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389 Years Ago To Today

Posted Nov 17th 2008

One of the most inspirational blog posts I have read in some time boils down to this amazing image.

A creative typographic mashup can be found at this great site 389 years ago. Continue reading to see what I mean.

Stairway To Heaven (Why We Cried) (Video)

This is one of the most profound video made to date about this historic election. The video was produced by Reggie Montgomery of Hitman Music Production Company (reggie@hitmanmusicproduction.de).

The Moose Stops Here

By FRANK RICH

ELECTION junkies in acute withdrawal need suffer no longer. Though the exciting Obama-McCain race is over, the cockfight among the losers has only just begun. The conservative crackup may be ugly, but as entertainment, it’s two thumbs up!

Over at Fox News, Greta Van Susteren has been trashing the credibility of her own network’s chief political correspondent, Carl Cameron, for his report on Sarah Palin’s inability to identify Africa as a continent, while Bill O’Reilly valiantly defends Cameron’s honor. At Slate, a post-mortem of conservative intellectuals descended into name-calling, with the writer Ross Douthat of The Atlantic labeling the legal scholar Douglas Kmiec a “useful idiot.”

In an exuberant class by himself is Michael Barone, a ubiquitous conservative commentator who last week said that journalists who trash Palin (more than a few of them conservatives) do so because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.” He was being “humorous,” he subsequently explained to Politico, though the joke may be on him. Barone writes for U.S. News & World Report, where his 2008 analyses included keepers like “Just Call Her Sarah ‘Delano’ Palin.” Just call it coincidence, but on Election Day, word spread that the once-weekly U.S. News was downsizing to a monthly — a step closer to the fate of Literary Digest, the weekly magazine that vanished two years after its straw poll predicted an Alf Landon landslide over Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936.

Will the 2008 G.O.P. go the way of the 1936 G.O.P., which didn’t reclaim the White House until 1952? Even factoring in the Democrats’ time-honored propensity for self-immolation, it’s not beyond reason. The Republicans are in serious denial. A few heretics excepted, they hope to blame all their woes on their unpopular president, the inept McCain campaign and their party’s latent greed for budget-busting earmarks.

The trouble is far more fundamental than that. The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

Obama won; Now pull up your pants

Justin M. LaGrande (Black College Wire) |

We haven't seen rappers back something this strong since the "stop snitching" movement a few years back. The Obama movement stood for something a lot stronger.

Rappers like Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, T.I., and other "dope boy" rappers, have seemingly put aside their musical message of drugs and guns in favor of a more political one. In concert venues across the country, they and others urged their fans to go out and vote. I even did a review on the Obama mixtape.

All of this effort paid off with the election of our first black president. After I wiped away the tears of joy, I started to listen to "We Are One" by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, and I began to ponder how the hip-hop community and the African American community in general could squander this incredible chance to right a lot of the wrongs perpetrated against us.

An Obama shoutout at a concert is nice and all, but if you want to really uphold the promise this historic event holds, then be proactive. Stop relishing in debauchery and ignorance. Use some of the money you allegedly made in the dope game before you became a rapper to improve your community. Stop disrespecting the black woman, and for god sakes, PULL UP YOUR DAMN PANTS! Obama isn't sagging his pants, and since we are supposed to aspire to do better, we can start by carrying ourselves as such.

I don't know about anyone else, but seeing so many people come together the way they did for Obama has made me feel proud to have stood in line for two hours on Election Day. For a moment, the hip-hop community -- and the human community -- displayed the power of the human voice.

We came together to make history, now I just want to know what exactly is the generation that has been called nothing less than a disgrace by their elders going to do to uphold the legacy of not only Obama's historic win, but all those who died for us to get to this point.

This movement was bigger than hip-hop, bigger than the black community, it was even bigger than the United States. People across the globe were pulling for Obama, and the hope that he represented. This election was the culmination of Martin's dream, Malcolm's movement, the Panther's war, Harriet's rescues, and the struggles and efforts of countless other African Americans who wanted us to see the achievements that we now take for granted.

This win started a discussion, not only with the seemingly affluent and elite members of our community, but with everyone in the country. When crack heads sober up enough to vote, you know things are real.

[Black College Wire]

Justin M. LaGrande wrote this article for The Gramblinite, the Grambling State University student newspaper, and it is published here courtesy of Black College Wire.

What Valerie Wants

By Terence Samuel | TheRoot.com

Barack Obama doesn't need Valerie Jarrett in the Senate. But if that's what she has her eye on, chances are his old seat is all hers.

Getty Images for Meet the Press

Nov. 11, 2008--The news that Barack Obama's confidant and transition team co-chair, Valerie Jarrett, may be the president-elect's choice to replace him in the Senate tells you two things for certain:

1) How attractive a seat in the U. S. Senate is for anyone interested in political office.

2) How indebted Obama is to Jarrett for his success.

Obama has made a point of articulating his understanding that the choice of who replaces him is not his; it belongs to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich—"This is the governor's decision. It is not my decision."—but who can doubt that the man elected to the seat (and, oh yeah, the most popular politician on the planet) would not have a say in who succeeds him?

The mere discussion of Jarrett as a possible successor has fueled talk that Mr. Change has quickly succumbed to Washington cronyism and old-style Chicago politics. That is grossly unfair, mostly to Jarrett, who is extraordinarily well-qualified for Obama's Senate seat and many other jobs. But Washington doesn't do fair. So let's get to the debate.

Just to get the qualifications issue out of the way: Jarrett graduated from Stanford and University of Michigan Law School. She was deputy corporation counsel for finance and development in the city administration of Harold Washington and deputy chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley. For three years, she headed the city's Department of Planning and Development and later was chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority.

She was chairman of the board of the Chicago Stock Exchange and was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. These days, when she's not palling around with the soon-to-be most powerful person in the free world, she also heads Chicago's 2016 Olympic Committee.

Jarrett could have just about any job she wants in Obama's Washington, and if she wants to be a senator, it's probably what'll she get. Obama was the only African American in the Senate and appointing Jarrett would address that concern for the governor. But appointing Jarrett would also be a snub of sorts to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who also has his eye on the seat.

It is probably in Obama's best political interest to keep Jarrett in the White House. She has been described as the other half of his brain. She'll be both an authority figure and completely loyal to him and his agenda, exactly the kind of surrogate he'll want wandering the halls of the West Wing.

But a seat in the U.S. Senate is a prize, a base of power in itself, and that is why the jockeying for it has been so intense.

The known contenders are three members of Congress—Jackson, Reps. Luis Gutiérrez and Jan Schakowsky—along with Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who heads the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. Other names in the hopper: State Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose popularity could threaten Blagojevich's re-election chances in 2010; and State Comptroller Dan Hynes, who also wants to be governor and who lost in the 2004 senate primary to Obama.

Whoever gets the job will prove to be a loyal foot soldier for the administration, so it's not like Obama needs to install Jarrett as his eyes and ears in the Senate. Regardless of who fills his seat, he's got Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois as his biggest booster. So whatever push there is behind Jarrett, it can't be about ensuring Obama's backing in the Senate.

The last time a senator had to vacate his seat to move into the White House, personal considerations beat out political necessity. After John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, his chosen replacement, his brother Ted, had not yet reached the requisite age of 30 to qualify for the job. The Kennedys persuaded the governor of Massachusetts to essentially appoint a caretaker senator, Benjamin A. Smith, the mayor of Gloucester, to serve until the following year when Ted Kennedy was elected, beginning a 45-year career in the Senate.

Jarrett may be a tough choice for Blagojevich. The governor is hugely unpopular, and his 2010 re-election chances are gravely endangered. He may choose to appoint someone who helps him with some particular voting bloc in 2010, when that appointee will be up for election to a full term in the Senate.

Or it might be that Valerie gets what Valerie wants. At a meeting in Washingtonwith black journalists over the weekend, she would not say what that was. That is up to Obama, she said: "I leave it in his hands, his very capable hands. ... So we'll see, we'll see."

We will.

Terence Samuel is deputy editor to The Root.

Who can replace Obama?

By ROGER SIMON |

Jesse Jackson, Jr. is seen as a potential successor to Barack Obama in the Senate. Photo: AP

Although Barack Obama’s historic election will place an African-American in the White House, it will reduce the number of African-Americans in the Senate to zero.

That’s an even lonelier number than one, and it is not a number that this nation should be proud of. So the question is: Does Obama’s replacement in the Senate have to be black?

Some would argue yes. And Jesse Jackson Jr., a member of the House since 1995, began campaigning for the slot even before Obama won the presidency. Jackson, son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was one of Obama’s national co-chairmen and says he would be “honored and humbled” to replace Obama.

So he’s an easy choice, a shoo-in for the job, right? Well, no.

The politics of Illinois is not quite that simple. And the top contenders for the job have a tangled web of relationships with the people who will have a voice in Obama’s replacement, including Obama himself; Dick Durbin, the other Democratic senator from Illinois; Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, who officially will make the choice, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, now in his sixth term, who has, to put it mildly, a certain amount of influence in the state.

Rep. Jackson does not have a good relationship with Mayor Daley. They disagree on a huge local issue — whether to build a new airport south of Chicago near Jackson’s district or expand O’Hare — and Jackson also toyed with the idea of running against Daley for mayor in 2007. At that time, Jackson brought up the touchy subject of fathers, saying that perhaps Mayor Daley was not proud of everything his father, the late Richard J. Daley, had done.

“His father was responsible for segregated policies of the city,” Rep. Jackson said. “I’m sure the mayor is not excited about the shoot-to-kill order, the protests or how Dr. King was treated. I’m sure he is not proud of that.”

Political attacks are one thing, but attacks on family are another, and in Chicago, neither is forgiven. (Jackson decided not to run against Daley, who was easily reelected.)

Gov. Blagojevich is not a fan of Jackson’s either, and, personalities and feuds aside, the argument used against Jackson is that he would “lack appeal downstate” when he had to run for election to the Senate seat in 2010. Lacking appeal downstate is code for, “White people won’t vote for him.”

A Chicago political insider whom I trust says that Jackson is on a list of possible replacements for Obama but that Jackson has only an outside chance.

One intriguing name on the shortlist is that of Emil Jones, 73, currently president of the Illinois Senate. He was one of Obama’s political patrons, is close to the governor and is an African-American, yet I got snorts of derision when I ran his name past some other Illinois sources of mine. That’s because Jones is from the old school — he started out as a sewer inspector, which is not bad training for a life in politics — and is not a modern, ready-for-TV candidate, possessing an orator’s tongue. He is a Chicago pol —  the ring tone on his cell phone is the theme from “The Godfather” — but he would be a “place holder” only and would not run in 2010. He would fill the seat with an African-American and give the other contenders plenty of time to start their campaigns.

There is another name on the short list, however, and she is not an African-American.

Tammy Duckworth, an Asian-American, lost both legs in combat in Iraq — she volunteered to fly helicopters because it was one of the few combat jobs a woman could get — and was personally recruited to run for the House in 2006 by Dick Durbin with the enthusiastic support of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who would go on to engineer her campaign; David Axelrod, who would become her media consultant; and Barack Obama. (Duckworth, like Obama, now opposes the war in Iraq.)

How MyBO Will Change the World

Submitted by Bob Fertik 

Barack Obama took Howard Dean's pioneering concept of an Internet-powered campaign and raised it to unbelievable levels, resulting in the landslide election of America's first black President.

Today we learned Obama built an email list of 10 million progressive activists. So what's next for Obama's online machine, a.k.a. MyBO? David Carr is spot-on:

Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

For the first time in the TV era, the two most powerful gatekeepers in Washington - Corporate lobbyists and the Corporate Media - will no longer control the gates to the Federal Government. And the potential consequences of this are as revolutionary as FDR's fireside radio chats, which allowed his New Deal to overcome strenuous Corporate opposition.

In 1993, Bill Clinton entered the White House with similar popular support and enthusiasm. But his Presidency effectively ended the day the health insurance industry launched its "Harry and Louise" ads to block his health care bill. Those ads killed Clinton's bill, leaving the Democratic base demoralized heading into the 1994 election. Many of Clinton's voters stayed home, allowing Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution to sweep into power and dictate Clinton's agenda for the next 6 years.

Barack Obama knows exactly what happened to Clinton, and he now has an incredible weapon - mass emails - to make sure it doesn't happen to him. First, Obama will be able to frame policy debates on his terms, rather than letting his opponents do the framing. Second, Obama will be able to turn his supporters into an unprecedented grassroots lobbying force to pressure reluctant Members of Congress. Third, Obama will be able to recruit and fund challengers to run against Members who dare to vote against his bills.

In fact, Obama's power even goes beyond raw politics. If a Corporate Media entity gets in his way, Obama could ask his supporters to boycott it and put it out of business. (Are you listening, FOX?) And if an industry group - like the health insurance industry - gets in his way, he could put its worst corporate member out of business the same way.

The potential power of Obama's Internet "base" is limitless. It will be fascinating to see how he uses it.

Update 1: I'd love to see Obama give his political machine a trial run in the Georgia Senate runoff on December 2 between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. Chambliss led on Election Day by just under 50% to 47%, with the remaining 3% going to the Libertarian candidate. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans are more likely to turn out for a special election than Democrats, but it's also possible Georgia Republicans are demoralized by Obama's victory while Georgia Democrats are energized.

Obama has every reason to get involved. John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning for Chambliss, so it's already a test of Obama's political strength. Senate Democrats badly want a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, and this is one of the very few GOP seats we can win. Democratic activists remember how Chambliss viciously attacked Vietnam veteran Max Cleland in 2002. 

Obama could easily raise $10 million and enlist 1 million callers for a 3-week campaign. No doubt David Axelrod is polling Georgia carefully to get the answer. (Kos is doing his own weekly polls through Election Day.) annrose just reported Obama field operatives are on the ground. If Obama thinks this long-shot race is winnable and uses his brand new machine to win it, the Washington Establishment will go into shock, and the GOP will go into all-out depression.

Inauguration Ball 2009

by Kenyada of Daily Kos

I don't know, maybe it was one too many re-runs of The Twilight Zone; maybe it was one too many posts at 538. All I know is that one night I found myself in a huge ballroom, somewhere in the middle of Washington, D.C.

Guests began arriving early. There are no place cards and no name tags. Everyone knows everyone else here. Now, there’s a grand foursome - Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz sharing laughs with Martin and Coretta Scott King. Looks like Hosea Williams refused the limo again, keeping it real. And my goodness; is that Rosa Parks out there on the dance floor with A. Phillip Randolph?

Seated at a nearby table, Frederick Douglass has a captive audience in W.E.B. DuBose and Fannie Lou Hamer, and Medgar Evers has just joined them. Marian Anderson was asked to sing tonight, but she only agreed to do it if accompanied by Marvin Gaye, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. Look, there’s Harriet Tubman. No one knows how she arrived, but there she is. And my guess is that, when the time comes, no one will see her leave.

There’s Jackie Robinson swiftly making his way through the hall as the crowd parts like the Red Sea to the unmistakable sound of applause. "Run, Jackie, run!" Along the way he is embraced by Jessie Owens.  Three beautiful young women arrive with their escorts – Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Ms. Viola Liuzzo flew in from Michigan, exclaiming, "I could not miss this."

Richard Pryor promised to be on his best behavior. "But I can’t make any guarantees for Redd Foxx and Moms Mabley," he chuckled. Joe Louis just faked a quick jab to the chin of Jack Johnson, who smiled broadly while slipping it. We saw Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole greet Luther Van Dross. James Brown and Josh Gibson stopped at Walter Payton’s table to say hello.

I spotted Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem having a lively political discussion with Eldredge Cleaver. Pearl Harbor WW II hero Dorey Miller shared a few thoughts with Crispus Attucks, a hero of the Revolutionary War. And there is Madam C.J. Walker talking with Marcus Garvey about exporting goods to Africa.

General Benjamin O. Davis flew into Washington safely with an escort from the 99th Fighter Squadron - better known as The Tuskegee Airmen. At the table on the left are three formidable women - Shirley Chisholm, Sojourner Truth, and Barbara Jordan - gathered for a little girl-talk... about world politics.

As usual, all the science nerds seem to have gathered off in a corner, talking shop. There’s Granville T. Woods and Lewis Latimer needling each other about whose inventions are better. Someone jokingly asked Benjamin Banneker if he had needed directions to Washington. And George Washington Carver was overheard asking, "What, no peanuts?"

Dueling bands? Anytime Duke Ellington and Count Basie get together, you know the place will be jumping. Tonight is special, of course, so we have Miles, Dizzy, and Satchmo sitting in on trumpet, with Coltrane, Cannonball, and Bird on sax. Everyone’s attention is directed to the dance floor where Bill "Bojangles" Robinson is tap dancing. Right beside him is Sammy Davis Jr., doing his Bojangles routine. And behind his back, Gregory Hines is imitating them both. Applause and laughter abound! The Hollywood contingency has just arrived from the Coast. Led by filmmaker Oscar Micheau, Paul Robeson, Canada Lee, and Hattie McDaniel, they  find their way to their tables. Dorothy Dandridge, looking exquisite in gold lamé, is seen signaling to her husband, Harold Nicholas, who is standing on the floor with brother Fayard watching Gregory Hines dance. "Hold me back," quips Harold, "before I show that youngster how it’s done." Much laughter! Then a sudden hush comes over the room. The guests of honor have arrived.

The President and Mrs. Obama looked out across the enormous ballroom at all the historic faces. Very many smiles, precious few dry eyes.
Someone shouted out, "You did it! You did it!" And Obama replied, "No sir, you did it; you all – each and every one of you – did it. Your guidance and encouragement; your hard work and perseverance..." Obama paused, perhaps holding back a tear.

"I look at your faces - your beautiful faces - and I am reminded that The White House was built by faces that looked just like yours. On October 3, 1792, the cornerstone of the White House was laid, and the foundations and main residence of The White House were built mostly by both enslaved and free African Americans and paid Europeans. In fact, most of the other construction work was performed by immigrants, many of whom had not yet become citizens. Much of the brick and plaster work was performed by Irish and Italian immigrants. The sandstone walls were built by Scottish immigrants. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that The White House is, ultimately, The People’s House, with each President serving as its steward. Since 1792 The People have trimmed its hedges, mowed its lawn, stood guard at the gate, cooked meals in the kitchen, and scrubbed its toilet bowls. But 216 years later, The People are taking it back!

"Today, Michelle and I usher in a new era. But while we and our family look toward the future with so much hope, we know that we must also acknowledge fully this milestone in our journey. We want to thank each and every one of you for all you have done to make this day possible.  I stand here before you, humbled and in awe of your accomplishments and sacrifice, and I will dedicate my Presidency, in your honor, to the principles of peace, liberty and freedom.

If it ever appears that I’m forgetting that, I know I can count on you to remind me." Then he pointed to me near the stage... "Kenyada, isn’t it time for you to wake up for work? Isn’t it time for all of us to wake up and get to work?"

Suddenly I awake and sit up in bed with a knowing smile. My wife stirs and sleepily asks if I’m OK.  "I’ve never been better," I replied, "Never better. It’s gonna be a good day."

A Thank You Note to White Voters

By Jack White | TheRoot.com

Couldn't have done it without you.

Nov. 8, 2008--While dodging those pigs I said would fly before a black man got elected president, I got to thinking about just who black folks had to thank for Barack Obama's historic achievement.

Obama and his brilliant staff are, of course, at the top of the list for mounting what was arguably the best presidential campaign in American political history.

And then there was our army of black voters who turned out in huge numbers and voted almost unanimously for our man.

But amid all our justified hooping and hollering, there's one group that I fear will not get its fair share of the credit for its essential contribution to this sweeping victory, a group we're more accustomed to blaming for all our woes than thanking for our progress.

I am talking, of course, about white folks.

Yes, white folks, the ones we thought would lie to pollsters about supporting Obama then pull the lever for his white opponent.

Not the majority of white folks, who voted for John McCain, but the millions upon millions of other white people, open minded and decent enough to give the brother a chance.

They deserve a big hand.

Of the 64 million votes Obama collected, the largest tally in history, by far the largest share were cast by white voters.

He racked up 43 percent of the white vote, equaling Bill Clinton's performance and easily surpassing Al Gore and John Kerry.

Without those white folks, Obama would have lost the election.

Obama positioned to reverse Bush actions

Stem cell and climate rules among targets of president-elect's team

By Ceci Connolly and R. Jeffrey Smith

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

Stem cell research
A spokeswoman said yesterday that no plans for regulatory changes had been finalized. "Before he makes any decisions on potential executive or legislative actions, he will be conferring with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, as well as interested groups," Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "Any decisions would need to be discussed with his Cabinet nominees, none of whom have been selected yet."

Still, the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress.

Black Power Brokers Ready to Rise In Tandem With New President

By JONATHAN KAUFMAN

Jeh Johnson, a black partner at a prominent Manhattan law firm, strolled down the hall from his corner office to chat with a fellow partner: Theodore Sorensen, President Kennedy's former speechwriter. It was late 2006, and another of Mr. Johnson's allies, Barack Obama, was pondering a bid for the White House. He suggested to Mr. Sorensen that he meet the politician.

Mr. Sorensen drafted notes about the pros and cons of running, including issues of personal safety. He and Mr. Obama talked by phone and later met face-to-face. Impressed, Mr. Sorensen vowed to support the young senator.

Today, Mr. Johnson, a Democratic fund-raiser who advised Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 race, is among a tightknit group of black Obama backers preparing for their own victory laps. Seated in his office recently, Mr. Johnson casually pulled out a list that's been circulating over the Internet of rumored Obama cabinet picks. Next to his name was the title secretary of labor. "I was flattered," said Mr. Johnson, before dismissing the speculative document with a laugh. "I am part of the Obama team and I'd want that to continue -- if asked."

For more than a decade, Mr. Obama has cultivated ties with a growing circle of black power brokers who are poised -- and eager -- to wield greater national influence. Some of these insiders stand to gain new status in an Obama administration, and many more in law firms, big corporations and on Wall Street. They believe that their proximity to the president-elect will burnish their reputations, much in the way that white elites always have leveraged connections in business and politics.

"When I get introduced to a new client these days, the first thing my colleagues mention is that I am a litigator and the second is that I am on Obama's national finance committee," says Mr. Johnson, 51 years old.

Michelle Obama: First Lady of the United States

By Kim McLarin | TheRoot.com

New house. New role. Relating to the nurturer-in-chief.

Getty Images

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Nov. 5, 2008--The first first lady to enter my consciousness was Rosalynn. I was 13 at the time. She was 50, the child of a farmer, the wife of a former governor, the mother of three. I could not relate to her, exactly—she was older than my mother and white and from a deeper kind of South than the one in Memphis where we lived. Still, I liked Rosalynn. She seemed quiet and gentle and down-to-earth, a nice enough lady to be doing whatever it was that first ladies did. Anyway, it had nothing to do with me.

After Rosalynn came Nancy: thin, chilly, glamorous; no relating there. On to Barbara, who seemed motherly and kind (this was before those Astrodome comments); she reminded me of my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Chenowith. Then Hillary: smart and capable and eager to do real work. By the time Hillary came along, I was old enough to understand that being a woman would play nearly as important a role in my professional life as being black, and so I watched Hillary with an interested eye. She was older than me and white, a first-generation feminist who grew up financially comfortable and secure. I still could not relate, precisely, but I was happy to see her kicking against the cookie-baking chains. After Hillary came Laura, the quiet Texas librarian. No doubt Laura Bush is more complex and accomplished than she has been portrayed, but to me she has remained a cipher.

Now comes Michelle Obama, first lady of the United States, a sister, a mother, a civil rights baby and accomplished professional, a speaker of truth. Feeling like you can relate to someone is not the best basis for picking a president, but it's pretty good for welcoming a first lady into your embrace.

Being relatable is, in fact, a key component of the job. Some of the nation's most successful first ladies—at least in terms of popularity and public perception—have all shared a certain quality of empathy that allows them to seem above partisanship, said presidential historian Carl Anthony. Michelle, he said, seems to have it.

"You can see that she makes herself accessible," he said. "She doesn't seek to establish or create some kind of mystique around herself."

Without compromising her tremendous personal dignity, Obama tells very personal stories about her life—her father struggling to provide for his family on a workingman's salary, her own efforts to balance the demands of work and family—that allow to her to connect with other, more-average Americans.

In Our Lifetime

By Henry Louis Gates Jr. | TheRoot.com

From toiling as White House slaves to President-elect Barack Obama, we have crossed the ultimate color line.

Nov. 4, 2008--

A new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

                                                       President-elect Barack Obama

We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose and to bear witness to the process by which this grand achievement occurs.

The first time was New Year's Day in 1863, when tens of thousands of black people huddled together all over the North waiting to see if Abraham Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The second was the night of June 22, 1938, the storied rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, when black families and friends crowded around radios to listen and cheer as the Brown Bomber knocked out Schmeling in the first round. The third, of course, was Aug. 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed to the world that he had a dream, in the shadow of a brooding Lincoln, peering down on the assembled throng, while those of us who couldn't be with him in Washington sat around our black-and-white television sets, bound together by King's melodious voice through our tears and with quickened-flesh.

But we have never seen anything like this. Nothing could have prepared any of us for the eruption (and, yes, that is the word) of spontaneous celebration that manifested itself in black homes, gathering places and the streets of our communities when Sen. Barack Obama was declared President-elect Obama. From Harlem to Harvard, from Maine to Hawaii—and even Alaska—from "the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire … [to] Stone Mountain of Georgia," as Dr. King put it, each of us will always remember this moment, as will our children, whom we woke up to watch history being made.

My colleagues and I laughed and shouted, whooped and hollered, hugged each other and cried. My father waited 95 years to see this day happen, and when he called as results came in, I silently thanked God for allowing him to live long enough to cast his vote for the first black man to become president. And even he still can't quite believe it!                    

How many of our ancestors have given their lives—how many millions of slaves toiled in the fields in endlessly thankless and mindless labor—before this generation could live to see a black person become president? "How long, Lord?" the spiritual goes; "not long!" is the resounding response. What would Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois say if they could know what our people had at long last achieved? What would Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman say? What would Dr. King himself say? Would they say that all those lost hours of brutalizing toil and labor leading to spent, half-fulfilled lives, all those humiliations that our ancestors had to suffer through each and every day, all those slights and rebuffs and recriminations, all those rapes and murders, lynchings and assassinations, all those Jim Crow laws and protest marches, those snarling dogs and bone-breaking water hoses, all of those beatings and all of those killings, all of those black collective dreams deferred—that the unbearable pain of all of those tragedies had, in the end, been assuaged at least somewhat through Barack Obama's election? This certainly doesn't wipe that bloody slate clean. His victory is not redemption for all of this suffering; rather, it is the symbolic culmination of the black freedom struggle, the grand achievement of a great, collective dream. Would they say that surviving these horrors, hope against hope, was the price we had to pay to become truly free, to live to see—exactly 389 years after the first African slaves landed on these shores—that "great gettin' up morning" in 2008 when a black man—Barack Hussein Obama—was elected the first African-American president of the United States?

I think they would, resoundingly and with one voice proclaim, "Yes! Yes! And yes, again!" I believe they would tell us that it had been worth the price that we, collectively, have had to pay—the price of President-elect Obama's ticket.

On that first transformative day, when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Frederick Douglass, the greatest black orator in our history before Martin Luther King Jr., said that the day was not a day for speeches and "scarcely a day for prose." Rather, he noted, "it is a day for poetry and song, a new song." Over 3,000 people, black and white abolitionists together, waited for the news all day in Tremont Temple, a Baptist church a block from Boston Common. When a messenger burst in, after 11 p.m., and shouted, "It is coming! It is on the wires," the church went mad; Douglass recalled that "I never saw enthusiasm before. I never saw joy." And then he spontaneously led the crowd in singing "Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow," John Brown's favorite hymn:

            Blow ye the trumpet, blow!

            The gladly solemn sound

            Let all the nations know,

            To earth's remotest bound:

 

            The year of jubilee is come!

            The year of jubilee is come!

            Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.

Last of the Culture Warriors

By Peter Beinart

Monday, November 3, 2008

Why has America turned on Sarah Palin? Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven't helped. Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image. But Palin's problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin's brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s -- which put questions of racial, sexual and religious identity at the forefront of American politics -- may be ending. Palin is the end of the line.

This won't be the first time a culture war has come to a close. In the 1920s, battles over evolution, immigration, prohibition and the resurgent Ku Klux Klan dominated election after election. And those issues played into that era's version of the red-blue divide, pitting newly arrived, saloon-frequenting, big-city Catholics against old-stock, teetotaling, small-town Protestants. In 1924, the Democratic convention split so bitterly over prohibition and the Klan that it took more than 100 ballots to nominate a candidate for president.

Then, in the 1930s, the culture war died. A big reason was the Depression, which put questions of economic survival front and center. In the 1920s boom economy, politicians were largely free to focus on identity politics. By Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, that was a luxury America's leaders could no longer afford.

The other thing that killed the '20s culture war was generational change. Over time, Catholics and other immigrants left their ghettos and began to assimilate. The cutoff of mass immigration in 1924 ushered in an era of cultural consolidation in which the differences among white Americans came to matter less and less. When Democrats nominated a Catholic, Al Smith, for president in 1928, he lost in a landslide. But by 1960, when they nominated John F. Kennedy, he grabbed a far larger share of the Protestant vote, and won.

Something similar is happening today. Our era's culture war also began in prosperity. It was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the high point of America's postwar boom, that African Americans took to the streets in vast numbers to demand equal rights. And it was in the early 1960s, as a result of the vast increase in postwar college enrollment, that students began challenging the conformity of American life. In 1962, the Port Huron Statement spoke of a generation "bred in at least modest comfort." It was those middle-class baby boomers who sparked the movements for women's rights and gay rights and the rise in blue-state secularism, all of which helped touch off this era's culture war.

The relationship between prosperity and cultural conflict isn't exact, of course, but it is significant that during this era's culture war we've gone a quarter-century without a serious recession. Economic issues have mattered in presidential elections, of course, but not until today have we faced an economic crisis so grave that it made cultural questions seem downright trivial. In 2000, in the wake of an economic boom and a sex scandal that led to a president's impeachment, 22 percent of Americans told exit pollsters that "moral values" were their biggest concern, compared with only 19 percent who cited the economy.

Today, according to a recent Newsweek poll, the economy is up to 44 percent and "issues like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage" down to only 6 percent. It's no coincidence that Palin's popularity has plummeted as the financial crisis has taken center stage. From her championing of small-town America to her efforts to link Barack Obama to former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Palin is treading a path well-worn by Republicans in recent decades. She's depicting the campaign as a struggle between the culturally familiar and the culturally threatening, the culturally traditional and the culturally exotic. But Obama has dismissed those attacks as irrelevant, and the public, focused nervously on the economic collapse, has largely tuned them out.

Palin's attacks are also failing because of generational change. The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud just isn't that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage. And just as younger Protestants found JFK less threatening than their parents had found Al Smith, younger whites -- even in bright-red states -- don't view the prospect of a black president with great alarm.

The economic challenges of the coming era are complicated, fascinating and terrifying, while the cultural battles of the 1960s feel increasingly stale. If John McCain loses tomorrow, the GOP will probably choose someone like Mitt Romney or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to lead it back from the wilderness, someone who -- although socially conservative -- speaks fluently about the nation's economic plight and doesn't try to substitute identity for policy. Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be the last culture warrior on a national ticket for a very long time.

Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a monthly column for The Post.

Will White People Riot?

By Wendi C. Thomas | TheRoot.com

Ridiculous question? Then stop asking it about black people.

"Would black people riot if Sen. Barack Obama didn't win the election?" That was the question a white man in Memphis recently asked a racial reconciliation group with which I am involved.

After five years of being a columnist for the daily paper in Memphis, I wasn't surprised by the absurdity of his query. Many whites still labor under the illusion that black folk act en masse and that if you ask the right one, you can get the official position of some 40 million people. If a few of us get angry, that logic allows, it must surely result in a riot.

Riot because we didn't get our way? Please. Black people have more than their share of experience with disappointment and dashed dreams. (See: King, Martin Luther; Evers, Medgar; Chaney, James.) Matter of fact, I'd go so far as to say we're experts in making the best out of a losing hand.

The reply to the curious white gentleman: "No! There is no reason to believe black people will riot if Obama does not win."

But soon after getting this man's e-mail, I started to wonder if he was on to something, if he had noticed what I had: a seething, barely constrained, ugly anger and frustration that makes good riot fuel. The kind of anger that prompts people to shout "Kill him!" and "Off with his head!" at rallies. The kind of hatefulness that would prompt a man to bring a stuffed monkey with an "Obama" sticker on the toy's head to a campaign event.

That kind of group-fueled nastiness must surely beg the question: Will white people riot if Obama wins?

Not all white people are McCain supporters. (See caucuses, Iowa.) Not all black people are backing Obama. (See Negroes, self-loathing. Just joking.)

But there is a small but vocal segment of white Republicans who just might have an aneurysm if the next occupant of the White House is a black man.

If the polls are accurate—and Obama wins—will these few angry white people make good on their oral declarations? And will those who stood by them silent, join them? With dreams deferred, can angry whites do what Langston Hughes taught us—to let it fester like a sore, even to let sag like a heavy load? Or will the dream of a perfect streak of white men in the White House, if deferred, cause white people to explode?

Might they torch stores and overturn cars? Or worse, will angry whites take out their disgust on black people by, say, denying loans, or jobs or housing? Burned-out stores and cars, that's unsettling. But the damage angry whites could inflict if they really go off—that's scary.

Will angry white people riot if Barack Obama wins the election?

There may be some people who think this is an absurd question. I honestly don't know. But it is no more absurd than asking it about blacks.

Wendi C. Thomas is the metro columnist for The Commercial Appeal. She's been a writer or an editor for The Charlotte Observer, The (Nashville) Tennessean and The Indianapolis Star. Among her many journalism awards is her 2008 induction into the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame for her opinion writing.