So there was a silver lining to that period of time, and it had NOTHING to do with the late-70′s Obama.

the current problems are intractable and can’t be solved, only managed,

From “Hope and Change” to “Despair and Decline”

While it’s true that America isn’t as liberal as New York City, the justification for electing both Obama over McCain and Dinkins over Giuliai were almost exactly the same — “Hope and Change” replacing “Gorgeous Mosaic” as the campaign buzz words, but the idea that the city/nation would become just a big, wonderful land of peace, love and understanding by uniting behind a laid-back, non-threatening personality was the same (because an aggressive, threatening African-American persona never gets nominated, let alone elected, even in New York).

And there’s no doubt that there’s X-percent of the population that’s going to ride Obama down into the sub-basement, just as long as he doesn’t try to throw the far left under the bus between now and 2012 (yes, there could still be a challenge on the left, but right now you’re looking at Kucinich type, not someone who could actually threaten Obama).

And I’m just about 100 percent sure that come 2012, Barack’s supporters will be running their man on pretty much the same platform that Dinkins’ backers did in his rematch with Giuliani in 1993; that the current problems are intractable and can’t be solved, only managed, and that whomever the eventual GOP nominee turns out to be is a closet racist, and will make life miserable for all of the population that doesn’t look or act like them. Across the entire country, that’s a more risky strategy after four years in office, but my guess is Obama will start out with a stronger base than the one Carter had to work with 30 years ago.

China’s in a race with time against the collapse of its un-sustainable economic arrangements, and its interests an India’s do overlap – could look like a choice between competing to the death or colluding. China’s also being driven into closer cooperation with Japan, which is on its own part being driven by its own looming fiscal crisis. Who’s up for Greater East Asian Economic Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Sequel?

http://english.caijing.com.cn/2009-11-10/110308834.html

This joint front forged on Saturday is a major political initiative — the first major India-China accord on international affairs–that is likely to impact not just the dimension of the talks on climate change but international diplomacy as a whole. The move comes after recent discussions on climate change held with Indian and Chinese leaders by US president Barack Obama, who appears to have made little impact on them..

.. should send tingles of fear up and down the legs of Team Obama and all foreign policy analysts as China begins to not just look outward but act.

This is one of those infamous “events” that shape the “Obama Legacy” (of failure).

At some point, disenchantment with the Ø might even pry some of the ideologically committed away from his 97% black support, and, once it gets permissible to defy Obama from the left among blacks, it may become more permissible to defy him from the center.

That’s all highly speculative, but the fact that Obama didn’t become the unanimous pick of African Americans until he demonstrated his viability may be worth keeping in mind anyway. If black unemployment is still in the 30% range in 2011-2, he may even crash to 96.5 or 96% support (joke).

And, the Dinkins example is interesting, but the US isn’t NYC. From early on the Ø-nauts were afraid of letting Ø turn into “the black candidate.” That could happen on the back end, too, firming up non-black opposition to him across the center to the right. Ø doesn’t have to be converted all the way into Al Sharpton to be in potential big trouble electorally, and for his coalition to splinter, suffer large defections, or be suppressed for turnout.

(The floor also means that, no matter how bad things get, Obama’s still viable in 2012. Everybody remembers how Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York after he was elected in 1993 in the wake of the disaster that was David Dinkins, but people forget that Rudy barely won the election over Dave, who beat him in 1989 for the exact same reason Obama won election in 2008 — because enough voters wanted to feel good about themselves by making history. Dinkins’ legacy of racial strife that was allowed to fester and six murders a day at one point barely pulled off enough swing voters to win because too many other voters were so welded to the idea of making history it trumped having a competent chief executive. So national Republicans should expect the same phenomenon three years from now.)