Barack Obama Must Now Save the Democrats

Barack Obama has won, but the path before him will not be easy. Before he can use his energy to engage John McCain, Obama has to save the Democrats. The success of this effort depends on how Hillary Clinton behaves. The first conspiracy theories are already circulating.

Barack Obama has made it his trademark to insist that he would speak with America’s adversaries. He now has the chance to prove that talking can accomplish something by applying this principle within his own party. Hillary seems to be implying that she was “stabbed in the back.” She is undefeated in the field and 18 million (largely female) voters are demanding justice. Internal party diplomacy is taking on the dimensions of a summit meeting between two adversarial powers. Before Barack Obama tests his abilities against John McCain he first has to save the Democratic Party in which two opposing groups of the 1968 generation confront each other. The women’s movement that supports Hillary Clinton, and the black civil rights movement, which propelled Barack Obama, are on the verge of becoming completely alienated from each other. It is up to Clinton as to whether this will result in a rupture in the party instead of the self-assuredness that will be needed in the general election.

Clinton and Obama will need a large measure of finesse to pull it off. Hillary has had her eyes on the oval office for three years. And it was the prospect of the oval office that stopped her from divorcing Bill in 1998. It can’t be easy for her to control the flood of emotions that losing this campaign has unleashed.

A whole generation of women share in the disappointment. And on top of that, there is a deep skepticism that many low income individuals feel towards a black, eloquent, Harvard graduate. For low income Americans outside the big cities, Obama is associated with federal affirmative action programs that benefit minorities at the expense of the majority. Clinton has had a great deal of success playing to these sentiments.

John McCain knows this, and this perhaps explains his rather lackluster performance in New Orleans. On the one side the young adoring crowds of the “elite” orator, and on the other a down-to-earth man from next door who endured Vietnam. That’s how he’d like to position himself.

Obama faces an enormous task. Clinton has an enormous responsibility. There are conspiracy theories swirling about even among black members of congress, such as that Hillary would like to see Barack Obama fail, so that she can replace John McCain as president in 2012. Ideas such as these could poison the party. There is only one way forward for Clinton’s 18 million voters: they will have to accept Barack Obama as their candidate. Hillary will have to tell them to do so. If she doesn’t, then America’s “1968” will end with the only candidate who was a prisoner of war taking the oath of office. That too would be a remarkable outcome for the 2008 election.