Is Barack Obama Electable?
This started out as a reply to a friend’s email who asked the question, and despite my wanting needing to come up for air from the political waters for a day or two to avoid an early repeat of 2004 where my frustrations got the better of me and my cynicism hit new lows, it evolved into this post…
It’s a fair question that we really won’t know the answer to until it’s actually an option, but I’d say Obama is as electable as Hillary Clinton, if not a bit more so. She’s a known entity and there’s a pretty large group of people on both sides of the divide who simply won’t vote for her, no matter who her opponent is.
I’ve got one foot in that camp myself thanks to the way she and Bill have been campaigning lately.
She’s got several old sets of baggage she’s carrying around from the 90s — failed health care proposal; NAFTA; DOMA; “don’t ask, don’t tell”; her refusal to release her sealed records from the 90s until after the election — not to mention what’s perhaps the biggest set that’s been pretty much overlooked because she’s a Clinton: she’s a woman. There are as many people in this country who won’t vote for a black man as there are who won’t vote for a woman, and if there was a way to pull back the curtain and see what’s really happening out there, I think you’d find a lot of them [not ALL of them, and not even a majority] are supporting John Edwards right now as a way to hide that bias, perhaps even from themselves.
As for the Republican contenders, they’re dealing with a seriously fractured party that doesn’t appear ready to compromise just yet. The longer Thompson and Giuliani stay in the mix, and as long as Ron Paul continues to play the reasonably well-funded Sharpton/Kucinich role, the better the Democrats’ chances are in November… as long as they don’t tear each other apart like Bill Clinton seemed intent on encouraging over the past week.