January 29, 2008
So, former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards has finally seen the light. He has "suspended" his campaign for the presidency, he says, in order not to be an obstacle in the path of history. That is, he, like the rest of the world, recognizes that the worldwide rule of the "gold ole boys" of Europe and European descent is finally, after 516 years, approaching its end. Now a real campaign may begin. Now the real issues and problems facing America and the rest of the world may finally be put squarely "on the table, " addressed and redressed.
However, Senators Clinton and Obama now must confront and successfully navigate a complex, even confounding trifecta of racial, gender, and generational divides. These divisions will intersect, intertwine, separate, and conflate again and again until the nominating conventions this summer; and, depending on which one of them actually wins the Democratic Party nomination, will explode into bold relief during the one-one-one campaign against the Republicans. Thus now we have what is shaping up to be a classic battle: The white woman against the black man.
Interestingly, the last public speech given by 19th century escaped slave, black abolitionist, Minister to Haiti, Washington, D.C. Marshall, and orator extraordinaire Frederick Douglass was before a women's suffrage group -- a basically white women's suffrage group. Douglass, like Senator Obama, was what is today termed "biracial", only in reverse in Douglass' case: white father/black mother.
