MyFoxChicago

This post has been edited by an administrator

The baby boom has long been notorious for it's need for "instant gratification." The media wants it as well, not just for marketing purposes but because it fuels the sense of "live'...the sense that it is, to paraphrase Mike Huckabee, "events and not process" that define our lives and infuse public affairs.

But "You Decide 2008" is not shaping up or working out in ways that will play to that sort of immediate analysis and limited attention span. Take the Democrats for instance. Former president Bill Clinton is slowly but surely taking center stage. Some think it unseemly that a former president would so deliberately play the role of "attack dog" in his wife's campaign. He's called the Obama candidacy "a role of the dice" and Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq "a fairy tale." The video of the former president working the the floors of casinos in Las Vegas, putting the arm on union workers before their caucuses created images something less than diplomatic. And this week he will raise his profile on the super sensitive subject of race in Atlanta on Martin Luther King's birthday and later in South Carolina where the African-American vote is so critical in next Saturday's primary

For Barack Obama the challenge is stark and clear. He must remind voters, black, white and Latino, that he is the first African-American candidate for president who runs in what he has tried to fashion as an era of post-identity politics. The Clinton's are doing their even best to get him off that pedestal and define him both as an overreaching and overly ambitious political prodigy whose time as not yet come.

It's a confrontation that is dangerous for Democratic Party and rife with the potential of sowing defeat into the threads of either candidate's victory in this compressed and super heated primary season. There are reports now that both Senator Edward Kennedy and Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel have warned Bill Clinton that he's playing a dangerous game here. But the former president seems determined to take Obama on himself....and in doing so his legacy as "the first black president" is one the line.

All of this also raises disturbing questions about exactly what his role would be in a Hillary Clinton White House. Whatever it suggests right now, there is no suggestion he would confine himself to a passive aggressive role. And it may renew in some voters an unease about what increasingly appears to be the "dynastic" nature of American presidential politics. Two families, the Bushes and the Clintons, both darlings of their respective political establisments, using their previous time in the White House as a justification to spend more time there.

Obama's campaign is built on the premise that, no matter how tempting, he will not resort to the politics of division. But he's being double teamed on every pass pattern by two experienced defensive backs who are not above a hold or even grabbing the face mask. This week will indicate whether there's any play in the Obama playbook to combat that. Because, after a second place finishh in New Hampshire and Nevada, he's got to put another win on the board before Super Tuesday. If the Clinton's manage to beat him in South Carolina they will play it as an "upset", manage the expectations game to their advantage and marginalize Obama with more than twenty states voting less than two week later.

It's Obama's challenge now to make sure voters stay in the process and avoid the perception that they are witnessing a "defining moment" in South Carolina. The media will play a Clinton victory that way and the baby boomers and many others will be quick to accept that rather than deal with the larger questions this fascinating Democratic race has raised. Stay tuned, it may not be all over on February 5th.

jackconaty's Blog

it's barack versus bill now

jackconaty

Inside Fox:
Politics About Us Good Day Program Guide Send Us Email

Write your comment below: Email me when a new comment is added to this entry