Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Speech



He's a good orator, and it's a nice speech, but he's done better.

The issue, and this speech, deserve better than I'm going to give here, but I'm just not up to it right now.

Two things --- I like Obama less now than I did before, for his denunciation of Wright's remarks; and he really should not even have mentioned Geraldine Ferraro.

I do like the message of hope and unity, of setting aside our differences and our anger to work things out constructively, but overall, it came across as reassuring the fearful white voters that the nuclear option is off the table; that while they'd like a seat at the table and are just as deserving as anybody else, the uppity blacks are promising to not get too uppity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

He had to denounce "God damn America." There is no path to the presidency with those words unchallenged. But he placed those words in a context and explained that context, which I think was helpful, even though you may already know and understand it.

Anonymous said...

Hey H., haven't been around here in a while.

I find your take very interesting. I'm reading lots of folks giving Obama points for limiting his denunciation to the words, and refusing to distance himself from the man.

Personally, I thought he said some important things toward the end of the speech, but not as important as lotsa folks are saying. I didn't hear anything that would comfort the sort of white voter who would worry about his uppity-ness.

I agree he shouldn't have mentioned Ferraro

hipparchia said...

heya, geneo! good to see ya! i haven't been getting out and about much myself, blogwise.

you and michael have raised a couple of points that i think i'd like to say something about. i'll put up another post on it in the next day or two.