Posted by spoonman Thursday 5 June, 2008 05:38 PM
The American election campaign has finally taken shape and Barack Obama will do battle with John McCain to see who the next President will be. So will Obama be the first ever "coloured" President?
Barack Obama has claimed the Democratic nomination for President, after securing enough delegate votes to get him over the line.
His opponent for the past 12 months, Hillary Clinton, will most likely concede to Obama sometime over the weekend.
Then she'll have to convince all the rank and file Democrats who voted for her, to vote for Obama in the actual Presidential election in November - no easy task.
Many Clinton supporters have claimed they'll only vote for Obama if he gets a ringing endorsement from the former First Lady, while others point-blank refuse to vote for anyone but Clinton. But she really has no choice if the Democrats want to overcome the divisions generated by the this epic battle for the nomination. That's politics.
Whether she can convince Obama to take her on as his Vice Presidential candidate remains to be seen. There are good arguments both ways.
Barack Obama is now under what are being described as 'unprecedented security measures'. You don't need a degree in political history to figure out that America has a long tradition of bumping-off anyone who takes on the 'establishment'.
Think Abraham Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to American public office in San Francisco who was assassinated by a council colleague in 1978, along with the reformist mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone. Even Ronald Reagan was shot, but survived.
So you'd have to imagine, given Obama's political stance on a range of important issues, he might just need all that extra security.
One other point worth mentioning is Republican nominee John McCain's choice of a running mate. There's a good deal of speculation that he might choose Condoleezza Rice, a single black woman (read into that what you will, you're most likely right!) with a high public profile, to offset a potential Obama / Clinton Democrat ticket.
So a few questions:
Do you think Barack Obama will face assassination attempts?
Would it be a smart move for Obama to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate?
Who will be John McCain's running mate?
And finally, can Barack Obama actually become the first "coloured'
American President?
Over to you.....
