Desperation?
Hillary Clinton, the candidate for youth? No, seriously, Hillary! is trying to make the case that she is the one and only candidate for the younger voters in America. A more jaded eye might say that she took a look at the numbers in Iowa and decided she better try to jump on that bandwagon before it left her behind.
Just seconds into her speech Friday morning, Clinton was declaring herself the candidate for America's youth — stealing a page from the new Democratic presidential front-runner, Barack Obama. The night before, the under-30 crowd came out in larger numbers than ever in Iowa caucuses normally dominated by the AARP-card set, delivering victory for the Illinois senator who promised to bring change to Washington.
That's why after her third-place finish in Iowa, Clinton got off her plane in New Hampshire and declared: "This is especially about all of the young people in New Hampshire who need a president who won't just call for change, or a president who won't just demand change, but a president who will produce change, just like I've been doing for 35 years."
"I'm running for president to reclaim the future — the future for all of us, of all ages, but particularly for young Americans," she said a few seconds later.
Obama has campaigned on his ability to change politics in America, and he's proven he can do it in at least one state. Fifty-seven percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers who were surveyed were participating for the first time, contributing to the record-breaking turnout. Obama got 41 percent of them, to 29 percent for Clinton.
Obama also showed he could appeal across racial lines in his bid to becomes the first black president, winning in one of the whitest states in the country.
One's mind boggles at the thought of Hillary Clinton as the candidate for youth. If anything, Obama's victory in Iowa, one of the "whitest states in the country," a term I personally find offensive, should say that Martin Luther King's dream of a colorblind society is actually happening. That Clinton is now trying a different "identity" politics is, I think, a mark of how bad her internal polling must look at the moment.
She's acting scared - and scared brings out desperate.
Side note: I think the Associated Press "analysis" piece says rather a lot about the bias and prejudice of Nedra Pickler, the author, in this instance than it does about the realities. Her off the cuff slighting of older voters in Iowa (the "AARP-card set") and the swipe at the racial makeup of Iowa - without acknowledging that one of the "whitest" states managed to overcome that reporter-perceived shortcoming is fairly telling.
By Mwalimu Daudi, January 5, 2008 @ 1:45 am
Don’t be surprised if Nedra Pickler’s bigotry becomes the official MSM narrative if Obama gets the nomination. Race and ethnic baiting have long been an MSM specialty.
But regardless of who gets the Democrat nomination - if you thought the MSM was bad in 2004 and 2006, those elections will look like a bipartisan lovefest compared to this year.