It's funny, everywhere I go some people ask me whether it's going to be a Latino breakthrough, some people ask me whether it's going to be a female breakthrough, and then I'm reminded that five years ago we didn't even know Barack Obama's name.
Gwen IfillIn the media universe we're in, where there are people screaming on one end, there is no problem at all with having a little bit of extra politeness.
Gwen IfillAspiring black leaders are often asked to transcend race, even though no one ever asked, say, Hillary Clinton to transcend gender. This is a precarious race straddle that most members of the breakthrough generation seem to reject. Even the most well meaning white Obama supporters seem to take deep satisfaction in this idea. Obama, they insisted, could be raceless, a reasurringly optimistic view of America's deepest burden that ignores countless peices of evidence to the contrary.
Gwen IfillEven marginal progress could be affected by investigations in Little Rock and in Washington.
Gwen Ifill