Presidential Race Heating Up?

Not an important question at this time, but some notable events have occured:

1. HIllary Clinton is still reeling and trying to recover from her off-balanced responses to questions at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants heraled by New York state Gov. Eliot Spitzer (who himself found his own public opinion polls rather week this week);

2. Rudy Guiliaini's politics becoming unbearable: first the endorsement of Pat Robertson (although an inevitability as seeing Rudy as their best chance to stop HIllary, and to keep on appointing conservative judges), but much worse the indictment of Bernie Kerik, his close pal and former Homeland Security appointee, who did "one helluva job" training Iraqi police forces (if you can call it that). Whatever - Bernie's only being accused of conspriacy, fraud, and racketeering through doing business with a company that has ties to organized crime figures in the Mob, not to mention the wiretapping of one of Jeanne Pirro's husband for blackmail purposes. Got a sweet deal on that deck at his condo from that mob-connected company, too.

Rudy's problem is of course how do you spin all that? Well, we try folks, we try....

3. Barack Obama's trying to ride the wave of (a): the benefits of attacks on Hillary at the Philadelphia debate (not to mention those Hillary attacks levied by John Edwards, Rudy, and others), and (b): trying to look more Presidential while at the same time look like HIllary, i.e. Presidential. He's been criticized for not attacking her and others more aggresively. He saw it as risky, but he certainly enjoyed the spoils of victory by attacking her credibility on various substantive issues, making her look like a waffler. And on Meet the Press last Sunday, he also stood up to one of the princes of the Fourth Estate, Tim Russert, when questioned about taking PAC money and donations from friends with legal woes. He's still struggling with attack projection, and if he goes too far it will likely hurt him (that why you should let Edwards do the attacking), but for now he should keep doing what everyone has asked him to do . . .

that said, watch for Rudy to play the race and gender card sometime before this year is out. no doubt, once threatened with a serious Obama turn, Rudy may have no choice in his limited repetoire but to turn on racial-bias doubt for the kill. Obama must head that off early not only to dispel the myth, but expose the person whom for some reason feels he/she can't win on their merits...

4. Michael Nutter won the Mayor's seat of the City of Philadelphia, making him the city's 3rd African-American mayor, and the city has not only seen itself run by black cheif executives for the past 9 years, it will be at least 13 years with Nutter, and 25 years since Wilson Goode took the seat of power in 1983. It must have been fun to win the election within a day of the recent Democratic debate at Drexel, where at the same time it was hosted in the same neighborhood the police were searching for a body of a man who jumped in the Schuykill River after just shooting a police officer in Center City a few blocks away.

So where we goin' wif this? Other cities have had black mayors for several years by now. Some (Atlanta, Baltimore, DC, New Orleans, Houston, Philadelphia) are of significant size and importance to be signifigant in national politics or measure how the country's tide is turning. Most of these cities are not in the best of shape, but the ones mentioned above - with the unfortunate exception - for the moment - of New Orleans - are all viable important centers of American commerce. And even New Orleans, still an important shipping center, has hope. All to say, Philadelphia is at a crossroads where it will have to either evolve into a Black Mecca like Atlanta and DC have (and Baltimore could) or wallow in corruption like Newark and Detroit, who've had black mayors maybe too long. The city under John Street was not the best, and Nutter is left with a deficit budget, serious quality-of-life issues, and a violent and ever-continuing murder rate that clearly threatens a significant portion of the black community. Not necessarily the poorer sections, either. Serious crime have now reached their foregone middle-class communities like Mt. Airy and Overbrook. The elements of the same: hip-hop, drug trade, easy proliferation of guns by youths - are weaving their way into the fabric of our communities. The problem isn't the people - it's the laws and socioeconomic conditions that continue to persist as the cancers of our community. Read into this any way you wish - you must admit that we need to tighten up our communities for a uniform standard of how to live, what not to do (murder, for one) and how to share the wealth that is all around us. as well as some of their suburbslife in the city. Nutter just promised the CofC in Chester County PA that he will bring the region together, to metropolitanize Philadelphia for the betterment of all. He will have to tackle the lifestyle issues first, but will also have to walk a new path that becomes the model of how black urban mayors can become regional leaders of metropolitan areas, a path that all future mayors of that city will have to follow in the future.

Oh, and internationally Musharraf's going mad and trying to suppress Bhutto is a recipe for failure that can only end in a civil war. Imagine that: the Pakistanis in a civil war, the Turks attacking the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, The Taliban still fighting UN troops in Afghanistan, and of course U.S. troops in Iraq.

And all is silent and quiet along the gray shelfs of the mountains where Bin Laden hides in Wazirastan. aaaahhhhhh....jjoooooyyyyyy!!