Now what?
By Ellen Goodman
IS THERE ANYONE who still remembers the folksy winter tableau? Eight Democratic candidates against the picturesque backdrop of Iowa and New Hampshire. It was a feel-good photo-op of diversity. The Democratic Party was black and white and Hispanic, male and female and proud. Our party, its leaders said, looks like America.
As for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Yes, there were the predictable magazine cover stories asking whether America was “ready” for an African-American or a woman. But these were not long-shot candidates, a favorite son or daughter running to prove a point.
Obama presented himself as the American sum of his roots. He wasn’t “the African-American candidate” but the post-racial, post-divisive orator whose presence and eloquence promised to turn that page.For her part, Clinton seemed to leap over the old gender barriers simply by being the front-runner. For once, a woman was the experienced candidate, the tough guy in the race.
Now what? The sense of freshness, the pleasure of breaking barriers, has been nearly exhausted.
We’ve gone from party lovefest to food fight, from having our eyes on the prize to feeling like partisans at a prizefight.
Look at any blog where opinion-hurling — Racist! Sexist! — has become a bitter sport. The pollsters have sliced and diced us into demographic tidbits of race, gender, class and age, producing self-fulfilling prophecies of splinter. Now national polls say a quarter of all Clinton supporters won’t vote for Barack. And the feeling is mutual.
As one supporter told Clinton in an e-mail, “It’s not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is.” But the campaign obits are written and waiting for release. So, for many women, the feel-good tableau is tainted by a 5 o’clock shadow of bad feelings. A historic campaign has opened fissures along historic fault lines.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_9388746?source=rss