After Super Tuesday: Can a scrappy little team win it all for Obama?

Celebrating his near equality with Hillary Clinton after Super Tuesday, Barack Obama said in Chicago that there are many rounds to fight in the remaining fierce competition but “we’re turning out to be a scrappy little team.”

He will need every bit of brawl heading into contests in Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine, Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Wisconsin and Hawaii later this month.

Whatever his successes, his audacity of hope image may take a battering in coming months as the blood-letting with Clinton continues awaiting the final decision of their peers at the Democratic Convention.

Obama has a lot going for him. Even his website looks younger and more hopeful than that of his rival. But the vital question is whether he can face down Clinton and the Democratic establishment’s onslaught as she poaches on his terrain of youth and woos women voters more skillfully.

It will take much more than uplifting speeches to save him from being the candidate of black America, who is viewed with skepticism by Hispanic voters and is the butt of unspoken racism by middle and upper middle class whites.

When it comes to the crunch would a white couple earning between $50,000 and $120,000, who are happy to have a black man to dinner, be willing to marry a daughter to him? It takes that kind of trust, commitment and tolerance for whites to be ruled for the first time by a black man in the White House.

Obama’s broad strengths so far were his fund-raising and appeal to the youthful. These will slip quickly if
the economy tanks as expected in coming weeks. The economy might revive after the Democratic Convention but he will be history by then, unless he agrees to be Clinton’s Vice-President.

In any case, that would be a cold marriage of convenience despite the smiles and almost cordial talk both exchanged briefly on camera after the latest debate. Even as a principle, it is debatable whether he would be the right choice for a Clinton Presidency, specially with co-President Bill prowling unrestrained as the First Gentleman of the US.

The Clinton-Obama scrap restarted within minutes of the exit polls with her handlers claiming she should be seen as the underdog now, especially since Obama is favored by the “establishment”, namely Edward Kennedy. This turns facts on their head but that is how great makeovers begin.

Muck raking is also not yet discarded. Hillary mildly rebuked husband Bill for his dirty tricks that caused her discomfiture before Super Tuesday, but he is not off the payroll. When push comes to shove, he can still play the bad cop and “terminator” while Hillary pretends to be hands-off and claims plausible deniability. What’s the harm in being Billary if it brings results?

A great deal depends on whether Hillary can raise money efficiently. Recently her take totaled just one-third of Obama’s and she has had to loan $5 million of own money to her campaign. But prospects are mixed and she may no longer be the money magnet of the past, particularly before the Democratic Convention.

Whether money pours in for Clinton depends on the perceptions of the person-in-the-street, not on delegates and billionaires. The only real way of collecting big money now-a-days is to rake in small contributions from very large numbers of people.

At this stage, it is hard to see how she can succeed in exuding the warmth and idealism needed to appeal to small contributors and to recruit hordes of young volunteers to work the Internet, phones and door bells for her. Everything about her including the way she dresses communicates establishment and power.

It is hard to shake the fact at this time that Obama offers change we can almost believe in while she offers more of the old nostrums. She might make it if she whips up enough fear about the economy and stands tall as the savior of middle-income earners and small store owners.

She does still have a traditional base in the working middle class. They might respond to build her war chest if the economy goes south. But that is far from being a foregone conclusion.

The key to credibility lies in timing. If she stokes fear early, she may beat Obama but lose the Presidential poll because many experts expect the economy to start looking up after the summer. That would give the clear lie to Clinton’s eco-fear mongering and might bury her in November combined with her other flip-flop failings.

Clinton has a lot of plausible strengths. But she just does not have Obama’s appeal to the heart, no matter how many self-deprecating jokes she cracks or how much she tears up in front cameras. She comes across as a cold fish to Obama’s charm. And this fish has Bill the wiliest of sharks covering her back, while Obama has the slightly flaky New Ager Oprah Winfrey.

We certainly need the audacity of hope to contemplate all of this.