Politics

My old pal Paul Delaney, a fellow contributor to The Root, recently asked me what kind of speech I thought Barack Obama’s Republican challenger would make to a mainstream black audience during next year’s presidential campaign. It’s a good question because every four years, the GOP and its standard-bearer reaffirm their determination to go after…

During the 30-year fight against AIDS, several U.S. presidents have been faced with tackling the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic — and according to the Black AIDS Institute and the NAACP, not all have risen to the occasion. In the report 30 Years Is Enuf! the two organizations graded five presidents from the last three decades —…

The day after Herman Cain won the GOP’s first 2012 presidential debate, I recapped it thusly: “Just minutes after the debate ended, an on-air focus group run by Fox News pollster Frank Luntz declared, almost unanimously, that Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, was the debate’s winner. Their reaction: ‘He’s a problem solver.’ “ It…

It’s all about this business of “contesting.” And it’s about all of us. One thing we all know is that if Cornel West actually met Barack Obama alone in a room — and we can be sure this will happen one day, and likely more than once — he would embrace him and call him…

Don Lemon discusses black women and being gay on Black Voices: Don Lemon stands by his words in a new interview with Black Voices after being criticized for saying that being gay is “about the worst thing you can be in black culture.” Only about two weeks after coming out, Lemon discusses being “overwhelmingly surprised”…

Almost seven months after Republicans took control of the House, pollsters, politicians and advisers from both parties tell the Associated Press that President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 is likely. On the heels of launching his re-election campaign, Obama’s hopes of returning to the Oval Office have gained some footing amid slow, yet optimistic economic…

As many a would-be prophet can attest, predicting the future is one surefire way of making yourself look ridiculous. When your prognostication goes wrong, the only ones who look sillier than you are those who believed in the forecast. Take, for example, radio Bible thumper Harold Camping, who whipped legions of evangelical Christians into a…

Donna Cassata of the Associated Press is reporting that “war-weary” lawmakers have sent a strong message to President Obama about ending the war in Afghanistan, as the commander-in-chief prepares to determine how many U.S. troops to withdraw this summer. A measure requiring an accelerated timetable for pulling out the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan and an…

On March 11, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Tolu Olubunmi came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant for the first time. “It’s been nerve-racking because it puts me at a risk,” the 30-year-old told The Root about her speech supporting Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) reintroduction of the DREAM Act. The bill, which…