How Caring About Clinton Is Like Asking Jack Layton Where The Country Will Be In Six Months

Oh…bama, not quite able to pull off a decisive win in yesterday’s votes, but still the winner simply because he showed up. And that’s really just it, isn’t it? Obama can’t lose now because he has secured enough delegates by the end of April to cruise through the rest of the primaries to victory barring losing every single vote from here until the convention in August.

So why is everybody focusing on what Hilary will do right now? Well, the cultural side of me likes to think that she’s America’s version of “nobody’s baby”, Shelia Copps; the woman who was able to turn some of the cogs behind the scenes for a while but got shafted when she went for the brass ring herself. In other words, it’s just melodrama right now. Don’t expect Barack Obama to draw too much attention to himself though; doing so will only expediate those tough questions that will eventually come to the eventual Democratic nominee and the man who built his entire campaign around “Yes, we can!” doesn’t come across as much of a policy wonk.

Clinton, for her part, is now just like the NDP; incapable of winning the top prize, guaranteed third place, but still naive enough to think there’s still a shot that she’ll drag down her closest neighbour. How the media doesn’t know or, if they do know, act on this is no longer in the realm of good journalism. It’s Barrack, not Hillary, whose opinions will be debated in the fall; she’s just a sad sideshow now.

Of course, the respectful thing for Clinton to do right now would be to drop out of the race, sparing the world from more of her sob story. She won’t do that though, since she was in it for blood from the get-go, trying to finally establish her decades-long goal of becoming the first three-term president since FDR. If she can’t have the cake, no one in the Democratic Party can, and from here until August, she will be a loadstone around Obama’s neck, dragging him down long enough and far enough to secure a McCain victory in November. If she pulls it off gracefully, something as doubtful as her becoming the 44th President, she gets another chance in 2012; if she fails to make a difference and Obama wins, she won’t have her next shot till 2016. The choice is pretty obvious when you consider the ego of the Senator from New York.

It’s Obama’s story that is really the more important issue right now though. Surely his advisors must be drafting up who his running mate will be already. They can’t and won’t go with Clinton; she’s not a very good second fiddle as I just mentioned. The race has been very divisive though and this is a major problem for Obama. He’ll have to secure a major Clinton supporter whose personality and record would naturally add to the ticket but also symbolize an olive branch to the Clinton faction. The real story also is that while Obama will win the nod, and has performed well over the past year, he is still only running a demographic campaign that is tailored to the Democratic Party — and even at that, he’s only winning within 10% in most of his victories. Break down the numbers further and you begin to see that he’ll definately lock down the black vote come the fall, but then, when hasn’t the Democrat?

Furthermore, his message of hope is only a one-trick pony, good enough to get like-minded people to give him an initial consideration. What happens when he tries to appeal to independents and soft Republicans? What happens as well when his message isn’t reinforced by a primary adversary who practically parrots every left-wing note he sings, but is challenged and attacked by an ideological opposite like McCain? While the Obama campaign has won the battle against Clinton, it really hasn’t demonstrated that it is capable of delivering the war, and that’s why there is such uneasiness in the many quarters of the Democratic Party about his candidacy.

This week’s results aren’t important because of what the Democrats are doing, but what the Republicans aren’t. If the Dems want to follow through on that desire to retake the White House after eight years of GOP control — something history gives them the advantage for — then they’re going to have to smarten up and soon. Personally, as a political observer, I know that Clinton would be a more formidable foe than Obama. Yes, she’s polarizing, screechy, and egocentric, but she can also stand her ground in a debate. Obama? He’s just riding the outsider’s wave right now and when he moves onto the next round, the fact that nothing’s really happened now will come back to haunt him. That’s because the silence you hear is really the GOP, watching, waiting, and taking notes; they’re effective under pressure and the Democrats have been kind enough to spare them three extra months they didn’t need but will aptly use. As soon as the convention ends, if not sooner, the tanks’ll roll out. And that’s why Obama might be better off shifting attention from Clinton after all!