Letter From America
An historic choice
On Tuesday, June 3, Barack Obama, the junior Democratic Senator from the state of Illinois, became the first African-American presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party in the US. Senator Obama is on course to becoming the first black head of the government of any western nation. Americans should congratulate themselves on this historic occasion and the historic choice.
According to Associated Press count, superdelegates pushed Obama over the hump (2118 delegates) even before the results of the last two primaries of the Democratic contests in South Dakota (Hillary won) and Montana (Obama won) became known.
The winning delegate tally was revised upwards (from 2026) on May 31, after the Democratic Rules Committee decided to award Michigan and Florida half their delegates (they had broken party rules by bringing their primaries forward) and apportioning delegates to Hillary and Obama according to votes cast in their favour in Florida, and assigning the uncommitted votes to Obama in Michigan, where his name was not on the ballot.
From the Iowa caucus on January 3 to the South Dakota and Montana primaries on June 3, the Democratic presidential selection process has lasted exactly five months. Obama's victory has set up another five months of campaign against the Republican presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a proponent of change, and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war, who is a staunch supporter of the current US military policies in Iraq and of President Bush's economic policies.
The newly anointed presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, delivered his victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, sending McCain an unmistakable message by celebrating his triumph in the very hall where the Republican Party will nominate McCain as their presidential candidate in early September.
As amazing as Obama's victory is, it is more stunning because it came at the expense of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment who had backed her. Obama, a first-term senator who was virtually unknown on the national stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the former first lady and one-time "inevitable nominee" in a 17-month marathon for the Democratic nomination.
"I am open to it (being the Vice-President) if it will help the party's prospects in November," Clinton said on June 3. Obama's campaign had no public reaction to Clinton's comments, which raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats have called a "Dream Ticket," that would put a black man and a woman on the same presidential ticket.
In her speech from Baruch College in New York, Hillary, however, did not endear herself to the Obama people. While praising Obama, she neither acknowledged that Obama had won the nomination, nor did she suspend her campaign. "I am not going to make any decision tonight," is all she would tell her supporters. Many experts characterised Hillary's speech as less than gracious.
In his electrifying speech, Obama, on the other hand was profusely complimentary to both Hillary and Bill Clinton. "Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign, not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight," Obama said.
"Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honour to compete with her," he added. Obama praised Bill Clinton's economic policies, which made Americans prosperous in the 1990s.
The young Illinois senator's success amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved. Obama stood for hope, and change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready, she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.
Together, they drew record turnouts in primary after primary -- more than 35 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as well as Democrats. Yet the race between a black man and a woman exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.
Obama drew strength from blacks, and from the younger, more liberal and wealthier voters in many states. Older, more downscale voters, and women preferred Clinton.
Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious internet fundraising, meticulous organising and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy -- all harnessed to his own gifts as an inspirational orator.
Obama now has a few days to catch his breath before the presidential campaign against John McCain begins in earnest. Come presidential election time this November, if the US economy remains as bleak as it is now, and the Iraq war remains as unpopular as it is now, and no new Jeremiah Wright pops out of Obama's past, the first African-American presidential candidate may win the race for the White House in a landslide!
Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed is a Rhodes Scholar and a Daily Star columnist.
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