Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we should have seen it coming - the body politic is finally trying to reject the healthy dose of change it received when Obama entered the Presidential race.
I admit it, I got caught up in the optimism like a lot of people here. For the first time in my life I actually started to kind of believe in a political figure. Sure, I realize, like Rev. Wright on Moyers, that Obama is still just a politician and is naturally hemmed in from being a fully realized human being. But here was everything this country was formerly torn apart over, namely race, finally being, if not put to rest then overcome, as in Iowa we started to bestow on a black man the ultimate "establishment" employment opportunity, President of the United States.
I was just as surprised as you were when media pundits who spend their lives in the muck were caught unawares by Obama's alternative politics, and started seeing that maybe another way was possible. This was interpreted as the media being in the tank for Obama, but was simply a reaction of talking heads having no programmed responses to fall back on. You actually started to hear Repulicans(!) saying positive things about a Democrat(ic) candidate.
This was the field of play until the status quo regained its composure and started to reassert itself. Now, after Rev. Wright and "bitter" and the Weather Underground (quick, check Obama's connections to the Dreyfuss Affair), the political world is back on familiar, comfortable territory. The Clintons, playing the old game as masterfully as ever, have found a receptive audience in the punditry since after all, they are speaking the same language.
The only problem of course is that now it's too late, at least for the primary, since Obama will absolutely be the nominee. He's done this by appealing to people's basic decency, which still exists, but has to be mined like quicksilver. Despite setbacks, he has shown himself to be disciplined and he'll get through it, with inevitable math on his side.
But the general election is a different matter. We now know that the people who are resistant to change, to a culture slightly different from their own, or from one they see on tv (rich people), they have non-racial, socially acceptable reasons to spurn Obama. And the same goes for the pundits who, after being caught flatfooted at first, now are back where they think they belong, in control of the discussion and public opinion. Or are they? I can't pretend to know, but if Obama keeps running the smart campaign he has to date (despite minor gaffes), and if he loses to McCain in this Democratic year, then we'll know that real, serious pessimism will be entirely justified. Because if not now, when?