Overcome?
Florida's legislature formally apologized Wednesday for the state’s “shameful” history of slavery, joining five other states that have expressed public regret for what Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama recently called America’s “original sin.”
It's not to say we should forget the past, but an apology for slavery is a major distraction, given the dismal state of affairs -- lost jobs, home foreclosures, struggling minority students. Rather than apologize, we ought to do more about the plight of young African-American males, who seem more prone to crime, joblessness and hopelessness.
While some legislators sound supportive of the slavery apology resolution, it can easily be exploited by those on the fringe. It can be divisive. Already I can hear the arguments: "My ancestors never owned slaves. We didn't benefit from slavery, so we have nothing to apologize for. It's time for black folks to get over it."
They might be right this time. The timing is odd. Here we have a black man getting serious consideration for the White House. If Sen. Barack Obama were to become president, imagine how that might affect the wave of apologies for slavery. His election would mean so much symbolically to black people around the world, yet he has no ancestral link to slavery.
While some deride such moves as attempts to slough off responsibility or soothe the consciences of white liberals, James Campbell, who chaired the 2003-2006 Brown University effort to examine the school's ties to the slave trade, sees efforts to re-examine history as a step towards justice, not an end unto itself. "I believe that how we see the past matters," says Campbell, "because how we understand history helps shape the present matrix of political possibility."
To Cohen, who remembers attending segregated sports games in the South as a child, an apology for slavery and its legacy isn't about pointing fingers but coming to terms with a history that for too long has been elided.
"I didn't own slaves. My parents didn't own slaves," says U.S. Rep. Stephen Cohen. "But as a government for a century, we continued to perpetuate the racism that was at the root of slavery in this country," he says.
After a century of segregation and racial violence, he says, "This is an attempt to start the healing."
Hillary Clinton
With the nominating contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama getting ever-tighter, there's a growing call -- mostly from Clinton partisans -- to allow Michigan and Florida primary results to count at the Democratic National Convention.
Hold the Michigan and Florida Democratic primaries again. The voters -- not the party insiders -- have the moral authority to choose the nominee. Democratic voters in Michigan and Florida should get that chance. Then in November, we'll have a fair fight. And I'll be honest -- it may not help the chances for a Republican victory in the fall. But it will help something even more important: the integrity of our political process.
Lately I find myself wondering: Why aren't more powerful Democrats in both the Obama and Clinton camps lobbying for a revote in Florida and Michigan? Is it simply about money? Sure, it would be expensive, but both candidates are raising money phenomenally.
And sure, the party would like to save some of that Democratic cash to fight John McCain in November. But I have to wonder, what's worse for Democrats: A protracted battle that results in a near-tie, with superdelegates carrying the day in Denver (leaving plenty of cash to fight McCain but one camp or the other furious), or a party whose coffers are maybe depleted (though I can't imagine that), but whose supporters know that democracy, though expensive, prevailed.
I'm not sure I can answer that question, but my gut tells me it's the latter.
Florida broke the rules, so it was supposed to be punished. Now Hillary Clinton is trying to lift the punishment -- in a way that might add delegates to her nomination fight with Barack Obama.
The Democratic National Committee decided last year that Florida delegates won't count at this year's convention, because Florida defied party rules in scheduling its primary this early. And the leading candidates agreed not to campaign there.
Would Hillary defy the DNC if she hadn't won Michigan's primary after somehow neglecting to have her name removed from the ballot Would she champion Floridians if Barack Obama was beating her in the polls? Of course not. She'll wrap all sorts of high-flying rhetoric about fairness and empowerment of the voter around it, but Hillary would have become the Defender of the DNC Faith had anyone else won Michigan.
None of this should surprise anyone.
This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart.
If this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn't contest those states because they weren't going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC's procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It's as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious. Imagine if African-American voters feel the rules were changed to prevent Obama's victory, if young voters feel the delegate counts were shifted to block their candidate.
This crowd is about to get much smaller.
There were no major blowups at Thursday's Republican presidential debate in Florida. Mitt Romney repudiated Washington's management of the economy. John McCain repudiated war critics. Rudy Giuliani repudiated the New York Times. Mike Huckabee repudiated those who attack his faith. And Ron Paul repudiated ... everybody else.
What did we learn from the Republican debate.
I don’t think there was an enormous margin between the candidates this evening. One of the challenges of covering this race is getting a sense of how these candidates and their messages are perceived to folks who don’t follow politics day-to-day, who just begin to tune in to the race in the closing days before they head to the polls.
If you were an apolitical Floridian, and you just tuned in tonight, I think you were probably impressed by Romney. It was his most unflappable performance in a while. Everybody else – McCain, Giuliani, Huckabee, even Paul – they were all more or less their regular selves.
Perhaps all of them saw how both Clinton and Obama killed each other in that CNN debate earlier this week and were afraid of turning off voters. Either way, tonight's debate was the tamest GOP affair in weeks. This, despite the fact that half of this field could be out of contention after next Tuesday.
Overall, the tame affair was good news for both Romney and McCain, the two frontrunners in Florida; both got to sound and look presidential. Romney, in fact, may have had his best debate performance in a long time because he wasn't attacked.
Rudy Giuliani appeals for support wherever he can find it.
With his plan for winning the GOP presidential nomination riding largely on a Florida victory at the end of the month, Rudy Giuliani asked an evangelical congregation for prayers instead of votes Sunday and quoted scripture to evoke a message of hope and perseverance. "I'm not coming here to ask for your vote," he said. "That's up to you and it's not the right place.
It's a good thing for Rudy Giuliani that he believes in the power of optimism. These days his campaign needs some. For most of 2007 the former New York City mayor led the Republican field in national polls, some state polls, and money raised from individual contributors. Poll after poll showed that Republicans believed Giuliani was the GOP's best chance to hold the White House in 2008.
Those days are over.
Giuliani is in danger of being downgraded to the welterweight division. Rudy says it almost as much as he says "9/11" - because the Jan. 29 primary is his warm Waterloo. But a new statewide poll shows Huckabee, Romney and McCain all ahead of him. With Rudy now third in national polls, that's starting to sound about right.
