When did Obama’s “Victory” become inevitable?

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I have been trying to figure out how it is that one can legitimately declare oneself a winner without actually winning. Obama is prepared to do that tonight in Iowa because he is clearly too impatient to wait until June 3, let alone August, and yet every Democratic nominee in recent history has had to wait until the convention. Suddenly, when running against Hillary Clinton, that isn’t necessary.

Obama puzzles me, genuinely. I watched The American Experience last night, the second of two on FDR. It was made ages ago, clearly, and the people praising FDR talked about how he offered hope and change, and certainly one can see how those words might have been powerful in 1932 with the Great Depression in full swing. But FDR had served in the federal government, been governor of New York; he’d been accumulating experience for years before running for president. He was a charismatic leader, but one with a track record.

Obama’s a new breed alright, sort of like when Reagan got rid of the gold standard and the US dollar was backed by nothing but power. Obama is backed by Kennedy, Kerry, et al. Add Byrd. He is not, contrary to his assertions, universally backed by voters. Many, many voters still back Hillary Clinton. The question is whether he and his powerbackers can afford to sneer at those voters.

To some extent they can. Not all Clinton voters are offended by the sexism or are even aware of things like NBC boycotts and movements to send one’s new “Independent” voter registrations to Howard Dean and the DNC. There are probably far more Clinton supporters who will support Obama if he is the nominee than who will not.

But as I was watching the program about FDR I was quite taken with the “coalition” he built. It’s rather sad to see it breaking down now, because it is FDR who was the great uniter, and Obama who will be the great divider. And it is precisely when he became divisive that he became the “presumptive nominee” in the press and in his own mind.

It was not until he began to uphold and even engage in the sexism that was directed against Clinton that he got the boyz behind him. He sold out.

There is a large number of people now disaffected from the Democratic Party who will desert it completely if Obama is the nominee, at least in terms of the presidential race. And many of them are women, but not all of them. And the deserters, the one’s protesting, are not deserting on racial grounds. There are others who will not vote for Obama because of his race, which is deplorable, but the ones he deliberately alienated to get power are leaving because of sexism.

Indeed, one might even thank Obama for that if it reinvigorates feminism, although I am not sure that will be the long term outcome.

Whether Obama ultimately prevails in the nomination or not remains to be seen. But one thing is certain. He became victorious when he realized an old truth: that male privilege will trump a woman of any color any day.

Fun Fact

States won by Hillary Clinton (to date):
300 electoral votes

States won by Barack Obama (to date):
217 electoral votes

(Read full article here).

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Filed under Culture, Politics, Sex, Wimp

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