POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!
Civil rights elder statesman Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., Wednesday, 27 February 2008 switched his support to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.
In a written statement, Lewis said Barack Obama's campaign "represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history" and that he wants "to be on the side of the people."

"After taking some time for serious reflection on this issue, I have decided that when I cast my vote as a superdelegate at the Democratic convention, it is my duty . . . to express the will of the people," the statement said.

Lewis' endorsement had been a coveted prize thanks to his standing as one of the most prominent civil rights leaders of the 1960s.




"John Lewis is an American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement, and I am deeply honored to have his support," Obama said in a statement.

"I understand he's been under tremendous pressure," Hillary Clinton said. "He's been my friend. He will always be my friend. At the end of the day it's not about who is supporting us, it's about what we're presenting, what our positions are, what our experiences and qualifications are, and I think that voters are going to decide."

Lewis' announcement came on the same day as another superdelegate, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, endorsed Obama, citing the presidential hopeful's record on trade.

Dorgan said Obama has supported key trade issues.

"He and I feel the same way," Dorgan said. "We both believe in trade and plenty of it. We just insist it that it be fair to our country -- the rules be fair."

The North American Free Trade Agreement is unpopular with blue-collar workers whose votes are considered crucial in the Democratic primary on 4 March in Ohio.




Lewis announced his Clinton endorsement in October and has appeared on the New York senator's behalf on television and at events across the country.

Clinton has frequently cited Lewis' support in trying to establish her credentials among minority voters, saying she saw her campaign as a continuation of his work.

But Lewis came under intense pressure to get behind Obama after his constituents supported the Illinois senator roughly 3 to 1 in Georgia's Feb. 5 primary, as did about 90% of Black voters statewide, according to exit polls.

Obama's support among Black voters nationwide mirrors Lewis' Georgia district.

His change of heart follows a similar move by Rep. David Scott, a Black Democrat who represents a neighboring district.

The decision also comes a week after the Rev. Markel Hutchins, a young Atlanta minister, announced he would challenge Lewis in the Democratic congressional primary this summer.

Hutchins, 30, has seized on Lewis' reversal in his presidential endorsement as evidence that the 68-year-old congressman is out of touch with his constituents.

"Today's announcement by Representative Lewis was clearly prompted by political expediency," Hutchins said Wednesday. "It is time for a change. It is time to send somebody to Congress who is actually willing to represent the district."

Congressman Lewis countered with "I think the candidacy of Senator Obama represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history that began in the hearts and minds of the people of this nation," he said. "And I want to be on the side of the people, on the side of the spirit of history."

National Syndicated colomnist, BOB HERBERT, had this to say about the Clintons in an OP-ED piece on 10 May 2008.
The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s Black! He’s Black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is Black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a Black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

Former President Harry Truman turned down an array of lucrative board memberships and speeches, declaring "the presidency is not for sale." Recent former presidents don't just sell it, they practically auction it off on eBay. Bill Clinton, in particular, has exercised poor judgment -- and, no judgment -- in the company he's kept. Not just his California jet-owning buddies, but some of the foreign leaders, like Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev. It's one thing for former presidents to have dodgy business dealings at home. But interactions with foreign governments should be a big no-no, unless the former president is on an official mission. The people of Kazakhstan may not quite appreciate the distinction between Clinton as official representative of our nation and Clinton in full private citizen/cashing-in mode.


Not to be outdone, Helen Burleson, weighed in with this eye opener:

As indicated by voters in two states where Hillary Clinton won, a large percentage of those who voted for her said she attacked Barack Obama unfairly. It is apparent that Hillary is using both gender and race to undercut Barack's chances of winning the nomination. The fact that people are aware of what she is doing and still they vote for her speaks volumes about them, and the lingering effects of racism in this country.

Hillary appeals to females to vote for her because women have not gotten a fair break in our society. After Hillary gains their sympathy with her emotional swings, the women stop thinking rationally, and vote out of their anger, frustration and hostility about how men dominate in our society. Hillary knows that many White Americans are attempting to move beyond race; however, she conjures up their deep seated racist feelings, though somewhat dormant, her utterings bring these lingering subconscious feelings to the surface. Now race becomes the issue rather than the opportunity for change which is so sorely needed in our country. Her frequent references to the fact that she can get the White working class vote that Obama can't is nothing but deliberate racism. This operates on both the covert and overt levels of the human psyche.

Just as people voted for Bush twice which was not in their best interests, people are voting for Hillary for the same irrational reasons. This time the issue is race and gender. That is why I would NEVER vote for her should she somehow manage to manipulate and claw her way to the top.

She is an intelligent woman and states logical and common sense reasons why Florida and Michigan should have their votes counted; but why is she just now coming to this revelation? Why did she not challenge the DNC at the time the decision was being made? Why didn't she advance and proffer these reasons initially when the vote was being taken? Why did she vote for the exclusion of Florida and Michigan delegates because they violated DNC Party rules if she knew that it would disenfranchise them? IIf this disenfranchises them now, it did when she voted yes. Now she constantly states that Obama doesn't want their votes counted to create a bias in her favor and to discredit him. If the citizens of those states don't see the hypocriscy and duplicity of her wailing, then they deserve to be fooled by her charade. I will tell you why she did not object at that time. It was because she did not expect to be outdistanced by Barack Obama. She felt the nomination was hers on Super Tuesday because she was somehow entitled.

She is self-serving. She does not have the best interest of the Democratic Party or the interest of our democracy at heart. It's all about her. It's all about the entitlement that she feels because she remained with Bill Clinton despite her humiliation and embarrassment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It seems to me that she made a pact with Bill about her political future in exchange for her not kicking the bum out! She is dangerous. Anyone who is that power driven and willing to win at any cost is not fit to sit in the seat of the highest office of the land.

She has been caught over and over again with lies, distortions, and feeble excuses for her failings and yet the public continues to follow her blindly. It should not take anything as obvious as her lying about Bosnia and being in danger because of a barage of sniper fire, to make the public see what kind of person she is. She has no decency, no morals, no ethics and no integrity. She is a drama queen and a master manipulator. She is a pox on the American scene.