Word: african-american
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...Venerable" is not exactly what America expected, though, from a convention that took the strikingly original step of nominating the first African-American to lead a major party toward the White House. Obama entered this race and campaigned through the primaries on the strength of his own biography and promise - a new face offering new politics for a new era. But with little more than nine weeks remaining in the campaign, and the race extremely close, here he is running one of the oldest plays in the book...
...ugly August, in 1988. Atwater had conducted a series of focus groups among blue collar Democrats in Paramus, N.J., in May and found all sorts of fodder: Michael Dukakis was "against" the Pledge of Allegiance. More substantively, Dukakis ran a weekend prison-release program in Massachusetts that allowed an African-American felon named Willie Horton to go on a killing spree. But what was most distinctive was a new tone: a derisive, sarcastic negativity that predicted, and enabled, Rush Limbaugh's brilliant, destructive trade...
...anti-Obama dissent had drained away. When New York's turn came to vote, Clinton moved to suspend the roll call and select Obama by acclamation. The band played Love Train. And so it was that Barack Obama - human jigsaw puzzle of races and ethnicities - became the first African-American standard-bearer of a major party. There were many black faces with tears rolling down them, and even though Obama plays down the historic nature of his achievement, it's clear that a lot of people saw the beginning of a different America at 4:38 p.m. mountain time...
...Biden officially launched his 2008 presidential run in February of 2007, he virtually ended it with a classic Biden gaffe - this one involving the man on whose ticket he'll be a part of in the race for the White House. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said, apparently oblivious to his implied slur of previous African-American politicians. Although Obama brushed aside the comment, other prominent African-Americans and much of the Washington political class came down hard on Biden. He apologized...
...city's top law-enforcement post. The Howard University graduate spent several wintry days knocking on doors in Iowa for Obama. She comes to her activism honestly: her parents met at a Berkeley student protest. Another Obama backer is Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, one of only two current African-American governors. Patrick, 52, shocked the commonwealth's political establishment in 2006 when he came out of nowhere to defeat a long-favored Democrat in the primary and trounce an incumbent Republican lieutenant governor in the general election. His name is often floated in discussions of a potential Obama Cabinet...