Juan Gonzalez of NY Daily News, Democracy Now on Barak Obama

[Fredda Weinberg]

I love this prose

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/columnists/gonzalez/index.html

Those of us who lived through those times have never forgotten that real social progress requires enormous personal sacrifice.

Today's Obama supporters are convinced they can bring about a whole new era with Facebook networks, BlackBerrys, a big "Change" banner and phone banks.

For all their many flaws, at least Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have no illusions about how fiercely contested the presidential race of 2008 will become.

In a nation suffering from the greatest wealth disparity in its history, those who tell us we can all get along are selling snake oil.

[Catchawave]

1. I liked this part too...

The Democratic candidate of "change," for example, has raised nearly $100 million in campaign contributions, nearly as much as the Hillary Clinton money machine. Three of his four largest group of bankrollers are executives of Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan Chase.

What kind of change is that?

[BeyondGeography]

2. Reads like a Hillbot hack job

[tishaLA]

3. This, I think, points precisely to the genetational shift

that underlies much of this battle between Sens. Obama and Clinton.

It is undoubtedly true that social progress requires sacrifice; it is also true that the 21st century employs new technologies to create progress. Social progress in the 21st century, unlike the 1950s and 60s, really does require that agents of change engage with Facebook, with phone banks, and with announcements going out on BlackBerrys: it creates instant coalitions from people dispersed throughout the nation (and, at times, throughout the world).

Some supporters of Sen. Obama probably think that change can happen with just wishing or willing it. But that is not something endemic to him or his campaign. Some. after all, thought that love-ins could stop a war. They couldn't, but they are part of it.