Bring it on!

Sometime during the snows of Iowa, the Clintons realized that the upstart fellow who was challenging Hillary’s entitlement to the presidency was making great gains and might actually win the nomination.

While Barack Obama was drawing larger and more dynamic crowds, electrifying them with his optimism and his conviction that America can actually find a different and better way in the world, the Clintons were drawing large crowds too, but there was something missing.

It would be cheap to simply call it hope.

Never daunted by the worst of times, the Clintons set about to improve Hillary’s chances, taking on the very delicate task of making sure the contest became about race.

Bill Clinton charged into the spotlight to characterize Obama’s record of opposition to our invasion of Iraq as “a fairy tale.”

He insisted that a vote for this graduate of Harvard Law School and constitutional law professor, veteran of effective community organizing on the mean streets of Chicago, eight years in the Illinois state senate and now two in the US Senate, would just be “rolling the dice.”

The way voting for Abraham Lincoln was, I guess.

Clinton surrogates spread out to remind us that their opponent, as a teenager, had experimented with drugs. Not only that, he has a middle name that is very popular within the Muslim communities around the world and identifies the ruling family of the Kingdom of Jordan!

Truth became innuendo: according to Robert Johnson (known for heading up BET, a purveyor of “gangsta rap”), Obama was “doing something – I won’t say what, but he wrote about it in his book” back in the neighborhoods of Chicago. He went on to liken Obama to Sidney Poitier playing the movie role of a very educated and “mannered” black man who was finally found acceptable by his white in-laws to be, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

Andrew Young, veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, declared that Obama is “too young” -- notwithstanding that he is 11 years older than the age of qualification set forth in the Constitution, three years older than JFK was when he became president, and a whole year older than Bill Clinton was at the time of his inauguration!

Young said Obama should “wait,” that “his time will come and the world will be ready for visionary leadership.”

Isn’t the world ready now?

All the while this was going on, the Clintons chided and tsk-tsked; this remark or that email may have been regrettable, or even “out of bounds,” but they would NEVER, EVER engage in race-baiting, and if there had been any injection of race into the campaign, well, then, “He started it!

True, the Clintons were not technically race-baiting; they were merely making sure that every single voter in South Carolina (a) remembered that Barack Obama is African-American and (b) had a chance to wonder whether he can win. Their intention is to do the one thing that Barack Obama had just about overcome: They want voters to see him as “the black candidate,” with the almost inescapable corollary that he would concern himself most with “black” issues.

I heard a commentator remark that the Clintons have a history of leaving a trail of damage believing they can always fix it later. Will it work this time? And is the country really not ready?

Maybe elders in the black leadership like John Lewis, Andrew Young and Charlie Rangel, bearing the scars of literal and figurative batons and dogs in the long and dreadful struggle for equality, are accustomed to think like this; they believe that a Democratic victory will almost certainly move the country forward again, yet are still, 50 years on, afraid to believe in their own successes.

But all around America, the younger generation, black and white, north and south, are turning out in droves to hear and see Obama, to register to vote, and to participate – many for the first time -- in the greatest democracy in the world.

The topic of race in America has become an undercurrent of the campaign, to the apparent satisfaction of some Clinton supporters and to the dismay of others. The former believe that it will drive not only more white voters to Clinton but also blacks who are fearful that Obama must lose because they dare not believe anything has changed in all these years.

Some of those whose reaction is dismay are tempted to want to make it go away by not discussing it at all: “Let’s get back to the issues, to the candidates’ differences, their likely style of governing; we don’t want this to be about race!”

There are pundits and politicians who like to describe what’s going on as “bickering” between the candidates.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you a truth: It’s not bickering, it’s deadly serious, and it’s not going to go away. Unless we haul it out into the sunlight and challenge it, we will be gone another generation before anyone tries again.

To those who say “Americans will not elect a black man, so there’s no point in trying, it isn’t time yet,” I say: How do you know that? Just when will the right time be? Why can’t we find out?

I’m not sure we’ll ever have this opportunity again.

I challenge the black and white and brown Americans who want to make the leap into a new place, to once again pass the torch to a new generation, to tell the doubters and the timid and the cynics:

“Bring it on!” Let’s get this over with and go forward.

I believe that this movement of hope has caught hold, that hundreds of thousands will emulate the past by marching, this time to the polls.

Now that Barack Obama has won the South Carolina primary by two to one over Clinton, agreed by all pundits to far exceed even the most generous predictions, I dare to believe that, just maybe, America has overcome, after all.

All over America voters have come to believe, because of the Obama campaign, that we may finally realize the American dream together.

For if not now, when?

Political Spin

Let’s just talk about political spin for a moment. And why I hate it.

To “spin” a comment or event is to, literally, twirl it about to make it sound the way you want, so you can use it to win the argument, the day, the election. In some cases, it is a way to turn truth into a convenient lie.

Barack Obama said, last week, in an in-depth interview with the Reno Journal-Gazette editorial board, that the coming election was similar to 1980, when President Ronald Reagan “changed the trajectory” of the country. He explained that in 1980 the voters:

. . . felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think [Reagan] tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

I think most folks would agree with that simple observation.

Obama went on to say that he thought that, for “large chunks of time” over the last 10-15 years, the Republican Party had actually been more a party of ideas than the Democrats, “in that they were challenging conventional wisdom.” He included in this observation that he did not necessarily agree with those ideas.

SPIN TIME: The Clinton campaign immediately trotted out the notion that Barack Obama had spoken “very favorably” of Ronald Reagan, and that Obama had said the Republicans had better ideas. Hillary went on to suggest that Obama must therefore be in favor of privatizing social security, eliminating the minimum wage, cutting healthcare benefits and giving goodies to the pharmaceutical companies. Bill Clinton made it clear he was not happy.

Anyone see a problem with this?

If you agree with the Clinton spin, then I had better not tell you that Mussolini made the trains run on time, or you would think I was a fan of his. And, of course, it I told you that Hugo Chavez has brought radical changes to Venezuela it has to mean I just LOVE what he’s doing to his people.

One of the difficulties in running for office is divining just how your most thoughtful remark might be understood — or misunderstood.

Now, sometimes a little spin is warranted, can be done without lying, and doesn’t really offend anyone.

Take the results of the Nevada caucuses this past weekend.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney did such a walkaway there was nothing left to spin, unless you cared to say it was just because of a huge Mormon turnout, which would not necessarily be the case as he moves along.

And on the Democratic side:

It was a great victory for the Clintons, for whom 51% of the voters declared.

It was a great victory for Barack Obama, who came from behind to win 13 delegates to Hillary’s 12!

All true. Quite spinnable. No harm, no foul. No lies.

And no clear winner, apparently, since the State party chairman has pointed out that everything could change at their county and state conventions!

Golly, those people get to have all the fun!

The Clintons don't make mistakes, do they?

Thinking about the Obama-Clinton race, it occurs to me that the more folks become familiar with Clinton, the less they think of her as a woman, and the more they get to know Obama, the less they think of him as black. Voters are getting past the novelty and into the serious business of character and issues.

And with this development has come, just in the last few weeks, a drip, drip, drip of remarks by one or the other Clinton or Clinton aide that cannot fail to remind us that Obama is black, even as other seemingly random events and behavior cannot fail to remind us that Hillary Clinton is a woman.

Now, far be it for me to suggest that the Clintons (yes, there are two of them running) would be so calculating as to make this happen, but it’s hard to dismiss, given what we know of them. Consider this:

If I’m right and the voters are beginning to look past race and gender, and the Clintons worry about that because they want to be sure (a) women vote for a woman and (b) primary voters go back to worrying about whether a black man can win in the general election, they sure don’t want them to forget her gender and his race, right?

Tell you the truth, from the ambiguity of Bill’s calling some of Obama’s campaign statements a “fairy tale,” and Hillary’s assertion that President Johnson was the only reason Martin Luther King, Jr. accomplished anything, to the scurrilous remarks by Robert Johnson, whose gifts to the black community have included bringing "gangsta rap" to his BET audiences, the inevitable criticism and reaction from the African-American community further serves to remind voters that Barack Obama is, indeed, black. Unintended consequences? I think not.

Now, I don’t think for a minute that either of the Clintons is a racist, and I’ll defend them on that point forever.

But I am easily persuadable that a scheme to remind voters to worry about Obama’s race is, well — Clintonian.

Nothing wrong with the polls!

I am perfectly satisfied with the analysis offered on Keith Olbermann's Countdown a couple of days after the election. He and Craig Crawford, of Congressional Quarterly, went through the numbers, and if I recall them more or less correctly, it came out that the percentage of the vote predicted for Obama (between 34 and 38) was just about right — he landed at 36%.

The number that was wrong, that had been forecast for Clinton, was 28%, obviously low. But then the number of UNDECIDED or MIGHT CHANGE votes was over 40% or so.

Looks like the majority of those broke for Clinton, maybe because of tears, maybe because of sympathy, etc., or maybe just because a lot of Clinton voters held back until the last minute. And it's reported that lots of those were women over 45 who (anecdotally) felt HRC had been mistreated.

Some independents who voted for McCain did so, they said, to stop Romney, but only after they were assured by the polls that Obama had it nailed. That would explain McCain's unexpectedly high numbers.

In the end, the POLLS weren’t to blame — the interpreters were.

On the Clinton candidacy

There is some buzz among the blogs that negative comments about her campaign by talking heads in print and on TV may have driven voters to Clinton, because she may have been perceived as badly treated.

Speaking as a devoted activist and admittedly an Obama supporter (full disclosure), I do think that folks who feel driven to vote in a particular way by the comments of others do the country a disservice. Yes, we wish that this commentator or that op-ed writer spoke with more restraint, said different things, but we all know -- or should know -- that they are in the opinion business.

We are responsible for how we vote, and it is our responsibility to assess events for ourselves.

I am a woman, and I was a strong supporter of the Clintons (both of them) during his presidency. But not this time.

I would love to see a woman president. But the Clintons don't really comprise a woman candidate; they are a team and that's what is running, and that's what we'll get if they win.

It's time to move on.

Authenticity 2, Money 0

Indeed, the events in Iowa last week must bring joy to the heart of every American who has despaired at the increasing influence of money and power in our politics, lamented the prevalence of sound-bite speechifying, all but succumbed to the feeling that too many seeking office see us, the voters, as dopes.

Whatever else the pundits may make of the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, it is abundantly clear that Americans really want change, but even more, we want authenticity.

Barack Obama, the only Democratic candidate who is not old news, has captivated his audiences (which have been huge and continue to grow) with his Kennedyesque ideas, coolly intelligent speaking style and wit, talking to his listeners as “you” instead of talking about “I.” He handily won the Iowa caucuses, thrilling supporters and cynics alike.

Obama, a youngish “skinny man with a funny name” with roots in Africa, won the first vote of the 2008 election for president of the United States! Can you imagine how that will play around the world?

Hillary Clinton, much to everyone’s surprise (most notably hers and her advisers’) came in third, 9 points behind Obama. Writing in this space a few weeks ago, I suggested that her claim to “strength and experience” was mostly myth and manufacture, and I do think that is part of what hurt her in Iowa; also hurting her was the omnipresence of her husband, which had the effect of reminding people that he was her only real qualification for the job.

For reasons probably having to do with what I call the “re-run factor,” John Edwards, notwithstanding a popular populist message, managed to eke out only slightly more support than Clinton. But that’s not the story here.

Now, some folks claim there is very little difference in what the two leading Democratic candidates offer; I disagree with that, but that’s another discussion. The difference is in how they offer it: One candidate appears completely comfortable speaking without a script, the other seems to need one; the former seems to speak from the heart, the other from calculation.

Over on the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, despite a slightly oddball outlook on some matters and absolutely no national or international experience, routed Mitt Romney, described by many in the media as the “perfect” presidential candidate.
Interestingly, the difference was almost exactly the same 9% as Obama’s lead over Clinton.

Huckabee exudes a genuine, unpretentious affability with a down-home flavor; you could call him the real McCoy. He, too, despite a wariness of his strong evangelical support, has charmed the media — though not, apparently, much of the Republican establishment.

Republican stalwarts from the Club for Growth and the Weekly Standard to Rush Limbaugh have attacked him on issues from taxes to immigration (“We shouldn’t punish the children of illegal immigrants for their parents’ acts,” he once said.) It’s panic in the streets as the Republican Party tears itself apart to keep a true compassionate conservative from winning.

Huckabee is unfailingly described as sincere and “authentic,” whereas Romney, described by wags as the “Stepford” candidate, has won rare-if-ever anti-endorsements from two conservative New Hampshire newspapers.

According to the Concord Monitor, “If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it. Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.

And the Union Leader, which had endorsed McCain, chimed in: “Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc. But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction….He has spoken his lines well, but the people can sense that the words are memorized, not heartfelt.”

According to the folks who like arithmetic, the legendary amounts of his own money that Romney, a multimillionaire, invested in the Iowa campaign amounted to more than half his total; his overall expenditure in Iowa worked out to about $250 per vote when the final count was in, contrasted with Huckabee’s $35 or so.

Does this mean you can’t buy an election? Time will tell, but for now we know with certainty that you can’t buy Iowa.

Now, unless the New Hampshire primaries blow away my theory, we’re on a roll. It looks like America may finally be on the verge of something big, something positive, something authentic, and above all, something new.