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WORD COUNT
663
MAY 14, 2008
THE ELECTION THAT
WOULDN’T DIE – by Donald Kaul
Let’s face it,
folks; this opera is over. The fat lady has sung.
The election results
in North Carolina and Indiana last week spelled “finito” to Hillary
Clinton’s presidential hopes. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” beat
“Norma Rae.” (Unless, of course, there is the political equivalent of
an earthquake, falling meteor or tidal wave, always a possibility.)
Conventional
Wisdom---which has been wrong 90 percent of the time in this election
process (remember the political obituary written for John McCain last
summer?)---was wrong again. It predicted a shrinking, narrow victory
for Barak Obama in North Carolina and a widening, strong win for Hillary
Clinton in Indiana.
Wrong again. Barak
blew out Mrs. Clinton in North Carolina and came within a whisker in
Indiana. Now comes word that Hillary loaned her campaign $6.25 million
(on top of the $5 million she already loaned it) for the latest
campaigns. That means her campaign is tapped out. It’s time for the
referee to stop this fight and declare a TKO.
That doesn’t look as
though it’s going to happen. Sen. Clinton keeps saying she’ll soldier
on (she’s a fighter, in case you haven’t heard) and the available
super-delegate-referees are reluctant to step in. Why? Don’t ask.
They’re Democrats. If there’s a way to screw up an election, they will
find it. For example:
Sen. Clinton main
hope now is to get the primary results in Florida and Michigan---which
she and the other candidates agreed shouldn’t count---counted. Those
two states, remember, were banished from the Democratic kingdom for
daring to move up their primaries without party permission.
With her back against
the wall, however, Sen. Clinton is trying to convince the party that it
would be wrong to deny those states representation. Obviously she
believes deeply in the democratic process. That and winning, no matter
what. Even if she gets her way, however, she still winds up behind Obama.
The voting in Indiana
and North Carolina followed what has become the usual pattern in these
elections. Obama gets almost all the blacks and young people, Hillary
working class people, women of a certain age and old people,
particularly if they’re white.
It’s easy to see why.
African-Americans,
who were systematically denied the vote in many places until just a few
decades ago, are ecstatic that one of their own, at long last, has a
shot at the presidency. Call it racial pride. Young people respond to
his message of hope and idealism.
Middle-aged women
identify with Hillary because her life’s path in many ways mirrors
theirs---a talented woman who had to put her personal ambitions on hold
while her husband did his thing (and did it and did it) but finally was
able to fight her way to prominence in a man’s world. The old white
people, as I see it, are not so much voting for Clinton as against Obama.
These are people who grew up in working class neighborhoods in the 50s
and 60s in a time of racial turmoil and strife. The time since then has
been marked by intense economic competition, some of it from blacks,
that has eaten away at their prosperity.
They don’t
particularly like black people. They don’t hate them necessarily but
they don’t feel comfortable with them, certainly not with blacks in
positions of authority.
That’s particularly true when the black in question is like Obama---cool,
confident, well educated and not bashful about voicing an opinion. In
another time the word “uppity” might have been applied.
And so they say
they’re not voting for him because of his pastor or because he’s too
inexperienced or doesn’t bowl well. Some even say it’s because he’s a
Muslim. Actually, it’s because he’s black. In the general election,
Obama might expect, with Hillary’s promised help, to win over the women
but I doubt whether those old men will ever come around.
But for now, the
Democratic part of this race is over. Unless there’s an earthquake,
etc.
--
Don Kaul is a
two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his own
account, is right more than he's wrong. Email:
dkaul@earthlink.net -- A photo of Donald Kaul is available
CLICK HERE
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