Barack Obama

Wonderful picture of our next First Couple:

Picture from Ebony's 10 hottest couple issue, via Daily Kos.

Hillary Clinton won in Indiana by by 1.39%. In North Carolina though, Obama trounced her by a 14% margin.

As I called it during my live twitter stream, HRC went from a double digit lead to 1-2% win. She squeaked it and it looks like the TV pundits finally have caught on to the fact that Ms. Clinton would have to get the superdelegates to decide the election in her favor.

I'll update later with the highlights of the night. Until then, good night!

I have had some contact with Kalyn Free since I support and blog about her organization, Indigenous Democratic Network (INDN List). INDN is an excellent organization that has been organizing Native Americans on the grassroots level.

Kalyn Free is also a Superdelegate and has just endorsed Obama. This, on top of the Native American Times endorsement, may be showing robust support for Obama among Native Americans. Endorsement statement below:

Statement from Kalyn Free:

DNC Superdelegate, INDN's List Founder and
USW (United Steelworkers) Associate Member Kalyn Free
Endorses Senator Barack Obama for U.S. President

CHICAGO, IL -- Kalyn Free, an at-large member of the Democratic National Committee, today announced that she supports Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination. As a DNC member, Free will serve as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. Free is also founder and President of INDN's List, an organization dedicated to recruiting and training American Indian candidates.

This brings the total number of superdelegates to endorse Barack Obama to 258. Senator Obama is 276 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination.

This is cross-posted at TechPresident

Yesterday I wrote about getting Lost In Hillaryland while driving down to Philadelphia to volunteer for the Obama campaign. In that post at Kenneth Cole’s Awearness Blog, I write about how after the mini-adventure of the day, my oldest came to the same conclusion as Joe Trippi : that Obama was going to lose.

My son’s observation was the most interesting part of the whole trip because it lent credit to my recent thinking of “politics as interface”.

Let’s look quickly at the definition of interface :

in·ter·face
(ĭn'tər-fās') Pronunciation Key
n.
1. A surface forming a common boundary between adjacent regions, bodies, substances, or phases.

2. A point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact: "the interface between crime and politics where much of our reality is to be found" (Jack Kroll).

3. Computer Science

1. The point of interaction or communication between a computer and any other entity, such as a printer or human operator.
2. The layout of an application's graphic or textual controls in conjunction with the way the application responds to user activity: an interface whose icons were hard to remember.

An interface is a “surface forming a common boundary”, a space that is not only a common space but a mesh of space and communication. As the Java handbook to object-oriented programming explains rather well, an interface is not just the end result of a design process. Interfaces don’t come from the outside of the software process. It is part of the process itself.

So the surface that creates a common boundary is not outside two distinctive people or two distinctive groups. An interface is not something that is given to a “user”. An interface is a meshing of actions or simply put, it’s a two way street.

“Politics as interface” would be the meshing of actions, states of beings and phases between individuals, groups or even systems negotiating power. As a space of communication and as a meshing of actions, states of beings, wills and desires for power, politics as interface is developed all the time.

Politics as interface in Hillaryland is in the box of buckshot lighters gracing the gas station attendant’s counter. Politics as interface in Hillaryland is certainly the senior women holding posters saying “Honk for Hillary”.

Yet Politics as interface in Hillaryland was the absence of sidewalks down Cedar Road, the expansive manicured front lawns with their mansions in the background and the “Hillary” signs cleaving the dirt in the foreground. It was the absence of white people in the small crowds waiting with exhausted looks on their faces for the bus to come. And it was certainly the meshing sights on the road to Philly of million dollar mansions, to quaint family homes to the “We buy ugly houses” signs next to boarded up brownstones and row after row after row of broken down and abandoned buildings on North Broad Street.

When we got lost in Hillaryland, my son was very keen and very much aware of who had the upper hand in expressing power. And it became even more obvious to him when we went canvassing on the 14th Ward.

Baratunde Thurston, Some Rights Reserved

Baratunde has been going to Philadelphia almost every weekend for the past weeks. So yesterday, thinking what I am going to do with the kids this week --they are in Spring Break. I decided to rent a car and drive down to Philadelphia to help out the Obama campaign any way we can and in the process, be a part of history.

I'll post later today updates and definitely come back here after 10pm when we'll have the chatroom open while waiting for the results.

C'ya later!

About 10 minutes past 1:00pm but the post is but nevertheless:

The formal act of endorsing a candidate is generally (and properly)limited to editorial pages and elected officials whose constituents might be influenced by their choice. The rest of us shouldn't assume anyone cares. My avoidance of offering a formal endorsement until now has also been affected by the pull of old friendships and my reluctance as a teacher and commentator to be openly partisan. But my conscience won't let me be silent any longer.

I believe that Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States.

Go read the whole thing NOW.

Previously : Robert Reich didn't expect to support Obama but now he is.

John Heilmann helps Robert Reich drop a bomb on the Clinton campaign :

Reich insists that the endorsement does indeed come as a surprise — to him. As we chatted in Washington, where Reich had come from Berkeley, where he teaches, to give a speech and meet with some Democrats on Capitol Hill, he explained that, despite the criticisms he's made of the Clintons ("I call it as I see it"), he had planned to refrain from offering an official backing for Obama out of respect for Hillary. "She's an old friend," Reich said, "I've known her 40 years. I was absolutely dead set against getting into the whole endorsement thing. I've struggled with it. I've not wanted to do it. Out of loyalty to her, I just felt it would be inappropriate."

So what's changed? I asked Reich.

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

To have tossed aside a 40 year-old friendship and business relationship is beyond serious. It's a brutally honest repudiation from a man who has become a sort of oddball superstar in the academic wonkosphere with such ponderings as Is Capitalism Always Good For Democracy? and the nature of Supercapitalism. Especially since Reich happens to be from ... ahem ... Scranton, Pensylvania.

Robert Shales is right on the money when he says, To this observer, ABC's coverage seemed slanted against Obama. Memeorandum exploded in posts from irate liberals and journalists who saw nothing but a thinly vieled hatchet job against the front-runner of the Democratic Party.

Close to fifteen thousand people have sounded off at the ABC News post about the debate (which, by the way, they changed from "Clinton, Obama find brotherly love at Philly Debate" to "Philly Fight Night : Democrats Spar over Electability").

I suggest you add to the comments over there as well as give a ring to their offices :

Call 818-460-7477
Press 2,
Press 1

Then you can press one of these two choices :

967 (News wth Charles Gibson) or
199 (other news)

As I wrote at the chat last night, it's as if ABC News wanted to outfox FOX News. It was an incredibly embarrassing scene to watch.

Not only that, George Stephanopoulos should not have been one of the moderators. As the former speech writer of Bill Clinton and still a Clintonista, if you are going to have someone so biased, then you ought to create balance. Which is why I shall forever refer to him as "Clinton's Boy".

The Boss weighs in on this year's presidential election. You think his timing, right before the Pennsylvania primary, is deliberate? Could his endorsement swing some of those blue collar votes? I bet lots of those laid off Rust Belt workers blasted Born to Run in their day.

(picture from Classic Rock Legends)

You just don't get more American than Bruce Springsteen. America's working class icon and true blue American legend is endorsing Barack Obama. Bruce's letter says it all:

LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

>

Source : Gallup.