Autumn Marathon

January 20, 2009

I began to be able to imagine this moment on Super Bowl Sunday, February 3, 2008. Barack Obama was already a sensation, having won the Iowa caucuses in January 2008. But Hillary Clinton had defied the polls and won the New Hampshire primaries.  Obama won South Carolina, Clinton won Nevada (though, if memory serves, she got fewer delegates due to the Obama organization’s superior caucusing skills).  Super Tuesday lay two days ahead.  The outcome of the Democratic nominating contest would remain in doubt for months.   Fifty weeks ago I attended a Super Bowl party in Brooklyn - the attendees were New Yorkers who ovewhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton. On the the other hand, the kids, my son’s 14 year-old peers, were enthusiastically for Obama.   As the only adult present who supported Obama, the others kept on trying to persuade me to change my vote.  I listened to their arguments which - in the end - amounted only to “Hillary has experience; Barack has very little.  She represents New York.  And the political establishment is telling us to vote for her.”   These arguments did not persuade me and as I thought about them, I realized that if that was all the Clinton campaign could rely on - her candidacy would fail.  For me, that was the end of the “inevitability” that surrounded Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.  It has been a long political road from that moment until now, but a short period of time - it was less than a year ago.