A Pilgrim’s Digression

It’s hard not to feel excited about what happened last Thursday in Iowa. Insiders and pundits will try to tell us it doesn’t matter, but there is a quite palpable feeling that it really did matter, and no amount of conventional wisdom can dispel that good feeling. Indeed the feeling grows with each passing day, as real and seemingly inevitable as a wave on the ocean.

It’s hard to say from whence it stems. For me personally, it stems from the overturning of assumptions about how the political party apparatchiks choose our candidates for higher office. No such proverbial “smoke filled room” existed in this caucus. Indeed by all accounts, independents and first time caucus-goers chose dark horse candidates over party operatives in both cases. Currently in the process of reading a book on Lincoln, I am reminded how that other Illinois Senator began the 1858 campaign as a distinct underdog and rose to prominence as perhaps our greatest President.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes that what Americans have responded to in Obama is a message of “hope, healing and change,” and I think he is exactly right. I would go further and compare Obama to the greatest Democrat politician, Franklin Roosevelt, in that he inspires confidence and courage where previously, there was doubt and fear. Always smiling, always cool, even when faced with the most outrageous assaults on his character by the Clintons, this is the kind of man Americans want as President. His ideas will no doubt come under increasing scrutiny as the campaign progresses, and especially if he becomes the nominee, but for right now all that matters is how he makes us feel. And that feeling is good, hopeful. For me, it has become an emotional attachment that elitists on both the left and right scorn, but it is powerful nonetheless. I recall people, especially women, making similar illogical expressions of emotion regarding the Clinton/Gore team of 1992, and even 1996. I scorned them, at the time, but now I am fully willing to give in to emotion in this case.

This is heady stuff. If Obama is elected, even if he is only the nominee and is defeated in November, it will change this country in ways that no one can foresee right now.

New Hampshire may be a defining moment for the Democrats, not necessarily in terms of who they choose, but in terms of who they want to be. Four years ago Democrats rejected change in favor of an establishment candidate, John Kerry, and as much as I liked the man personally, he was not the right choice. In a kind of warding off gesture toward the shadow of previous Democrat voter mistakes, Obama himself has said that voters should not succumb to fear and vote for Clinton because of her status as a known entity. And increasingly it seems like voters are responding to that message. Have no fear. Vote for your ideals. Believe.

There is a wave forming, and you don’t get in the way of a wave. You ride it. In fact, Bob Herbert is perhaps prescient in predicting that if Clinton wants to stop the wave, it has to be in New Hampshire. A win in New Hampshire for Obama would result in the kind of multi-media orgasm never before witnessed in politics. The momentum would be well-nigh unstoppable. As Herbert writes, “I expect that African-Americans, under those circumstance, would view his campaign with almost religious fervor. All those questions about whether he’s black enough would be history. Mr. Obama would be perceived by many as within striking distance of the presidency, and there will be very few blacks in favor of stopping that train.”

Very few blacks or whites, I would imagine. Democrat supporters of Hillary Clinton need to ask themselves, on the issue of electability, who can more successfully throw a wrench into Republican campaign strategy? Clinton may be a woman, but she can’t count on female support the way Obama can count on black support. It may be incorrect to view black voters as a bloc who vote one way, however, it cannot be denied that there will be a strong impetus among democrats of all races–especially blacks–to be among the first generation to vote a person of color into the highest office in the land.

In talking to my wife, it is that kind of voting behavior that she, and probably a lot of other people, too, fear the most. It is not exactly a fear, either, but rather a concern that people are voting for Obama (and Hillary) for the wrong reasons: out of an emotional desire to elect the first black or first woman.

Emotion aside, I think the fact that Obama would be the first black man, and Hillary the first woman, to be elected President is itself a proponent of great change in the country. The fact that after more than two hundred years, the ceiling of race and gender in politics has been utterly and forever broken will have a powerful impact on people. Think how inspiring a black President would be for children, and not just black children. No longer would white kids see in the President a reflection of their white fathers and grandfathers and, unconsciously, accept a ruling paradigm that places white men at the veritable head of the country as fathers sit at the head of the table. This is a powerful antidote to the incipient poison of racial privilege.

And how will Republicans counter the kind of change a black man would represent? How can a white, Mormon, impeccably groomed shape-shifter like Mitt Romney compete? Does the fact that he is a governor and not a Senator really make that much of a difference? And John McCain…I actually think John McCain actually has the best shot he is ever going to get at the nomination, right now. Republicans have this instinctive, compelling urge towards the tried and tested candidate. Change is not really what conservatism is all about, by definition. In a match-up between Obama and McCain, McCain is just going to look old and battle-scarred. For some, that is a good thing. Craggy and cranky has its appeal. With the majority of Americans, however, craggy and cranky is going to work about as well for McCain as it did for Bob Dole in 1996.

As for Huckabee, I don’t see how his almost Nixonian cynicism can win against the Kennedy-like appeal of a smiling Obama. Huckabee may turn out to be a flash in the pan anyway, a kind of Pat Buchanan candidate for evangelicals. Hardly any story about the New Hampshire primary even mentions him. The story as the media crafts it is about whether Romney is going to founder against the granite of McCain’s popularity in New Hampshire. That said, South Carolina is an old nemesis of McCain’s, and it is conceivable that Huckabee will come back to a victory there.

Whatever the outcome, this has to be the most fascinating, hopeful primary season in decades. For once, voters are getting the kind of political battle they love: one in which the outcome is not preordained, the nominees not “inevitable” or anointed, as George Bush was in 2000. I say hooray for that.