Enlarge By Alex Brandon, AP Tears flow down the face of Marty Nesbit as Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, speaks in Philadelphia about race. OBAMA SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS OBAMA SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS CLOSE-UP: BARACK OBAMA CLOSE-UP: BARACK OBAMA In-depth: Latest Obama news, video, photos, timeline, more ... Barack Obama on the campaign issues: Iraq | Immigration | Health care | Education | Abortion | Gay civil rights CAMPAIGN ISSUES: 2008 CAMPAIGN ISSUES: 2008 Click on the titles to learn more about where the presidential candidates stand on the issues:



WAR IN IRAQ

The war in Iraq is the dominant issue in the 2008 race for the White House. The early primary votes will be cast as the conflict completes its fifth year. The next president will be the first to take the oath of office during an ongoing war since Richard Nixon in 1969.



IMMIGRATION

Immigration is a highly divisive issue, as concerns about terrorism amplify the debate about border security. Congress has failed to enact immigration legislation because of differences between supporters of tougher enforcement to limit illegal entry into the country and advocates of amnesty for illegal immigrants.



HEALTH CARE

Polls indicate that health care is one of the most important issues to voters heading into the 2008 presidential elections. The rising cost of health insurance and the growing number of uninsured give the issue added urgency. Several candidates have called for universal health care; others have said these plans amount to socialized medicine.



EDUCATION

White House hopefuls are divided on the federal government's role in education as Congress considers changes to President Bush's signature schools law, the No Child Left Behind Act, and how to make college affordable.



ABORTION

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in the landmark case Roe v. Wade and the ruling has been the subject of heated political debate ever since. Presidential candidates over the years have weighed in on a variety of abortion-related topics.



GAY CIVIL RIGHTS

The issue of civil rights for gay men and lesbians -- including the definition of marriage, service in the military and protection against hate crimes -- has long divided the two major political parties. It's not as simple as saying Democrats are for them, and Republicans are against them. In a gamble, Obama takes aim at America's 'racial stalemate' PHILADELPHIA  Facing the most serious controversy of his political career, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Tuesday condemned inflammatory remarks by his pastor but argued they should be understood in a historical context of black anger. He urged the nation to move past "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years." The sweeping speech on race relations in America — delivered within view of Independence Hall, where the Constitution was drafted — showed the Illinois senator trying to reassure white voters whose support he needs in the Pennsylvania primary next month and a general election in November, without dismaying the black voters who overwhelmingly have embraced his candidacy. IN HIS WORDS: Read the Obama speech (pdf file) VIDEO: See the full speech (via YouTube) LIVE BLOG: The speech as it unfolded The result was not only the most extensive discussion of race to date by Obama, who generally has played down racial issues while seeking to become the first African-American nominated for the presidency by a major party. Tuesday's speech, historian Roger Wilkins says, was also the most extensive discussion of race ever by a presidential candidate. The Illinois senator challenged voters to reject the racially tinged politics that have helped shape American politics for generations, bred "division and conflict and cynicism" — and distracted voters from common problems involving education, health care and jobs. "At this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time,' " Obama said. In portraying such racial divisions as part of the old politics he has vowed to change, the speech laid down a marker that his campaign hopes will inoculate him from continued fallout over minister Jeremiah Wright's words and other flare-ups over racially charged issues. ON THE WEB: Obama speech on race gives the Internet a workout CONTROVERSY FROM THE PULPIT: A portrait of Obama's retired pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Obama also made intimate references to his own multicultural background, including his unease with racial comments made not only by his black minister but also by his beloved white grandmother. The closest parallel in U.S. political history to Obama's address is John Kennedy's speech in 1960 in which Kennedy explained and defended his Catholic faith to a group of Baptist ministers in Houston, says David Domke, a communications professor at the University of Washington. Obama "addressed race in America in a more sophisticated way than we've ever seen any candidate do," Domke says, and the dynamics of race make the consequences hard to predict. "He bet his candidacy on the American public." The speech sparked a furious discussion on cable TV and radio talk shows and among some Internet bloggers about how it would affect Obama's nomination battle with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and whether it represented a seminal moment in America's long struggle with race. Just hours after Obama's speech and a few blocks away, at Philadelphia City Hall, Clinton said she welcomed the frank talk about race and gender. Those issues have created "pitfalls and detours" as well as excitement in the presidential campaign, she said. "We will be nominating the first African-American or the first woman," the New York senator said. "That is something all Americans can and should celebrate." She said she was glad Obama gave the speech but indicated it shouldn't be a critical factor for voters, reiterating her suggestion that her rival hasn't backed up his powerful rhetoric with results. "In the end, the test is not the speeches a president delivers," she said. "The test is whether the president delivers on the speeches." Obama decided to schedule the address after news accounts late last week detailing sermons by Wright fueled a public furor, overshadowing campaign efforts to focus on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war and the country's shuddering economy. In videos that have been broadcast on newscasts and circulated on the Internet, Wright is seen denouncing the country as racist. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said the United States had "supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. "America's chickens are coming home to roost," he declared. Strategist David Axelrod says Obama wrote the 40-minute speech himself, staying up until 2 a.m. Tuesday to finish it. The setting underscored the seriousness of the moment. In contrast to his usual high-decibel rallies in packed gymnasiums, he spoke in a formal auditorium, flanked by eight American flags, before a racially mixed, invitation-only audience of about 200 elected officials and community leaders. K.T. Newton, an assistant U.S. attorney from suburban Bryn Mawr who was in the audience, called the speech "remarkable" and praised Obama for having "the courage to address these issues." There were skeptics, too. "I don't think it's going to change anybody's mind," said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. "People who were for him before will say, 'Yes, that's right,' and people who were against him will say, 'That's not right.' " Galen said what he was "absolutely unmoved by was the notion of going from the abomination of slavery … to somehow using that to justify the un-American and vitriolic language of Jeremiah Wright." Listening in the pews Wright retired last month after 36 years as pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama joined the South Side church in the late 1980s while working as a community organizer. The minister married Obama and his wife, Michelle, baptized their two daughters and inspired the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. Obama on Tuesday acknowledged that he had heard "controversial" remarks by Wright as he sat in church. Last week, the senator had played down being aware of such comments, saying the statements highlighted in news reports "first came to my attention … at the beginning of my presidential campaign." In the speech, Obama called Wright's words "not only wrong but divisive." They presented "a profoundly distorted view" of a country whose progress on race relations is evident in the success of his own campaign, he said. "I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible," Obama said. The son of a Kenyan exchange student and a Kansas transplant who met at the University of Hawaii, Obama drew on his mixed heritage to ask Americans on both sides of the nation's racial divide to show more tolerance of each other's anger and frustrations. Obama asked white Americans to understand "the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up," when segregation was legal and opportunities for blacks painfully constrained. He asked blacks to open their eyes to middle-class whites who "work hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped." Imagine whites' reaction, Obama said, "when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed." "Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company," he said. "But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation." He said they helped Republicans cement support from white working-class "Reagan Democrats" in the South and industrial Midwest and allowed conservative talk-show hosts to "build entire careers." The senator said he could no more disown Wright, who guided him to Christianity and "has been like family to me," than he could break with his white grandmother. Though she "loves me as much as she loves anything in this world," Obama said the 84-year-old Hawaii resident "on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe" and once "confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street." Both she and Wright "are a part of me, and they are a part of America, this country I love," Obama said. Citing his grandmother was a smart thing to do, says Ruy Teixeira, author of America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters. "It sounded authentic (and) it really makes you think," he says. "People can't condemn a family member or cast them into the wilderness because they said some extremely stupid things." "That's going to appeal to white blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania," agrees Jane Elmes-Crahall, a specialist in political rhetoric at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. "They have strong family values and believe you can't cut yourself off from your family. They may embarrass you, but you don't separate yourself from them." She says the view by many in the news media that the speech represents a defining cultural moment means Obama's message is likely to be heard by the state's white working-class voters. "Will they sit in front of YouTube or CNN and listen to the whole thing? I don't know," she says. "But they are going to hear parts of it over and over." Keys to the Keystone State Statewide polls show Clinton with a comfortable double-digit lead in Pennsylvania, where the demographics favor her. She's particularly strong among seniors, and the Keystone State is the nation's fifth-oldest in median age. Like Ohio, a state she won this month with support from blue-collar workers, Pennsylvania is struggling to recast its manufacturing economy for a post-industrial age. African-Americans, Obama's strongest voter group, make up just under 11% of the population. The state's primary on April 22 is critical to Clinton's hopes of narrowing Obama's edge in pledged convention delegates. Obama, meanwhile, has hit a rough patch with controversies over Wright's comments and the corruption trial in Chicago of a supporter and fundraiser, developer Tony Rezko. "This campaign was going in a really good way for Barack Obama but not in the last few weeks," says Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the non-partisan Cook Political Report. Obama's speech "is going to help him as he navigates through the racial minefield," says Vesta Weaver, a professor at the University of Virginia who studies racial politics. "But I don't think that it puts a cork in everything that the Republicans are going to throw at him racially if he gets the nomination." Obama's speech demonstrated how the political realities and strains of a prolonged campaign have changed his candidacy. Race was not an issue that Obama often discussed directly in the campaign's early days, and he has protested when he felt the Clinton campaign was inappropriately injecting race as an issue. In an interview with USA TODAY on the day of the New Hampshire primary in January, he cited voter turnout and youth involvement as examples of his campaign's historic nature. Only when pressed did he acknowledge his own potentially precedent-shattering role as the first black presidential nominee. African-American candidates historically have had difficulty winning in majority-white constituencies. Only three African-Americans, including Obama, have won popular election to the Senate. Only two have been elected governor. And in presidential contests, race has been most prominent as a wedge issue. In the 1968 campaign, Republican Richard Nixon devised a "Southern Strategy" that used racial code words to appeal to white Southern Democrats. Some of Obama's aides counseled against giving a speech that focused so directly on race. "I know there were some who advised against making this speech," says Rep. Artur Davis, an Alabama Democrat and Obama supporter. Still, Davis predicts Obama ultimately will benefit from seizing "an opportunity to have an honest dialogue about race in this country." Praise and skepticism Among his audience, reaction was emotional and positive from blacks and whites. Paula Peebles, a black businesswoman from North Philadelphia, a low-income neighborhood, nodded approvingly as he spoke. "He reminds me of JFK because he talks about a new America for everyone," she said. However, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, an African-American who has endorsed Clinton and appeared with her at City Hall, was cool when asked for a reaction to Obama's speech. He said Wright's comments were "something he has to address" but dismissed the notion that race would be an obstacle for Obama. "Somehow I found a way to talk about the issues," said Nutter, who defeated two white and two black opponents in last year's Democratic primary. Even so, he acknowledged that race remains a factor in politics — and one that could help Obama in this city, where 43% of the population is black. "I'm not going to insult your intelligence and say some people might not have a tendency to gravitate towards a candidate who looks like them," Nutter said. He's backing Clinton because he thinks she's most prepared for the presidency and that, in the end, more voters will move toward her. "I like making history as much as anyone else," Nutter said. "I also like to win." Contributing: Jill Lawrence. Kiely reported from Philadelphia; Page from Washington, D.C. Enlarge By Emmanuel Dunand, AFP/Getty Images Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, delivers a speech on race at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday. 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