Obama the Dream

Despite early indications that black support was iffy for Obama, the numbers are climbing for him. Will it be enough? WaPo, via RCP. Most of the self-anointed (and aging) black liberal leadership are in the Clintons' corner. There's been some backlash at home in Chicago, and black attendance was light in Springfield. We'll have to see how it plays out, but I don't imagine Hillary and Bill will just sit by. Maybe they will trot out Al Sharpton to run again---he likes the expense-account trappings of a Presidential campaign.

Up until now Obama's base has been among the MSM and the liberal white elite---you know, journalists and English teachers still working on the meaning of their great American novel, stymied because they don't really believe in the American Dream. Obama is their Dream Candidate.

We'll see how he holds up over the next year. But even if he wins the Dem nomination, short of Dennis Kucinich Obama is the most liberal candidate running, which will not serve him well in the general election. Dream on.

Previous posts: Political Bedfellows, What Then, Barack?

UPDATE: James Taranto, Best of the Web:

In 1993 the Washington Post infamously referred to evangelical Christians as "poor, uneducated and easy to command." The amount of attention the press pays to buffoonish "leaders" like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson suggests this stereotype is widespread. Journalists are unlikely to describe black Americans as "poor, uneducated and easy to command." But the deference that they gives to buffoonish "leaders" like Jackson and Sharpton leads us to suspect that they may harbor such stereotypes.

If Giuliani and Obama win their parties' nominations, it would represent a diminution of the power, respectively, of evangelical and black "leaders." It would show that evangelical and black voters are more sophisticated than the press has heretofore recognized, and thereby strike a blow against prejudice.

UPDATE: At the RCP Blog, Obama on the war in 2002, the Jeff Berkowitz interview---"Give Inspections A Chance". Ah yes, a whole host of critical issues to consider. (After all, he did "major in international relations", which he cited as his foreign policy experience.) But never to act on. What then Barack?

If, God help us he ever got elected, I fully expect a Carteresque "Crisis of Confidence" speech at a critical moment, blaming someone else for his indecision and and incompetence. I'd trust Hillary over Obama on foreign policy. Shudder.