I HAVE asked myself many times in the past two weeks whether the politics of this country will be tolerable for the next ten months if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic presidential nomination. I fear the answer. To be treated to so many months of reminders about Bill Clinton's sex life, corrupt pardons and the rage of the "loyal Bushies" set is unpleasant to consider. The thought of seeing the battles of the last sixteen years replayed and the country still divided by a bright line when an alternative is at hand is just too depressing. And for Obama fans like me, it's getting harder to justify the idea of pulling the lever for a Clinton Restoration after watching the last few weeks of their sanctimonious and disingenuous attacks against Sen. Obama and his record.
I was twelve-years-old when the Democrats lost the House of Representatives midway through Bill Clinton's first term in office in 1994. My understanding of political issues at the time was not sophisticated, and I certainly could not understand the political mistakes of the first Clinton administration and the corruption of the long-seated Democratic Congressional majority that led to the so-called "Republican Revolution." I only remember it as a day of deep bitterness.
I lost my political hope when George W. Bush won the state of Florida by a single vote, courtesy of Sandra Day O'Connor. I thought I had buried it on September 11, 2001 as I watched the towers fall on the first day of my sophomore year of college. For a couple years after, out of contrarianism and cynicism, I came to embrace the neoconservative policies of the Bush Administration until I came back to my senses when I saw how horribly awry the world had gone. But I was least hopeful about the future when I embraced these policies.
In November 2004 I watched the election returns at a bar in San Francisco filled with utter despondency. Then I thought the news could hardly get worse when New Orleans was ravaged first by nature and then by political incompetence and cronyism. The last Congressional elections suggested the possibility of change in misguided policies and substantial oversight of the Bush Administration. But the hopes were slight, and little was delivered.
And then along came Barack Obama as a viable presidential candidate and suddenly embers of idealism I hardly knew still remained were fanned into a small flame. After the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago, when Sen. Obama appeared the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination, I experienced a real sense of joy. Now it is looking more likely that instead of putting on the ballot a leader who can call the nation once again to be a "city upon a hill," the Democrats will give us the choice between voting for Republicans and the "city of Hill (and Bill!)"
The acrimony of the last two weeks between the Democratic front-runners, particularly over race, has started to sap my hope again. Looking at CNN's Nevada entrance polls, Obama won the support of African-American voters by an overwhelming majority (80-16). Sen. Clinton similarly won an overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters (64-24) and women (52-30). Obama dominated the youth vote, Clinton the elderly vote. The Clintons, with much more vigor then they ever spent fighting Bush's corruption the last seven years, appear to be successfully changing Obama from a candidate that could transcend racial divisions to one who is all about race. He is being transformed from an African-American man to a black man and is having a difficult time persuading older white voters or Hispanic voters who have a long history of tension with the African-American community to vote for him. How the primaries will play out is anyone's guess. But if the voters in the rest of the country break down along the same demographic lines as those in Nevada, Obama will do well in South Carolina and then be beaten by just enough in the key contests on February 5th and February 12th to lose the nomination.
If Clinton does manage to eke out victory along those lines, she will leave the Democratic coalition divided with significant parts of the African-American community deeply and deservedly resenting her. I personally will not easily forget her deprecating and objectionable reference to Obama as a "talented ... young African-American." The ground she will have to make up to regain their support and her chances for victory in the general election will be substantial.
In 1968, the hopes of much of America were pinned on Bobby Kennedy and in the end the country got Richard Nixon. I hope it is not this dashed kind of hope about 2008 that is remembered forty years from now.
Andrew Winerman's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at awinerman@cavalierdaily.com.
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