Can Hillary Clinton do it? Is it imaginable that the cup of nomination might
be torn from Barack Obama’s lips? Is it still conceivable that America could
elect its first black president, or its first female one? Or is it possible
that, after eight years of George Bush, the Republicans could yet retain the
White House in the eccentric shape of John McCain?
Nobody, and I mean nobody, has an answer to these questions.
Families, friends, pundits, barmen, cab drivers disagree heatedly and
everywhere over what will happen and what should happen. In the land of the
blind, the one-eyed guru is king. This is the most intriguing presidential
campaign of modern times.
Meanwhile at every twist and turn along the road, there is another barrage
from another quarter of the never-sleeping American electorate. The
Republican primaries are over but the Democratic ones are relentless, from
the icy blasts of Iowa and New Hampshire in January to the torrid spring of
Indiana and North Carolina in 10 days’ time. The party just cannot make up
its mind.
Last week the apparently smooth path to coronation of Obama ground almost to a
halt, thanks to a feisty, fighting, spitting, jeering rearguard action by
Clinton. She just refuses to give up.
When every dictate of dignity and party unity suggests she should have
conceded months ago, she will not give way to Obama.
Her campaign has been a chaos of sacked managers, unpaid bills, gaffes and
indiscretions, but she cries: “The American people deserve a president who
doesn’t quit,” and that is that. The Clintons’ motto is that they “will do
anything to win” and they are being true to it. They give the old Democratic
party an echo of the tough old days, of men who play mean and hard. There is
a touch of Margaret Thatcher to Clinton at present.
This weekend her aides are frantically seeking to reverse the arithmetic of
the primary process, which gives Obama a near unbeatable superiority in
convention delegates in August. Near is the operative word.
If the Florida primary had not been disallowed on a technicality, Clinton
probably has more popular votes within the party than Obama, as many as
500,000 out of 15m, though not more delegates.
She argues that she has shown her strength in key states such as Ohio and
Pennsylvania, which Democrats must win to beat the Republicans, and where
poor white voters might go for McCain or not vote, rather than support
Obama. If Clinton wins another such state, Indiana, next week that argument
will further strengthen (though not put her ahead in delegates). Power will
then lie with the as yet unattached “superdelegates”, who will hold the
convention balance and who should, says Clinton, switch to her if the party
is to beat McCain. America, she implies, is ready for a woman president but
not a black one.
Until last week, Obama could match this argument toe to toe. While Clinton’s
support may be deep in states the Democrats are not likely to lose, his is
broad, with a wide coalition of blacks, the young and college-educated
voters. He has shown that he can increase Democratic registration and thus
bring many hitherto Republican southern states into play. He is new and
exciting, and would make McCain appear tired and old.
His is a new covenant between his party and the people, a new leaf turned over
from old Clinton mafia.
It is certainly hard to imagine that America could find another candidate so
perfectly cast to be its first black president. Obama not only writes good
books (by himself) and makes good speeches, he has a solid record of
legislation in Congress, for instance over nuclear nonproliferation and
veterans’ rights. His team is calm, efficient and, in comparison with
Clinton’s, loyal. Of the three surviving candidates, he is the only one with
a presidential aura, even if it can seem aloof and overrhetorical.
A writer in The New York Review of Books, Garry Wills, even compared Obama’s
recent speech on race to Abraham Lincoln’s, as that of a man who could rise
above the squabbles and guilt by association that goes with running for
president. Merely by being elected, Obama would resolve the anguish that
seems to afflict modern America, both abroad and at home. Surely black
America’s time has come in this man.
That was until last week. Forget Obama’s fine qualities, say Clinton’s
supporters. They have been put to the test and, as yet, Americans are not
fully convinced. In polls they may like Obama more than Clinton, but they do
not know him as they know her. Hence her jibe: “He is not a Muslim . . . as
far as I know,” and the advertisement implying that Americans would not want
a black hand reaching out to the 3am crisis phone call.
If in 10 days’ time Democrats in Indiana join those of Ohio and Pennsylvania
in rejecting Obama, then white working-class America will have spoken. “We
won where we have to win,” says Clinton. If this panics undecided delegates
into backing her, it proves that an older and more conservative America is
unwilling to confront the change that Obama offers.
He will disappear as another “McGovern-style”, wine-drinking liberal who
cannot address America in a language it understands.
This is mostly code. Despite Obama’s plea to be treated as “just an ordinary
American” and his cry that “in no other country on earth is my story
possible”, his faltering at this late stage is only in part due to his
Harvard education, his unfortunate remark about working-class bitterness and
his association with a dodgy pastor. It is for his colour.
That is why Democrats wavering over his suitability regard Clinton’s challenge
as reasonable if tough. Has this man – has this black man – got what it
takes to overcome everything that the Republicans will throw at him come
November? Or might he just take his party down to a defeat that, after eight
years of Bush, will be ignominious in the extreme, and put back the cause of
black political advance in the process?
Obama might be able to ask the same question of Clinton as a woman, but at
this juncture she seems physically and emotionally tougher than him.
If Obama is denied the nomination by such last-minute skulduggery, the
consequence could be catastrophic for the Democrats. Black America will be
enraged. The chosen candidate, Clinton, and her ever-present husband will be
seen as the agents of rejection. They will have denied their party the
historic glory of being the first to nominate a black candidate for
president.
In the process they will have roused all the hobgoblins of racism and reaction
in old white America, and for what? Clinton already claims as a
qualification her “eight years’ experience” with Bill in the White House,
abusing the spirit of the term limit. There seems to be no satisfying the
gigantic ambition of this couple. Millions of black and progressive
Americans – and many who just cannot bear the Clintons – may never forgive
them. They could deny Clinton not just the presidency in November but her
seat in the Senate thereafter.
Foreigners may look on this saga with stunned horror. A bruised and uncertain
America – 80% of whose citizens claim it has “gone off on the wrong track”
under Bush – is tearing itself apart in what appears a parody of democracy.
But it is not a parody. Given the rigidity of the electoral college in the
final election – reducing the real contest to just a few swing states – the
primaries are the one chance that tens of millions of voters have of
scrutinising and passing judgment on who should rule them.
The attention paid by candidates to the smallest communities in states across
the nation is phenomenal. Compared with the synthesised, centralised
elections of Europe’s political clubs, it is politics raw and intimate and
real.
As an outsider I may believe that a President Obama would rejuvenate his
country’s sense of itself and so transform America’s world image in the
coming century as to be worth any shortcoming in his campaign.
But the trial by ordeal through which he must pass is a fair one. The next
president must end a war and rescue a nation’s finances. He or she will need
massive legitimacy to do so. The primary campaign is a necessary ritual and
one that bears sober witness to the democratic moment.
