Barack Obama

OBAMA IN OREGON (PT. 1) is the name of the new video shot and edited by yours truly, Oregon's Official MTV Choose or Lose Street Team 08 Citizen Journalist, and just as the title foreshadows, there will be two more parts to this tryptych of political goodness. Clicking the picture above will take you to the video page. Playing the video will bring you a little closer to the excitement that hit the city of Eugene when Obama came to town.

Crossposted to The Unapologetic Mexican, Jesus' General and OpEdNews.

With all of his historical advantages, what explains his relatively poorer performance?

Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

The numbers for the fundraising of Democratic Presidential candidates in the first quarter of 2007 have now been released, and John Edwards has raised less money than both front-runners Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton raised $26 Million dollars, not counting the ten million she was able to transfer from her Senate campaign to her presidential campaign.

The New York Times reports today that Barack Obama has raised $20,000,000, and “his fund-raising prowess has helped make him the chief rival to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.” In Obama’s past Senate campaign, says the New York Times, “Even as he cultivated an image as an unconventional candidate devoted to the people, not the establishment, he systematically built a sophisticated, and in many ways quite conventional, money machine,” building “from the ground up”. NYT

The reasons for Clinton’s historical fundraising levels are well-known. She is a major national player in the Democratic Party, was first lady for eight years, has been elected to the US Senate twice, and her husband was President of the United States twice. Many people donate to her campaign because they believe in her policies and they believe she is most likely to win the nomination.

Barack Obama is able to raise $20 Million in the first three months of his first presidential bid because there is tremendous public excitement about the new vision he offers and the outstanding qualities of the man himself, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who became the school’s first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review and then became the only Black member of the US Senate. He has an extraordinary personal story and two best-selling books to support his campaign.

But, the question must be asked, “Why has John Edwards, who ran for President in 2004 and became the Democratic nominee for Vice President, only raised $15 Million dollars in the first quarter, which is 25% less than Barack Obama and almost 50% less than Hillary Clinton? The Fix, WaPost

The difference cannot be explained by name recognition, since Edwards was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, while Obama has never been on a national ticket. If Edwards still had lower name recognition than Barack Obama at this point, a negative inference would have to be drawn about Edwards’ relative ability to draw the public’s attention and generate enthusiasm about his campaign. Certainly, America knows who Edwards is.

Their presence on the Internet would not seem to explain John Edwards’ inability to raise the sums that his competitors raised either. John Edwards’ website has been up longer and contains more links to social networking sites, so he does have exposure on the Internet. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post calls the Edwards website an “exercise in social networking that includes not only a blog, where surfers can post their thoughts, but also cyber-diaries written by Edwards's family members.” WaPost But, Slashdot.Org says Edwards’ website is “a bit of a disorganized mess . . . [and] The Edwards campaign needs to hire a professional web designer (or fire the one they have).

Indeed, ZDNET says:

Clinton’s early, Web-based campaign announcement helped catapult the Clinton campaign to “number one” presidential campaign Web site status honors in January 2007. The Clinton online effort booked a commanding Web site traffic lead over the second place Obama campaign Web site and attracted almost twice the number of visitors as the John Edwards campaign Web site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Number one HillaryClinton.com drew 828,000 unique visitors in January.

In fact, John Edwards’ attempts to dominate the Internet game have led to his biggest online embarrassment. The John Edwards anti-religious blogger scandal hurt him badly, because it raised doubts about his political judgment and acumen. It may well have left Americans doubting John Edwards’ respect for religious people and/or his ability to manage a successful campaign and the country.

One might have thought that, as a candidate who is both white and male, John Edwards might have been expected to come into the race with an advantage, based on biased perceptions of who could win and whose gender or color would make them ineligible. This might have been expected particularly because there has never been a woman or Black president of the United States.

But, to the extent that there are still gender and skin-color biases within the Democratic Party, John Edwards does not seem to have benefited sufficiently from them to move him into the top ranks of the rain-makers.

The difference in fundraising ability also cannot be explained by time spent campaigning, since Edwards has been a full-time candidate since 2004, while Clinton and Obama have had to campaign while contending with their Senate responsibilities. But Clinton and Obama have campaigned while maintaining the prominence that comes with still being a responsible member of the US Senate. Having entered the US Senate in 1998 and run for the presidency and vice presidency, Edwards certainly has had more opportunity than Obama to draw national attention over the years.

John Edwards’ own message may have hurt his fundraising. He says that he is running for president to help the poor, which is mostly comprised of women, minorities and their children, but those groups have expressed little support for Edwards. Supporting John Edwards Supports the Status Quo http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/02/supporting-edwards-perpetuat... Meanwhile, voters who are not poor may have concluded that the Edwards campaign has little to offer them. Why Edwards’ Candidacy Won’t Resonate with America http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/12/202415/98

It seems unlikely that hilarious capturing John Edwards combing his hair for two full minuutes was the fatal blow to his candidacy, but the video may have contributed to an overall impression that Edwards lacks gravitas.

CBS News reports that the Rev. Jesse Jackson has endorsed Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

CHICAGO, March 29, 2007
Presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson are seen at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Awards Breakfast in Chicago on Jan. 15, 2007. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Quote

"It is because people like Jesse ran that I have this opportunity to run for president today.”
Barack Obama, in a written statement

(AP) Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Thursday he's backing Democrat Barack Obama in his presidential bid, giving his support to a new generation of black politicians.

“He has my vote,” the Rev. Jackson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, winning 13 primaries and caucuses in 1988. His son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, already has endorsed Obama.

Jackson represents a different era of black politician, battle-tested by the civil rights struggles of the 1960s with Martin Luther King Jr. CBS NEWS

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Thank you, Zimbel!

There are certain facts that are so obvious about America that a court would take "judicial notice" of them (recognize them as common knowledge on which no proof was necessary). For example, "There has never been a Black or woman president or vice president of the United States." Adam Nagourney's NYT Article

And yet pointing these facts out remains politically controversial, probably because, in a country that is only 35% white and male, the white male monopoly can only exist in a democracy if we all continue to pretend that it does NOT exist. (I was banned from participating at one site just days after posing the question with a diary entitled, "Will the White Male Monopoly End in 2008?")

If we do mention the white male monopoly of the presidency and vice presidency, we are supposed to pretend that it occurs by happenstance or as a result of unknowable "pipeline" style factors.

Lisa said at my blog yesterday:

"You are racist with your descriptions of the general white public never voting for a black man for President."

And to that Zimbel responded, very convincingly with a statistical argument:

A string of 43 white male presidents isn't enough to support his conclusion?

Okay- how about the string of roughly 200 national executive candidates of major parties that were white male (save one exception, Ferraro). If we completely omit race from the question, is it fair that roughly half of the population (females) are represented by roughly 0.5% of executive candidates? Isn't a 1:100 ratio of candidates versus population good evidence of sexism? And, yes, I know that this number skyrockets to an amazing roughly 2% (and about 1:35) if you discount all the time prior to the 19th amendment's ratification. Still seems like sexism to me. Zimbel

All the king's white men.

The fact is that the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency is indefensible in a "democracy" from a statistical standpoint, and so defenders of the monopoly argue that I and others are "racist" to even mention the statistics. If no one forcefully says otherwise than defenders of the white male monopoly (who can be of any gender and skin color) will continue to insist that the monopoly is simply the product of statistical happenstance.

Newt Gingrich is considering running for president of the United States and is being taken seriously. There are at least half a dozen Black congressmen and congresswomen with more elective experience than Newt and with better poll number nationally, so why don't they announce that they're considering running for president?

Why do so few Black people and women raise these trial baloons, making the presidential trial baloon mostly a white man's sport?

The answer is simple: Any white man in the public eye can announce that he is considering running for president, even if he has never held elective office (e.g. Wesley Clark) and immediately be taken more seriously even than 90% of the Black people and women who have held elective office for decades.

Do people who insist on supporting presidential and vice presidential candidates who are white men effectively collude to perpetuate the white male monopoly of the presidency and vice presidency? Should we all just ignore the fact that supporting white male candidates in 2008 perpetuates the 200-year monopoly, and must we ignore the fact that supporting Blacks, women and Latinos tends to end the monopoly? Is the 200-year white male monopoly of the presidency and vice presidency even relevant to the question of who we should elect in 2008. I think that it goes beyond mere relevance to being essential to the question of who we are as a nation and who we want to be.

I encourage more women and Blacks to announce that they are considering running for president, senator and governor in the future, if only to better accustom the public to considering all of the possibilities.

For too long we have been dominated and monopolized by the excess credibility of white men and the excess credulity that the American public gives to white men. And that's why George W. Bush is president of the United States today.