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February 20, 2008

Comments

Kawg1012

Great post!

Mandy

Great post, Great blog!

I work for the Obama campaign in the county where I live.

Hope you don't mind If I link to you from my site!!

Mandy

I'm hosting a live-blogging online primary party on my blog for tonights results! Stop by and join us! add your 2 cents!!!

http://notanothermomblog.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Anjuan

After writing a similar post about Barack, I searched to see if something similar had been written, and I saw this post. Thanks for writing such an insightful post. Do you mind if I put a link to this post in the post on my blog?

DemocratDad

Please do! What's our blog?

aLyoness

With all the recent controversy regarding Obama's long time church do you still feel that it's a "shoe-in."

Also, what of Obama's position to not allow the votes of Michigan and Florida?

Democratdad

Thanks for asking, aLyonness.

Well, I'm a little more nervous about Obama's "shoe-in" status after all of the anti-hope mongering that Hillary Clinton's campaign has been up to over the past few months, particularly the way they have redefined Obama's success in demographic and racial terms. But I still do believe he will win. My wife and I are planning to be in D.C. for the inauguration in January 09 -- it will truly be historic, and I predict there will be many tears shed by citizens of all demographic groups on that day.

As for your specific questions, the pastor/church eruptions are frustrating to me as an atheist. I consider it to be the price Obama has to pay for the betrayal he made of his beautiful humanist/atheist upbringing when he joined a religious community steeped in make-believe and empty "God" talk. He surely had to be Christian to run for national office, and there are no doubt other personal reasons why Trinity Church was a good fit for him in Chicago, so I understand why he joined it. But this is the stuff that comes with the territory of religious belief. Will it hurt his chances? Probably not, since all of it belongs in the realm of emotional and self-satisfied groupthink; as long as he insists repeatedly of his devotion to God and Jesus over the next five months I imagine that voters who care about this kind of make-believe will go along.

On the MI and FL decision, I think that will be forgotten soon. It seemed a fair result. Votes only exist in any meaningful way when they reflect rules. So the dichotomy was false.

Susannah

Very interesting post. You may be interested in this recent thought-provoking essay from across the Atlantic: http://www.theliberal.co.uk/Obama_and_the_Idea_of_America.html

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