Speculation runs rampant: why is Hillary sticking around after it's blatantly obvious that she won't get the nomination?  Is she incapable of admitting defeat?  Prepping for a future run at the White House?  Doesn't want to let down her hard-core supporters?  Hoping to clear up her debt and get her campaign to repay her for her personal investment?  Is she just being spiteful to the brazen upstart who side-tracked her inevitability?

Maybe we learned another reason, today.

Obama won North Carolina.  That's big.  The win is important, to different people, for different reasons.  
           The Obama campaign has taken pains to distance itself from comparisons to other African American presidential campaigns of the past, and for good reason: Obama's appeal to white voters is unprecedented, and pigeonholing him as the "black" candidate, when his message is essentially post-racial politics, is counterproductive in this race.  But to the black electorate in North Carolina, his win here means something extra. To the black folks in NC – and in Durham, specifically – Obama's win here is a vindication of the kind of work they've done here for a century.  
         

And they called me crazy when I said this was a generational thing.

Hillary is watching her support wane from just about every demographic, and her campaign is desperately clinging to every vote it can for survival.  She’s still strong among working class whites, especially women, and older voters.  Fair enough.  But compared to Barack’s rock-star-like popularity among younger voters, who are registering, donating, and volunteering in record numbers, there just won’t be enough to make up the difference.  She’s tried making the case over and over again that she can represent the interests of the "youth", using (for lack of a more colorful term) Chelsea’s bland popularity to appeal to sororities and youth organizations across the country.  She has even managed to generate a kind of muted enthusiasm among young women, who are truly torn between the possibility of electing a woman, a gender-affirming act, and being drawn into the decidedly male but alluringly charismatic circle of Barack Obama’s social movement disguised as a political campaign.  

And then Bill Clinton had to open his big mouth and, essentially, declare a generational war.  

Battlestar Galactica

I’m going to depart from my usual snarky, sarcastic political style to devote this diary to an underground pop-culture phenom beloved by intelligentsia and fanboys alike: Battlestar Galactica.  More particularly, the religious issues presented on the ground-breaking, gritty sci-fi series.  More exactly, the portrayals of Monotheism and Polytheism on the show, and what they say about the place of such fundamental religious ideas in a society.  If you’ve made it to this point in the paragraph, then you are either a sci-fi fanboy (lookin' at you, Brinn!), a Pagan (Isaac!  I can hear you breathing!), or a religious studies nerd, so join me after the jump for analysis.

Barack Obama’s impressive speech did something, today.  It took the Obama Movement’s ideals about challenging the political status quo way beyond rhetoric and deep into the risky and dangerous realm of racial guilt, anger and resentment.  In confronting the issue Obama gets to the deepest wound in our shared American experience and lances the infection with frank and honest public discussion about attitudes and experiences that until now were reserved for private conversations.

Obama took real risk with his speech, and while the "reviews" from the MSM aren’t quite in yet, the buzz in the blogosphere seems to indicate that he hit it out of the park.  Hillary could have done much the same thing with the issue of sexism in America – had she had the political courage to do so.  As it is, little she could say at this point could adequately match his moral position without sounding trite – what’s a rich white lady going to say about race and class in America that will add to the discussion?  Obama had her rhetorically outclassed, using every persuasive tool in his oratorical toolbox, from the moment he first opened his mouth.

And as a result, Hillary got served.

It’s easy to sit here and predict all the spectacular ways Hillary Clinton could mess up if she managed to weasel the nomination away, right now.  You can almost hear the scurry of little Hillbot feet as they desperately try to game the system.  The constant floating of running-mate bait, the incredibly skewed perspective on how a 3-10 streak is actually a "winning" streak, the Michigan/Florida debacle, super delegates, cashing in two decades worth of favors to MSM talking heads (and, apparently, the entire writing staff of SNL), it’s utterly obvious at this point that Hillary the "fighter" is ready to take this all the way.  But I really don’t think she’s gonna like where "all the way" puts her.  

Let’s leave aside the potential damage of an actual Hillary Administration for a moment (if her campaign is any preview of how she will govern the nation, cue collective shudder . . . now.).  Let’s look at the permanent damage she is likely to inflict on the Democratic Party.  She might be the first Woman president, but she may well end up being the last Democratic president.  She loses even if she wins, and the resulting damage to the political system in America will last a generation.  

"Just focus! The Alliance said they were gonna waltz through Serenity Valley and we choked 'em with those words. We've done the impossible and that makes us mighty! Just a little while longer, our angels are gonna be soaring overhead raining fire on those arrogant cod, so you hold! You hold! Go!"

Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds
Serenity Valley, Hera
500 Years From Now (More or less)

Call it the scifi nerd in me.  Call it a telephone-addled flight of whimsy.  The quivering anticipation that has built up around the next election cycle has reached into my tired brain for the inspiration of an apt metaphor, and Joss Whedon happened to be there.  Shocker.  Even more shocking (and some would say, ominous) is that the quote that lept to the fore was from Joss’ conssumate rebel, Malcolm Reynolds, who in the lamentably short-but-brilliant (THANKS A FUCKTON, FOX!) post-apocalyptic sci-fi western Firefly, and the triumphant second incarnation Serenity, is on the losing side of a nasty interstellar war.

Point of information.  Didn’t say he was on the wrong side.  Said he was on the losing side.  And it makes a difference.

Everyone has a few nasty habits that they don’t usually discuss in polite company, and one of mine is paying attention to marketing trends.  I know, I know, it’s disgusting, but . . . well, I need to for my job.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

When you observe the intricacies of an election campaign in marketing terms, you get some memorable – and not always particularly successful – slogans, commercials, campaign songs, yard signs, even buttons out of the process.  Since Madison Avenue and its spiritual cohorts took control of campaigning back in the 1960s, no campaign for the presidency is complete without a full list of official branding, up to and including a catch-phrase that sums up the candidate in one easy-to-read bite.

Since I put up my diary about Obama Dads, things have gotten a little . . . strange.

For one thing, I’ve been inundated with "attaboys!" and questions about my "organization" – which is ironic, considering the point of my fellow Obama Dads and I doing what we do is that there is no organization.  That being said, suddenly there are t-shirts and blogs and proposals for websites . . .

. . . and among the many questions I’ve received, one begs an answer.  Just who are these Obama Dads?

Chew on this, Mark Penn.

Four middle-aged (Gen X, ages 38-41) fathers, middle class, each making between $28k and $43k a year, three of us college educated, two of us college grads, and between us we have 8 kids (10 if you count steps).  Two black, two white.  All four of us found ourselves doing something none of us could have predicted a year ago, and something that would be unthinkable a century ago.  We were all campaigning – hard – for a Democratic candidate for President.  Who happens to be black. In the Deep South.  

One of us is a pragmatic libertarian (mois).  Two are generally apolitical types who have only voted sporadically over the course of their lives, and then usually for whichever candidate didn’t seem as bad as the other.  One is a registered Democrat who grew up in the bowels of the Rust Belt, and who voted whichever way his unionized dad did, when he bothered.  Of the four, one (me) has ever donated to a campaign.  

We’re the Obama Dads.  And we’re fired up.

I bumped into friend (and fellow Obama supporter) H. this morning when I stopped at the German bakery for coffee.  

H. is just a few years older than I am, the son of two 60s era civil-rights activists and prominent members of the community.  (H., by contrast, hasn’t ever been terribly active in politics, which irritates his widowed mother to no end.) I've known H. for over twenty years.  We did a six-week temp job together in our misspent youth, had a couple of classes together, fellout of touch, fell back into touch, and like you do in a small Southern city, we run into each other every couple of months . . . say when we stop at the same place German bakery for coffee.  

Of course after the obligatory "How’s your folks?  Wife?  Kids?" exchange I took the opportunity to sound him out about what he (and the other members of the Black community in my town) were thinking in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire.  We have a history of discussing race and politics and exchanging views, so he wasn’t shy about responding – especially since both of our cars were sporting Obama ’08 bumper stickers.

What he had to say was interesting.

Yes, come in, have a seat, Ma’am.  Thank you for taking the time to meet me like this.  This won’t take long.

I just wanted to let you know personally.  It’s been a hard, hard decision – but it’s one we had to make to fill this vitally important position.  We’ve had far more great candidates than we anticipated, all with excellent qualifications, but we had to pick just one.  This is an essential position, after all, and – well, let’s just say that the current man on the job is on his way out.  And he left one heck of a mess.  So that makes this job doubly important.  

As I said, we’ve had several outstanding candidates, yourself included.  We winnowed the list down to three, carefully researched each resume, evaluated the candidate’s record with the organization, and listened intently to each succeeding interview.  With that kind of talent available, it wasn’t easy, and we were genuinely impressed with the candid ideas each of you brought to the table.  And after a long, intensive review, I'm sorry to say that we’ve decided to go with another candidate.

Christmas is crashing down on me like an unstoppable wave, but I couldn’t pass this up: after it became known that the Clinton campaign registered two new domain names (votingpresent.com or somesuch) with the presumed intent of launching a political attack site denouncing Obama’s record of voting "present" in the Illinois State Legislature, I couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

The idea, it seems, is that Clinton is going to hammer him on "waffleliness" or some other lightweight charge (the drug dealing Islamic madrassa thing didn’t stick, apparently) because he used a common procedural tactic in the conduct of his tenure as a representative.  The stats are elsewhere and I don’t have time to dig ‘em up, but the gist is he voted "present" about 3% of the time.  The funny thing is, this does nothing but good for Obama: it draws attention to his record as a state legislator, working within the party and the state congress to achieve important local and state-wide legislation.  It also draws attention to the fact that Hillary (ta-da!) has no record as a state representative.  Or any other state office, for that matter.  More on the flip.

When I happened across a diary from Lying eyes in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t help but fire this off.  Basically, the diarist very politely (and dripping with condescension) asked "young people" to "back off" and please let Hillary win this one, huh?  Willya?  Please? I mean, isn’t it the Boomers’ time, now that their parents are mostly dead or in that home out by the Interstate?

I felt compelled to write in response, not to her particular diary, but to the idea that the two frontrunners represent a generational divide – one is almost tempted to use the term "gap", if the Boomers hadn’t trademarked it for their own justification for political rebellion in their youth.  The fact is that while both candidates have their share of supporters from across age and class and gender, Clinton is most clearly the candidate that represents the interests of the Boomers, while Obama has the interests of Gen Xers and those that follow.  There is an essential divide, here, and it’s important to call it out.

I had a chance the other day to revisit one of my former employers from my food service days, an independent downtown seafood restaurant.  I worked here nine years during college, off and on, and managed it for four of those nine.  I like the place.  It’s got a beachy feel, lots of nautical clutter, it and the seafood is first rate, if expensive.  I wandered back into the kitchen to say howdy, and unsurprisingly, B was there.  B has forgotten more about cooking fish in the last five minutes than you ever will learn.  He’s an older black gentleman, he’s been with the joint forever, and when you taste his marinated and grilled tuna steak a heavenly chorus erupts in your mouth.  

B has also voted religiously in every election he’s been able to.  He’s not an activist, but he’s an extremely loyal and dependable Democrat.  He’s as rank-and-file as they come, and I trust his opinion implicitly on such things as who the black community in my strongly-blue city is supporting.  Our conversation was interesting.

When one encounters such bald-faced egotism and blatant self-promotion as is regularly displayed by Stephen Colbert, one must pause in admiration of the sheer audacity it takes to so masterfully play the celebrity game.  But simply laughing at the antics of Comedy Central’s brain trust and dismissing Colbert’s stunt as meaningless entertainment is missing something more important, here.  While the pundits wave off the thing as a publicity stunt for book flogging purposes (which it most definitely is, and brilliant at that) they fail to recognize the possibility of Colbert having a very real effect on the Democratic primary process.

You have to love the irony of the fact that Jon Stewart, goofy, snarky guy-most-likely-to-sell-you-a-bag-in-the-dorm Stewart, is having more of an effect on the political process than most of the partisan talking heads shows.  I credit the rise of John McCain as a serious candidate to The Daily Show’s great series of comedic "ambush interviews" in New Hampshire, Mo Rocca and Steve Carrel asking off-kilter questions with a vicious deadpan.  The fact that McCain got the freakin’ joke and was willing to laugh about it, on TV, in the most stressful political crucible known to man, humanized him and made him a likable Republican.  

Last night Barack Obama made his first – but probably not his last – appearance on The Daily Show.  I’ll spare you the play-by-play – it’s pretty adequately covered elsewhere.  But this was Barack’s debut to The Daily Show’s highly net literate, college educated, pot smoking audience, and I’d have to say he killed.  More postflip.

Okay, there’s a lot of pandering to special interest voting blocs in the presidential race, and I appreciate that.  But there are also voting blocs that don’t get pandered to enough, and there are some seriously potent opportunities for an enterprising candidate to claim a few percentage points by doing so.  

When the GOP really messes something up because of its own pandering, a wise candidate should jump all over it.  And the GOP did just that when, just before the last Congressional session ended, it effectively outlawed internet gambling.  The move was largely to appease an uneasy Evangelical base that saw most of its pet issues – abortion, gay marriage, etc. – going nowhere.  Since casinos tend to be heavy contributors of the GOP (Just ask Jack Abramoff) and they didn’t like the competition, the GOP figured that they could kill two birds with one stone by outlawing the transfer of money for gambling through US banks.  Mumble something about funding terrorism and the children.  It was an afterthought, a coda of legislation.  Blatant pandering to the base.