Will Mr. Obama Go To Washington?

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Washington Report
Will Mr. Obama Go To Washington?
Illinois state legislator seeks to become only black U.S. senator
By Tamara E. Holmes

In the upcoming months, all eyes will be on the presidential competition. However, the stakes are high in the race for the former U.S. Senate seat of presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun, as Democratic state Sen. Barack Obama attempts to become the nation's only black U.S. senator. If elected, he would be the first-ever black male Democratic senator and the first black male senator since Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts was elected in 1966.

Obama, who represents Illinois' 13th District on Chicago's South Side, faces eight opponents in a hotly contested Democratic primary next month. According to local news polls, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas and State Comptroller Dan Hynes are the front-runners by slight margins. Other candidates include: millionaire investment broker Blair Hull; lawyer and former school board president Gery Chico; radio talk show host Nancy Skinner; and healthcare executive Joyce Washington (who is also African American).

Since announcing his candidacy in January 2003, Obama has raised $2 million, surprising many political analysts who expected him to have trouble raising funds. The first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama has a strong record when it comes to supporting minority-owned businesses, which is why some black business leaders are working overtime to send the 41-year-old senator to Washington.

John Rogers, chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management (No. 1 on the BE ASSET MANAGERS list with $10.3 billion in assets under management), has contributed $9,000 to Obama's campaign. Lou Holland, managing partner and chief investment officer of Chicago-based Holland Capital Management (No. 11 on the BE ASSET MANAGERS list with $1.3 billion in assets under management), has contributed $12,000. Obama has the backing of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the state's second-largest teacher's union; the Illinois Council of Service Employees International Union; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.

Obama's chances of winning will also depend in part on his success in mobilizing Illinois' black working class, says Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago. "He's got to find a way to make [the primary] important to people who wouldn't normally turn out [to vote]."

http://www.blackenterprise.com/Archiveopen.asp?source=/archive2004/02/0204-02.htm
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Favorite Son
Barack Obama, America's latest political star, is expected to become the next black U.S. senator. Could his victory put him on the path to the White House?
By Kenneth Meeks

He gave the speech of his life. With grace and confidence, a relatively unknown Illinois state senator stood before a sea of cheering delegates at Boston's FleetCenter, home to this year's Democratic National Convention. In an electrifying keynote address, the poised politician spoke of his lineage; uniting a nation across racial, ideological, and economic lines; and, most importantly, the promise of the American dream.

"If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child," he told delegates as they exploded into applause and cheers during his speech. "If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief–I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper–that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. ... There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

After his address of unity and hope–one that energized a party and set the tone for the presidential race to come–the nation witnessed the birth of a new political star: Barack Obama. They not only saw a man who is almost assured of ascending to the U.S. Senate representing the state of Illinois, but a politician pundits say has the timber to one day become America's first African American president.

So who is this candidate many speculate is in contention for the White House? To answer that question, BLACK ENTERPRISE went on the road with Obama–to three cities on a campaign tour through southern Illinois–a month before he stepped onto the national stage. We discovered his platform, his political passion, his background, and the aspirations of "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him."

ON THE ROAD
On a warm and rainy June morning in Springfield, the state capital, the 42-year-old three-term senator who represents Chicago's South Side addresses a packed room of mostly white, blue-collar workers at the AFL-CIO building. In the back of the room, a unionist holds up a sign that reads: "The Land of Lincoln Loves Senator Obama."

Today, Obama listens to Ada Owens, a Decatur woman who worked at the Bridgestone/Firestone manufacturing plant for 27 years before it closed in 2001. The plant, which employed as many as 1,200 people, shut down as a result of the recall of Firestone tires that dominated headlines several years ago. Now, Decatur is on the verge of becoming a ghost town.

"I was able to get a negotiated package but too young for Social Security, so that meant I had to go out and look for another job," Owens says in a shaky voice worn by three years of economic despair and hardship. "For younger workers who didn't have a retirement option, it's been horrible. A lot of older folks have died of heart attacks because of the stress. We hear that the economy is looking up and that there are jobs out there, but they are not decent jobs where you can support your families. And they're not here in Decatur. That's what we lost."
Owens' story underscores a larger problem facing Illinois and the heart of Obama's campaign. As Owens recounts her story, the politician nods his head, his face etched with concern and compassion. When she finishes, Obama calmly takes the microphone and collects his thoughts before addressing the issue head-on. He conducts an informal poll of the 100 or so in the room, finding that half have either lost jobs or knows such a casualty. Despite President George W. Bush's pledge to create millions of new jobs this year, Obama says many pay a fraction of those originally lost. "What I'm hearing everywhere I go is a middle class that is feeling squeezed because their jobs are moving overseas, and they are economically insecure," he says. "We lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs and we have not been benefiting from the economic growth that has been taking place. Collectively, what we're experiencing is erosion of the economic status. We have some people–a small slither of the economy–who have done better than they've ever done before; a middle class that is shrinking; and a greater and greater difficulty on the part of the working class … to get into the middle class. That is the story that we have to reverse."

Throughout the room, heads nod in agreement. Obama seems to connect with a constituency that ranges from black churchgoers like Owens to white unionists threatened by the outsourcing of jobs to China, India, and Mexico. An older white man in the fourth row eyes Obama cautiously as the politician outlines his four-part program called "REAL U.S.A. Corporations Plan." His platform is designed to counteract the despair that corporate outsourcing breeds by, among other things, getting the federal government to advocate more effectively on behalf of workers and communities in the World Trade Organization and making sure that tax codes give incentives to companies that keep jobs in America. When he finishes, the room erupts with applause.

"I could be wrong about him," says Owens. "We won't know until he gets into office, but I think he says what he means. And if he doesn't, then he will have me to answer to. He will be held accountable."

AGAINST THE ODDS
The next stop is East Alton, a city on the Mississippi River with a population just shy of 7,000. It's roughly an hour and a half drive to East Alton, where Obama faces the machinist union, and it's a great opportunity to get to know the man behind the campaign. Next month, he could possibly replace Republican Peter G. Fitzgerald, who is not seeking reelection. And an Obama victory would move the Senate Democrats–at present outnumbered 51 to 48–one seat closer to a majority. This year also marks the first time Democrats have the possibility of gaining control of the Senate, with strong Democratic hopefuls in Southern states like South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana.

As it stands, Illinois doesn't look good for Republican challenger Alan Keyes, who entered the race in August. He was hastily chosen by the GOP after a tabloid scandal knocked the former Republican candidate, Jack Ryan, out of the race. Ryan, 44, is a Wilmette native and a Goldman Sachs investment banker who dropped out of the race in late June when unsealed portions of his 1999 divorce case revealed claims from his former wife, actress Jeri Ryan, that Ryan took her to sex clubs and tried to talk her into having public sex with him. The story came at a time when the challenger was trailing Obama in the polls by 20 points. Obama's only comment was that Ryan's divorce documents were "not a campaign issue."

In 1988 and 1992, Keyes unsuccessfully sought a Senate seat in Maryland, earning 38% and 29% of the vote, respectively. However, according to published reports, his credibility suffered when the media learned in 1992 that he had paid himself a salary of $8,500 a month from his campaign funds. He later sought the Republican presidential nomination, earning 4% of the vote in the Illinois presidential primary election in 1996 and 9% in 2000. Four years ago, the native New Yorker criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton for moving to another state for political reasons. In August, Keyes moved from Darnestown, Maryland, to Calumet City, Illinois, to set up temporary residence for his campaign. Keyes told CNN that he justified his move as "responding to the people of Illinois who have asked me to come and help them with a crisis situation."

Although Obama refuses to respond to negative pols, Donna Brazile, political consultant and Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign manager, says at some point Bush and the Republican machine will descend on Illinois to try to derail him. "Therefore, he will need the active support of John Kerry and the rest of the Democratic Party. There is no question that the era of electing black power candidates is over. Now you're electing individuals who have expanded their power base and are looking at larger goals. I think Barack's positioning in the race will suit him well to become a leading voice of African American issues, as well as American causes that African Americans should be a part of. He has his pulse on the real issues facing voters this fall. Nobody thought he would come out of that primary alive, given that he had two [rivals] who had a great deal of gravitas, but he came out more than OK." He came out strong and well positioned.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) remembers talking about Obama's long-shot candidacy a year ago with Democrats in Washington, D.C. They all expected Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, the leading candidate, to win the primary in March. Instead, Obama beat out all six Democratic hopefuls by an incredible 53% of the vote. "Frankly, a lot of people in Washington were dismissive of Barack's candidacy; a lot of people in D.C. believed that if you can't win a House seat, how are you going to win a Senate seat?" (In 2000, Obama lost by a 60% to 31% margin when he challenged incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther, for a seat in the House of Representatives.)

If Obama wins, it will be a milestone for African Americans. To date, there have been two African American senators since Reconstruction–Edward William Brooke, who represented Massachusetts when he was elected in 1966, and Carol Moseley Braun, another Illinois politician who held office for one term after she was elected in 1992. Rep. Denise Majette is also looking for a seat after winning the Democratic nomination in Georgia. Says Davis: "I think that Denise has a difficult race. Georgia is a state that has never elected a black to the position of U.S. Senator. Illinois has, and there are certain historical advantages in the state of Illinois that I think certainly favor Barack's candidacy."

Obama ran a smart campaign in the primaries. He brought together white liberals and African Americans, gaining endorsements from Carbondale City Council member Sheila Simon, daughter of the late Sen. Paul Simon, the most respected liberal Democrat in downstate Illinois, and former Sen. Max Cleland from Georgia, a popular veteran who lost both legs and an arm in the Vietnam War and who introduced Kerry at the Democratic National Convention. Obama also gained votes from heavily Republican and predominantly white areas in the southwestern and northern portions of the state–places like DuPage County, where a black candidate was never expected to get backing.

If Obama wins and becomes the only African American in the U.S. Senate, Braun warns that he will have demands placed on him by both Illinois voters and a "national constituency."
"He won't be able to get away with just representing his state, which most senators can do," explains Braun, who didn't endorse any candidate during the primary. "[Other senators] can represent their state and that's really the only expectation that anybody has of them. [Obama is] going to have to learn to balance the needs of his state against the larger national constituency right off the bat, and without necessarily having the resources or staff to do the job. But I'm sure he's up to it."

But not every African American believes this notion of a national constituency. Maintains Vernon E. Jordan Jr., senior managing director at Lazard L.L.C. and a member of BE's Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street: "His constituency is the people of Illinois. They elected him and it is them he will be responsible to. [He's not being elected to be] the representative of all black people. He's being elected to be the Democratic senator to represent the people of Illinois. That is his only mandate."

NEXT STOP ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
East Alton is a small community a stone's throw away from St. Louis, where many young Altonians moved for jobs. The rain has all but stopped, and a small crowd of 150 people are already in their seats when Obama walks into the room shaking hands with his right hand as he places his left hand on the other person's shoulder, elbow, or forearm. He always looks people directly in the eye. He is masterful at connecting with people reagardless of age, gender, or race.

At the Machinist Hall, Obama reiterated his pro-labor campaign speech, his stance on the Free Trade Agreement, China, and the ills of the Bush administration. When he finishes, the room erupts with applause, and he easily melts into the crowd, listening to ideas and answering people's questions. An hour or so after he arrived, Obama and his entourage are back on the road, this time headed south to Carbondale to attend a $50-a-plate fundraiser in his honor. From Carbondale, his motorcade will drive four hours north to Peoria and is scheduled to arrive around 2 a.m. Campaigning is a grueling process, but he's up to the challenge.
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

But Obama doesn't only need votes; he needs money. And he has managed to raise loads of it. Of the first million that his campaign raised, half came directly from BE 100S and small minority-owned companies. He received initial donations from Chicago-based contributors like John W. Rogers Jr., CEO of Ariel Capital Management L.L.C. (No. 1 on the BE ASSET MANAGERS list with $16.1 billion in assets under management) and his wife, who gave more than $21,000. Employees of Loop Capital Markets L.L.C. (No. 3 on the BE INVESTMENT BANKS list with $113 billion in total managed issues) put up in excess of $24,000. And Louis A. Holland, managing partner of Holland Capital Management L.P. (No. 10 on the BE ASSET MANAGERS list with $1.9 billion in assets under management) personally contributed close to $10,000. Obama's support extends beyond the boundaries of the Windy City to investment bankers in New York City such as Vernon Jordan, who along with his wife, sponsored Obama's first big Washington fundraiser last fall at a time when his underdog campaign didn't look good and long before anybody knew him. "Several friends of mine said to me, 'I'm coming because of you,' and they came, they saw, and they heard him. They took in what he had to say and I think they too felt his commitment and his passion and were moved by his eloquence enough that they wrote checks," Jordan explains. "So I am just very impressed by him as a man, as a lawyer, as an individual, and as someone who chose not to go to a law firm but to be a community organizer and to do something about community problems. I felt when I first met him and listened to him that I was listening to myself 40 years ago and so I am very excited about his candidacy, very excited about the possibility that he will serve in the United States Senate."

Rogers, who has known Obama and his wife, Michelle, for well over 10 years, says that as a state senator, Obama has been extremely effective in helping the black business community by providing strategic advice. "Whenever any of us had issues of concern or things that needed to be addressed, Barack has been very responsive. He basically gives people insight into how the government works. Having a peer–someone our own age–in government who can sit down and tell entrepreneurs how the state process works, how you work within it, and what buttons to push shows us the way. He's shedding light on how the process really works."

Obama has always been a strong advocate for small and minority-owned businesses. "[They] are crucial to the American economy," he asserts. "An overwhelming number of jobs in our society have been created by small and minority-owned businesses. I'm proud to see more African Americans generate the capital and the technical knowledge needed to start their own companies. They are taking ownership [of their destiny], and not just working for somebody else, [because owning your own business] is the recipe for long-term wealth and stability for any community.

"But more needs to be done," he continues. "I see my role as helping to open doors that have previously been closed for small businesses across the country–black, white, Hispanic, or Asian. The more we can do to encourage assistance through the SBA and other organizations; the more we can promote exports in other countries. And the more we can incorporate technology into small and minority-owned businesses, the more successful we will be as a country."

Obama says this initial core of financial contributors helped him establish credibility early on, and that allowed him to raise additional money. As of the end of the second quarter filings with the Federal Election Commission, Obama raised an astonishing $9.8 million with $3.3 million in cash toward his election bid, outpacing most of this year's senatorial candidates.

And he has proven to be a shrewd money manager. During the primary, he held on to his money until the last few weeks and then he hit the airways with an impressive (and effective) television blitz. With seven candidates in the race, there was a bloc of undecided voters, and when people started to make up their minds in the last couple of weeks, Obama had a barrage of spots.
Page 4, cont'd

A CONNECTION WITH MANY CULTURES
Born in Hawaii, Obama is the son of an African exchange student from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. He rarely saw his father, who left the family when Obama was 2 to attend Harvard and then later returned to his native Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. (At age 21, Obama learned that his father had died in a car accident.)

When Obama was 6, his mother married an Indonesian oil manager, and the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. As a teenager, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attended one of the island's top prep schools. He was a lone black child raised by his white mother and grandparents. But he gained the ability to connect with people from various national, cultural, and racial backgrounds. "I grew up with whites and blacks and Asians within my own family and surrounding communities. It's an enormous advantage in an America that is changing everyday in that it requires us to work together across racial, cultural, and ethnic lines," Obama says. "But I was affected by the problems that I think a lot of young African American teens have; they feel that they need to rebel against society as a way of proving their blackness. And often, this results in self-destructive behavior. I've written about the fact that when I was in high school, I experimented with drugs and I played a lot of sports, but didn't take my studies particularly seriously. But I was fortunate to have a foundation and values from my family that helped me to overcome some of those destructive attitudes."

Although he always considered himself a good student in high school, Obama says he didn't get serious about his scholarship until his third year in college, when he transferred to Columbia University in New York. Filled with political idealism, he became a community organizer in Harlem after graduation. But he couldn't afford to stay in New York City on his salary. When he decided to leave Harlem, he wrote to organizations across the country looking for work and received only a single reply from a church-based group in Chicago that was trying to help residents of poor South Side neighborhoods cope with a wave of plant closings–an experience that would begin to shape Obama's political career.

Three years later, he left the church organization to attend Harvard Law School, and in 1990, he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Armed with a law degree that matched the likes of Fortune 500 leaders, Obama could have designed a high-powered legal or corporate career. He turned down an opportunity to clerk with a chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit and jobs working for prestigious Wall Street law firms. Instead, he returned to Chicago to practice civil rights law, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting rights legislation for small public interest firms. He later started teaching at the University of Chicago Law School but did not pursue a tenure-track post. He decided to go into politics.

When Obama announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate, he had already built a solid track record on issues affecting working-class families. He expanded a program to provide healthcare to Illinois children. He wrote and passed a law that gives $100 million in tax breaks to working-class families. He wrote and passed landmark legislation to end racial profiling among state law enforcement agencies. The bill also required a videotaped confessions in murder cases. And while Obama doesn't have statistics that chart the results of his bill since being signed into law, the ACLU applauded his effort to make law enforcement agencies in Illinois keep track of all traffic stops and the race of the individual. Obama was also one of the few candidates to publicly oppose the war in Iraq.

Win or lose in next month's election, Obama represents a new form of leadership. For more than three decades, black political leadership has largely been tied to civil rights activism, with two distinguishable traits: a willingness to agitate with firebrand conviction and the ability to mobilize large groups of blacks behind a common cause. Today's black politicians, however, talk less about equal access and more about education and economic opportunities, viewing themselves as coalition builders and economic developers seeking to appeal to broad constituencies and abandoning rhetoric that would tag them as liberals. It's a group that includes former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who ran an unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2002, and Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee, who is expected to make a run for the Senate in 2006.

It's Rogers of Ariel Capital Management who sums up Obama best: "If you're a leader and you care about people, you're going to reach out beyond your local community and help people nationally. I think Barack will be an extraordinary national leader. Dr. King was able to fill an enormous void with his extraordinary gifts. There is an enormous void in this country and Rev. Jackson can't fill it all. We need other strong dynamic leaders who can be a voice for the voiceless. I think it's our responsibility that all of us who are privileged and given the opportunity to, reach back and help bring others up. And Barack does it extraordinarily well."

As Obama's campaign motorcade meanders through country roads and small towns, we come to a stop on the campus of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. It's early evening, and the sun starts to disappear behind the trees. Inside the SIU Student Center, an estimated crowd of 600 conservative Illinois residents are waiting for Obama's entrance. For Obama, inside are more people to reach and more voters to sway. And it's one step closer to Washington.
–Additional reporting by Joyce Jones & Stephanie Young

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_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Posted by:
princy

Posted On:
12/12/2006 9:20:00 PM Barack Obama
His education is from the best Law School in the USA, "Harvard". So education wise hes the best. Knowledge is the key, and knowledge he has. You elect a MAN that has knowledge"BOOK" knowledge. Not, daddy got money knowledgegeorge. If a average student can be PresidentBush. Most surely The "HIGHEST HONOR" student, being number of his graduating class can most certainly run this country. BARACK OBAMA
Posted by:
ardonna

Posted On:
12/12/2006 8:54:50 PM
I think that he is ready to become president. Even though he has not had a political background that spans over decadesthat doesnt mean that he wouldnt make a good president. George Bush is from a blood line of Politicial bigwigs that includes a former president and a current governor and he still is incompetent. We need a leader in this country, not a dictator. Obama has already proven himself in that department.
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Obama Encouraged to Enter 2008 Race
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Sen. Barack Obama says he may have to overcome questions about his inexperience, stereotypes about his race and even a middle name that reminds Americans of Iraq's former dictator. Despite all that, the Illinois Democrat received plenty of encouragement to enter the presidential race during an initial trip to this pivotal campaign state.

Barack Hussein Obama drew the kind of political frenzy that is commonplace in New Hampshire in the final month before the nation's first presidential primary.

In this case, it happened more than a year in advance for a man who hasn't even decided whether he's running.

Obama said he is still "running things through the traps" as he considers whether to join a field of Democrats that's expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton and several other more experienced political hands.

He said his family is a major concern because he has two young daughters. Also, he doesn't want to run just because the timing is right politically - he wants to feel he has something important to offer.

"This is an office you can't run for just on the basis of ambition," Obama said. His advisers said he would consider his choice over the holidays, after his annual Christmas trip to his native Hawaii to visit his grandmother.

He got encouragement everywhere he went in New Hampshire. He drew 1,500 Democrats to a state Democratic Party fundraiser and several hundred more at a book signing in Portsmouth. Organizers of both events had to turn away many others.

State party officials said 150 members of the media signed up to cover Obama's speech, representing news organizations as far off as Australia and Japan. A large media contingent crowded into a Portsmouth coffee shop with the senator and knocked into tables as he tried to shake hands with the customers.
History teacher and Democrat Mark Bingham of Alton met Obama and said that despite his inexperience, he could rank among presidents named Lincoln and Kennedy. "It's good to see politics going in another direction," Bingham told the senator.

Gov. John Lynch joked that the Rolling Stones were originally the headliners at the state party fundraiser where the $25 tickets quickly sold out. "But we canceled them when we realized Senator Obama would sell more tickets," Lynch said.

As he took the stage, supporters handed Obama a petition signed by 12,000 people across the country encouraging him to run, said Todd Webster, who started the RunObama.com Web site.

Obama recognized there has been "a little fuss" over his possible candidacy, but said he thinks the excitement reflects voters' desire for a new, positive direction in politics that is not about him as an individual.

"I am suspicious of hype," Obama told reporters. "The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife."

Obama's newness could be one of his biggest liabilities - he's served just two years in the Senate after seven years in the Illinois Legislature. But Obama tried to turn his inexperience into an asset compared with other candidates who have been governing for much longer, although he didn't mention any rivals by name.

He said he thought Americans would look past his name and his black skin and judge him on his merits once they got to know more about him.

Clinton, D-N.Y., has not yet begun campaigning in New Hampshire. But she brought one of the state's prominent Democrats - Terry Shumaker, who worked on both her husband's presidential campaigns - to her Washington home Sunday night for dinner. She also made several calls to other state activists this week to sound out her presidential prospects.

Several other potential candidates have been making trips to New Hampshire for the last year and a half. Among the most frequent visitors is Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who filled a small room at a Manchester conference center Friday night but wasn't near the draw as Obama on his first trip. Anticipating the inevitable comparison to their visits on the same weekend, Bayh's aides joked that 1,000 more people were in an overflow room.
Bayh said he wasn't intimidated by the Obama mania as he talked to voters one-on-one. "I'm doing the things that matter in New Hampshire," Bayh said.

Because of their pivotal role, New Hampshire voters are accustomed to individual attention from presidential candidates. Obama tried to accommodate them despite the large turnout, staying for over an hour after his speech ended to sign a book for every person who wanted one.

He also chartered an $11,000 flight to Chicago late Sunday night so he could greet attendees after his speech without having to worry about catching a plane.

--

Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy contributed to this story from New York.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/yb/ybopen.asp?section=ybaa&story_id=101185237&ID=blackenterprise
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Washington diary: The next president?
By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

One could be excused for thinking that a 45-year-old African-American with barely two years' experience in the US Senate and a name that evokes America's two most hated enemies wouldn't have an ice cream's chance in hell of winning the presidency.

But Barack Hussein Obama has proven once again that in American politics, truth is a lot stranger than fiction.

I went to the see the senator's maiden voyage to New Hampshire over the weekend, my overnight bag packed with caveats and my pen dipped in Beltway cynicism.

I came away thinking that Hillary Clinton has a huge problem on her hands.

Since New Hampshire is one of the first high-profile pit stops on the rocky road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the voters of the Granite State regard politics with the same degree of zeal, snobbery and discernment as wine buffs at a Pinot Noir tasting or poodle owners at the Crufts dog show.

They are quick to rumple their nose and curl their lip when dished up something that doesn't meet their expectations.

Money well spent

So it was nothing short of astonishing that 1,600 of them had paid $25 each on a beautiful Sunday morning to see Barack Obama at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester.

Isn't $25 how much you normally pay people to listen to a senator speak in public?

As far as I could gather from the rapturous applause and the post-mortem interviews, the harsh cognoscenti of the Granite State left the event feeling it was money well spent.

As John Distaso, the political editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader and the druid of primary politics, told me: "I have never seen anything like this... at such an early stage in the campaign."

Early is an understatement. It's more than a year before the primaries and almost two years until the presidential election.

As the governor of the state put it in his opening address: "We had booked the Rolling Stones until we realised that Barack Obama would sell more tickets!"

The junior senator from Illinois, as the cable news networks like to refer to him, lopes on stage with an elasticity that almost verges on a dance.

He deals with the hype graciously. "I am genuinely baffled," he told the adoring crowd, sounding genuine, "and so is my wife!"

There are lots of deferential references to his wife Michelle, who he met at Harvard Law School. It reminds me of the endearing way in which George used to talk about Laura.

Barack Obama also has a good line to fend off any questions about his weird name.

"When I first started to work in public life... people would ask: 'Hey brother, what's with your name? You called Alabama or Yo' Mama?'"

As for the unfortunate middle name, Hussein means "blessed" in Arabic and as the senator puts it: "The American people don't care about middle names."

Appealing picture

Assuming that the senator will become a candidate and stick around for a year or more, I am sure that his name will become campaign ad fodder.

But as we discovered in the mid-term elections, too much mud-slinging backfires and America is not cruising for a bruising but yearning for a healer.

And this is where the meat and potatoes of Senator Obama's speech comes in.

Ever since he wowed the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, he has been speaking about the need to overcome the bickering between Blue and Red, Democrat and Republican.

He paints a picture of America that is more complex, nuanced and appealing than the caricature that most partisan politicians and journalists like to present.

He knows all about complex. He is after all the son of a Kenyan economist who was "as black as pitch" and a woman from Kansas who is as "white as snow".

He was brought up in Hawaii and Indonesia and he became the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

He is religious without being born again. As he likes to point out the title of his best-selling book The Audacity of Hope - number two on Amazon - is plagiarised from a sermon given by his favourite Chicago preacher.

He looks slim and healthy and yet he enjoys the occasional cigarette.

Beyond race?

In short he defies the pigeonhole.

It also struck me that on Sunday his was virtually the only black face.

The fact that someone like me can attract a crowd like this shows that this country yearns for something new and different
Barack Obama
I know that New Hampshire is a predominantly white state, but Mr Obama's campaign has moved on from the raw passion of the civil rights movement.

He mentions Martin Luther King without reminding you of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.

Like Colin Powell, the senator from Illinois makes you forget he is any colour.

He is also clever enough not to sound condescending or to tie himself into the kind of mental pretzels that strangled John Kerry.

His inexperience in the Senate may turn out to be an asset and he has the same talent that JFK apparently had of appearing glamorous and humble at the same time.

As for the hype: "It flatters me," he told the crowd, "but it also alarms me... because it says more about America than it does about me.

"The fact that someone like me can attract a crowd like this shows that this country yearns for something new and different!"

His voice is neither shrill nor pompous.

Problem for Hillary

Yes, Hillary has the machine, the money, the pollsters and the brand recognition - but she also has the baggage.

She is the undeclared front-runner and according to history that is a dangerous position in the Democratic Party.

After all, her own husband finished third in the New Hampshire primaries before going all the way to the Oval Office.

The Senate has turned Hillary into a skilful deal-maker who rarely slips up.

But is that enough to fire up the imagination of an electorate yearning for a compelling story?

When pressed about an apparent admission in print that he had smoked marijuana, Barack Obama replied: "Yes, and I inhaled. That was the point."

Watch out, Hillary! And, I might add, watch out John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani!

Hillary's supporters are constantly coming up with reasons she can overcome her limitations. Barack's supporters wonder whether he has any.

Key questions

So, can he win? Can he raise the cash?

Can he survive the rough and tumble of the campaign and the tough questions?

Will the colour of his skin not count against him? Can be convincing about security in the middle of an ongoing war?

Can he survive the fickle adulation of the media?

If the answer to all the above is yes, Barack Hussein Obama will be the 44th president of the United States... as strange as that may sound.

Send us your comments in reaction to Matt Frei's Washington diary using the link below:

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6173373.stm

Published: 2006/12/13 11:49:30 GMT

© BBC MMVI
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Washington diary: Your comments

Send us your comments in reaction to Matt Frei's Washington diary.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=5002&&&edition=2&ttl=20061213183207

Published: Tuesday, 12 December, 2006, 22:06 GMT 22:06 UK
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

December 29, 2007
The Long Run

A Biracial Candidate Walks His Own Fine Line

By JANNY SCOTT

The 2006 Democratic primary campaign for the presidency of the Cook County Board of Commissioners was vintage Chicago politics.
The incumbent was an aging party loyalist, mayoral confederate and
institution in black Chicago. His opponent was younger and white, a
reform-minded independent Democrat who had helped Barack Obama in his Senate race two years earlier.
Both sides wanted the support of Mr. Obama, a vote magnet in
Chicago. The challenger, Forrest Claypool, 48, had the backing of the
major newspapers and a couple of liberal members of Congress. The
incumbent, John Stroger, 76, had the party organization, many of the
city’s blacks and Mr. Obama’s political benefactor, the State Senate
president, Emil Jones.
So Mr. Obama remained neutral. He was blasted in blogs and
newspapers for hedging rather than risk alienating people he needed,
though others said he had made the only shrewd choice.
“Those relationships are complex,” said Mr. Claypool, who lost the
primary race to Mr. Stroger (who never served because of illness) and
is now working on Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign. “No politician
takes important relationships for granted.”
Much of Mr. Obama’s success as a politician has come from walking a
fine line — as an independent Democrat and a progressive in a state
dominated by the party organization and the political machine, and as a
biracial American whose political ambitions require that he appeal to
whites while still satisfying the hopes and expectations of blacks.
Like others of his generation, he is a member of a new class of
black politicians. Too young to have experienced segregation, he has
thrived in white institutions. His style is more conciliatory than
confrontational, more technocrat than preacher. Compared with many
older politicians, he tends to speak about race indirectly or
implicitly, when he speaks about it at all.
After Hurricane Katrina,
he did not attribute the lumbering federal response to the race of most
of the storm’s victims. “The incompetence was color-blind,” he said,
adding that the real stumbling block was indifference to the problems
of the poor. After six black teenagers were charged with attempted
murder in the beating of a white schoolmate in the “Jena Six” case in
Louisiana, he said the criminal justice system needed fixing to ensure
equal justice “regardless of race, wealth or circumstances.”
And when Mr. Obama announced his candidacy in February, he chose the
steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., a place imbued
with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln.
He spoke of his work in “Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods” and of ending
poverty; race came up only glancingly, as in, “Beneath all the
differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people.”
But the postracial style has its pitfalls.
‘Acting Like He’s White’
Earlier this fall, the Rev. Jesse Jackson,
an Obama supporter who ran for president twice, was quoted by a
reporter as saying Mr. Obama “needs to stop acting like he’s white”
(words that Mr. Jackson has variously said that he would never say and
that were taken out of context).
He added, “If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena.”
More recently, Mr. Jackson accused the Democratic candidates except for John Edwards
of having “virtually ignored” the plight of blacks. (His son,
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., a national co-chairman of the Obama
campaign, fired back in an op-ed column in The Chicago Sun-Times under
the headline, “You’re wrong on Obama, Dad.”)
“A black candidate doesn’t want to look like he’s only a black candidate,” the Rev. Al Sharpton,
the civil rights activist, who ran for president in 2004, said in an
interview about Mr. Obama. “If he overidentifies with Sharpton, he
looks like he’s only a black candidate. A white candidate reaches out
to a Sharpton and looks like they have the ability to reach out. It
looks like they’re presidential. That’s the dichotomy.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Obama denied that he had spoken less
about race issues than other candidates. But he said he focused when
possible on “the universal issues that all Americans care about.” His
aim, he said, is “to build broader coalitions that can actually deliver
health care for all people or jobs that pay a living wage or all the
issues that face not only black Americans but Americans generally.”
He suggested that his critics were comparing him not with Mr. Edwards or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
but with Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton. “That comparison is one that
isn’t appropriate,” he said. “Because neither Reverend Jackson nor
Reverend Sharpton is running for president of the United States. They
are serving an important role as activists and catalysts but they’re
not trying to build a coalition to actually govern.”
Mr. Obama’s legislative record does not diverge sharply from that of
other black legislators, some who have studied it say. For example, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
which grades members of Congress on their support for its agenda, gave
Mr. Obama a 100 percent score. The difference between him and some
others lies more in life experience, approach to politics and style.
And while Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is entirely comfortable with
his identity — as he has said, proud to be an African-American but not
limited by that — he carries a peculiar burden as a presidential
candidate: whether or not he calibrates his words, blacks as well as
whites are likely to parse them for anything they might signal about
racial issues.
“There is a special expectation and opportunity that we have to talk about the ways race works in America,” said Gov. Deval Patrick, a friend of Mr. Obama and the first black to lead Massachusetts.
But, Mr. Patrick said, “sometimes I think advocates want one note
from us. I think our experience in our lives and in our politics has
been that there’s much more than the one note — and sometimes a
cacophony.”
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

There was a time when black politicians had little in common with
white politicians. They had been educated in segregated schools and
historically black colleges; many had entered politics through the
civil rights movement, social activism or the black church. Their
districts and constituents were overwhelmingly African-American. They
were “race men” who had built their careers advocating for blacks.
Winning a Mixed District
They tended to be more liberal and militant than the Democratic Party as a whole, said Michael C. Dawson, a University of Chicago
political scientist. They opposed rising military budgets and military
intervention abroad, favored economic redistribution and were willing
to consider such things as demands for reparation for slavery.
Hanes Walton Jr., a University of Michigan
political scientist, said, “Once you got African-American elected
officials in the 1960s and 1970s, there was huge demand from the black
community about getting things done. Some of these elected officials
came on with fairly rough edges because they were making consistent and
hard demands. In many ways, that couldn’t be escaped. These elected
officials knew that they were elected from the black community.”
Mr. Obama, by contrast, grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, far from
any center of black life. He graduated from a private prep school in
Honolulu, Columbia College and Harvard Law School. Though he has
belonged to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago since 1987,
he was not raised in the traditions of the black church, which
Ange-Marie Hancock, a Yale political scientist, says “nurtured
generations of black politicians” and “that almost exclusive emphasis
on race — and race in a black/white framework.”
Mr. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 — not from an
overwhelmingly black district like those that elected early black
legislators but from a racially and economically mixed neighborhood,
Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago. In a state where
Irish-American dynasties dominate Democratic Party politics, he sprang
up as an outsider — a former community organizer without party or
machine support.
Mr. Obama never fit any easily recognizable model of a black
politician during his seven years in Springfield. He was a progressive
Democrat who worked with Republicans; a black man whose weekly
poker-game partners were white; an independent Democrat whose mentor,
Mr. Jones, was one of the most powerful black politicians in the state
and supported by the Chicago machine.
In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama recalls sitting
with a white, liberal Democrat in the Senate and listening to a black,
inner-city legislator, whom he identified only as John Doe,
speechifying on how the elimination of a particular program was blatant
racism. The white colleague turned to Mr. Obama and said, “You know
what the problem is with John? Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel
more white.”
Mr. Obama finds a lesson in that moment: White guilt has exhausted
itself. Even fair-minded whites resist suggestions of racial
victimization. Proposals that benefit minorities alone cannot be a
basis for the broad coalitions needed to transform the country, he
concluded. Only “universal appeals” for approaches that help all
Americans, he wrote in his book, “schools that teach, jobs that pay,
health care for everyone who needs it” can do that, “even if such
strategies disproportionately help all Americans.”
Mr. Obama has never had difficulty appealing to whites. In his
ill-fated 1999 campaign against Representative Bobby L. Rush, a
four-term Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, Mr. Obama
won the white vote but lost the black vote in a district that was
overwhelmingly black. Abner J. Mikva, a former Illinois congressman and
longtime supporter, said, “It took him a while to realize that it’s a
vote that has to be courted.”
Hermene Hartman, the publisher of N’Digo, a weekly newspaper in
Chicago, recalls advising Mr. Obama to talk less about his experience
as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. “What I
was saying early on was, ‘Harvard Review will play at the University of
Chicago, it won’t play on 55th and King Drive,’” Ms. Hartman said.
Mr. Mikva says Mr. Obama learned to campaign in different ways
without changing the substance of what he was saying. He learned to use
rhythms, analogies, “quotes that resonate better.” Others say he simply
worked hard at becoming better known, consolidating his support among
black elected officials, black ministers, labor organizations and
community groups, skating nimbly among factions.
Straddling Interests
Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Jackson extends back at least to
the early 1990s. Mr. Jackson’s daughter, Santita, was a friend of Mr.
Obama’s wife, Michelle, and was a bridesmaid at their wedding. The
Congressional district of Representative Jackson included Mr. Obama’s
State Senate district; they have worked together on issues, endorsed
some of the same reform-minded candidates against the party slate and
sought each other’s advice.
At the same time, Mr. Obama has remained close to his longtime
mentor, Mr. Jones — an old antagonist of Representative Jackson, who
defeated him for Congress in 1995. Alan Gitelson, a political scientist
at Loyola University in Chicago, said, “The skill of Obama is that he’s
been able to straddle the two major factions among blacks in Illinois.”
Mr. Obama has also cultivated a working relationship with Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Mr. Daley, who backed an opponent of Mr. Obama in the 2004 Senate
primary, this year endorsed Mr. Obama for president — around the time
that Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Daley for re-election, annoying some
supporters and passing over two black candidates considered unlikely to
win.
“I can tell you, having worked for both of them, they are both
pragmatists who want to get things done,” said David Axelrod, Mr.
Obama’s chief strategist and a longtime consultant to Mr. Daley.
By the time Mr. Obama began running for the United States Senate,
he “didn’t have to run as a black candidate,” said Don Rose, a longtime
political consultant in Chicago. Illinois had already elected one black
senator, Carol Moseley Braun,
and Mr. Obama had nailed down overwhelming black support. According to
Mr. Axelrod, he ended up with 92 percent of the black vote in a
competitive field.
Yet race was a subtext of a television advertisement widely believed
to have helped Mr. Obama win, Mr. Rose believes. The advertisement
featured Sheila Simon, the daughter of former Senator Paul Simon, a
Democrat who was a revered figure in Illinois politics, lionized by
white progressives and admired by some conservatives. Mr. Simon, who
had worked with Mr. Obama on ethics reform, had intended to endorse him
but had died unexpectedly after heart surgery in 2003.
So Mr. Axelrod had asked Ms. Simon to make an advertisement about
the similarities between her father and Mr. Obama. He said the
commercial might help explain Mr. Obama’s unexpected success in white,
working class neighborhoods on Chicago’s Northwest Side, which had been
hostile to black candidates in the past. Mr. Rose believes that the
advertisement’s subtext, intentionally or not, was gender and race: “It
is saying, ‘People, I’m a white woman, and I’m not afraid of him.’”
Dining With Sharpton
In Washington, Mr. Obama made it clear almost immediately that his
career would not be defined by his race. One of the first acts of the
new Congress was to certify the results of the Electoral College. Some
members of the Congressional Black Caucus
moved to contest the certification of the Ohio votes. Mr. Obama did not
join them. In a hastily arranged maiden speech, he said he was
convinced that President Bush had won but he also urged Congress to
address the need for voting reform.
In his office, he hung paintings of Lincoln, Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom he calls his heroes.
In recent weeks, Mr. Obama has turned some of his attention to
courting black voters. Nine months into his campaign, he held his first
fund-raiser in Harlem, at the Apollo Theater, where he said, among other things, he was in the race because he was “tired of reading about Jena.” Then he went on tour with Oprah Winfrey, whom he had gotten to know when she interviewed him after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
Mr. Sharpton, who has yet to endorse anyone, says Mr. Obama began
his campaign as “the alternative to guys like me.” But in recent
months, Mr. Sharpton said, “he’s been calling us.”
Mr. Obama also arranged to dine with Mr. Sharpton, in the presence of a herd of reporters, before his appearance at the Apollo.
“A portion of black voters want Obama to give them some raw meat,” said Julian Bond,
chairman of the board of the N.A.A.C.P. “Because they want so badly to
have their concerns addressed and highlighted, and they expect it of
him because he’s black.”
_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

David McNew/Getty Images

Biography

Full Name: Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
Party: Democratic
Political Office: U.S. Senator from Illinois, elected 2004; member, Illinois State Senate 1997-2004
Business/Professional Experience: Attorney, law firm of Miner Barnhill & Galland (Chicago, IL), 1993-2004
Date of Birth: August 4, 1961
Place of Birth: Honolulu, Hawaii
Home: Chicago, Ill.
Education: B.A. Columbia University 1983; J.D. Harvard Law, 1991
Spouse: married Michelle Robinson, 1992
Children: daughter Malia, born 1999; daughter Natasha, born 2001
Religion: United Church of Christ
Home: Chicago, Ill.
Campaign Web Site: barackobama.com

Books

By Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream [2006]; Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance [1995]
About: Hopes and Dreams: The Story of Barack Obama, by Steve Dougherty [2007]

The Caucus: Posts on Barack Obama Information From Votesmart.org Barack Obama on YouTube | MySpace

Highlights From the Archives

If Elected...

Closing Income Gap Tops Obama’s Agenda for Economic Change

By DAVID LEONHARDT

Senator
Barack Obama said Friday that the top priority of the next president
should be to create a more lasting and equitable prosperity than
achieved by either President Bush or even Bill Clinton.February 2, 2008U.S.Series

Kennedy Chooses Obama, Spurning Plea by Clintons

By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s endorsement pits members of the nation’s most prominent Democratic families against each other. January 28, 2008U.S.News

If Elected ...

Obama Envisions New Iran Approach

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JEFF ZELENY

In
an interview, Senator Barack Obama said that forging a new relationship
with Iran would be part of his effort to stabilize Iraq.November 2, 2007U.S.Series

Obama Promises a Forceful Stand Against Clinton

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

Senator
Barack Obama said he would start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton more forcefully, in response to concerns about his lack of
assertiveness.October 28, 2007U.S.News

One Place Where Obama Goes Elbow to Elbow

By JODI KANTOR

Senator Barack Obama is a wily player of pickup basketball, a game with unspoken rules and lots of elbows.June 1, 2007U.S.News

A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith

By JODI KANTOR

Barack Obama’s campaign has put a strain on the close relationship he forged over 20 years with his pastor.April 30, 2007U.S.News

2 Years After Big Speech, a Lower Key for Obama

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

The senator is not presenting himself, stylistically at least, the way he did when he gripped Democrats in 2004.April 8, 2007U.S.News

Charisma and a Search for Self in Obama’s Hawaii Childhood

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

The presidential candidate’s racial consciousness and political curiosity appear to have begun far from Illinois.March 17, 2007U.S.News

In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice

By JODI KANTOR

Barack Obama arrived at Harvard as an unknown; by the time he left, he had become a political sensation.January 28, 2007U.S.News

National Desk
As Quickly as Overnight, a Democratic Star Is Born

By MONICA DAVEY

In his quest for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, Barack Obama was, by many measures, supposed to lose. March 18, 2004U.S.News

ARTICLES ABOUT BARACK OBAMA

Newest First
| Oldest FirstPage: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next >>

Support Divided, Democrats Trade Victories

By PATRICK HEALY

Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Rodham Clinton could secure an edge to the Democratic nomination.February 6, 2008

Area Voters Savor Rare Feeling: A Suspenseful Primary

By ALAN FEUER

Breaking free of their traditional political obscurity, voters from around the New York region turned out to vote.February 6, 2008

Support Divided, Top Democrats Trade Victories

By PATRICK HEALY

Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Rodham Clinton could secure an edge to the Democratic nomination.February 6, 2008

_________________
Le Mensonge peut courir un an, la vérité le rattrape en un jour, dit le sage Haoussa
Ma devise:
se SURPASSER ,ne JAMAIS ABDIQUER,TOUJOURS RESTER HUMBLE

Northeast Delivers 2 Big Prizes for Clinton

By MICHAEL POWELL

Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton scored twin victories in the Democratic
primaries in her home state of New York and in New Jersey. In
Connecticut, Senator Barack Obama won by a small margin.February 6, 2008

Two Parties, Two Distinct Paths to the Nomination

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

The Democrats are facing a long nomination battle; Republicans are closer to rallying around a nominee.February 6, 2008

A Sizzle Among the Young (at Least Some)

By JODI KANTOR

Barack
Obama is the Pied Piper of the race, walking off with more young voters
than any other recent presidential candidate.February 6, 2008

Obama and Clinton Settle In for the Long Run

By JOHN M. BRODER

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama began fortifying for a drawn-out and expensive campaign.February 6, 2008

Darkness and Light

By MAUREEN DOWD

If
Barack Obama wants to be president, he’ll have to slay the dragon. And
his dragon is the Clinton attack machine.February 6, 2008

Rival Democrats Clutch Their State Prizes, and Look to Collect a Few More

By JEFF ZELENY and JULIE BOSMAN

Coast-to-coast
contests ended with one definitive conclusion for Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Barack Obama: The show will go on.February 6, 2008

Obama Takes Connecticut, Helped by Lamont Voters

By DAVID W. CHEN

It
was the young, the rich and voters who called Iraq the top issue who
helped provide the margin of victory for Senator Barack Obama in
Connecticut.February 6, 2008

Divided They Run

Any
candidate — and any party — who presumes to unite this country, must
first unite their own. That is how democracy is supposed to work.February 6, 2008

Winds of Change

By BOB HERBERT

The
fight for the nomination, one of the best political dramas in decades,
has always resembled a contest between realists and dreamers.February 5, 2008

McCain Shops for Votes With Stop at Grand Central

By ERIC KONIGSBERG

Senator
John McCain of Arizona stopped by Vanderbilt Hall (inside the terminal,
near the 42nd Street taxi line) for a hastily scheduled campaign
appearance.February 5, 2008

Daschle Uses Senate Ties to Blaze Path for Obama

By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

Tom
Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, is working for Barack Obama
and trying to steer the party away from another Clinton presidency.February 5, 2008

Candidates Blitz States as Big Day Looms

By MICHAEL COOPER

Candidates made their final pushes with rallies and commercials in states from coast to coast.February 5, 2008

As 24 States Vote, a Grab for Delegates, and an Edge

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

A
total of 3,156 delegates will be allocated under arcane rules on what
could be the most significant day yet in the 2008 campaign.February 5, 2008

Connecticut Sees Surge of Voters for Primary

By THOMAS KAPLAN

In
this state renowned for its independent voters, about 17,000 people
changed their registration to join a party over the past three months.February 5, 2008

Obama Receives Cheers in the Meadowlands

By JONATHAN MILLER

Despite
a relatively low turnout, enthusiasm among supporters for Barack Obama
was bolstered by a surprise appearance by Robert De Niro at a campaign
event in New Jersey.February 5, 2008

Facing Far Bigger Crowds, Obama Strikes a New Note

By JEFF ZELENY

The
cerebral, soft-spoken speeches that sustained Barack Obama for months
have given way to words of motivation meant to energize his crowds.February 5, 2008