Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Obamanon Wins Border Clash

While corporate political pundits are pointing to Senator Clinton's establishment win in California, Senator Obama's narrow victory in Missouri is the more telling result from "Superduper Tuesday." If any state can be viewed as a microcosm of the American electorate, it is Missouri or Missoura depending on which part of the state you call home. Iowa is too homogeniously northern, white and rural to qualify as a representative demographic. New Hampshire's small population is too regional and idiosyncratic. South Carolina is too regional and ethnic. The Missouri win shows that Obama's decisive victories in Iowa and South Carolina were not flukes. He has claimed during the campaign that of the two remaining Democratic candidates, he has the most crossover appeal and Missouri proves he is correct. Missouri is both a southern and northern state, rural and urban, ethnic and anglo, evangelical and established church. Obama has managed to bridge a divide within the Democratic Party that is not just racial but socio-economic as well. His movement is from below, not top down. It will take a movement, not just a campaign, to win enough idenpendent and liberal Republican votes to beat the Republican money machine in the general election.

Obama also offers the most contrast with the Republican front runner, John McCain. These two candidates represent two very divergent views of America. McCain is an old warhorse, a tragic hero of a failed foreign policy. He intends to continue the military-industrial security state and global hegemon we have inherited from ten consecutive administrations, Republican and Democratic, since the end of World War II . His vision for American is a hundred year occupation of Iraq and continued global confrontation with our competitors if we take him at his word. Senator Clinton has often identified herself with her husband's foreign policy which did not differ in significant ways from his predecessors in office. The idea of regime change in Iraq came to fruition in Bill Clinton's administration. The current Regime acted with force on that established policy. For a Senator who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to claim she was surprised by the Charlatan's use of military force after granting him the authority, is completely disingenuous, or indicative of her lack of discernment of the militarists in power, or reflects her true willingness to use American military power in the same way John McCain would: to maintain a world-wide hegemony at the expense of domestic programs. Senator Obama offers the hope of a long awaited change in this disfunctional and costly paradigm. He is talking about national security in terms of social justice and economic prosperity, and an America rebuilt to lead in solving global crises, to be more energy self sufficient, and more caring of our citizens. Obama wants to reorder America's policy priorities because the operative dynamic of world affairs has change drastically since the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight. Barak Obama has become the historic face of change.