The circumspect rhythm of this phase continues. While Bill Clinton continues to dis-play behaviour that belies his fabled political talents and the Clinton campaign con-tinues to display evidence of critical dysfunction, Hillary herself and Barack Obama are concentrating hard on the business at hand, the upcoming races in Pennsylvania and Indiana in particular, exercising every discipline to speak and step carefully. The definition of misstep as ever comes primarily from the media circus. I am heading to Pennsylvania as I did to New Hampshire, one week before the vote, ready to do what-ever, which in this case may include some house party speaking as the phone calling and door knocking of Getting Out the Vote. We do not expect to win. The goal is get in single figures of Clinton, who but four weeks ago was twenty-five points ahead. Having been in New Hampshire I know all too well that one can’t underestimate the tendency of Hillary’s core to work hard or the beleaguered middle class to eschew the unknown, but that’s fine. We fight the fight, which is how chance begins.

Forty years ago today I was home in Stamford, Connecticut on spring break from my freshman year at Harvard University. It had been snowing. I was on my way home from some errand or another driving my father’s Mercury Capri — a snug car, not bad to handle — when the music on my AM station was interrupted by the announcement that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dead. For a split instant I could neither see, hear, nor feel re-gaining my senses just before the Capri completed its drift across the road and into a tree. Far less than twelve hours before I’d heard him deliver his Mountaintop Speech. (more…)

Despite Hillary’s efforts to the contrary, the Rev. Wright controversy ebbed over the long Easter weekend. Polls are now reflecting a post-Philadelphia Speech rebound for Barack. The two Democratic candidates are once again neck-in-neck but there is no denying the fact that as our vitriolic race prolongs itself the principal beneficiary has been and will be John McCain. (more…)

I had to take a few moments to think on this one. The Senator himself admitted yesterday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the furor over Reverend Jeremiah Wright had taken him aback, shaken him up a bit, reminded him just how unlikely and difficult his Presidential candidacy was. For me, last week’s weary, weary blues at the accu-mulating nastiness had escalated to the point that yesterday I just had to lie down. (more…)

I’ve been black for a very long time, so I can’t saw that I’m flabbergasted by cam-paign developments these last days, but talk about the weary, weary blues! (more…)

She prevailed. In Texas and Ohio the Clinton campaign’s vow to throw everything at Barack Obama including the kitchen sink bore fruit. While many have speculated that other pieces of plumbing predominated in this last effort and despite of the fact that she is still in the same overall position with delegates (with proportional allocation of delegates the norm for these contests she accrued but 9 more than Barack and still is considerably behind him overall) it would be disingenuous to ignore that there has been a shift in momentum as Hillary crows about her knockout blows, Barack’s im-plied wimpishness and the Obama campaign ponders how to win the nomination according to its own principles and not giving themselves over to politics Clinton-style, i.e. down in the dirty gutter. (more…)

Barack counsels that we remember New Hampshire. Since I was there, this is easy to do. Yes, the signs for us are positive, or more accurately they aren’t so positive for Hillary, but twenty years in the Hollywood film industry has beaten into my heart and soul the truism that nothing has ever happened until after it’s occurred. The last thing that anyone can or should do is count a Clinton out. (more…)

Yes, literally from Zanzibar of the coast of Tanzania where I’m in the last days of a long-planned vacation. My intention was to allow at least a week after Super Tuesday to contend with developments impossible to predict in September – and there were many — but it’s only luck that has me returning to London well in time for the now all-important March 4th contests in Texas and Ohio. And so a wider appreciation of how the wider world is interacting with the American presidential race. (more…)

A great phrase though not unfortunately originally from me. It was used by the editor of the Guardian newspaper’s America website Michael Tomasky in his introduction to that paper’s pre-Super Tuesday coverage. Give up trying to compare 2008 to any of the past presidential cycles, he said. 2008 isn’t 1952 or ’60 or ’72 or ’88. Not since never have we ever seen anything like this. Amen. (more…)

In six days it will have been one year since Barack Obama’s announcement of his candidacy and my consequent decision to help him in any way I could. Here in Lon-don people felt me sentimental if not downright mad. Was I seduced by his race or his fluency with words? And even if these weren’t the cases it was so damn early! Too early to be obsessing about an election almost two years a way. (more…)