AddieStan

If you've been living in a cave, or away from a computer or BlackBerry or some other tethering device, you may not know of this brilliant piece of music by Will.I.Am, which is based entirely around the oratory of one Barack Obama. It's breathtaking. But don't take my word for it. Check it out.

Of the first-ever televised debate between presidential candidates, it is often said that people who watched it television thought that the cool, sweatless John F. Kennedy won. Those who listened to that debate on the radio were said to have called it for Richard M. Nixon . Because of a prior commitment, was not able to watch tonight's debate, televised on CNN, but listened to it on C-SPAN radio. To my ears, Hillary Clinton won. Her knowledge of each of the issues was breathtaking, and her vocalization, modulation, and demeanor were all excellent. Barack Obama 's disembodied voice annoyed me; there was a pushiness to it. The television commentators all seem to be calling a tie.

I was born into a church that bars me from the priesthood on the basis of something called the "natural resemblance" theory: in other words, because Jesus of Nazareth possessed certain body parts that I do not, and because I have some that he did not, then I do not resemble him well enough to minister in his name. Today, there are feminists who are demanding that I vote on the same basis; that a presidential ballot cast for anyone who does not possess the same bodily configuration as mine indicates a damning lack of sisterhood on my part. I daresay, I have not waged my little wars for women's equality only be to be told for whom I must vote. To wit, this post on TAPPED: AIN'T I A FEMINIST?

Your blogstress wishes she wasn't quite so burnt out on live-blogging debates, of which there are far too many this election cycle. (There are some words I never thought I'd hear myself say.) Tonight's GOP debate features the bizarre spectacle of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates sitting at a dais in front of the "Air Force One" plane that went out of service with Reagan, being asked questions not simply by pop-culture newsman Anderson Cooper, but actual newspaper reporters, as well. But given the general lack of charisma among the Republican candidates, and the fact that this is the umpteenth debate in as many weeks, your écrivaine asks her readers to fill her in in the morning. The debate takes place, even as she types, on CNN.

The Democratic campaign for the presidential nomination will endure a sad moment this afternoon, when John Edwards , the former North Carolina senator, is expected to announce his withdrawal from the race. Yes, your blogstress has been rather hard on Edwards, having a natural aversion to his sometimes transparent displays of opportunism, particularly his attempt to capitalize on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and his sexist response to Hillary Clinton 's verklemptitude in New Hampshire. But Edwards has brought something quite real to the Democratic debate, and without him, it's doubtful that the role of corporations in creating the hard times experienced today by so many Americans would have ever been brought to the fore. I am also moved that Edwards is returning to New Orleans to make his 1:00 announcement today; it was from that neglected and abused city that he launched his presidential bid. Of course, the prognosticators are already placing bets on w...

Your blogstress did her best to be present for her devotees at the anointment of Barack Obama by the Kennedy clan but, alas, she found herself among the 100 or so journalists turned away from the event . Of course, being your Webwench, yours truly was not about to take no for an answer, seeing as she had RSVP'd and assured ahead of time by Obama for America staffers that both she and her laptop would have no problem entering the hall at American University at which the rally took place. Would that it were true. So, eventually, your cybertrix did indeed make it into that hall, just as Uncle Teddy was saying that the senator from Illinois would be ready to lead on Day One. And then they kicked me out. I had a laptop. Not allowed for those of us who were closed out of the magnetometer sweep of equipment, despite our having arrived in time for it. Today I have the sniffles.

Reader nrglaw left a long and thoughtful comment on an earlier post about Barack Obama 's prospects for the general election. So thoughtful is the reader's post, mes amis , that your blogstress has granted it this thread of its own, as well as a respectful, if less than thorough, refutation. From nrglaw: There was a lot of focus on one statistic leading up to the SC primary, namely that Black Democrats represented 52% of the state's democrats. That statistic seems have gotten forgotten since the Obama victory. Its clearly still very relevant, however. I understand that Obama won 80% (my son says 82) of black democratic voters, which would account for 40% out of the total of 55% he polled. In the 18-29 year old group, he took 49 -- a push at best. Overall, he polled only 25% of the white vote. Apparently, the Latino vote was not very significant, because it isn't even mentioned in any of the MSM coverage of the results. This is a group where Hillary has done well. So...

It's the status quo. (Read: the Clintons) This is a transcendent speech. The Clintons may have given Barack Obama a gift with their negative, race-baited campaign against the candidate they sought to paint as "the black candidate." For in playing the race card, they gave Obama permission to address the race issue head-on, to no longer dance around the question of racial prejudice in America. I do believe that their lies in the hearts of far more white people than anybody imagines a desire for redemption.

Obama is pointedly asserting the diversity of his "coalition," exactly the right point to make, given the racialized nation of the South Carolina campaign. But his tone, so far, is a bit more combative -- even angry. Be careful, Barack. The people turn to you for uplift.

...as the Obamas take the stage. Pink, Chanel-like suit, flipped hair. A departure from her sexier trademark body-conscious dresses and combed-back hair. Fitting, perhaps, in light of tomorrow's " target=resource window>endorsement by Caroline Kennedy , Jackie 's only daughter.

In tomorrow's New York Times , Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, constitutional scholar and all-round class act, will " target=resource window>endorse Barack Obama . Wow.

Speaking from Independence, Missouri, former President William Jefferson Clinton , even as the returns came in from the primary race he sought to sully in South Carolina, delivered what may be taking the place of her concession speech. However, what bit of the speech MSNBC showed was mostly about Himself: his AIDS activism, how he ran "a pretty successful presidency". He's become quite nauseating.

In the three-way contest between John Edwards , Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama , the O-man won 49 percent of white voters in the 18-29 age group. This is good news because it shows the limits of racializing the campaign. Another interesting stat: Obama and Clinton won virtually equal numbers of white, male voters. Will provide those numbers as they become available. And although the two white candidates won greater percentages of the white vote than did Obama, he won a good 15 percent more of the white vote than the 10 percent the polls had suggested he would won. And Obama's 24 percent total of the white vote come close to Edwards' 29 percent. Hillary Clinton won 36 percent of the white vote, mostly from older white women.

Here's Bill Clinton , speaking with reporters earlier today: Another reporter asked what it said about Obama that it "took two people to beat him." Clinton again passed. "That’s’ just bait, too. Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama's run a good campaign here, he’s run a good campaign everywhere." Notice the non sequitur here, mes amis . What does Jesse Jackson have to do with the fact that it's taking two Clintons to beat one Obama ? Oh yeah, he's black. Remember that, South Carolina. The man is black, black, black. Ya hear me, crackahs?

...by a wide margin. Your blogstress just hopes that margin includes a good percentage of white voters.

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) just predicted, in a conversation with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann , that Super Tuesday would not determine the Democratic presidential nominee. He also said that "race had been injected into this campaign" to a degree that made him "uncomfortable." One bit of good news: 70 68 percent of white voters stated in exit polls that they found Hillary Clinton 's attacks on Barack Obama to be unfair.

It seems quite obvious that Florida is just that. Nonetheless, mes amis , you'll not want to miss this post by S.W. Anderson at Oh!pinion: With the same leadership brilliance that caused hizzoner to put the Big Apple’s disaster communications center in the World Trade Towers, which a few years earlier had been the bombing target of Muslim terrorists, Giuliani has put all his campaign eggs in one basket: Florida. Granted, Florida has plenty of ex-New Yorkers, along with lots of people from New Jersey, Connecticut and other Northeast states. Nonetheless, it seems an egotistical leap for Giuliani to believe a majority of them would just naturally flock to support him. CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS POST FROM OH!PINION

She's been there all along, the African-American woman, the most loyal and stalwart voter any Democratic politician ever met. You just didn't see her . So steadfast is she, exercising loyalty to her party, to her race, to her gender, to her country, that her support over the course of decades has long been taken for granted by Democratic politicians able to appeal to that set of loyalties. Embodying the intersection of race and gender, the black woman voter was, in years past, rendered invisible, as the bloc known as "the black vote" took on, in the popular imagination, the face of the African-American man, and the one known as "the women's vote" was given a white face. What irony, then, that this time, in this primary season, when the two main candidates in contention for the Democratic party presidential nomination each wear the assigned face of one of those blocs, that the black woman is, for a moment, revealed as an entity in her own right -- and...

Seems to me that they're coming out a bit early, considering we're still a week and a half out New York's Super Tuesday primary. But perhaps your blogstress's memory is a bit impaired. Their argument for Clinton is her brilliance and policy experience; as for her bad vote on the war, the reasoning seems to be, "That was then, and this is now." Obama gets written off rather lightly, with nods to his "gifts," but no appreciation of his brilliance. The more legitimate critique of Obama is a sort of amorphous quality to his raison d'être . Still, to laud him for his "gifts" without applauding his intellect seems to fulfill the "magic Negro" narrative described by my colleague Kate Sheppard at TAPPED. CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW YORK TIMES'S ENDORSEMENT OF HILLARY CLINTON

Moderator Brian Williams just announced the New York Times 's endorsement of John McCain in the New York primary by reading the editorial board's pointed critique of Rudy Giuliani as a mean man. Asked to respond, Giuliani predictably derided the Times as a hopelessly liberal institution. Then McCain stepped up to defend Giuliani. Looked to your blogstress like Romney and McCain were vying for Giuliani's affections.