Super Bowl Sunday is upon us and Super Tuesday is only days away.
Living in New England, in general, and New Hampshire, in particular, is an interesting especially during this time. The ongoing blood feud between Boston and New York makes the stakes higher and the sideshow even more interesting. The New York Giants and the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl are almost a mirror image of the Senator from New York and the Senator from Illinois who will crawl into the ring to begin the gladiator games that is the Democratic primary this political season.
The choices between the contestants are strangely reversed in a funny sort of way. The New York Giants are clearly the underdog while the Senator from New York is the frontrunner even as her prime advesary, the Senator from Illinois, is gaining ground. The New England Patriots have so dominated the field with no losses this season and three of the last four Super Bowl rings on their fingers the game is theirs to lose. The Senator from Illinois is a first term Senator whose national resume was a rousing, consensus-oriented speech at the last Democratic convention is in a place where the election is his to win.
The analysis of the Super Bowl game is much clearer than the Democratic Primary. The New England Patriots have the edge based on their season record and their legacy of victory. The New York Giants are upstarts who would pull off a major upset if they were able to snatch victory from the jaws of almost certain defeat.
The Democratic primary offers a much more complex analytical exercise. First, the candidates are very close on issues, very close. There are minor differences and they are so close that these differences have to be played up as the distinctions that distinguishes them from each other. But in large measure when compared to the opposition party and its candidates they are distinctions that don't make a difference. Which brings us to the next point. Since the last two elections have been carried by Republicans, which of the last two Democratic primary candidates are the Republicans more likely to vote for, a white woman or a black man?
The gender issue is still an issue among both men and women, white, black and other (Native American, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, etc.). Will the rancher in Wyoming, the farmer in Oklahoma, the red neck in Alabama and Juan Valdez in the Southwest pull the tab for a female presidential candidate? While we would like to think that we live in more enlightened times, do we really? The other variable in this multivariate analysis is the "Clinton" factor. The presence of the former two-term president and the specter of his playing a Svengali role to the women who suffered his well known and long standing sexual dalliances takes the Hilary presidential prospect down a few notches. I mean if he could convince her to stay (even after her "I am not a stand by your man kind of woman" comment on national t.v. when asked what would she do if it proved out that Bill was screwing around) after humiliating her in public what does that say about his influence over her. I guess just as importantly if it was not due to Bill's influence that she stayed what does it say about her blind ambition? If neither scenario are the motivation for her staying and she was just a woman in a relationship with a man who broke the social contract like so other couples what does it say about the other aspects of their relationship that is like so many other couples which takes us back to the possibility of undue influence?
Gender aside, what about race? Will race matter when the voting booth curtain is drawn and we stand face to face with the punch card, little pencil with the blank circles waiting to be filled with the traces of black led rubbed roughly enough across white paper to leave a mark, or the switch that will send a trickle of current executing the decision regarding who will be the next leader of the "free world?" Can the Idaho farmer, the newly minted Mexican citizen or his cousin was born in the U.S.A. or the miner scratching coals from the Kentucky hillside and coughing up black mucus or even the ivy league educated hedge fund manager whose sphincter tightens just a little every time he passes a Black man who returns his glance without looking awayvote for he that once was physically subjugated and never quite fully psychically elevated to an equal as their choice for supreme leader? We would like to think we live in more enlightened times. Do we really?
There are those progressives (read neo-liberals and Black utopians) who would want to live their dreams of hope for a better future where men (and women) are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character through the Obama presidency. But even that would be largely still-born due to the political wrangling that is Washington and the machinations of the political process if an Obama presidency tried to be something other than the same old Washington crap warmed over and served on a sliver tongued platter. The bureaucrats would resent the implication that they are in some way tainted by the very process through which progress is achieved and without drawing on existing stocks of goodwill, expertise and access he would be cutting a path through a thicket that regrew each time he pulled his arm back to chop. In other words, progressives of all stripe would find that they, like Obama's Black proponents, could only have what they ask for by foregoing what they want. If he is to be effective, he has to play the game and ergo the death of the new republic and business as unusual will lie still-born. If he demands that there be light in dark places of standard political practice and shine the light of a new way for a new day the little gnomes that make the magic that greases the wheels of Washington will scurry away. He will be left with four years of attempting to tear down tradition and fighting institutional inertia.
Not an easy choice. The dynamic is why Bill Clinton called it a fairy tale. He was shouted down by those who would want to be sprinkled with pixie dust and kiss the frog of White supremacy and emerge from the head of Hera fully grown. Obama has fashioned himself as a new political David going up against the Goliath of the corrupt or at least corporatist Clinton legacy. While Bill raised issues that are real that many others do not want to face or to remember by playing the race card in South Carolina, Hillary's main political pivot point is still that she is a political Collosolus standing astride her husband's two-terms of experience and her own expertise. But pulling the curtain on the voting booth will be much like pulling the covers over our heads at night when we are overcome with fear of the things lurking in the dark, in the corner, under our bed. For many Hillary represents the worst of those fears for others Obama embodies them.
Choices, choices. I am rooting for the Giants.
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