Don’t call it a comeback, she’s been her for years!

I still hadn’t recovered from my 4 hours of sleep last night, but it’s now 6AM, I haven’t slept a wink tonight and I’m still energized by these elections. I guess I didn’t realize how much they mattered to me. Last night, everyone was predicting that Obama was going to win by at least 5 - 10 points today and that Hillary was effectively out of the race. Apparently, even though she’d raised $100 million and still has $20 million in cash to spend - and even though fewer than 1% of the US population have actually voted, even including New Hampshire’s voters — her investors were also buying into the Obama coronation.

And then Hillary became female again. Her voice broke on national TV. She reminded people that Obama was black, but she was a woman, and it’d be a huge “change” if Americans elected the first female president. Her breakdown was apparently one of the most viewed clips on YouTube today. Male political analysts are noting that “as men” the moment touched them. And Obama’s analysts are saying that women saved Hillary since her moment of weakness — and the reminder that she is a woman — made them feel sorry for and identify with her, resulting in a tsunami of support from the female community.

So I think that there are at least 4 important lessons to be learned here:

• Politics are at least as much about emotion as they are about issues. Hillary learned that the hard way. Her ability to win will depend on her ability to adapt to that political reality. And like any good performer, sometimes you have to be able to dig deep and gut out a convincing performance if it isn’t coming naturally.
• Bill and Hillary Clinton are political maestros. He was labelled the Comeback Kid when he ran in 1992, and she’s now being labelled the Comeback Gal. What does that make Chelsea?
• The political pundits don’t know shit! Hindsight is often 20-20, but it’s a lot more difficult to predict the future, even with clever pollsters. The big question tonight is: How did all of these “experts” get it so wrong? And more importantly, why should we trust them going forward? CNN’s host unwittingly betrayed the arrogance of political pundits when he noted: ““The actual voters can surprise people.” It’s almost as if, the pollsters and analysts believe that they are the bearers of political truth and the voters are the pests who sometimes get in the way.
• As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the big fear of the African-American community is that we can’t allow ourselves to believe the Barack hype, because what white people might say to a pollster — “Oh, I love Barack Obama! Of course I’m voting for him.” — might not reflect what they do when they are alone in the voting booth. It’d be sad if that factor — that is, race — had any significant role in explaining Hillary’s comeback and the exaggerated poll numbers in favour of Obama.

For me the ideal would be Hillary in 2008 and Obama in 2012 or 2016. He has time to gain the relevant experience to transform his poetry to prose, as Hillary suggests in her revised stump speech.