Panel will discuss 2008 election at CLU

The public is invited to attend a panel discussion at California Lutheran University on the historic nature of the 2008 presidential election.

CLU professors will take part in the event, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"Witness to History: The Unprecedented 2008 U.S. Presidential Election" will be held in CLU's Lundring Events Center, in the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center at Olsen Road and Mountclef Boulevard.

Political science professors Greg Freeland, Herb Gooch, Fred Gordon, Haco Hoang and Jose Marichal will discuss what the primaries, caucuses and general election mean for civic engagement, democracy and participation.

They will specifically address the impact of Super Tuesday and answer questions. The professors will share their academic perspectives and their viewpoints from their experiences working on campaigns and in government.

For more information, call 493-3433.

Obama pummels Clinton in White House clean sweep

Obama, who is locked in a battle with Clinton for the party's nomination, won big in Washington state, Nebraska and Louisiana, outscoring the former first lady by 2 to 1.

The Illinois senator, bidding to be the country's first black president, swept Washington state and Nebraska with a staggering 68 percent of the vote. In Louisiana, with 98 percent of precincts reporting, he was on 57 percent.

"We won north, we won south, we won in between," Obama told 6,000 cheering guests in an electrifying speech to a Democratic dinner in Virginia.

"People want to turn the page. They want to write a new chapter in American history. And today the voters from the west coast to the Gulf coast to the heart of America stood up to say yes, we can," Obama said.

Saturday's results give 46-year-old Obama a high-voltage burst of energy ahead of the next nominating contests: on Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC and then Texas and Ohio on March 4.

And they will be a blow to New York Senator Clinton in her bid to be the first woman president, as she badly needs a win as the race moves to new battlegrounds after the Super Tuesday contests ended in a stalemate.

Clinton, 60, was also pumping up the crowds at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Virginia, asking: "Are you ready to take back the White House and take back our country?" She was warmly received, but it was Obama who raised the roof.

On the Republican side, ordained Baptist minister Huckabee wrested two states from the apparent Republican front-runner McCain, in a boost to his flagging campaign.

He took Kansas by 60 percent, and after a fierce neck-and-neck battle in Louisiana, snatched the state with 44 percent to 42 percent for McCain.

McCain won the Republican caucuses in Washington state, but his narrow victory -- 26 percent against 24 percent for Huckabee and 21 percent for Texas Congressman Ron Paul -- showed he still had to convince many of the party's conservatives to support him.

A Vietnam war hero, McCain, 71, is virtually assured of the party's nomination for the November elections, with some 724 delegates to 196 for Huckabee. A total of 1,191 are needed for the nomination.

But Huckabee has been doing well in conservative, rural states.

"I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them," he told supporters Saturday, warning McCain "the game is on."

Clinton and Obama are locked in a tussle for delegates to the party's convention in Denver in August, chasing the 2,025 delegates needed to win the party's nomination for November's presidential elections.

Thanks to the complex Democratic Party rules, it was not immediately clear how many delegates Obama picked up from his victories on Saturday.

But Washington state was the biggest prize with 78 delegates up for grabs, and a further 19 superdelegates who can vote for whom they like. Louisiana has some 56 delegates; Nebraska has 24. Maine, which votes on Sunday, has 24 delegates and 10 superdelegates.

A tally by independent pollsters RealClearPolitics late Saturday put Clinton only marginally ahead in the delegate count, with 1,112 to Obama's 1,096.

A national Newsweek poll out Friday had Obama surpassing Clinton's once-overwhelming lead for the first time, with 42 percent to 41.

Obama late Saturday claimed as his own the Democratic Party's crown for the November polls.

"The Republicans in Washington are already running on the politics of yesterday which is why your party must be the party of tomorrow and that is the party I intend to lead as president of the United States of America," he said to deafening cheers.

Obama appears poised for victory in Virginia and Maryland, in part due to the high number of African-American voters.

Virginia Governor Tim Kaine said he endorsed Obama because "he is a unifier in times of bitter division. He is an agent of change at a time when our nation needs change."

Pete Crane, a Washington state caucus-goer for more than 30 years, said the turnout at a caucus in Bremerton was "by far" the biggest crowd he had seen.

"It was an incredible crowd, probably three times what it was four years ago," Crane told AFP. The precinct went 32 to 12 to Obama.

Barack Obama's effort to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States

Barack Obama's effort to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States has been alive and well for more than a year.

The most surprising thing about his campaign, even after his win in Iowa, is how little fireworks there have been around the fact that he is a seriously viable African-American candidate. More has been made of race in recent weeks as the Democratic field has narrowed and the stakes have heightened.

Even so, the public, and even the pundits, seem remarkably unastounded by the fact that Obama could be the first black presidential candidate from a major party, and within a year's time, the first black president of the United States.

One reason why Obama's race has generated so little hoopla is the personal charisma and competence of the candidate himself. His speeches are delivered with polish and conviction, and none can deny that his message is principled, uplifting and of late, more substantive. He is a Harvard-trained lawyer, a U.S. senator, young, attractive and a great family man. His past life reveals nothing wayward enough to be politically damning. What's not to like? Still, these virtues do not fully explain why Obama's race seems to matter so little, when historically speaking, even at this inconclusive stage in the electoral process, his candidacy marks a major milestone in American politics.

Black political activity |has deep American roots
Notwithstanding his personal attributes, another reason why Obama's race seems relatively inconsequential is because he is part of a long legacy of black political activism in America. This legacy prepared the ground for him to speak his mind as an "American" candidate, not solely as an African-American candidate. (The two of course are not mutually exclusive.)

Thus when we define "politics" loosely as the artful garnering and deployment of power to establish a greater good, we might argue that black politics has existed since the earliest organized slave revolts, or since African-American Crispus Attucks helped to ignite the nation's fight for independence by giving his life in the Boston Massacre.

In 1829, David Walker made his politically charged appeal for freedom for enslaved citizens, linking him firmly to the antislavery movement that would soon become a powerful lobby in American politics. If we focus on conventional party politics from 1845 to the end of the century, we must acknowledge Frederick Douglass as one of the first and foremost black political figures in America. His work with the abolitionists to end slavery, his advisory role to Abraham Lincoln, his strong advocacy for Lincoln's Republican Party long after the Civil War, and his championing of women's rights, all involved political work with national implications. Historically speaking then, Barack Obama's political eminence is part of a long tradition of black political activism in the United States.

We might go on to cite the Reconstruction period in the South, 1865-76, as an era when blacks organized, voted and elected black officials to leadership positions in the Southern states, home at that time to the vast majority of African-Americans. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, white backlash and the Republican Party's ideological shifts undermined these gains, but they did not extinguish black political organization and agitation for a better life and country.

Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois paved way
In the early 20th century, Booker T. Washington (first black ever invited to the White House) and W.E.B. Dubois had opposing political stances, but each sought to influence those in power to help move race relations forward. In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association organized blacks to take control of their own destiny. Then in the aftermath of the Depression, and with the emergence of Democrats as champions of the dispossessed, blacks adopted the Democratic Party as the electoral vehicle to help them build a more perfect Union.
Out of the crucible of the New Deal, World War II and Korea came the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and '60s. "People" politics was used to achieve the greater good. People politics garnered its victories in the streets, but this tactic quickly shifted to a focus on the ballot box: Voting rights was a key platform item for Martin Luther King Jr., and even Malcolm X argued that change could come in one of two ways - the ballot or the bullet.

These black spokespersons and their political movements were locally based (Tip O'Neill's definition of all politics), but their powerful messages reached the highest echelons in American politics: the Kennedys, Johnson, and the landmark legislation that defined the Great Society. In the aftermath of the 1960s, there have been so many black elected officials and political appointments that it would be silly to try to name them all here. The point is that in American party politics, we are no longer surprised by the election of black mayors or governors, black state and federal legislators, politically appointed black judges, African-American heads of parties (Ron Brown), black campaign managers for presidential candidates (Donna Brazile), or respected black political pundits, Republican as well as Democrat, on the radio, in newspapers and on TV.

Chisholm, Jackson early presidential hopefuls
Black presidential candidates are not a rarity either: Shirley Chisholm was a presidential candidate in 1972; Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition ran in 1984 and 1988; Dr. Lenora B. Fulani ran in 1988 and 1992; Alan Keyes threw his hat into the ring in 1996, 2000 and this year; Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton competed in 2004. Moreover, in 1996 and 2000, Republican Colin Powell had huge national support behind him for a run at the White House, though he declined to enter the race.

To be sure, Barack Obama is a unique and charismatic candidate in his own right. However, part of what makes his racial identity so unspectacular as an issue in 2008 is the political groundwork laid by African-Americans - and Americans generally - to bring the country more in line with its foundational ideals of liberty, justice, equality and opportunity for all.

However the elephant in the voting booth here involves timing. Race seems to mean so little in this election because Obama's message about the state of our union is, at this time, bigger than race. He presents himself as one who would rescue the country from pernicious divisiveness, self-serving, old school politics, governmental gridlock, poor leadership and the all but total disappearance of statesmanship. As a "unifier" and builder of coalitions that include race, Obama is not the first. But what stands more in the balance this time is the health of the body politic. That is, Obama's candidacy coincides with the desire of many Americans at this time to put the good of the country ahead of politics as usual. The good of the country is more important than race - or, as the slate of candidates reveals, than gender, age or religion. Americans seem to want a candidate who will bring politics and government back to the people, not just the parties. And race seems to pale in significance when what's at stake is the health of the political system itself.

Edward Washington is an associate professor of English and co-chair of the African-American Studies minor at Mansfield University.