Don't Hate The Player... Hate The Playing Out.

If there's a reason I'm less than thrilled about the prospect of Barack Obama as the nominee, it's kind of summed up in the events that transpired this week: at a moment when Obama could move decisively and publicly to wrap this contest up, instead we get days and days of "background" maneuvering (as if "private meetings" in Washington DC could be anything like private at this heated moment) and surrogate statements designed to play ugly while somehow seeming above the fray.

And if there's a reason I admire Hillary Clinton, it's because she spent the week doing the thing I keep being amazed at her doing, in its simplicity and directness: she took the campaign to the people who actually vote.

Apparently the Obama campaign has picked May 20th as the fairly arbitrary date that they will get up and say, out loud, what the web has been trying to sell to only semi-success: that based on some creative exercises with potential numbers, Obama has won the nomination, or perhaps more accurately made it impossible for Clinton to win it.

How reassuring.

I love being a Democrat, in part because we are so fabulously dysfunctional. Who else could take the most exciting political race I've seen in my lifetime, argue like a family in an ugly divorce, and end on a note that's like that nightmare Thanksgiving where your drunken relative spoils everything by telling "the truth" about various family internal squabbles.

At which point we all get our coats and try to escape.

Obama people focus, to distraction, on Clinton's behavior in these closing moments. Me, I keep watching the guy who's supposed to be our favorite choice. I think all I've ever wanted is for Obama to act like the winner; to be Presidential, to get going on being the guy who will be in charge.

• To me, the guy who would be in charge would be in West Virginia most of this week, reminding voters that it's essentially over and we need to come together.
• To me, the guy who would be in charge wouldn't let another two weeks go by losing primaries that he won't contest by more than 20 points.
• To me, the guy who would be in charge would be meeting, publicly and privately, with the woman he needs to drop out and back him more than anyone else.

This isn't about "I think Clinton should be his VP." We're past the point, I think, where "unity ticket" is the question, or the solution. Not because I don't think they'd make a fine team jointly, but because the Obama campaign doesn't seem to know what "unity" means. Mr. Obama has said next to nothing about the very real divides revealed in election after election. Whenever anyone brings up the divide between the well educated and higher earning support he receives, the support he receives from the black community... and contrasts it with the support of less educated, poorer, and more female support Hillary Clinton receives... we get bogged down in charges of racial bias and "failure to believe."

I'm not under any illusions that miracles will happen, that the magic solution to make Clinton the nominee will appear in the next days, weeks, or month. I said I think it's over, and I still do. But the wrap up here is for Obama to accomplish, not Clinton. It's the winner who has to set the tone, do the work, bring the people together.  Like some sort of ongoing feminist nightmare, Mrs. Clinton is expected to lose her job to a younger, less experienced man... and then do his work to clean up the aftermath.

I honestly think that Obama supporters don't get what's happened here: in their zeal to reject "the old ways" and "the politics of the past," they've lost sight of who got rejected in that bargain and who feels little or no connection to the storyline Obama's been selling. What's amazing to me is that, still, with voters in more states expected to flock to the polls and pick someone other than the apparent nominee, the Obama people think the problem rests with others. That, it seems to me, is a disastrous notion to head towards the fall with: that people better know enough to pick Obama... or they'll be punished with someone else winning.

And with bad feelings allowed to stew on all sides of this race, with no one playing the key role of respecting the differences, acknowledging the tensions, and figuring out the compromises that keep us together... we head into an endgame where the winner isn't so much winning as playing to run out an imaginary clock. Barack Obama has said, over and over, that he knows how to do this work of winning people over, finding common ground and changing the way we do politics. Now would be a good time to show those skills, not just talk about them... and hide in backrooms. End this. Don't just merely let it play out.

Comments

[Redstar]

Another excellent summary. Very well put.

[elmey]

I don't think Obama likes the rough and tumble of campaigning much, he seems to prefer the set piece speeches.

I'm baffled too by the refusal to fight for those working class white votes. It highlights the two things McCain is going to attack Obama on: lack of grit(weakness) and elitism. Yeah, he can't win in WV and KY, but it's not just those people who have to be convinced he cares. Of course the thing is, he really doesn't seem to have a feel for blue collar voters. He has got to find an issue that resonates and not nuance it to death. From my point of view it should have been healthcare as the centerpiece of economic revitalization and security, but that's just me, something else could work.

Women are pissed too, the crap coming from the media (and blogs) gets projected onto his campaign, as do remarks from people like Kennedy and Steve Cohen last week--I don't know if the campaign has processed that yet, or if they're still thinking the women's vote differential is just an ephemeral "identity" politics phenomenon.

I'm kind of worried about the GE, something that was unimaginable six months ago. Oy.

[Redstar]

Ever since I read Obama's memoir, I can't resist psychologically profiling the man (if you're familiar with his story, you'll see it invites this kind of response). I'm sort of embarrassed by it.

Nonetheless, I found in his descriptions of working with low- and moderate-income black communities on Chicago's Southside as an oganizer, that he found both sanctuary in black community but also suffered from guilt over his education (private high school and Columbia U.) and the future opportunity that went with it (Harvard Law). I wrote in another post on this site about his difficulty empathizing, versus sympathizing with people - by his own description, he pursued community organizing out of a middle-class sense of trying to do good, to give back (like when I've been called a "white do-gooder"). Though he found strong racial identification and community in Chicago during his organizing years, he also continued to describe himself as on the periphery somewhat of these communities, both as a mixed-race person and as an interloper - which many community organizers are, particularly when they arrive from outside the community as he did. It's an occupational hazard.

Upon his return to Chicago, he and Michelle have built a decidedly middle-class, and upper-middle-class life. Also, despite his mother's financial hardships as a single mother putting herself through school and raising kids, she also obtained an advanced degree, raised her children on two continents, and traveled abroad for her own fieldwork and career. (Keep in mind that educational attainment is a major indicator of class status in this country.) His grandparents who raised him were solidly middle-class in the American 1950s way.

From my perspective, there's not a lot in Obama's biography that shows he's all that in touch with the material realities of working-class families, beyond his three years as an organizer. Yes, he saw real hardship in Kenya and Indonesia, but again, he was relatively insulated as a young American male "visiting" these cultures.

I think I'm transferring quite a bit onto Obama, who reminds me of myself and my elite academic peers. I have relatives who are deeply poor and many who are working-class, and many who are now economically middle-class but culturally more working-class. I moved up economically as I grew up, thanks to my parents. It's difficult - in my current Ivory Tower existence - to remain in touch with the daily struggles of my relatives or keep alive the memories of those struggles for my mom and me when I was little. I believe Obama has good intentions, but I do think he's given up somewhat on making connections to working-class communities generally speaking, assuming his current coalition can bring him the nomination, and by assuming his smarts and Dem status can obviously trounce McCain on the economy at the polls. I am less optimistic about this latter piece, esp. given some of his surrogates/volunteers complete inability to relate to working-class insecurities.