Obama’s Win and the “Era of Race”

November 6, 2008 – 9:34 am

Jack Carter is a businessman and politician. He is the son of former United States President Jimmy Carter.

It was a night that makes me proud to be an American and proud of all of my fellows who call her “Home”. Barack Obama won a resounding victory with a message of change presented as much by the color of his skin and the sound of his name as by his philosophy of community and shared responsibility as an antidote to the problems before us.

The path before him may not be easy, but it is well-defined. He must move to heal the partisan rift in our country so we can mobilize broad-based support for the targeted solutions we need to stabilize our financial crisis, repair our foreign policy, and develop our infrastructure so we need not fear competition from the rest of the world.

He must do this without antagonizing his Democratic supporters who formed the foundation of his election or bowing too much in their direction.

That is surely easier said than done, but he has several assets on his side: Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (0)

Yes We Can, And Yes We Did

November 5, 2008 – 5:04 am

Like many people across the globe I sat on the edge of my seat and watched the election results roll in. Though I have always felt that Obama is a centrist who will govern along that line, with the occasional lean left, I really wanted to see him win the White House.

As the night went on, with more and more states called in his favour, I dared to hope. Then it happened… The words I never thought that I would hear, “CNN calls the election for president elect Barack Obama.” Though I did not expect it, the tears streamed down my face and I knew a sense of joy that I was completely unprepared for.

I am not an American and yet when the announcement came, I found that I had more emotionally invested in the election than I realized.

In my mind I saw a vision of the middle passage. I saw my ancestors chained together, surviving on menstrual blood and feces. I heard the cruel cry of the whip as it sailed through air, permanently scaring the bodies of my ancestors. I heard the weeping of my foremothers as they watched powerlessly as their children were sold away from them. On this night I saw the culmination of all of that suffering for millions of Americans and beyond, for all of us.

The true history of the moment overwhelmed me and I was humbled by the patience, the will to survive, and the grace of my people.

As I watched him give his acceptance speech, I knew it was a moment that I would tell my grandchildren about. It was the moment when I realized that I too had dreamed the impossible dream, and lived to see it realized. My tears flowed freely, and, just for the briefest of moments, I knew what it was to believe that I, a black mother of no real significance, was worth something. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics, racism | Comments (2)

Joy From Historic Obama Campaign

November 5, 2008 – 4:47 am

Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.

To type those words brings back the euphoria of the first few minutes after the words flashed on the blurry screen of the projector lugged in at the last minute to update all of us at the Northeast Philly headquarters on the results.

I have been awake for many, many hours.

I woke up at 4:30 AM to arrive at my staging location by 5:30.

Like millions of others across the country, I spent the whole day working. I watched the polls, knocked on doors, brought coffee and donuts to poll workers, and I talked to hundreds of voters.

There was a little high every time someone smiled at us and said, “I voted this morning!”

There was an even bigger high when the pollworkers told us that turnout was double what they normally see.

There was an almost unbeatable high when our state was called for our candidate almost as soon as the polls closed.

But nothing comes close to the feeling we got when, in a roomful of people who’ve worked those same long hours, the screen told us: Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.

This campaign has seemed endless. After countless primary battles, it feels for a moment as though there has to be another one after this—this can’t be over. It almost seems too easy. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (3)

Election ‘08: High Anxiety

November 4, 2008 – 7:37 pm

Watching this election, electronically linked up to voters across the United States and beyond, is a surreal and beautiful experience.

I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t matter what the outcome is.

After all, we at GlobalComment here do not quite care about the political leanings of our readers, as long as said readers are thoughtful and well-informed. Yet as an individual, not a journalist, I am hoping for change. I am hoping, in short, for Obama.

This election has been ugly - both on the national and local level. In North Carolina, my home state, Elizabeth Dole (a fellow Duke grad, to add insult to injury), overstepped all boundaries of decency in attacking her opponent in the Senate race. Unlike the mainstream GOP platform, which excels at insidious subtleties and dogwhistles, Liddy Dole went ahead and called Kay Hagan “godless,” quite a big deal in the Bible Belt.

It is looking as though this vicious strategy has backfired, and I am glad.

If there is one thing that I am sure of is that our country does not wish to go back to the McCarthy era, wherein “real Americans” were separated from “fake Americans,” and suspicion and paranoia held sway. No matter how tough it may get in the years to come, thought-crime has little to do with what the United States stands for.

Tonight, I had the chance to speak to many Americans: both expats and those who call the Middle East their home. Interestingly, most Muslims I have spoken to were people who previously voted for Bush, and who have become so disgusted with “Muslim” being used a slur in this election, that they have opted for Obama, disregarding his comparatively liberal policies.

Regardless of religion, all folks I have chatted with today confessed to anxiety, both in terms of the election and in terms of the future. No matter who wins this year, we may be in for a number of bleak years, that much has been accepted by most everyone.

But as Bob Dylan sang, “the hour before dawn is the darkest.” Alongside anxiety is the no-nonsense belief that we will find our way, come hell or high water or voter fraud.

Stay with us for more election updates & check out the Feministe election liveblog, in which Natalia is a participant.

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, election 08, middle east, north america, politics | Comments (0)

The Road Most Travelled By - The Unraveling of the GOP

November 3, 2008 – 4:24 pm

In the final hours of this marathon election, all the polls are predicting an Obama victory. Whether this outcome is confirmed or not, the Republican party is in need of some serious soul-searching.

Once again, as in 2000 and 2004, the Republicans are seeking to win the election on the basis of a highly cynical strategy fueled by negativity. In the words of Joe Biden, they are taking the lowest road to the highest office in the land.

Instead of damaging Obama’s reputation, the McCain/Palin ticket has managed to damage its own. With Palin running around the country talking of a “real America” that apparently exists only in the rural areas away from the “elitist” cities, one can only wonder why the party would intentionally want to narrow its base in this manner.

Are the Republicans now confining themselves to becoming solely the party of sparsely populated farms, villages, and little suburbs? Seems foolish, to say the least.

Palin has done more than alienate urban dwellers, of course. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in Columnist, election 08, north america, politics, racism | Comments (3)

I Can See the Campaign Finish Line

November 3, 2008 – 11:40 am

Is it just me, or did this seem like the longest election campaign in the history of democracy?

Seriously, the primaries seemed to take forever and a day to get through. Every single word a perspective candidate said was scrutinized to death in search of hidden meanings. It felt like being instructed to play a Pink Floyd album backwards in search of subliminal messages.

Finally when I was sick to death of hearing the daily goings on of Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain, they settled on the Maverick POW from Arizona. Though Biden, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all ran, it was really only ever between Clinton and Obama. Oh the waste of paper for the speeches written by candidates that never had a snowball’s chance in hell. Will the trees forgive us this one?

Cue, the balloons and patriotic music: we finally hit the conventions. Between the rhetoric and the political grandstanding I damn near lost my lunch. There was nowhere to hide. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (0)

If the Democrats Win - Then What?

November 1, 2008 – 2:49 pm

“Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

That adage holds true for Barack Obama and likely for many presidents before him. Is it going to hold true for the American public in a couple of years?

We’ve had it with Republicans. They overreached, became increasingly unyielding and evermore narrow in terms of the interests to which they appealed, and they drove both our foreign and economic policies into the ditch in a stunning double display of ineptitude.

The utter irony of it all happens to be that the Republican candidate who had to go down with the ship was the only Republican on the national scene who for years decried the excesses of the right. Bush screwed McCain – and the nation – in 2000, and he screwed him again in 2008 by letting McCain take the fall for Bush’s incompetence.

The media cannot wait to gush about Obama. And the guy likely deserves it, as it is a feel-good story on many levels, and he does have very uplifting oratory.

It remains to be seen how the electoral college will shake out, but Obama should come in somewhere north of 340 of the 538 electoral votes out there in the arcane presidential electoral process. Likewise, he should enjoy a filibuster-proof senate majority while picking up another 20 to 30 congressional seats.

The nation, in short, is throwing the Democrats the car keys saying, “Here you go. Don’t screw it up.”

And that is the problem for the Democrats. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Business World, election 08, north america, politics | Comments (2)

Obama’s Final Pitch

October 31, 2008 – 2:08 pm

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Barack Obama’s biggest challenge as a candidate has been convincing people not to fear him, fear his difference, his skin color, his name. Luckily, it is a task to which he has proven himself well suited.

Obama’s calm demeanor has been his biggest selling point through the ups and downs of the past few months, and his 30-minute infomercial ad was the icing on that cake. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (1)

November 4th and Obama’s Hereafter

October 28, 2008 – 10:42 am

Jack Carter is a businessman and politician. He is the son of former United States President Jimmy Carter.

With just a few days left until the election, Sen. Obama has a substantial lead over Sen. McCain. While many Democrats remember elections in 2000 and 2004 and fear that lead will somehow evaporate, I expect the margin to hold.

For all the negative advertising, its polling impact seems minimal. McCain has little else to offer, and the economy – represented by falling global stock markets – is still stealing the headlines.

Governor Palin has become a drag on the campaign, witnessed by the increasing number of high level moderate Republicans, including Colin Powell, who are endorsing Obama. And the “Experience Issue”, once the cornerstone of McCain’s campaign, has collapsed beneath the weight of his sporadic actions over the last two months, including the Palin VP pick.

On the other hand, Obama still has the advantages he began with in September: he’s a better campaigner; his issues are much more in line with the voters; he’s got the best campaign strategists and organization; he has substantially more money to spend; and, most people don’t want to vote for Republicans this year, anyhow.

Barring some political catastrophe, the combination of McCain’s problems and Obama’s assets should, if anything, continue to widen the lead. Which brings up some interesting questions… Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics | Comments (1)

Obama the “Socialist” Boogeyman

October 26, 2008 – 2:54 am

So the McCain campaign won’t let go of Joe the Plumber. He’s still being trotted out in speeches by McCain and Palin. They mention again and again how Obama wants to “spread” Joe’s wealth.

Aside from the condescension (yet again) implicit in McCain’s reduction of Joe to a stereotype (and leaving out any of the frenzied investigations into just who Joe really is), I want to look a little closer at what the Joe the Plumber rhetoric really means.

Joe, of course, is white. He’s from Ohio, a state connected with middle-American whiteness, as opposed to the cities that McCain likes to emphasize in reference to Obama (”I don’t need any advice from a…Chicago politician!”).

The city is black; Middle America is white.

Joe the Plumber’s purported wealth is used in conjunction with his whiteness: Joe is just a plumber, just an average guy, but he’s going to be taxed more under Obama’s plan. The subtext, of course, is that your “average,” white, hardworking guy is going to be taxed to give money to those who don’t work hard. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, money, north america, politics, racism | Comments (7)