Reactions to Obama's speech

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When even Joe Scarborough on MSNBC says "What Barack Obama did today was historic," and Chris Matthews says "I've never heard a speech so free of BS on race as I have in the one by Barack Obama today," then something is up.

Around the blogosphere, reaction was generally positive to Obama's speech in Philadelphia. James Fellows of the Atlantic, who lives in China, watched it and was very impressed:

This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.

At Tapped, the American Prospect blog, Kate Sheppard compared it to Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech:

King's speech may have been more powerful rhetorically, but this speech really laid down the complexities of race in America in a way that someone with Barack Obama can appreciate in unique ways.


More reaction...

Fellows's colleague at the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan - an Obama supporter - was effusive:

It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.


Eve Fairbanks at the New Republic's The Plank put the speech into the context of Obama's campaign:

I do think Obama defined his candidacy more in terms of race today, but I guess from my perspective that's a good thing. His calls for 'change' always left me a little cold: change what? After hearing his speech, the 'what?' feels clearer.


Ana Marie Cox on Time's Swampland blog wonders if the speech worked:

Who was Obama talking to? Who was listening? Would any working class white person change their mind after listening to this speech? Would anyone who had decided that Obama has been tainted by Wright now be swayed to vote for him?

On the progressive-left blogosphere, reaction was more muted than in the conventional media. At OpenLeft, one poster headlined it "incredible," and commented: "His biggest gamble is to treat the subject with the depth and seriousness and complexity that it deserves."


Jerome Armstrong at MyDD struck a different note, and was highly critical of what he saw as the politics behind the speech:

What Obama wants to do is pivot it back to Clinton vs Obama, and get the Republican attack on him through Wright off the table, so he's equated Wright and Ferraro multiple times in the speech.... This is pretty ugly and unfair though of Obama, to equate statements by Ferraro with Wright. Obama goes on and on about how great a person Wright is, without a single kind word about Ferraro, just rubbing it in further. I believe the campaign has reached a new low.

Over at the National Review's The Corner - always a harbour of differing opinion - there are some strong reactions or counter-reactions. Charles Murray - that's right, the author of The Bell Curve - posted:

Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant - rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.
But several others at the Corner were less impressed. Stanley Kurtz replied:

Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism - all under the guise of achieving national unity.

Over at Daily Kos, a series of open threads on the subject racked up over 2,000 comments from readers. One, from a reader in Britain, read:

Here in the UK, that speech could never have been made. While racism certainly exists here, it is never acknowledged in the way that Barack Obama just did in his speech. I am heartened by seeing such an honest and heartfelt examination of the issue, and have never been as proud of my country as I was today, watching from abroad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

DOES OBAMA EVEN KNOW WHO HE AND HIS DESPICABLE PASTOR HAVE OFFENDED MOST, AND WHY HIS FAVORABILITY RATING IS IN FREEFALL?

Why is a guy who grew up a rich kid with a Kenyan father and Southern White mother (no ties to being a slave whatsoever) lecturing Northern Whites regarding the Civil War when it was our ancestors who fought and died in the Union Army to free the slaves?

Is Obama kidding or what? Yes, Senator Obama, let’s have a discussion about race in America and then maybe you’ll understand why you are in absolute freefall against John McCain in States like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. You ripped a scab off of a wound that we didn’t deserve to have inflicted in the first place.

Lexi