Across the pond

Yesterday must have been about the most depressing Good Friday ever in the life of Barack Obama. One opinion poll showed that voters in the last big state, Pennsylvania, which votes on 22 April was now showing Hillary Clinton at 56 per cent and Obama at 30 per cent. Another shawe that even in North Carolina, which Obama was expected to win comfortably, Hillary has edged ahead with 43 per cent of the votes compared to Obama’s 42 per cent.

This is a huge switch around. A week ago Obama looked the front runner likely to win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency. But in the last few days Obama has been crucified because of his association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his pastor, whose inflammory sermons had been quoted in the all the media, including hundreds of web sites.

This despite the fact that Obama made a speech on Tuesday is one of the bravest I have seen by any US Presidential candidate. In that speech he deplored Wright’s rabble rousing extremism and made it crystal clear how far away that was from his own views. But he diid not pour shit on his old spiritual adviser. Obama did what Christians are supposed to do. He attacked the sin not the sinner. And he pointed out that this sometimes ranting rabble rouser, had many good points. And that he had spent his life caring for people who needed caring for.

Not only that he used this speech to pull together the essentials of his platform. He explained to the voters what he intended to when he got into power. And why.

That speech will lose him some votes. Because he makes it clear that he is not only not a Wright thinker he is not a right thinker. In American terms he is leftish. Translated into British politics that puts him close to the Liberal Demcrats, to people like David Cameron and Ted Heath from the British Conservatives. He is a long way from Clement Attlee, but his thinking has many similarities to that of Hugh Gaitskill and John Smith. Both of whom, if they had not died so tragically young, would have made a much better job at making Labour electable than Tony Blair.

The importance and quality of that speech was immediately recognised by the New York Times (and this blog). Somewhat belatedy The Guardian has also recognised its importance. It is the first leader in this morning’s paper.

It has a ludicrous headline (Language lessons), but the first paragraph gets to the essence of it.

Barack Obama has already established himself as an extraordinary politician. But his speech on Tuesday may have been the most important of the US presidential campaign, and not only for Americans. This is a large claim for a speech made as the Iraq war enters its sixth year and the world financial system teeters on the edge….But race remains the scar across the face of America; the politics of difference existed long before and will exist long after these crises have been resolved.

Since I wrote my previous blog on Obama’ speech, the threat of a serious recession in the US and in Britain has become even clearer with the examination of the collapse of the New York investment bank, Bear Stearns. Most of the analysis puts the blame full square on the banks, for encouraging many to buy houses they could not afford, based on assumptions that the boom would go on forever. The banks fuelled the boom by lending money to each other.

All the banks were doing some of what caused the collapse of Northern Rock and Bear Stearns. And now the bubble has been pricked they are covering their losses, partly by keeping mortgage rates high, even though the central banks have cut interest rates.

Worse than that, though the banks are now mostly doing their best to repair the damage, some big speculators have been adding to the chaos. They drove down the share price of a much bigger bank, HBoS (which owns the Bank of Scotland and the Halifax Building Society), fuelling fears that it was also in danger of collapse.

Obama is not anti-capitalism and he is not against big business but he is critical of the excesses of the financial system. He is a Democrat in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. And what most of the analysts  say about our present crisis is that it is the result of the mad drive for deregualtion launched by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in America. The challenge, then and now, is how to find ways of regulating the private sector without stifulling initiave and enterprise.

Obama makes it clear that he wants to have a go at this. And he wants to have ago at doing something about what I think is the major scar on American consumer capitalism and American democracy. While the rich have got richer the poor have got poorer. And the poor mostly don’t vote, although they have the right to. A disportionate number of the American poor are non-white, but there are also plenty of poor whites, particularly in the old industrial heartlands.

Americans now buy Toyotas instead of Fords. And the big US motor companies make most of the car abroad. So the skilled workers have no-one who wants to use their skills. (Norman Tebbitt, would no doubt have told them to get on their bikes and go to Malaysisa.)

As the question of whether Obama will rise again. You won’t find the answer by going to church tomorrow.

The answer will be delivered by the US electorate next November. Will more of the listen to his speeches and read them in full? Or will they be swayed by the sound bites delivered by the mass media?

That will be the real test for US democracy.