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America will put racism to rest when majority of American voters
elect a black president in November.
Democrat Barack Obama made history and took a
giant step to capturing the United States presidency by winning the
Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday as the first African
American candidate to lead a major party ticket, following a
crushing victory over Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Obama will face Republican Sen. John McCain, who
at 72, is the oldest man to seek the most powerful elective position
in the world. McCain belongs to a family of soldiers whose
patriotism and love of America cannot be dismissed. He himself is a
wounded Vietnam War veteran.
Against McCain, Obama is not a sure winner
despite an overwhelming anti-Republican public sentiment, thanks to
the bungled presidency of George Bush, probably the worst president
America ever had.
Five months to the election, Obama had a slight
49-percent to 44-percent lead in a USA Today/Gallup poll.
Two major issues define the elections—the Iraq
War, in which the US is estimated to have spent $2 trillion; and the
economic slowdown, which has seen the steepest drop in housing
prices in two generations. Whites are 82 percent of the US
population of 274 million in 2000; blacks 13 percent. That should be
the same ratio for voting. Disturbingly, black voters are not as
enthusiastic in exercising their right to vote as white voters.
In the Philippines, if you are challenging a
sitting presidency and your lead is just five percentage points, you
are as good as dead in the water. That is what happened to actor
Fernando Poe Jr. who was leading by 30 percentage points at the
start of the campaign in early 2004 only to lose by four points to
Gloria Arroyo by May, 52 percent to 48 percent.
If Obama loses, then America is not ready for a
black president. That loss becomes even more stark because he
defeated a woman for the Democratic presidential nomination. Thus,
two history-making events will lose their meaning and value to
American society—that of having a first black president and that
of having the first woman president.
As a Republican, McCain is considered a
progressive mind and is often viewed as in a different mold from
George Bush.
A Harvard-educated lawyer and only 46, Senator
Obama triumphed after 16 months of the longest, most expensive and
perhaps most divisive primary fight ever, stopping Clinton’s own
precedent-setting quest as the first woman to run for president of
the US. Eighteen months ago, Clinton, also a lawyer, was perceived
to win the Democratic nomination; the presidency was hers for the
taking.
After Hillary, it is not clear whether in the
next 20 years, there will be any American woman politician who could
break the ultimate barrier, the glass ceiling to the US presidency.
While most modern western democracies and a number of Third World
countries have had a woman head of state or of government, the US is
unique in its bias towards women leaders.
Obama, meanwhile, rides on the crest of a
popular outcry against an incumbent Republican president widely
perceived as an incompetent who brought America to an unwinnable war
and to the edge of what could be the worst economic slowdown since
the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Obama first caught national attention during the
2004 Democratic presidential convention with a stirring call for
unity, proclaiming “there is not a Black America and a White
America . . . there’s the United States of America.”
Son of a white American Kansas mother and a
black Kenyan father, Obama was raised in Hawaii, and lived for a
number of years in Indonesia in the late 1960s. During the primary
fights, he was at times depicted as a Muslim, which is a lie.
He is married to Michelle. They have two young
daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Obama claimed victory in Minnesota, a
battleground state in November’s general election against McCain.
Clinton initially refused to concede defeat. She
later indicated a readiness to be Obama’s running mate.
Analysts say Obama needs Clinton to help him
mend party rifts and to connect with the American white working
class women and Hispanic voters, sectors of the populace the
Illinois senator has had difficulty relating to.
Her dominance of the white working class vote
again raised doubts whether America is ready to send a black
president to the White House.
A Clinton vice presidency, however, raises the
possibility of three presidents sitting in the White House—Obama,
Hillary, and Bill Clinton. Hillary is seen as a strong-willed vice
president who will not relish being left out from major policy
decisions and directions.
Obama’s soaring rhetoric calling for hope and
change Americans can believe in, in a nation wary of and wearied by
the Iraq war and frozen by fears of recession, ended a 16-year
dominance by the Clinton dynasty over the Democratic Party.
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