Obama (Ba)ROCKS!

Dec. 27/Jan. 3 issue



Barack Obama, according to
his spouse, Michelle,  “is not a politician first and foremost.
He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make
change.”  She emphasizes that there's nothing inevitable about
Obama's running for president or even staying in the Senate if he
doesn't feel he's making a difference.



Running
in the primary against white candidates, [Obama] did extremely well in
heavily white areas. This is not about “diversity” (a word he
recognizes as horribly overused) but about “embracing our hybrid
origins and transcending our often narrow-minded past.”



The task
now, Obama says, is…for Democrats to “reclaim and reassert in very
explicit language that our best ideas rise out of communal values.”



Yet
Obama…is fully prepared to step into a leadership role for the
Democrats.  Incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who calls
Obama “a gentleman and a scholar,” expects him to travel abroad as a
member of the Foreign Relations Committee and fit in well in the clubby
Senate, where Obama has hired defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle's chief of staff to run his office.

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