Rolling Stone Magazine’s Jann Wenner makes the case for Obama. He draws distinctions with the former first lady (and to hear her version of it, the former actual president) that make the feeling I get when I imagine her winning even more like my stomach is full of mud.
Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him “frankly, naive” for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign — one that whupped America’s most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign — from Day One — than Senator Clinton. And at no point did he go negative with personal attacks or character assassination; as much as they might have been justified, they didn’t even seem tempting to him.
Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.
All this was made clearer by the contrast with Hillary Clinton, a capable and personable senator who has run the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics. Her campaign certainly proved her experience didn’t count for much: She was a bad manager and a bad strategist who naturally and easily engaged in the politics of distraction, trivialization and personal attack. She never convinced us that her vote for the war in Iraq was anything other than a strategic political calculation that placed her presidential ambitions above the horrifying consequences of a war. Her calibrated course corrections over the past three years were painful. Like John Kerry, who also voted for the war while planning a presidential run, it helped cost her that goal.
Although Obama declined to attack her personally for her vote for the war in Iraq, he did call it, devastatingly enough, a clear demonstration of her so-called experience and “judgment.” He has also spoken forcefully about the need to break the grip of lobbyists — at a time when Clinton is the largest recipient of drug-company donations of anyone in Congress. Clinton could not address this issue at all, and neither will John McCain, who is equally a player in Washington’s lobbyist culture.
Despite Clinton’s spin that her two primary victories this week restore her claim to inevitability, Obama is ahead in the delegate count. Superdelegates appear committed to following the voters’ will. Depending on what happens here in Florida — where just like in 2000, Republicans are in a position to twist the process — and in Michigan, Obama’s chances are strong. I am keeping my fingers crossed, and my hopes high.
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