Two weeks ago, I proclaimed “clarity at last” when announcing my favorites for the primaries, Obama and McCain, and the likelihood that I’d vote for the latter in the general election. While I remain strongly in favor of these two candidates for the primaries, I’m now less sure about the general. I’d like to see more from both men, and hopefully, I’ll be able to, although there’s no guarantee either will win their party’s nom.
McCain’s path to the GOP nom is not as inevitable as it seemed a couple days ago. But he’s clearly in better shape than Obama, whose momentum appears to be stalling.
That’s a shame. Perhaps more of this type of effort will shift things in Obama’s favor in the remaining days before Super Tuesday. Or maybe some more of this — although I honestly and increasingly fear nothing will be enough, that the powerful allure of a vote for pragmatism (i.e., Clinton) may be too powerful to overcome.
I was in the office of a prominent U.S. Democratic Senator on Wednesday. A legislative assistant in that office — someone with whom I communicate frequently and whose opinions I respect — said he thinks, no matter whom the next President is, he/she is going to have his/her hands full figuring out how to adjust the expectations of the American public, a population that increasingly wants more from government but doesn’t want to pay for it. While I found that statement odd coming from a Democratic staffer, he has a point, and he also seemed to suggest Hillary would be better suited for the task than Obama, whose “Yes We Can” motif may be raising expectations so high as to make them unmanageable.
Similarly, one of my bosses, a long-time Democrat and first-year Baby Boomer, seems to speak for many of the early half of his generation in favoring the grounded pragmatism of Sen. Clinton over the uplifting rhetoric of Obama.
And yet, I can’t help translating both of their critiques as “establishment thinking,” as selling short the utility, the power, and the person of Obama. And that’s precisely why I’m thinking about crossing party lines in Missouri’s open primary on Tuesday and casting my vote for the Senator from Illinois.