Well it wasn't Kansas but it was close. Obama's victory in Iowa woke up the press and the country to the fact that this guy is the real deal. You're going to hear pundits going on about why he resonates with the common man and that his message is messianic in it's recall of the great changers of society; Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy are most often mentioned.
What the pundits and the deer-in-the-headlights mainstream politicians don't get is that the electorate is not amazed by Obama and his populist appeal, they've been waiting for him. Maybe we are all a little surprised that our next leader is going to be a black man from Illinois, but than he's not running to be the President of Black America either. His ability to connect with a broad spectrum of people is partly because he doesn't bring the baggage that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did.
We've know for a long time that people have had it with politics as usual in Washington. Governor Shwarzenegger in California saw it and abruptly changed his confrontational tactic's to great effect. Signaling that Republicans who are going to be successful in the future are going to be moderate Republicans. The Republican Party is not your evangelical, gun toting, tax cuts at any price, gay bashing, Karl Rove crowd anymore. People have woken up and realized that the snake oil sales men left them with a product that is of dubious value.
I don't see why we ever thought that arming the ordinary citizen, segregating Gay's and relegating non-Christians to secondary citizenship was more important than health care, education and the growth of good paying jobs. I know we bought the bag of baloney that giving the wealthy more money would benefit all of us. I just don't why. What I do know is that we did buy into this, or at least enough of us did so that people like George W Bush got two terms as president of the United States.
What Obama's victory in Iowa meant is that era is in all probability over. I've mentioned before Obama's "Tiger Effect" on the voting public. Like Tiger Woods, Obama has people who were on the outside looking in, coming into the event and participating. Young people and disenfranchised Republicans, independent voters and moderate Democrats have responded to his message His cutting across demographics has amazed the experts. His challenge will be to keep them engaged long enough to get elected.
The cynicism of the electorate is understandable since after the Democrats routed the Republicans in the last election they have done little or nothing to effect change. Why is Obama any different? Maybe to much was expected, but the price for the Democrats is that the new face looks better than same old, same old. In truth, it's not just the Republicans that the public doesn't trust anymore, it's the establishment politicians. It's to bad for Hillary, Joe and Chris and time for Obama
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment