WP: More Voters, Black and White, Believe That A Change Is Gonna Come

[BeyondGeography]

Obama's Cheering Section Ups The Volume

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 12, 2007; Page C01

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Change. The word on which Sen. Barack Obama has staked his candidacy. A word that's peppered in all of his speeches and plastered around any Obama event. A word that attracts and enthralls and, in some cases, challenges. Change? What's going to change? Are voters going to change?

..."The tide has turned, the momentum has shifted to his direction. You can feel it, you can feel it in this state, you can definitely feel it among black folk in this state," says state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a fixture of South Carolina politics for more than 15 years. For months she's remained neutral in the race but now leans toward Obama. "Look, black folk had to fight, had to fight hard, to get a vote in the ballot box. We're pragmatic," Cobb-Hunter continues. "For a while black folk here in the South couldn't imagine that white folk would ever vote for a black man. But white America can. And black America is realizing that."

...To witness the Oprah-Obama show up close as it traveled from heavily white Des Moines to heavily black Columbia was to see that crossover appeal at work. Surely, voters don't support Obama only because he's black, the same way Clinton's followers don't root for her only because she's a woman. Yet never before has a black candidate appeared to have such a strong shot at winning a party's nomination. This is the moment when black and white voters in these early voting states are poised to answer some hard questions: Are we over race, that still uncured boil on America's psyche? Are we ready to break from our racial and racist past?

...Adds Ellis, a retired elementary school teacher whose parents are Polish immigrants: "I've been looking at Joe Biden and I've been looking at Barack Obama. When I think of Obama, I think of someone who's a change agent, someone who can lead change. Not just from the status quo in Washington -- you know, lobbyists having too much pull -- but from our history, our racial history."

...Jason Jones couldn't believe the crowd downtown on Saturday afternoon. "I don't think Iowa was prepared," says the 24-year-old high school social studies teacher, a transplant from Kansas City, Mo. And he couldn't believe what he read and reread on the Dec. 2 front page of the Des Moines Register. Obama led the newspaper's latest poll.

Obama? Over Clinton? In Iowa?

"I don't want to come off like I don't have faith in America, but I seriously thought that Hillary Clinton had a better chance being the first woman president than Barack Obama being the first black president," says Jones, who is black. "But after Saturday, I've told a couple of my friends, 'Obama really has a shot at this. He could really make this happen.' "

...At first Thompson, a retired credit administrator from GM, supported Clinton, but the more he heard about Obama, and the more he heard Obama speak -- on TV, on the radio, talking about Iraq, education, health care -- the more he admired him. Seven years ago, when President Bush was first inaugurated, Thompson watched the ceremony on television at his Greenville home. He sat with his only grandson, 5-year-old Jamal, on his lap. "I told him he could be the president of the United States if he so desired. The sky's the limit. Anything is possible."

And now, there's Obama.

"Imagine," says Thompson, "they're calling him the future president of the United States. Imagine."==

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/11/AR2007121102492.html?hpid=topnews

[dkf]

1. :) gives me the shivers...