Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who Wednesday switched his allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, may not be the last high-profile African American officeholder to change sides.

The pressure on Clinton’s black supporters to defect has been gradually mounting, rising to the point where some elected officials are being forced to consider whether their backing for Clinton will have adverse consequences for their own political fortunes.

“It’s atmospheric pressure, a change in mood in their communities,” says University of California at Los Angeles political scientist Mark Sawyer, who studies race, ethnicity and politics. “You see people that are going out to vote that have never voted before. Do you want to be on the other side of that?”

Lewis, who announced his decision in a statement, alluded to the weight of history and pointed to his district’s overwhelming support for Obama in the state’s Feb. 5 primary. “When I speak to students about the Civil Rights Movement, I say that it is impossible to stop a determined movement that is captivating the American consciousness,” Lewis said. “I think the candidacy of Sen. Obama represents the beginning of a new movement in American political history that began in the hearts and minds of the people of this nation. And I want to be on the side of the people, on the side of the spirit of history.”

But it’s also true that his decision to flip comes not long after he drew his first general or primary election opponent in nearly a decade—a challenge rooted in Lewis’s previous endorsement of Clinton.

“One who is an elected representative of the people must not ever get ahead of his or her constituencies,” said the Rev. Markel Hutchinson, his primary election challenger. “It is a complex quagmire that congressman Lewis is presently in, because instead of waiting and following the leadership and direction of his constituents and following the pulse of the community that he represents, he side-stepped his constituents.”

There is little reason to think that political expediency drove Lewis, a civil rights icon who is safely ensconced in his Atlanta-based seat, to make the jump to Obama. But there’s no question that, for many black politicians, the stakes have increased since Obama’s Jan. 26 victory in South Carolina, when he first displayed his tremendous popularity among African Americans by winning 78 percent of their vote.

In the four weeks since then, black elected officials ranging from Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas to New Jersey state Sen. Dana Redd to Georgia Congressman David Scott have switched from Clinton’s to Obama’s camp. That list also includes former Cleveland Mayor Michael White and New Jersey super delegate Christine “Roz” Samuels.

“Who wants to be on the wrong side of history?” says UCLA’s Sawyer. “These are African American politicians who probably didn’t think Barack Obama had much of a chance to get elected and now he’s poised to be the nominee.”

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Civil rights icon and Democratic Party elder John Lewis Wednesday defected from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, in a hugely symbolic blow to the former first lady’s White House campaign.

The 68-year-old Democratic "superdelegate" made his decision after a period of public agonizing, but said he wanted to be on the side of history.

"John Lewis is an American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement, and I am deeply honored to have his support," Obama said in a statement.

The veteran Georgia congressman is one of the 795 party luminaries and lawmakers who can vote how they like at the party convention and may have a vital say in sealing the presidential nomination.

Buoyed by his wins in 11 nominating contests in a row, Obama has eroded Clinton’s lead in the superdelegate count heading into pivotal nominating contests on Tuesday in Texas and Ohio.

"Something is happening in America," Lewis said.

"There is a movement, there is a spirit, there is an enthusiasm in the hearts and minds of the American people that I have not seen in a long time, since the (1968) candidacy of Robert Kennedy," he said.

"The people are pressing for a new day in American politics, and I think they see Senator Barack Obama as a symbol of that change."

Lewis said he had a "deep and abiding love" for Clinton and her husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, and said the New York senator was a "brilliant and capable candidate."

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It may be just a wee bit early to say that Hillary Clinton has blown her chance at the Democratic presidential nomination, but it’s not too late to address the exploding amazement of the political pundit class over the ineptness of her campaign. Rarely has a storyline been, in such equal parts, so dominant and fun to read.

How did the Clinton people manage to run such an embarrassingly bad campaign? Inquiring minds want to know.

But it’s really not that hard to figure out. In truth, they had nothing to work with – a problem that was only exacerbated by the fact that they were so thoroughly convinced of the opposite.

With the spectacular flop that has been her presidential campaign, the myth of Hillary Clinton at last unravels. She was none of the things that so many people seemed convinced she was. She was really not all that smart. She was certainly not all that tough. And as much as she and her true believers wanted to think otherwise, she wasn’t popular – not even among Democrats.

Think back to when Hillary first burst upon the scene. The first thing we heard about Hillary was that she wouldn’t be like other first ladies. She wouldn’t bake cookies. She wouldn’t do traditional first lady stuff like literacy campaigns. That was for weak, submissive, June Cleaver types. Hillary was too good for that.

She was a lawyer, you know! She was her own woman.

Fine, then. Way to go on becoming a lawyer. Without in any way detracting from the accomplishment of becoming a lawyer, which I probably couldn’t do, there are hundreds of thousands of them. It’s a noteworthy achievement, but let’s not get carried away with ourselves here. Just because you’re Grace van Owen and not June Cleaver doesn’t mean you’re qualified to, say, redesign the entire country’s health care system.

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With just over a week to go before the Ohio primary, Bill Clinton’s arrival in Chillicothe was greeted as a homecoming of sorts. More than a few in the audience at the college gym could remember the first time he came to the city. It was 15 years before, almost to the day, and the new President was in town to sell his economic plan. The 46-year-old baby boomer had seemed the very embodiment of the freshness and change that the people of this downtrodden burg on the edge of Appalachia had been praying for. They were giddy when he jogged through Yoctangee Park with the mayor in 3�F (-16�C) weather and dropped by their new McDonald’s for a decaf. But it was the hope in his words that thrilled them most of all. "None of us have all the answers," Clinton declared back then. "This is a new and uncharted time. And I want to encourage you to continue to believe in your country."

But today’s Bill Clinton after a quadruple bypass has given up jogging in favor of long walks, and his hair is a halo of white. And he had come to deliver a very different message. Don’t fall in love, he cautioned, simply because someone tells you that "we need to turn the page in America, and we need to adopt something fresh and new — whatever that is."

It is hard to miss the irony: the man from Hope is now trying to figure out how to tamp it down. But that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the spot in which Bill Clinton finds himself today, as his wife’s presidential campaign fights for its life in Ohio and Texas. What is harder to figure out is how much of the blame for her predicament belongs to him. "I think he just did her such damage," says a friend and supporter, expressing a sentiment that many feel privately. "They’ll never see it that way, because they can’t. And he has no self-knowledge. This has magnified all his worst traits."

Everyone around Hillary Clinton always recognized that Bill would be a mixed blessing for her campaign. Back in the pre-Obamamania days, her supporters assumed that no one could draw crowds, bring in money or ignite the base like the only Democratic President since F.D.R. to win reelection. Bill was considered the sharpest political strategist of his generation. And as public approval for President George W. Bush sank lower and lower, the Clinton years, for all their drama, were looking better and better. Yet there was always the worry about whether Bill would be able to stay within the constrained, derivative role of the candidate’s spouse. The biggest fear was that he would shine too bright, burn too hot, consign the candidate to his shadow.

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In the classic joke, the candidate approaches a fellow politician to ask him for his backing. “I’m sorry,” the fellow demurs. “I already promised my support to your opponent.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that in politics, promising and doing are two very different things.”

“In that case, I will be glad to promise you my support.”

Something along these lines is happening to Hillary Clinton, and it couldn’t be happening to a nicer person. Or at any rate, it wouldn’t be happening to a nicer person. A lot of folks who pledged their support to her when she looked to be inevitable are now beginning to realize she may be in-Evita-able. They are still making noises to reassure her they are on board, but in the real world they are enviously eying the rats who are scurrying off the ship.

Say for example you are one of those black Congressmen from Brooklyn whose constituents voted 4-to-1 for Obama in the primary. You are still loudly proclaiming your fealty to your Senator, she who arranges your weekly pork delivery; you are huffily asserting your independence of thought, bristling at the notion that you might be swayed by such plebeian categories as the financial; you are testily deflecting any perceived contradiction between your role and the view expressed by your voters; and outside your office the streets are clotted with five thousand angry people chanting in unison.

Not what you signed up for back when you were an innocent fourteen-year-old and the local Democrat chieftain taught you the ins and outs of cutthroat neighborhood politicking. Not what you yearned for in your idealistic youth when you listened to all those empty promises liberals made. And now… what is the world coming to? Well, I’ll tell you.
Those same empty promises are being made again, this time by a black gent named Obama.

Old Jesse Jackson had it exactly right when he recently called one of Hillary’s black “committed” super delegates. “If it came down to one vote, yours, would you be prepared to go down in history as the black man who prevented the first black major-party Presidential candidate?” The fellow involved murmured that he would consider this argument, but you and I know better: Jesse knows his man. If it came down to that scenario, you can bet the house on that vote going to Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton. Say O, you can’t C, brother.

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If you have the vague impression that President Clinton was paid $20 million to exit a partnership with Ronald Burkle in Yucaipa as part of an effort to clear away potential conflicts as Senator Clinton runs for president — well, not so fast. When we looked into the matter yesterday, it emerged that Mr. Clinton has as much as said he is going to wait and see whether his wife wins or loses to Senator Obama before he breaks off any potentially lucrative business arrangements. A Washington Post article following up an initial Wall Street Journal report on the potential $20 million payment quoted a Clinton spokesman, Matt McKenna, as saying, "he’s taking steps to ensure that there is an appropriate transition out of his business relationships should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee." Emphasis ours. The Huffington Post quoted another Clinton spokesman, Douglas Band, as saying that Mr. Clinton was taking steps "to ensure that should she receive the nomination, there will be an appropriate transition." Emphasis ours. So for all Mrs. Clinton’s recent campaigning against hedge funds, it looks like her family is hedging its bets with a straddle as careful as any of those devised by the most savvy New York traders.

Source: NY Sun

So it turns out that Bill Clinton’s ties to mining mogul Frank Giustra extend far beyond the lucrative contract he won in Kazakhstan after the two of them shared a dinner with that nation’s president.

As Bloomberg News reported, over the past three years Giustra’s private commercial-sized jet has been turned into a veritable Air Bubba - whisking the ex-president around the world at least a dozen times for well-paid speaking engagements, personal fund-raising or stops to assist wife Hillary’s White House campaign.

Giustra has also become one of the Clinton Foundation’s largest benefactors - in a way, Bloomberg reported, that ties the foundation’s success with his own.

Though Clinton’s people angrily deny any ties between him and Giustra’s business interests, the Clinton history on such matters makes those protestations hard to take seriously.

Which causes us once again to ask a critical question:

When will Hillary Clinton finally release her tax returns?

This isn’t such a stretch: Bill and Hillary’s finances are co-mingled, and the senator recently loaned her sinking campaign $5 million.

Indeed, the loan was made at about the same time that Bill Clinton ended a business relationship with another longtime benefactor that allowed him to reap a $20 million bonanza.

On top of the $50 million he’s earned for himself and the hundreds of millions he’s picked up for his global charities - not to mention his presidential library.

Yet he refuses to identify most of the sources of all this cash.

What’s the big mystery?

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The Hillary Clinton campaign pushed to reporters today stories about Barack Obama and his ties to former members of a radical domestic terrorist group — but did not note that as president, Clinton’s husband pardoned more than a dozen convicted violent radicals, including a member of the same group mentioned in the Obama stories.

"Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun article reporting a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, to Obama in 2001. (Obama’s ties to the radical group first surfaced last week in a Bloomberg News article.)

In a separate e-mail, Singer forwarded an article from Politico.com reporting on a 1995 event at a private home that brought Obama together with Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, another former member of the radical group.

Opting to leave any attacks on the issue to the GOP may be wise, as attacks from Clinton could backfire. In his final day in office, President Clinton pardoned another one-time member of the Weather Underground, Susan L. Rosenberg, after she had served 16 years in prison on federal charges.

Rosenberg had been arrested in 1984 while unloading 740 pounds of dynamite, a submachine gun and other weapons from the back of a car.

Rosenberg admitted the materials were to supply others for politically-motivated attacks. Authorities had been searching for Rosenberg since 1981, for what they believed was her role in the robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y. The attack, for which Rosenberg was thought to have aided with surveillance and getaway driving, left two police officers and a guard dead.

Rosenberg has denied playing a role in the Brinks heist. In arguing for a pardon in 2001, she noted that she had been a model prisoner.

And in 1999, President Clinton also pardoned 16 violent Puerto Rican nationalists responsible for more than 100 bombings of U.S. political and military installations, after they promised to renounce violence. The attacks reportedly killed six people and wounded dozens more. In justifying the pardons, President Clinton noted none of the men had been convicted of crimes that resulted in death or injuries.

At the time, the first lady said she opposed her husband’s decision to free the men, who had by then each served more than 19 years in prison for crimes including armed robbery and illegal weapons possession. The reason, a spokesman said then, was that the men had taken too long — more than three weeks — to agree to renounce any future violent activity.

Contacted by phone Friday morning, spokesman Singer declined to comment for the record for this article.

"If the Clinton campaign is truly concerned about the exploitation of the Weather Underground issue by the Republican attack machine, perhaps they should focus on the pardon of some of its members in the waning days of the Clinton administration," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

Ayers and Dohrn disappeared after a bomb, meant to be detonated at New Jersey military barracks, prematurely exploded in a Manhattan townhouse. It was expected to have been one of more than two dozen bombings by the group. The two turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. Neither served jail time for the attacks to which they were believed to be linked.

Source: ABC

For many black Americans, it’s a conversation they find hard to avoid, revisiting old fears in the light of bright new hopes.

They watch with wonder as moves ever closer to becoming America’s first black president. And they ask themselves, their family, their friends: Is he at risk? Will he be safe?

There is, of course, no sure answer. But interviews with blacks across the country, prominent and otherwise, suggest that lingering worries are outweighed by enthusiasm and determination.

"You can’t have lived through the civil rights movement and know something about the history of African-Americans in this country and not be a little concerned," said Edna Medford, a history professor at Washington’s Howard University.

"But African-Americans are more concerned that Obama get the opportunity to do the best he can," she added. "And if he wins, most of us believe the country would do for him what it would do for any president, that he will be as well protected as any of them."

Clyde Barrett, 66, a longtime U.S. Labor Department employee now retired in Tampa, Fla., says he often hears expressions of concern for Obama’s safety. One young acquaintance, Barrett said, declared he wouldn’t even vote for Obama for fear of exposing him to more danger.

"To me that’s a cop-out, where you can’t take a stand and support someone because you fear for his safety," Barrett said. "I don’t have any apprehension … We’ve got to go ahead and persevere."

For many older blacks, the barometer for gauging hopes and fears is the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

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