+ First off, let's declare
+ Obama collected more votes in the SC primary than McCain and Huckabee combined.
+ Obama collected more votes in this Democratic primary than all of the candidates in the 2004 Democratic primary combined.
+ Obama beat Clinton among women 53% to 30%. Can we please stop talking about that gender gap now?
+ Obama beat Clinton in every single age group except those 65+. And the younger the group, the bigger the advantage for Obama. As I've said from the beginning, if the kids come out, Obama cannot lose.
+ Edwards won among whites over the age of 30. Obama won among whites under 30, and he took 24% of the non-black vote overall in a tight three-way race. Can we please stop talking about that racial gap now?
+ And lots of people are beginning to remember that Bill Clinton can be a real jackass sometimes. (Think that isn't that bad? Think again.)
+ Watching MSNBC for over three hours last night, it became immediately clear that Bill's role in the campaign, and in a potential Clinton administration/restoration, is a topic that will dominate the discussion for at least the next few days. And its not just MSNBC. Here, for example, is Joe Klein:
A mass, unspoken decision had been made that Bill and Hillary Clinton had behaved unjustly toward Barack Obama. It was the sort of decision that Bill Clinton might have tried to argue with, if it had come from the press: "Hell, that Reagan thing...c'mon that's the kind of thing Republicans do to us all the time. Barack's gonna have to get used to it if he wants to play in the big leagues..." Except he had pulled the Reagan thing--trying to make it seem as if Obama had said that Reagan's ideas were better ideas--with the wrong audience...and I don't just mean black people, I mean an entire political party sick of games-playing.
The Clintons' political scheme going into South Carolina was brilliant. They would subtly diss the primary, which Obama was likely to win, by having Hillary go off campaigning in the Super Tuesday states. They would leave behind the First Black President to work the state (The novelist in me envisions him saying to his card-playing buddy, Bruce Lindsey, "Hell, I might even be able to turn it around for her...Betcha $500 I can narrow it to less than 10%....") The damages would be limited; Obama's victory could be explained away as a black pride thing. In fact, this afternoon, Clinton was quoted reminding people that Jesse Jackson had won the primary in 1984 and 1988--which was, of course, a history lesson not a race jab. Of course.What was not anticipated was a blowout loss. What was not anticipated was a wholesale rejection of Bill Clinton--68% of people in the exit polls, if I did my addition right, thought Bill Clinton's presence was either very or fairly important in the campaign. (Sometimes you wish the damn pollsters would just ask the next question: You think that was a good thing? My guess is, they didn't.)
Obama struck precisely the right note in his victory speech, skewering the Clintons without naming them. And it seems to me that when he says that the election is contest between "the past and the future," he is describing a situation that becomes truer every day, as the Clintons' vestigial political virtuosity becomes more creaky and transparent, and just seems out-of-date and distasteful in a party that may want to turn the page on all that.
It may well be true that any Democrat is going to have to handle that sort of sewage in the general election, but I've now--belatedly!--figured out that the real audacity in Barack Obama's campaign--far more than his positions on the issues, which almost seem an afterthought--is his outrageous belief that the entire country, not just Democrats, wants to see a straight up election; that the entire country is tired of the pestilence of tactical tricks that the Clintons learned from their co-dynasts, the Bushes. (The latest example being their sudden, sociopathic emphasis on the importance of the Florida primary, a contest all three candidates had agreed to eschew at the behest of the Democatic National Committee.)
It is a hell of a bet Obama has made. And nearly 40 years of political, uhm, experience tells me that it isn't a very wise one...but I must also say that it is truly sad to see Bill and Hillary Clinton on the wrong side of it.
I had always thought that Obama's "real audacity," as Klein put it, was obvious. Of course he's betting that the country consciously and desperately wants to enter a new political era. He's been making that clear since his 2004 convention speech, for god's sake! But hey... if people like Klein are finally getting it, better late than never, I say!
More to the point, Klein highlights a theme that will clearly become Obama's dominant narrative going forward. I nearly jumped out of my chair last night when he delivered these lines during his victory speech, and in the coverage that followed, Joe Scarborough repeated it over and over:
The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.
It’s about the past versus the future.
The Clinton campaign is the past; the Obama campaign is the future. If that narrative takes hold, he wins. Particularly when he defines the past like this:
It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense, and innovation – a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.
Distractions and drama passing for politics? Whatever could he be referring to here? Remind people there was more to the 1990s than economic growth and the Clinton narrative of competence and experience could be in deep, deep trouble.
More:
There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes.But here’s what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day – an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.
When I hear the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can’t join together and work together, I’m reminded of the Latino brothers and sisters I organized with, and stood with, and fought with side by side for jobs and justice on the streets of Chicago. So don’t tell us change can’t happen.
When I hear that we’ll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who’s now devoted to educating inner-city children and who went out onto the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don’t tell me we can’t change.
Yes we can change.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can seize our future.
And as we leave this state with a new wind at our backs, and take this journey across the country we love with the message we’ve carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire; from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words:
Yes. We. Can.
While we breathe, we hope. Wow.
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