By Habib Siddiqui

Part 2: Who Goes to the White House?

America is now holding its primary elections. With Senator Hillary Clinton's predictable victory in the Pennsylvania primary election, the super delegates may eventually decide who ultimately gets the ticket for the Democratic Party. The election is also bringing to the fore the ugly side of racism that has always been dormant within the society.

The three most important issues in the minds of most voters are economy, war and healthcare (in that order). Everyone is feeling the pinch of soaring prices on almost everything from gasoline to milk to meat to bread and rice. The American economy seems to be in recession. Consumer confidence has hit 26-year low. Many voters have lost their homes to foreclosures, many parents are struggling to pay for soaring tuition costs of their college-going children, many elderly citizens are hard pressed with rising healthcare cost and many workers will lose jobs. Experts tell us that the days of cheap gasoline at pump stations are over and difficult days are ahead. Beside such economic worries most voters are concerned about American foreign policy. (The American foreign policy is entwined with economics. Oil was a factor for invasion of Iraq. Now that has backfired. Instead of cheaper oil Americans are paying more at the gas pumps.) Tired of the war and its effect on economy, they crave for a shift away from Washington's unwavering support of an Israel-centric Middle East. They don't want to fight another proxy war for Israel against Iran and Syria.

Unfortunately, such voter concerns on the future of American foreign policy are routinely eclipsed by the corporate media, which parrot what the "Israel Lobby" desires; after all, many media pundits, owners and sponsors either belong directly to or are affiliated with the Lobby. The Lobby is tied up intimately with the defense industry – "military industrial complex" – that prefers war over peace, especially when it comes to Iran, which is considered a threat to the 'existence' of the Zionist state.

The matter of who goes to the White House is very important to the Lobby and its circle of influence. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why a Presidential candidate gets better exposure in the American media and favorable treatment from interviewers and moderators in the debates when he/she sounds more hawkish, i.e., pro-war and pro-Israel. We got a good demonstration of this from the favorable treatment of Sen. Clinton in the April 16 face-off between the two Democratic candidates on the ABC TV. In the first 40 minutes of the two-hour Democratic debate, the moderators appeared unmistakably hostile towards Senator Barack Obama by asking him about his remarks that small-town residents bitterly cling to guns and religion; the inflammatory sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (with follow-up questions like: "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"); about Obama's patriotism why he doesn't wear an American flag pin; and his relationship with William Ayers, a former Weather Underground radical who has acknowledged involvement in several bombings in the 1970s. One wonders if such TV gangsterism had swayed many neutral Whites, Catholics and blue collar democrats to voting for Senator Clinton in the critical Pennsylvania primary held Tuesday, April 22, 2008! This win has given a gasp of life to Mrs. Clinton's race for the White House; within a day of the win she was able to raise ten million dollars towards her presidential campaign.

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