IX: Obama’s Triumph of the Will: The 2008 Primaries 335who are widely remembered and admired: William Jefferson Clinton and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Neither came from or had access to the elite system, though at times they brushed against it; when
push came to shove, they rejected it for their own survival. Both deeply wanted people to like them
because of their upbringings — both came from poor families in small-town America with abusive,
alcoholic fathers....If the candidate who emerges from this primary season echoes the liberal elitism
of McGovern, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, then Democrats should start bracing for a losing year, one
they should have easily won.” (Salena Zito, “Elite Democrats Lose,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
April 20, 2008)
OBAMA AS ADULATION ADDICT
As one British journalist noted, ‘Obama personally was an adulation addict: he needed the
adoration of the mob as his emotional fuel: In the last, say, three weeks, Obama hasn’t put forward a
single new proposal. He hasn’t, at least on any evidence that I’ve seen, tweaked his stump speech
much. He’s been static and stale and ... he hasn’t been looking like he’s having fun doing this. That
can be deadly, and voters can smell it. A campaign can’t be static. It has to sense new dynamics and
paradigms as they arise and roll with them. While it shouldn’t depart from its basic message, it
should undertake little reinventions of the candidate along the way to show that the candidate is on
top of what’s going on out there.’ (Michael Tomasky, London Guardian, April 25, 2008) The
addiction to mob adulation is historically one of the most ominous possible symptoms for the
survival of a democracy. In this regard, Obama was on cold turkey for most of the second half of
the primary season, a fact which underscored his weakness as a candidate: ‘After the end of
February, it was a very long time before Obama WON any victories in primary elections. In the
interim, the Bill Ayers case and a second round of the Jeremiah Wright scandal exploded into public
view, thoroughly discrediting the Trilateral candidate. Obama had now settled into a familiar
pattern: he was able to win the votes of affluent suburbanites, feckless college students, and the
black community. He had very little appeal to white voters in general, trade union households,
women, retirees, Catholic voters, Jewish voters, Asian voters, Hispanic voters, and to that group of
swing voters known as the Reagan Democrats. The only question that remained was whether
Obama’s losing coalition would look more on the Electoral College map like McGovern in 1972,
Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984, Dukakis in 1988, Gore in 2000, or Kerry in 2004. There was little
doubt that Obama was a sure loser in any normal election. Obama’s gamble was obviously enough
that his friends in the Department of Justice and the FBI would be able to deliver scandals powerful
enough to destroy Senator McCain at some opportune time in the fall. In the meantime, the attitude
of the hacks and elitists at the Democratic National Committee was a mystery to many: why did
they insist on nominating Obama, when he was so obviously a pathetically weak candidate with no
hope of winning the presidency in a contested election? Superficial observers said that this was
because the party insiders really were multicultural and politically correct, and that they therefore
did not want to offend the black community by rejecting its once-in-a-lifetime champion. More
seasoned commentators knew very well that the Democratic National Committee did not give a
damn about the black community one way or the other, and that the hysterical support for Obama
was simply due to the fact that he was the candidate demanded by the Wall Street financial
oligarchs for purposes of saving the entire Anglo American imperialist system. This was the real
reason, and not any concern about black sensibilities.