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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A good start

So far the closest thing to my impression of Obama's speech yesterday comes form Nathan Newman here.

This is the aggressive speech that I've wanted from Obama from early on, that clearly identifies the corporate source of the political stalemate that he talks about often, yet whose source he was often vague about. Put on the defensive by the attacks on Reverend Wright, whose own sermons were steeped in these issues of economic and social justice, Obama didn't just play defense but aggressively redirected the discussion against those making the attack. In an imperfect country of racial division, the corporate political class will always find offensive comments and issues to stoke racial fears, Obama argued, so the issue of Rev. Wright is almost irrelevant: To give into that politics is to let that corporate class win the political game.


Like Adrastos says, it takes "Bollocks" to take on the bullshit hate machine as forthrightly as Obama did yesterday. For the first time, Obama admits that the problem isn't just that "people need to come together" but that they are being purposefully kept apart (and down).

Still, I don't think it really means anything unless this kind of aggressive talk becomes more central to the campaign or if it makes its way into the regular stump speech. One encouraging thought with regard to this is that Obama reportedly wrote this one himself.

Meanwhile there's a long way to go and Hillary is picking up key endorsements so.... I hope everybody enjoyed the little show.

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