting.
The public financing system involves an offer of public funds in exchange for obeying a private funding spending limit:
Under the federal presidential financing system, a candidate this year would be given $84.1 million from the Treasury to finance a general election campaign. In exchange, the candidate is barred from accepting private donations, or from spending more than the $84.1 million.
This morning, as expected, Obama left the public financing system, forgoing those $84.1 million in public funds --- knowing that he can raise significantly more in online donations.
Obama is now "the first candidate of a major party to decline public financing — and the spending limits that go with it — since the system was created in 1976, after the Watergate scandals." It is a historic move, although it should be said that it had long since become commonplace for nearly all candidates of both parties to decline public funds (and spending limits) during the primaries.
If McCain follows suit, then the 2008 general election will be the first in over twenty years not to be bound by spending limits --- and each candidate will be able to raise and spend unlimited private funds.
The problem is that these "spending limits" were never absolute. The RNC and DNC have long conducted their own fundraising and spending, bound by a different and much higher personal contribution limit. And 527's have now made it commonplace for outside groups to spend massive amounts in the final weeks of the campaign.
In other words, Obama would have been at a significant disadvantage in the general election, the historic disadvantage of Democrats nationally for years in fundraising --- since he would have been unable to maximize his new model of online fundraising, while his opponents would have been free to raise and spend without being bound by contribution limits.
And in a real sense, Obama's is the more public financing model, based on the active choice and mobilization of millions of Americans giving small sums, instead of the passive allocation of tax funds by a bureaucracy or the barely restrained spending of an oligarchy.
Still, public financing advocates are almost sure to be upset --- and rightfully so --- at what could be the final collapse of a system, but it's not Barack Obama they should be upset with. Public financing regulations haven't kept pace by raising spending limits or further restricting 527's, and until they do, they only leave Democrats at an extreme disadvantage.
Let's remember what public financing was for: To ensure that the voices of the public are heard over the unrestrained spending of the special interests. An unreformed public financing system no longer meets this challenge and indeed perversely maintains the inequity. Instead, the internet holds the future of an engaged public, rising up as they have, on their own, to fund the campaigns and make irrelevant the special interests.
Washington newspaper The Hill reports conversations with Democratic fundraisers, quoted by name, predicting massive totals this summer:
Specifically, they say Obama could raise $100 million in June and could attract 2.5 million to 3 million new donors to his campaign.
These fundraisers say Obama could increase his fundraising dramatically because of three factors: a boost of enthusiasm among Obama donors following his clinching of the nomination; the migration of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) donors to his camp; and the mobilization of big Democratic donors who have given little so far this year.
In the past, the Obama campaign has been tight-lipped about fundraising results, and we now have a broader range of "Democratic fundraisers" offering predictions to the press.
Second, I hope this influx of major Democratic donors (including those have until now remained on the sidelines) doesn't change the broad-based, small-donor model of Obama's fundraising this year.
Third, Obama's spectacular achievement has been a far more successful fundraising model that requires a minimum of candidate time:
During the month of February, for example, his campaign raised a record-setting $55 million—$45 million of it over the Internet—without the candidate himself hosting a single fund-raiser. The money just came rolling in.
That model should be maintained as much as possible, and that means continuing to make significant investments in online campaigning. Techpresident contributor Patrick Ruffini predicted:
The Obama Internet team hit the ground running with ten staffers in February 2007, including Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Don't be surprised to see them recruit more tech and data geeks for the general, including former Clintonistas and from Silicon Valley.
The Republican National Committee launched a new website today –– "Change We Can't Afford." McCain last week repeated over and over last week, "That's not Change you can believe in."
In other words, the Republican party seems dedicated to repeating the words "Change" and "Obama" in the same sentence as often as possible. By the end of the election season, you're going to have to put an Obama trademark symbol next to the word. They're doing Obama's work for him.
This is the worst possible strategy --- even worse because they don't even dispute that Obama would be Change. They concede it in advance. In an electoral climate where more than seven out of ten voters think the country is on the wrong track, you don't mock the idea of Change. The Clinton campaign has already learned this lesson, far too well.
If you're running against someone, you don't use the word "Strong" or "Experienced" every time you mention their name, even if you're trying to dispute the claim. What you do is you use the word "weak." Republicans are only reinforcing Obama's outsider status.
Today Steve Hildebrand announced in an email to supporters that the Obama campaign would be the first in decades to have staff on the ground in all fifty states.
As in every presidential election, some states will be more competitive than others, and we will scale our resources accordingly.
But unprecedented grassroots energy during the primary means that this list of competitive states will be longer than ever before -- and it will include states like Virginia and Montana that aren't traditionally within reach for a Democratic presidential candidate.
And in every single state, our staff will build volunteer capacity that will provide help where we need it and impact races up and down the ballot this November.
This is a presidential campaign that understands that it's not enough to just win. If you do, you'll never be able to pass universal health care or serious global warming legislation. You have to have a mandate.
And the Obama campaign won't just win, they'll be laying the groundwork for a national grassroots effort to influence Washington, shift the balance of power, lobby our government, and sweep to wide margins in both houses of Congress.
But to do all this, they're going to need all the resources they can get. Make another small donation. Make it $25. And check out very excited Texan and Kossack Kath25's diary about the grassroots energy building in Texas!
Over the next few weeks the Obama campaign will be in transition –– drawing on a broader pool of consultants, making major new staff hires, and building operations in critical states. As far as reaching into the Clinton circle for new staff, the Obama campaign has made a few savvy choices –– an Ohio specialist and a famed opposition researcher:
In one telling example, he is moving to hire Aaron Pickrell, the chief political strategist of Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio — who helped steer Mrs. Clinton to victory in that state’s primary — to run his effort against Mr. McCain there.
In another, aides said, he has tapped Dan Carroll, an opposition researcher who gained fame digging up information on opponents’ records for Bill Clinton in 1992, to help gather information about Mr. McCain.
Where else can the campaign gain from the Clinton team? Although often criticized for not preparing for a lengthy primary season, there was a lot that the Clintons did right. Early in 2007, they were already hard at work lining up national Latino leaders like Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa --- nailing down a constituency that would be keep the campaign alive nationally.
When Richardson left the race, the Clinton campaign immediately pounced, rounding up his crucial circle of advisers specializing in Western politics, like Michael Stratton, who ran Ken Salazar's Colorado Senate campaign in 2006. These voices are valuable for Latino outreach nationally, but they also simply have experience running campaigns in Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico --- all crucial states for Obama in the fall.
In comparison, the Obama campaign has often been accused of complacency when it comes to Latino outreach, even by their own supporters, though recently they've been getting creative, including Obama dutifully learning phonetically a short message in Spanish for a commercial in Puerto Rico.
The Clinton campaign almost always outperformed Obama among Hispanic voters, despite the fact that Obama is better on some of the more specific issues of Hispanic voters:
The campaign’s mistake may have been in believing Obama's more aggressive stance on immigrants' rights would speak for itself, without active promotion.
While both Obama and Clinton supported the comprehensive immigration reform bill that failed in Congress last year, only Obama has promised, if elected, to return to the issue during his first year in office. Obama also supports driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants; Clinton does not.
And during the Jan. 31 Democratic debate in Los Angeles, Obama struck the more conciliatory tone on illegal immigration. In response to a question that blamed immigration for African American unemployment, Clinton agreed with the premise, while Obama called it "a case of scapegoating that I do not believe in, that I do not subscribe to."
Make no doubt about it, Latino voters will be crucial to the future of the Democratic party, and Clinton's outreach team may be one of the best. Now's the time to poach from it.
Obama visits the campaign's national headquarters in Chicago to congratulate his (mostly very young) staff, to encourage them to take some time off and catch their breath, but to remind them of how much harder they're all going to have to work.
And he's right, in the primary, they could lose, combine forces with the new candidate, and move towards November. But now they can't lose. We can't lose. The burden is on us now, not just on his staff but on all of us:
Party leaders will be making a statement tomorrow morning to end the process. Will they recognize Obama as the presumptive nominee?
In the absence of a concession speech from Sen. Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night, top figures in the Democratic Party are set to go public, urging all uncommitted officials to declare their presidential affiliations.
Sources have confirmed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, and an official with the Democratic Governors Association are planning to release a public statement on Wednesday morning requesting that the party close its ranks and prepare for the race against Sen. John McCain.
Today the Democratic party will be holding the final primaries of the 2008 presidential campaign season. Our goal should not only be one nominee going forward, but one party.
That's why I hope you'll make a contribution today to support the Democratic National Committee, no matter what the results today, and make a statement for unity. Help support the grassroots network of organizers that Howard Dean and the DNC have built in all fifty states! And show your support for the difficult compromises the Rules and Bylaws Committee made last weekend.
The Clinton campaign has repeatedly fallen back on criticizing the process after every loss --- challenging the right of students to caucus in college towns when they realized they would turn out in large numbers for Obama; challenging the Nevada Democratic party's right to set up worksite caucus locations for casino workers otherwise disenfranchised once their union endorsed Obama; challenging the entire caucus process once they had repeatedly been out-organized and defeated by large margins.
At no point in 2007 did Hillary Clinton critique the caucus format, nor did she challenge the Rules and Bylaws Committee's initial decision to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates. These decisions were made only later, only after they became necessary to keep her chances alive.
The most dangerous moments at Saturday's RBC hearing were when Harold Ikes repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the process, arguing that although the Clintons might lose, the party process was fundamentally unjust and an Obama nomination illegitimate.
And these ideas filter down to Clinton's supporters. According to Newsday:
And many of her supporters are vowing to fight on despite the odds. Some have circulated a 17-page critique of the party's primary rules prepared by Clinton supporter Stephen Herbits.
It's titled: "The 2008 DNC Presidential Nomination Process: A Crisis Of Legitimacy."
This group is not connected to the campaign, but they are pursuing the campaign's logic to its natural end and accepting the campaign's rhetoric.
I've never ceased to be amazed at the ultimate insiders on the Clinton campaign --- people like former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe or Harold Ickes --- express shock (shock!) at the way elections are conducted around here. They could have been voices for reform during any time in the last two decades that they dominated the DNC.
Hillary Clinton personally has made arguments comparing the DNC's initial decision not to seat Florida and Michigan delegations --- a decision she herself explicitly agreed with and which her surrogates on the RBC (Ickes included) voted for --- to Zimbabwe's corrupt government, to apartheid, and to the civil rights movement.
The Clinton campaign has spared absolutely no fire when turning not only on Obama but on the Democratic party. In Nevada, they tacitly supported a lawsuit against the state Democratic party to close caucus locations where Obama supporters might caucus. On Saturday, as the DNC tried to work out a compromise to meet both campaigns halfway, Clinton surrogates repeatedly threw up their hands at the injustice of it all. Harold Ickes made open threats.
Continue your run for president, continue to try to sway superdelegates. Fine. And be a voice for changing the nomination process for 2012.
But don't try to change the rules after the fact. Don't challenge the Democratic party's nomination procedure as unjust and illegitimate after you've lost, or treat in bad faith the DNC's constant attempts to remain neutral, find compromises, and mediate between the two campaigns --- that's what will be so destructive to the party and will ultimately give Clinton supporters an excuse to sit out the election in November.
Hillary Clinton must eventually recognize that she lost --- fair and square. The future of the party depends on it.
Too much is at stake in this election. Another seat on the Supreme Court. The opportunity to finally end the war in Iraq. A historic opportunity of having a solid Democratic majority to pass a progressive agenda on health care and poverty. That's what this election is about, not Hillary Clinton.
CNN is reporting that "most" of the remaining seventeen undecided senators would endorse Obama "this week":
Sources familiar with discussions between Obama supporters and these senators tell CNN’s Gloria Borger that the senators will wait until after the South Dakota and Montana primaries to announce their support for Obama. [...]
[A]ccording to one source, “the senators don’t want to pound Hillary Clinton, and there is a sense she should be given a grace period.”
Unfortunately, this may mean that Obama might not have the chance to be lifted over the top by the final voting in South Dakota and Montana.
[UPDATE]Marc Ambinder hears that not only are these senators planning an endorsement, but a group --- Harkin, Salazar, Carper, and Cardin --- is meeting tonight at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. to plot the endorsement:
Sens. Salazar and Harkin [neither of whom have officially endorsed Obama yet] are spearheading an effort to persuade all 17 undeclared Senator superdelegates to endorse Sen. Barack Obama at the same time, possibly as early as tomorrow night, probably by late Wednesday.
Remember the heady days of 2007 when multiple candidates were announcing their runs for president... over and over and over again?
After all, why announce just once, when you can stage a series of ever more elaborate announcements, one after the other, milking every last bit of press coverage for all its worth?
McCain was particularly ham-fisted about it, announcing with a smirk in March that he would announce his run in April:
“This is the announcement preceding the formal announcement. You know you drag this out as long as you can. You don’t just have one rendition. You’ve got to do it over and over.”
Dan Balz kindly described the trend in the Washington Post of "multi-step announcement schedules to garner maximum attention for their bids."
But this kind of admittedly cheap stagecraft is hardly unique to this cycle. After nearly a year of campaigning in 2003, finding his campaign hitting a lull, John Kerry decided to start all over again with a new re-announcement in front of an aircraft carrier in Charleston harbor. It worked.
And why just have an "announcement" anyway? When you can have an "announcement tour"? It's about savoring every last drop of free media coverage.
Let's not forget this, as Obama makes victory address after victory address, first in Des Moines last week and tomorrow night in St. Paul, that the cable networks will be broadcasting them at full length, granting the kind of airtime money couldn't buy.
There were worried supporters this morning, wondering if Obama's St. Paul announcement would really be it this time, if enough superdelegates would announce to put him over the top. Let's use the victory lap for all its worth.
First, there have been conflicting rumors tonight about Clinton's plans for Tuesday, along with word that the Clinton campaign is starting to let go of staff. Via Ben Smith:
Members of Hillary Clinton's advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending...
The advance staffers -- most of them now in Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana -- are being given the options of going to New York for a final day Tuesday, or going home, the aides said. The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed -- at least -- some of its staff. The advance staff is responsible for arranging the candidate's events around the country.
With the future of her campaign in doubt, Clinton hasn't announced her plans for the final election night of the primary cycle or beyond, but the aides said she would stage her election night event in New York City. Her entourage is currently expected to wake up Tuesday in New York and to arrive in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night.
Some suspect that an event in New York is a signal she could be preparing to end her campaign for president. It's also possible, however, that Clinton is merely shedding some staff now that there will no longer be any primaries and hence less active campaigning. With the Clinton campaign already deeply in debt, she would need a leaner organization if she intended to survive until the convention.
Second, from the British newspaper Telegraph, there are rumors that Obama's staff is preparing a package for Clinton to convince her to leave the race. I don't attribute much value to rumors from the British press, since they rarely seem to be accurate, and they probably lack the inside sources their American counterparts have.
And please note that all of these anonymous sources are second-hand, twice-removed and twice-anonymous. "Colleagues" who heard from "senior figures." A "Democrat" who discussed strategy with "friends" in Obama's "inner circle."
But so the rumor goes, the Obama campaign, unwilling to nominate Clinton for vice-president, will instead put together a concession package.
Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator. [...]
The Obama camp, however, remains nervous about Mrs Clinton’s intentions and ambitions, and is preparing a face-saving package that will allow her to continue to play a role in health care reform, which has been her signature issue for more than a decade. Despite pressure from some Clinton allies, Mr Obama and his advisers do not wish to ask her to be his vice-presidential running mate. “They will talk to her,” one Democrat strategist close to senior figures in the Obama camp told The Sunday Telegraph. “They will give her the respect she deserves. She will get something to do with health care, a cabinet post or the chance to lead the legislation through the Senate.”
Another Democrat who has discussed strategy with friends in the Obama inner circle said that Mr Obama was openly considering asking Mrs Clinton to join his cabinet, alongside two other former presidential rivals: John Edwards, who is seen as a likely attorney general; and Joe Biden, who is a leading contender to become Secretary of State.
Mr Obama hinted at the plan last week. “One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was 'how can we get this country through this time of crisis?’ And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.”
I post these ideas less as reality and more as genuine possibilities worth pondering.
Howard Fineman has heard rumors that campaign strategists are planning a convention placing Obama squarely in the Kennedy tradition. How large a role Ted Kennedy himself plays depends on his health, of course.
The obvious comparison will be with Camelot and the young Kennedys, a fresh breeze, a sense of change, the chance to revitalize America, etc. It's a strong concept, one that emphasizes the message of change, but it's one that's not without risks.
Camelot is a message of glamour, of stardom, of aristocratic privilege. It's remembered fondly, but politics has changed a lot in the intervening forty years. Would an earthier, community-organizing message, focused on economy hardship, using Kathleen Sebelius to highlight Obama's Midwestern roots, be more effective? I'm not sure.
I already reported on rumors that Obama would embark on a summer tour, highlighting his biography, including "a stop in Hawaii, his birthplace, and a major address there at Punchbowl Cemetery, where his maternal grandfather, who fought in World War II, is buried." No doubt another stop in Kansas would be on the agenda.
The focus on his grandfather's WWII service shows that the campaign has the right instinct --- to highlight how Obama's unusual biography is peculiarly American, all the more American, for all its strange detail; to highlight, in other words, as Obama put it in his 2004 convention speech, that in no other country on earth would his unlikely story have even been possible.
On the other hand, during the Kennedy endorsement rally some months ago, Obama raised his gratitude for the scholarships like those organized by the Kennedys then that made it possible for his Kenyan father to study in the United States. And second, the image of passing Ted Kennedy passing the torch on to a new generation, emphasizes Obama's newsness, his freshness, his message of change. I'm ambivalent.
[UPDATE] The other question is whether Obama will still have the chance to go on a foreign tour, an idea that was thrown around a couple months ago. A symbolic trip to Israel? A chance for adoring crowds in Europe to reinforce the idea of restoring American's image abroad? Another visit to Kenya to highlight the historic nature of his candidacy? To Asia? Or, as has been his focus more recently, to Latin America --- perhaps Brazil or Mexico? There isn't much time left before the convention.
[UPDATE II] Obama, of course, also hoped to campaign at least once in all 50 states, and I believe only Alaska and Hawaii are left. So a trip to Alaska is probably in the cards as well. It's a nice time of the year for it.
The Barack Obama campaign has pledged to send Senator Obama to Alaska this fall for a brief stop, if possible, as well as a longer follow-up visit to the state after the November elections.
At a press conference, Obama explains his reasons for leaving Trinity:
Several voices in the blogosphere today suggested this might set a bad precedent for future elections and that Obama should have continued to stand up to the unreasonable expectation that he be held responsible for every sermon at Trinity. But at a certain point, we should concede that Obama is being held to a different standard and just start living with that fact.
Meanwhile, pompous as ever, Jerome Armstrong just can't understand why Obama didn't take his advice sooner and dump his faith community of twenty years ages ago.
I do wonder if there might be irreparable damage to all the faith-based outreach that Obama undertook through much of 2007, such as his visit to Saddleback Church, and then the 2006 Call to Renewal speech. How does he continue to reach out to those voters and build those kind of coalitions now? It's a pity.
And Obama must know that his next choice of a church community will be monitored even more closely. Will some in the African-American community be upset if the new church is somewhat more outside the tradition? Will the wolves at Fox News be satisfied with whatever church he selects? Will the new church still exemplify the tradition of standing up for social justice that drew him to Trinity in the first place? A tough series of decisions.
I imagine actually that they wouldn't have left Trinity if they didn't already have somewhere in mind. Though of course, with Obama on the campaign trail, he's isn't likely to be able to attend very often anyway.
[UPDATE] A prominent African-American blog, Jack and Jill Politics, says it was only a matter of time, writing:
When you run for office, let alone this office, you have to give up much of what you are. It's part of how race works that white people are seen as individuals, and black people are seen as representing one another as a whole.
It's also true that the black church has always been radical, and that black radicalism has been seen as a threat in a way white radicalism hasn't. You look at Pat Robertson and company and you realize white radicalism is utterly mainstream in a way that black radical politics never could be, whether they're even close to as extreme.
But these are the rules we play by in America, and Obama knew that when he signed up.
