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• Monday, December 12, 2005 04:29 PM

  leaders...plural?

  I don't take much issue with the article in general. And I've been largely (bankruptcy bill excepted)impressed with Senator Obama's record and character. Indeed during his Dem. convention speech I said to my wife that we were very possibly looking at the first black US president.

  I do take issue with the nearly non-sequitur cover image and the subtitle. At least two thirds of the article was devoted to an analysis of California's racial politics, and produced not one example of a California politician primed to hit the national scene. Discussions of New York and Atlanta were equally void of examples of any sort of national "movement".

  Of course all politics is local, and it has to start somewhere, but tidying up the piece with a few paragraphs about Barack Obama seemed cheap and, frankly, off point. Without the suggestion of the story's graphic image lead the summation doesn't follow.

  Salon, and liberals in general, would do well to ditch any and all race baiting immediately--however well intentioned. It can only backfire from here on out. It is one of the pillars of the broken liberal movement, and trying to salvage this condemned structure can only lead to more trouble. Progressives from across the political spectrum would be well advised to erect an entirely new foundation that severs all ties to past strategies and builds on the foundation of the best that both (all) political parties have to offer. This is what Barack is doing, and perhaps we will see a movement grow out of it, but the work sited in Oakland and LA and New York and Atlanta is not yet an outpicturing of some transcendent uprising.

  —jazztao Read jazztao's other letters
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