Ta-Nehisi Coates

Speaking of the New Republic, my old buddy Mike Schaffer (sorry Mike, you can't make me say "Michael" or "Currie," no matter how big time you are!)  weighs in on Pennsylvania politics and what Obama and Clinton can expect, should the primary stretch past March 4. The Essence:

While Iowans trumpet their nerdy earnestness by asking detailed policy questions of presidential wannabes every fourth winter, Keystone State politics are entirely un-self-conscious. This is an old example, but a relevant one. The last year the Pennsylvania primary mattered, in 1984, one of the more memorable moments came when Walter Mondale met with the ward leaders who ran Philadelphia's Democratic machine. When the former vice president took questions, one of them rose to ask ... how much street money he could look forward to on Election Day. Not the sort of thing you usually hear in Cedar Rapids.

And so the plot thickens. The Times isn't looking good in this one. The Essence:

Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.

Heh, the old "this state doesn't matter" meme, picks up some steam. Good look to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

I'm not sure I buy McCain's categorical denial. Having said that, I really really don't get this. In a perfect world, this would dead all talk of liberal media bias. This story will do nothing but unify conservatives against the hated liberal New York Times. I consider the McCain scandal to be of the same species as the attempted weak hit piece Barack Obama piece on drugs.

But this McCain business is worse. What the piece basically concludes is that a bunch of former McCainites, too scared to be named, thought he was trading favors for success. THERE IS NO ON THE RECORD ATTRIBUTION FOR THIS SCURRILOUS CHARGE. Now, it may turn out that McCain was doing just that, but if you're going to say something like this, you can not mess around playing footsie. You need someone on the record, or some sort of paper documentation, something that would convincly show that your charge isn't just the mumblings of disaffected ex-friends. I mean seriously. Come correct, dog. Or don't come at all.

This, I think, spells trouble for Hillary. The Essence:

In a state where half the voters were white women, where only one in ten voters were minorities, and where more than half were from households that made less than $74,999 annually, Wisconsin should have comported with Clinton's strengths. But the exit polls, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for television networks and the Associated Press, offered scarce news of encouragement for the New York senator.

He basically beat her on her home-field. What I want to know is by what logic do you decide to cede ten primaries to a guy? Worse, the Clinton folks had already seem this strategy bomb for Guiliani. Why try to repeat it? I think this really shows that what folks have been saying is true: There simply was no Clinton post-Super Tuesday strategy.

This is not some dreamy prediction. Obama won Wisconsin last night by 17 points. You guys are news-savvy so I'm not going to repeat what's been said repeatedly already. Suffice to say the base in Wisconsin was more Hillary than Obama. More to the point, we are starting to get to a point of mathematical impossibility. Basically for Hillary to win, she needs to carry every state in the fashion that Obama carried Wisconsin. Remember, no one predicted Obama would win by 17, so the idea that Hillary will rise from the dead and pull this off, well...don't just take my word for it...

You know, I see a lot of people flipping over Michelle OIbama's statement that for the first time in her adult she's proud of America. Meh, I know she will likely have to put out a statement of apology today, but I have to say I agree with her. It's wrong to infer from there, that I, or anyone else, is ashamed of being American. I'm not. I think this is the greatest country in the world. Michelle herself is fond of the "only in America" line. But pride comes from a country, or a person, mobilizing to do something. I can't think of a single thing which this country has done--in my lifetime--that's made me feel pride.

Now let's put that in context. I can only think of one thing that black folks have done that filled me with pride--the Million Man March. Besides that, I got nothing. Of course there are black people who I am proud of as individuals, but I don't walk around with my chest out because I'm black. Hell, I can only think of about two or three things that I've done as an individual that have made be proud. People really need to calm down, and chill with the psuedo-patriotism.

OK, so let's just state from jump that I am against ANYONE questioning ANYONE else's blackness. I was against it when folks did it to Obama last year (how quickly we forget)and I'm against it now. That said, how can you not appreciate the irony here. Let's go:

Obama has swamped Clinton among black voters in each of the 20 contests that had exit polls and large enough samples of African Americans to be meaningful. Just to put that kind of shutout in perspective, black voters represent the only demographic group that the New York senator has not carried at least once during the Democratic primary campaign. Obama now has such a lock on the loyalties of African Americans -- 84 percent of the black vote in Alabama, 87 percent in Georgia, 84 percent in Maryland, and on and on -- that the black vote is no longer contestable.

Which brings us back to the dilemma facing some of Clinton's high-profile black supporters -- those with titles and constituencies of their own. They are feeling some kind of crazy pressure. Last Friday, about 25 of them held an hour-long conference call to discuss what one described as an effort to "pester, intimidate, question our blackness" for not supporting Obama.

I am sorry, but this is rich. Last year, you couldn't pick up a newspaper, read a blog, or watch a news show without someone questioning Obama's blackness. Now it's Clinton's endorsers whose blackness is now being called into question, Amazing, That said, I am always skeptical of anonymous claims like this. Who are these people who are questioning your blackness? Call them out please. Beyond that, contrary to popular belief, the black political class has always been subject to the same forces that any other political class was subject to. A lot of these guys forgot that they ruled with the consent of the people, and with the people going the other way now, well....

Nice piece on this in the Post. As you guys know, I disagree with Tavis on this one, but I don't believe it was ego, as much as a misjudgment of the mood of black folks. That said, man its shocking how hard people are jumping on him. I also think that this has more to do with the excitement around Obama, than a beef with Tavis.

If you've got a second, check this out. Pretty entertaining. It clocks in at almost an hour, though. You know me though. I'm such a geek that I watched this while making home fries and eggs for me and my son this morning. Great quote from Hitchens--"I don't need two minutes to finish with this religion, but thanks." LOL. Classic Hitchens

Courtesy of Gawker--some folks a little too fired-up and ready to go.

I make no bones about my opinion, I think the decision to run some sort of neo-Southern strategy was foolish in a Democratic primary. I was kind of skeptical that that's what had happened until Clinton--amazingly--compared Obama to Jesse. The longer this thing goes on though, Bill is finding we all don't look alike. Anyway, here is a nice piece breaking down Clinton's campaign via HuffPo. 
The Essence:

A Clinton superdelegate who served in Bill Clinton's administration said the former president "has screwed this thing up for her big-time. They need to send him out of the country for a long, long time. I am angry at Bill Clinton and I think there are other Hillary people who are angry at Bill, who felt that she was running a very good, solid campaign - she wasn't the exciting one, but she was the solid one - and then he came in and made it nasty, and single-handedly pushed away black voters."

Yeah it's tokenism, but it does prove the point. I have a hard time believing that a church that said it was "unapologetically white" could find a black person to speak on its behalf--at gun-point doesn't count.

I watch a lot of MSNBC, and I've gotta say that Chris Matthews hates Hillary's guts. I'm not sure that's even debatable. I don't know about wider press bias in this campaign, but I can certainly see the case for it. Here is an interesting piece analyzing said bias. The thing that scares me the most about Obama is his church, which people charge is racist. Frankly, I don't buy it.

The church, on its site, claims to be "unashamedly black," and people have charged that no church in America could call itself "unashamedly white." But this only shows America's elementary understanding of black folks. Let's put the ignorance of history and culture aside. Blackness isn't just race, its ethnicity, on par with Irishness, Jewishness or Italiness. A better angle would be to ask could a church call itself "unapologetically Irish" and yeah it certainly could. It might sound bizarre, but it wouldn't be particularly racist. Anyway, I'm not confident that in a general election, people will be able to see the difference. I think at some point, Barack--who has been going to this church for decades now--is going to have to come out a defend that joint. As a matter of morals and politics, he can't run away from this one.

I really don't how I missed this. This is Barack in South Carolina a few weeks back, channeling his inner Malcolm X. There is something so lovely about this.

Hehe. Some fool over at The Conservative Voice argues that an Obama presidency would be bad for blacks. I'll tell you what would be bad for blacks---getting advice on what is "bad for blacks" from the conservative voice. Hehe. Read, should you need a good hearty chuckle.

Nice piece by Robert Kuttner on the hope that Obama will begin to address himself more to economic issues. A nice optimistic obsevation:

A great leader gets the music right as well as the words. It took a little while, but Obama now does both. He has the campaign's poetry, leaving Clinton with the prose.

Nice piece here. Also some audio from Barack here. Barack sounds a little pissed in the audio. In defense of Tavis--whose been catching it from all quarters of black folks--I do think that we are going to STILL need black folks to hold Barack accountable, should he win. The job of black irritant is an important one, because power--even black power--concedes nothing without struggle.

That said, we're still in the campaign phase. One point he makes is "If the issue is I should only be talking to black people, then I'm not going to win the presidency." I think what gets some folks about Obama is that things like, say, criminal justice reform don't make his stump speech, even though it's an issue that's incredibly important to black folks. The thinking is that Obama isn't talking about it because he doesn't care about it. But the fact is he does talk about criminal justice refom--he also endorses representation for Washington D.C.--it's just never in his stump. I am sorry, call me Tomming, but I have to agree with that strategy. The fact is, many of the issues important to black folks just aren't vote-getters. At some point we've gotta ask--Do we want the brother to win? Or do we want him to represent STRICTLY us and ALWAYS us?

So Tavis has been going at it with Barack Obama, because Obama has declined to appear at Smiley's State of the Black Union Conference. For anyone whose missed it you can hear all of the audio here. You can also here Michelle Obama's classic response to Tavis here. Here's Melissa Harris Lacewell, she of Gloria Stienem critical beatdown fame, at it again:

All these black leaders who spent the year telling us that Obama is not old enough, not black enough and not angry enough to earn African American votes must have noticed that Obama can deliver the black vote to himself, by himself, with little help from these self-proclaimed racial power brokers.

And Jimi Izrael bringing it:

It isn't that I have a plan so much better than Tavis'. No ma'am. I take care of mines and do what I can for my brothers and others. I just reject the rhetoric of people being paid just to be black—they are Race Brokers: Grievance Merchants and Professional Negroes who give white America the word from Darktown, so no one actually has to engage race relations in a constructive way.  They put on nice suits, get in front of microphones and tell black people how to feel and when to feel it. They remind white folks that we are not a monolith, then reduce blacks with generalizations and best-guesses.

What people don't get is that we're witnessing the end of gate-keeping in the black community. With John Lewis and the like unable to deliver black voters to Hill, with talkers like Sharpton and Jesse basically sidelined during arguably the most important event in black America since '68, with Julian Bond on the wrong side of history, we are seeing the complete scrapping of the black America's shadow government--presidency, congress, cabinet and all. That's a good thing--it's like all the Popes of Blackness, as Jimi calls them, are coming out of their face, only to be exposed as utterly irrelevant. I told you guys earlier--anybody can get got. In the words of Cedric the Entertainer, Barack keeps trash bags on him. He's so sincere. This some sincere isht right here.

This whole thing makes me think of that great KRS line, "phone calls are made profiles are kept low..." As you guys likely know, Julian Bond, head honcho of the NAACP, recently came out to say that the Michigan and Florida delegates should be seated. Roland Martin did some digging on this and found out that Bon collaborated with some other old-school civil rights hands to get this done. This just seems like a hamfisted, clumsy attempt at politicking. The Essence:

As someone who has opposed the leverage of Iowa and New Hampshire, I'm in agreement that they should not always be first. Yet that has nothing to do with today, and Bond knows it.

What is unclear is why he waited so long (he also didn't notify the NAACP's 64-member board of the letter) and why, according to my NAACP sources, he wrote the letter with help from Mary Frances Berry, former head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as well as Wade Henderson, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

The letter was hurriedly drafted on Friday, as evidence by the three misspelled words in it. It's not clear why there was such a sense of urgency to get it out, but the fact that it came to light on Tuesday night when Obama was steamrolling Clinton in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia has some conspiracy-minded bloggers making all kinds of assertions.