Cronies and the Imperial Mayor

Here's the problem with Sarah Palin. It's not her politics, although those are wrong. It's not her lack of meaningful experience, although it is jaw-dropping how unready she is. The greatest difficulty, for me, is that she practices the same politics of cronyism and corruption and bait and switch and division and deception that George Bush has practiced for eight years. When she first ran to become mayor of Wasilla, she sought to paint her opponent as a poor candidate, because he wasn't a born again Christian, and put her opposition to abortion and support for gun rights at the center of the campaign. Keep in mind, this was for a job where those issues were irrelevant to the responsibilities of the office. She brought them up to divide people and distract them.

When the town librarian wouldn't take some books off the shelf because Palin objected to them, she fired her (although public outrage led her to be rehired). She also fired the town's police chief because he had been a loyal supporter of the previous mayor. These loyalty tests, and the tendency to inject politics into aspects of governmental affairs that had never previously been politicized, echo the last eight years in Washington.

X's 4th of July

One of my very favorite songs of all time is X's 4th of July from their great album See How We Are. One truth about me that only my wife knows--certain songs make me tear up, when I hear them or even just when I talk about them. And they aren't sweet, achy love songs. Songs grab me when someone gets something so right that it overwhelms me. X's 4th of July is like that. Every time I hear it--and I play it all the time (and EVERY independence day)--I get weepy.

The song is about redemption. At a more intimate level it is about the redemption of a relationship that has fallen into disrepair and hopelessness. It is clear that the lovers in the song still love each other, whatever that means, and I think it means something different for each couple. But life and unspoken betrayals or disappointments have left the couple disconsolate. They have lost that sense of intimacy, the shared space, that couples have. But the fourth of July provides, unexpectedly, an opportunity for reconnection. It offers a chance to step outside of their lives, in part because it is a holiday and the swift current of their other obligations has receded for the moment, but also because the fourth of July, in the characters' lives, as in so many other lives, carries deep-rooted memories of the joy of a summer day, and the wide-openness that a seemingly endless summer day appears to promise. The reconnection between the couple is voiced simply:

What ever happened I
apologize
so dry your tears and baby
walk outside, it's the Fourth of July.

Simple words, but when John Doe sings them, he invests an emotional uplift that is unmistakable. This is an opportunity for the couple to redeem their love and restore their relationship.

But the song is also about the redemption of America. And, like the relationship at the center of the song's tale, it's clear that, from Dave Alvin's view, America is a fucking mess. We have betrayed promises we have made one another. We are separated by a seemingly uncrossable distance. We are profoundly hopeless, and can't envision an escape. But the song locates redemption and rehabilitation in an inspired place: the children of immigrants. It is the celebration of mexican-american kids, shooting off fireworks on the sidewalk outside the narrator's apartment building "on the lost side of town" that reminds us that it is the fourth of July. Their exuberance and joy, their celebration of independence day, opens a window for the couple to find their redemptive moment. And these kids, too, represent, from the song's perspective, the source of our own collective redemption. By keeping our promises to them, by finding our way to walk alongside them, by drawing on their still vibrant, untrampled hopefulness, we can start again. Just as the couple will. And in this new beginning, we can find our chance to restore what we have lost.

As I listened to the song this independence day, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were at a crossroads in our collective tale, that Obama's candidacy is the sound of fireworks out on the sidewalk, reminding us of our promises, our threadbare and uncertain affection for one another, our hope for better things. Let's reconcile. Let's restore what has been lost.

What unites us

I find it extraordinary that 2008 will be the year that an African American became President and gay marriage was given legal status. The scenes from California are so encouraging and, in my mind, link with the Obama candidacy. In Obama's campaign we find the claim that we are all united in wanting the same things--a good education for our children, fair pay, forward-looking public policy, and a government that is responsive and focused on the needs of the wide majority, not the privileged and the wealthy. And in the celebration of gay marriage we find something similar--a recognition that we all deserve the opportunity to establish a home with the person we love, and to raise children, if we choose to, and to have our union be part of the public record so we can count on the protections that the law promises to married couples.

Update (6/19): My friend over at St. Scobie's offered a great perspective on gay marriage. She points out that her marriage (and my marriage, and in fact all marriages) are stronger when we permit gays to marry because we eliminate the rottenness at the foundation of the institution. At one time it was illegal in much of America for whites and African-Americans to marry. Then Loving v. Virginia swept away anti-miscegenation laws, stating:

Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

This seems so clear to us now, and, one day, so too will the idea that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry. In the Loving decision, the Supreme Court said anti-miscegenation laws were "subversive to the principle of equality," and so too are laws or efforts to erect laws that deny marriage to same-sex couples. In short, viewed through Scobie's eyes, marriage remains a subversive institution, blind to our commitment to equality, as long as gays are denied the right to marry. Thanks to events in California, her marriage, and my marriage, and the institution of marriage is stronger because it is freed from this blind disregard for a portion of our population.

By the way, if you don't read St. Scobie's on a regular basis, you should. She is funny and smart and all over the place.

An Open Letter to Jewish Voters Who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November

I’ve heard a lot of talk about Jews who plan to vote for John McCain in November because they: a) believe he will be a stronger supporter of Israel; b) are concerned that Obama will be overly sympathetic to Islamic and Arab states in the Middle East, which is essentially the flip side of the preceding; c) hear that Israelis don’t like or trust Obama; d) aren’t certain Obama has the experience to do the job; e) think Obama has “Muslim blood” and was educated at a madrassa; f) are certain, in any event, that Obama has been influenced by the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan.

I don’t want to unpack all of these wildly off the mark beliefs and take them on one by one. Although, if you insist that I have to, call me up and I’ll do just that. You have to promise to be civil, though, and not rant, and bring evidence to support your claims.

My approach, for the moment, in the space I have available, will be to draw your attention to the forms of rhetoric and the tools of persuasion that the Republicans (and other shadowy forces of division) are using to shape your opinions. Additionally, I want to remind you of some history and some reasons to be in solidarity with Obama and his political movement.

First of all, don’t you recognize when Republicans and conservative commentators and unidentified bloviators use Fox News and blog postings and e-mails from unnamed “friends of friends” to position the claim that Obama might not have been born in the U.S. (and that his birth certificate has been faked), or that his original faith may have been Islam (and has left a lasting disfiguring impression on him), or that he took his oath of office on the Koran, not the Bible (and prioritizes his faith to Islam above his role as an elected official), that this is exactly the type of scurrilous and hateful rhetoric that was once circulated about Jews. The methods have changed—we have twenty-four hour cable news and the web and e-mail, while Jews were targeted in pamphlets and handbills and by word of mouth. But the objective and the methods are the same—to imply, by suggestion and misrepresentation and innuendo and outright fabrication, that Obama isn’t entirely trustworthy, that he is impure, and that he is part of some conspiracy to dominate the world. Why allow yourself to be persuaded by a campaign of lies that resembles in so many ways the type of hateful crusade that was carried out (in fact, continues to be carried out) against Jews? Shouldn’t we, as targets of this sort of innuendo and hatred, have a higher obligation to demand evidence, to examine that evidence, to push back? When you swallow these claims without requiring evidence and without demanding accountability, you are doing so not because the claims are persuasive, but because you are hoping for a reason to discredit Obama. It is convenient for you to believe this campaign of lies. Out of convenience—because you don’t want to confront your own racism, perhaps—you are countenancing (and forwarding!) smears and distortions and inflammatory falsehoods.

Second, why can’t you see that you should be shaking with rage when someone makes the claim that Obama, whatever faith he practices, or despite the things he claims, and the evidence of his life and the choices he makes, is Muslim because it is in his blood. As a Jew who bends toward the Reform end of the spectrum, I believe we are Jews because of the choice we make to be Jewish. There is a long history of assessing membership in the Jewish community through matrilineal descent. If you require me to have a Jewish mother to be Jewish, then I’m not a Jew. I think I am, because I have been converted, and have committed to raise my children in a Jewish home, and we maintain a kosher kitchen, and I embrace the moral requirements of Judaism—in Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel's words, "justice, truth, and peace" (and, I would add, benevolence and charity). Let’s set aside our intramural debate about what makes a Jew a Jew. Instead, let’s acknowledge something indisputable. At the center of this attack on Obama is the idea that he is marked—tainted—by his father’s faith. And, these attackers imply, there is something wrong with that faith. Obama cannot be imagined to be, as a result, trusted to be loyal to the United States; he isn’t truly one of us. This combines a number of ideas that have always been just behind the scenes (and, often, clearly visible) in the attacks and campaigns targeting Jews throughout history. Jews were killed or driven out in pogroms dating back centuries because it was believed that Jews weren’t legitimately members of the communities within which they lived. And the Nazis targeted Jews, even those who were distant from the practice of their rituals and faith, and were by every measurable indication assimilated into the national and cultural life of their homeland, because it was imagined that their Jewish heritage contaminated even these Jews. Edith Stein, who was born a Jew but converted to Catholicism and became a nun, was killed by the Nazis despite her conversion and her fervent practice of her Catholic faith because she was born a Jew. It was, in other words, in her blood.

Given this history, how can you not challenge and repudiate emails that claim that Obama’s heritage makes him an unacceptable candidate. At the core of Jewish life is the idea that Jews are a chosen people not because we are beloved by God, but because our worldview, our belief system, is worthy of emulation. The central feature of that worldview is a commitment to doing good works, to healing the world. This translates, very easily, into a fundamental truth that shapes my (and many Jews’) moral vision: We should be measured by the actions we take, by our commitment to be fair and generous and charitable. It isn’t our blood—an unbroken line of inheritance that connects us with Abraham—that makes us special, but our choices and conduct. I challenge you to employ the same standard: If you want to evaluate Obama’s candidacy, consider his conduct and his actions.

Now some of you might say: that’s what we’re doing. And Obama’s conduct falls short of what we would demand from a presidential candidate. He sat for twenty years, you say, as others have, in a church where hate was preached. Let me agree with you: I wish Obama hadn’t. But religion is, too often, contaminated by hateful ideas. Millions of Americans attend evangelical churches that teach the idea that some people are saved and others are damned, and the damned will suffer, and deserve to suffer. And millions of Americans attend churches where homosexuals and unwed mothers and women who chose abortion are denounced and condemned. And the Republican party has committed itself, has built its electoral strategy on winning over these voters and the party’s candidates seek out endorsements from ministers who lead these flocks, as a way of securing their votes. In short, let’s look forward to a day when religion is removed from our politics, but until that day, let’s not pretend that Obama’s minister preached anything worse than that preached by religious leaders, like John Hagee, affiliated with McCain. On the question that it is hard to accept that Obama sat there for twenty years, I think it is easy to argue, and can be confirmed with evidence, that many Americans sit through sermons they disagree with, and swallow claims they are uncomfortable with, and turn their heads and ignore doctrine they can’t accept. They don’t do this because they are weak, but because their church is charitable at the same time it is narrow-minded. So many churches, like Trinity United Church, do good work—they help and feed the poor, and provide aid to those who are suffering from AIDs, they assist addicts and alcoholics and help them toward recovery, and they shelter battered women. People judge their church and their church leaders on their conduct, not their doctrine, and they see work being done in the community that is not being done by the state or any other official actor. And they know their co-worshippers, and know that many of them are good people, and their membership in the church is understood as a way of connecting with these friends and peers. Obama is probably not much different than these people. But this is such a tiny part of his overall life, and shouldn’t we take into account the totality of his life and contribution?

And on that measure, how can there be a contest between Barack Obama and John McCain? When I converted to Judaism, the most appealing idea in Jewish life was this: we can heal the world by performing acts of charity and justice. We are active agents in making the world a better place. It isn’t through prayer, or by divine intervention, or through the delivery of a savior that our world will be healed, it is through our efforts and by our example. This, too, is inescapably part of Obama’s message. Want to read something that will reawaken your commitment to social justice? Read Obama’s speech on urban poverty, given last year in Washington, D.C. Maybe you have come to distrust government solutions to poverty and unemployment, and you dispute Obama’s declaration that government must play a role in any serious effort to eradicate poverty. That’s fine—although I believe you are wrong to think the market or faith-based organizations alone can do it. Still, let’s fight that out, joined in a common belief that poverty and suffering and hopelessness are unacceptable to us as Jews and as Americans. Let’s agree that our candidates should be compassionate and engaged in the work of erasing poverty and reducing suffering. And hasn’t Obama been engaged in exactly that work for his entire adult life, first as a community organizer, then as a politician? Visit McCain’s website—he doesn’t discuss poverty directly anywhere on his site. His solution for America’s ills is a “Pro Growth, Pro-Jobs Tax Agenda.” That, it seems to me, at best, is arms-length compassion. As Jews, shouldn’t we demand more from a candidate?

Finally, in my preceding comments I urged you, on the basis of our history, to be more demanding, to reject baseless, unsupported claims designed to amplify hatred and distrust and to incite, not inform. In the history of the Jews we find evidence that bias and prejudice is destructive. It is this experience—of enslavement and discrimination and marginalization—that has been part of the history of solidarity between Jews and African-Americans. Jews and African Americans struggled side by side, and died together, to fight for civil rights. Solidarity with Obama makes sense in part because of this shared history of suffering, but also because any struggle of this type, to champion social justice, to elevate the downtrodden, to heal, is our struggle. It is what makes us Jews. These concerns are the core elements of our moral vision as Jews. While I might urge you to support Obama because his candidacy represents an achievement in the struggle for civil rights, I would argue more forcefully that you should stand with him because his political and moral message is in tune with our collective hopes for the world. This is true especially in comparison to McCain’s views, which are loathsome to most Jews. McCain continues the long Republican commitment to narrow conservative principles and the perpetuation of the advantages of wealth and privilege. And, at least as far as his campaign has provided us a glimpse into his governing style and decision-making, McCain, too, shares the Bush administration’s disinterest in inquiry and disdain for science and evidence-based claims and dismissiveness toward engagement and dialogue. We are, in our study of Torah and our Talmudic tradition, a scholarly community. The Jewish rabbinical tradition rests on the idea that truth comes from reasoned inquiry, careful (although admittedly creative) use of evidence, and dialogue and disputation. In all of these areas—in his embrace of tolerance and accommodation, in his commitment to social justice, in his openness to debate and dialogue—Obama, not McCain, is the closest thing Jews could find to a kindred spirit.

Hillary in the rearview mirror

I was reflecting on where Obama goes next, and my thoughts led me back to an earlier comment I made on my blog, about Obama’s commitment to big changes—paradigm shifts—not incremental changes. At the time, a friend of mine believed Obama was looking for incremental change, and I argued that incrementalism characterized Hillary's approach, not Obama's. As a trench-warfare-ist, she believes you fight for every little piece of ground. Gains are small, but incremental. Over time, (if you have time) you can assemble some meaningful and commendable successes.

On a blog by a guy named Andrew Sprung, I found some support for my view, and a link to some comments made by Obama in a January debate (which I had missed).

Barack Obama may have hit the gamer in the nomination battle in last night's ABC debate. Hillary was working all night to make the case that she was the real "change" agent because she has gotten change done in the past. By contrast, she suggested that Obama's promise of change is mainly talk. When she cited Bill Clinton's balancing the budget as a major accomplishment of 'change', Obama delivered this multi-tiered response:

Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes.

I actually give Bill Clinton enormous credit for having balanced those budgets during those years. It did take political courage for him to do that. But we never built the majority and coalesced the American people around being able to get the other stuff done.

And, you know, so the truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

As with many of Obama's best formulations, this seemed simultaneously to rise to the moment and be the fruit of long reflection. He exactly captured the strength and the weakness of the Clinton presidency in an assessment that is generous, fair, but dead-on accurate as a critique. Bill Clinton outmaneuvered the Republicans year after year on budget essentials but he never built the coalition (generous of Obama to say "we never built...) to reform health care, or revamp energy policy, or build any other major policy bridge to the 21st century. Hillary would say that's because the vast right-wing conspiracy sabotaged them at every turn. But Bill kept handing them swords to gore him, so he never built the trust that underlies a mandate. So Obama manages to bury Clinton and to praise him. "I give him enormous credit" but....

On top of this, Obama has here the perfect response to the "he's just talk" line of attack. Politics is almost literally all talk. You've got to be good in the cloak room, at the negotiating table, on the debate floor. What gives a politician the ultimate strength to push through change, though, is to convince the mass of voters to support his or her effort for something major like health care reform. "Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens." That says it all. That's a real political philosophy at its deepest.

Also, note the organic riff on "the fierce urgency of now": But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. Obama's slogans are the fruit of long reflection. They don't become fixed like a smile for the camera; they weave themselves into his language and ripen over time. He manages to shake off that broken record effect that encrusts almost every campaign.

This hits the nail on the head. When it comes time to seek reelection, the incrementalist is handicapped because his/her supporters are left disappointed by the modest improvements achieved by the incumbent. They wanted more, even if those desires weren’t fully expressed (or even fully perceived). The opposition is poised to rally their supporters by exaggerating the “destructiveness” and “presumption” of these modest changes, while championing the promise to roll them back. What we need right now are huge shifts—reengireeing federal policy to make the education of our children a national concern, not a local concern; reasserting the moral and political legitimacy of federal regulatory power, so we can, for example, introduce big changes in auto emission standards and fuel efficiency standards; enlarging the scope of that regulatory power so we can, for example, hold corporations responsible for the consequences of their bottom-line driven or shareholder-return driven decisions when those decision have demonstrably negative consequences for the larger public. All of these bold policy directions have historical precedents. Didn’t we desegregate schools in the south by overturning the presumption of local authority over education? Haven’t we made all kinds of products safer, and workplaces and work practices safer through regulation? Isn’t Superfund an example of the federal government trying to hold companies responsible for the harm they do? And Obama is right: if you rally support for big changes, and accomplish those big changes, you reposition the political fight. When the incumbent has the public on his side, because they have been recruited as active agents and catalysts for the change, the shift in policy becomes their change—and a meaningful one at that, not a timid small step toward change—and they’ll fight the opposition to defend it.

Another great piece you have to read can be found on The Huffington Post. Sam Stein provides some great analysis on why the Obama campaign is smarter than the Clinton campaign (as if evidence was required) and why Obama and Howard Dean are better stewards of the party than Terry McAuliffe. The central focus of the analysis is the "50 state strategy." Obama and the DNC plan to run operations in every state this fall, which should do three things: 1) Force the Republicans to spend money where they didn't expect to; 2) put Obama in play in states no one ever thought were competitive; and 3) help down-ticket democrats running for the Senate, House seats, and state and local offices. The Clinton campaign was organized to do one thing: put Hillary in the White House. There was no thought about the rest of the party. Clinton apostles like the horrible Debbie Wasserman Schultz still don't get it, refusing to campaign for Democrats running in opposition to Republicans with whom she has a cozy and mutually advantageous relationship. Someone from the party needs to grab Wasserman Schultz and say: Hillary lost, and the era of self-interested Democrats is over.

Is this all they've got?

Largely spurred on by Hillary's "the sky is falling" panic over Obama's supposed non-electability, the media has been spinning a story about what a rough time Obama is going to have in November against McCain. The electoral map is all wrong for Obama, the pundits say. He can't win white votes, they add, picking up on Hillary's hateful, wrong-headed and dismissive claim. I have friends, too, who are all shaky and frightened. They say things like: "Oh man, the Republicans are going to 'swift-boat' Obama," and "The media looooves McCain."

Looking at recent Democratic wins in congressional contests to fill empty Republican seats, and the nonsense the Republican candidates threw up on the airwaves, I've become pretty confident that November will not only promise a comfortable Obama win, but also Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House.

In the last day or two, we've seen the Republicans use the term "tar baby," in a party-wide memo when discussing Obama's efforts to woo Hispanic voters. As in the past, some Republicans have back-pedalled to explain that, in the South, where the talking-points memo's author, Representative Tom Davis, is from, the term tar-baby refers to a "sticky situation." Although it is hard to believe, this is the third time in the recent past when a Republican has had to apologize for using the term tar baby. So here's my point: even if Davis (and Mitt Romney and Tony Snow before him) is just a moron who doesn't get that African Americans find the term offensive, the use of it in a section aimed at laying out a strategy for reaching out to an ethnic group--in this case Hispanics--suggests the overall cluelessness of party leaders. I'm surprised Davis didn't refer to Hispanics as "bean-eaters."

We've also seen George Bush, Joe Lieberman, and McCain all suggest that Obama will sell us out to the Nazis, er, they mean, the terrorists. The goal here, clearly, is to position in the minds of Jewish voters the idea that Obama will collaborate in a new Holocaust, foolishly sitting down with Ahmadinejad and the genocidal maniacs in Hamas and Hezbollah to negotiate away Jewish lives and our national security. But the facts of Bush's wrong-headed foreign policy can't be escaped--he has made Iran more powerful because of his blundering about in Iraq and he has steadfastly refused to help solve Israel's security problems. That's the sticky truth of things, and the Republicans will have a hard time rewriting that narrative.

Now the Tennessee Republican party is going after Michelle Obama, reminding Tennesseans that she found in her husband's candidacy a reason, for the first time in her adult life, to be really proud of America. This, I guess, will be joined to an effort, at some point, to remind us all what a crazy out-of-his-mind white-person-hater Jeremiah Wright is. These initiatives will be directed toward convincing Americans that Obama is a hate-filled black radical, contemptuous of all the good things America has done for African Americans.

But look at how lame this all is. Does any of this really frighten you? Now if Tom Davis shows up waving pictures of Obama with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, then I'll start worrying.

Hillary and "white Americans"

Hillary Clinton gave an interview to USA Today which is published today. In it she says: "Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again." It seems like she is equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." I don't think that Hillary believes that blacks aren't hard working. I don't think she intends to communicate to racist supporters (or would be supporters) that she shares their view that African Americans are lazy. I think she is tired and in this case, actually, misspoke. But as in an earlier entry I made, I believe this comment is an example of how insensitive the Clinton campaign is to how their language--and blunders--resonate in the black community. If Hillary got it, she would have already issued an apology.

In any event, whatever she meant, it seems like Obama doesn't measure up any worse among white voters than John Kerry did in 2004. The Republican Party has made a practice of seeking white votes with divisive politics (and by positioning itself as the party that parties for the wealthy). So it is not a surprise that the Republican candidate can be expected to grab up a lot of white votes. In the end, with some distance between the Jeremiah Wright story cycle and the general election, Obama might be imagined to do better than Kerry among whites, given the overwhelming rejection of Bush (and, by party and policy affiliations, McCain) by white Americans, black Americans, and Americans of every color. And as the campaign continues, with the promise of something new and more hopeful, and a real opportunity to move forward toward an America where parents, both white and black, can guarantee their children a better life, through improved schools and an economy that spawns innovation and produces jobs, Obama can siphon away white votes that McCain assumes he has locked up. Obama will drink the Republican Party's milkshake in November.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not giddy and delusional. I know that there is a lot of racism out there, and there are millions of racist Americans who don't like to think of themselves as racists, but, nevertheless, will never, ever vote for Obama because he is black. And these voters will grasp at any defect of Obama's, or any slip, or any story however improbable and untrue, and hold it up as evidence that Obama can't be trusted and doesn't deserve their vote. But these will only be ad hoc justifications, ways to write off Obama without acknowledging, to themselves or to the wider world, that they are twisted by bigotry. Still, Obama's message will reach enough voters who will stare down their racial biases and vote for him if only because their love for their children will liberate them, if only for a few moments alone in a voting booth, from a lifetime of prejudice. And this is the important thing to recall: Obama's candidacy (and his eventual election) doesn't signify that we have reached the promised land, and have left our hatreds and intolerances and prejudices behind, instead, it is merely the next step along a long path.