Arbitrary number this is, but we have something like a 75 percent chance that the next president will be a Democrat, and — well, after Iowa I’d have said 75 percent chance, after New Hampshire it’s — um –50?– the Democratic nominee will be Barack Obama.

I confess to an inability to shed cynicsm, and to being a young cumudgeon.  Regarding my post on Obama’s speech, I should reiterate that I don’t see how anything Obama might have said could have a different effect.  You cannot run for president without thinking yourself as somehow synonymous with the nation at large, and edging to referencing yourself in the third person.

Obama contains the classic dilema of Electibility: he is presidential timber because he has just enough of a dearth of experience to allow a wide projection of meaning.  Or, as Bill Clinton parced it, one year of Senate experience.  (And, might I add, under the mentorship of one Joseph Lieberman.)  This is not enough time to leave a mark, and Obama has been careful to make sure that is the case, and this allows the public to think of themselves as pushing the “reset” button for our line-up of political figures.  Which poses the question, as we slide into electing our first black president —

When will we have our first Entrenched Black Senator?  Obama might have been that man, I suppose up for the White House in 2012 had Kerry won the election in 2004.

Implicit in the first lines of the speech, though never explicitly said as we can slide to its meaning of getting out large numbers of people who do not normally vote and tapping into the idealism of Youth– Race… to not lose some of the cynicism and appreciate the moment is to commit the civic sin of ahoristical perspective.  And Hillary Clinton’s campaign disgraced itself when Mark Penn suggested the Republicans might use rumors about drug dealing — dealing in racist stereotypes for that moment.

We have had some level of debate on the meaning of Obama’s background, and how it sets him apart from the cultural background of the average black American, and also the terms of the literary conceit of the “Magical Negro”, someone popping out of nowhere to assuaging of white guilt, and I suppose you can trudge through these area and drudge through the nuances as carefully as you feel that need.  Blah de Blah de Blah.  Do so, and then go tap the shoulders of the great Reactionary Racist Demagouges of American history, and see where this discussion gets you.  For instance, South Carolina’s Ellison “Cotton Ed” Smith, who, as his nephew and biographer put it…

“At some point in every speech the Lord’s will got mixed up with the boys in grey storming an impregnable height, the purity of Southern Womanhood, Yankees, the glorious past and the still more glorious future, including the white man’s sacred right to lynch.  It was all very vague and inspiring.”

Or, in his own words, referencing his reaction to the 1936 Democratic Convention…

“When I came out on the floor of that great hall, bless God, it looked like a chckerboard: a spot of white here, a spot of black there.  But I kept going down that long aisle, and finally found the great standard of South Carolina.  And, praise God, it was a spot of white!  I had no sooner taken my seat when a newspaperman came down the aisle and squatted by me and said, “Senator, do you know a nigger is going to come up younder in a minute and offer the invocation?”  I told him, I said, “Now don’t be joking me, I’m upset enough the way it is.”  But then, bless God, out of that platform walked a slew-footed, blue-gummed, kinky-headed Senegambian!  And he started praying and I started walking.  And as I pushed through these great doors and walked across the vast rotunda, it seemed to me that old John Calhourn leaned down from his mansion in the sky and whispered in my ear, “You did right, Ed.”

But you can pretty easily just throw a dart at a long list of American political figures and hit a remark such as that.  So that was the sight of a black man playing any small role in civic life, and in the party that he considered the Vanguard of White Supremacy — tiny flutterings flittering away.  After all, he thought they’d been well shut down on the defeat of Reconstruction, which on that score, from the farewell speech of the last of the 20 black members of Congress from the late nineteenth century, also reading the tea-leaves.

“This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negro’s temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again.  These parting words are on behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people, faithful, industrial, loyal people, rising people, full of potential force.  […]   The only apology that I have to make for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness, and manhood suffrage for one eighth of the entire population of the United States.”  — George H. White of North Carolina, 1-29-01 – the next black Congressman would be Oscar DePriest in 1929, working his way in the Chicago political machinery.

Then again, you know, the statement “They said this day would never come” could have been said by Hillary Clinton if she had won.  Hillary Clinton dead wrong in her response to the “Iron my shirt” hecklers — drop the “Remnants” in the “Remnants of Sexism” statement.

I should probably apologize to Michael Wade right off the bat.  This may be obnoxiously innocuous.  But the terminology sticks out as one giant red flag.  Understand, though, that out of the thousands of people who picked through and read today’s Letters to the Oregonian, you can count the number of people who flashed where I did on one hand.

Iowa was won by the young.  At last, a new cadre of voters to break the Beltway Myopia.  Let’s hope Iowa wasn’t a fluke.  Goodbye, baby boomers! 

Hm.

Cadre:  a group of trained or otherwise qualified personnel capable of forming, training, or leading an expanded organization, as a religious or political faction or a skilled work force; … … … a cell of trained and devoted workers.

Well, if you say so.  How many cadres of anti-baby boomers are there?

You know something. I did not much like Barack Obama’s victory speech, one that is heralded high and wide as Brilliant Hypnotizing Oratory.

There probably is no way around the queasy effect of a politician, who needs to posit his or her victory as the start of a Revolutionary Epoch in American history. But somehow I still think, I want to hear something a little bit less… audacious.

They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.

And yet, here we are. This country has come together. Stricken out their disillusionment. Bridged the awesome divides. Found the common purpose. The common purpose, of course, being to get Barack Obama a slew of delegates. In the state of Iowa. The nation, the entire nation, has come together to vote at a 38 percent clip in the localized environment of Iowa to grant him 38 percent of the vote. It is high purpose indeed, transcending the nation’s differences, for Awesome Me.

But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

I remain a bit cynical, I admit. Somehow I fail to understand a post-partisan America, and somehow I fail to see how roughly 50 percent — probably a bit less than that — of Americans aren’t going to be coming together for the Awesome Goal of nominating or Electing Me, Barack Obama, over … that other guy. And gal.

A New Day in America. The Age of Me… Thank you, everyone! This is America’s Purpose.

For what it’s worth, John Edwards left me even more disappointed. How difficult is it to Congratulate Your Victorious Opponent?

Yeah, okay.  Who would have imagined a skinny black kid with a funny name, and connect that meme with the one about the unrepresentatively rural and unrepresentatively White state, and…

John Edwards is toast.  There is no room for a Southern White Male.  Apparently.

I was thinking about the candidates appearances on the newly returned late night programs.  Hillary Clinton did an awkward bit on the Union approved Letterman.  Mike Huckabee crossed the picket line to appear on Jay Leno.  I imagine that no Democrat would dare cross the picket line to appear on Leno, but Mike Huckabee’s explanation on appearing on Leno (and it is curious that guests on Leno are in the position of apologizing for being on the show) was that he thought Leno had struck a deal just as Letterman had.  This ignorance would not have flied with the Democrats.  But then again, what was Huckabee doing thinking he needed to explain this away — are the Unions going to cross over for Huckabee?  I suppose there might be something in dicing and analyzing results.  Huckabee dominated lower income Republicans — which probably largely simply overlaps his base in the arena of Evangelicals.

More impressively, the Youths pulled in for Obama, and so it is that the Kids Are All Right.  Here I muse and note that there are no Youths in the Republican Party.  A fun game to play is to look at the average age of registered Republicans circa 1994 and compare it to right this minute.  If you want to argure the “If you’re 20 and aren’t a liberal — no heart; if you’re 40 and aren’t a conservative — no head” Churchill bit (I think that’s Churchill), I will point out that Reagan dominated the Youth Vote.  But maybe that was a particularly Heartless Generation.  Or maybe just one with only a memory of Carter to guide them.

I have a general idea that Election Results are something of a lagging indicator of where our society stands.  The Elderly vote; the Youth do not vote.  So it is that the worst message that came out of the 2004 elections was that the Evangelicals stampeded the Republicans to victory.  A lagging indicator that moved the Republicans into an untenuable position — a position foreign to —

Maybe in a couple of posts I’ll get to a New Years Celebration Explanation to complete that thought.  Maybe.

Mike Huckabee won the Republican Caucuses.  In the arena of “winners” and “losers”, that makes him a winner.  McCain is probably the other winner, just off the basis that Romney lost.  Giuliani is probably a loser too, as we prepare to find out what the viability of his “Ignore the Earliest Contests” strategy.  Ron Paul beat this guy.  Ron Goddamned Paul.

And Fred Thompson.  Fred Goddamned Thompson.

The immediate reaction of the Republican Intelligentsia, as hear on NPR from Jonah Goldberg, was the trumpetting of McCain.  Huckabee frightens this crowd, as Goldberg referenced when he called him a “Right Wing Progressive”, additional comment “Not a good thing.”  Somewhat familiar to Rush Limbaugh in either 1992 or 1996, after Pat Buchanan disturbed the party, coming on the air with the statement “You have been fooled.  Pat Buchanan is not a conservative.  He is a Populist.”

The Evangelicals.  They have a mind of their own.  Somewhere beyond the grave, William Jennings Bryan is smiling.

I get the feeling John McCain is the Republican nominee.  And I have a sense of dejavu.  John Kerry in 2004 was the front-runner at the very beginning, then fell off the perch completely, and came back… by default.  By Default.

Liberman is stumping for McCain.  A boost?  Sure.  Lieberman is a great hero of Republicans.  Why, McCain may well tap Lieberman as his running mate!  Speaking of lagging indicators, McCain / Lieberman ought to excite the Youth, correct?

#1:  Ralph Nader has endorsed John Edwards.  For whatever that’s worth.

#2:  Dennis Kucinich has endorsed Barack Obama as the second choice for his Iowa voters.  For reasons that don’t quite make sense to me, seeing as he endorsed John Edwards four years ago, Edwards a few steps to the right of where he is now.

#3:   I have already said who I would vote for if you threw a ballot at me.  But I don’t know what I would do for that great second ballot, seeing as Dodd is getting nowhere.  Edwards, I suppose.  Though, I am wary… Paragraph 4 for where to begin.  I suppose this is where to start for how Kucinich can scuttle Edwards — consistency or something or other.

#4:  Fred Thompson has said that he is not really into this “running for president” thing that he is currently engaged in.  I do not fully understand that guy.  It is, I suppose, a suggestion that he is a regular guy who, like all regular guys, isn’t so ambitious as to run for the presidency.  I would suggest that a presidential candidate ought be … um… Ambitious.

So, bottom line:  Fred Thompson has endorsed Not Him.

#5: Thom Hartmann has said that he believes Edwards might be the next Roosevelt, and Obama might be the next Kennedy.  (The latter I warily think toward “uh oh“.)  Unsaid, though a bit inferred: Clinton looks like the next Clinton.

#6: Oh, and Erik Sten has endorsed Hillary Clinton.  Woo-hoo.  Who did your city council member in whatever city you are in endorse?  Do you know?  Why do you know?

… Iowa.  Less than 36 hours away… What a stupid election system we have set up.

2008.

And off with the head of 2007!

When this year ends, the nation will have elected a new president. And that will be the end of the Bush Presidency. Or, 20-some days shy of the end. But we will all mentally think of the new Guy (or Gal) as President.

And we will, from that vantage point, be able to better digest the meaning of the eight years of George W Bush. If there is any meaning to it, which I’m not entirely sure there is.

New edict: Let’s start referring to the man by his middle name. “Walker”.

I think the mental trap of thinking beyond Walker came with the 2006 elections. At that point, one could think ahead, but then the mental jumps just sort of lag as you look around, and see that Wallace is still sitting there, sputtering away. Maybe the primary season, up suddenly in less than 48 hours with Iowa, will get me past that hurdle.