The race is on, with three days left before the make-or-break Super Tuesday on February 5, when 24 US states hold primaries with 52 per cent of all pledged Democratic party delegates at stake.
Thus candidates seeking the presidency must do well there in order to secure their party's nomination. Since states receive delegates in proportion to their population, a win in a big state like California, which has several hundred delegates compared, say, to South Carolina, which has a handful, is critical to a presidential hopeful.
Not long ago, before Barack Obama's impressive victory in Iowa, pundits declared the race for president all but over: Hillary Clinton was both an invincible front runner and the inevitable winner. Now, not as smug, they have changed their script.
Earlier this week, Obama arrived in Washington, with his broad victory in South Carolina behind him, where he appeared before a crowd of thousands at the Bender Arena of the American University where he picked up the coveted endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
"Let there be no doubt: we are committed to seeing a Democratic president in 2008, but I believe there is one candidate who has the extraordinary gifts of leadership", Kennedy said, as he was joined on stage by his son Representative Patrick J. Kennedy and his niece Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy.
"I am proud to stand here today and offer my help, my voice, my energy and my commitment to make Barack Obama the next president of the United States."
Needless to say, the Kennedy endorsement gave a major boost to Obama, several days before Super Tuesday, and represented a blow to Hillary Clinton who had wanted the Democratic Party's leading liberal to remain, at worst, neutral.
The Kennedy family's political blessing clearly advances Obama's potential of mobilising new energies in his campaign among African American, young, educated and even Latino voters, with the latter reportedly favouring Clinton.
As Camelot's New Knight, gift-wrapped in the shining armour of JFK's legacy, Obama can ride high.
Wide appeal
But how to explain the Obama phenomenon, the phenomenon of the first African-American presidential hopeful to be taken seriously by Democrats and independents, blacks and whites, men and women, and voters from virtually all income levels? (Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, and Al Sharpton in 1994, among other, lesser known black luminaries, were not taken seriously as contenders for their party's nomination at the time.)
How then to explain that wide appeal? Obama's policy proposals are no different from those of his Democratic rivals. He has not been in Congress long enough to hone his skills as a legislator.
True, he is considerably polished, articulate and informed, but so are his opponents. And as one commentator put it recently: "His lean physique, close-cropped hair and stick-out ears can give the impression of a slightly pushy undergraduate."
Moreover, you would've thought that, as he was about to embark on seeking his party's nomination, he would've followed wiser men's advice to "wait his turn", to run for president when it was the "right time" to do so, in 2012 or even 2016.
But Obama knew, as they did not, that when the hour meets the man, you seize the moment. For in politics, as in everyday life, timing is essential. And the moment for America has been a long time coming.
Americans are weary of the old politics, of the Bushes and the Clintons, of the Nixons and the Johnsons, that cheapened the public discourse and debased the meaning of what the Founding Fathers had intended to imbue the United States with. In a subliminal kind of way, Obama speaks to Americans, about Americans, from Americans.
Supporter
Let me indulge a recollection here to explain not only that wide appeal he commands but what clinched it for me personally as an Obama supporter.
Early on in his campaign, Obama, then a distant runner, gave a speech in Washington that I attended. True, the speech was compelling and replete with rhetorical flourish.
And true, its effectiveness lay not so much in the eloquence of the words as in their musicality. (If you watched his victory speech in South Carolina, you'll know what I mean.)
Obama, not unlike Martin Luther King and other African-American public speakers, strung words together much as a Jazz soloist would string notes together, improvising, as a Jazz performer would while jamming, a great deal in addressing the audience, combining melodic words from his prepared text with ideas he composed extemporaneously as he spoke.
Obama was so eloquent that day, and I walked away from the lecture hall wondering: How could a man be so eloquent, so informed, so tuned in to the temper of our times and to the mood of our nation?
Only later did I realise that, deep down in my heart, my question was really not about how a man could be so gifted, but how a black man could be so gifted. Obama, you see, had put me in touch with my bigoted notions about race (acquired where and how, me being a Third World person?) and obliged me to question my social values.
The speech was revelatory, its impact on me enduring. I have no doubt that Obama has won over many, many voters because of that very gift.
Three days from now, on Super Tuesday, in 24 states, Americans will cast their ballots for the next Democratic nominee for president.
Those among them, tired already of the old guard politicians in Washington, voters who feel their country is estranged from the rest of the world, and is waging yet another unnecessary, unwinnable war, this time in the heartland of the Middle East, will find in Barack Obama a leader ready, capable and willing to fix that which has been broken in the American national soul.
Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington D.C.
