Election years in the United States rarely remain civil and polite — at least not for long. And this is especially true when the stakes are high and the outcome of the election is as critical as this November’s presidential election. Case in point: the Democratic primary is starting to turn ugly, as Senator Barack Obama begins to take the lead, winning the endorsement of many powerful figures in Washington, and influential labor unions.
In the past three weeks, Senator Obama has won hundreds of delegates in primaries around the country, and for the first time has pulled ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton in the primary race. Its funny how quickly things can change; only five weeks ago Senator Clinton was practically being “inaugurated” by the press as the de facto Democratic presidential candidate.
With an ex-president husband, and decades of experience inside the power structure of Washington, most observers believed Hillary Clinton to be unbeatable in the race for the Democratic nomination. But Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has failed to go quietly into that good night, and in the last few weeks has won primary after primary, continuing to build momentum and raising millions of dollars toward his presidential bid.
Obama’s strategic gains in the past few weeks have put the “fear of God” into the Clinton campaign. Senator Clinton recently restructured her campaign organization, and “loaned” her campaign $5 million of her own personal money to compete against Senator Obama in the Chesapeake primary.
It is interesting to note that while Hillary Clinton is easily able to write her campaign a check for $5 million, Senator Barack Obama’s total net worth is reported to be approximately $1.7 million.
And although the Democratic campaign has been mostly a “love-fest” so far, things are now beginning to veer into darker territory. Senator Clinton is now going on the offensive against Obama, accusing the junior senator of being both inexperienced and a talker, not a doer. Visiting Cincinnati earlier this week, Senator Clinton said, “It is time we had a president who was a fighter, a doer and a champion for the American middle class,” a possible jab at Senator Obama’s relatively short-lived career in politics.
Clinton has also begun to associate her candidacy more closely with the middle class. But while she claims to be “from and for the middle class of America,” the reality is that she grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago, going on to attend both Wellesley College and Yale Law School. Not exactly a middle-class résumé.
Oddly enough, Clinton has also attacked Obama on what many see as his greatest strength — his ability to communicate coherently and passionately with the public. Senator Clinton has suggested that Obabma is all about the “rhetoric,” not substance, saying “You can choose speeches or solutions.”
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