Good politics, in both moral and practical terms, comes down to where you expend your energy. Let me preface this by stating what will likely become obvious: I currently support Obama for the nomination. However, the lessons of the Obama campaign are applicable across any boundaries of rivalry.
What I would say is Clinton's biggest problem at this point is her unwillingness to abandon the current system. She's accepting money from special interest contributors (not a mortal sin in my book, but stay with me), and before the campaign, she was careful not to run afoul of the Republicans, but in the process made a lot of political decisions that weigh her down.
I'm not going to go into that with any depth, but here's the trick: accepting political orthodoxy, or counting on it to win out is not the best way to campaign. It relieves you of some risks, but the paralysis it brings on in terms of one's ability to answer the voter's sentiments with one's own is a risk all its own.
Obama's ability to raise money without going to the special interests, to sweep a whole number of red states and swing states handily should not be minimized. He's not letting himself become a slave to demographic chess games, the strategy of catering to a base.
Base politics is the politics of fear. Two kind of fear, really: fear of loss of support, and the fear inspired in the voters of other candidates as a means to keep power resting firmly in the hands of a few. It is also, on a fundamental level, a losing proposition. As the Democrats discovered in 1994, and Republicans discovered in 2006, there's a point at which people's disgust with those in power overcomes people's revulsion towards the other side.
It also makes some fundamentally flawed assumptions about the way people behave. The fundamental flaw is free will. Blacks don't have to vote for blacks, nor women for women, nor men for men or latinos for latinos. People can choose. This can be an alarming possibility for those who depend on their constituents being doggishly loyal, but it can be fairly useful in the hands of those willing to generate support by other means.
Categories bleed into each other, have boundaries where values become interchangeable. Base politics appears to deal with solid chunks of population, but in fact mostly works by appealing to the more dedicate portions of the population. That worked pre-Bush, when government seemed to work well enough without our help, but Bush has shaken people out of their sense of political apathy, which means that these different categories not only have become more unstable in their populations, but the parts of the population that were unstable in their political leanings in the first place, but who were staying out of it, are now much more involved.
Taking money from special interests is fine for Base Politics. It works there because the base doesn't easily defect on such grounds. They'll support you regardless of what deals you make. The trick, though, is that it paralyzes your choices, your thinking, and in today's political environment, that's a risky proposition.
Obama's given himself freedom to do things the easy way by taking what would have seemed the more difficult route: depending on donation from individuals. He's less able to abandon his supporters, but he's got more freedom to head in their direction, and not have to worry about getting that phone call from a special interest telling them they're looking for another candidate. This is key, and goes to my whole point here: the old politics paralyzes political initiative and reduces the agility of our politicians.
He's also doing something smart in appealing to voters not traditionally part of the base. Why? Because there are plenty of people who feel underrepresented. Reagan found success when he appealed to Democrats who felt their interests weren't being served by the party, and Obama is finding success by appealling to those people as well. Only, instead of getting them to cross party lines against their interests, Obama will be able to do something even Reagan couldn't do: welcome constituents home.
Most Americans are to the left, in their attitudes, in their religious perspective, and in their politics, to the Republican party. That party succeeded in carving people away from our ranks by use of wedge issues, taking issues like abortion and defense, and leading people to vote against their other interests. Bush, though, took that thinking to its limits, and in many ways destroyed the usefulness of wedge issues for the Republicans. They can still use them, but years of failure in the war, and the frightening over-involvement of church and state has convinced many that they're not well served by this political bargain with the devil.
When it comes down to it, there are plenty of people out there who aren't appealed to by the Democratic establishment and it's terribly careful triangulation with the Republicans. They have come to believe that they are wrong, and don't see much promise in those Democrats who are still trying to appeal to them on the basis of copying the Republican's old macho appeal.
The change they want is paradigmatic change, change that feeds back and changes the playing field. Some will try to advance the party's cause by carefully engaging in the same old politics. They're fooling themselves. Although such politics works on some people, it is obsolete; people are waiting for a completely different kind of change, and at best they will view any such candidate who wins on such grounds as a stepping stone. No, it's for the best that somebody comes along and just sweeps the table of all the other junk. That's what people want, and the more the candidates can approach things that way, the better for all involved.
Morally speaking, what people want at this point is somebody capable of dealing with the mess at hand. Whether Obama or Clinton are up to the challenge is a debateable point. Some will talk about experience, but all things being equal they're equally experienced and inexperienced. Obama's been in public office longer, Clinton's been in the Senate longer, but both our main candidates hardly qualify as political veterans. Neither of them has ever been in executive office, a governor or mayor. Whoever our candidate is, they will have to learn that as they go, and in a new political environment to boot.
I think at this point, Obama's got it, and not only that, he's free to go with his (so far) good instincts. It says something that with Edwards only recently out of the race, Obama was able to get the significant majority of the states, and endure what should have been the fatal loss of the mainline blue states in the east, and California in the west.
We have to consider in this election not only who can defeat the Republicans, but who can defeat them moving forward, and who will have the political flexibility, when they get into office to tell the special interests to go to hell. This will be important, because many of those interests will be set to frustrate change and waste the momentum of the moment. We need a candidate strong enough and free enough to change the balance of power in Washington. We may win with Clinton, but we will triumph with Obama.
