A New Year Reminder: "Stop and hear the music"

Joshua Bell Busks in the D.C. Metro - How Many People Notice?

By Vivien Schweitzer
09 Apr 2007

It may be difficult for classical music lovers to imagine Joshua Bell as just another street musician, but that's exactly what he was to the busy rush hour hordes pouring in and out of the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Washington, D.C.

An extensive article in The Washington Post's Sunday magazine yesterday documents an experiment carried out this past January 12, beginning at just before 8 a.m. — the middle of the morning rush hour. Bell performed six classical pieces, including the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2, for about 45 minutes as 1,097 commuters, most on their way to government jobs, passed by.

His performance was organized by the Post "as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

Joshua Bell

Apparently not. Sixty-three people marched past the violinist without a glance while he was playing the Chaconne on his 1713 Stradivarius. The Post writes that, in the 45 minutes that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to listen for a minute or so, while 1,070 people hurried by without even appearing to notice.

When asked what he thought might occur during such an experiment, Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, said that, even assuming Bell wasn't recognized, out of 1,000 people there would be "35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening." He added that he thought a crowd would certainly gather and that Bell would make about $150.

As it turned out, Bell earned $32 and change. The Post quotes him as saying, "That's not so bad, considering. That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."

The event was pitched to Bell as a test of whether, in an unlikely setting, "ordinary people would recognize genius." Whether or not she recognized his genius, at least Brazil native Edna Souza, who has been shining shoes at L'Enfant Plaza for six years, recognized something unusual. She dislikes buskers — she says they are make too much noise and prevent her from talking with her customers, which isn't good for business.

But asked about Joshua Bell, she says while he was also "too loud," "he was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."

Morning in America

By Eugene Robinson |Thursday, November 6, 2008 | Washington Post

I almost lost it Tuesday night when television cameras found the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the crowd at Chicago's Grant Park and I saw the tears streaming down his face. His brio and bluster were gone, replaced by what looked like awestruck humility and unrestrained joy. I remembered how young he was in 1968 when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., moments before King was assassinated and hours before America's cities were set on fire.

I almost lost it again when I spoke with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the bravest leaders of the civil rights crusade, and asked whether he had ever dreamed he would live to see this day. As Lewis looked for words beyond "unimaginable," I thought of the beating he received on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the scars his body still bears.

I did lose it, minutes before the television networks projected that Barack Obama would be the 44th president of the United States, when I called my parents in Orangeburg, S.C. I thought of the sacrifices they made and the struggles they endured so that my generation could climb higher. I felt so happy that they were here to savor this incredible moment.

I scraped myself back together, but then almost lost it again when I saw Obama standing there on the stage with his family -- wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, their outfits all color-coordinated in red and black. I thought of the mind-blowing imagery we will see when this young, beautiful black family becomes the nation's First Family.

Then, when Michelle's mother, brother and extended family came out, I thought about "the black family" as an institution -- how troubled it is, but also how resilient and how vital. And I found myself getting misty-eyed again when Barack and Michelle walked off the stage together, clinging to one another, partners about to embark on an adventure, full of possibility and peril, that will change this nation forever.

It's safe to say that I've never had such a deeply emotional reaction to a presidential election. I've found it hard to describe, though, just what it is that I'm feeling so strongly.

It's obvious that the power of this moment isn't something that only African Americans feel. When President Bush spoke about the election yesterday, he mentioned the important message that Americans will send to the world, and to themselves, when the Obama family moves into the White House.

For African Americans, though, this is personal.

I can't help but experience Obama's election as a gesture of recognition and acceptance -- which is patently absurd, if you think about it. The labor of black people made this great nation possible. Black people planted and tended the tobacco, indigo and cotton on which America's first great fortunes were built. Black people fought and died in every one of the nation's wars. Black people fought and died to secure our fundamental rights under the Constitution. We don't have to ask for anything from anybody.

Yet something changed on Tuesday when Americans -- white, black, Latino, Asian -- entrusted a black man with the power and responsibility of the presidency. I always meant it when I said the Pledge of Allegiance in school. I always meant it when I sang the national anthem at ball games and shot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. But now there's more meaning in my expressions of patriotism, because there's more meaning in the stirring ideals that the pledge and the anthem and the fireworks represent.

It's not that I would have felt less love of country if voters had chosen John McCain. And this reaction I'm trying to describe isn't really about Obama's policies. I'll disagree with some of his decisions, I'll consider some of his public statements mere double talk and I'll criticize his questionable appointments. My job will be to hold him accountable, just like any president, and I intend to do my job.

For me, the emotion of this moment has less to do with Obama than with the nation. Now I know how some people must have felt when they heard Ronald Reagan say "it's morning again in America." The new sunshine feels warm on my face.

An Admirable Campaign Journey

By David S. Broder | Sunday, November 2, 2008 | Washington, Post

When Barack Obama began his candidacy for the White House 20 months ago, most Americans knew next to nothing about the young senator from Illinois, barely two years into his first term in federal office.

After his performance in 2004, some Democratic activists had marked him as the best convention speaker since Ted Kennedy, Ann Richards or Mario Cuomo. Others had read his book "Dreams From My Father" and had declared him their finest literary talent since Ted Sorensen was ghostwriting for John F. Kennedy. Still others remarked on the fact that, unlike many of the party leaders in Washington, Obama had been prescient in his opposition to the U.S. attack on Iraq.

But no one knew much about his political skills or his ideology, and so he was generally underestimated as a threat to Hillary Clinton and the others who lined up to seek the 2008 prize.

What we have learned since then has been impressive. The most basic question about him -- or about anyone seeking the presidency -- is whether he has the capacity to lead the country and manage the government. Nothing in Obama's history -- lawyer, community organizer, state legislator and back-bench senator -- had demonstrated extraordinary skills. The proof had to come from the campaign itself.

As soon as I saw him on the small-town circuit in Iowa, where he began his pursuit of office, two things became clear.

First, he could generate votes by the force of his rhetoric and personality; he was not yet a celebrity, but he already had the capacity to convert strangers into friends.

And second, he had a cadre of people working for him who knew what they were doing. Though many of them were in their first presidential campaign, they were not amateurs. They understood their responsibilities and -- reflecting Obama's own self-discipline -- they went about their work with minimal waste of energy.

Somehow, this young senator had developed a battle plan for an awesomely intimidating and expensive process. Mitt Romney, with his Harvard Business School MBA, was no more efficient than Obama.

Of course, running a good campaign is not a guarantee of success as president. Jimmy Carter figured out brilliantly how to move from Plains, Ga., to the White House, a journey almost as implausible as Obama's, but he didn't know how to govern once he got there.

Obama has been Carteresque in the extravagance -- and vagueness -- of his promises to change Washington. But he is not afflicted with Carter's intellectual-moral contempt for other politicians, the trait that wrecked Carter's relationship with a Democratic Congress. On the contrary, Obama moves well among the political insiders, even while presenting an outsider's visage to the public.

What we have learned of Obama's programs puts him squarely in the liberal tradition of the party. Unlike Bill Clinton, he has not tried to spell out the ways in which he would propose to rewrite Democratic foreign or domestic policy. As a result, we can only guess what his real priorities -- in a time of severe budget constraints and a backlog of accumulated needs -- would be. One can imagine serious debates within an Obama administration and between his White House and Congress.

In what history may record as his singular achievement -- dealing with the classic American dilemma of race -- he had the largely unappreciated help of his opponent, John McCain, who simply ruled out covert racial appeals used by politicians of both parties in the past. But Obama himself demonstrated repeatedly how to bridge the racial divides that still remain, by emphasizing his calm good judgment and respect for others. As a symbol of that national maturity, he carries a powerful, positive message to the world.

Obama is not, any more than other politicians, a paragon. He reneged on his promise to use public funds for his general election campaign, driving a stake into the heart of the post-Watergate effort to reform the campaign finance system. He rejected McCain's invitation to hold joint town hall meetings -- opening the door to the kind of tawdry exchange of charges that we have seen. In both instances, he put his personal goals ahead of the public good -- a worrisome precedent.

But he has engendered widespread enthusiasm in a jaded and cynical public, especially among young people. And if he does not disillusion them in the years ahead, that would be a real gift to the nation.

Washington Post Endorses Obama: "We think he is the right man for a perilous moment. "

October 17, 2008

THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.

The first question, in fact, might be why either man wants the job. Start with two ongoing wars, both far from being won; an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan; a resurgent Russia menacing its neighbors; a terrorist-supporting Iran racing toward nuclear status; a roiling Middle East; a rising China seeking its place in the world. Stir in the threat of nuclear or biological terrorism, the burdens of global poverty and disease, and accelerating climate change. Domestically, wages have stagnated while public education is failing a generation of urban, mostly minority children. Now add the possibility of the deepest economic trough since the Great Depression.

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these problems, and we are far from being his fiercest critic. But for the past eight years, his administration, while pursuing some worthy policies (accountability in education, homeland security, the promotion of freedom abroad), has also championed some stunningly wrongheaded ones (fiscal recklessness, torture, utter disregard for the planet's ecological health) and has acted too often with incompetence, arrogance or both. A McCain presidency would not equal four more years, but outside of his inner circle, Mr. McCain would draw on many of the same policymakers who have brought us to our current state. We believe they have richly earned, and might even benefit from, some years in the political wilderness.

OF COURSE, Mr. Obama offers a great deal more than being not a Republican. There are two sets of issues that matter most in judging these candidacies. The first has to do with restoring and promoting prosperity and sharing its fruits more evenly in a globalizing era that has suppressed wages and heightened inequality. Here the choice is not a close call. Mr. McCain has little interest in economics and no apparent feel for the topic. His principal proposal, doubling down on the Bush tax cuts, would exacerbate the fiscal wreckage and the inequality simultaneously. Mr. Obama's economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises, but it pushes more in the direction of fairness and fiscal health. Both men have pledged to tackle climate change.

Mr. Obama also understands that the most important single counter to inequality, and the best way to maintain American competitiveness, is improved education, another subject of only modest interest to Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama would focus attention on early education and on helping families so that another generation of poor children doesn't lose out. His budgets would be less likely to squeeze out important programs such as Head Start and Pell grants. Though he has been less definitive than we would like, he supports accountability measures for public schools and providing parents choices by means of charter schools.

A better health-care system also is crucial to bolstering U.S. competitiveness and relieving worker insecurity. Mr. McCain is right to advocate an end to the tax favoritism showed to employer plans. This system works against lower-income people, and Mr. Obama has disparaged the McCain proposal in deceptive ways. But Mr. McCain's health plan doesn't do enough to protect those who cannot afford health insurance. Mr. Obama hopes to steer the country toward universal coverage by charting a course between government mandates and individual choice, though we question whether his plan is affordable or does enough to contain costs.

The next president is apt to have the chance to nominate one or more Supreme Court justices. Given the court's current precarious balance, we think Obama appointees could have a positive impact on issues from detention policy and executive power to privacy protections and civil rights.

Overshadowing all of these policy choices may be the financial crisis and the recession it is likely to spawn. It is almost impossible to predict what policies will be called for by January, but certainly the country will want in its president a combination of nimbleness and steadfastness -- precisely the qualities Mr. Obama has displayed during the past few weeks. When he might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush's financial rescue plan. He has surrounded himself with top-notch, experienced, centrist economic advisers -- perhaps the best warranty that, unlike some past presidents of modest experience, Mr. Obama will not ride into town determined to reinvent every policy wheel. Some have disparaged Mr. Obama as too cool, but his unflappability over the past few weeks -- indeed, over two years of campaigning -- strikes us as exactly what Americans might want in their president at a time of great uncertainty.

ON THE SECOND set of issues, having to do with keeping America safe in a dangerous world, it is a closer call. Mr. McCain has deep knowledge and a longstanding commitment to promoting U.S. leadership and values.

But Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads his books can tell, also has a sophisticated understanding of the world and America's place in it. He, too, is committed to maintaining U.S. leadership and sticking up for democratic values, as his recent defense of tiny Georgia makes clear. We hope he would navigate between the amoral realism of some in his party and the counterproductive cocksureness of the current administration, especially in its first term. On most policies, such as the need to go after al-Qaeda, check Iran's nuclear ambitions and fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs little from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain. But he promises defter diplomacy and greater commitment to allies. His team overstates the likelihood that either of those can produce dramatically better results, but both are certainly worth trying.

Mr. Obama's greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest worry: his insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a fixed timeline. Thanks to the surge that Mr. Obama opposed, it may be feasible to withdraw many troops during his first two years in office. But if it isn't -- and U.S. generals have warned that the hard-won gains of the past 18 months could be lost by a precipitous withdrawal -- we can only hope and assume that Mr. Obama would recognize the strategic importance of success in Iraq and adjust his plans.

We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding of the benefits of trade reflected in his writings. A silver lining of the financial crisis may be the flexibility it gives Mr. Obama to override some of the interest groups and members of Congress in his own party who oppose open trade, as well as to pursue the entitlement reform that he surely understands is needed.

IT GIVES US no pleasure to oppose Mr. McCain. Over the years, he has been a force for principle and bipartisanship. He fought to recognize Vietnam, though some of his fellow ex-POWs vilified him for it. He stood up for humane immigration reform, though he knew Republican primary voters would punish him for it. He opposed torture and promoted campaign finance reform, a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public financing in the general election campaign. Mr. McCain staked his career on finding a strategy for success in Iraq when just about everyone else in Washington was ready to give up. We think that he, too, might make a pretty good president.

But the stress of a campaign can reveal some essential truths, and the picture of Mr. McCain that emerged this year is far from reassuring. To pass his party's tax-cut litmus test, he jettisoned his commitment to balanced budgets. He hasn't come up with a coherent agenda, and at times he has seemed rash and impulsive. And we find no way to square his professed passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

ANY PRESIDENTIAL vote is a gamble, and Mr. Obama's résumé is undoubtedly thin. We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy and end, as he said in his announcement speech, "our chronic avoidance of tough decisions."

But Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.

Registration Gains Favor Democrats

Voter Rolls Swelling in Key States

By Alec MacGillis and Alice Crites

Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 6, 2008

As the deadline for voter registration arrives today in many states, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is poised to benefit from a wave of newcomers to the rolls in key states in numbers that far outweigh any gains made by Republicans.

In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states -- 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.

In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear -- of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds.

Republicans acknowledge the challenge but say Obama still has to prove he can get the new voters to the polls.

"The machine that has been put in place by the Democrats is effective. They have a lot of people holding clipboards," said Brian K. Krolicki (R) , the lieutenant governor of Nevada. But he added: "There's a difference between successful registration and a groundswell. It's mechanics versus momentum."

The Obama campaign says it expects the numbers of new voters in swing states to swell even more later this month as elections offices process the tens of thousands of registrations still pouring in. And it exudes confidence about its ability to turn the new voters out with a vigorous follow-up operation. "This a lesson we learned. The old-fashioned way of registering voters was to stand on the corner of the street, stand on the campus quad and register one by one, which we still do," said Jon Carson, the campaign's national field director. "But another important component is getting people the information they need to participate."

Obama, who led a major voter drive in Chicago in 1992, has stressed voter registration from the outset of his campaign, seeing younger or disaffected Americans as a crucial pool of support. The campaign intensified its outreach over the summer, dispatching hundreds of staff members and volunteers to states with large percentages of unregistered voters.

Complementing its efforts are organizations that have been registering hundreds of thousands on their own, such as Democracia USA, which registers Hispanic voters; ACORN, the anti-poverty group; and Women's Voices, Women Vote, which targets unmarried women. More generally, this year's registration tilt is part of a broader shift since 2004 away from Republican affiliation, particularly among younger and Hispanic voters and among college-educated professionals in former GOP strongholds such as New Hampshire, Colorado, and the suburbs of Philadelphia and Northern Virginia.

In Florida, 800,000 voters have been added to the rolls this year, fewer than were added in 2004. The secretary of state's office attributes the drop to registration efforts reaching a saturation point and to the slowing of the state's population growth since 2004.

But the Democratic edge is still more apparent than it was in 2004, when Republicans made a big push to register evangelical Christians in the state. As of Sept. 1, the most recent date for which new registrations are divided by party, Democratic rolls were up by 316,000 and GOP rolls by 129,000 this year. The GOP figure falls short of the gain of 155,000 among independents.

This year's additions expanded the Democrats' registration edge in Florida to half a million voters, a gap expected to grow by Election Day as the thousands of voters who have signed up since Sept. 1 are added to the party totals.

The ratio is more lopsided in North Carolina, where Democrats have added 208,000 voters this year. The 34,000 voters the Republicans have added lags well behind the 148,000 new independents. Four years ago, when Bush won the state with 56 percent of the vote, the picture was different -- Democrats added 192,000 voters during all of 2004, but Republicans nearly matched them with 179,000 new voters of their own.

A disproportionate share of the new voters in North Carolina are minorities. At the start of the year, white voters in the state outnumbered blacks by nearly 4 to 1, and Hispanic voters by 10 to 1. Yet the 146,000 black and Hispanic voters added to the rolls represented nearly three-quarters of the growth among white voters.

Gary Pearce, a Democratic political consultant in North Carolina, said the gap in new registrations is a big reason he thinks Democrats have a chance of carrying the state for the first time since 1976. "It's huge. You talk about a surge -- we think we're going to see it here," Pearce said.

Many of the registration gains in North Carolina and elsewhere came during the nominating battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. While resulting in a long and costly primary season, it also helped draw voters onto the Democratic rolls.

In Nevada, site of a highly competitive Democratic caucus in late January, the party has this year added 91,000 people to the rolls in a state that Bush carried by 21,000 votes in 2004. Republicans added 22,000 voters, while 26,000 independents have been added. Republicans outnumbered Democrats in the Silver State at the start of 2007, but registered Republicans now trail Democrats by 81,000.

The primaries produced an even bigger boost in Pennsylvania. In addition to several hundred thousand new voters registered as Democrats, tens of thousands of independent voters and Republicans switched their affiliation to vote for Obama or Clinton.

Some of them may vote for McCain, but the numbers are nonetheless eye-catching. This year, 474,000 Democrats have been added to the rolls in Pennsylvania -- while the GOP rolls have actually lost 38,000 voters. In 2004, there were 357,000 Democrats added and 66,000 Republicans.

n Virginia, where Obama volunteers have been a constant presence at Metro stations and grocery stores in Democratic areas, there are 310,000 more voters than at year's start. That compares with 210,000 new voters over the same stretch in 2004.

Although voters do not register by party in Virginia, there have been increases of 10 percent, or close to it, in the Democratic strongholds of Arlington County, Alexandria, Norfolk, Newport News and Richmond, which combined have added 58,000 voters. Similarly, in Missouri, where registration is also nonpartisan, an outsized share of the roughly 200,000 new registrations this year have been in greater St. Louis -- suburban St. Louis County, which now leans Democratic, is close to having one-fifth of the state's voters.

In Colorado, which Bush won by 100,000 votes in 2004, Republicans were well in the lead for registrations at the start of the year but are now on the verge of being overtaken. By Sept. 1, Democratic registration was up by 80,000, partly because of the Democrats-only caucuses in February. That far exceeds the gain of 28,000 unaffiliated voters and 21,000 Republicans. In New Mexico, which Bush won by 6,000 votes in 2004, Democrats have added 40,000 voters since last year, compared with 12,000 Republicans.

Voter drives have been a lower priority in states with less growth and turnover. Michigan has registered an increase of 160,000 voters this year, small for a state its size and less than what it recorded in 2004. Ohio, the scene of such intensive organizing in years past, has seen roughly the same growth in new voters as in 2004 (it does not break down registrations by party). Indiana's growth has been roughly equal to that of 2004; in Wisconsin, voters can register on Election Day.

In several states, registration gains may not be enough for Obama. His campaign deployed dozens of staffers to Georgia, with an emphasis on seeking out the estimated half-million eligible African Americans there who do not vote. Volunteers from across the country spent hours in the summer heat at bus stations and in housing projects in small cities such as Macon and Columbus, and as of Sept. 1, the state's rolls had grown by 350,000 voters, surpassing the gain of 270,000 for all of 2004. But last month, the campaign began pulling staffers out of Georgia, deciding the gap was too wide in a state that Bush won with 58 percent in 2004.

Obama's investment in voter registration has taken some of the burden off the nonprofit groups that did much of that work in 2004, but they are still active. The groups are not allowed to coordinate with the campaign, but they try to target separate areas to avoid overlap.

In Florida, a network of most of the nonprofit groups doing registration work estimates that it has registered about 440,000 of the 800,000 voters added in the state this year, said Bob Schaeffer, a network coordinator.

The Obama campaign predicts that 80 percent of the voters it is registering will support the Democrat, and that 75 percent will turn out, a rate it bases on turnout during the primaries. That means that for every 100,000 voters it registers, it would net a 45,000-vote edge on Election Day. In Virginia, that projection would mean an extra four percentage points from this year's new voters in a state that Bush won by eight points in 2004.

Donald Green, a Yale political scientist, said history suggests turnout rates lower than 75 percent among truly newly registered voters. The Obama campaign's higher rates of turnout during the primaries may have been boosted by voters who were re-registering at a new address or under a new party, he said. "New registrants tend to vote at reasonably high rates but not very high rates," he said. "Most surge in turnout comes from already registered voters."

But Pearce, the North Carolina consultant, speculated that this year's election might shatter some of those expectations, based on the energy he is seeing and the reach of Obama's get-out-the-vote operation there. "It's the enthusiasm gap," he said. He added: "They'll get a lot of them out on Election Day. I'm not an organization guy -- I'm skeptical of the people who think the organization is going to turn it all. But they've made me a believer.

Obama Visits Elkart, Indiana - First Candidate Visit Since RFK in 68

Sunday in the Park With Barack By Shailagh Murray|Washington Post

ELKHART, Ind. -- The event was billed as "door knocking," but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Early Sunday afternoon, the Barack Obama motorcade pulled to a stop at the corner of Bank St. and Superior St. in a tidy, working-class neighborhood near downtown here. Several neighbors had already gathered on the sidewalk, and they cheered when Obama stepped off the bus with wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha. "Hey guys, how are you?" Obama called out.

He approached Rose Bias, 44, who lives two blocks away and had heard from another neighbor about a Secret Service sighting. Obama commented on the harness her son Trenton was wearing. (Bias said she had him on a leash because the toddler was apt to run off.) "Be on the lookout, you might be on the news," Obama warned her. He greeted David Romberger, 44, who is unemployed. "I'm voting for you sir," Romberger told Obama, citing the senator's "principled" opposition to the gas-tax holiday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has proposed.

By now a few neighbors had become a small crowd. Word that Obama had arrived in Elkhart was traveling from pew to pew in local churches (more on this later), and people had begun streaming down the sidewalks. Obama joked to an aspiring dental hygeinist, "Let's see your teeth." Jarrett Himebaugh, 9, introduced himself to Obama and stated "I know why John Edwards dropped out. He got less votes than you and Hillary."

"A political scientist," Obama laughed, making his way across the intersection.

The Obamas finally made it to a few front porches. At 241 Bank St., Jody Coleman, a 33-year-old factory worker, had come outside to investigate the commotion. "I was sitting at home, online, trying to deal with a new pet, and I was like, I think Barack Obama is on my street corner," he said. Coleman told Obama that the cost of filling up his GMC Sonoma truck had jumped from $25 to $65. He isn't buying the gas-tax holiday either. "What's it going to do for one day?" he said. "That's all it would help me."

Mike and Kim Konecny greeted the Obamas at 233 Bank St. and talked about the local economy. Both are in the recreational vehicles business, a major local industry and are worried about layoffs. Obama pitched his $1,000 middle-class tax cut as a better deal. Mike, wearing a Notre Dame cap and t-shirt, said he had been undecided, "but I'm not now," he asserted.

After Michelle and the girls broke off, heading to a local park, Obama finally made it halfway down the block. The swarm had grown to around 200 people. They lined the sidewalk, creating an informal rope line, waving pens and snapping camera phones. "I don't get this response when I canvas," deadpanned Stacy McColly, a local volunteer who doorknocks for Obama almost every day. One girl, trembling, handed her phone to Obama to say hello to her friend "Hillary."

"Hi Hillary!" Obama said with a big grin. "And she supports me," he relayed to reporters standing nearby. "Oh, this isn't Hillary Clinton? Oh, Hillary Van Dyke. Nice to meet you! Thanks for your support."

Another woman handed him a phone and Obama said hello to "Grandpa Dick." At this point an hour had passed, and the candidate still had a mob waiting to greet him. "Yes! He's right here by Simpson Street! For real!" one woman yelled into her phone. "Mama, calm down. Hurry up and get down here!"

It was nearly 40 years to the day - May 2, 1968 - when the last presidential candidate came through Elkhart. That was Bobby Kennedy, of course, and he drew 3,000 people. Judging from the response on Bank St., one wonders what size crowd Obama could have gathered, had the campaign provided more than 15 minutes notice of his arrival.

Finally, Obama boarded the bus, and the motorcade traveled a mile or so to Riverview School, where Michelle and the girls were hanging out at the playground. A small mob had already gathered to see the Obama women, but when the senator showed up, it grew some more. Obama posed with babies and signed autographs. "I think we can carry Elkhart with your help," he announced. Then he agreed to shoot a few baskets.

A few baskets turned into another game of P-I-G, and this time Obama's opponents were Anthony Nowacyk, a local 14-year-old, and Rod Roberson, another neighbor, who happens to be president of the Elkhart City Council and a former Northwestern University basketball player. Roberson also knows Michelle's brother, Craig Robinson, from his Northwestern coaching days. He's the one who heard about the Obama visit while he was in church.

Obama and Roberson chatted and talked a little trash, but the candidate held his own, sinking a few impressive three-point shots (and only one air ball). "Under pressure!" Obama said, as one shot sailed through the basket. "I'm a pressure player." Soon the score was P-I for each, but then Obama missed. "I was robbed on that last one," he said, after losing the game. Nowacyk, who doesn't play on a team but was an impressive, if quiet, opponent, offered this assessment of Obama's playing abilities: "He's alright."

Poll Shows 10-point Lead for Obama, Increasingly Negative View of Clinton

I encourage you to take the time to read this lengthy and excellent analysis of where things stand in the race for President. zjm

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen

updated 3:55 a.m. ET, Wed., April. 16, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama holds a 10-point lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when Democrats are asked whom they would prefer to see emerge as the party's presidential nominee, but there is little public pressure to bring the long and increasingly heated contest to an end, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The fierce battle, however, appears to have taken a toll on the image of Clinton, who was once seen as the favorite. And Obama has widened his lead since early February on several key qualities that voters are looking for in a candidate and has narrowed sizable advantages for Clinton on others.

He now has a 2-to-1 edge on who is considered more electable in a general contest -- a major reversal from the last poll -- and has dramatically reduced a large Clinton lead on which of the two is the "stronger leader."

While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992. Impressions of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also have grown negative by a small margin.

In the new poll, 54 percent said they have an unfavorable view of Sen. Clinton, up from 40 percent a few days after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January. Her favorability rating has dropped among both Democrats and independents over the past three months, although her overall such rating among Democrats remains high. Nearly six in 10 independents now view her unfavorably.

Obama's favorability rating also has declined over the same period but remains, on balance, more positive than negative.

Debate likely to focus on 'bitter' remarks

The findings come as the two contenders prepare to meet tonight in Philadelphia for their first debate in more than a month and their final direct encounter before Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. The exchange will begin at 8 p.m. Eastern time and will air on ABC News.

A likely centerpiece of the debate will be a controversy over comments Obama made April 6 at a San Francisco fundraiser in which he described residents of economically hard-hit small towns as "bitter" and said they "cling" to guns or religion. The Clinton campaign quickly seized the opportunity to tag Obama as an elitist who is out of touch with the values of rural America.

Obama said that while he may have chosen his words poorly, he was correct in saying that many Americans in these communities are rightly angry about the failure of the government and politicians to do more to improve economic conditions in their areas. His campaign also released an ad yesterday that criticizes Clinton. The spot opens with a narrator saying: "There's a reason people are rejecting Hillary Clinton's attacks. Because the same old Washington politics won't lower the price of gas or help our struggling economy. Barack Obama will represent all Americans."

Overall, 51 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would prefer to see Obama win the nomination and face Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, in the November general election; 41 percent would rather have Clinton atop the Democratic ticket. Post-ABC polling just before Clinton won the Ohio primary and the popular vote in the Texas primary on March 4 showed nearly the same results.

In hypothetical general-election matchups, Obama holds a slim, five-point lead over McCain, while McCain is three points ahead of Clinton, which is within poll's margin of error. But in the past six weeks, McCain has gained ground on each of his potential rivals.

Dems want to see a clear victory

The closeness of the primary contests and McCain's momentum are a worrisome sign to some Democratic Party officials who fear that an extended and negative contest could hurt their chances of winning back the White House and picking up seats in Congress.

But few of the Democrats polled expect such dire consequences. Two-thirds predict that the length of the battle will either not have much of an impact (50 percent) or will even help (17 percent) the party's prospects in November. A third of Democrats, however, think a long competition will carry a cost for the party. And more than a third of Democrats said they might not support the party's nominee in the fall if it is not their top choice.

Nearly six in 10 Democrats who are aligned with one of the candidates said they would prefer to see Clinton and Obama continue campaigning until one of them wins a clear victory, rather than bringing the fight to an early conclusion. And most Democrats say Clinton should stay in the race even if she comes up short in Pennsylvania: 79 percent of Clinton partisans would want her to fight on after what would be an unlikely loss, and more than a third of Obama supporters said she should stay in even if she is defeated there.

In the new Post-ABC poll, conducted just as the "bitter" controversy began, half of rural Democrats said they want Clinton to be the party's nominee, compared with 39 percent who prefer Obama. Suburban Democrats are divided about evenly between the two, and Obama has a 24-point advantage among those living in urban areas.

The latest turn in rhetoric comes alongside a perception that the Democratic race has become increasingly negative. In the past two months, the percentage of Democrats calling the contest "mostly negative" has increased 14 points, to 41 percent. While a quarter of Democrats who see the campaign as generally negative blame both sides, more than three times as many blame Clinton's team as Obama's.

Obama has a lead in this poll among pledged delegates and overall votes won in primaries and caucuses, but neither he nor Clinton is likely to amass the majority needed to win the nomination without the help of superdelegates -- elected officials and party leaders.

Those superdelegates are free to back any candidate, and many of them remain uncommitted. When asked how superdelegates should decide which candidate to support, nearly half of Democrats said they should follow the overall popular vote, while just one in eight said the number of delegates won in primaries and caucuses should be the deciding factor. Nearly four in 10 said superdelegates should choose the candidate they think is the best.

Efforts to sway superdelegates

In efforts to sway superdelegates, the Clinton campaign has seized on fiery comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama's former pastor, whose harsh comments about the United States in past sermons generated a storm of criticism.

And while most Democrats (and 59 percent of all Americans) said Obama has already done enough to distance himself from Wright, nearly half are very (15 percent) or somewhat (32 percent) concerned that Republicans would use Wright's comments effectively against Obama in a general election.

Many Democrats are also concerned about how Obama's level of experience would play in the November contest: 43 percent said his ability to serve as president would be diminished because of a lack of seasoning. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Democrats said Clinton's political style would prove an asset in the White House.

But Obama counters with significant momentum on attributes and issues, and he now has advantages over Clinton of 31 points on electability, 23 points on honesty and 21 points as the candidate who would do more to change Washington.

Democrats in the new poll are more evenly divided about which candidate better understands their problems: 46 percent said Obama, while 41 percent said Clinton.

Clinton maintains a wide advantage on experience, but her 24-point edge as the "stronger leader" has eroded substantially in the new poll, to a 49-to-44-percent margin. And Obama is now on par with Clinton on handling the economy (he trailed by 14 points in the last poll) and Iraq (Clinton had been up eight points), the top two issues for Democratic voters. Additionally, Clinton's current 10-point lead on health care is down from 28 points.

The poll was conducted by telephone April 10 to 13 among a random national sample of 1,197 adults, including 643 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. The results from the full poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points; the Democratic sample has an error margin of four points.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

More Good Polling News for Obama

From NBC's Mark Murray

New LA Times/Bloomberg polls for Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina are out...

Pennsylvania
Clinton 46%
Obama 41%

Indiana
Obama 40%
Clinton 35%

North Carolina
Obama 47%
Clinton 34%

Methodology: "The poll, conducted under the supervision of Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 623 voters in Pennsylvania, 687 in Indiana and 691 in North Carolina who expected to cast Democratic ballots. The margin of sampling error for the findings in each state is plus or minus 4 percentage points. The telephone interviews took place Thursday through Monday, meaning the bulk were conducted just as controversy broke out over an Obama remark widely criticized as demeaning rural voters in Pennsylvania."

Obama at the Helm

By Peter Beinart

Tuesday, April 8, 2008; Page A19

Deep into a primary campaign that was supposed be over by now, Barack Obama must still answer one fundamental question. Jeremiah Wright notwithstanding, it's not whether he's too black. It's whether he's too green. Hillary Clinton has made Obama's inexperience her chief line of attack, and if she goes down, John McCain will pick up where she left off. Luckily, Obama doesn't have to rely on his legislative résumé to prove he's capable of running the government. He can point to something more germane: the way he's run his campaign.

Presidents tend to govern the way they campaigned. Jimmy Carter ran as a moralistic outsider in 1976, and he governed that way as well, refusing to compromise with a Washington establishment that he distrusted (and that distrusted him). Ronald Reagan's campaign looked harsh on paper but warm and fuzzy on TV, as did his presidency. The 1992 Clinton campaign was like the Clinton administration: brilliant and chaotic, with a penchant for near-death experiences. And the 2000 Bush campaign presaged the Bush presidency: disciplined, hierarchical, loyal and ruthless.

Of the three candidates still in the 2008 race, Obama has run the best campaign by far. McCain's was a top-heavy, slow-moving, money-hemorrhaging Hindenburg that eventually exploded, leaving the Arizona senator to resurrect his bankrupt candidacy through sheer force of will. Clinton's campaign has been marked by vicious infighting and organizational weakness, as manifested by her terrible performance in caucus states.

Obama's, by contrast, has been an organizational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer. From the beginning, the Obama campaign has run circles around its foes on the Internet, using MySpace, Facebook and other Web tools to develop a virtual army of more than 1 million donors. The result has been fundraising numbers that have left opponents slack-jawed (last month Obama raised $40 million, compared with Clinton's $20 million).

But the Web is the political equivalent of gunpowder: It can mow down your opponents, but it can also blow up in your face. In 2004, Howard Dean's campaign also raised vast sums online, but it spent the money just as fast. By embracing the anarchic ethos of the liberal blogosphere, Dean generated enormous excitement, but he couldn't harness it. Within his decentralized, bottom-up campaign, a thousand flowers bloomed, but not at the right time and in the right place. "You cannot manage an insurgency," said Dean's Web guru, Joe Trippi. "You just have to ride it."

The Obama campaign has proved that adage wrong. It has married Web energy with professional control. It has used the Web masterfully but, unlike Dean in 2004, sees it as a tool, not a philosophy of life.

At the top, in fact, the campaign is quite hierarchical. There's no question who's in charge: David Axelrod, a grizzled Chicago street-fighter whom Obama has known since he was 30. Axelrod and his subordinates believe their guy represents a new kind of politics, but they're not above using old-school, hard-ball tactics -- even against his own supporters -- to help him win. Last spring, for example, when the Obama campaign realized it couldn't control a popular Obama page on MySpace, it persuaded the company to shut the page down.

It is this remarkable hybrid campaign, far more than Obama's thin legislative résumé, that should reassure voters that he can run the government. As president, he'll need to keep his supporters mobilized: It will take a grass-roots movement, breathing down Congress's neck, to pass universal health care. But in dealing with those very supporters, he'll also have to be ruthless so as not to get caught up in the kind of side skirmishes, such as gays in the military, that weakened Bill Clinton early on. Obama's experience whipping up support on MySpace while simultaneously tamping it down is exactly the kind he'll need in the Oval Office.

The danger is that Obama will fall prey to the malady that ruined Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter: self-righteousness. Elections are winner-take-all, but governing isn't. Candidates can denounce Washington, but presidents have to live there. If the lesson Obama draws from his outsider campaign is that he and his supporters are children of light while those who oppose them are cynics, he'll find it hard to compromise. Successful presidents know how to make half a loaf look like a big win, and presidents with messiah complexes don't do that very well. But if Obama can come across as idealistic without being moralistic, if he can keep his supporters' spirits high and their expectations in check, if he can fuse exuberance and discipline, he might just run the government pretty well. That won't be easy, but then, neither is running for president. Just ask Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a monthly column for The Post.

Invited to Wrestle in a Racial Mud Pit, Obama Soars Above It - The Washington Post

By Courtland Milloy, Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Before Barack Obama took to the podium yesterday, I was pretty angry at how slimy the presidential campaign had become. And my plan was to write a screed about those whites who want Obama to "transcend race" while they get to hold on to their racist ways.

In the latest episode, inflammatory snippets of sermons by Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ Church in Chicagp, had been fashioned into a political bombshell by Obama's opponents. Right-wing TV commentators then detonated it with ignorant vitriol, including an insinuation by Pat Buchanan that Wright was a black David Duke, the former leader of the white terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, and that Obama was the disciple of a hateful man.

I could go on and on.

Then Obama spoke, and I had a mind-altering experience. After hearing him deliver what was essentially a treatise on faith, hope and charity, I no longer wanted to risk getting stuck in a racial tar pit with Buchanan or any of the others. I just wanted to hop on that Obama bandwagon and head for new America.

The desire to rise up out of the racial muck was intensified with every conversation I had about the speech.

Rep. Elijah E Cummings (D-Md.), who co-chairs the Maryland for Obama campaign, hit the nail on the head when he told me: "Obama has the ability to elevate our thinking beyond the chicken-yard scratching and biting. He calls on us to soar like eagles. And if he can't always take you there, he can sure dare you to go."

Edwin Chapman, an African American physician who lives in Mitchellville, said: "The big challenge for Obama was not to be portrayed as the black candidate and not to be perceived as denying his blackness. It would not have worked if he had done like Tiger Woods and called himself a 'cablinasian.' It worked because Obama came off as a Renaissance man."

Another friend, Sidney Strickland, an African American attorney and co-founder of a bank in Laurel, said: "He spoke frankly about the racial divide, the gap in black and white perceptions of reality. And because of his personal story, rooted in having a black father and white mother, he was able to offer himself as the bridge."

Yet, as Obama made clear in the speech, the racial gap is huge, and it would be a stretch indeed for anyone to even imagine that it could be spanned entirely by one man in a lifetime. He certainly knew about the breadth of the gap inside my head.

"Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race and racism continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways," he said. "The memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness. . . . That anger is not always productive. Indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems. . . . But the anger is real, it is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm."

Then Obama went on to say something that almost made me audaciously hopeful. He had the courage to connect slavery to black suffering today.

"Many of the disparities that exist . . . can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation," he said. He went on to connect the achievement gap with the legacy of inferior, racially segregated schools that still haven't been fixed "50 years after Brown versus Board of Education."

He noted that legalized discrimination had prevented blacks from owning property or getting jobs or loans to purchase homes. The result has been the inability of countless blacks to accumulate wealth and pass on the benefits to their children. Obama linked a lack of economic opportunity to crime and poverty.

Of course, some still could not handle the truth. Brit Hume of Fox News, for instance, thought Obama was "blaming whites" -- even though Obama specifically called on African Americans to take responsibility for their lives.

That was enough to make me want to wallow in the muck again. But Obama had made a point that was bigger than Hume or Buchanan or even himself. To get where you need to go, you've got to know where you came from. And even if Obama doesn't make it all the way to the White House, I sure like where he's taken me so far.

Washington Post: Obama's Road Map on Race

By Eugene Robinson Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Once again, the conventional wisdom proved stunningly unwise. Barack Obama was supposed to be on his heels, forced into a backpedaling, defensive crouch after racially charged remarks by his former pastor, delivered from the pulpit years ago, suddenly became the hottest story of the presidential campaign. But instead of running away, Obama issued a challenge to those who would exploit the issue of race: Bring it on.

Yesterday morning, in what may be remembered as a landmark speech regardless of who becomes the next president, Obama established new parameters for a dialogue on race in America that might actually lead somewhere -- that might break out of the sour stasis of grievance and countergrievance, of insensitivity and hypersensitivity, of mutual mistrust.

"My goal was to try to lift up some truth that people talk about privately but don't always talk about publicly between the races," Obama told me in a telephone interview later in the day. He delivered his speech, titled "A More Perfect Union," in Philadelphia just yards from Independence Hall.

As expected, Obama categorically denounced the incendiary sound bites from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons that have been played endlessly on cable television in recent days. Wright displayed "a profoundly distorted view of this country," Obama said in his speech, "a view that sees white racism as endemic."

But Obama didn't stop there. He went on to specify what was wrong with Wright's preaching about racism in the United States: "It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made; as if this country . . . is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."

The consensus among the commentariat was that Obama, as a matter of political tactics, should want to shift the conversation away from the subject of race as quickly as possible. He told me that the decision not to turn away, but to give a major speech on the issue, was his.

"What was fascinating over the last three or four days was to see how Reverend Wright's admittedly offensive comments . . . were packaged in sound bites in a way that didn't contribute to understanding between black and white Americans but only expanded the chasm between them," he said. "I thought it was both a challenge and an opportunity to use this moment to describe, to black and white, why there is this chasm."

And that may have been the most significant aspect of the speech: the fact that Obama proposed a conversation, not a monologue. He not only laid out the reasons some African Americans might feel alienated or resentful but also the reasons some white Americans might feel the same way.

"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race," Obama said in the speech. "Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. . . . So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college . . . when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

These resentments have "helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation," Obama told his audience. "And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

Obama called on African Americans to embrace "the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past," and to take "full responsibility for our own lives." And he's absolutely right.

This amounts to a new set of talking points for a discussion about race: Don't be paralyzed by history but acknowledge its effects. Recognize that whites have legitimate grievances that are not racist. Don't cling to victimhood as an all-purpose excuse. Accept personal responsibility.

Obama told me that he doesn't intend to make race a major theme of his campaign. "I don't think that we are going to be gnawing on this bone at every stop," he said. But I believe he might have pulled off something that seemed almost impossible: He not only ventured into the minefield of race and made it back alive, but he also marked a path for the rest of us to follow.