In the decades to come, historians will continue analyzing what happened in the 2008 election, especially how a young African-American inexperienced in national politics beyond a half-term in the Senate with a funny Kenyan name came to dominate the White House bid in a field of formidable political veterans such as McCain, Clinton, Edwards, and Giuliani. Yes I said it: there is no doubt in my mind that Senator Barack Obama will easily win the election in November, simply because he understands the electorate better than any of the candidates do, and along the victory lap to Washington he will carry on his shoulders a plethora of Democratic nominees picking up House seats and Senate seats, and some of them even might be picked from Clinton's own superdelegate pocket.
Obama is dominating the American political scene not just because of who he is, but also because of what America has become. I like to call our current situation "The Perfect Storm:" a highly unlikely combination of historic factors that have come together at exactly the same time that Obama has come of age politically.
Bush incompetence. This can be summed up in one word: Brownie. Democrats should thank Bush every day, despite all the foolish mistakes he has made, because he has done more for Obama than any other human being. Things have to be really bad sometimes before they can get better. Obama could not have risen without 8 years of Bush first. Let's pretend for a moment that you agree with all of Junior's policy platforms from the last 7 years, including the strong protection of America, the invasion of Iraq, social security reform, immigration reform, education reform, or fiscal responsibility. He has failed miserably in every area due to the gross incompetence of his administration. Protecting America was doomed from the start, with 9/11 proving that the Bush-Cheney inner circle did not respect the threat from Al-Qaeda despite repeated and passionate warnings. The resulting War on Terror has produced one failure after another: the rise of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran; a Taliban and Al-Qaeda resurgence when our knockout punch was nigh; Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the unproductive debates on torture, extraordinary rendition, and spying on people's phones. Bush has somehow, miraculously managed to create an American foreign policy that is both morally wrong and undermines our national security. Iraq was invaded successfully, but grossly mismanaged from the beginning. The economy is in dangerously poor condition. Bush's domestic agenda has been defeated by one grand mistake after the other, whether it was New Orleans in 2005, or No Child Left Behind leaving lots of kids, uh, you know where.
Clinton incompetence. Just a few months ago, this argument would not have applied. Isn't history fascinating? Despite Hillary's inability to do anything productive with healthcare while her husband was President for 8 years, and despite presiding over an anemic Democratic party for 8 years, she somehow managed to market herself as the most "competent" Democrat in the race over the course of 2007. The only semi-decent thing to happen to the Democrats nationally since 2000, taking back Congress in 2006, had little to do with Clinton. In fact, she was a cause of this backlash, as she helped authorize the unpopular war which prompted the 2006 takeover in the first place. But all this was marketed away by clever Clinton operatives. She wasn't knocked off the competence pedestal, the arrogance pedestal, and any number of other pedestals until she ran into a well-organized, grassroots-fueled Democratic campaign that she underestimated from the start.
Bill Clinton tomfoolery. Bubba proved that "nobody is the boss of me." This race would have been a little bit closer if Bubba could have kept his mouth shut. Now his legacy is tarnished and he locked his wife out of the White House. By inserting the race card into the campaign, a mass defection of blacks was created in South Carolina and onward; overnight, we went from a majority of blacks backing Hillary in the polls, to almost 90% of them going for Obama. That's largely because they did not think Obama was electable. That is, until Bubba helped make him electable by denigrating the historic accomplishments of Obama's campaign, and then, red-faced with righteous anger, called the senator's staunch opposition to Iraq a "fairy tale." Which was itself a fairy tale. The Hillary people rushed forward with a muzzle, but it was already far too late to keep the blacks and many of other races.
An uninspired Congress. As bad as the administration has been, unfathomably, Congress has been even worse. Lobbyists pour the slop into the pork barrel and members of both the House and Senate feed like starving pigs. The swing from Republican control to Democratic control has not created an improvement, and many Americans see both parties complicit in the dirty Congressional politics of getting nothing done. They see a Washington where the president bickers with Congress, Republicans bicker with Democrats, they're all rich and corrupt, and the only losers are working Americans.
America is polarized, and tired of it. Bush oversaw a dramatic polarization of the country, an uncivil war between blue states and red states, one where reasonable citizens on both sides of the Republican/Democrat divide honestly believed that the other side was ruining their country. Karl Rove engineered this drama, and it was effective toward the goal of getting elections won by small margins. America now yearns to move on from this 51/49 life and follow a leader who is actually intelligent, competent, and able to get something done, get it done right, and get it done on principles most of us can rally behind. This is the promise of Barack Obama; we should be clear that he hasn't proved that he can deliver this yet, but America is more than willing to give him a chance. Luckily, things cannot easily get worse on the polarization front than they are now. The level of gridlock is at saturation point, the level of discourse is toxic, and politics have nowhere to go but up. Nothing positive of note is going on at the federal level today except some aid for Africa.
McCain will sink on the Iraq ship. McCain too is a response to this polarization, as his party conceded that the only chance at victory would be the least-reviled Republican figure. Some Dems are worried that McCain will poach enough of the nation's independents to eke victory because he occupies the center, the same place where his opponent likes to roost. On issues such as the environment, campaign finance reform, torture, and the economy, he is not radically different from most Democrats. But liberals should relax. McCain only has one card to play, which is fear. Obama will not keep you and your children safe! He'll take your gun away! He is weak on national security! He wants us to surrender! There are wolves circling around us in the woods! But his only card is undermined on the most important national security matter of the day, Iraq. McCain is on the side of the failed Republican policies. A.K.A., the wrong side of the voters.
Loud, Dumb Republicans. Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Rush Limbaugh: this is a case of "everyone wins." Obama will win thanks in part to your hysterics, and good days are ahead for you too. You would love nothing more than to attack an incumbent Democrat in the White House so your ratings, and sense of self-importance, will go up for at least four more years. It's no coincidence that they're skewering McCain: right-wing lightweights clearly don't want him to win. The same old, tired messages of abortion, bashing gay rights, how the media favors President Obama, "liberals = unpatriotic = terrorists," the frightening prospect of another liberal Supreme Court justice, and the evils of Islam will continue to play out on the airwaves daily during the Obama administration. But the messages of hate won't get across to many beyond their little choir.
They've got nothing on Obama. I have read just about everything the right-wing lunatic fringe has written or said about Obama, pouring over anything they've written against him.. The fact is, they have nothing substantive on him at this point beyond supermarket tabloid stuff. Obama is a foreign spy. Michelle Obama hates America. His pastor said some nasty things. Land deals with Tony Rezko. In other words, no deal-breakers. If he gets through Clinton in one piece, we can be confident there is nothing else to find. If her people found anything more than alleged plagiarism, black liberation theology and a friendship with Tony Rezko, they would have used it. It was fortunate that Obama was forthcoming long ago about his drug use as a young man; more than we can say about W, Bill Clinton, or for that matter Rush Limbaugh as an older man.
Only one candidate represents the next generation of America. We haven't had a politician who youngsters think is "cool" campaigning for president since Bill Clinton in 1992. Many who are too young to even vote suddenly care about politics for the first time. This isn't an accident; it's partly because their older and wiser parents are sensing a historic movement; civics teachers are getting tingly as they teach their students; Obama is most accessible at only 46 years old; he will be the first post-baby boom president; and the Obama campaign has spent an enormous amount of resources on courting the young, something few campaigns in American history have bothered to do. Most younger voters don't see Obama as black, but just as a dude they would like to see in the White House because he, like, speaks to them.
Obama represents what we want from a leader for some of the wrong reasons. Here is where the politically incorrect stuff comes in. Yes, some blacks are voting for him in droves largely just because he is black. Women are voting (and fainting!) for him because they have a massive crush on the tall, dark, and handsome guy. Older whites are voting for him due to white guilt: they know their race has stomped on blacks for centuries, and voting for Obama is a bit of a mea culpa. Americans like myself with a dual identity identify with his connections to Indonesia and Kenya. Whether voting for these irrational reasons is right or wrong, people have always voted along these lines, and they always will. We are fortunate that in this case at least, they have accidentally voted correctly.
These are the factors that perfect storms are made of. It will be a long and bumpy ride to November, but come January 2009, it will be a new day in America. Let's hope for peaceful waters afterward- and above all, be glad that you were a part of it.