We are now on Obamawatch 2008!

I vowed that after the South Carolina primaries, and the presumable win of Sen. Obama that I would then put the Uppity Negro Network on Obamawatch and make a concerted effort to pay closer attention to the political pundits since I can now avail myself of the cable news networks, namely CNN and occasionally MSNBC.  I’ll watch FoxNews when I’m the mood to throw stuff out of my room–they’ll get me worked up enough.

I further thought about making a separate category called Obamawatch, but the New Hampsh– primaries taught me to not be so presumptious.  So all things Obama will be filed under Politics and susbsequent categories as necessary.

Now, to my point.

This primary is unlike one in my memory.  Granted, this is only the third one that I was truly aware of what was going on in the whole political arena.  I consciously remember winter of 2000 when my U.S. History teacher (shout out to Kyle Westbrook History chair at the new Walter Payton H.S. of Chicago) was quite disappointed when Bill Bradley seemingly was not going to get the nomination and we had, at least to us, the little known governor of Texas (even though it was Texas) who only qualification was that he was the son of our former president.  

I also remember that fall of 2000 because in the weeks leading up to general election, two 16 year olds were going at it everyday all day when we had a chance to argue about who was better qualified with their own “fuzzy math.”   And I actually remember that I went to bed Tuesday night fully expecting to hear that Al Gore had won, and I woke up on the Wednesday morning having to put on my uniform for J.R.O.T.C and my friend was sitting there already and I threw my bookbag down on the floor and we commenced just totally miffed at the series of events surrounding the election.  I think throughout the course of November or prior to the election we actually would stop class and the other students would actually turn their attention to us (this was a R.O. class and truthfully did we do much substantive work?  I think not).

I also remember 2004 campaign, but I believe because that was my first presidential election I only voted in the general election of the fall voting for Illinois’ sad governor Rod Blagojevich and for the horse of a man John Kerry.  Personally, I did like Kerry.  He had the New England liberalism that I appreciated and I personally did think he was qualified for the job–however, I think he signaled the momentary death of the Democratic party.  How the hell you couldn’t defeat someone as incompetent as Bush is beyond me.

So, these years, in 2007 to 2008, because clearly we’ve been running these elections for at least a year as Sen. Obama announced his candidacy in February of 2007, is the first time where I paid attention closely to the primaries–and actually voted–in the early elections in Chicago for the February 5th, Super Duper Tuesday where the 20+ states all hold their primaries.

All of that being said, why are people doubting Sen. Obama’s ability to not garner votes from the other states?  Granted there are places where black Democrats are not as big as in South Carolina, however I do believe that Iowa does stand to reason that Obama can do it!  It was the first state to vote for their delegates and perhaps does show the temper of midwestern states, something that Hill’ry and her campaigners somehow overlooked.  States like Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas and Missouri will be very interesting as midwestern states.  Not to mention the Mountain States of Colorado and Idaho and the southern states of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee (one need only ask an Al Gore who failed to carry his home state and a Harold Ford who fell victim to a rabid Republican in the 2006 U.S. senate election). Lest we forget that in fact Obama was able to mobilize white, women voters to vote for him and not Hill’ry.

ALSO, since we’re on the topic of things forgotten, Obama was the FIRST to speak and run on the campaign of change and somehow the political advisors told both Hill’ry and Lil’ (who wish he was Big) John to use the word “change” as much as possible the day after Obama’s Iowa caucus win.  So now we have mindless Democratic supporters who suffer from that ever contagious disease of political amnesia and now have rearticulated “change” as their own candidate defines it.

Well, make sure to read the blog that’s posted after it, it too is an Obamawatch 2008! related article.

Keep it uppity, JLL

This also seems to be the primary of delegates.  If my memory serves correctly, after the New Hampsh– and South Carolina primaries, for the most part Al Gore and John Kerry had sealed their fate as doomed candidates against the Karl Rove machine.  But currently, let us remember that Sen. Barack Obama has more delegates than Sen. Clinton, a point that neither campaign has made light of, and left the media to do so.