A Pilgrim’s Digression

Knowing I would not be able to go to a polling place and vote today, on Friday I went down to the Registrar’s office in the county courthouse and cast my vote for Obama in the so-called “Potomac Primary.”  I voted an absentee ballot, but it wasn’t exactly absentee since I sat at the Registrar’s own desk and checked off the name on a slip of paper.  There were no issues and no other candidates on the ballot.

I have actually come to prefer voting absentee.  There is something concrete about the small piece of paper with the names printed on it, something more real than the antiquated lever voting machines, or the push pin machines, or the more modern (and even more remote) computers.   I always imagine my paper ballot going into a real, wooden ballot box the way things used to be done in the nineteenth century.  It’s an image that makes me feel my vote really counts.

Anyway, it’s hard to know what it is going to happen today.  My wife and I are basically canceling each other’s vote.  She is voting for Hillary today.  Our neighbors, of whom I wrote in my last post (the man and wife who play leap frog when making love), are canceling each other’s vote, too.  The wife is voting for Hillary and the husband for Obama.  It’s hard to say whether this is a generalized trend or not, but I tend to think so.  Limited as I am in my social interactions, I have yet to hear of a man voting for Hillary.

And yet, I tend to think Clinton will fare better today than the pundits are predicting, at least in my state of Virginia.  Last night on Hannity and Colmes, Frank Luntz polled a focus group of local voters, and Hillary fared pretty well, especially after being shown one of her political advertisements in which she promised to remove tax subsidies for “big oil” in order to pay for next generation fuel development.  The fact that she is offering specifics, in terms of policy, seemed to play well with the older folks.  The younger members of the group didn’t seem to care as much about policy as they did about the symbolism and inspiration of an Obama presidency.

However, I think it’s wrong to criticize Obama for lack of substance, as Hannity does.  There is substance there; he does talk policy, at least in the Obama ads I have seen here in Virginia, but there is substance even in his inspirational speeches.  My favorite ad is the one in which he talks about ending partisanship in Washington, and this seemed to strike a chord with the focus group on Fox, as well.  One woman compared the past thirty years to a Hatfields and McCoy’s-type feud between Democrats and Republicans.  My feeling is that the rise of Obama and McCain is directly predicated on voter frustration with the decades-old blood feud between the parties.  The extent of that frustration has been underestimated by the talk show hosts and other pundits who have attacked McCain.  People are tired of the adversarial, us versus them, nature of our political discourse.  Obama, at least, offers a different way.

McCain is probably going to have to abandon his rhetoric of bi-partisanship in order to pull Conservatives in line behind him, though.  People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh see any kind of negotiation with “the enemy” as highly unorthodox and suspect.  Limbaugh yesterday referred to comments by some pundit or other that Limbaugh is an ideologue of the same stripe as Mao or Stalin.  Dissent cannot be tolerated.  In typical Limbaugh fashion, he attacked a straw man instead of the actual argument.  “Me a communist?  These people are comparing me to communists?”

No, Limbaugh, they are comparing you to an ideologue who happens to be a communist.  By definition, an ideologue is someone who advocates a set of ideas which remain unchanging.  The point at which an ideology is swept into the proverbial “dustbin of history” is precisely the point at which adaptation to change is necessary, but the ideologues who command authority within the party or ideology are unwilling to adapt.

However, I think it remains to be seen whether we are at such a moment in history.  Limbaugh sees the rise of McCain as a temporary phenomenon.  Conservatism will be here, unchanged, when voters come back around, or perhaps when another Reagan appears on the scene.  Note how dependent ideologies are on strong leaders to show the way out of the wilderness.  The conservative lament, this election year, has been that there has been no candidate running for office who has inspired them.   And they have expressed their dissatisfaction by either voting for Huckabee (who is still winning primaries), or by withholding support from McCain.

On the Democratic side, I still think Hillary will probably win the nomination.  She is the establishment candidate.  She has the backing of the party.  Her own husband is a Super Delegate.  She offers practicality and solidity, or as she likes to say, she is “battle-tested.”  I prefer “battle-worn,” like an old battle ship, but that’s just my word.  That cannot be underestimated as a factor in her appeal, though.

However, age and experience can also be a disadvantage when going up against someone like Obama, who has untarnished youth to recommend him.  We are a youth-centric culture, and frankly there is nothing more beautiful than seeing Obama and his family together on the campaign trail.  Michelle Obama was on Larry King last night talking about how her husband hasn’t missed a parent-teacher conference, even while campaigning, and how he took a day off to come home for their anniversary.

That personal anecdote may not be characterized precisely as an argument for voting for Obama, but it personalizes the candidate for millions of people in their thirties and forties who are going through the exact same issues of raising children.  It allows us to say “He’s just like us in a lot of ways,” whereas one really can’t say that about Hillary, who apparently is rich enough that she can donate five million to her campaign when it is financially in trouble, and whose daughter seems just as much a cardboard campaign prop as she did the first go around, way back in 1992.

I think it is precisely that kind of “next generation” appeal that makes Obama so formidable against McCain.  It’s McCain’s age as well as his ideology that will make him unpalatable to a lot of people, this November.

This election is a classic example of how every once in awhile, one generation must give way to another, politically.  It remains to be seen whether the baby boomers are ready to go quietly into the night.  I suspect not.  The boomers own the political machine.  If it comes down to a convention battle in August, or the candidate must be chosen by the Super Delegates, I just don’t see Obama winning that fight.  Unfortunately, the un-democratic methods the Clintons may have to deploy in order to win the nomination at the convention may cost Democrats the election in November.

Already we have seen a preview of what is to come this summer.  This belated attempt by Clinton to get the Michigan and Florida delegate votes to be counted is just one example of how they will win at any cost, even if it means disenfranchising millions who may have voted for Obama if his name had been on the ballot.

This may not be Obama’s moment, but if not now, I really don’t know when he would would fare better.  To me, a Clinton or McCain presidency would just be more of the same politics that we have had for the last three decades.  I guess the question is whether enough people see the election in that way, or if it comes down to the stability that a “battle-tested” Clinton or McCain offers.  Change is not wholly redemptive or cathartic.  It can be frightening to go into the unknown, even with an inspirational captain at the helm.  There is just as much chance of a storm ahead as there is sunlight and fair breezes.