Why Barack Won: An analysis by the uncredentialed
February 7th 2008
By Darrell Hyde
The Super Tuesday spin will no doubt go on longer than even the most devout political junkie can tolerate. The talking heads will no doubt continue to bobble on dissecting the minutia until my head is ready to explode, and likely long after it has. But one fact is clear to me - Barack Obama has emerged as the clear Democratic winner.
I won't deny my own personal prejudices here - I'm about as enthusiastic of an Obamamaniac as you're likely to find. I'm also someone who's concerned by the direction in which this country is headed. Like most people I'm concerned about the economy, the war and our returning veterans, the environment, poverty, crime, and the slow and deliberate decay of the middle class. I know I'm not unique in any of those respects; in fact that's kind of the point.
After New Hampshire, the same pundits who all but nominated him following his win in Iowa hypothesized that Iowa had been a fluke and that things were now comfortably back on track (someone more cynical than I might even say those same pundits breathed a sigh of relief).
South Carolina also proved to be all too easy to write off. African-Americans had voted overwhelmingly for the first viable African-American candidate, this was expected, it has been factored in, no need to panic.
Even as the first Super Tuesday returns came in and the state of Georgia was called for Obama, the unending rationalizing continued - heavy African-American turn out, we always expected him to do better in the south, etc, etc, banging my head on the steering wheel, etc. It was as though Senator Obama was the stepchild of the Democratic machine who could do no right in his parents' eyes.
Enter the Midwest, stage left - Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota (ok, so Minnesota is't exactly Midwest, but you get the idea). What's missing? Try a large African-American population - let alone a large African-American Democratic electorate, yet Senator Obama carried each of them, some by considerable margins.
It is in those contests that Senator Obama's victory was sealed in my mind. Never before has it been so clearly demonstrated that not only are the American people ready for an African-American president, but that his campaign can transcend race, gender, age, and region to create the kind of broad based coalition needed to reunite this country after years of divisive politics.
We really are one nation, even if we don't always act like it. There truly is far more that unites Americans than divides us, even if you can't score political points by acknowledging it. In this election finally, we have a chance to change all of that. We have in Barack Obama a chance to reunite this nation, begin to heal the wounds of the past, and move forward as one nation, united. Let us not waste it.
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