A lot of people are bitching about how high gas prices are. I don't drive so I think I have a pretty objective view on this issue: Gas prices aren't too high. If anything, taxes on gas should be higher. This way the cost of gas can better line up with the cost of consuming gas (here is Steven Levitt on all the negative externalities that low gas prices impose).

This, however, seems lost on Hillary and McCain. Both are proposing to temporarily reduce the federal gas tax. This is a particularly dangerous proposal because there is no reason to believe that gas prices will be coming down in the near future. Once you remove a tax like this, good luck ever putting it back in place.

Not to fawn over Obama (or I could give all the credit to Editor's Blog man crush and Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee), but you have to respect a politician that is in such a heated race and makes such a principled stand on an issue like this. And, right on cue Hillary is throwing everything she can at Obama on this issue:

...his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

Classy.

Update: Here is what Greg Mankiw, founder of the famous Pigou Club has to say about the Hillary-McCain proposal:

I don't know any prominent economist who favors this McCain-Clinton proposal. More common is the reaction of a friend of mine (a veteran of the Clinton administration) who calls the idea "ludicrous."

Labels: Austan Goolsbee, Barack Obama, Pigou

Finally, someone with the courage to speak the truth:



Here's an idea: Instead of having the two candidates debate this fall, why not just have "Ms. Weiss" and Roberta McCain go head to head, Lincoln-Douglass style. No moderator, just the two grandmotherly surrogates talking about the issues.

UPDATE: Alex points out a great gem from the youtube comments. Commenter "FiremanSteve" has this to say:

Ms. Weiss is a great lady. I have not seen her in years until now but she is as passionate about life as she appears to be in this segment. Regardless of whomever we support it sure was nice to see her again.

FiremanSteve, how did you let Ms. Weiss slip out of your life? What were you thinking??

Labels: Barack Obama, great americans, old people, snogging

And so we beat on.

In the end, after the weeks of manufactured drama, negative ads, and cheap-shots at people who shop at Whole Foods, the Pennsylvania primary was ultimately as inconclusive as the long line of primaries that came before it. What was supposed to be the biggest thing to hit the state since the immaculate reception instead ended with a whimper, Senator Clinton's 9.3-percent margin of victory meeting expectations but failing to break the deadlock. Or at least that seems to be thinking.

The reality, I think, is a bit different, and goes back to something I wrote before about basketball teams' tendency to foul in the final minutes of games. Hillary cut into Obama's delegate lead a little bit yesterday, but much more important that is the foreboding road ahead, and the total number of delegates that were just taken off the board for good. In a vacuum, the win is a big win, but viewed in its proper context as her last chance to make up pledged delegates, it's a real blow.

All of which relates back, somewhat tangentially, to a column I have in Tuesday's Maroon about Obama's "brush your shoulders off" moment in North Carolina. While primary results and mundane controversies might dominate the airwaves and public discourse, their impact pales in comparison to the unspoken truths (i.e. delegate math, organization, money) that make an Obama victory all but inevitable.

Labels: Barack Obama, Hillary, Pennsylvania

Of all the charges leveled against Barack Obama over the last two months, few have been more absurd than the claims that he embellished his position at The Law School by referring to himself as a "professor," when his official title was actually "lecturer." Slate's excellent "Trailhead" blog, among others, latched onto the accusation and accepted the Clinton camp's argument.

While there are a few minor administrative distinctions between professors and lecturers, for all intents and purposes, they are the same thing and students wouldn't differentiate between the two. So perhaps tired of hearing its name cluelessly tossed around, The Law School stepped in today and issued a statement essentially telling everyone to please stop talking about this:

The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer."

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track...

Good enough for me. Not content to simply leave our favorite Senior Lecturer in Constitutional Law in peace, however, Time's "Swampland" blog mistakenly referred to Obama's institution as the "University of Illinois" in its post on the matter. This is, of course, a real sore spot for U of C students. Coming to her co-blogger's defense, U of C alum Ana Marie Cox had this to say in the comments:

In JNS's defense, I'd like to note that people screw up UC/UIC all the time. I think somewhere I have a regrettably snobbish t-shirt from my time in Hyde Park, referring to the misconception: "University of Chicago: Not a State School."

I was younger then.

Phil Singer, btw, would not have gotten this wrong -- and maybe he shouldn't have miffed the lecturer thing. Both he and Howard Wolfson are fellow Maroon alums.

It's kind of a strange place.

Just a little bit.

Labels: ...so U of C, alumni, Barack Obama

Since Barack Obama’s pastor has oddly become the single most important issue facing Americans in 2008—more dangerous, even, than killer knickerbockers—it got me to thinking: “Is Jeremiah Wright really the monster they say he is?”

Michael Gerson seems to think so. So does Matt. And Charles Krauthamer. And Jeff Jacoby. It has been emphasized by conservative pundits and readily accepted as fact by most on the Left. However I think it’s a mistake to simply dismiss Wright as a hate-monger without taking a closer look. More importantly, it resurrects the issue of John McCain’s courting of the pastor John Hagee—and why it isn’t given the same treatment as Wright-gate.

Regarding the HIV/AIDS claims, Wright is no doubt incorrect, and his remarks on the matter are angry and belligerent. But they don’t exist in a vacuum. They stem instead from a history of racial conflict—centuries of mistreatment that allow such sentiments (and often diseases themselves) to fester and then spread. The Tuskegee Experiments stand out as a not-so-shining example of the ill effects that governmental racism can have. Wright’s views are in the minority among African Americans, but only barely: According to a recent Washington Post study, 48.2 percent of blacks “agreee somewhat or strongly [that] HIV/AIDS is a man-made virus.

Are comments like Wright’s harmful? Of course. We should be quick to condemn dangerous and inaccurate conspiracy theories, and in his speech Obama was unequivocal in this regard. I wish he had been more outspoken on this at the time, and maybe he will more ably utilize the bully pulpit in the future. Nonetheless, it seems a bit reckless to call these remarks “hateful.”

His appeal to “God damn America” is likewise rife with anger and frustration—and is appallingly devoid of the rhetorical punch it sought to deliver. For those reasons, it is “incendiary,” but you’d have to try very hard to personally be offended by it. In context, it is meant to be a clever play on “God Bless America,” which he repeats first in a questioning tone, before concluding otherwise.

As with his comments on HIV/AIDS, and the US-of-KKK, we’d be foolish to simply mark it off as hate-speech without actually considering what makes Wright say stuff like this. Those words aren’t hurting anybody, nor are they inciting retribution toward any group; they’re just angry, every bit worthy of the title of “crazy uncle.”

The point is, that no matter how we may personally react to Wright’s most incendiary soundbites (I found them troubling and tragic), they exist for the most part at a level comfortably below “hate.”

The same cannot be said for John Hagee, a high-profile John McCain endorser. His beliefs are not born of circumstance and history, which explain but don’t justify Wright’s hysterical statements. No, Hagee’s vitriol is a product of his core beliefs—that Catholics are degenerate, Muslims are a scourge, and gays cause natural disasters. (more here!). Any comparison between Hagee and Wright needlessly lets the former off the hook.

Although Hagee’s remarks may be more hateful and more numerous, I think most reasonable people would agree that neither man has a place in presidential politics. Thus, Obama was understandably criticized for his association with the reverend, but when the media and rivals called for an explanation, he provided one, explaining that while he firmly denounced Wright’s statements he could not disown his friend of 20 years. It may not have satisfied everyone, but it nonetheless defied precedent and exceeded the expectations to which every other candidate has been held.

Unlike Obama, who has known Wright since the Senator was still in his 20s, McCain’s relationship with Hagee is political, not personal. The pastor has admitted that McCain personally approached him looking for an endorsement, and the alliance is designed to exploit Hagee’s powerful bloc of Christian Zionists. With none of the spiritual ambiguity of Wright-gate, the question, then, is “What is his excuse?” McCain has none.

He curtly dismissed the ensuing criticism, and then sent surrogates like Kay Bailey Hutchinson out to say, essentially, that this is no big deal. Perhaps. But that all depends on the nature of his relationship with Hagee, which he has failed to elaborate on. He eventually offered a one-paragraph condemnation of any statements that offended Catholics, but not Muslims or gays (or poor J.K. Rowling). With no knowledge of the pastor besides what we know, the decision to court Hagee was truly a question of judgment. And in this case, McCain sided with politics over morality.

Just because he writes the best speeches doesn’t mean Barack Obama should be the only candidate held responsible for his actions. Which is why the tremendous gap in coverage between McCain’s endorsement by John Hagee, and the remarks of Jeremiah Wright are so disconcerting. And this is why the fallout from Wright has spurred a discussion not just on religion, but on race—because it looks to be the outstanding variable in play here.

Labels: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright

The most interesting criticism to arise from Barack Obama’s speech on race stems from the nature of his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. As Michael Gerson put it in Wednesday’s Washington Post, “Barack Obama is not a man who hates—but he chose to walk with a man who does.”

Gerson’s argument is predicated on two parts: That Wright is, in fact, a man who hates, and that Obama should have left Trinity as a result. The first point is less relevant for now—Wright is certainly capable of hateful language, but to what extent it dominates his sermons and to what extent his political views converge with his religious ones, we really have no idea; It’d be irresponsible to attempt to capture his entire character in a few choice sound bites. But let’s suppose that, in his authority, Wright did stray from time to time into the realm of vitriol and that for a number of these outbursts, Obama sat respectfully in his pew. To this, Gerson and Matt naturally ask, why? In doing so, they fail to give due credence to the candidate’s answer.

The Senator could have stayed at Trinity for three reasons: He could have believed Wright’s every word. Let’s discount this one for now (he is a Muslim, after all). The second explanation, then, would be that he did it for political reasons.

If Obama wished for nothing more than a career as a State Senator representing a South Side community, perhaps joining Trinity would have been the politically correct move to make. But it’s clear that Washington was always in his sights. Viewed in that light, and with regard for the past week and possibly the next eight months, staying at Trinity was by no means a cunning political move.

Provided that Obama does not personally subscribe to Wright’s most incendiary views, we are left with this to chew on: Obama stayed at Trinity in spite of the political risks and in spite of the views of his pastor. Therein lies the third option, and the one put forth by the Senator in his speech: He stayed because the rhetoric of his pastor was secondary to his close relationship with the church.

As he stated, his complicated friendship with Wright was always secondary to his relationship to God and his relationship to the members of his community, both of which he felt best served at Trinity. Because of his personal connection and sentimentality—he got married there and both his daughters were baptized there—he couldn’t bring himself to quit the church. With the assumption that Obama did not accept Wright’s ridiculous views, and that this was not a political decision, we should logically conclude, then, that most of the time, Trinity was simply a place of worship and a rock of his community, and that, by and large, Wright was not a peddler of hate. This would explain why an intelligent man like Obama would have first been drawn to Trinity, and as a result, why he didn’t stop attending.

So there is Obama’s answer. Where Gerson errs is in mistaking an issue of faith for an issue of judgment.

To put it another way, I can’t help but relate this to my own personal experiences with the Catholic Church. This all came boiling to a head one night in Washington D.C., when I went with my grandparents, both in failing health at the time, to a Sunday evening mass. Presiding over the service was the Cardinal of Washington D.C.—in the news that same day for stonewalling efforts to bring priests to justice for sexual abuse. Certainly, there was plenty to be cynical about.

Yet there were my grandparents, ever the odd couple, sitting quietly throughout the service. Leaving was out of the question, and not just because neither of them could drive. The Church had been with them every step of the way in their lives—they had put their children through its schools, spent their free time volunteering, and done their best to live to its greatest promise. To borrow from Obama, they could no more quit the Archdiocese, than they could quit their family. The highly personal nature of faith does not lend itself to calculated judgments.

You can argue, as Matt and Gerson have, that Obama should have left the church nonetheless; that the “incendiary” rhetoric crossed the line of decency and that you personally would have packed up and left faster then you can say “U–S-of KKK.” That’s fine. As a visitor, I probably would have, too.

But his relationship with Trinity is far more complex and far more personal than a collection of youtube clips. To the best of his abilities, and to a degree heretofore unprecedented in recent political memory (with apologies to Mitt Romney), Obama sought to answer such questions. His answer may not seem rational, but then, what part of faith really is?

Labels: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright

Like most patriotic Americans, I plan on spending the the next four days on the couch, watching the NCAA tournament and wondering why my parents didn't have the sense to name me "E'Twan."

But since I also have an unhealthy obsession with presidential politics, I got to wondering what the leading candidates had to say about March Madness. And because the news media shares my unhealthy obsessions, I have an answer.

For his Final Four, Barack Obama chose: UNC, Kansas, Pittsburgh, and UCLA, with the Tar Heels taking down the Bruins in the National Title game.

You're probably thinking to yourself right now, "wait a second, isn't that exactly the same as Bob Knight's Final Four?" And you're correct. The odds of this happening are too small for me to calculate, so we can only wonder: Are the two in cohorts? The prospect of an Obama–Knight ticket is tempting, to be sure. Knight combines a military background—he coached at Army—a lengthy track record of managerial competence, and certifiable toughness. Not to mention the fact that he has almost certainly never been privy one of Reverent Jeremiah Wright's sermons. In short, he's an older, meaner Jim Webb.

Labels: Barack Obama

I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by Obama's NCAA bracket.

In 3 of the 4 regions he has the #1 playing the #2 in the Elite 8. Even worse, his big surprise is Pitt making it to the final four. Now, we know Obama needs to do well in Pennsylvania, but is this really going to make a difference? I do like his pick of Stanford making it past Texas. You gotta love the Lopez twins. Still, this isn't a very ballsy pick.

You think that Obama would have at least picked Michael Beasley and Kansas State to go pretty far (Elite 8?). Beasley seems like the college basketball version of Obama. He has loads of talent, he's young, and he's playing on a team no one has heard of that is trying to slay the big shots.

But, instead of sticking his neck out, Obama pussied out and went with a pretty conventional bracket. Honestly, this is the sort of bracket that I'd expect to see from Hillary. Very disappointing.

Labels: Barack Obama

It aint easy being white
It aint easy being brown
All this pressure to be bright
I got children all over town

—Gob Bluth (w/Franklin)

My initial reaction to Obama's speech yesterday was not to break down in tears like Todd Gitlin did at The New Republic, nor was it to take everything I heard as a personal insult, as just about everyone at The National Review did. No, the very first thought that popped into my mind was "wow, that was an awful lot like Gob's song on Arrested Development."

In a sense, that's not entirely off-the-mark. Obama's speech stands out for its embrace of that great rarity in modern political discourse: nuance. His relationship with his pastor can't be summed up in a simple denunciation, and racial dynamics in the United States aren't as black-and-white as they seem; we can find our calling in our imperfections. As Gob and Franklin put it, "It's not easy."

I'll have more to say about it later, but in the meantime, here are a few speech-related links worth checking out:

• Jonathan Cohn has the best analysis over at The Plank, pretty much covering everything I was going to write. Key quote:
  

"No, this speech was something else entirely--long and winding and intellectually honest; imprudent and, in many ways, impolitic. It was far from flawless rhetorically. Parts of it might best be described as tortured, the work of somebody struggling to convey complicated and deeply held beliefs in a context famously hostile to both ambiguity and honesty."

• Mike Huckabee reminded me why, so long as he has no shot at the White House, I really like him. While not defending Jeremiah Wright, he offers this:

"I’m just telling you, we’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie you have to go in the backdoor when you go the restaurant. Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and have resentment, and you just have to say, I probably would too."

• And FreeDarko weighs in, as FreeDarko is wont to do, with some non-linear images and broader application of Obama's words and ESPN message boards. Seriously.
  

Labels: Arrested Development, Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright

If you would like your hands to smell like 275 pages of cologne ads, pick up a copy of Vanity Fair RIGHT NOW and read Todd Purdum's piece on the raising of Barack Obama. A lot has been written about Obama's upbringing, mostly by Obama himself and deranged conservative commentators, but this one warrants your attention for a few delictable nuggets. A sample:

Furishima also showed me, but asked me not to quote verbatim, the tender inscriptions in her yearbooks from Obama, who, in tiny, precise architect’s printing, expressed regret that they hadn’t gotten to know each other better, and the hope that someday he might be worthy of her attention. He signed one of them, at the very bottom of the page, with a squiggly cartoon of a mound protruding from the edge of the paper, and these words: “my afro stickin’ up over the top again.”

And also, if you had any doubt that he's extraordinarily cocky, there's this, from the day before his speech at the Democratic convention:

“We were walking down the street in Boston, and this crowd was growing behind us, kind of like Tiger Woods at the Masters. And I turned to Barack and I said, ‘This is incredible. You’re like a rock star.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘If you think it’s bad today, wait till tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?,’ and he said, ‘My speech is pretty good.’ ”

Can't really argue with that, I guess. There's a lot more in there, including his conversation with Emil Jones where he persuaded the Illinois Senate President to make him a U.S. Senator. You can read it all here, cologne-free.

Labels: Barack Obama, cologne ads, famous presidential candidates who once had afros

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Outside of Tim Russert's attempt to reveal to the world that Barack Obama is a card-carrying member of the Nation of Islam, there wasn't much to report from tonight's final Democratic debate. Russert spent about six minutes trying to guilt-trip Obama into disowning, disarming and then dismembering Louis Farrakhan live and on stage, even going so far as to read aloud decades-old quotes even after the Senator had answered the question. It was inspired.

What was left unsaid, however, is that Louis X and Obama are practically neighbors and therefore practically buddies:


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In terms of irrelevant and ridiculous questions he could have asked, I think Russert should have at least summoned the courage to ask if they every carpool or attend each other's barbecues or something.

Also, I stumbled upon this tour of Hyde Park with Michelle Obama. It's not much of a tour, but she does reveal that she and Barack first snogged outside of the Baskin Robbins on 53rd. The very same Baskin Robbins which recently went out of business. Coincidence?

Labels: Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan, snogging, Tim Russert

Because one can only handle so many different spellings of the name Chingis before going insane (seriously, it's like the Antoine for Turkic peoples), I took a study break to watch Obama's Jackson–Jefferson speech in Virginia. He broke from the standard issue stumpage to offer this gemstone:

The name of my cousin Dick Cheney won’t be on the ballot. That was embarrassing, when that news came out. When they do these genealogical surveys, you want to be related to somebody cool.

Snap!

Labels: Barack Obama, family matters

My last post for the weekend, probably, but it is being reported now that today's Nebraska Democratic caucus received almost nine times the expected turnout in some places.

There's an obvious joke about how I didn't know there were that many Democrats in Nebraska, but I'll leave that one for Chris Matthews. The Omaha World–Herald (which seems like a bit of a misnomer) has a kind of awesome live blog of what went down. Key quote:

Overrun by crowds, caucus organizers at Monroe Middle School declared a state of emergency.

All attempts at traditional caucusing have been suspended.

People are now being asked to simple drop a blue piece of paper with their choice in a box.

And it doesn't look good for Hillary Clinton. People have to wait to drop into Barack Obama's box. The Clinton line is much shorter.

Again, this is kind of awesome. They were step away from writing something like "We are heading for the hills with a few others. There were no survivors. This is a goodbye."

We would have done something like this for Super Tuesday in Hyde Park/Kenwood, except we would have frozen to the death, and definitely not produced anything noteworthy.

Labels: Barack Obama, caucus-blogging, Nebraska

I'll be posting my eulogy for Mitt Romney shortly. Tears are dripping like lemon drops on my keyboard as I type. It's been a rough day for all of us here.

But in the meantime, enjoy this column explaining why Barack Obama will destroy us all, particularly those of us who reside in the state of Kansas.

Note the mustache in his columnist photo, and for good measure, here's another photo of the author, with a few more needles on this dying christmas wreath of a half-stache. It goes without saying that he has been extended an open invitation to write for viewpoints.

Via Wonkette, obviously.

Labels: Barack Obama, Islam, Kansas

For the first time in, well, a long time, Barack Obama returned to his Kenwood crib yesterday to cast his vote in Hyde Park. For those who woke up at 4:30 in the morning to watch him vote, it was a disastrous waste of nine hours, since he voted in the afternoon. For everyone else it was cause for a minor swelling of neighborhood pride. So just how much of a home court advantage did Obama have in yesterday's primary?

The Chicago Board of Elections doesn't release the head-to-head data by congressional district, since that's only superficially important. But they do display the district-by-district tallies for Obama and Hillary delegates. Since there's inevitably a tiny bit of fluctuation when you get to vote for eight delegates, the best measure is the alternate delegate, which pits one Obama supporter against one Hillary supporter.

In the 1st district, Obama's alternate Greta Ivers sqeaked by with 91.4% of the vote. Hillary alternate Jan Rowland took 8.58%. I take it there wasn't much of a gender split.

Over in the Jesse Jackson Jr.'s 2nd district, where residents of the Shoreland vote, only 83.64% chose to make history (as the congressman put it in his robocall). Weak. Sauce.

Labels: Barack Obama, Hyde Park

This was scene outside the Ray School this morning, where I cast my first ever election day vote. There wasn't much of a line at 10:30--a fair number of students and lots of old people, which I think is a fairly accurate sampling of Hyde Park.

The rush of voting for not one, not two, but three managers of the municipal water fountain (is that an elected office?) quickly turned to frustration when, upon handing in my top-secret oversized ballot, I was handed a bland "Ballot Receipt." What ever happened to the "I voted!" stickers? I won't go so far as to say that people vote because they receive stickers afterward, but it's definitely an incentive. Plus they look really snappy, and, honestly, what good is a stupid receipt?

Also of note: The illustration on the instruction card depicts a ballot in which John Adams, James Madison, and James Monroe are all competing for the Democratic nomination. This is an open invitation for voter fraud because A.) Unlike Madison and Monroe, Adams was a Federalist, and B.) If you're allowed to vote for dead candidates, it would logically follow that you'd allow dead people to vote for said candidates. No wonder Daley keeps on getting reelected.

Apparently, Obama will be voting in Kenwood at around 1:30 this afternoon. This was lousy news for our Maroon photographers who were up before the crack of dawn in anticipation of an early vote.

Labels: Barack Obama

In the past week Hank Weber has:

a.) Changed his name to Henry
b.) Quit his job and moved to St. Louis
c.) Ruined the dreams of thousands of kids
d.) all of the above

Read on for the answer!

Weber, former vice president of community affairs at the U of C and the man partly responsible for the ultimate eviction of the Hyde Park Co-Op, just started up his new gig as Vice Chancellor of Governmental Affairs at Wash U and is already making headlines. According to the Wash U Student Life, Weber nixed a plan by students and Barack Obama's campaign to bring the Senator to campus on February 2:

Three students in the organization then met with Vice Chancellor for Governmental Affairs Henry Weber to request permission to have Obama speak on campus in the Athletic Complex.

Barack Obama is set to speak at the Edward Jones Dome on Saturday, February 2, at 9 p.m. Admission is free and attendants are encouraged to RSVP online here.

"The Vice Chancellor told us that because the University could not offer the same opportunity to every candidate and because of tax concerns, the University could not host Obama," said senior Ben Kastan, one of the students involved in making the request.

So how come candidates are allowed to speak at public and private universities all the time? The answer is that if one candidate comes, every other candidate must be allowed to speak there as well. Almost always, the venues don't turn into revolving doors, though, since campaign schedules are complicated, and it's not really worth it for, say, Duncan Hunter to give a speech to liberal college kids who have never heard of him.

So if you answered D, congratulations!

Labels: Barack Obama, Hank Weber

From the Guardian (via TPM), comes this gem out of the mouth of an "unidentified Clinton advisor":

"If you have a social need, you're with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you're young and you have no social needs, then he's cool."

Oh?

Labels: Barack Obama, Hillary

If Edwards’s event was a rally and Hillary’s was a forum, Obama’s appearance at Concord High School is an event. With school still in session, no one is allowed into the building, which makes enough sense, but it’s 30 degrees and no one seems to have any idea when we’ll be allowed in. As a result a line stretches from the doors down to the street and the crowd’s impatience breeds a level of expectation not seen elsewhere.

Standing in front of us is a couple from Cambridge, Massachusetts and their young son, who I’ll call Billy. Imagine Jonathan Lipnicki from Jerry Maguire, and then drop him smack dab in the middle of the most intensely covered presidential campaign in history, and you have Billy. Our conversation goes something like this:

Billy: Do you know who my dad is running for?
Me: …who?
Billy: My dad is running for Obama.
Me: Oh.
Billy: He says his name funny. Do you know what he calls him?
Me: What?
Billy: Ba-rack!
Me: You know, I think your dad might have it right actually.
Billy: [changing subject] We just saw a former president and someone who is running for president. Can you guess who we saw?
Me: Jimmy Carter?
Billy: No! We saw Bill Clinton and—and…[stumbles briefly]
Me: Hillary
Billy: Yeah! [walks away to climb snowbank].

So there you have it. The 2008 Democratic primary in a nutshell: some dude with a funny name against that chick who married the old president guy.

Adding to the atmosphere outside is a wide range of organized activists, handing out paraphernalia and talking to voters. They offer stickers that say “Ed in ‘08” for an educational foundation supported by Bill and Melinda Gates, and “I’m a health care voter,” and “I’m voting for kids” (which would seem to encompass both the education and the health care groups). There’s also a lady handing out pens and cookies to raise awareness of the ballooning defense budget. The pen doesn’t work and the cookies are stale, thus illustrating perfectly the perils of cutting costs on essential services.

After an hour outside, we’re finally allowed into the building where, to my dismay, they’re checking names on a thick, official-looking list. “They” are volunteers who can’t be any older than me, endowed with an authority that seems to surprise and slightly confuse them. Apparently, this event is RSVP only and there’s no way anyone is getting in off of the waiting list. It feels like the scene in the Christmas Story where Ralphie waits an hour to see Santa only to completely blank on what he wants and ultimately ask for a fire truck, if that makes any sense.

The doors to the gymnasium are barred by campaign staff who, if not particularly beefy looking, have the full support of the Concord police force, and for all I know they’re armed to the teeth with tasers. An altercation is out of the question. Somewhere close to me a middle-aged lady who can’t find her name on the guest list grumbles, “I was leaning toward Hillary and this seals it!” Moments later, we see her walk right in, unaccosted. After lying to the volunteer on duty (“yeah, we already checked in”), we’re in the clear. Hope never tasted so audacious.

Obama's goal when he takes the stage in Concord is clear: find the undecideds and speak directly to them, even going so far as to ask them to identify themselves at the beginning of the speech so he can announce his intentions to convert them. “In four days time,” he implores at the beginning of each new thought, before musing once more on the possibilities of his brand of hope.

There’s little about Barack Obama’s oratorical abilities that hasn’t been parsed over, analyzed, and discussed some more, but after Iowa and Hillary Clinton’s reactionary emphasis on production over prose, he has retooled his stump speech to pary her jabs with humor. He spins his opponents as grinches bent on crushing the dreams of the empowered voters and mocks their arguments. He muses, “they say ‘he talks about hope too much. He’s a hope-monger,’’ which earns him laughter and applause, as does the question, “Did JFK say, ‘that moon thing, it’s too far?’” (Answer: no). He’s not as fluid as Edwards, who speaks quickly and with few breaks. Rather, he thrives off of a certain choppiness, and his speech moves in an escalating series of crescendos, until finally, the expectations of the audience are met full on by the volume and the intonation and the substance of the skinny gentleman from the South Side with a funny name standing at the podium. At those points, the words hardly even matter

His performance in Concord and the crowd’s eagerness to embrace him solidifies my belief that New Hampshire is a foregone conclusion for the Senator. The next day, he speaks at a similar rally in Nashua, with a capacity crowd of 1,500 and another 1,500 crammed into an auditorium next door watching on a video screen. For now at least, the hope-mongering seems to be paying off.

Labels: Barack Obama, New Hampshire primary

The Idolator, part of the Gawker umbrella that includes Wonkette and Deadspin, has an item on Hillary and Obama's musical taste. Just going by their examples, the situation is in fact bleak. The Goo-Goo Dolls, Celine Dion, Third Eye Blind--it's not the type of jams you want the leader of the free world listening to as he/she prepares for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. But are benefit concerts really an accurate measurement of musical taste? After all, if the Goo Goo Dolls want to play for free, and people are willing to pay your campaign to see them, there's no point in saying no.

According to Facebook, Obama's favorite musicians are as follows:

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Joann Sebastian Bach (cello suites), and the Fugees.


By contrast, Hillary's facebook page doesn't list any favorite anythings, which in addition to being really lame, means that I'm just going to assume that she really does like Celine Dion and Fleetwood Mac.

To date, Wyclef, Lauryn, and Pras are still the number-one reason I can come up with for why I would vote for Obama (I'm still on the fence). In fact, it's the best reason anyone can up with--Andrew Sullivan's recent cover story in the Atlantic said essentially the same thing in different terms, and the Nation made a similar argument. Obama provides an exit strategy from the Baby Boomers' bickering that no other candidate can escape. If you accept the premise that the country needs a fresh approach, then BHO is the only candidate left--"Washington Outsiders" like Romney and Huckabee are still Baby Boomers stuck fighting the wars of yesteryear.

So musical tastes, far from being a space-filler on political blogs, can tell us a lot about the candidates. For Obama, the first major presidential candidate ever to openly acknowledge his love of hip-hop, his tastes remind us that he doesn't really care about the lingering generational conflict he was never a part of.

Labels: Barack Obama, hip-hop