U.S. Dem Primary: A Numbers Experiment

Readers of this blog know that I favor Obama in the U.S. primaries. And while I can't really fault Clinton for staying in the race, I'm concerned that the next three months are not a great way to build party unity and develop a good strategy against John McCain in the fall.

Having said that, I ran the numbers last night. If Democrats counted up their delegates the same way Republicans do (giving the winner of the state all the delegates, not a proportion of them), Clinton would be the frontrunner right now.

It'd be close, but for Barack to win, he'd have to win 6 competitions (where he's currently favored) and then pick up at least one of the following states/territories: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, or Kentucky. Clinton is favored to win all of those.

In other words, if it weren't for this switch, made 20 years ago after a push by Jesse Jackson, Barack would be having this major uphill fight. And people would be calling on him to step down.........

Here's the math: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pLzwxoRcCDWckDVZDoUpiKw

Brain Scientist, Meet Stroke

A pretty great lecture by Brain Scientist Jill Taylor. She gets so into the retelling of her story, that you can hear just how emotional of an experience it was for her.

She's on the fringe when she starts talking of using her experience to transcend the global political landscape, but it is an extremely thought-provoking, emotional, and spiritually touching experience.

I'm having embedding problems. Find the video here: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

(Also, a transcript!)

Kenya: The Medium Term, Part One

The other big story from yesterday is that Kenya's rival parties have, finally, officially approved the constitutional changes to put in place the National Accord.

Reading the news reports of this from The Nation and The Standard, there is an overwhelming sense of optimism and excitement in how the two warring sides have now come together.

Both the President and the future Prime Minister made very clear signals about their willingness to cooperate as equals in the enormous task that awaits them. That is great, amazing news.

The President's hard-line followers had, in recent weeks, made comments that seem to undermine the entire basis of the power-sharing agreement. It is very reassuring to see the President, at least symbolically, suggest he supports deeper power sharing than his supporters.

It's difficult to project out into the Medium Term, as I am hoping to do in this post. Kenyan politics has been, for the past 20 years, enormously volatile. During this time, Kenyan politicians have demonstrated a remarkable ability to abandon principle and dignity in the name of political expediency.

What is being suggested in all of the news reports that are coming out now is that the political class has a sense that its time to move above the nasty, hate-tinged disagreements of the past toward a better future.

Given Kenya's previous attempts to do this, we should not be so naive as to think that this will all go off without a hitch. The biggest question, the one that is the hardest answer is the following:

How will the new drive for transparency, accountability, and meaningful change confront the leaders of Kenya's ugly past?

What we need to be honest about is that Kenya has an ugly past. There are many powerful, influential individuals who have gotten very rich off of state-sanctioned corruption.

A couple of those individuals are Kenya's first and second president, who have been accused of some involvement in not only corruption, but also torture and political murder. (I'm not saying they're guilty, just that everyone knows that a serious investigation means their roles need to be investigated.)

It seems extremely unlikely to me that former President Moi, or President Kenyatta's offspring are at all willing to open this can of worms. Any reasonable effort to do this would be extremely painful for them, their families, and, on a psychological level, the nation.

Kenya may need a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, as is about to be formed. I'm just not sure that the wounds of the past few months are deep enough to convince Moi he should hand back hundreds of millions of shillings, or for the Kenyattas to agree that they should hand over their land to the state so it can be divvied up among squatters and the local community.

I'm not sure it's enough to make each of these men's inner circles admit to their corrupt actions. Or even their involvement in political murder.

While the Moi and Kenyatta families and their respective cronies may realize that they can't stop the Commission from being formed, it seems extremely likely that they will do everything in their power (and they do still have a lot of power in Kenya) to prevent this from hurting their interests.

Finally, I'm not really sure that this is where Kenya wants to go now. Going through this--expurgating a sad, vicious, hate-mongering past--is not necessarily a way to create peace among Kenya's various ethnic groups. It needs to be handled very, very carefully.

Leaders from all levels need to prevent people from interpreting whatever Truth or Justice comes out of the Commission as supporting one ethnic group's claims over another. The Commission needs to have individuals from all over the country come forward with meaningful and sincere admissions of guilt and complicity.

With Kenyan politics where it is now, it's hardly clear that that is the most likely outcome.

A More Perfect Union

 

Obama's speech this morning was, for a political speech, incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and moving. It is clearly the most significant speech of this presidential campaign, and perhaps of the past 20, 30, or 40 years.

It was extraordinarily bold in its scope and intent. While I think the delivery was mediocre at the start, once he got into his groove, he was powerful.

He displayed humility, understanding, and, above all, hope. I can't imagine listening to a better political speech in the next 20 years.

Unfortunately, as I watch CNN and I read the New York Times, I'm struck at how the whole speech, so sweeping, so remarkable, is being boiled down into comparing and contrasting Wright's comments to Obama's.

Obama's speech attempted to transcend this debate, to look at the larger picture in which all of this took place. It looks like the political analysts aren't ready or willing to do that.

A final thought: I can't understand why it was given on a weekday morning instead of primetime. Why give the speech when everyone's at work? The speech was so long (more than a half hour), that I think it's unlikely many people are going to watch it.

Despite all of this, it's interesting to see that, in the immediate aftermath of this, Obama still leads Clinton among registered Democrats, and still is ahead of John McCain in national polls. That's a bit surprising for me, especially since John McCain is essentially getting a free pass from all the political in-fighting among Democrats.

For what it's worth, it's reaffirmed to me that I was right to believe in Obama so strongly. I'm less than enthusiastic about his heavy-handed rhetoric on protectionism, but this speech, more than any other, makes clear why he would be a great president: an ability to transcend politics and identify the issues that unites us all.

In fact, his speech was more than presidential. While history will be the ultimate judge, sitting here, six hours after watching the speech, I believe it was transformational. I certainly hope so.

Update/Correction/Clarification: Originally I wrote that "he said things that no American politician has ever dared to say". I'm obviously wrong on that front. What I mean to say is that his speech tried to do more than just use race as a political tool.

He tried to make the argument that race still matters in our society, but it doesn't have to be something that divides us. What underlies America's racial tension are the greater values that each of us, individually, fundamentally hold.

Those values bind us together. While they may occasionally clash on the surface, we can't allow ourselves to be divided by them. We need to go beyond the petty clashes and look at the deeper issues. Solving the deeper issues does not mean favoring the arguments of one ethnic group over another.  It's about solving issues in a fair way that will benefit us all.