Wednesday, June 23, 2004 :::
First, most divorce records are not sealed. This was an exception. I don't know how it is that they get sealed, or unsealed, though I do agree with my brother that it seems that if they were sealed for good reasons before, an amorphous "public right to know" seems shaky grounds for unsealing them.As for the political impact, this was Obama's race to lose from the beginning. On the one hand it seems hard to believe this sort of thing will last more than a couple weeks; while Blair Hull seems to have been sunk by similar developments a few weeks before the Democratic primary, that was a four man race, in which a loss of credibility is going to be self-sustaining; Ryan is still the most credible alternative to Obama, and will remain so. On the other hand, Ryan hasn't held elective office before, and has largely run on biography and character up to this point. (Made millions as an investment banker, quit to teach at an inner city school.) If Obama weren't black, Ryan would probably have had a decent shot at peeling off some black support on the basis of his story. Obama is a man of great integrity, a family man, and the downstate cultural conservatives will now see more of themselves in him than in Ryan. While Ryan still may attack Obama as liberal, Obama's pretty much in dead-girl/live-boy territory at this point.
::: posted by dWj at 9:22 PM
