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Monday, January 5, 2009

 

Inauguration Day crowd estimate reduced by half

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Officials are casting doubt on an early projection that 4 million to 5 million people could jam downtown Washington on Inauguration Day, saying it is more likely that the crowd will be about half that size.

D.C. authorities said the earlier estimates, provided by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, D, were based on speculation surrounding the historic nature of the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president. After weeks of checking with charter bus companies, airlines and other sources, they're reassessing.

"It's more of an art than a science," City Administrator Dan Tangherlini said. "The fact is, earlier it was speculation. Now we're beginning to flesh it out and what the physical capacities of the system are."

The Secret Service has dismissed the high-end estimates of 4 million to 5 million people.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

 

From Paris to New Delhi people now feel more connected to America

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Through tears and whoops of joy, in celebrations that spilled onto streets on distant continents, people around the globe called Barack Obama's election a victory for the world and a renewal of America's ability to inspire.

By electing a youthful African-American with chestnut-colored skin, the United States has chosen a man whose face seems familiar and comforting in most of the world.

From Paris to New Delhi to the beaches of Brazil, revelers said Obama's election made them feel more connected to America, and that America, after years of strained relations, seemed suddenly more connected to the world.

"As a black British woman, I can't believe that America has voted in a black president," said Jackie Humphries, 49, a librarian who partied with 1,500 people at the U.S. Embassy in London on November 4 night.

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Monday, November 10, 2008

 

Barack Obama's historical outcome is victory for printed press

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Apparently looking for something old to go with something new (Barack Obama) and something blue (a more Democratic Congress), the American people bought newspapers in huge numbers Wednesday (November 5), a day after the historic election of the nation's first black president.

From the nation's largest daily, USA Today, to its more modest broadsheets, newspapers expanded press runs to accommodate increased sales. Some sold special gift editions and framed front pages.

But even the expanded production left many news racks barren and consumers scrambling to snag a memento. Readers lined up from Los Angeles to Miami to buy copies of their daily paper.

The Chicago Tribune sold framed front pages for as much as $99. A single copy of Wednesday's The New York Times sold on e-Bay for a reported $249.99.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

 

41% favor Obama, 24 % support McCain, 34% are undecided

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A national survey of Asian American voters done jointly by four universities says a sizable section of this group remains undecided, a factor that sets them up to play a 'pivotal' role in the outcome of the election.

The study, released October 6 in Washington, was conducted by researchers from four leading universities: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside)and University of Southern California (USC).

The 2008 National Asian American Survey (NAAS) shows that 41 percent of Asian Americans are likely to favor Sen. Barack Obama, while 24 percent support Sen. John McCain.

In battleground states, where either candidate could win on Election Day, Obama leads with 43 percent of Asian Americans supporting him and 22 percent favoring McCain.

The study shows a high proportion of undecided Asian American likely voters at 34 percent, way above the national average of 8 percent.

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Monday, September 1, 2008

 

Indian Americans swing into action at Denver's Pepsi Center

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Despite making up only about 58 of the 4,440 delegates and alternate delegates at the Democratic National Convention, Indian Americans swung into action at Denver's Pepsi Center and around town, because of the positions they occupy in the party and the room they have carved in the political campaign debate.

In the morning session Sunita Leeds, Co Chair of the very important Rules Committee and Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Indo-American Leadership Council, was introduced along with the other members of the Rules Committee, by Howard Dean, Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

The DNC also organized an Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Caucus meeting at Four Seasons Hotel, where several Indian Americans addressed the issue of getting out the youth vote and securing swing states for the party on the road to November. In the panel themed ‘Showing our Strength: Our Electeds, Our Candidates, Our Future,' Ohio State Representative Jay Goyal, was one of three state level elected officials to speak He spoke about how Democrats could win Ohio, a swing state, and if it won that state, Obama's presidency was in the bag, according to him.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

 

Race is likely to remain major point of contention in bitter contest

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Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have tried to step back from a divisive debate over race, with each candidate denying that he was the first to inject the issue into the campaign.

Nonetheless, the candidates and campaigns have been battling over the issue and which side was engaged in ‘low road' politics, an indication that race is likely to remain a major point of contention in what is becoming an increasingly bitter contest.

For Obama, the argument is an unwelcome distraction that could complicate his efforts to win over voters who may be skeptical of a relative newcomer with a less than typical background.

It also pulls the focus away from his efforts to focus on bread-and-butter economic issues.

For McCain, any hint of racist tactics would hurt his efforts with the moderates and independents he needs to win in November.

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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

 

The Democrats Barack Obama calls for better India-Pakistan ties

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U .S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on July 22 that the U.S.-led war against militants in Afghanistan might be made easier if the United States worked to improve trust between India and Pakistan.

Obama, who is on a foreign fact-finding trip and visited Afghanistan over the weekend, described Afghanistan as the central front in the war against terrorism and said the situation there was "perilous and urgent".

Trying to reduce tensions between traditional rivals India and Pakistan could help, he said.

"A lot of what drives, it appears, motivations on the Pakistan side of the border, still has to do with their concerns and suspicions about India," Obama told a news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman.

"We haven't had a conversation between the Indians and the Pakistanis that has been sustained and meaningful about how they can arrive at a more sensible arrangement between the two countries that could relieve some of the pressure and help us go after ... some of these forces along the border regions."

Relations between India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, have become strained again despite an ongoing peace process.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

 

Scholars say Obama's campaign is history in motion

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Already, the adjective ‘historic' seems permanently attached to news media descriptions of Barack Obama's emergence as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

News anchors and pundits deploy the term with abandon, but what do actual historians think?

"I think this will be in a class by itself," said John Hope Franklin, who at 93 is the dean of the American historians who think and write about race.

Obama's campaign "is the most radical, far-reaching, significant (undertaking) by any individual or group in our history," he said. "This strikes at the very heart of national ideology on race and the political patterns of this country's history."

Obama's candidacy is ‘monumental,' said Manning Marable, 58, professor of history at Columbia.

"It can redeem American history from the specter of race that has plagued us for nearly 400 years."

"Race is the original sin of American democracy," said William Chafe, 65, professor of history at Duke, so "this will be historic in a thousand ways."

It could be, added Alan Brinkley of Columbia, "a very important event in the effort to put race to bed as an issue."

These scholars were all talking about the phenomenon - unexpected for all of them of a black man becoming a leading candidate for president in 2008.

They agree that this is something big, even if it is too early to know just how big. And several of them agreed that it is also something complicated.

So Obama began his first speech as the presumptive nominee in St. Paul on June 5 night with eloquent thanks to "my grandmother, who helped raise me ... who poured everything she had into me and who helped to make me the man I am today." She is Madelyn Dunham, Obama's white grandmother.

Race in America has never been a blackand-white matter. Many Americans have a mixed racial background, "but that is something we have never wanted to acknowledge," said Clement Alexander Price, 62, professor of history at Rutgers.

"For a long time, the races (in America) have been joined at the hip." A further refinement: Obama's African ancestry is not traceable to an American descendant of slaves, but to his Kenyan father who in 1959 arrived in the United States, where he met and married Obama's white mother. So the candidate's pedigree, like his new standing in history, is unusual.

"It is one of those exquisite moments in American history," said Johnnetta B. Cole, 71, former president of Spelman College and an anthropologist, "that teaches all of us, especially the young, what is possible in this country."

Ultimately only history can determine what is historic. Obama's status in history will depend on future events that are today mostly unknowable, though the first whether he will or won't be elected president in November - will be known relatively soon.

Even if he wins, the important presidencies are the ones that change the country and its politics, said David Blight of Yale. A President Obama's place in history "would depend so much on whether he truly can develop a new coalition" that creates a new politics.

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Friday, June 6, 2008

 

For much of the world, Obama's victory was a moment to admire United States

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For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation's image abroad is in tatters.

From hundreds of supporters crowded around televisions in rural Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, to jubilant Britons writing "WE DID IT!" on the "Brits for Barack" site on Face book, people celebrated what they called an important racial and generational milestone for the United States.

"This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime," said Sunila Patel, 62, encountered on the streets of New Delhi. "A black president of the U.S. will mean that there will be more American tolerance for people around the world who are different."

The primary elections generated unprecedented interest around the world, as people in distant parliament buildings and that ched roof huts followed the political ups and downs as if they were watching a Hollywood thriller.

Much of the interest simply reflects hunger for change from President Bush, who is deeply unpopular in much of the world.

At the same time, many people abroad seemed impressed - sometimes even shocked - by the wide-open nature of U.S. democracy and the history-making race between a woman and a black man.

"The primaries showed that the U.S. is actually the nation we had believed it to be, a place that is open-minded enough to have a woman or an African-American as its president," said Minoru Morita, a Tokyo political analyst.

"I think it will be put down as a shining, historical moment in the history of America," said Fumiaki Kubo, a professor at Tokyo University.

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has admirers around the world, especially from her days as first lady, interviews on four continents suggested that Obama's candidacy has most captured the world's imagination.

"Obama is the exciting image of what we always hoped America was," said Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, a London think tank. "We have immensely enjoyed the ride and can't wait for the next phase."

The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, who has extensive overseas experience, is known and respected in much of the world. In interviews, McCain seemed more popular than Obama in countries such as Israel, where he is particularly admired for his hard line against Iran.


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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

 

Speculation about Jindal running mate for McCain

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After a conservative talk show host tossed up the idea of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as the perfect running mate for Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, the talk has only grown. Even within the Republican Indian American community, activists see the 36-year-old governor and former Bush appointee, as a buffer against a possible Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The latest is an opinion piece in The New York Times by well-known columnist Bill Kristol entitled "McCain-Jindal?" that extols the governor's virtues as a vice presidential candidate and implies that Sen. McCain is seriously considering the possibility.

"… in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They're tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak," Kristol said in his May 5 piece.

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The Democrats are putting the "stale" in stalemate

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The Democrats are putting the "stale" in stalemate.

Barack Obama needed to "close the deal" by beating Hillary Clinton in Indiana and North Carolina. Clinton needed a "gamechanger" so that she could have a viable path to the presidential nomination.

But as of May 6 night, no deal closed and no game changed.

Obama's big win in North Carolina, coupled with Clinton's narrow lead in Indiana, adds to a sense that his nomination is inevitable. But the muddle also gave Clinton a reason to remain in the race and force the party's superdelegates to decide it.

At least for now, there is no exit plan. We're going to West Virginia! And we're going to Oregon and Kentucky! And we're going to Puerto Rico and Montana and South Dakota! Yeeaarrgghh! .

"There were those who were saying that North Carolina would be a game-changer in this election, but today what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.," Obama told his supporters here at North Carolina State University on May 6 night. But in the next breath, he acknowledged that he hadn't closed the deal, either. "I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana," he added, to boos from the crowd.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

 

Both defended handling of missteps, misstatements; directed sharp criticism

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Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton both defended their handling of missteps and misstatements on the campaign trail and directed sharp criticisms toward each other - during a potentially pivotal Democratic debate in Philadelphia on April 16 night.

With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination mired in a form of trench warfare that has left party leaders searching for a way to bring it to a conclusion before the party's late summer convention, Clinton, D-N.Y., and Obama, D-Ill., began their first head-to-head encounter in nearly two months focused on political disputes rather than their relatively narrow policy differences.

Obama, who leads in the delegates needed to claim the nomination, fielded tough questions about his relationship with his former pastor, his patriotism and his description of small-town voters as "bitter," the latter a controversy that has engulfed his campaign for much of the past week.

Obama argued repeatedly that voters are smart enough to differentiate petty issues from important economic matters.

"So the problem that we have in our politics, which is fairly typical, is that you take one person's statement, if it's not properly phrased, and you just beat it to death," Obama said. "And that's what Senator Clinton's been doing over the last four days. And I understand that. That's politics. And I expect to have to go through this process.

But I do think it's important to recognize that it's not helping that person who's sitting at the kitchen table who is trying to figure out how to pay the bills at the end of the month."

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