Ushindi wa Obama una maana gani kwa Afrika na Dunia?

[mwanakijiji]

Watu wengi hasa nje ya Marekani wanasubiri kwa hamu kuona kama Barack Obama ataibuka kidedea siku ya Jumanne na kuwa Rais wa Marekani. Kama kura mbalimbali za maoni zinaweza kuaminiwa inaonekana kuwa ushindi kwa Obama ni dhahiri.

Wengi ambao wanafurahia au wanasubiri kufurahia ushindi wa Obama hasa kutoka Afrika si kwa sababu wanajua sera zake, si kwa sababu wanafahamu misimamo ya Obama kuhusu masuala mbalimbali n.k bali kwa sababu Obama ni mtu mweusi.

Kinachoshangiliwa zaidi ni kuwa kuna uwezekano mtu mweusi atasimama kama Rais wa Taifa lenye nguvu zaidi duniani.

Lakini hatuna budi kujiuliza je ushindi wa Obama utainufaisha vipi Afrika? Je una maana gani?

[Ach-F]

Why Barack Obama won




Two years ago, Barack Obama was barely a blip on America's political radar. But, with a brilliant, disciplined campaign, a vast amount of money and a favourable political climate, the junior senator from Illinois has risen to the most powerful job in the world. His campaign will be a template for those seeking to replace him. It was, even Republican strategists admit, a technically perfect ground campaign. The money was key. Mr Obama realised during the primary contest that he had developed an extremely broad donor base, which he could keep going back to for money. So, he rejected federal funding for his campaign and the financial limits that came with it.


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Barack Obama's record fundraising was the keystone of his success

Army of helpers

With the help of Facebook founder Chris Hughes - who devised an innovative internet fundraising system - the campaign eventually attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (?403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined. Mr Obama had the money for four times as many campaign offices as Mr McCain and a vast army of campaign staff and volunteers. They developed and exploited a vast database of information about potential donors and voters in every key state.

Everyone who visited the Obama website was asked to sign up to get more information. Everyone who did so was asked to contribute, or volunteer. If they did, they received several follow-up calls and messages asking for more money, or more assistance. That fundraising ground campaign left him well equipped for the air war. TV advertising is the life-blood of a campaign which has to span some 3.5m square miles (9m sq km) and 300 million people, and Mr Obama had no problem buying airtime.


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The campaign was masterful at getting out the vote


Masterful operation

In some swing states in the final weeks of the campaign, he was outspending Mr McCain by a ratio of four to one. His team again tapped into the internet, targeting ads at those online. They even bought ad-space embedded in video games. Mr Obama could afford to campaign in Republican strongholds and force Mr McCain to spread his limited resources ever thinner, sucking his resources away from swing states. At the same time the campaign was masterful at getting out the vote. It ran a huge registration drive for likely Democrats - adding more than 300,000 people to the voter rolls in Florida alone.

Realising that so many new voters could overwhelm polling places on voting day, the campaign made early voting a priority in states where it is allowed. More people cast their votes before election day this year than ever before - more than 29 million in 30 states, according to preliminary data. All of this worked of course because of Barack Obama's appeal as a candidate. He is a superb orator who can work a crowd in the Bill Clinton tradition.

His image was wholesome; a self-made family man with one house, one car - and one family. It was a contrast to John McCain who divorced the wife who waited for him through the Vietnam war, married an heiress and couldn't remember how many houses he had.


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Mr McCain's greatest strength - his foreign experience - was whittled away

Anti-Bush candidate

Mr Obama was able to connect more deeply with more diverse voting blocks. He struck a chord with younger voters, won over Hispanic and Jewish voters who had been Republicans in the past, and of course got out the black vote like no president before him. Mr Obama's single, consistent message of change was appealing when almost nine out of 10 Americans believed their country was "on the wrong track". He could easily position himself as the anti-Bush candidate in a way Mr McCain struggled to do. President Bush had lower approval ratings than the disgraced Richard Nixon, and Mr Obama's relentless campaign message was that John McCain had voted with him 90% of the time.

The polls suggested more people trusted Mr Obama to fix the economy and when the financial crisis struck he was best placed to take political advantage of it. His persistent focus on how to help those most impoverished by eight years of George Bush's leadership seemed a better fit for the times; a sharp contrast to the kind of tax cuts which were now a central plank of the McCain campaign and would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Difference a strength

Ultimately, even Mr McCain's great political strength as a war hero with decades of foreign experience was eclipsed. Mr Obama's selection of the veteran foreign policy expert, Senator Joe Biden, as his running mate helped close the experience gap. He insisted too that judgement was more important than experience and over the course of the campaign the political consensus seemed to shift to his ideas. Mr Obama called for a withdrawal timeline in Iraq, defending Afghanistan's borders by launching raids inside Pakistan when required and talking to America's enemies.

Slowly and quietly even the Bush Administration came to accept those ideas, while John McCain seemed ever more isolated as he continued to reject them. Barack Obama said he didn't "look like other Presidents on the dollar bill". Although that was a reference to his colour, he was different in so many ways to the established political aristocracy, that in a year when Americans were craving something new, his differences turned out to be his part of his strength.


The ground of campaigning has changed and most of the elections if not all will learn from this formidable system. Lets hope others will follow the lead.

[Ach-F]

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Waiting Game.

[Ach-F]

America's future; The Significance of Obama's victory







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Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and their two daughters will become the nation's First Family in January

On 21 January 2009, a residence that was built by African slaves more than two centuries ago will be inhabited by an African-American, his wife and their two young children. They will move in not as builders, cleaners or aides but as the nation's First Family. A 47-year-old junior senator called Barack Hussein Obama, whose father grew up herding goats in Kenya and whose wife is descended from African slaves will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some 147 years after the end of the official end of the Civil War and 44 years after the Civil Rights Act, America has finally exorcised its most stubborn ghost of the past: the original sin of slavery.

Despite all the milestones of the recent past, including two African-American Secretaries of State under George W Bush, the legacy of shame lingered on quietly. Frequently it was met with a wall of silence or a welter of euphemisms.

It was the day that politics caught up with demographics

Racial prejudice will not end tomorrow. But the debate about it will surely become more honest.
We can finally bury the Bradley effect, which had been analysed ad nauseam on cable TV and the web. Americans voted for Barack Obama for a variety of reasons. Some because he was an African-American. Others because he was young, cool and clever. But almost everyone who did vote for him surely came to the conclusion that this was a man with sober judgement.

Bush albatross

Tuesday's vote was also a vehement rejection of the Bush legacy and the candidate who had become attached to it.


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Mr McCain's opponents worked hard to tie him to the Bush legacy

From the moment it became obvious that John McCain was going to be the Republican nominee, both Hillary Clinton and Mr Obama, who were still busy slugging it out in the primaries, hung the albatross of the Bush years around the former Navy pilot's neck.
They tried to make Mr McCain's first term look like President Bush's third. It worked because the Vietnam vet had sided with Bush on the Iraq war. In an election in which change had become the resounding mantra, any Republican, even the erstwhile maverick McCain, was swimming against the tide. But it would be wrong to think of this as a tidal wave in favour of the Democrats. Their grandees on Capitol Hill are almost as unpopular as their counterparts from the Grand Old Party.

Why, in a gene pool of 300 million people, must the presidential ticket include someone called Clinton or Bush?

The 2008 race was a people's revolt against America's political Establishment. Yes, even Sarah Palin, the moose slayer, shared the revulsion at the smug politics of dynastic entitlement. This was the lesson that Hillary Clinton had learned far too late in the primaries. The former First Lady argued that she could handle the top job from day one, because she had seen how it's done at close quarters. Why, in a gene pool of 300 million people, must the presidential ticket include someone called Clinton or Bush? Mr Obama's genius was to understand this yearning for change, give it a blindingly obvious name and then plan for it meticulously. The "skinny kid with a funny name", who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia and came of age in Harvard and Chicago embodied the uprooted, multicultural, messy reality of modern America and made no excuses about it.

As he put it once, mocking the hypocrisy of Bill Clinton: "I smoked dope? and, yes, I inhaled. Wasn't that the point?"

Starbucks generation

But Barack Obama is more Tiger Woods than Jimmy Hendrix. He is the first candidate to seize on the insurrectionist power of the internet.


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Mr Obama used the power of the web to enlist an army of young supporters

Mr McCain prided himself on being a stranger to the web. The Clintons thought they had harnessed its powers because they were friends with the people who owned large chunks of it.
But Mr Obama went straight from the service providers to the individual users. At one of his first rallies in Washington DC, I was struck by the dozens of students who had turned up with their own laptop computers to process the new arrivals. They collected the $15 (?9.40) entry fee and, more importantly, they harvested e-mail addresses. In one afternoon, Mr Obama had managed to raise $150,000 and recruit thousands of footsoldiers, who would be sent personal e-mails, instructions and reminders throughout the long campaign.

Mr Obama raised more than $600m. Half of it came from the likes of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood. But the other half came from two million first-time donors, many of whom were also first-time voters. As the president-elect used to put it: "It's all about YOU!" The first time I heard it, in the frozen landscape of New Hampshire, it made me cringe. But then I looked around and noticed that the audience was lapping it up. And the only black face in this vast and shivering crowd belonged to Obama himself.

Ground war

He may have started his campaign as an insurgent. But he ran it like a field marshal. He didn't just receive Colin Powell's cherished endorsement, he also used his strategy of overwhelming force to win one battle after another.


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The message of hope and change... has been music to American ears, tired of the cacophony of fear and resentment In the ground war, he established field offices in states where no Democrat had won in a generation. In Virginia and Indiana, which had last voted for a Democrat in 1964, he established at least 50 such local operations, used the money collected over the internet to employ hundreds of paid staff and then used the e-mail addresses of the "citizen fundraisers" to recruit thousands of volunteers.

In the air war, Obama bombarded the average household with five times as many TV ads as his opponent. John McCain, the veteran flyboy from the Vietnam War, was like the Red Baron taking on a B52 bomber. On Tuesday it all came together. There was the message of hope and change. Yes, this is dangerously open to wishful thinking, it raises expectations that the new president may never be able to meet, but it has been music to American ears, tired of the cacophony of fear and resentment.

Then there was the meticulous planning of a disciplined campaign that didn't leak, didn't quarrel, kept wedded to one central theme and, crucially, didn't panic when the American economy was having a nervous breakdown. Mr Obama's cool judgement during the financial meltdown was the crucial turning point: it made the impetuous McCain seem reckless. It allowed Americans to imagine the younger man as the sober, designated driver of this country.
Obama Republicans

Tuesday showed us once again that history travels in packs. The 4 November was the day the internet triumphed over television as the prime medium of politics.



Mr Obama's victory represents a generational change

The Starbucks generation overtook the Dunkin' Donuts generation. The baby boomers - now in their sixties - bowed to a tribe of politicians so fresh they're still looking for a cliche. It was the day that politics caught up with demographics, that multi-cultural America gave voice to African-Americans as never before, but also to Asian-

Americans and Hispanics. You would expect Louise Roberts, the black hairstylist in Culpeper, Virginia, to cry and "praise the lord for this gift". Her mother and father couldn't even sit in the front of the bus or share a cheese sandwich with white Americans 45 years ago.
But I never expected to see my neighbour Dave, a staunch Republican and a partner in a Washington law firm, pin an Obama-Biden poster into his immaculate front lawn on the night of Halloween.

Moderate Republicans - call them Obama Republicans after Reagan Democrats - will be a tempering influence on the new president and his Democratic majority on Capitol Hill.
He will ignore them at his peril. But Obama the silver-tongued lawyer has always preferred consensus to conflict.

Like most of his predecessors in the White House, he will move to the centre and realise that this is the only place from which to govern a country that loves ideas but distrusts ideology.


All credit to Matt Frei - Te presenter of BBC World News Americawhich airs every weekday on BBC News, BBC World News and BBC America (for viewers outside the UK only).

[Ach-F]

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Obama does the school run

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Dad ... Barack Obama and daughters ........Don't forget to


HERE?S Barack Obama on the school-run. The President-elect took time out from planning his new job of transforming America to take daughters Malia, ten, and Sasha, seven, to class. However the first black US President in waiting found it difficult to go unnoticed as he was surrounded by burly secret servicemen. Mr Obama was seen helping his girls out of the car, before giving them a kiss and sending them on their way to class.

Hapo ndipo mzungu anaona kizunguzungu

[mchukia fisadi]

Why Barack Obama won




The ground of campaigning has changed and most of the elections if not all will learn from this formidable system. Lets hope others will follow the lead.

I think even Tanzania opposition parties should get experience from this type of campaign

[Ach-F]

Obama in charge

You could be forgiven for thinking that Chicago is the new Washington, that the president-elect is already running the country from there and that the West Wing has just become the Mid-West wing.


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Barack Obama is gearing up for action from day one of his presidency

Even though he assured us again on Tuesday - if assured is the right word? - that he will only take over the reins of power after Inauguration Day on 20 January, Barack Obama talks, decides and reasons as if those reins are already firmly in his hands. He refers to his weekly radio address like a real president does. Everything from his body language to his use of the present tense indicates that he already thinks of himself as the commander-in-chief, preparing everything for day one of America's 44th presidency. The drastic times demand it, he tells us. But then so does his pragmatic and poignant nature, one might add. Compare his behaviour to the unbearable lightness of George W Bush.

Intellect

Mr Obama is not just announcing his cabinet much earlier than most other presidents-elect in transition. He is also telling us in greater detail what his policies will be. Earlier this week he announced a plan to get 2.5 million Americans back to work. Then he vowed to have his new director of the congressional budget office go through the existing budgets with a scalpel or an axe, depending on what is needed, to cut out any waste.

Previous presidents-in-waiting have also made such claims. But such is Mr Obama's steely-eyed determination and unsmiling sense of purpose that you actually believe him. As Mr Obama said, talking about his erstwhile colleagues on Capitol Hill: "Friendship doesn't come into this. That's part of the old way of doing things." You could hear someone, somewhere, gulping. I also heard him say something that I have not heard for a very long time. As he introduced the latest members of his cabinet, Mr Obama said that they were individuals who had shown "great intellect" as well as courage and commitment.

Intellect?

Sarah Palin and John McCain built their campaign on the tradition nurtured under George W Bush of ridiculing intellect and articulacy as subversive values that rub up against the wholesome grain of middle America. Mental agility was deemed less important than honesty, sacrifice and leadership. Perhaps. But why not demand all four of your president and those who serve him? It turned out that a country in peril yearned for leaders with brains. Because, and here is the funny thing, stupidity and incompetence tend to go hand in hand. So, darngonnit, why not forgive some high falootin' Harvard guy his best-selling memoirs and correct use of English, if he can get us out this mess? Sounds like a bargain to me.

Clinton legacy

When George Bush introduced members of his team, the highest accolade was that they were great Americans and true patriots. It always struck me as odd that patriotism could bestow competence. Was not allegiance to the flag one quality that could be taken for granted from anyone who had forgone a huge salary in private industry to earn a paltry one in public service? Barack Obama, one imagines, assumes that the people who are taking on a raft of potentially soul-destroying jobs in tough times are doing so because they care about their country.

So what about the team? Yes, there are an awful lot of faces from the Clinton past.
Larry Summers, the new economic chief strategist used to be President Clinton's secretary of the treasury. Tim Geithner, the new secretary, worked under him. Peter Orszag, the new director of the congressional budget office is only 39 years old but has also worked for the Clintons. Bill Richardson, expected to be secretary of commerce, is an old Clinton grandee. Susan Rice, tipped to be the new American ambassador at the UN, worked for Mr Clinton.
The list goes on and there is of course Hillary herself, although you could describe her as the only official from the Clinton era who never actually worked for the president.

Squandered potential

At some stage it would be refreshing to see some new faces from Silicon Valley or the Sun Belt brought into the clutches of government. So here is my take on the matter. Thanks to the multiple distractions of Bill Clinton and his administration, some of America's brightest people were too busy ducking subpoenas or grappling with indecision at the top to perform their best work. The Obama administration is a chance for them to prove their critics wrong and to live up to past expectations. As Hillary Clinton used to say: "Let's undo the damage of eight years of George Bush!" But how about also realising some of the squandered potential of eight years of Clinton? The state of the nation demands it. The state of the nation may render it impossible. But as the man who still swivels his chair in the Oval Office once put it under different circumstances: "Bring it on!"

It turned out that a country in peril yearned for leaders with brains. Because, and here is the funny thing, stupidity and incompetence tend to go hand in hand . Not any more, shouldn't Tanzanians learn from others?

[Ach-F]

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What do the Obama girls eat?


This month when Sasha and Malia Obama move into the White House, they'll have a first-class kitchen staff cooking their meals. But will the presidential chefs be able to replicate the girls' favorite foods?

Here are a few of their best-loved dishes:

Mac & cheese
And not just any old macaroni and cheese will do. The Obama girls prefer their cheesy pasta the way it's prepared by family friend Yvonne Davila. We hear Davila makes their favorite French toast, too.

Chocolate chip cookies

Actually, make that chocolate chunk. The Obama girls discovered these sweet treats at Baby Boomers Cafe in this Iowa city while they were on the campaign trail. The cookies are so popular now, their price has gone up by 50 percent.

Tuna salad

We don't know if it's a favorite, but the girls know how to make it. It's also one of the few dishes their father prepares (in addition to his famous chili). Have a look at the president-elect in action here -- and get the recipe.

Bonus trivia: Will the girls inherit their father's taste? Looks like our new president hates this root vegetable.

Bado hawajaweka Nyuka!

[Ach-F]

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D - Day

[mfumwa]

Watu wengi hasa nje ya Marekani wanasubiri kwa hamu kuona kama Barack Obama ataibuka kidedea siku ya Jumanne na kuwa Rais wa Marekani. Kama kura mbalimbali za maoni zinaweza kuaminiwa inaonekana kuwa ushindi kwa Obama ni dhahiri.

Wengi ambao wanafurahia au wanasubiri kufurahia ushindi wa Obama hasa kutoka Afrika si kwa sababu wanajua sera zake, si kwa sababu wanafahamu misimamo ya Obama kuhusu masuala mbalimbali n.k bali kwa sababu Obama ni mtu mweusi.

Kinachoshangiliwa zaidi ni kuwa kuna uwezekano mtu mweusi atasimama kama Rais wa Taifa lenye nguvu zaidi duniani.

Lakini hatuna budi kujiuliza je ushindi wa Obama utainufaisha vipi Afrika? Je una maana gani?

Ushindi wa Obama una maana kubwa kwa sio tu Afrika bali kwa dunia, likija suala la ubaguzi wa rangi. Mtu anatakiwa aheshimiwe mawazo yako bila kujali rangi yake. Na hili ni fundisho kwetu waTZ, uchaguzi wa mwaka 2005 suala la rangi liliingia vibaya mno. Kumbuka Salim alivyokuwa anitwa Mwarabu, lakini haikuangaliwa historia yake ya nyuma jinsi alivyolitumikia Taifa mpaka kuwa Katibu Mkuu wa OAU sasa AU.

Kuhusu mafanikio, itategemea na yeye mwenyewe atakavyoamua, lakini sio wakutegemea sana kuwa ataisaidia Afrika. Manake sera za Marekani za nchi za nje ni zilezile. Lakini mtu naye pia ana nguvu zake katika kuzifuatilia hizi sera.

[masanja]

Nimeshuhudia jinsi Rais mteule wa Marekani akiapishwa na mchakato mzima wa uchaguzi ulivyoenda.

Ni dhahiri Marekani bado ni baba wa demokrasia na naamini kwa wale viongozi wa kiafrka wanaomcha mungu wanalo la kujifunza.

Hakuna aliyeumbwa kuwa Rais milele,

[laigwanan]

Amerika itaendelea kuwa Amerika, hata kama mpuuzi kama Makamba akiwa rais.
Obama kuwa rais itawasaidia wamerikani wenye asili ya Afrika kufuta utumwa wa kiakili kwani sasa wataweza kusimama na kujiamini.
kuhusu Afrika, Obama atafuata yale yaliyokwisha pangwa kwani ikumbukwe Marekani ana " permanent interest not permanent friend".