OBAMA SWOON OF THE DAY

GEORGE LAKOFF, ALTERNET - We are on the cusp of a new politics in America. It should be dated from March 18, 2008, the date of Barack Obama's landmark speech "A More Perfect Union." The usual pundits have looked mainly at the speech's surface theme: race. They weren't wrong. It was indeed the most important statement about race in recent history. But it was much more. It was a general call to a new politics and an outline for what it needs to be. Just as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was about much more than the war dead on that battlefield, so Obama's speech -- widely hailed as in the same ballpark as Lincoln's -- went beyond race to the nature of America, its ideals and its future.

IN FACT, Obama was pulling 50 points in the Gallup poll against Hillary Clinton when the Wright story broke. That fell to 42 in the wake of the uproar. He gained three points after his speech, presumably mostly from those who had supported him a few days earlier. In other words, the speech had virtually no effect on those other than voters who already supported Obama. It looks like the national conversation will have to wait a bit.