Simon Burns MP has used these pages to make the case for Hillary Clinton. Iain Duncan Smith will shortly be arguing that John McCain should be America's 44th President. Today, Nick Bourne, AM for Mid & West Wales and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly for Wales, states his belief that a President Barak Obama will be good for Britain and the world.
Nick blogs here.
Barack Obama has locked up a majority of the pledged delegates after the primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. In fact I believe that the contest for the Democratic nomination has become almost a sideshow as it is clear the battle for the Presidency will be between Barack Obama and John McCain.
That isn’t to say that Obama will clinch the nomination immediately but he has both more delegates and more super delegates than Hilary Clinton.
This week, on Monday, five more super delegates pledged themselves to Barak Obama whilst none pledged themselves to Hilary Clinton. The most prominent new recruit to the Obama standard is Senator Robert C Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd stated that “Obama was a shining young statesman who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq.”
The journey from Junior Senator for Illinois to putative Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party has been an impressive one. Although he will have spent only four years in Washington by Election Day in 2008, his rise to prominence in American politics has been astronomic.
During the Democratic primary season, Barack Obama has demonstrated an enviable ability to reach out to Republican and Independent voters as well as those pledged to the Democrat cause. He has attracted people to politics who have had no political leanings and were, indeed, ‘anti-politics’ before Obama burst onto the scene. That is a very favourable omen for the Presidential showdown with John McCain.
This extraordinary ability to reach out to people must now be honed to ensure that he is able to gain the support of working class voters across all sections of American society. Polling certainly suggests that he is able to do this.
He has attracted star endorsements of top Democrats like Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and John Edwards, as well as the backing of the influential talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Such backing is not to be sneezed at.
Masses of people are turning out for his rallies, just this week 75,000 in Portland, Oregon, being the greatest number so far.
His emergence onto the political scene and the storming of the Democrat bastion is something to be welcomed, not just in American terms but in world terms because it signals, I believe, a new dawn for America with strong moral leadership and a fresh start. He really stands for a new type of politics and that can’t be bad. There are certainly clear echoes of David Cameron’s emergence representing a new Conservatism.
I have believed from an early stage that he would take the Democratic nomination, just as I believe that he will be the next President of the United States. I believe that is good for America, good for Britain, good for Europe, and good for the world.
