Hillary Clintons Takes Her Curtain Call as She Suspends Her Campaign

Okay, I was no big fan of Hillary Clinton, but she gave a damn good speech today. (Here’s a link to the full speech). To be blatantly honest, if she had spoken in this manner when she started her campaign, the outcome may have been very different. You have to admit that she did win the popular vote, not to take anything away from Barack Obama’s win. You see both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama made history and they both represent America as it should be and not as it was. As I have stated with a great deal of resolve, both candidates have made us take a good look at ourselves and the things we aspire to. Hillary Clinton, for what it is worth, proved that a woman can run for the highest office in the country and be taken seriously. The only problem is that there was another woman who dared to do the same thing and at a time when she was literally laughed at. That woman is Shirley St. Hill Chisholm. I was very annoyed at the fact that neither Clinton nor Obama made reference to her, to my knowledge, on the campaign trail. She was in fact a trailblazer and a foot soldier in the quest for equality for blacks and women in this country. Hillary Clinton was absolutely right when she said “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before.” Her speech repeatedly returned to the new threshold her candidacy had set for women. In primary after primary, her support among women was a solid bloc of her coalition. She noted that she had received the support of women born before women could even vote. That is a fact that the Obama campaign cannot ignore and must find a way to heal the party. We need this bloc of voters to ensure his victory in the Fall.

So, Hillary Clinton in the end, left with honor and dignity. Even though she began her campaign with an air of inevitability and certain victory, she left with a great deal of respect and can be content in the fact that she did make a difference and she did fight. She created a brand and is no longer in the shadow of her husband, who has been considered by many as a factor in her loss.

Barack Obama said it best in his response to her speech. Obama said in a statement he was “thrilled and honored” to have Clinton’s support and praised her campaign for shattering barriers for women and inspiring Democratic voters.”Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I’m a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her,” Obama said. He recognizes the fact, that though there may be hard feelings, Hillary Clinton can help him in his quest. I do not think he should choose her to be his running mate, but she could be a very powerful surrogate for his campaign for a myriad of reasons. I would also encourage him to use her in his administration in some way, if he prevails in the fall.

So, Hillary, or Shrillary as she has been called, won’t be saying she’s the best candidate for the job of president and I know that this must have been a tremendous blow, but the reality is that she did make a mark for women, of all ethnicities to admire. She had more delegates than any runner up in American political history. While I do not agree with many of her positions and some of the methods she used on the campaign trail, like Barack Obama, I have to pay homage to her for an incredible journey and being a pioneer for women all across America to simply say: YES WE CAN to just about any endeavors we wish to undertake.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Presidential Elections

Barack Obama’s Historic Win Reaches Kenya

According to the Associated Press, crowds have amassed at the home of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother to celebrate his historic win. The AP said that scores of jubilant villagers trooped to Sarah Obama’s home in western Kenya to savour her grandson’s victory.

While crowds huddled around TV sets in the provincial capital Kisumu to watch excerpts of Barack Obama’s victory speech when he made history to become the first black candidate of a major US party. “I was very delighted to learn that he had scored big against his rival,” an ebullient Sarah Obama, who is the third wife of Obama’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, told reporters amid bursts of laughter. “I’m very happy and continue praying that he succeeds in future.”

“Finally one of our own is getting up there to the high seat in America,” said Pascal Onyango, a water vendor in Kisumu. “Obama has done our community and our country proud. We are very happy about that. We know he will win,” Jack Owuor, a resident in Kogelo village said.

I asked my mother who retired and moved back to Jamaica what the feeling was on the island about Obama’s accomplishment and she said that people are esctatic and hopeful that he will prevail in the Fall to accomplish another historical feat. He has done blacks proud and he has done whites and every other ethnicity proud.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Presidential Nominee, Sarah Obama

Barack Obama Makes History in America by Clinching Democratic Party Nomination

I came across this list on the Chicago Tribune website and I must say, I agree with their points.

5 reasons Obama won

1. He owned the word “change” when voters were fed up with the status quo. In a field of older, better-known candidates, he represented “the new.”

2. He opposed the Iraq War when others were equivocal. The issue was a clear winner against Clinton, who had voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion.

3. His oratory was electrifying. While his early debate performances seemed halting and uncomfortable, he steadily improved. His stump speeches were assured, and he drew crowds as large as 75,000.

4. His campaign was better strategically and operationally, particularly in taking the long view and focusing on caucus states and primaries beyond Super Tuesday.

5. He won the Internet, notably in raising record amounts of money and building networks of supporters through non-traditional methods.

5 reasons Clinton lost

1. Her campaign was too corporate and hierarchical. It spent too much on staff, was too slow in decision-making and had too little independent thinking.

2. She didn’t recognize the threat Obama posed early enough, and went straight from “inevitable” to in trouble.

3. She invested heavily in Iowa, then lost to Obama there. Her deputy campaign manager had urged her to skip the opening caucuses, which her husband, Bill, had bypassed in 1992.

4. She had no coherent post-Super Tuesday plan. While she held her own in the Feb. 5 primaries, including a big victory in California, she lost the next 11 contests.

5. She failed to connect with African-American voters, a demographic that had always been in her corner. Early in the race, poorly timed comments by Bill Clinton hurt her among blacks.

5 major differences between Obama and McCain

1. McCain supports the Iraq War; Obama opposes it.

2. McCain opposes abortion; Obama favors abortion rights.

3. Obama favors talking with hostile regimes; McCain does not.

4. McCain would make the Bush tax cuts permanent; Obama would not.

5. Obama favors more restrictions on gun ownership than McCain.

Final thoughts….

Call it what you want, Barack Obama accomplished a major feat and has done us proud. Hillary Clinton underestimated the tenacity and determination of Barack Obama. She also miscalculated the fact that people are just tired of politics as usual. I know that both her and her husband aren’t racist people and I believe that they genuinely hoped that a black man would be in such a place as Barack Obama is today, but I don’t think they expected it to occur on their watch. Bill Clinton helped to shape the new perception of his wife among blacks that they would push the race and fear card in the hopes of getting ahead. Hillary Clinton made history herself and no matter how you look at it, she did get millions of votes that cannot be ignored, but she is wearing out her welcome and it is time for her to pack it in and concede.

America is a country with a tortured racial history—institutionalized slavery, a bloody civil war, wrenching Supreme Court rulings, riots in the streets and the modern realignment of its political parties, but the victory by the African American senator from Illinois has written a new chapter in the American story.

His candidacy has resonated with so many people across this country, including people who grew up in an era of desegregated schools and who, for all the uncomfortable racial baggage that persists, at least lived their lives accustomed to encountering blacks as neighbors, colleagues in the workplace and accomplished figures in pop culture, business, sports and government.Two-thirds of white Americans now say they have a black neighbor. Less than half did as recently as 1984, when the country first met the easily approachable and decidedly upper-middle-class Huxtable family with the premiere of “The Cosby Show.” You have to give President Bush some credit, because during his administration, African-Americans have been at the pinnacle of the national security apparatus, with Colin Powell as the president’s first-term secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser and Powell’s successor. The television series “24” began introducing America in 2001 to a fictional black president, the decisive and confident David Palmer. So, you see, this is the natural progression of things as Dr. King had envisioned years ago. What will be even more poignant and historical, is the fact that when Barack Obama delivers his speech at the Democratic Convention on August 28th, it will be made on the same day as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic and prophetic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Race and national identity are likely to continue to be a part of the campaign, either explicitly or implicitly through attacks based on the Muslim heritage of Obama’s African ancestors that portray him as alien to American culture. Though his Arabic middle name, Hussein, is taken from his paternal grandfather, Obama is Christian. People like Ann Coulter continue to highlight his middle name as though it was a scourge. They continue to try to tie him to Muslims, as though it was a crime to be a Muslim in America, which we know for a fact that he is not.

It was equally amazing that among Obama’s colleagues in the Senate is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and one-time stalwart in the chamber for the Southern struggle to preserve segregation, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who welcomed Obama to the body and later benefited from a fundraising appeal Obama made on his behalf. In his memoir, Obama describes Byrd penitently looking him in the eye and telling him, “I only have one regret, you know. The foolishness of youth.” Yes, anything is possible in America. The road to the White House won’t be an easy one, but rest assured, we are all fired up and ready to fight for Barack Obama to get there. As we say in Jamaica, “A FI WI TIME NOW!” YES WE CAN and WE WILL……

Filed under: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Presidential Elections