OBAMA NEEDS TO PUT HIS EMPHASIS ON THE STRUGGLING MIDDLE CLASS AND THE GROWTH OF POVERTY

The nomination of Barack Obama as president of the United States by the Democratic Party holds the promise of the breakthrough we need in this country to finally get over our long history of Jim Crow policies and attitudes. The problem for Barack Obama and for his running mate Joe Biden in the two months ahead before the election is that they probably can’t make too big a deal out of this fact, that is, if they want to win the election.

Yes, the nomination of Barack Obama is history making. The policies and attitudes of Jim Crow, that is, the portrayal of African Americans as inferior to whites and the corresponding practices focused on putting them down and keeping them down date back to the earliest days of slavery in this country.

Had Lincoln Not Been Assassinated

I often wonder if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated, that is, with the termination of the Civil War he had been alive to manage the initial phase of Reconstruction, if the outcome might have been different. I would like to think so. Instead the effects of Jim Crow including defacto Jim Crow in the North got steadily worse, that is, until the famous Brown Versus Board of Education case in 1954 that put an end to the notion of separate but equal in education. Then Martin Luther King and others who fought for equality and justice for all citizens in all phases of American life came to prominence.

African Americans have repeatedly made a name for themselves in sports and entertainment since the 1960s, and the hope is that as their visibility at the highest level of politics and other leadership positions becomes routine that racism, covert or overt, will no longer be a significant phenomenon of American life. The attitudes of the current generation of young people, that is, people under 40, point us in that direction.

Hillary Clinton: “Awfully Hard To Win”

Meanwhile it is Barack Obama and his wife Michele who are leading the way. That said, to truly make a difference Barack Obama has to get himself elected. Otherwise as a defeated nominee he’ll be a sentence or two in some future American history books and the promise will not be fulfilled. We’ll remember him as we remember Bob Dole or George Dukakis or Walter Mondale or John Kerry except with a tad more awe and a tad more regret as we think about what might have been—the first African American to have received a major party nomination, but, we’ll have to add, he couldn’t pull it off. He lost!

And let’s not forget what Hillary Clinton has been telling us throughout her run for the presidency. “It is awfully hard to win a general election,” she has said. Any notion that Obama will have an easy time achieving victory has to be put out of mind immediately.

Shift Focus To The Poor, White or Black

How does he avoid that fate? How does he go from nominee to the next president of the United States? How does he get himself elected? Peter Beinart, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, as published in a recent issue of The Washington Post (The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, August 18-24, 2008, page 30) makes the point that if race becomes too strong an issue in the Obama-McCain campaign—and that is already threatening to happen--it will not work in Obama’s favor.

On the other hand, he says, too much has already been made of race in this campaign for Obama to pretend that it is playing no role in voters’ decisions. Rather Beinart argues that Obama “needs to control the race debate instead.”

Take On Sensitive Affirmative Action Issue

How does he do that? By switching the debate from race to class, that’s how, says Peter Beinart. By taking on the sensitive issue of affirmative action and even acknowledging that the benefits of affirmative action are no longer necessary for upper middle class and upper class blacks—at the same time, by switching the focus to the poor, and I need to add, by putting the spotlight on the struggling middle class.

This is how Beinart puts it. “Over the decades, racial preferences have played a vital role in creating a black middle class, but that middle class is now large and self-perpetuating. It is the multi-generational poor---whether urban and black or Appalachian and white—who truly need a boost today. And that’s what Obama himself seems to believe.”

Too Much Poverty

The immense challenge, however, is whether Obama and Biden can get this point across to working class or blue color white families in the key border states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and parts of western Virginia so that they’ll overlook the race issue and other negative attitudes long entrenched in some of their communities and cast their vote for him? If he can’t get enough of their votes, he is not likely to win. That’s what John Kerry found out in 2004.

There is no doubt that right now we are watching history being made in this country, but Obama and Biden can’t spend too much time talking about it. They’ll have to leave that job to the commentators from our ubiquitous media and to the historians in their books. The job of Obama and Biden is winning an election. The middle class of all races and ethnic backgrounds in this country are struggling right now. The income spread between rich and poor is widening at an enormous rate, and we have far too much poverty for a nation that is supposed to be rich. That’s where the emphasis has got to be.

Thanks for tuning into Mind Check. For a look at my other writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. Please note that my latest book, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, is now available. You’ll learn more about it at the sasaftwrites website.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft

ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY, SOME THOUGHTS ON MY LATEST BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT

“Oh you’re taking the pro-active approach.” That’s how one of my nurses reacted during my recent stay at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital when I discussed with her why I was doing a bone marrow transplant and what I hoped to get out of it. Her reaction was more meaningful than most since not only was she a health care worker toiling in the field of the blood cancers, but, as I later learned, her own husband was a victim of multiple myeloma.

Yes, I did opt for the pro active approach, meaning that I may not have been in imminent danger from the bad lymph node in my abdomen, but I chose to do something about it anyway. And what an ordeal it has been. Even toward the end I was still wondering if it had all been worth it. Should I have chosen instead to let nature take its course and see if my olive size lymphatic tumor would metastasize into an attack of all my internal organs? As it is, I have no absolute knowledge of how well the procedure worked. Is the cancerous tumor still there after all I’ve been through—the awful BCNU or Carmustine, bad kidney reaction, etc.—or not?

Walking Problems

At this writing, I’ve been home for two weeks, and I’m starting to see genuine recovery. I’m still walking a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, but at least a cane is required only when I’m on rough terrain outside. I’m still suffering from mouth sores, a chemotherapy byproduct, which can make eating a chore and contribute to the fact that many foods I used to like taste awful, and my energy level varies and is often below par. In addition, I’m functioning at about 10 degrees colder than anyone else. It’s summer time here in the mountains, and while everyone else is feeling just right or maybe too warm, I’ve been cold most of the time. It’s 85 degrees outside, and I’m the one wearing the sweat shirt.

On the other hand, my white blood count is now in the normal range, and I’m hoping my other major blood components—hemoglobin and platelets—will soon start to rise as well. Also my kidney function has returned to normal. The reader will remember that kidney malfunction was the unpleasant complication that forced an extended hospital stay of over a week. It also was the principal cause of my legs and feet ballooning out from 15 pounds and more of water weight and causing me walking complications from which I am only starting to recover.

Extra Eight Days

As it was, I ended up being a resident of Room 909 North at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital from July 1 to July 29—29 days. A time span of 21 days had been the most optimistic prediction for the length of time of my transplant. I went eight days over that estimate.

Some friends ask me to compare my experience at Baptist with my experience at Johns Hopkins where I had my first transplant in 2002. The quick answer is that any comparison is unfair since I would be attempting to compare practices at one institution six years ago with practices today. A friend of mine in high school named Parker Reis had a favorite expression which he repeated all the time, “Comparisons are odious.” Yes, comparisons are odious and sometimes they are not fair, but we love them just the same.

Record Keeping and Sharing

Hopkins, for example, had a focus of accommodating the needs of the out-of-town patient and family whereas this is not a high priority with Baptist which serves more of a local population. However, since Harriet and I live an hour and a half away from Baptist we would have appreciated more help with respect to our distance needs.

Then there is the question of record keeping and record sharing. On this issue, Baptist shows a clear advantage. Baptist buries you in paper. Is this because we now enjoy the benefit of 2008 computer technology versus the computer technology of 2002? Could be, but Hopkins was definitely not noteworthy in 2002 for the availability of information on what was going on with me and making that information available to me.

Baptist uses a team approach with respect to the physicians and senior nurses (physician assistants and nurse practitioners) following your case. This means that there is almost always more than one person who can talk to you about what is going on with you and the decisions being made about you.

Baptist And Catheter Care

I am also quite impressed with the way Baptist does its catheter care. At Hopkins, my Hickman catheter became infected and had to be removed in the middle of my Hopkins transplant, a very traumatic experience that included a near death experience in the middle of one very bad night. Under the care of the Baptist staff, my Hickman functioned perfectly right up to its removal by the same people who put it in in the Radiology Department.

One reason, maybe the main reason, that I had no trouble with my Hickman this time around has to do, I believe, with the existence of a Catheter Care team at Baptist. These are specially trained nurses who do nothing but look after the catheters that have been placed in patients including drawing blood from them throughout the patient’s stay.

Okay, that’s my comparison. As my wife keeps reminding me, maybe Johns Hopkins wasn’t perfect, but I got five years of remission out of the bone marrow transplant that Hopkins performed on me. How much remission time am I going to get from the bone marrow transplant from Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital?

True, that’s the ultimate comparison. Thanks for tuning into Mind Check and thanks for putting up with the spotty postings over the last two months. Now that I am on the road to recovery, I will make every effort to return to a more frequent posting schedule. To see an overview of my career as a writer including information on my new book, Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft