Obama One Year Later: Tinkering We Can Believe In

By: Kai Wright-TheRoot.com

Before there were tea partiers, there were nurses. Angry nurses disrupting Sen. Max Baucus’ health care reform meetings back in the politically halcyon days of spring. Their complaint was simple: Democrats refused to even discuss proposals for single-payer, universal coverage. But unlike the deference that anti-reform zealots won this summer, all the nurses got for their trouble was jail time.

That’s because as far back as the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama began defining “reform” as something far more modest. The Obama campaign, Washington’s Democratic leadership and the progressive advocates who backed them agreed that Obama’s public plan—a competitive option inside the private insurance market—would be the face of reform. Everything more ambitious than that—like a single-payer plan—quickly became too radical to be taken seriously, while laughably cautious industry proposals defined the opposing boundary of compromise.

Obama One Year Later: Tinkering We Can Believe In....

Senate Votes to Confirm Holder As AG

The Senate has voted 75-21 to confirm Eric Holder as the nation's first African-American attorney general. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, called the vote historic.

Guard Yourself, Officials Say, from Inevitable Dirty Tricks

By: Denise Stewart

In the hours before Election Day, as inevitable as winter, comes an onslaught of dirty tricks - confusing e-mails, disturbing phone calls and insinuating fliers left on doorsteps during the night.

The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.

Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.

Some Hampton Roads, Virginia residents received offical-looking fliers last week that said if they were Democrats, they could vote on Wednesday, Nov. 5, instead of Tuesday to avoid the long lines.

Distribution of the fliers, just one of several reported attempts to deceive and suppress voter participation among Democrats across the country, is being investigated by Virginia state officials.

Voting rights activists say that as Election Day nears, the Virginia flier is a reminder that voters, regardless of their party affiliation, should be mindful of attempts to prevent them from exercising their constitutional right.

“Usually, it’s in the last 72 hours before the election that we start seeing the dirty tricks,” said Melanie Campbell, executive director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing Black civic engagement and voter participation.

Guard Yourself, Officials Say, from Inevitable Dirty Tricks....

Inside An ACORN

In ACORN'S Michigan office, employees are baffled by what they call an "aggressive" attack on their organization. The community organization, whose goal during the election cycle is to register as many voters as possible, refutes claims that fraudulent voter registration cards have an affect on the election.

No Home Means No Vote

How do you vote when you don't own a home? From Detroit we hear first hand that it's not easy, if sometimes just impossible. What's being done to prevent that this election? We listen in on an ACLU session and find out how people who can get legal help to vote by calling 866-OURVOTE. Video by The UpTake's Oren Goldenberg.

Fear of Islam hurts Obama in Kentucky

Rural voters say they do not trust that Obama has been honest about his religious beliefs.