Récord de recaudación y bendición de The Nation

Barack Obama ha recaudado 32 millones en el mes de enero, según su campaña. Recaudó una cifra similar en el segundo trimestre del pasado año, pero esta vez ha alcanzado la cifra en un sólo mes. Las victorias en Iowa y Carolina del Sur parecen haber animado a todos los que dudaban que el Senador negro tuviera alguna opción de salir nominado. Esta ventaja económica permitirá a Obama empezar a lanzar publicidad en varios estados que celebrarán sus primarias después del SupermMartes: Washington, Louisiana y Nebraska -9 de febrero-, Maine -10 de febrero-, Virginia, Maryland, y el Distrito de Columbia -12 de febrero-, entre ellos. Lo que augura una larga competición por la nominaicón demócrata. Otra buena noticia para el Senador es la bendición de la revista progresista The Nation. Chris Hayes escribe por qué Obama es la mejor opción para la izquierda. The Choice

(...) It's gotten to that time in the primary contest where lines are drawn, camps are solidified and conversations around dinner tables grow heated. My friend Dan recently put it this way: "You start talking about the candidates, and next thing you know someone's crying!" The excellent (and uncommitted) blogger Digby recently decided to shut down her comments section because the posts had grown so toxic. The recent uptick in acrimony is largely due to the narrowing of the field. While once the energy was spread over many camps, it is now, with the exits of Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards, concentrated on just two, leaving progressives in a fierce debate over whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make the better nominee, and President.

According to polling data as well as my conversations with friends and colleagues, progressives are evenly split or undecided between the two. This is, to me, somewhat astonishing (about which more in a moment), but it also means that at a time when other subgroups within the Democratic coalition are leaning heavily toward one candidate or the other, progressives are at a moment of maximum leverage.

(...) The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama.

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. If you've read his first book, the truly beautiful, honest and intellectually sophisticated Dreams From My Father, you have an inkling of what young Chicago progressives felt about Obama. He is one of us, and now he's in the Senate. We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone. (...)