Politics

One day, one hour and 47 minutes after three bullets struck him down in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, Robert Francis Kennedy, the junior senator from New York and likely Democratic presidential nominee, died at 1:44 a.m., June 6, 1968. It would take years, decades even, for historians to make sense of that single event.…

What if Bobby Kennedy’s bodyguard Roosevelt Grier had spotted the gun a few moments earlier and wrestled Sirhan Sirhan to the floor before he could fire the fatal shot? What if Kennedy hadn’t died only a few hours after he won the 1968 California Democratic primary, but had gone on to win the nomination and…

Monday is the official start of my Obama inauguration diet. Having secured the nomination, I believe that Barack can beat John McCain in the general election. This means that after months of binging on the primaries, I have just over six months to get in shape, and I have a lot of work to do.…

Hillary Clinton’s decision to end her campaign and endorse Barack Obama this weekend means that Obama is now assured of the Democratic nomination for president, and that Clinton’s historic bid to become the first woman to win the White House will end in disappointment. But the “women question” that has dogged Obama at times during…

Something is wrong. Perhaps the trouble lies with me, though I think it lies elsewhere and that I’m not the only one experiencing this creeping sense of dread at a point when I should feel ecstatic. Fighting off the scourge of political cynicism has been a more formidable challenge in the past few months than…

Lawd, have mercy! They said pigs would fly, fish would whistle and lost souls would be shivering in hell before a major political party anointed a presidential standard bearer who is not only black but actually dances like one. Well, those wonders may not have occurred, but I’ve been sweeping up shards from the glass…

Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, and historic does not even begin to capture the sweep of the achievement. “America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past,” Obama told a roaring crowd of 17,000 in St. Paul, Minn. “Our…

I know a woman who, a few years ago, suffered a miscarriage about halfway through her pregnancy. A week or so after the event, she telephoned me in tears, sobbing so hard it took five full minutes to calm her down. It wasn’t just the miscarriage, she said, but the terrible things people were saying…

It is time to say farewell to a glorious campaign that stretched the limits of political correctness, nepotism and stopped just a few thousand votes from obliterating one kind of glass ceiling. We will miss you, Billary Clinton; you made the last 16 months a blast. In memory of this overwhelmingly entertaining (and underwhelming-ly planned)…