Hype

“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope!”
— Barack Obama

Anyone falling for the media spin that Hillary Clinton’s victory last night in New Hampshire was an upset (or even a comeback) is suffering from a seriously short attention span. She was leading pretty comfortably there before Iowa and managed to salvage a 3% victory over the upstart Barack Obama who, I think, got a little caught up in the hype around the historical import of his candidacy and coasted a little bit. She did it through a mix of old school political strategy, going negative against Obama in the final couple of days, and an accidental slip of her robotic demeanor that revealed the human being underneath. Anyone who thinks the latter will come to define her campaign moving forward is crazy.

That said, I think her narrowly winning NH is a good thing for Obama as he will benefit more than her from an extended campaign that runs, at least, through Super Duper Tuesday — I refuse to call it Tsunami Tuesday — because it will give him the opportunity to clarify a couple of things about himself, including the simple fact that on the political experience front, he trumps both Clinton and Edwards, as Phil West pointed out on his Obama blog:

But the top three Dem candidates actually have very similar resumes, despite Clinton’s familiarity with the White House from having lived in it. All three are lawyers who have folded activism in some form into their legal careers. If you’re looking at their careers as elected officials, Obama actually has the edge, having spent a decade in either the U.S. Senate or the Illinois legislature, whereas Clinton is on her seventh year as a U.S. Senator (with no prior eleced office) and Edwards served one six-year term. 

Speaking of Edwards, I’m glad he’s not dropping out yet because his voice is an important one to have in the mix and my guess is he will continue to target Clinton as the “status quo” candidate, allowing Obama to focus on representing his campaign’s powerful message of hope. His speech last night was arguably as good, if not better, than his speech Iowa as it had a slightly harder edge to it, challenging Americans to stand up and be heard, to not let anyone tell us what can’t be done, echoing JFK’s “Ask not…” with his own catchphrase, “Yes We Can!”

Check out the full text of Obama’s “Yes we can!” speech.

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