May 1, 2008
It's tough being Everyman.
Way back when, before the angry and antic prophet Jeremiah rose to
smite him, Barack Obama appeared before us as an open presidential
vessel, into which many poured their political dreams.
Foremost were black Americans. Bill Clinton famously diminished the
Obama candidacy during the South Carolina primary as just one more
Jesse Jackson fling. But across the black community, support for this
candidate clearly had deeper roots. Head to head against Hillary, he
has been getting huge majorities of the black vote. This was their
moment.
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger notes that no prominent Democrats
stood with Barack Obama during the candidate's recent dark hour. (May
1)
Upscale white voters signed on and were belittled as liberals
exorcising white guilt. Maybe, but for many Obama was also the un-Bush
and un-Hillary.
Independents worn down by 16 years of Red-Blue trench warfare bought
the "change" promise. Obama sounded like he could pull it off. Indies
like to dream.
Brand-name Democrats, such as various members of the Kennedy
aristocracy, went over, calculating it might be easier to push the
party forward with Obama's lightness of being than the Clintons'
boxcars of baggage.
The periodic ideals of young America we know about.
Even as they watched Barack win, pundits and reporters were agog that
a one-term, black-American senator from Illinois could have such an
effect. This pickup-team coalition of idealists and pols, led by a
virtual Luke Skywalker, was on the brink of pushing the Clinton empire
over the cliff. It made the Clintons crazy.
This week we learned the limit of a dream in American politics. At
Barack Obama's darkest hour, not one prominent ally came forward to
support him. Everyone abandoned Everyman.
No prominent black clergyman came forth to make even the simple point
that Jeremiah Wright's notion of the "black church" is but one point
on a spectrum of faith. Rev. Wright, now written off as a virtual nut
case, got more support from black clergymen than did Obama.
Barack Obama was bleeding by Monday and needed cover. Where, when he
could have used them, were Obama's oh-so-famous endorsers: Jesse
Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy,
Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John
Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted
Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford
Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?
Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp:
Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley
Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's
Sheila Dixon?
It isn't hard for big names to get on talk TV to make a point. Any
major op-ed page would have stopped the presses to print a statement
of support from Ted Kennedy or such for the senator. None appeared.
Call it profiles in gopher-holing.
Blogs and Web sites are overflowing with how this meltdown is largely
of Barack Obama's own making. What difference does that make? He is
not running for class president; he's running for the presidency of
the United States. Even at the crudest level of political calculation
and cowardice, there's a point in a presidential race when a
candidate's supporters are all in. We passed that point weeks ago.
It's him or her.
Analysts and historians will spend years sorting through the lessons
of this most bizarre of all presidential campaigns. The Obama
desertion points in a few directions.
The nature of modern media coverage and the length of the campaign
(two years!) has made these presidential candidates truly larger than
life; indeed, they've become almost cartoon-like. Their personas dwarf
and overwhelm the parties to which they nominally belong.
As entities, the parties continue to recede. The Democratic
superdelegates, created to represent the party's interests, look like
deer frozen in the headlights of the two candidates' roaring tractor
trailers.
As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is
their "aloneness." They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that
the old and honorable notion of "standing with" a candidate like Obama
simply didn't occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has
become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the
neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation's presidency
looks like just another personal crack-up.
What about the voters =96 the average Joes and Janes showing up in
record numbers in formerly obscure primary states? It's wonderful to
learn so much about the politics of Rhode Island, eastern Indiana or
swaths of central Pennsylvania, and the candidates themselves are
pressing more retail political flesh than ever. The result, though, is
pretty clinical =96 data flowing into exit-poll categories whose
fluctuating post-primary percentages are somehow more exciting than,
well, real people.
The list is long this week of supporters who let Barack Obama hang out
to dry. More than a few were last seen running out on Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps the solution here is for the two soloists to meet, flip a
coin, and spend the next six months as a pair running against John
McCain. It looks like they're the only friends they've got.
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