Baby Boomers, worried about their impending retirement years with their faltering pensions at risk, now face seemingly uncontrollable health care costs which in many cases are putting their very jobs at risk. Fewer and fewer companies, with the other economic strains at work, are enamored with the thought of paying the health bills of an aging work force -- and its family members.
Young voters are just coming into that world, and job and economic security must seem like oxymorons to them.
Accordingly, in this election cycle, Mickey Mouse-gotcha politics isn't sticking like it has in recent years. Mr. Obama misspeaks. His minister is a racist. His wife says something many people don't like. So what? In years past, things like that could derail a candidacy. Not this time. This election cycle, despite far more media coverage than ever, when every throat-clearing is turned into a potential gaffe, it appears that American voters are not going to be distracted. They want a change. Call it hope, call it what you will, but don't call it business-as usual.
Mr. Obama is charismatic and well-spoken. He offers an intangible feeling that better days are ahead. His message, trite as it may seem to some, is resonating across traditional party, class and racial lines. Is he too naive? Too inexperienced?
Hillary Clinton and John McCain personify business-as-usual. They've both been in Washington for years now and done little, if anything, to alleviate -- or prevent, for that matter -- the problems we now face. So much for experience, one might reasonably conclude.
Much can and will happen in the months until Election Day, but as Ms. Clinton has already discovered to her dismay, there's something happening here that traditional political strategy can't cope with. Call it the times we live in. Short of a stunning upturn in the American psyche, Mr. Obama will ride that wave into the White House. And no amount of gotcha is likely to change that.
5 comments:
"In years past, things like that could derail a candidacy. Not this time."
Maybe that's true in the Dems' left-based primaries, but it's doubtful the wider electorate will be so open-armed about making president a man with the "judgment" to associate for more than a decade with an unrepentant domestic terrorist and to sit for 20 years under a race-baiting, anti-American pastor. Americans likely don't crave that kind of change.
The San Francisco fundraiser gaffe may have changed Obama's future. Hillary has opened up a big lead in PA, which may keep her hopes alive for a brokered convention in Denver.
Yes, I agree Americans want change and many are not in a great mood. However, Hillary Clinton continues to effectively undermine the Obama campaign themes of "unity" and "hope" with her scorched earth tactics. And Obama's longtime mentor Jeremiah Wright continues to be controversial. If Wright keeps talking, that forces pundits and writers to talk and write about it -- and that's not good for the Illinois senator. And, rightly or wrongly, Obama's latest condescending comments on guns and religion will hurt him in the months to come should he be the nominee. FYI-- I'm such a "bitter" American that I went to church and then went to a firing range!
Welcome to the 'sphere!
You touch on a basic point about the nature of politics: There is such a thing as a "public mood," and the successful candidate or party is the one which most appeals to that mood.
"Horse-race" election coverage tends to miss the role played by public mood, since the incidents that constitute the news are an expression of the professional interest of political journalists, rather than the interests of the general voting public.
Interesting point. I'm surprised you sound to positive on Obama. However, I have to admit it's nice to know people my age who are actually aware of what happens on Nov. 4th.
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