Politics of hope and change

The race for the Democratic nomination has come down to Senator Hillary Clinton (New York) and Senator Barack Obama (Illinois). If Obama wins the nomination, he will be acclaimed as a national figure of indubitable presidential stature. If Hilary Clinton wins -- the more likely outcome of the primaries -- she will have shed her unelectable image, but would she?
The contrasts between them are eye-opening. On campaign trails and debates, Obama says that the choice between Hilary Clinton and him isn't one of race or gender but of "the past" (former president Bill Clinton) versus "the future" (him). "What is at stake now is whether we're looking backwards or we're looking forward," he says.
At the moment, the race for the Republican presidential nomination seems to be all but decided -- it will be Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam War hero.
After the primary electioneering process is over, each political party holds a convention to formally select the presidential and vice-presidential nominees.
Democrats will meet in Denver, Colorado, between August 25-28, and Republicans will meet in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, between September 1-4.
With each party's nominations sewn up during the primaries, the convention is essentially a grandiose arrangement for the party to unify after the primary season's heated debates. November 4 is the Election Day in 2008, with polls opening as early as midnight in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, and finally closing in Hawaii and Alaska.
Leaving aside who will be the next president of the United States, the country is already witnessing the dawn of a new epoch, which columnist Brent Budowsky of "pundits.thehill.com" characterises as "Obamism" -- one that ushers change and hope for the better -- that embodies movements of history, people, and ideas that come in many flavours and are offered by many voices, whose torch, at the moment, is being carried by Barack Obama.
In his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, Sen. Obama brought the participants and the convention watchers on TV to their feet with, "Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us … Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."
Millions of Americans are slowly coming to believe that America is on the way to restoring its fundamental values, distancing itself from the demoralising negativities of the Bush p residency.
Columnists and talk show commentators are saying we may be witnessing yet another great historic political realignment -- one that compares with the Democratic realignment brought by President Franklin Roosevelt and the Republican realignment brought by President Ronald Reagan.
This new realignment encompasses:
* The hopes of progressive Democrats who truly believe in a party that embraces fairness and equality, transcending race, religion and gender.
* Political independents who profess a national unity, adhering to the fundamental American values that have far too often been denigrated in the extremism and radical rightist doctrine of creating an enemy and then waging a preemptive war against him.
This emerging realignment is a "coming together" of almost all die-hard Democrats and a great majority of political independents, along with nearly 10% Republicans who no longer have a voice in the Republican party overtaken by the rightist factions. Their movement is in the process of charting a new electoral map for rekindling and change that is intended to elect a new a president and a "do something" Congress.
Obama's political opponents have already demeaned him by using racial innuendos in winning the New Hampshire primary, but when resentments appeared to threaten a crack in the party, both camps prudently scurried to call a truce -- but for how long?
David Brooks in The New York Times wrote that both Clinton and Obama have already "eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics." Clinton is fighting for "little girls everywhere," while an Obama victory is about "completing the dream (of Martin Luther King)." "Given the passions this historic confrontation is stirring up, the truce will probably not last," said Michael Goodin in the New York Daily News.
"The Clintons are taking a 'risky gamble' by attacking Obama," wrote Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times. A Clinton pollster has even said that Hispanic voters wouldn't vote for a black candidate, attempting to create a "brown firewall" for Clinton's campaign by "condoning Latino racial hostility toward the first African-American with a chance to become president."
Democratic icon Senator Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Obama came following a New York Times op-ed (January 27) in which his niece Caroline Kennedy compared Obama to her father, John F. Kennedy (JFK). The endorsement, a blow to Hillary Clinton, was reportedly sealed by Kennedy's frustration at racially tinged comments by the Clinton campaign and supporters, especially from Bill Clinton.
Kennedy's endorsement gives Obama a much-needed boost -- particularly in Latino communities, where the Kennedy name still resonates with emotions.
The Obama-JFK comparison, however, seems a bit ostentatious to some and uncomfortable to others. For example, Steve Clemons in The Huffington Post argues that aside from the "ethereal mysticism" of the analogy, it whitewashes troubling parts of the Kennedy legacy. JFK was a "Cold War hawk" who "approved of regime change" and nearly got us in "a nuclear catastrophe with the Soviet Union." So as "compelling" as he is as a candidate, Obama has to understand that "gravity operates even in the White House." American will not become great again on "mysticism and gut."
Almost all political pundits concede that in the November presidential election, the Republican nominee would find Obama more intimidating on both intellectual and oratory levels than Clinton.
Notwithstanding Obama's admitted use of marijuana and cocaine which, along with any other dirt they can dig up, would be an issue of dissection by the Republicans, Clinton is not only disliked by many Democrats, she will hardly win any of the 10 % disillusioned Republicans and may attract only a few political independents. Many would hate to see a co-presidency of the Clintons.
Gary Young in Britain's Guardian wrote: "In the last 50 years, the number of white people who said they would not vote for a black presidential candidate has nose dived from 53 percent to just 6 percent."
Whether Obama succeeds in carrying the torch to its ultimate destinations is no longer a debatable issue; he has already "tapped into powerful currents that embody the best of American politics that he is speaking for, the yearnings of the realigning majority of the American people." With his rhetoric of hope and change, he is pursuing a destiny "that could well prove legendary."
In his expansive outreach, Obama is trying inexorably to fairly represent all constituencies. He offers a hope that's hard to hold back -- he offers a dream that's hard not to dream.

Dr. Abdullah A. Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University.