Eugene Robinson: No Longer Unimaginable

No Longer Unimaginable
By Eugene Robinson
Sunday, January 6, 2008; Page B07

It was one of those moments that give you goose bumps -- the cheering crowd, the waving placards, the candidate and his family looking Kennedyesque on the occasion of a stunning victory. Barack Obama took the stage Thursday night in Des Moines and proclaimed his vindication of hope: "They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high."

Yet there he was, the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother, a man with brown skin, kinky hair and utter command of what he called a "defining moment in history."

Those of us who have struggled to get our minds around the notion that a man who looks like Barack Obama could be the next president of the United States can no longer take easy refuge in the disappointments of history. Obama may not be elected president; he may not even get the Democratic nomination. But at this point, it's impossible to deny that what we are witnessing is something new.

The Iowa caucuses showed us the America we like to believe we live in, a country ready to embrace a man with brown skin as its leader. Is this really a land of such racial harmony and understanding? No, it's not. "We are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come," Obama said in his soaring victory speech. But sometimes we see things so differently that it's a wonder we agree on the blueness of the sky.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010403567.html

A page has been turned and it is without doubt for the better.

There's an interesting note about how Rachel Maddow really doesn't get it in there too.

At least when you say Rachel Madow 'really' doesn't get it. I suspect she hit the nail right on the head. Notice that much of the increase in attendance at the Democratic Caucus came from the young - or should I say the defiant young.

I would counter your argument with this - and I do not say it in any mean spirited way, but please give it a little thought. Read that article with this in mind and then come back and tell me where I'm wrong. This, like just about everything else that has been written since Iowa tells us that people are looking for "Change". Then the article continues by telling us what change it is that we are addressing - the color of the skin of the person. That is the only change they are talking about in the article. Used to be all white guys, now there is a black guy. This is historical?

No mention of changed policy, just changed skin color. I thought Ms. Maddow's comment indicated maybe she was the only one who really did get it.

Uh, yeah. It is.

I'm not commenting on Maddow in the context of the whole article. I'm commenting on the context of her comment that " host Rachel Maddow, who happens to be white -- mused that white Iowans who harbored racist views might be unwilling to put them on display in the caucuses." Racists don't tend to vote Democratic anyways, at least since the Southern Strategy. So her comment is essentially vapid, ill-informned, and non-productive. Moreover, may I dare say, that systemically, bigotry has been on decline in the United States since the late 70s (not saying it definitely doesn't exist) and so as an electoral factor it is hardly influential or decisive. George Wallace wouldn't have a shot in hell in 2008.

I never particularly liked her on Olbermann, but this just confirmns my suspicion that she's hardly a top-notch political commentator.