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THE CABAL
President Obama |
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| Slow down, Barack, you're not there yet | |
 by Michael Weiss, January 4, 2008 |
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A friend emailed to say that he was worried about Obama's victory speech. It sounded too messianic. Some people like this sort of thing: Andrew Sullivan knows hope and was assumed straight into heaven last night. But as against Howard Dean's primal scream, the Chicago boy went in the orotund, let-my-people-go direction. The air of election was upon him, as Harold Bloom might have put it if Harold Bloom were trying to sleep with Obama.
One might easily write this off as the fervor of a hard-won first victory in a long campaign. But the wisecracks have already started:
Obama did work a new joke into his speech. Referring to his new status as the Democratic front-runner, he said: "This feels good. It's just like I imagined it when I was talking to my Kindergarten teacher."
The problem is, he's still not the Democratic front-runner. He's behind Hillary in all the national polls by a substantial margin and, as I noted earlier, he cleared what was a potentially dealbreaking obstacle for him only. Hillary could afford to lose Iowa; Obama could not.
The press has unsurprisingly focused on his race as the starkest factor in the Iowa win: A Lillywhite state goes head over heels for a black man. No doubt that is historic, but more significant is Obama's religiosity to a deeply Christian, Midwestern polity. Sixty percent of the Republican caucus-goers identified as evangelical, to which fact we can attribute almost entirely Mike Huckabee's win. (Were we hearing so much about "breaking the mold" and defying the "conventional wisdom" when Pat Robertson convinced a sizable number of field of dreamers he was the man for the White House in 1988?) How many Democrats are equally faith-minded? And doesn't Obama make a more convincing person of God than Hillary does?
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Michael is an editor of Nextbook and a contributing editor of Jewcy. His work has appeared in Slate, Gawker, New York, Democratiya, Reason, The New Criterion, The Weekly Standard, City Journal and Standpoint. |
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Adam Shprintzen
Reasons you will be missed 'round here:
"The air of election was upon him, as Harold Bloom might have put it if Harold Bloom were trying to sleep with Obama."
You bring up a really interesting point; all of the demographic polls that I have read so far have touted the large percentage of evangelicals supporting Huckabee, yet similar stastics have not been available on the Democratic side (age and income I have seen...important, of course). It does seem that the Dems do get a pass on the religiosity issue, despite many of their own evangelical (or just plain wacky) religious connections and ideas.
Steven Lee Beeber
I agree with Adam, you'll be missed, Michael. You raise some very good points here and put things in context. One major caveat. Did you really have to summon the image of Harold Bloom sleeping with Obama? Much less any one?! That's cruel!!
Brian
For many Iowans, church is the highlight of their week (how many of us can say that about shul?), so it's understandable they might want a president who introduces more of that wonderful feeling into their lives. And I think it's crass to look down upon them for it.
But Huckabee's evangelical advantage is just being spun by Romney to suggest very subtley that he was the victim of bigotry among caucusgoers. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson's candidate (maybe Dr. 700 himself doesn't take much stock in Iowa) came in 5th without trying.
If Obama has any balls, he will announce fairly quickly that, in the event he is the nominee, Joe Biden would be his running mate, thus showing he isn't going to react wildly to over-inflated gaffes that mean nothing.
My fear is that every single Democrat will succumb to the idea that people will only vote for "one of them" and pick Richardson as a running mate.
Michael- you're smart but replaceable.