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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (38163)	7/27/2004 10:00:58 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 81568

BARACK OBAMA'S MIRACULOUS CAMPAIGN. Race Against History by Noam Scheiber "Sloppy drunk" is not a term that warms the hearts of advance men, the people responsible for making politicians' events run smoothly. It is, however, a fairly apt description of at least a quarter of the audience at the Will/Grundy County Annual afl-cio Dinner on this Friday night in late April, just before State Senator Barack Obama arrives to make a pitch for his U.S. Senate campaign. At 9:00 p.m., a couple hundred union members are gathered in a banquet hall whose hard linoleum floor, institutional ceiling tiles, and decorative band of Christmas lights give it the feel of a high school cafeteria. Joliet is only about 45 minutes from downtown Chicago, at the center of Will, one of the suburban "collar" counties that surround the city. But, culturally, it feels much farther away. The women's hairdos are noticeably bigger, the men a little heavier. Everyone appears to be drinking beer and cocktails from clear plastic cups. And, as I walk in, an emcee reminds the audience not to forget about tonight's "50-50 raffle," in the working-class Illinoisan accent "Saturday Night Live" made famous. Another thing not likely to warm the hearts of advance men: watching the warm-up act for your boss rant about the infernal treachery of politicians. George W. Bush carried Will County by a few percentage points in 2000; in 2002, Republicans swept just about every local office here. But you'd never know it listening to Margaret Blackshere, the diminutive president of the state afl-cio, who gives the speech directly before Obama's. Blackshere carries on for what must be 15 minutes about corporate greed, the exploitation of workers in Beijing, and the uselessness of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And, while her message seems to resonate with the audience--a group of ironworkers assures me that everyone here is concerned about the migration of jobs overseas--her tone is a little jarring. The speech's crescendo is a surprisingly militant indictment of not only the president ("I'll be damned if I'm going to let George W. Bush and his cronies destroy us"), but of any politician who would "wrap themselves in our flag." "Thank you very much, Margaret, we have our work cut out for us," is the only thing the slightly stunned emcee can think to say once she finishes. When Obama is finally introduced, he's at no such loss. A self-described "skinny guy from the South Side" with a mild country drawl, his broad smile and high cheekbones make him an impressive figure on stage. Obama frames his speech as a playful introduction to himself. ("When I first ran for state Senate ... [people] would call me 'Yo Mama.' And I'd have to explain, 'No, it's O-bama'--that my father was from Kenya, from Africa, which is where I got the name ... and that my mother was from Kansas, which is why I talk the way I do.") But, more than that, his speech is a call for uplift so earnest it would make John Edwards blush. "People would ask me, 'You seem like a nice guy, you're a churchgoing man, got a wonderful law degree, great future ahead of you, why in the heck would you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?' But I tell people the reason I got into politics is the same reason that people decided to form unions," Obama says. "And that is that we are all connected as one people. ... If there's a child on the South Side of Chicago that can't read, that makes a difference in my life, even if it's not my child." <more>...http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040531&s=scheiber053104&c=1&pt=Aa%2FyzSB2doaYG05uWN9TSB%3D%3D