The Clintons’ Mistake

They simply misjudged the mood. By focusing on the Penn-trees, they missed the Obama-forest:

Another adviser said Mr. Penn and Mr. Clinton were consumed with polling data for so long, they did not fully grasp the personality deficit that Mrs. Clinton had with voters.

Obama’s victory over Clinton in Iowa reminds me ever-so-slightly of how Bill Clinton once beat George H. W. Bush. And that’s got to hurt.

Clinton and African Americans

She has a very perilous path ahead. A reader writes:

I have been having some email exchanges with friends of mine about what happens next after Obama’s win in Iowa.  We are all 30-something, educated, professional, black men and the consensus seems to be that Obama is going to be smeared big time via surrogates and whisper campaigns in order to put Hillary Clinton back on top. I am not so sure, but everyone else believes it to be a forgone conclusion. But here is the kicker, if that does happen and it works, we have all said that Hillary can forget getting our vote in November. None of us are going to vote Republican.  We’ll all vote in our local, state, and congressional races,  But the vote for president will either be left blank, third party, or better yet, we are talking about writing in Obama

Hillary smears Obama at her peril come November.

Call And Response

It isn’t just Obama who is winning this campaign. It is the infectious conviction of his supporters:

Barack Obama’s campaign won the organization battle at the 100 Club. They got signs into his supporters’ hands, and must have issued instructions to not save the sign-waving for his speech. So visibility through the night was theirs. But the swell and crackle of energy in the room when he spoke? That was organic, and it was overwhelming. Every time Obama started to lose me with a line I’ve heard one time too many this long campaign season, the crowd would bring me back in.

The African-American Awakening

There’s a great piece in the NYT today on it. It’s what Obama himself predicted privately and publicly in the fall: that his mixed showing among black voters was a function of their disbelief that white voters would ever back a black man for president. Now they see that this bkack man can do it, and you can feel the emotions well up:

“People across America, even in Iowa of all places, can look across the color line and see the person,” said Mr. Brown, 35, who was working at the reception desk at DK’s Hair Design near Ladera Heights, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Describing himself as a “huge, huge supporter,” of Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown added: “So many times, our young people only have sports stars or musicians to look up to. But now, when we tell them to go to school, to aim high in life, they have a face to put with the ambition.”

Iowa was, as Obama saw ahead of time, the perfect catalyst for this dynamic. He was very candid about the ethnic make-up of Iowa and how it could prove what no words could argue. But what’s really ground-breaking, it seems to me, is how many African-Americans, especially the next generation, are in favor of Obama for far more than racial reasons. Here’s one typical email:

I’m a thirty-something African American voter here in South Carolina. Up until last night, reading and watching commentary from the MSM and pundit class talk about everything they knew nothing always sent me into a further depression. It is distressing to see so many supposedly intelligent people be totally clueless as to why Obama has succeeded the way he has. 

A large percentage of the Americans just don’t buy the 51/49% narrative that has been shoved down our throat throughout the Bush/Clinton years. Everyone is "shocked", except for the millions of voters who have simply been waiting for the leader willing to put his weapons down in the name of the common good.

Iowa is but a small representation of the change coming. Bush, Rove and Cheney have taught all of America how to be afraid, confusing the "wars" they fought decades ago with the "war" they are fighting now.  I don’t need a daddy like Giuliani to protect me, nor do I need a mommy like Clinton to tell me to take my health insurance whether I like it or not.  America needs leadership again – not shameless pandering, triangulation and poll-based policy proposals designed for only 51% of Americans.

A lot of people (both political and in the press) are very afraid of the Iowa results – that noise we hear is the sound of the walls built between us by politicians and angry boomers crashing down. My spirit was lifted this morning upon seeing my generation finally step up to the plate to reject the current status-quo in our politics. Obama will win – only those afraid of it refuse to believe it.