The American electoral process leaves me totally m

[Flash]

The American electoral process leaves me totally mystified, and these town hall meetings seem to go back to the quakers and shakers.

However, a country with more military spending than the rest of the world combined is not something to be ignored.

The Americans will get the President that they deserve, and whoever that will be is still far from certain though favouring obama.

The Republicans will likely be judged for killing the middle class in much the same way as the Nazis were judged for killing Jews.

Both jobs were botched, and there are sufficient survivors of both experiments to require a political solution

[Flash]

admin said:

The American electoral process leaves me totally mystified, and these town hall meetings seem to go back to the quakers and shakers.

However, a country with more military spending than the rest of the world combined is not something to be ignored.

The Americans will get the President that they deserve, and whoever that will be is still far from certain though favouring obama.

The Republicans will likely be judged for killing the middle class in much the same way as the Nazis were judged for killing Jews.

Both jobs were botched, and there are sufficient survivors of both experiments to require a political solution

TO witness Barack Obama's victory speech last night in Des Moines, Iowa, was to witness a moment pregnant with possibility and history.

About 2000 supporters applauded wildly or simply stared in awe at a man whose rhetorical flourish rekindles the 1960s optimism of a new kind of united America.

But while he might echo Martin Luther King, his message transcends the civil rights campaigns of the troubled 1950s and 60s. Obama knows the US has moved on. Instead, he talks to all Americans about their right to things such as universal healthcare coverage and a middle-class tax break.

Something happened in the US yesterday with this result. A black man sweeping Iowa, where 95 per cent of its population is white and socially conservative, is simply a breathtaking turning point in UShistory.

There's no doubt that Obama can go on from here to become the next president of the US - the first black man in the White House.

His win is significant for the Clinton campaign, which has held a traditional lock on the African-American vote - at least until yesterday. Black Americans had feared there was no way Obama could win in a country still torn by racial strife.

Obama is not only likely to attract that base of Clinton's support, he also has the potential to drive a huge turnout of the black vote in the November presidential vote.

Obama's exotic history means the possibility of a US president presenting a new face of America to the world. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia; his father was a Muslim from Kenya, his mother a white woman from Kansas; his middle name is Hussein.

"On this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do," Obama told his cheering crowd.

"We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America."

His win is a vindication of his strategy to champion generational change and cleverly put Clinton on the defensive by saying that she represents the Washington establishment.

Obama's dazzling speeches attract huge crowds - something he's been doing ever since he burst into the national consciousness with a typically soaring speech at the Democratic national convention in 2004 - and drew immediate comparisons with civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King and Democratic icons John and Robert Kennedy.

"This was the moment when we finally beat back the policies of fear and doubt and cynicism, the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up," he said yesterday. "Years from now, you'll look back and say that this was the moment ... America remembered what it means to hope."