Barack Obama for Democratic nominee - Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times has endorsed Barack Obama. As blogger Sam Graham-Felsen points out, this is big, historic even. It's the first endorsement for the Times since 1972!

Barack Obama for Democratic nominee - Los Angeles Times: "experience has value only if it is accompanied by courage and leads to judgment.

Nowhere was that judgment more needed than in 2003, when Congress was called upon to accept or reject the disastrous Iraq invasion. Clinton faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war. At last week's debate and in previous such sessions, Clinton blamed Bush for abusing the authority she helped to give him, and she has made much of the fact that Obama was not yet in the Senate and didn't face the same test. But Obama was in public life, saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right."

Dawn in South Carolina

A native Tar Heel's take on the results, reflecting what so many progressive North Carolinians were thinking and talking about yesterday:

Dawn in South Carolina:

"When I was growing up in North Carolina, our neighbor South Carolina played an important role in our lives--giving us something to look down on. We fell for too many racist demagogues through the years (y'all remember Jesse Helms?), but we weren't always run by them. We didn't have no rebel flag flying over our statehouse. We elected a racially moderate governor at the height of the civil-rights backlash in 1960. It was something to say for ourselves, and we appreciated South Carolina's making us look relatively all right.

After Saturday's primary, this Tar Heel can do nothing but offer a big, deep bow to the Democrats of South Carolina. Not because I was particularly rooting for Barack Obama over John Edwards--but because of these fine folks' rejection of the Clintons' gutter politics. The majority of white Democrats, in a state where the Democratic Party was so long the organized mob enforcing Jim Crow, repelled the Clinton campaign's unspeakably vile attempt to paint Barack Obama as some kind of coke-dealing, slumlord-pimping cousin of Al Sharpton--and their equally vile assumption that Deep South whites, whether they're Democratic or Republican, can be manipulated by coded racial divisiveness in 2008 the way they were in 1968. Or, to add a bit more vileness to the mix, their assumption that they could make South Carolina blacks believe that one of their own would be 'unelectable' by definition."

Stunning Facts from Obama's SC Primary Victory

Lots of important data points in last night's historic win....

No Bradley effect in SC.
One big surprise is that Senator Obama managed to increase his share of the White vote significantly over the most recent polls, garnering nearly 25% of that demo rather than the projected 10%, a rare if not unprecedented feat for an African American candidate, especially noteworthy in the "deep south". Second, the senator's share of the white male vote was almost even with Hillary's.

Here are a couple more points, from MSNBC.com:

"COLUMBIA, S.C. - There were two true stunners Saturday night: the size of Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory over Sen. Hillary Clinton — 28 percentage points — but just as significantly this number: total turnout for Democrats in their primary was greater than the turnout for the Republican primary in this state, which is one of the most loyally Republican in the nation.

Four years ago about 293,000 Democrats voted in the state’s primary: Saturday Obama alone got more than that number of votes.

Why did Obama win South Carolina and what does this triumph portend for
future contests?
One short answer: He and his campaign staffers
worked."

Big congrats and much respect is due to the South Carolina democratic party for their fairness, hard work, and impeccable organization!

Election: Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick

So brilliant, so funny, so on the nose on so many levels...

Radical Love Gets a Holiday - New York Times

Radical Love Gets a Holiday - New York Times

An interesting, thoughtful perspective on MLK from the very smart, very funny frequent NPR contributor Sarah Vowell:

"Whoever wins the presidential election this year will be a Christian. (Unless of course it’s that one guy who is a member of a Muslim sleeper cell. Just when you think the electoral process couldn’t get any more stupid....) So the rest of us might as well suck it up and see if we can pick the Christian who is, if incapable of loving his or her enemies, the one who seems least likely to drum up a bunch of extra, new enemies to hate."

The hardball master has taught Hillary well | Andrew Sullivan - Times Online

One of my favorite conservative writers, Andrew Sullivan, nails the thinking behind the Clinton camp's Machiavellian by way of Karl Rove political calculations and machinations of the past two weeks:

The hardball master has taught Hillary well Andrew Sullivan - Times Online: "The Chicago columnist Don Rose explained the logic clearly enough: “They’re not really racists, they just want to stress that Obama hasn’t really transcended race and that a person of colour may not be electable. Think about it, folks. Over and over again.”

The hardball tactics of Rove have defined American political life for a long time. The Clintons have now shown they have learnt from the master. The question for the Democrats is whether they want a candidate who can play the Rove game as cynically and as brutally as the Republicans. Or whether they want a new start and a new politics. That’s what is at stake now in the Democratic race. And one side has shown its true colours."

Weddings - New York Times

I don't usually blog about wedding stories, but this is a great unexpected love story and a lovely perspective on recognizing love:

"...They met on whirlwind encounters in 14 countries, and on one of those trips, they bought her engagement ring in Edinburgh.

They were married on Dec. 29 by the Rev. Glen Robyne, a United Methodist minister and Mr. Robinson’s nephew, at the Old Spanish Monastery in North Miami Beach. The nondenominational service had American Indian touches and also included a friend reading a Portuguese poem and Mr. Robinson’s oldest son, Lawrence, reading a French poem.

Several guests said that they had come halfway around the world to witness the wedding of Ms. Thompson, who had an explanation for why she finally said yes.

“When he looks into my eyes,” she said, “there is adoration there that makes me feel wonderful about me. That’s what you should really look for in someone. Because if you feel wonderful about yourself, you can do things.”"

Hillary, Barack, Experience - New York Times

Hillary, Barack, Experience - New York Times: "Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid.
Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.”"

Jon Robin Baitz: Leaving Los Angeles (Part Three: Epilogue) - Entertainment on The Huffington Post

Jon Robin Baitz: Leaving Los Angeles (Part Three: Epilogue) - Entertainment on The Huffington Post

A heartfelt account about the personal costs of the ongoing writers' strike from one of TV's most successful and outspoken creators, Jon Baitz, formerly of ABC's Brothers and Sisters. It's interesting when the labor struggle involves some of the most privileged among us:

"It came as no particular shock that the head of ABC Studios very politely fired me Friday evening. 'What did I think was going to happen?' is not an unreasonable question. I have not, for someone with a show on the air, been particularly politic about the strike; specifically the media moguls and their polarizing intractability. The head of the studio said it was a bad day, he was making a lot of these calls. I felt sorry for him. I really did. Not so bad for myself. Still, I guess I no longer have any relationship to Brothers & Sisters or to the studio. Just a very gracious, exceptionally polite 'bye-bye.'"

American Pie in the Sky?

Columbia Law Professor Patricia Williams writes an excellent analysis/indictment of our image-obsessed national political psyche in the current issue of the Nation magazine, daring us to rise above the incessant, reductive, and ultimately degrading spin this election season. The title of her piece, "American Pie", however, betrays the persistently challenging, perhaps even impossible, nature of that goal:
American Pie:

"I hope that we Americans can resist the vicious vacuity of politics at the level of whether Tara Reid has hit 'scarily skinny.' We will have enough to deal with as the right's Rovian spinmeisters kick into action, wrapping both Obama and Clinton in sticky webs of hybridized stereotypes. She will be too 'mannish,' he too 'boyish.' She'll be too familiar, he too foreign. He'll be a wimp, she'll be a pimp. Yet this is an extraordinary moment in American history--we have our first serious black and female presidential candidates. It is my audacious little hope that the two of them, in whatever order, will become running mates by November. They must not fall prey to those who would love to see them wound each other before then, in the scramble to be top dog."