| June 11, 2008 | Wednesday | Jamadi-us-Sani 06, 1429 |
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Democrats’ race to the finish
HILLARY Clinton found it remarkably hard to bow to the inevitable. But when she finally summoned up the willpower to do so last Saturday, her performance was both eloquent and moving.
After dwelling for a while on cracks in the glass ceiling, she told her supporters that the new task before them was to “take all our energy and all our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president of the United States”.
It had by then been reasonably obvious for several weeks that she could not win enough delegates to overtake Obama, and it would have done no harm to Democratic prospects in the November election had she gracefully exited a month or two earlier, thereby allowing the presumptive party nominee to focus on the bigger task of tackling his Republican rival. Her tenacity may, at some level, be admirable, but it appears to have been founded on the belief that the nomination was somehow hers by right.
A wake-up call in Iowa at the beginning of the year, when she came third in the first caucus of the primary season, failed to alter that mindset, perhaps partly because it took only a brief loss of composure in front of TV cameras to bring out the sympathy vote in New Hampshire. However, the grassroots support that propelled the Obama campaign proved incredibly efficacious, and the Clinton team, while shedding staff, frequently opted for negativity. The other side barely found it necessary to reciprocate: Bill Clinton, increasingly given to fits of apoplexy, sufficed as a built-in negative.
Bill and Hillary assumed that their network of supporters, cronies and all those who owed favours to them would prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for any challenger. Obama outmanoeuvred them partly on account of his considerable personal appeal. He was able to inspire a movement of the sort that, 40 years ago, had accounted for a groundswell of popular support for Robert F. Kennedy. By the time he was assassinated in June 1968, Kennedy was considered likely to win the Democratic nomination and, in the event, chances are he would have defeated Richard Nixon, just as his elder brother had done eight years earlier.
When, last month, Hillary Clinton cited the RFK assassination as an argument for staying in the race, she was widely berated for the implication, intended or otherwise, that Obama might be destined for a similarly tragic fate. Over the past week she has indicated her willingness to be co-opted as a vice-presidential candidate, and there are those who will wonder whether this willingness to play second fiddle is based on the prospect of that very contingency.
There can be little doubt, after all, that Obama is a potential target for the racists who still populate too many parts of the American landscape, not least the southern rural hinterland. He was roundly criticised for bringing up the bitterness of those driven towards guns and God by seemingly hopeless economic circumstances. The diagnosis may have been simplistic but it wasn’t inaccurate, even though Obama did not pinpoint racism as a common component of this bitterness.
That the profoundly prejudiced have lent a receptive ear to suggestions that the African-American candidate is at best a closet Muslim and, at worst, the Antichrist is hardly surprising. In some cases their relationship with reality is tenuous enough to precipitate the fear that should Obama become president, white Americans will, as a voter in small-town West Virginia told a Guardian correspondent, “end up slaves. We’ll be made slaves just like they was once slaves.”
Such depths of ignorance are a restricted phenomenon. But a degree of racism, sometimes subconscious, is considerably more widespread. Inarguably the most unpleasant aspect of the Clinton campaign was its success in subtly pandering to such prejudices: as the primary season drew to a close, America’s racial fault lines were exposed in one state after another. This dangerous trend did not suffice to swing the battle Clinton’s way, but it established an unfortunate dynamic that John McCain can insidiously exploit.
The presumptive Republican nominee is running neck and neck with Obama in opinion polls, despite the Bush administration’s steadily abysmal ratings. Depending on which constituency he is addressing, McCain occasionally tries to distance himself from the unpopular government, but his imperialistic impulses mirror the disastrous status quo.
Although he once relished his reputation as a maverick, McCain has consciously drifted to the right in order to reassure Republicans who might consider him inadequately conservative. This has, inter alia, made it easier to portray him as a symbol of continuity — which, presumably, will be the preferred angle of attack from the Democratic side. McCain has taken a risk by calling for a series of town hall debates — apart from the ritual network confrontations — given that his unimpressive tenor is no match for Obama’s sonorous baritone.
The vacuous feel-good rhetoric that the Democratic contender effortlessly intones is a reminder that the general level of politics in the US necessitates empty catchphrases. It does not necessarily follow that Obama is all form and no content. He is a thoughtful and intelligent young man with largely liberal instincts who thinks the US can be transformed into a less unpalatable superpower. The contrast with George W. Bush and McCain is stark enough for him to be acknowledged as a far more pleasant alternative.
However, anyone who perceives him as a harbinger of epochal change is bound to be disappointed. Obama is more likely to tinker with the economy than to make any serious effort the corporate stranglehold. He has lately been reassuring the reactionary anti-Cuban and pro-Israeli lobbies, whose antagonism can translate into a substantial electoral disadvantage. He has also felt obliged to water down his relatively conciliatory stance towards ‘enemies’ such as Iran. In some respects, he may be emboldened by an electoral triumph in November. However, it would be folly to presume that an Obama presidency would somehow transcend murky compromises on any number of fronts.
Despite that, Obama is undoubtedly the best that can be hoped for in the circumstances. He has leapt over one formidable hurdle with panache, a historical achievement that elicited a hint of pride even from the cold heart of Condoleezza Rice. A more crucial barrier, however, remains to be overcome. Were the global population entitled to vote for the so-called leader of the free world, Obama would win by a massive landslide. The American electorate, on the other hand, often chooses unwisely. It may well err again five months hence, and it will be particularly disappointing if this decision is based on judging a candidate by the colour of his skin rather than the content of his character.
The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.
mahir.worldview@gmail.com
