GoldbergBlog

Done the Impossible

For some reason, Barack Obama’s official clinching of the nomination on June 3rd didn’t really hit me. Maybe I was exhausted from the primary season or maybe I had accepted his victory back on May 6th when he won North Carolina by a landslide and almost won Indiana. For whatever reason, it wasn’t until now, at Hillary Clinton’s concession speech and her endorsement of Obama, that I can finally accept that he has done the impossible.

I’m proud of myself not because I ended up backing the winning candidate back before Iowa, but because I had the good sense not to give into predictions. I knew I wanted Obama to win, but the farthest I was willing to guess was “Maybe Edwards?” It wasn’t because he was a better candidate (although had he received the nomination, you’d hear no complaints from me), but he was a white guy. I didn’t have enough faith in Americans to select an African-American or a woman as their candidate. My faith in America was shattered in 2004 with the re-election of George W. Bush. That faith hasn’t been completely been rebuilt by the nomination of Barack Obama but construction is underway.

But there was really only one way this ever could have happened and it has nothing to do with demographics or even past decisions like whether we should or should not have invaded Iraq. It had to do with one campaign running brilliantly and the other being disastrous. How can anyone look at this race and not think of the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare? Slow and steady won the race because Clinton did not prepare for a contest after Super Tuesday. It’s been said that “Failure to plan is planning to fail,” and that’s exactly what happened. Once Obama won eleven contests in a row, it was over for her. She was never able to make up that difference. She tried to gather her forces in Texas and Ohio but it wasn’t enough.

Of course, then came the Reverend Wright mess and that’s where Obama proved himself on the campaign trail. It can’t be enough that your opponent is weak. You have to be strong and that Obama was able to weather that storm perfectly as well as the minor storm with his “bitter” remark, shows that he’s ready for the fight with the Republican Attack Machine. And I regret my earlier sentiments that Clinton should get out of the race because this long battle didn’t hurt the party but strengthened Obama as a candidate and forced him to actually fight rather than coast to the nomination on his opponent’s poor strategy.

We now have a clear contest on our hands and every cynic who says this is just a contest between John Jackson and Jack Johnson hasn’t been paying attention.  I’m nervous and excited to see what will transpire in the next five months but for now, I can only sit back and marvel at what Barack Obama accomplished and hope that he will be the 44th President of the United States of America.

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