Adam Serwer explains how Democrats, led by Obama, are addressing black poverty by confronting the problems of fatherhood:
For years, conservatives have shrugged off public-policy solutions to black poverty, arguing that cultural problems with marriage and fatherhood are primarily to blame. Liberals, hobbled by a desire to avoid alienating black voters, failed to acknowledge their own public-policy failures and ensuing cultural problems as contributors to black poverty. In short, conservatives blame the breakdown of the black family, and liberals blame the breakdown of the system.Neither explanation adequately explains the dilemma or provides for a solution, but together they effected a stalemate on an issue that remains a low priority in the minds of most lawmakers. John McWhorter, a self-identified centrist and fellow at the Manhattan Institute who sees fatherlessness as one of the causes of lingering poverty in the black community, was glad Obama gave the speech. "The sad fact is that fatherlessness does not stand out in the popular imagination as an emergency in the way that, say, poverty or Jim Crow did in the '60s," McWhorter says. No matter what the reaction, Obama's speech brought fatherlessness to the forefront of public debate.
Tim Fernholz reports on conservatives who are trying to grab onto Obama's coattails:
Last spring, at the height of a national obsession with Barack Obama, some Republican elected officials weren't sleeping soundly at night.Not the hardcore conservatives; they knew their base and their districts. It was the moderate Republicans -- the ones who make a habit of working across the aisle, whose districts often contain more independent and Democratic voters than Republicans and will likely go for Obama -- who were concerned. While the presidential contest remains close, signs around the country point toward Democratic success at the congressional level. How better to stave off this challenge than by featuring Obama himself in your political advertisement?
And Paul Waldman writes that the current economic crisis provides an opportunity to permanently shift the nation's ideological direction:
As the economic meltdown of 2008 continues, some are hearing echoes of the Great Depression. And if this is another 1929, the next president could well be another Franklin Roosevelt. That's what Barack Obama seemed to be aiming for when he said last Friday, "This is not a time for fear. It's not a time for panic. It's a time for resolve and a time for leadership. I know we can steer ourselves out of this crisis, because we have done it before. That's what we do as Americans."
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