I actually think agendas are more often found in State of the Union speeches than in inaugural speeches.

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.

In 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.

Aspiring 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.

Even marginal progress could be affected by investigations in Little Rock and in Washington.

I actually think agendas are more often found in State of the Union speeches than in inaugural speeches.

Folks who are getting their strokes in the South are not as unhappy with Howard Dean. You don't see anybody starting any movement to get him out of office.