Georgia heavyweight John Lewis says … Obama
WASHINGTON _ One of the subplots of this Democratic nomination battle has been the jockeying by African American leaders.Members of Congress like Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio and John Lewis of Georgia endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The Clintons have a sterling reputation among black voters after cultivating friendships over the years and delivering from the White House. African American author Toni Morrison once called Bill Clinton “the first black president.” (She endorsed Obama this year.)
So it was natural for African American leaders to sign up for Clinton, long before Barack Obama ignited a multi-racial grassroots fire in the Democratic electorate.
They have been under intense pressure recently from Rep. William Lacy Clay of St. Louis and others in the Congressional Black Caucus, telling Clinton endorsers that they don’t want to end up on the wrong side of their history. Obama and his allies keep a call list close at hand to make daily phone appeals.
Like the title of that movie — Things Change.
This afternoon, Georgian John Lewis, a superdelegate and a widely known leader in the civil rights movement from his years heading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), jumped to Obama. He’d been going back and forth for two weeks since he signaled that he was dropping Clinton and then tried to rescind that decision.
“Something’s happening in America, something some of us did not see coming. Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary,” Lewis said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It’s been a long, hard and difficult struggle to come to where I am now,” he added.
Update: Clay told us Thursday that some of his colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus “miscalculated the strength of Barack’s candidacy and what it meant to Americans.”
Of those African Americans sticking with Clinton, Clay said: “All of Barack’s supporters have said everything we can say to them in a nice way, trying to help them understand that he’s going to win, he’s going to be the Democratic standard-bearer. He is the leader of a movement that is moving on, with or without them.”
Yeah, it figures John Lewis would move over to Obama. Lewis was the first major house figure to suggest impeaching President Bush. He was one of 31 congressman who voted not to count Ohio’s votes in the 2004 election. His lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is 2.4%. Citizens Against Government Waste gives him a 2% rating. The National Taxpayers Union gives him an F. But he got 100% from the ACLU, 100% from the Children’s Defense Fund, and a 98% from the AFL-CIO.
All this fits perfectly with Senator Obama’s views, which are anti-business, anti-freedom, and ultimately, anti-American. As the Wall Street Journal reported today (link below), Obama would provide a tax credit to American companies that provide union-style pay and benefits, while assessing a tax upon foreign profits of American companies. Your average union lug may believe this is smart, but in reality, it will put American businesses at a disadvantage in a global market - or cause them to simply move elsewhere.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120407121574294919.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks