If Obama is our next President, then it will certainly alleviate America's perceived prejudice against people of different color. I hope Obama doesn't force his personal Christian beliefs down people's throats like Bush, the evangelicals and neocons. It appears that Christian theology (not necessarily Christians themselves) teaches condemnation and hatred towards those who do not conform to that way of thinking.

On the whole, I'm sure that Obama is unlikely to be a fascist Christian like Bush. The Republicans, sometimes even Ron Paul, can present much of the same substance and message--old, white Christian men claiming to be of faith and claiming to represent change, even though all past US Presidents were and are white men. It seems now that when Bush said that he was a "compassionate conservative" it was too vague and empty a message. In particular, if he had been something like a fiscal conservative, then he wouldn't have spent so much money overseas on at least two wars.

All in all, Obama appears to have a very good chance of getting the Democratic nomination, since the Clintons seem to be bickering against him only so they can go back to Washington again. Positive campaigning is better than the confusion of attack ads ad nauseam. Politicians generally win elections by being steady, calm and fair.

Nicholas Rosen

Great Falls, VA

Barack Obama can transcend partisanship, which is entirely different than the bi-partisan compromise you suggest in your article. In a 6/28/03 letter to the Black Commentator, Barack defines trans-partisanship:

My job, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, isn't to scold people for their lack of ideological purity. It's to persuade as many people as I can, across the ideological spectrum, that my vision of the future is compatible with their values, and can make their lives a little bit better. Thus, while I may favor common-sense gun control laws, that doesn't keep me from reaching out to NRA members who are worried about their lack of health insurance. I favor affirmative action, but I'm still going after the votes of white union members who oppose affirmative action, because I think I can convince them that it's Bush's economic agenda, and not affirmative action, that is eroding their job security and stagnating their wages.... In other words, I believe that politics in any democracy is a game of addition, not subtraction. And I believe deeply enough in the decency of the American people to think that progressives can build a winning majority in this country, so long as we're not afraid to speak the truth, and so long as we don't write off big chunks of the electorate just because they don't agree with us on every issue.

Seeking common points of agreement with voters rather than writing them off because they are in the "other" party or disagree with us on "other" issues, is what Obama means by trans-partisanship. And it is this trans-partisan outreach that has been missing from Democratic Party politics.

Too often, party leaders hastily dismiss this as bi-partisan compromise, and point to actions in Congress in ceding to Bush's agenda as evidence. But broad transpartisan coalition building starts with voters, not Congress. This is what Ronald Reagan's strategic advisors understood in the late '70s when they were creating the Reagan revolution: that broad coalitions of voters forces Congress to change if they want to attract these same voters when they face re-election.

Obama has identified several issues in which independents and some Republicans can agree with the progressive cause: healthcare for all, ending the war in Iraq, ending government corruption, breaking our addiction to oil, and playing a constructive and positive role in world affairs. Thus, rather than separate ourselves from voters who agree with us on these issues because they may disagree with us on some other issue, Barack says unite with them where we agree so we can be much stronger in our fight for these issues in Congress.

Your article fails to address this transformative effect of an Obama candidacy, and instead falls into the traditional media trap of focusing on race as the key transformative quality. And while I agree that even on that score, Obama's biracial history will transform race and bring the races together, the greatest transformative effect of Obama is on the progressive movement and the Democratic Party because he is able to attract voters that we had once written off.

Metteyya Brahmana

Santa Cruz, CA

In his assessment of the rightward orientation of the "partisanship" that has brought us to the present crisis (God, let this crisis be a turning point, too), Gary Younge is as right on the mark as can be.

But Senator Obama has to watch his words, because in these United States, we still allow elections to be won by the so-called "serious" candidate, who is always the one who gathers the largest amount of campaign money. So Obama, like any other candidate, faces the dilemma that the more he promises now, the less campaign support he gets from the establishment, and vice versa.

So if Barack Obama is elected President, which "transcendence" do we expect? That his actions will transcend his careful words, as on that great day when Obama voted against the occupation of Iraq? Or the opposite, that Obama's hopeful rhetoric will transcend a disappointingly incrementalist program?

I know that when many white people look at Barack Obama, they see the opportunity to drown their half-suppressed awareness of the real structure of economic racism--last seen inundated by Hurricane Katrina--in a tasty multiracial chocolatini. But what would Obama do as President? Would he use our nation's biggest "bully pulpit" for education and economic emancipation--as Michelle Obama seems more than ready to do?

Or would he go the way of Bill Clinton and the DLC, the path of least resistance? (I believe it was John Trudell who observed that taking the path of least resistance is what makes a river meander, and what makes a politician crooked.)

I don't know the answer to this question, but I am willing to give Barack Obama a chance (though I'd be even more willing if he appointed John Edwards as his running mate). We should be so lucky as to elect a President for whom capitulation is not a foregone conclusion.

Eric Paul Jacobsen

Saint Paul, MN

While I am not too fond of any of the candidates running for President, I do believe the fact that a woman and an African-American are front runners is a positive thing. The country is moving beyond race or gender in the election process. I did vote for Jesse Jackson Jr., when he ran for President, and Tom Bradley for Mayor of Los Angeles and for Governor of California. My only successful vote was for Bradley, when he became mayor of Los Angeles. We do have two Democratic Women Senators in California, who I have supported up to this point.

However, though I think it will take us some time for us to regard them as normal people running for office, taking them on their own merits, and not as symbols, it would be wise for voters to look at them as human beings and make a judgment based on their qualifications for office.

I do believe sisterhood is rather common among women. My wife has close female friends and is very attached to her real sisters, but she did write in Ralph Nader for President on the Democratic ballot. I went with Kucinich, but if Nader does run, he will get my vote in the general election. It will be the first time I have not voted a straight Democratic ticket. I am not very happy with Republican "lite" Candidates running as Democrats. NAFTA was passed during the Clinton Administration.

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

I too experienced a moment such as the one described by Mr. Younge. It happened in New Hampshire in the last days of the primary. Everywhere I went, I found other women who felt the same way I did. They were going to vote for Hillary, no matter what the media, the other candidates and the bully boys said. We were going to stand up for what we wanted, not for what everyone told us we should want. For a moment, we all came together and told the deafening chorus of loud-mouthed sexists to shove off.

It was an experience I will never forget. It was sisterhood.

Of course, the day after the election the media wrote us off as closet racists (the Bradley effect) or dithering ninnies (we voted because she cried). No matter. I was there. I know what happened. The other women who were there know it too.

Mr. Younge, you mention gender inequality in passing, but Obama has been noticibly silent on this issue. You hear him talk about racism, homophobia, income inequality--but never the misogyny rampant in our country. He has no plan to address it, no policy proposals. Violence against women, the objectification and degradation of women in mass culture, the staggering double standards and stereotypes applied to Hillary and other women in positions of power--stereotypes he benefits from and occasionally trades in himself--the lives of girls and women subject to gender-based oppression around the world don't figure anywhere in the Obama vision of "change."

Like many, many of the women I talked to in New Hampshire, that doesn't sound like real change to me. In fact, it sounds like a whole lot more of the same old, same old.

I'm glad you had your moment, Mr. Younge. I'm sorry you didn't share mine.

Given the chance, I wouldn't trade the moment I experienced for anything in the world.

Nina Miller

Washington, DC

It is not enough to propose "eradicating' the problems as you put it.

Within that quality of John Kennedy urging us to become physically fit, put a man on the moon, light the fire of freedom in the world is the power for us not only to eradicate problems but to progress forward to a better world.

So-called progressives get too bogged down in the manifestations of the wrongs rather than focusing on the inspirational which act as solutions.

This is why I support Obama.

Perhaps you disdain musicians as political spokesfolk, but John Lennon was right when he said that when you focus on the negative aspects, you give it energy. I think he meant that you must put out your message, not someone else's.

Richard Ray Harris

Desert Hot Springs, CA