My guess is that Obama will become the next president but he will not be the first "black" president. Obama's own bill directing the FDA to pay more attention to genetics and personalized medicine would lead to understanding that designations like black and white and brown and yellow are misleading. Ancestral genetic tests even now are available that show we all have mixed ancestry. Most surely, among Obama's predecessors, would be many with sub-Saharan African ancestry just as Obama himself is mixed like all of us.

I went recently to an organization meeting of Obama supporters. I was not the only one candidate shopping. The small group was as mixed as our ancestry. It included college students and retirees like myself. There Goldwater fans along with this old fossil who remembers fondly Eugene McCarthy's Children's Crusade. There were independents and Republicans and Democrats. Most talked about being thrilled with Obama's speeches. My wife and I had seen no more than very brief clips.

Long rocky path to the nomination - I personally would take the election then as almost a given - but what a difference there could be without all the rancor and division of the past.

Best, Terry

Sounds like Obama's narcissism goes all the way back to his youth. It wlll be a rude awakening when he loses all four of the first primaries / caucuses.

This is the book that convinced me that I should support Obama's quest. I especially challenge the cynics out there to read this book. I am willing to bet that when you put it down you will be on board the bandwagon.

No, I will not read his book. And it's precisely for the reasons you think "cynics" should:

1. He's not on any quest; he's running for president. Presidents aren't annointed, they're elected.

2. I'm not looking to hop on a bandwagon. I'm trying to decide which candidate I will support and it's the one who best represents me and my concerns.

It's comments like this that convince me more and more that we need less hem kissing and more critical thinking about Barack Obama.

Only in race conscious America is this newsworthy. It raises the question "is Obama white enough' the way these type articles are written.

CorinneM,

Just out of curiosity, I went and checked out your previous comments on the site. You have posted about ten comments over the past two months. Every single one of them has been critical of Obama.

Who do you support? Why are you so critical of Obama? Is it his policy positions? His voting record? What is your beef?

Ridiculous, pacc. The article says that it was a "joke" between Barack and his mom about being "president." Even if the "joke" had a grain of seriousness underneath it, there is no evidence that Obama was one of those kids -- and we all know who they were -- in high school or college who act like they're already positioning themselves for a career and not acting like regular kids their age. They were often crudely sized up as having a "hard on'" for elected office. With Obama, the evidence is, indeed, all to the contrary. The article has his classmates saying that he didn't do student government or try to get elected to or be the leader of anything, and that instead he was trying to be a starter on the basketball team. A different Obama story from a couple of weeks ago noted that on his yearbook page, he made a reference to "chooming pakaloo" -- a Hawaiian expression for pot-smoking -- again, totally inconsistent with the sort of overheated ambition at a too-early age that pacc is trying to impute to Obama. Remember Bill C's infamous letter to some military figure he had cultivated a connection with in his early 20's -- with its wince-inducing reference to the young Bill C's "political viability within the system"? Now THAT's evidence of the kind of kid that is so calculatingly ambitious at so young an age as to raise alarm bells about things like ego and narcissism. It's amusing to see the Obama-haters on this site -- who usually have already invested themselves in one of Obama's rivals -- grasp at straws to bring him down.

Can't we just entertain the possibility that he is the earnest, thoughtful, smart, committed, ambitious (but not in a sick way) person that he appears to be and that everyone who has crossed paths with him in his life says he is? I suspect that if there was any grain of seriousness in the joke his mother made with him about being president, it was because Obama confided some of his grievances about the slights he had received to her rather than wearing them on his sleeve in front of his classmates, and she said, well maybe you ought to do something that could change that when you grow up. She may also have been that rare mother whose estimation of her son's potential was not too high.

Obama's problem remains the Gary Hart problem -- where's the beef? If he is to win the nomination, he needs to talk a lot more about substantive proposals. Candidates who run primarily on character lose the Dem nomination.

That cuts two ways...sad, really, that the Democratic Party labels a white male in this way.

huh? "beat him by using an empty advertising slogan." gary hart's pres. run in 84 ended with the donna rice scandal. even if he didn't pull out right at that moment, it was over then.

Wrong. Donna Rice and the Monkey Business sank Hart in 1988, when he was the frontrunner for the nomination. In 84 Mondale beat Hart and his "new ideas" with a Rovian "attack-the-candidate's-strength-with-a-junior-high-slogan" strategy--using a popular ad slogan to make a deep thinker seem shallow.

Toni Morrison caused a stir when she called Bill Clinton "the first Black President;" saying "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

New Yorker, October 1998.

Raymond, as someone from Illinois you are correct. We can tell you he is really the thoughtful, intellegent, decent person you think he is. He really believes in what he says and in trying to make things better.

I was specifically encouraging people to read the first book, I think it gives far greater insight into Obama as a person. I am glad, if you have read Obama's second book.

You characterize "Audacity" as "nothing new." On one hand, I agree, it is not a book prescribing a long list of new public policy ideas. If it where such a book, it would not have spent four months at the top of the bestseller list. Most voters are not political junkies willing to wade through such dry and arcane stuff. What "Audacity" is, and I do believe that this is new, is a discussion of values and principles written in interesting and accessible language. You and I may disagree about how compelling or useful the book is. After all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

What you can not dispute is that the book has been wildly successful. I believe that success is a testament to Obama's skill as a writer and thinker, it is also a testament to his keen political instincts. Obama knows his audience and wrote a book people are willing to buy and to read. Unlike John Kerry, he seems to understand that voters care more about values and character than about ten point plans and resumes.

He also seems to understand that talking about reducing the amount of bitter, hyper-partisan polarization is both good politics and good public policy. It is good politics because after 16 years of polarization the public, particularly the swing voters, hunger for something new. It is good public policy because in order to be successful, progressives need to build a working majority. In order to do that, we have to re-engage some of the tens of millions of disaffected people who have become increasingly alienated from the process, and we have to bring some of the moderates over to our side. The best way to do that is to try to change the tone of the debate.

Appearantly you take offense to my use of the term "cynic." I see your point, I don't like being called names either, but I use the term for a very specific purpose. You and several others who consistently post negative comments about Obama (pacc, CorrinneM, and Miri11 to name a few), seem to object to Obama not primarily because of his politics, but rather because of his tone. You seem to see his attempt to use less divisive language as either a "sell-out" of progressive principles or as a "trick" of positioning.

This is why I encourage people to read his books, because once you read his books, again particularly the first one, I think you start to see that he actually means what he says, and his biography is consistent with his stated beliefs. Other than basic progressive values, I believe that "authenticity" is the single most important characteristic needed in a Dem Presidential nominee. The Repubs destroyed Gore and Kerry primarily by attacking their authenticity. If Hillary is our nominee, I believe she is extremely vulnerable to such attacks.

This is why I support Obama. You and others in the anti-Obama camp are clearly smart people. I hope we can have a constructive debate focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates. If I have mis-characterized your objections to Obama, I hope you will clarify your position.

"Candidates who run on character loose the Dem nomination."

Any other examples besides Hart? I think most political scientists agree that voters are primarily motivated by values and character. Policy and experience may appeal to the political junkies but that is not most voters.

It is ironic that Obama is being touted as prospectively the first black president. American Blacks say he may be black but that he is not Black, not one of them.

One suspects that that is exactly why so many White liberals LOOOVE him.

It is now accepted that Fox's report that Barack Obama attended a madrassah in Jakarta in the 1960's was false. But only if you want it to be.

A video clip of the school shows it to be a secular public school with boys and girls playing together, men and women teachers in Western clothing, and the men teachers beardless.

BUT

In the same video clip the headmaster of the school says that the Muslim children were given religious training in Islam, the Christian children were given religious training in Christianity, and so on.

Which religious training did Obama get? His step-father, though non-practicing, was nominally a Muslim. Obama's middle name is Hussein. When he registered for the Catholic school his religion was listed as "Muslim". Asked why Obama was listed as a Muslim by the new school, the Obama campaign's spokesman Charles Gibbs replied, "I don't know."

Unlike Charles Gibbs, I do know. In a Muslim country like Indonesia proselytizing Muslims to other religions such as Catholicism is illegal. Which would make it imperative that children entering the Catholic school be registered as Muslims if they had had Muslim religious training, so they could be exempted from being taught the catechism. Which also clarifies the throwing-sand-in-your-eyes attempt to confuse the issue with which school Obama attended first.

When I was seven and eight I attended a Sunday school. That has a great deal to do with what I believe and feel to this day, who I am. What a person learns at that age has a profound influence on his attitudes throughout his life.

At the very least the scandal here is that Obama is getting a free ride from the press, partly because the initial story was over-stated and partly because it came from Fox, and partly of course because Obama is the Great White Hope of the liberals. The initial story that Obama had attended a radical Muslim madrassa having proven false, the press instantly dropped it.

But had the story been that Obama had attended Muslim religious school training for two years as a child and that his mother kept a koran in their home, they would have found that the story was true.

Does it matter that Obama was trained as a, let us assume, moderate Muslim? Considering that the koran explicitly teaches the Muslim duty of jihad and to kill Jews and subjugate Christians, I would say yes.

Congratulations, this is definitely one of the slimiest posts I have seen since I first started visiting TPM several years ago. You managed to hit not one, not two, but three smear memes about Obama in one post!

Slimey Meme #1: "Obama is not black enough." This dog won't hunt. Obama is now outpolling Hillary among blacks in several national polls. Obama was almost universally regarded as the winner of the showdown "Team Hillary" forced in Selma. Most credible pundits now expect Obama to take 70 to 80 percent of the black vote by the time the primaries roll around.

Slimey Meme #2: "So many White liberals LOOOVE him." Check out the media photos on Obama rallies. He is drawing the largest multi-cultural crowds in the history of the Democratic primary. It isn't just white liberals that are showing great enthusiasm for Obama and his message.

Slimey Meme #3: "Does it matter that Obama was trained as a moderate Muslim? Considering that the Koran explicitly teaches the Muslim duty of jihad and to kill Jews and subjugate Christians, I would say yes." Putting aside for the moment the distorted spin you put on Obama's experience as a six and seven year old child, your comment is a piece of religious bigotry worthy of Pat Robertson on a bad day. Did you take a wrong turn on your way out of Ann Coulter's website?

I have a couple of additional questions for you. First, who are you? I see from your profile that this is the first post you have ever made on this site. Second, who do you support for Prez in 2008, if you are supporting any of the other Dems, I automatically think less of him or her.