Yes, you can almost now taste a generational shift in American politics…but like most generational shifts the old generation is going to battle and resist it tooth and nail.
And it most assuredly did in South Carolina where former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton — called the “Billary” campaign by some — ran a conventional provoke-and-destroy 1990s-2007 kind of negative campaign against Senator Barack Obama. And, in the style of those campaigns, they denied they were doing just that. Many voters, pundits — and top Democrats — vigorously disagreed.
In the end, Obama won the South Carolina primary by a big margin. And in his victory speech below — his best televised speech yet — he makes the plea for change and warns followers that the systemic, attitudinal, and political stylistic change “will not come easy.” He argues there is massive cynicism that denies change is possible and perpetuates it, but those ideas “are not the America we believe in.”
Watch the speech. And realize: a speech does not a nomination make.
But there are clearly people in younger generations (and also disgusted people in their 50s, 60s and older) who want change. And there is now a movement…and a voice…clamoring for change that would put a premium on consensus, aggregating interests and forward-looking thinking. And — as you see in music, the arts, fashion, lifestyles — sooner or later the new ideas DO win out.
Part I:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7d7u2AKVU0
Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdRdIEa7AM
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.