Part I - Obama's Voice
As an open-minded supporter of Barack Obama, I think the Senator made a critical mistake by telling New Hampshire that if they made him the winner, he'd be the nominee.
There is no question he's a very appealing candidate, but this was like getting a great kiss on the doorstep on a first date and asking your girl to marry you. He should have treated New Hampshire as a second date, an opportunity to get to know each other better. Obama moved too fast, and set the stakes too high. For some people, his voice, a strength a day before, became a weakness. What sounded mellifluous some now heard as just a bit too smooth.
Part II - Hillary's Voice
I also think the shift in the women's vote is much deeper than is being appreciated. I had written that the tears Senator Clinton fought back were about blunted ambition, but I failed to see how deeply many women felt what she felt, because Hillary's ambition is in some ways theirs.
Her tears said, I (we) have a lot to offer this country, and I can't believe that once again, our chance to do so is receding further into the future.
Her breaking voice spoke to those women who feel they've been required to wear a mask in public. While many women entered the booth saying they intended to vote for Barack, when they got inside, voting for him seemed like a betrayal of their own dreams.
At this point, I don't believe any candidate has made a deep connection with many voters, but I do think Hillary is starting to strengthen that connection to a great many women. I cringed at her metaphor of "finding her voice" in her victory speech, because it sounded rather contrived to me -- a 50 year old who has been in the public eye for decades finding her voice. But I think she may be channeling the aspirations of women who (in some ways unlike her) have not had their voices heard. I now think Hillary did indeed find her voice.
I read someone yesterday arguing that Hillary tends to use "I" and "me" while Barack speaks of "us" and "we". This was clearly a dig at Hillary. But in New Hampshire, more voters lived vicariously through her first person voice than joined Barack in his plural pronouns.
Barack is quite literally living a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. There are few things that can make me and many of my friends cry like a tableau of racial change. However, for most of us, it is a dream of justice for someone else. That dream has a very strong pull on us, but not as strong as the strings Hillary can pluck in calling women to achieve a dream of justice for themselves.
Part III - A Voice for the Aspirations of All
I had written last week that only John Edwards had connected to a constituency in a way that could sustain him through losses (and that constituency is a small one -- one slice of the labor vote.) The other two Senators were speaking in terms that were grand, but not intimate. They were speaking to the whole electorate, but not directly to any portion of it.
Now the race has been transformed.
As the African American vote rejoices in the success of a candidate that many of them had dismissed just a week ago as unelectable, I'm seeing this race very differently. I now think that what we are seeing is truly transformational, a once in a lifetime contest in which the deepest aspirations of enormous chunks of the American electorate have some of their deepest emotions tapped.
I'm not sure where it will lead. i believe that none of these three candidates can win on the basis of their own constituency. Worse, I fear a descent into a zero-sum game, where African Americans find themselves pitted against women, perhaps with an exhausted electorate settling for Edwards as a candidate who has offended neither
But I also sense a chance to transcend these divides. I hope these three candidates recognize the dangers and the possibilities. When these wellsprings of emotion are tapped, disparaging opponents may lead to bitter recriminations in November. As they each strengthen their messages, they need to reach across these divides, and speak to the aspirations of their opponents as if they were their own. I hope they each find that unifying voice.