Can he win?
With the trauma of the primary drawing to a close, that is the question Democratic activists are asking themselves as Hillary Clinton sows doubts that Barack Obama can actually rally a plurality of the electorate to his side.
It’s a valid question. Barack Obama is a singular, incandescent politician, the likes of which has not walked across the public stage in years.
But he is not without serious, serious flaws as a candidate. He would be one of the least experienced men ever to sit in the Oval Office. He comes out of the ward-heel Chicago political tradition. He avoids pieties to the American flag
And with a middle name of Hussein, an international upbringing, and law professor pedigree, he doubtless strikes any voters as strange, if not downright Manchurian. Does he even own a dog?
And for those who think the nation is becoming post-racial, consider how many Democratic primary voters who have admitted they are not voting for Obama because he’s Black.
Just four years, a Senator with a long and distinguished Senate career, who wrapped up the nomination early, and who looked North Vietnamese soldiers in the face and shot them dead was painted as too weak and ineffectual to keep the terrorists at bay.
Even in a year where his opponent has his own problems—age, issues with base, a deeply unpopular war, if Obama were to win it would mean that this country is a vastly different place than it was even four years ago.
Such electoral seachanges are not unprecedented. As Rick Perlstein pointed out in Nixonland, in 1964 LBJ’s promises of a “Great Society” garnered over 61% of the vote. Four years later, Richard Nixon and George Wallace combined for almost 57% of the vote.
If Obama hopes to even eke out a win against McCain, he has to hope for similar shift in the American landscape, one where ads of lurking wolves and menacing serial rapists don’t move the needle much.
That could be the case. The electorate is growing steadily younger, and the nation more urban. Terrorism is receding as a worry. Most voters have grown up with the idea that “diversity,” is a public good for it’s own sake.
The conventional wisdom has always been that for Democrats to win, they must be “Bubbas,” comfortable at hog rallies and bowling alleys, and be unashamedly Middle American. Obama, with his nuanced answers and graceful glamour, is not.
Between 1964 and 1968, the bulk of the electorate grew disenchanted with civil rights gains and with the stridency of anti-war demonstrations, and the New Deal consensus collapsed. It is impossible to imagine, even with remarkable gifts, a 2008 version of Barack Obama seriously challenging for the presidency in 2004. If he wins this time around, its proof we are living in a vastly different country than the one we thought.
