March 4 is the new Feb. 5, and, depending on whom you listen to, the race is already over on the Democratic side, with Obama needing just one more win to end the Clinton Age in American politics. After 10 losses in a row, the Clinton Inevitably Strategy now looms as one of the great strategic blunders of our time. How Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin by 17 points would be a head-splitting political puzzle, if it didn't come at the end of a long string of defeats and was not the smallest loss-margin of the last 10.
Even winning Texas and Ohio may not be enough to save her now. One Clinton operative confessed this week that many on the Clinton campaign are already preparing to move over to Obama, once he is the nominee. They, too, are getting caught up in the Obama excitement. In yesterday's New York Times, we were presented a picture of the candidate herself maybe making peace with the idea of a loss.
One way or the other, the long, hard fight for the Democratic nomination will produce a winner well positioned to beat John McCain and become an iconic figure in American history.
Before that happens, however, Democrats must confront the tough question about what becomes of the loser, the runner-up, so to speak-now presumed to be Hillary Clinton, already an iconic American figure in her own right.
Because the race has been so close the Clinton-Obama contest has opened up some unexpected divisions in the Democratic Party among people who have invested their deepest selves into one candidacy or another. It will obviously be incumbent on the nominee to make peace with the opposing factions, but in this case, Democratic chances in November may depend at least as much on what the loser says as who the winner turns out to be.
It is not hard to imagine an Obama concession speech, though it is getting harder to imagine that he will need one. His rhetoric about changing the tone of our politics is easily reconciled with giving up the fight for the greater good. Obviously, he'd have to lose the arrogant edge that, naturally, has been creeping into his victory speeches lately. But as he has done time and again, he would be likely to deliver a speech that meets the moment both in tone and substance.
But what does Clinton say? How does inevitability accommodate so serious a setback?
Peggy Noonan ponders this question out loud in a recent Wall Street Journal column. It is important for a number of reasons. First, Clinton seemed so destined that it is difficult to imagine her, post-election, doing anything other than preparing for an inauguration. Is Hillary Clinton just going to be the junior senator from New York, collecting more prestigious committee assignments in the Senate, maybe one day becoming the powerful chair of the Armed Services Committee or (sometime long after Ted Kennedy leaves) of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions?
I don't see it.
But more important, if Hillary Clinton loses, what she says about Barack Obama will be critical to his chances of victory, because there is a strain of feminism that is desperately invested in the Clinton candidacy that Democrats will need in November. They are the one demographic that remains loyal to Clinton-white women over 50-and they feel rebuffed by Obama's sudden rise.
They see biased media coverage aiding Obama's surge, and they see Clinton being held to a much higher standard than her male opponents. They are disheartened.
The working assumption is that the big Democratic problem comes if Obama is not on the ticket-a lot of his supporters are likely to stay home or otherwise disengage. But if the disappointment of these Hillary troops turns to disillusion, the effect could be equally damaging. So what does she say?
She must tell her voters that history has made a momentous choice, and while she did not prevail in this historic election, she feels that she and they are part of something bigger. She must say that it is the Democratic Party that once again has the opportunity to provide the country with another Great Leap Forward. She must tell them that they live in amazing times, and it is up to them to ratify the moment for history.
If she pulls it out-and no one plays do-or-die politics like the Clintons-it will be up to Obama to convey the same message.
