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Obama ahead of Hillary in battle of Selma
Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper - Americas

excerpt ...

It is the new battle of Selma, unfolding in the Alabama town where a historic 1965 march was a turning point in the struggle for civil rights in the deep south – but this time pitting Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama for the electoral prize of the US black vote in 2008.

A 42nd anniversary is not normally one that would merit special treatment. But that calculation changed last week for the Hillary Clinton campaign with a poll showing that Obama, the young African-American senator for Illinois, had moved ahead of her among African-American voters who could be pivotal in key Democratic primaries.

Obama announced weeks ago that he would attend today’s events, speaking at a black church and taking part in the traditional annual march across the Edmund Pettus bridge outside the city, where police wielding tear gas and bullwhips violently dispersed an attempted march by activists on March 7 1965.

Now not only will Ms Clinton go to Selma herself. She is also wheeling out the most powerful weapon in her armoury: her husband. Bill Clinton – so popular among African-Americans that he has been described as “America’s first black President’’ – has abruptly change his weekend plans, deciding to travel himself to Selma, where he will be personally honoured later in the day at a local civil rights ceremony.

As a result, what was once a routine and little-noticed anniversary has been transformed into another instalment of the fierce battle between Ms Clinton and Obama – a battle that last month became personal after the Hollywood mogul David Geffen, once a Clinton loyalist and fundraiser, publicly switched sides, criticising both the candidate and her husband in a trenchant interview with The New York Times.
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Obama's latest statement on Iran demonstrates why America's future must be in the hands of the American people, not politicians. However, he still remains the biggest challenge to the DLC, and THAT is where the real difference between Obama and Clinton is to be found. When the DLC listed Obama on their "100 New Democrats to Watch" in 2003, Obama asked his name to be removed from the list, a direct challenge to the "authority" of the DLC. The DLC is the pro-war element in the Democratic Party and it is the DLC that led the democrats to authorizing the war.

If the Democratic Party is to once again become the party "of the people", then democratic voters MUST wrest control of the party away from the DLC.