Obama Campaign Redoubles Efforts to Reach Hispanic Voters

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 25, 2008; A01

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, May 24 -- Sen. Barack Obama swept across this island commonwealth Saturday, a visit that had the markings of a coda to a grueling primary campaign.

"Hóla, Puerto Rico! How's everybody doing today?" Obama shouted to a crowd gathered in Old San Juan, before he led dancing supporters along the seaside battlements for a raucous caminata, the traditional candidate parade. "I am thankful, I am grateful. . . . If we do well in Puerto Rico, there is no reason I will not be announcing that I am the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America!"

The expected victory by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in next Sunday's primary here is unlikely to shift the dynamic of the Democratic race. But Puerto Rico is emerging as a field test of what has become one of the first orders of business for the Obama campaign in its transition to general-election mode: redoubling and rethinking its effort to win over Hispanic voters, a demographic it lost to Clinton and will need against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Last week, Obama courted Puerto Ricans in central Florida and Cuban Americans in Miami, laying down markers in a pivotal state in which the growing Hispanic vote is trending Democratic. This week, he will head to the Hispanic-heavy swing states of New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.

The challenge: establishing a connection between Obama, a rookie senator from Illinois new to the national scene, and Hispanic voters, a crucial element of the Democratic coalition who have not yet reached the threshold of familiarity that they need to cast their lot with him. That effort is complicated by the diversity of the Hispanic community, in which the interests of predominantly Mexican Americans in the Southwest can be very different from Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans on the East Coast.

"We recognize we must work very hard . . . to do better with Latino voters in the general election," said Federico Peña, an Obama supporter who served as both transportation and energy secretary in President Bill Clinton's administration. "We're just going to have to do much better. We recognize that. The senator recognizes that."

The plan, discussed in a conference call in the past week among the campaign's top Hispanic supporters, includes immediately ratcheting up Obama's exposure in Spanish-language media; creating a separate fundraising category that contributors can donate to for the purpose of paying for ads in Spanish; registering as many as possible of the 7 million eligible Hispanic Americans not on the rolls; and, in coming weeks, reaching out to Hillary Clinton's major Hispanic backers.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the highest-profile Hispanic supporter in a campaign that lacks a Latino in its inner circle, envisions a greater role for surrogates such as himself who can be "validators" of Obama. While campaigning in Puerto Rico recently, Richardson said, he often invoked comparisons to John F. Kennedy -- a hero among many fellow Catholics in Hispanic communities -- to convince voters that Obama is a "young man of enormous potential."

But much of the revamped outreach will be up to Obama. As disparate and far-flung as the Hispanic electorate is, those who study it say Hispanic voters share a tendency to judge politicians as much on how personally comfortable they feel with them as on the issues. ("We know each other" was President Bush's slogan for Hispanic outreach in 2004, a reference to his ties with the community in Texas.) Obama has had little opportunity to do so.

"The majority of Hispanics are at very best confused or uninformed about who he is," said Jorge Mursuli, executive director of Democracia USA, which registers Hispanic voters. "That's not insurmountable. . . . But in the end, any Hispanic who doesn't know him or have a relationship with him in their mind, that is a vulnerable vote that a Republican can nab."

To make up the gap, Obama will engage in more time-intensive retail politicking, which with its undertones of old-style identity politics has not always come naturally to him. "This huge stage [for big rallies] that has allowed so many thousands to feel the excitement has not allowed us to know him," said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), an Obama backer. "We have to bring him down off the pedestal, bring him down to the living room and see him."

And, advisers say, he must find a way to tell the story of his life and campaign in a way that reflects commonalities with Hispanic voters: that he was born to a foreigner who came to America seeking a better life, that he was raised partly by grandparents -- on an island, like many Americans of Caribbean descent -- that he has experienced some of the same hurdles as part of a racial minority, and has overcome them by excelling in his education.

"Hispanics are big proponents of improving your life and advancing yourself through education, and that's his life story," said Freddy Balsera, a Florida political consultant who is helping lead Obama's Hispanic outreach in the state. "When he starts explaining that to Hispanic voters, they're going to connect to him."

This is where Puerto Rico comes in, although its residents cannot vote in November. So strong are the links between the island and mainland that reports of Obama's visit here -- whether via relatives or Spanish-language media -- will only help the campaign build a bond that it realizes has been lacking.

"What happens on this island 2,000 miles from New York and Chicago, we all find out about," said Gutierrez, whose family hails from Puerto Rico.

The stakes are great. In the 2006 midterm elections, Hispanics made up 6 percent of voters, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, with higher rates in key swing states such as New Mexico (27 percent), Florida (10 percent) and Nevada and Colorado (9 percent). In 2004, Hispanic voters favored Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) in all major states except Florida, where Cuban Americans have tilted the Hispanic vote Republican.

But there are signs Hispanic participation could be much higher this year, in reaction against the recent anti-illegal-immigrant movement, which has unnerved many citizens of Latin American descent, and out of discontent with the war in Iraq and the economy. Mursuli noted that Hispanic turnout in the Democratic primaries had in several states matched general-election turnout in 2004 and said that his group is racing ahead with new registrations.

In the primaries, Obama prevailed among Hispanic voters in a few states, such as Virginia and Connecticut, but Clinton won them easily in most other states. In California, analysts speculated that Obama faced resistance because of "black-brown" tension between African Americans and Latinos there.

The Obama campaign noted Hispanics' greater familiarity with Clinton and her husband and is confident that it will fare better against McCain. Obama's advisers say that although McCain supported an overhaul of the immigration system last year, they will highlight the tougher line he took in the primaries and his party's overall tone on the issue. "There are differences, and they can be clarified and magnified," Peña said.

Florida is looming as the biggest battleground. In the last week, McCain was in Miami to speak to Cuban Americans and harshly criticized Obama for his call to normalize relations with Cuba.

On Friday, Obama ventured before a Cuban American audience to deliver a speech on Latin America, and the numbers suggest he may make inroads. Democrats recently surpassed Republicans among registered Hispanic voters in the state, a combination of a leftward movement among younger Cubans and of the growing numbers of Puerto Ricans (migrating from the island and from the Northeast) and other Latin Americans. In 1988, Cubans made up an estimated 90 percent of Hispanic voters in the state; now they are fewer than half, according to the Florida polling firm Bendixen & Associates.

Such considerations seemed far off Saturday as Obama marched through Old San Juan in barely controlled chaos. "Obama la esperanza y el futuro . . . Y un amigo presidente porque respeta nuestra gente," blasted the song on the sound truck ("Obama the hope and the future/And a friend president because he respects our people").

Here and there, the candidate broke into a few dance steps. "We have great support here in Puerto Rico," he declared at the end. "The most important support is not the support from the elected officials or support from the powerful -- it's the support from the people, and that is what we have shown here today."

To Claim Popular Vote, Clinton Is Seeking Wins in Last 3 Primaries

By Anne E. Kornblut and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 25, 2008; A08

Trailing in delegates while her debt continues to grow, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is aggressively campaigning in the final three contests of the primary season in the hope of seizing a victory in the overall popular vote from Sen. Barack Obama.

The effect of such a victory -- and the question of whether Clinton hopes to leverage it into the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket or simply leave it as a historical marker -- is less clear. "One hundred percent of her energy is on the popular vote," a senior adviser said. "The only thing she can control is how hard she works and what effort she puts into the remaining three contests. She wants to end this with as many votes as she can."

The pursuit of the popular vote sent Clinton to South Dakota on Friday, then back across the country to Puerto Rico yesterday. It also helps explain the sometimes-contradictory rhetoric she used last week -- on one evening highlighting party unity, and on the next, defiance and determination to continue running hard against Obama.

"Whatever happens, I'll work as hard as I can to elect a Democratic president this fall. The state motto of Kentucky is, 'United we stand, divided we fall,' " Clinton said after Tuesday night's victory. Her address in Louisville was interpreted by some as a sign that she is contemplating her post-campaign stance as Obama moves closer to the requisite number of delegates.

Yet the next day, with renewed vigor, Clinton compared her effort to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan to the abolition of slavery -- a sharp about-face that two advisers said reflects the difficult, emotional nature of this stage of the race for the candidate.

Clinton's sense of urgency about seating the delegates from those states, of course, is also rooted in her desire to move ahead in the popular vote. The Democratic National Committee sanctioned both states for moving their primaries up on the calendar in violation of party rules. Although neither candidate campaigned in Florida, Clinton ran up a big margin over Obama there, and she won the Michigan primary after Obama removed his name from the ballot.

After the two split primaries in Oregon and Kentucky last Tuesday, Obama held a lead of about 400,000 votes, according to various estimates, but counting the raw totals from Florida and Michigan would vault Clinton ahead of him. She hopes to close the gap further with what her campaign expects to be a big win in Puerto Rico's primary next Sunday.

Still, her aides struggled to explain what she hopes the popular-vote victory will yield. On Friday, they beat back rumors that she is negotiating to be Obama's running mate. "Totally false," senior aide Howard Wolfson said of a report that she is in formal talks with the Obama team over conceding. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, called the same reports "laughable."

Members of the Clinton inner circle said that as the campaign has dragged on, her group of confidantes has grown smaller. One senior adviser normally privy to major decisions said it is unlikely that anyone beyond campaign manager Maggie Williams and attorney Cheryl Mills is having concrete discussions with Clinton about her strategy going forward.

Democratic officials aligned with Clinton continued to say that the race is not over and that she has every right to remain in, despite the long odds.

"Most of the time when you're five runs behind going into the bottom of the ninth, you don't prevail, but I've never seen the Dodgers walk off the field," Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said. He said he still hopes she will "load the bases, hit a grand slam and then load the bases," but that to do so would require taking the fight well past June.

"If Clinton wins, it won't be until the convention," Sherman said. "It's more likely than not that Obama will wrap this up in June."

A decision about the fate of delegates from Michigan and Florida could come Saturday, when the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee is scheduled to meet. If either side is dissatisfied with the outcome, the matter will move on to another subcommittee and could take until the end of June to resolve. The final primaries of the year, in Montana and South Dakota, will be held on June 3.

Clinton has stated repeatedly that she will not drop out unless Obama picks up enough delegates to become the nominee. In her calculus involving the results of Florida and Michigan, that figure is 2,210, rather than the 2,026 number the Obama campaign is using.

The Clinton campaign has adopted an unyielding public stance heading into the Rules and Bylaws Committee's meeting, insisting that all delegates from Michigan and Florida be seated, with full voting rights, and that the results be strictly allocated on the basis of the primary results and by DNC rules. By their calculations, such a resolution would give her a net gain of 111 pledged delegates.

Obama leads by about 190 delegates, so even the most favorable outcome would still leave Clinton well short of her rival. Under more likely resolutions, her net gain would be 56 delegates or in the neighborhood of 30 delegates. The 30-member rules committee includes 13 members who have endorsed Clinton and eight who have endorsed Obama. While those backing Clinton are inclined to support her position on Michigan and Florida, they are not prepared to march in lockstep with the campaign.

Don Fowler, a former DNC chair, said: "I would be inclined to support what the campaign wanted, but there are limitations." Fowler disagreed with the rules committee's decision to bar the two delegations from being seated at the convention, but said, "Even I would assert that there has to be some kind of retribution, some kind of sanction."

Clinton also appears to have hurt her case by comparing the cause of seating the delegations with the abolition of slavery and the disputed election in Zimbabwe (not to mention her invocation, on Friday, of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to explain why she is still in the race). Knowledgeable Democrats said those comments have played poorly with the very people she needs most right now, superdelegates and members of the rules committee.

James Roosevelt Jr., who is co-chair of the rules committee, said he hopes the panel will agree on a resolution at its meeting next weekend. If Clinton is dissatisfied, her recourse would be take her fight to the Credentials Committee, which takes possession of the issue on June 29.

Even Clinton advisers doubt the fight will go that long but do not rule it out. "If the committee comes up with a solution that doesn't honor the results of the primaries, there is a strong chance it goes to Credentials," said one top adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Comments Cast Shadow on Last Laps in Primaries

May 25, 2008

Political Memo

By JEFF ZELENY

BAYAMÓN, P.R. — By this point in the Democratic presidential race — after endless hours of debates, 17 election nights and so many miles of campaigning — when both candidates arrived on Saturday in Puerto Rico, it seemed that surely everything had been said between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Yet even though Mrs. Clinton apologized for invoking the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy on Friday — she said she was simply explaining how many races had gone on longer than hers, including in 1968, when Mr. Kennedy was killed in June — the reverberations have raised fresh questions about her motivations, overshadowing her campaign here and in the remaining two states.

So did Mrs. Clinton change the endgame of the nominating fight? And is Mr. Obama less likely, should he become the nominee, to invite her to join the ticket?

The answers to both of those questions, at least at first blush, seemed to be no, but the issue was the subject of much discussion on Saturday. Several Democrats said Mrs. Clinton’s comments were unfortunate and inappropriate, but none called for her to end her candidacy.

For his part, Mr. Obama was more flummoxed than furious, his aides said. He had no plans to publicly broach the subject on Saturday, but when asked about it in an interview with a Puerto Rico radio station, he said he accepted Mrs. Clinton’s explanation.

“I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make, and I think that is what happened here,” Mr. Obama told Radio Isla. “Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it, and I will take her at her word on that.”

Still, the reference to the Kennedy assassination brought to the surface a fear many supporters and friends of Mr. Obama have quietly held, given the historic nature of his candidacy. For more than a year, Mr. Obama has had Secret Service protection because of unspecified threats, and security was visible Saturday along a crowded parade route in Old San Juan as he campaigned for the June 1 primary here.

As the primary season winds down, Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and Mr. Obama, of Illinois, have cooled their sharp attacks on each other. He has taken to praising her at most every campaign appearance, while she reminds Democrats that she will strongly support the eventual nominee.

The Kennedy comments, though, threatened to inject tension back into the duel.

Several Democratic leaders contacted on Saturday declined to discuss the topic, fearing it would further inflame the situation. Prominent African-American supporters of Mrs. Clinton did not rush to defend her comments, though they said they doubted she had intended harm. If she had, they said, it would be troubling.

Ralph C. Dawson, a labor lawyer who is an uncommitted Democratic superdelegate from New York, said Saturday that Mrs. Clinton surely had “no desire to draw such a parallel.”

“If I thought it reflected some purpose on her part it might impact my decision, but I don’t think so,” Mr. Dawson said. “I think the senator misspoke.”

Mr. Dawson said he had often thought about Mr. Obama’s well-being. “I think that the safety of candidates is always a concern,” he said. “Because of the extraordinary nature of Senator Obama’s campaign, I think it may be more of a concern. But as Senator Obama has said, he doesn’t want people focused on that.”

At least momentarily, though, the focus has once again returned to the subject, whether Mr. Obama likes it or not.

Ray Rivera contributed reporting from New York City.

Alice Walker on Obama

	He looks vulnerable here, but in a good way. Great capture. - cSc - formerly Paint with light

He looks vulnerable here, but in a good way. Great capture.

View Jennifer Esperanza's map

Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

all photos Jennifer Esperanza ©

By Alice Walker | TheRoot.com

The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or
gender, but on truth.

March 27, 2008

I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find that because of the
presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race
for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the
old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the
Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves
just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is
a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation
that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May
Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white
girls as 'Miss' when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never
admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my
parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she
responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.

My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May.
They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and
processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran
her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my
father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any
hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green
shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of
Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.

We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty
tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a
girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned
to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their
competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to
feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten
dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay
that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a
nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the
dairy cows herself.

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus
carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my
brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my
parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks
while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick.
We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that 'Jane' and 'Dick'
had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black
children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started
reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had
had no idea so kept from black people it had been that such a place
existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public
library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and
will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or
raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties
it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had
been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because
they attempted to exercise their 'democratic' right to vote. I wish I
could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better
than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to
me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of
their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in
Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in
Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who
loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they
did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for
instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the
Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to
the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other
trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because,
in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality,
this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to
make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I
knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to
lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the
country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep
sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see
him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh
choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions
of Americans â€"black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over
Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I
thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required.
Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense
mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable
human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like
Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of
our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and
for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we
are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other
than our (white) selves.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not
mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important
points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person
of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and
raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people,
after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see
suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I
understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a
people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends
and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn
their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard
Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is
beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the
on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to
destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior
towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to
cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All
colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same,
whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand;
our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand
what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I
want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, 'enemy' or
'friend,' and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to
understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and
talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a
proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot.
But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them,
human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she
felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as 'a woman'
while Barack Obama is always referred to as 'a black man.' One would
think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she
is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in
her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react
to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of
her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person,
with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with
no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I
cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into
Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white
privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so
marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States.
My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in
Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is
leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have
cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in
the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and
because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including
some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama.
I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there
is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still
plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even
though our family has been here longer than most North American
families â€" and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American
genes â€" we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote,
and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.

When I offered the word 'Womanism' many years ago, it was to give us a
tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These
are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our
singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white
women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in
brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man
or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence,
compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color
support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old
white women and men who do.

Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black
women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of
them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line
for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving
the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we
wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as
the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we
head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the
meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to
celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of
our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race,
ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on
Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing.
Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our
country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us
toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually
and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do
the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this
of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard
work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination.
And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never
tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Namaste;
And with all my love,
Alice Walker
Cazul
Northern California

US billionaire Buffett backs Obama for president

Mon May 19, 12:37 PM ET

Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, is backing Barak Obama for US president and thinks current US economic policy will push the dollar lower against other global currencies

Buffett told a press conference here Monday he had offered support to both Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton but that since it appeared Obama would win the party's nomination, "I will be very happy if he is elected president.

"He is my choice," Buffett said.

Commenting on the US economy, the 77-year-old investor who is known as the "Sage of Omaha," stressed that fiscal, monetary and trade policies were of great importance.

"I think that the US has followed and is following policies which will cause the US dollar to weaken over a long period of time," he said.

After voicing support for Obama, Buffett nonetheless noted the US economy had managed to do "awfully well" despite a depression, two world wars and many financial crises.

"They say in the stock market ... buy stock in a business that's so good that an idiot can run it because sooner or later one will," he added.

"Well, the United States is a little like that. We can take a little mis-management from time to time," Buffett said.

The chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company with 76 businesses, also said he was ready to add one or two more, on condition they were well-run and had annual pre-tax earnings on the order of 50 million euros (78 million dollars), he added.

"The bigger the better," Buffett said.

Almost all of his companies are in the United States but after investing in the Israeli industrial group Iscar, he was visiting Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy to spread the word that European groups were also welcome to give him a call.

"I kind of go the the office everyday and wait for the phone to ring and hope it isn't a wrong number," he quipped to describe his strategy of letting companies come to him rather than searching them out.