First Read from NBC News: Obama, 50 years later : Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Obama, 50 years later after MLK’s famous speech… Previewing Obama’s speech — a focus on opportunity for all… NBC/WSJ poll: Many Americans say King’s dream hasn’t become a reality yet… How clear is Obama’s goal in Syria?… Boehner promises “a whale of a fight” over the debt ceiling… Kaiser poll: Confusion about the health-care law… So enter Bill Clinton, the “secretary of explaining stuff,” who will speak on the law on Sept. 4… And internal poll shows Lamar Alexander sitting pretty so far.

*** Obama, 50 years later: On this 50^th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, our focus today moves from war in the Middle East and the looming budget battle to the topic that has divided this country throughout its history: race. And the highlight of the commemoration is President Obama’s speech at 2:45 pm ET from the Lincoln Memorial, the same place where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech 50 years ago. The issue of race has always been a main part of Obama’s political career, and it has carried some contradictions for him. After all, the nation’s first black president was born to a white woman from Kansas and a father from Kenya. He didn’t grow up in the South or in an urban metropolis — the venues of the civil-rights movement — but instead in Hawaii. He won election in 2008 and re-election in 2012 not solely because of minority support but rather by a coalition including African Americans, Latinos, young voters, and white liberals and independents. And despite writing a famous book about race and his identity, he avoided national conversations about race in his first term, although theGrio’s Perry Bacon notes how that’s changed in the second term. Bottom line: Today’s speech isn’t an easy or clear-cut one for Obama, especially with all the expectations about it

*** Previewing Obama’s speech — a focus on opportunity for all: Over the last few weeks, however, the president has seemed to preview the remarks he’ll give — and his focus has centered on opportunity for all Americans. “Let’s assume that we eliminated all discrimination magically, with a wand, and everybody had goodness in their heart,” Obama said at a town hall last week when asked a question about education and civil rights. “You’d still have a situation in which there are a lot of folks who are poor and whose families have become dysfunctional because of a long legacy of poverty, and live in neighborhoods that are run down and schools that are underfunded… So if, in fact, that’s the case — and that is what I believe — then it’s in all of our interests to make sure that we are putting in place smart policies to give those communities a lift, and to create ladders so that young people in those communities can succeed.” And in his interview with the New York Times last month, Obama said: “When you think about the coalition that brought about civil rights, it wasn’t just folks who believed in racial equality; it was people who believed in working folks having a fair shot…  And if there’s one thing that I wanted to try to emphasize today in this speech, it is that America has always worked better when everybody has a chance to succeed.” Obama also said this to radio host Tom Joyner: “All I can do on an occasion like this is just to celebrate the accomplishments of all of those folks whose shoulders we stand on and then remind people that the work is still out there for us to do.”

*** NBC/WSJ poll: Many Americans say King’s dream hasn’t become a reality yet: In his “I have a dream speech,” Martin Luther King Jr. declared his desire for a more colorblind America: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But five decades after the March on Washington, just a bare majority of Americans – and fewer than one-in-five African Americans – believe that dream has been realized. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last month, 54% of respondents agreed with the statement that America is a nation where people are judged by their character, not their skin color. But 45% percent disagreed, including a whopping 79% of African Americans. In the same poll, another bare majority — 52% — said race relations in the U.S. are good, which was down from 79% who said this in Jan. 2009, 72% who said it in 2010 and 71% who said it in 2011.

*** Today’s program in Washington: The “Let Freedom Ring Commemoration” of the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington begins at 11:00 am ET, and some of the other notable speakers include: Sen. Angus King (I-ME) Myrile Evers Williams, Lynda Robb Johnson, Caroline Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), former President Jimmy Carter, former President Bill Clinton, and the King family. By the way, NBC’s Kristen Welker reports that Obama called Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) a “couple of days ago” to get his recollections about the March on Washington, according to a senior administration official. The same official added that the president views today’s speech as a moment to reflect back on what was happening 50 years ago, the progress that has been made since then, and the challenges that lie ahead.

*** How clear is Obama’s goal in Syria? Regarding the likelihood that the Obama administration will use force — and perhaps soon — against the Syrian regime for its reported chemical-weapons attack, what we’re watching is to see how clear President Obama makes this goal to the American people. There’s no doubt the White House has been trying to lower expectations by not calling for regime change. But isn’t it the administration’s policy for regime change? After all, Obama has called for Assad to step down.

*** Boehner promises “a whale of a fight” over the debt ceiling: At an Idaho fundraiser earlier this week for Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), House Speaker John Boehner vowed to use raising the debt limit to extract cuts and reforms to entitlement spending. “I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit,” he said. “The president doesn’t think this is fair, thinks I’m being difficult to deal with. But I’ll say this: It may be unfair but what I’m trying to do here is to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would produce if left to its own devices. We’re going to have a whale of a fight.” Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told CNBC’s John Harwood that the Obama administration will not negotiate over raising the debt limit. “Congress has already authorized funding, committed us to make expenditures. We’re now in a place where the only question is, will we pay the bills that the United States has incurred?”

*** Kaiser poll: Confusion about the health law: To us, perhaps the most striking numbers from the new Kaiser Family Foundation poll on health care are these: 44% of Americans either think the health-care law has been repealed, overturned by the Supreme Court, or are unsure whether it’s the law of the land. What’s more, 51% say they don’t have enough information about the law or how it will impact them. Also in the poll, the law remains unpopular, getting a 37%-42% fav/unfav rating. (It was 35%-43% in June.) But importantly, the vast majority of Americans do not want to defund the law. Just 36% approve of defunding it, 57% do not. But Republicans approve 60%-34% — hence the ongoing GOP discussion about potentially shutting down the government to defund the law. (The defund numbers, Kaiser says, has been consistent since Jan. 2011.)

*** Bill Clinton to give major address on the health-care law on Sept. 4: With this confusion about the health-care law, First Read can report that former President Bill Clinton will deliver a speech on the health-care law in Little Rock, AR on Sept. 4. Remember, it was almost a year when Obama tapped Clinton to be his “secretary of explaining stuff” at the Democratic convention as it related to the state of the U.S. economy. Now it appears the president is doing the same when it comes to the implementation of the health-care law. Also note the Arkansas venue for the speech: Is this also about trying to help Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), who’s up for re-election next year and is perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Dem incumbent in 2014?

*** Internal poll shows Lamar Alexander sitting pretty: Lastly, one of us got our hands on a new internal GOP poll showing that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) appears to be sitting pretty in the primary challenge he’s now getting. “It doesn’t look rocky for Lamar Alexander on Rocky Top just yet. The Tennessee Republican has been named a top target by conservative groups and drew a primary challenger last week, but an internal GOP poll conducted for the senior senator’s campaign shows the longtime state politician still enjoys high job approval ratings and wide leads over his potential opponents  A year away from next August’s Republican primary, a survey from North Star Opinion Research, shows Alexander has a 69% job approval rating among GOP primary voters, with 24% disapproving. The Republican also gets high marks with Republican subgroups: 74% of strong Republicans gave him a positive job approval, along with 70% of evangelical Christians.

Click here to sign up for First Read emails.
Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. Follow us @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @DomenicoNBC, @brookebrower

President Obama sat for an interview with radio host Tom Joyner. Here’s the transcript. Of his speech today: “All I can do on an occasion like this is just to celebrate the accomplishments of all of those folks whose shoulders we stand on and then remind people that the work is still out there for us to do, and that we honor his speech but also, more importantly in many ways, the organization of the ordinary people who came out for that speech. We honor them not by giving another speech ourselves — because it won’t be as good — but instead by just doing the day-to-day work to make sure this is a more equal and more just society.”

Of what Martin Luther King Jr. would think of Obamacare, Obama said, “Oh, he would like that. Well, because I think he understood that health care, health security is not a privilege; it’s something that in a country as wealthy as ours, everybody should have access to.”

File this one away for fact checking in two years… Of Obamacare’s cost, the president said: “For a lot of people, it will be cheaper than your cell phone bill.”

And: “President Barack Obama says he got teary while watching ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler,’ a movie about a black White House servant who worked for several presidents. Obama says he reflected on the effects of discrimination on a generation of people. He says that generation displayed dignity and tenacity and, quote, ‘put up with a whole lot of mess because they hoped for something better for their kids.’”

The Washington Post: “Obama’s relationship with the American civil rights movement has been a vexing one, challenging a cool, intellectual president to engage the memories and expectations of pioneers who marched, resisted and, in some cases, died before his birth. On Wednesday, the arc of that relationship will reach from Grant Park to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On the spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described his dream 50 years ago, Obama will define a new front in the fight for equality and identify the mounting threats to progress emerging today.”

NBC’s Carrie Dann: “As he stands – literally – in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Wednesday to commemorate the movement that paved the way to his presidency, President Barack Obama faces the unique challenge of paying tribute to King’s vision without the urgent focus on racial discrimination that motivated the original March on Washington….Obama’s presidency – after five years and two decisive elections – is a self-evident tribute to the realization of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. But his job title also means that he’s charged with separating his own identity from the task of improving the lives of all Americans, creating a balancing act as he prepares to deliver an anticipated address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial marking the anniversary of the march.”

New York Times: “For Mr. Obama, Dr. King has been an idol, role model and burden since he assumed the presidency. He keeps a bust of the civil rights leader in the Oval Office along with a framed program from the 1963 march, and some of his favorite lines have been adopted from Dr. King. But as the nation’s first black president, Mr. Obama has found that no matter how much supporters may want to compare them, he cannot be a latter-day Dr. King.”

AP: “Vice President Joe Biden says there is no doubt that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is responsible for the heinous use of chemical weapons. Biden’s comments Tuesday make him the highest-ranking U.S. official to say the Syrian regime is the culprit in a large-scale chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21.”

NBC’s Jessica Taylor: Senate remains a glass ceiling for African-Americans.

Politico: “Immigration reform advocates have a new enemy: the congressional calendar. Fall’s fiscal fights have lined up in a way that could delay immigration reform until 2014, multiple senior House Republican leadership aides tell POLITICO, imperiling the effort’s prospects before the midterm elections.The mid-October debt ceiling deadline — an earlier-than-expected target laid out Monday by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew — is changing the House GOP leadership’s plans to pass immigration bills that month.

New York Times: “Speaker John A. Boehner says he is gearing up for ‘ whale of a fight’ with President Obama over raising the federal debt ceiling, even though Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he has no plans to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over the nation’s debt limit and wants it lifted without a political showdown. At an Idaho fund-raiser on Monday for Representative Mike Simpson, a Republican and a close ally, Mr. Boehner said he planned to use the need to raise the debt ceiling to gain political leverage and demand ‘cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit.’”

AP: “Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to address a Minnesota audience in late October. Beth El Synagogue announced Tuesday that Clinton would appear in St. Louis Park as part of its national speaker series. The event is set for Oct. 27. … Past speakers at the synagogue’s lecture series include former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.”

The Kansas City Star: “That Texas Gov. Rick Perry is headed to Missouri on Thursday hoping to lure businesses back to the Lone Star State should come as no surprise. This year, the former GOP presidential hopeful has swaggered into a handful of blue states around the country to court companies with a sales pitch of low taxes and less government regulation. But this trip is different. When Perry arrives in St. Louis this week, he’ll be doing so with the blessing of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Along with a coalition of fellow business advocacy groups, the chamber is hosting Perry at a luncheon in the hope he can help muster enough support to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a $700 million tax cut. That alliance has drawn heated criticism.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Missouri Republicans and business leaders are preparing to lay out the welcome mat this week for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Tuesday came pretty close to calling them economic traitors for it.”

ILLINOIS: Chicago Tribune: “Pat Brady, who was forced out as chairman of the state Republican Party after backing gay marriage legislation, said Tuesday he has been retained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to lobby GOP state legislators to back the bill.”

SOUTH CAROLINA: Charleston Post & Courier: “The only thing missing from the anti-Lindsey Graham rally was the senator himself. But there was a Graham cardboard cutout for people to get their picture taken with — and to direct their political anger.More than 14 months before the election, some Republicans are making it clear they are not happy with the state’s senior senator, calling him too easy to compromise with the Obama White House. And though their numbers might be small and their event Tuesday night high on theatrics, the dislike for Graham among the 100-plus people at the FreedomWorks town hall rally in North Charleston was apparent.”

Greenville News: “Republicans and Democrats are at odds over how many people showed up at the re-election announcement of Gov. Nikki Haley in Greenville on Monday and what those numbers mean. Haley’s campaign estimates that almost 300 people attended the event outside the BI-LO Center that featured Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, while Democrats argue the number is between 75 and 100.”

TENNESSEE: NBC’s Jessica Taylor: Tennessee waltz? Poll says Alexander can withstand Tea Party challenge.

VIRGINIA: Beth Reinhard notes all the money the RGA has poured into the governor’s race as well as the national GOP political hopefuls who are going to stump for Cuccinelli: “Down in the polls and outraised by his opponent, Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli is increasingly relying on the national party to come to his rescue. In the last two months, the Republican Governors Association has spent $3.6 million on television ads in the state, on top of the $2 million doled out to the campaign earlier this year. Three of the GOP’s biggest stars, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are all expected to campaign for Cuccinelli this fall, with Rubio scheduled to come to Virginia next month.”

But: “The national party’s much-ballyhooed goals of winning over more minorities and women on the road to the White House doesn’t always line up with Cuccinelli’s fiercely conservative track record. The mismatch was evident Tuesday, when the attorney general was asked about Rubio’s bill to allow millions of illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. Some Republican leaders say the bill will pave crucial inroads in the fast-growing Hispanic community. ‘I don’t support amnesty, if that’s what you mean, but I certainly support a focus on the rule of law,’ Cuccinelli said in a visit to the Ashby Ponds retirement community. He added that he hadn’t read the bill: ‘I’m running for governor. That is a state office.’”

ABC takes a look at the “complicated legal back story” of GreenTech. “For an upstart electric-car company with big ambitions, its ties to Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe have been both a blessing and a curse. The company, GreenTech, is now front and center in Virginia’s 2013 race for governor, and its critics are raising questions about political favoritism, national-security risks, and the government’s role in foreign investments—unwelcome attention for the struggling firm.”

Washington Post: “Suzanne Patrick, who served as deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy under President George W. Bush, launched her campaign for Virginia’s veteran-heavy 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday. Painting herself as a ‘centrist Democrat,’ the former Navy commander will take on the two-term Republican incumbent, Scott Rigell, next year.”

Gaining representation in the U.S. Senate remains a glass ceiling for African-American politicians, despite significant strides in winning seats in the House of Representatives during the 50 years since the March on Washington.

It’s a fact often overlooked after Barack Obama, the most recent and only the third popularly elected African-American senator in history, capped off a rapid ascent from state legislator to commander-in-chief in just four years.

“It’s extraordinary when you look at it in the context that Obama was able to leap from a state senator to being a U.S. Senator to the presidency, because that’s been far from what other African-American politicians have accomplished,” said Frederick Harris, director of the African American Politics and Society Workshop at Columbia University.

“With the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we added significant numbers of African-Americans into the Congress, more adequately representing our numbers in terms of population in the country, but not fully representing those numbers,” said Maryland Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards. “I still think we’ve made a lot of progress, but we’ve got some work to do.

How have things changed for African-American politicians in the past 50 years?

Charles Rex Arbogast / AP file

Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., during an interview with The Associated Press in Chicago on Nov. 18, 2010.

• In 1963, there were just five black members of Congress, according to the House historian. Currently there are 41 voting members in the House of Representatives.
• In 1963, there were no sitting African-American senators in Congress — and there wouldn’t be until three years later, when Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African-American popularly elected to the Senate.
• Half of the states have never elected an African-American member of Congress. Only 25 have ever sent a black representative to the House.
• Only three states have ever elected black senators — Mississippi (during Reconstruction), Illinois and Massachusetts — but South Carolina and New Jersey could soon join that list.
• After Brooke, there have been only two other popularly elected black senators — Carol Moseley Braun and now-President Obama, both Democrats from Illinois.
• Briefly this year, there were two sitting African-American senators for the first time in history, with Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democrat Mo Cowan of Massachusetts. Scott was appointed to the Senate to fill the seat vacated by Jim DeMint’s resignation, and will run for — and is favored to win — a full term in 2014, which would make him the first African-American to popularly win a Senate seat in the South. Cowan temporarily filled John Kerry’s vacated seat before Democrat Ed Markey was elected in a June special election.

After October there’s a good chance those numbers could grow if Democrat Cory Booker wins the New Jersey special election. Then, Booker would be only the fourth popularly elected African-American senator. If both Booker and Scott win re-election in 2014, it would be the first time in history the Senate had two popularly elected African-American members.

Mel Evans / Mel Evans / AP

Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker addresses a gathering after winning the Democratic primary election for the seat vacated by the late U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013, in Newark, N.J.

Records for African-Americans seeking executive offices at the highest state levels have been similarly dismal. In 1989, Democrat Douglas Wilder made history in Virginia, not only becoming the first black governor since Reconstruction but winning in the former headquarters of the Confederacy. It wasn’t until 2006, when Deval Patrick won in Massachusetts, that the country got its second African-American governor. In New York, David Paterson briefly assumed the governorship after Eliot Spitzer stepped down, but amid scandal didn’t run for a term in his own right.

The disparity is even starker with Obama’s rapid ascension, proving that he could build not only statewide but also national coalitions — twice.

“It’s woeful,” said Edwards of the lackluster success Democrats have had statewide. “I think part of it is making sure that we really identify as part of the talent pool when it comes to running for statewide office. Certainly we have people of great capacity in a lot of places.”

Redistricting has been a key ingredient for the dramatic rise in African-American politicians in the House with majority-minority districts, designed to elect black politicians and boost their numbers. A decade after the Voting Rights Act’s passage in 1965, which helped increase the number of minority districts, black representation had tripled and continued to steadily rise.

The formula hasn’t been foolproof, but it’s helped others get a foothold into higher office.

But to African-Americans, the key is winning outside of those districts designed for them to win, expanding their coalitions in those places as building blocks for larger campaigns.

“Ironically, in majority-minority districts, African-American politicians don’t break out, mostly because they have to serve constituencies that expect them to target policies that concern issues on racial inequality which for many, if not most white voters, is something they’re simply not interested in,” said Harris. “It’s the perception of these candidates that doesn’t allow them to be successful as candidates.”

“I think part of winning a statewide office is also the capacity to put together a wide ranging and diverse coalition that’s built on race and ethnicity and religion and gender and all of the things that make us diverse, and that’s a winning coalition,” said Edwards.

It hasn’t been for a lack of trying by some candidates, and often it’s party, not race, that’s been the barrier. In Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., came close in 2006 in a good year for Democrats, but fell short. The same year for Republicans, Ken Blackwell lost a bid for governor in Ohio. There were high hopes for Artur Davis in 2010’s gubernatorial election in Alabama, but he was attacked as too conservative and didn’t make it out of the primary. Davis has now switched to become a Republican.

Streeter Lecka / Getty Images file

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx

Politicians point to other elected officials who give them hope they can break other barriers, beyond hoping to keep an African-American as governor for 2014 and hoping to historically elect two black senators. Frequently mentioned as future candidate include California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed or now-Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, the former Charlotte mayor.

“Just because we’ve completed 50 years and we’ve made some significant progress doesn’t mean there’s not a ton of work to be done,” said Edwards.

Related:

• Obama must balance history with policy as he commemorates the March on Washington
• ‘The moment we’d all been waiting for’: March attendees remember King’s historic ‘dream’ speech
• Commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy with #DreamDay

This story was originally published on Wed Aug 28, 2013 4:37 AM EDT