Obama won the 3 contests of Saturday (Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington) and unexpectedly Sunday's primary in Maine. Huckabee won in Kansas and Louisiana while Washington has been called for McCain by the local head of the GOP (although the results are very close and the votes had not yet all been counted). For an excellent summary and analysis in French of the latest results : check out In Blog We Trust (hosted by the JDD).
Watch Mike Huckabee's video : I hope you will enjoy his humor. For instance, he refers to the fact that he comes from Hope, Arkansas like Bill Clinton and tells an inspiring tale of his rise out of poverty.
To find out what is at stake in Tuesday's Potomac primaries ( Virginia, D.C. and Maryland) read NPR's story.
5 comments:
Bonjour,
Je ne sais pas pourquoi, les commentaires que j'écris sur mon blog s'effacent au bout d'une journée... donc j'écris ici, pour vous remercier pour votre commentaire et vous féliciter pour votre blog: vos étudiants ont de la chance!
Bien à vous,
Scopes
Bonjour,
Je ne sais pas pourquoi, les commentaires que j'écris sur mon blog s'effacent au bout d'une journée... donc j'écris ici, pour vous remercier pour votre commentaire et vous féliciter pour votre blog: vos étudiants ont de la chance!
Bien à vous,
Scopes
I recently saw the results of a poll about French's decision if they had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The last won with a great majority (I don't remember exactly the percentage.) And so, I wonder why is there such an infatuation for him? To be honnest, I must say that, after reading his book (even if sometimes it looks like a fairy tale) I do agree with most of his ideas and if I had to choose I would pick him. But I wonder if this infatuation is due to French media which had greatly insisted on the fact that he is young, that he is Black and to show the evolution of the morals in the USA which is seen as a country which still have big problems with racial tensions? Or is it because he is Black and as we had a female candidate in France, the debate (in term of what is good to sell newspapers) about women at key posts in politic is already closed? Or is it because of the 'yes' of Hillary to the war in Iraq. What is more surprising is that even if Barack Obama seems to be the 'protégé' of French, we also hear about Hillary Clinton's campaign, but almost never about the Republican candidates, aven now about John Mac Cain which appears as THE Republican candidate. Is it because we speak about MRS Clinton or just because (maybe) Republican are pretty inpopular in France because of their 'too conservative' points of view...? To finish, I would say that I was very surprised to see how important seems to be this campaign even in France, because what we have not to forget is that the USA that qualifies itself as 'le gendarme du monde' takes decisions which concerns all the world and is still the fisrt world power so even if we don't like the idea we have to deal with it...
Dear Scopes,
I posted a comment on your blog last night but it has since vanished... I wanted to thank the two of you for your coverage of the primaries, I've enjoyed reading your blog and am sure my students will also appreciate it.
I was simply being nosy and asking about your field of research. Mine is religion in 16th century England. Quite remote from the American horse race.
I really enjoy listening to It's all politics, the NPR weekly political podcast. I'm sure you are familiar with it as well...
Aude
Hello Anissa,
Thanks for staying in touch and trying to make sense out of what is goind on in America.
I think yours is an excellent question. Why are the French completely infatuated (;-)) with Obama. The ideas you suggest are quite reasonable and your comparing Clinton to Royal makes sense. Maybe we are a bit disillusionned with female candidates, however Clinton is quite the opposite from Royal in terms of preparedness, support for the Democratic establishment, in-depth mastery of the nitty-gritty of policies... Could it be that the French might be more gender-biased than they are racially biased?
Another reason for Obama's popularity in France is his powerful rhetoric of change, hope etc... Foreigners are not really interested in the specific policies offered by Clinton and prefer to listen the wonderful orator, that reminds them of what they've studied in high school ( M. L. King ...)! I should add that Clinton's hawkish foreign policy stance (on Irak, and Iran) make her less appealing than Obama's message on international co-operation and peace.
As for why the French are more interested in the Deomcratic contest than they are in the Republican race, I think there are two reasons :
1. the Democratic primary is more fun, more exciting and more historic ( an African-American vs a woman).
2. the French don't like the Republican party and don't want to understand its dynamics and its ideology. That's a pity because the GOP is undergoing significant change right now and the contest was a lot of fun before Mitt Romney stepped down.
These are only hypotheses and a tentative (= provisional) explanation
Keep in touch !
Aude
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