The AP has once again anointed the blessed one in ways we have not seen for some time:

The amazement was on their faces. Hundreds waited for Barack Obama on that evening in South Carolina, 15 weeks ago, to claim victory — a surprising victory, surprisingly large. And amazing it was. It made it possible for him to stand today on the verge of being the first black person ever nominated for president by a major party.

One could guess the thoughts of the blacks and whites in that crowd: Can you believe that our state — South Carolina, first to secede and first to open fire in the Civil War — is now catapulting a black man to the front of the presidential contest in a year that bodes well for Democrats?

“Race doesn’t matter,” some began to chant. “Race doesn’t matter!” The cry soon gave way to more familiar chants of “Yes we can,” and everyone in the auditorium surely knew that race does still matter in so many ways. But in a pinch-me moment, they seemed to realize that a barrier had been broken with a swiftness and certainty that even they had not foreseen.

“One could guess the thoughts of the blacks and whites in that crowd: Can you believe that our state — South Carolina, first to secede and first to open fire in the Civil War — is now catapulting a black man to the front of the presidential contest” — the treacle doesn’t get any thicker than that. (Furthermore, the AP writer was not reporting what was actually going on in the minds of the crowd; rather he was recounting his own flight of fancy.) And it doesn’t stop there:

Rep. Elijah Cummings…says the Illinois senator convinces people of all races that Americans as a society, and as individuals, can achieve higher goals if they try. “He says we can do better, and his life is the epitome of doing better,” says Cummings, noting that Obama was raised by a single mother who sometimes relied on food stamps. “He convinces people that there’s a lot of good within them.”…

Obama is an electrifying speaker. At virtually every key juncture in his trajectory, he has used inspirational oratory to generate excitement, buy time to deal with crises, and force party activists to rethink their assumptions that a black man with an African name cannot seriously vie for the presidency. A prime-time speech at the Democratic convention in Boston catapulted him to national attention in 2004. When his presidential campaign badly trailed Clinton’s high-flying operation, he gave it new life with a timely Iowa speech that outshone her remarks moments earlier…

Obama has a compelling biography, too. The son of a black African father he barely knew, and a white Kansan mother who took him from Hawaii to Indonesia, he was largely raised by his white maternal grandparents. He finished near the top of his Harvard law class, then rejected big firms’ salaries to work as a community organizer in Southside Chicago, where he found a church, his wife and a place that felt like home…

Jim Margolis…interviewed many of Obama’s Harvard classmates for TV ads and documentaries. They told him Obama “was wise beyond his years, and never talked down to people,” Margolis said. “He has this amazing ability to connect with people and understand their problems,” he said. “And through it all, there is this optimism.” For a politician with only four years of experience at the federal level, Obama also has spot-on instincts, associates say, and a steely confidence in his convictions…

Obama fans often search for words to express their attraction. “He just really electrifies you when you are listening to him,” said Lena Bradley, 78, a beauty salon owner in Washington. “He has something that’s leading him.” As ephemeral as “something that’s leading him” sounds, it’s hard to explain in more clinical terms his impact on people. But it’s there.

So we’re back to the MSM’s revealing its mad crush on the new JFK on steroids (hmmm, wasn’t the first JFK actually on steroids?). But something seems quite different this time in the life and workings of media’s putative First Family, i.e., the First Lady. Robert Novak comments on some of the new Jackie’s activities:

Close-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama. The Democratic front-runner’s wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party’s nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility.

Mrs. Obama would appear to be as angry as ever. Hugh Hewitt sees Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright, the Ayers/Dohrn cell, and Tony Rezko as the Four Horsemen of the Obama Apocalypse. Of course, with the media reverting to embarrassingly fawning treatment of the candidate, and preparing to launch the epithets of political correctness to silence any uncomfortable character questions, it remains to be seen whether there will be an Apocalypse at all, or whether we’ll just proceed directly to the Rapture.

UPDATE

While we’re on the subject: if John McCain had said there were 58 states, would the media give that a pass, or would McCain get the potatoe treatment or worse?

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, MSM, Republicans, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.