Prescience: The South Carolina Effect

From the Birmingham News: Black Voters Drifting from Clinton to Obama.

Also, watch this trend.

UPDATE: So you say the national polls aren't really interesting because this is a state-by-state race. Please ponder this shiny new poll from California, closing that gap. This one goes out to the pessimist.

(This is my favorite sport, if any of the other contributors to this blog want to write about theology or human interests, do please interrupt me. I will return to the human race on November 6 or 7.)

Endorsements and Alabama Sea-Changes

Rocket City USA falls into the Obama win column.

Cullman County elects James Fields to the Alabama State Legislature. Cullman County is 96% white and once was the national headquarters for the Klan. Mr. James is from Colony, a black community established during Reconstruction as a rural ghetto. Mr. James is the first Black candidate to win his party's nomination for a state office and the first Black candidate to win a seat in Cullman. He has worked as a high-level administrator and investigator in state government and as a county commissioner. He won by almost 60% of the vote.

I have deep roots in Cullman County through my maternal grandmother, and my parents actually left the town and incurred a significant financial loss and displacement for a year or two because they could not abide racist attitudes in their intimate, non-familial community. I was very proud of my parents then, and I am very proud of Cullman County today, transcending racial identity and a harsh history to elect a talented, qualified candidate with exceptional experience in state and county administration.

Signals

Today, the governor of Kansas, the honorable Kathleen Sebelius, endorsed Barack Obama for President. Sebelius is a Democratic governor in a Red State, a Super-Tuesday state.

Last night, Governor Sebelius gave the Democratic Response to the President's last State of the Union address.

Not being in the front office of the Party, I am not sure how the Party picks those who give the Democratic response to the State of the Union. I imagine, however, that Howard Dean or someone pondered the political implications of that prime-time gig, in a hotly contested election, with a floundering GOP incumbent, a Democratic Congress and the winds at the party's back, especially if McCain, disdained by much of his party, or Romney are the opponents. I imagine that someone somewhere wondered just who and how to maximize the political effect of the speech, its content and the politician to deliver it.

Someone, somewhere invited a low-profile governor of a midwestern state with a small population, few delegates and very little name recognition to step into the prime time.

Today, that same governor endorses Obama in her home state. Her forthcoming endorsement was not a mystery, and I reckon the timing is not a coincidence.

Might HRC be feeling a little isolated?

Might the party leadership be betting on a new inevitable candidate?

Might we get a woman in the West Wing after all? (Apparently, I'm just not in the loop, and maybe she's not so low-profile.)

Might endorsements and party signals start to reshuffle the superdelegate commitments?

Landslide Understories

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union and still flies the Confederate Battle Flag on the statehouse grounds. South Carolina is Southern. South Carolina is Christian, conservative and still majority white. South Carolina was a bastion for the GOP and the Right.

Today, South Carolina cast its lot with a Black candidate for President.

Tonight, I’m awfully proud of the South.

Some opponents and cynics still will say, “Well, half of the Democrats were Black people, so he was bound to win.”

Here are the headlines:

Obama won by almost 30%, receiving about 50% of the vote from the Democratic primary.

Obama won 80% of the Black vote.

Here are the rich, deep, true, exhilarating notes for the night:

Obama won 55% of voters aged 45-59, HRC’s baliwick.

Now, watch this: With 99% reporting, 545,940 people in South Carolina voted in the Democratic primary, and half of them voted for Obama.

With 100% reporting last week, approximately 445,000 people in South Carolina voted in the Republican primary, handing John McCain a victory with 33%, a 3% margin of victory.

Did I mention this was in South Carolina?

In open primaries, more South Carolinians voted for Barack Obama than McCain and Huckabee combined, and they waited a week to do it.

History is afoot. Oh, Lord, do not pass us by.

Obama's Religion

If you still have questions about Obama's faith, may I suggest this interview with beliefnet.com? It's illuminating.

Throwing Elbows

This is worth a read and digestion.

(This, by the way, is the 200th post at this little blog. If we ever get 200 readers, I'll let you know.)

Daddyhood

Dear Lord, may she always fly and laugh in a blue sky, and may I always catch her on the way down.



May she always swing higher and higher, and may I always get to stand behind her.



Amen.

(Much love and thanks to Uncle Adam.)

Today

This is worthy of the occasion and the sacred space.

Obama Wins Nevada.

MSNBC.

Mark Elrod.

CNN.

Daily Kos.

New York Times:

With 98 percent of the precincts reporting on Saturday evening, Mrs. Clinton had 51 percent of the vote to 45 percent for Mr. Obama. Mr. Edwards had 4 percent, a surprisingly poor showing given the attention he had devoted to Nevada. But the delegate count under the intricate rules of the caucuses appeared to favor Mr. Obama because of his support from a wide swath of the state, giving him 13 delegates compared with 12 for Mrs. Clinton.

There was no call of congratulations to Mrs. Clinton from Mr. Obama, who flew out of Nevada as the caucuses were convening. In a statement, Mr. Obama did not acknowledge defeat and noted that he had received one more delegate in Nevada than Mrs. Clinton because of a strong performance in precincts outside Las Vegas.

“We came from over 25 points behind to win more national convention delegates than Hillary Clinton,” said Mr. Obama, of Illinois, “because we performed well all across the state, including rural areas where Democrats have traditionally struggled.”

Strategists from both campaigns, as well as the Nevada Democratic Party, were poring over the returns several hours after the caucuses concluded. If the Democratic presidential race becomes a bare-knuckle fight to the nominating convention in August, the extra delegate for Mr. Obama could prove as important to him as the momentum that Mrs. Clinton might receive from winning the most votes in the state.

If I were Eric. . .

. . . not only would I be ultra-sexy and very fast, I would be able to vote in the Michigan primary today.

The MI Democrats lost their franchise with the national party when they moved the primary up, so there are no delegates at stake. Only HRC and uncommitted are on the ballot; the Dems can’t even write in another candidate.

Thus, for whom should Michigander Dems vote in the Republican primary if the goal is to elect Obama?

Daily Kos would have you vote for Mitt, just to be irritating. The idea is that by keeping Mitt alive in the primaries, their field continues to be conflicted and a mess. The conventional wisdom says that Mitt is the easiest opponent for the Dems, although I am not sure I agree, so by supporting Mitt in his do-or-die quasi-home state, the Dems get a two for one: Confound the GOP race a little bit more and support the Dems’ favored candidate.

(To my beloved conservative, Republican, Romney-supporing friends and colleagues, I disclaim the foregoing as an attempt at humor, with no ill intent toward you or your candidate. In the even that the humor doesn't strike you as funny, please remember that I laughed and laughed and laughed at John Edwards's "soft and creamy" hands. Thanks.)

The other option, of course, although less fun, is to vote for the candidate who would be the best President if the general election were to produce a Republican President. For my, money, that would be McCain, for whom I voted once already, in the 2000 Tennessee primary, against GWB, after GWB already had secured the nomination. That was my protest vote, and a fat lot of good it did.

So, if I were Eric, I think my better angels would win out, and I’d be voting for McCain today in the GOP primary.

ASI Love

In recent years, I have crticized ASI plenty, especially some questionable, partisan speakers selected to take the stage at one of Harding's most prominent events. When something very good happens, then, I feel obliged to celebrate it publically. Here is the email I sent today:

Dr. Burks, Dr. Carr, Col. Reely:

You and the leadership in the American Studies Institute deserve commendation and gratitude for inviting Fred Gray as a Distinguished Lecturer this Spring.

As a prominent, public face of the University, ASI bears a great responsibility and duty on behalf of Harding’s great community, including alumni, the Church of Christ and the Kingdom we claim. Harding is called to serve and teach with excellence and courage and by inviting inquiry into the great questions and problems of Men and Nations. Mr. Gray’s refreshing invitation to address ASI advances our response to that calling.

Mr. Gray’s work and ministry has borne mighty fruit in our community and country. His devotion to the vulnerable and oppressed glorifies God, and his work before persecution and corruption reflects Christ’s mission declared in Luke 4. His work transcends the politics typical of recent ASI speakers, and he should fulfill ASI’s stated mission even more because of it. Even more, he continues to contribute to Christian education with close association, support and leadership at our School of Law, and we take pride and inspiration from him as we grow and deepen our work among the poor and vulnerable in Montgomery.

Thank you for inviting Mr. Gray to speak. Not since I was president of ASI’s student program have I been more excited about the organization. I am very proud of Harding today and look forward as ASI seeks more speakers who so embody our mission.

May God lead us all,
JRB

If you blasted Harding and its administration for Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, I urge you to offer some encouragement for a remarkable step in the right direction.

Fact Check

From the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, some good facts:

Obama's church is not a cult, is not racist, is not anti-American.

Obama is not a Muslim.

Obama was sworn into the Senate using his very own Bible, held by his very own wife.

Please don't take rumors for granted, even if you think you might like them to be true, or even if you really, really like conservative talk radio, even if you read Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal and especially if you are fond of emails from people who really don't check snopes.com.

Obama Apologies, Part 2

A friend asks why I support Barack Obama for President. These are four reasons that persuade me. These are the macro-reasons, and his policy proposals also align with my preferred vision for the national government.

1. Faith and Philosophy Obama is a Christian. Not alone among the candidates, he expresses his policy ideas and guiding principles in terms of faith, not merely as pragmatic or unmoored morality. This is rarer among Democrats than Republicans, and I am exceedingly happily to find a progressive candidate who frames his policies and ideas in terms of faith. He and I agree that government has a significant role to play in addressing issues of inequity and injustice, problems of poverty and systemic bias against vulnerable and historically marginalized populations. I believe these issues are spiritual, ethical and moral, and that people of faith should use every tool as our disposal, including the state, to address them, wisely, pragmatically, prudentially, creatively and usefully. In the 2004 Convention speech, he described a distinction between private and public morality, which I believe is useful to describe government’s realistic use. Government is not very good and promoting individual morality but it is a very useful tool in addressing systemic, cultural and institutional injustice and corruption. In that speech, Obama suggested that this “public morality” is the greater role of government, and I agree.

2. Personal Narrative Perhaps I should be more interested in specific policy proposals and the ubiquitous criticism of inexperience, but Obama’s personal narrative stands for something remarkable in America and in the world. Obama is white and black. His father is from Kenya, and his mother is from Kansas. Obama’s father was a nominal, non-religious Muslim, and his mother was a secular humanist. As he worked with Christian churches in Chicago, Obama claimed Christ. He is a lawyer, the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review, a civil rights attorney, who first devoted his career to the poor and vulnerable in Chicago’s south side. I may be maudlin about it, but this story and his candidacy is Important. Such a story only could happen in our great republic, and it represents a great turn of the wheel of history, beyond our dark past of racism and slavery, through the civil rights era, just passed racial harmony and right up to the edge of racial reconciliation. Not only will this thoroughly American point-of-view uniquely equip him to speak to our neighbors beyond his natural constituency, but it should give him a powerful means to interpret global complexity. 90% White Iowa demonstrated a dramatic rejection of the notion that “America is not ready to elect a Black Man.” This is big History in real time. I am willing to suffer some flawed policy ideas in exchange for the Meaning of the Obama presidency.

3. Partisanship and Moderation The Clinton and Bush presidencies and their accompanying Congresses, led us into a bleak season of partisan extremism. Practical and fruitful movement in our government happens best in the middle, with smart compromises and humble, tough negotiations, not raw power victories. At the risk of naiveté, I think that if we are to overcome the current stasis and escalating meanness, we need leadership who rejects those tactics. Here, Obama’s inexperience may just work in his favor, because he has not worked in the party apparatus so long as to be tainted by the hard knocks. ** I am not swooning so much to ignore the fact that Obama is a partisan and is in a party, but his rhetoric of unity and his history in the Senate makes me hopeful that he is serious about it.

4. Foreign Policy Long have I believed in engagement over isolation. I oppose the Cuban embargo as anachronistic and believe the best way to overcome such tyranny is with a flood of free market capitalism, dialogue and diplomacy. The Current Occupant promotes great and unnecessary harm by straight-arming every conceivable foe, like Iran, by demanding that they acquiesce to all our demands before we will negotiate. Where is the negotiation? We create more enemies than converts by such hubris. In virtually every crisis and with nearly every conceivable foe, engagement and dialogue will serve our national interests and security better than isolation and fear-mongering. I do not suggest appeasement or capitulation before any aggressor or dictator, but cocky bullying exacerbates extremism and others’ nationalism to no good end. Obama agrees and has committed himself to well prepared, tough, engaged diplomacy with friend and foe.

** In this space, I earlier wrote that Obama was a member of McCain's Gang of 14 as an example of bipartisanship and moderation. I was incorrect. Obama was not a part of that Senate episode.

Obama Apologies, Part 1

Note: I wrote this as a Facebook note today in response to a friend's inquiry about my candidate of choice. The Iowa caucuses are closing as I write, and good Senator Obama is leading with 37% of the delegates, over Edward's 30% and Clinton's 29.6%. It's a good night.

This note is in response to the message on my Wall from Kelly who asks why I support Obama and who notes that she does not support universal health care.

First, a word or few about universal health care, a thousand and one options exist between pure free-market health care and fully socialist medical care. Neither Obama nor any other candidate is proposing Canadian- or British-style health care in which the State pays for everyone's health care with subsidies fully funded by taxation. Rather each proposes a different mix of private-sector incentives and pressures with public subsidies or mandates. We could not in one fell swoop eliminate the private sector from health care and should not, because it is profit motive that drives innovation and competitive care.

We also cannot ignore the "cost of poverty" on the entire system and every citizen. The U.S. pays much more per capita on health care than any comparable country (about $5000 per person, not taxpayer, not patient, per person), but fails to provide coverage for about 47 million citizens, including about 8 million kids. The Kaiser Foundation, among others, dispels a myth that we get substantially better health care than those in other countries with nationalized health care. In short, we're not getting a good bang for our buck.

This disparity leads me to two conclusions:
1. We pay too much for what we get.
2. We should not rest when the quality of health care (as opposed to the quality of plumbing, entertainment, etc.) depends on the ability of someone to pay for it.

The second conclusion arises from an ethical tension. For Christians, the disparity in access to health care should prompt concern over stewardship, justice, compassion and life. Regarding stewardship, companies, insurance, government and patients are not getting a sound deal for the money we expend on the services we consume. Regarding justice,the poor get substantially less access and quality to health care than others. Regarding compassion, we should not sit by in affluence while the poor suffer without care better available. Regarding life, we subject our neighbors to shorter, less fruitful lives when we neglect this plight.

A few other observations:

1. We already provide subsidized, nay socialist, health care to people over 65 regardless of wealth, to Veterans and to the very poor by way of Medicaid. These piecemeal efforts create inefficiency, caprice and strange incentives in the rest of the market.

2. Rationing is coming, if it is not already here. That is, providers and patients are already having to pick and choose services based on the ability to pay, even for insured patients. This arises from inefficient and expensive defensive medicine, as opposed to preventative care. It also arises from the costs levied on the providers who often have to foot the bill themselves for care to those without sufficient insurance.

3. We rely, perhaps unfairly, on doctors and hospitals to provide free care for the uninsured. This affects the free market as well, by forcing providers to shift the cost of indigent or uninsured care to other revenue streams, increasing the price for all.

4. For all the talk of wanting to maintain control and independence over our own care, we believe in a fiction. In the current market, we realistically receive care from options over which we have virtually no control. The question remains then, do you want health care power vested in the State or in the Insurance Company with an almighty profit motive? That's a hard call.

Obama's health care plan offers a mix of incentives and subsidies that still relies on private insurance companies, who still can profit, and on private health care providers, who still can profit. The profits might be smaller than the luxurious margins enjoyed these days, but the private sector still has incentives. Obama also would leverage the bargaining power of the government to negotiate prices with private companies, engaging the very free market that now creates remarkable innovation and care for the insured.

Stirring

Happy New Election Year!

I support, endorse and laud Barack Obama. As I have written here before, I believe that he is gifted and right for the job, with sound policies, remarkable talent, charisma, language, personal narrative and faith to make an exceptional President in very tricky times.

I have a friend who dated lots and lots of girls in his day, and he declared that each one always was "different" than the others, but none of the relationships worked out, despite the girls' typical swooning over my swank brother. I admonished him one day as he despaired the loss of another hot girlfriend and pointed out to him that all of his girls were cut from the very same exceptionally cute, moderately smart, usually funny, always in a Greek house, white, Southern, WASPish socialite stock, so the outcome usually wasn't a surprise to anyone else, because deep down inside he needed something actually different and compelling on a level apart from the classic crush. Finally, he brought home a Filipino Catholic accountant with a Southern drawl, and they are getting married next month. Barack Obama is the sexy Filipino Catholic accountant with a Southern drawl that the country needs right now.

Here are my predictions for the Iowa caucauses tomorrow:

Democrats:
1. Obama
2. Clinton
3. Edwards

Republicans:
1. Romney
2. Huckabee
3. McCain

Here is what I hope to see tomorrow, the best case outcome:

Democrats:
1. Obama
2. Edwards
3. Clinton

Republicans:
1. McCain
2. Huckabee
3. Romney

Release the hounds! Let the games begin! Play ball!