"I am not a member of any organized party. I am a Democrat."
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Father Raymond J. De Souza makes an interesting point in National Post about Barack Obama winning the majority of Democratic delegates.
"Whatever else he might accomplish," De Souza says, "Senator Barack Obama has prevented the restoration of the Clintons. ... It was partly about him, but mostly about her. Many have remarked that in the identity-politics world of the Democratic Party, the first credible black candidate trumped the first credible woman candidate."
For all intents and purposes, it really came down to Obama vs. Clinton in the earliest days of 2008, when Obama won the Iowa caucuses. A few diehard Democrats -- most notably John Edwards and Bill Richardson, but there were a few others -- stayed in the race beyond New Hampshire the following week.
But I believe it was Iowa that anointed Obama as Clinton's challenger for the nomination.
De Souza thinks the "formidable power of being the not-Clinton first became clear" a couple of weeks after the Iowa caucuses -- when Michigan held its primary ahead of schedule and only Clinton's name appeared on the ballot. Clinton won, but an uncommitted slate of delegates received about two-fifths of the vote.
At that point, the voters' desire for an alternative was clear.
"Obama became the chosen instrument for those who fervently wished to prevent the Clintons from coming back," De Souza writes. "In this race, being the not-Clinton was as important as being black."
There's an interesting dynamic at work in America regarding the Clintons. Bill Clinton remains popular as a former president, remembered fondly for presiding over an economic boom and a period of relative peace. He is, after all, one of only three Democrats (along with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt) to serve two full terms as president in the 20th century.
(By contrast, the Republicans only had two -- Eisenhower and Reagan -- although it may seem like more because Theodore Roosevelt served almost all of William McKinley's second term after McKinley was assassinated, three different Republicans were elected in succession in the 1920s and Richard Nixon was elected twice but didn't complete his second term. Actually, there's another Democrat -- Harry Truman -- who served almost eight full years, succeeding FDR a mere three months into Roosevelt's fourth term.)
But Clinton brings with him personal baggage. And there is no question there are many people who hate him. Thanks to his own behavior on the campaign trail, the list now includes many blacks who regard him with suspicion after looking upon him as a friend during his presidency.
So there is a tug-o-war going on between appreciation for the accomplishments of Bill Clinton's presidency and resentment for the promise that went unfulfilled because of his personal flaws. I suspect it's a dichotomy that Clinton will have to live with for the rest of his life, much as Richard Nixon had to live with the memory of Watergate balanced against some impressive achievements in his presidency and Lyndon Johnson had to accept that his domestic record seemed to be permanently buried beneath his woeful record in foreign affairs.
Clinton clearly inflicted some wounds on his wife's campaign. Is that at the core of Hillary's defeat? Perhaps. I have heard some of her supporters bitterly blaming Bill for her defeat -- although, before the primaries began, Bill was regarded as an asset for his wife's campaign.
I don't want to rub salt in an open wound. Let me just say that I think Bill was a factor in the outcome. I don't believe he was the sole cause of it.
Yes, it's true, as De Souza says, that whoever emerged as the "not-Clinton" in this race would be the candidate Hillary would have to beat to claim a nomination that most people believed she was probably going to win. Obama got the boost in Iowa and that gave him the momentum to move past the other contenders, even though Hillary made a comeback the next week in New Hampshire and won uncontested races in Florida and Michigan shortly thereafter.
But it's also true that the Clinton campaign was run sloppily by a staff that made no preparations for a drawn-out race and had no rationale for the election of its candidate.
When it came right down to it, the Clinton campaign really couldn't offer much more of a rationale for Hillary's election than Ted Kennedy could provide when asked in an interview nearly 30 years ago why he should be president instead of incumbent Jimmy Carter.
The rationale for both, basically, was "I'm entitled."
If they had been running for the Republican nomination, that might have worked.
Republicans have a tradition of giving their nomination to the one "whose turn it is." This year, it's John McCain's turn (much to the chagrin of many true believers in the Republican Party). In 1996, it was Bob Dole's turn. In 1988, the GOP rewarded George H.W. Bush for eight years of service as Ronald Reagan's vice president. And it was Reagan's turn in 1980, because he had lost a close race to Gerald Ford four years before.
You don't have to be next in line to win the Democratic nomination. In fact, sometimes it seems that Democrats prefer to nominate someone most people hadn't heard of before the primaries -- like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or Michael Dukakis.
Sometimes it seems that being the Democrats' front-runner early in the process is like receiving the kiss of death.
And sometimes, it seems, the kiss of death is actually winning the nomination.
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