Pundits are busy dissecting the vote totals and telling people what is missing from the movement behind Barack Obama. They are busy, too, telling us who won’t vote for Hillary Clinton.
When Obama won Iowa they said it was a quirk and he wouldn’t win enough Black votes. When he won 80 percent of the Black vote in South Carolina they said he couldn’t win enough white votes. When he won 43 percent of the white vote in Georgia they said he couldn’t win enough workers. When white workers on Minnesota’s Iron Range backed him they said he couldn’t get enough Latinos. But the vote in the Southwest shows his support among Latinos is growing.
When Hillary won in New Hampshire they said she did so with support from women but she couldn’t get men to vote for her. But her big votes in major states came from men and women alike. After South Carolina they said Blacks and young people would not vote for her. Yet in New York and California, she drew support from both of these groups.
All of this punditry serves to obscure what is really going on in our country. Masses of voters are bringing their passionate desire for a new kind of politics to the polls. Obama rallies and Clinton rallies are packed with men, women, youth, seniors — Black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American — and with union members and nonunion workers. They all want an end to war, they all want universal health care and they all want an end to the Bush nightmare. And they are marching to the polling places in record-breaking numbers.
What a contrast with the sparsely attended Republican rallies and their candidates’ appeals to racism, sexism and reaction. The right-wing Republican power brokers are trembling about what November holds for them as they watch all this.
The united action of broad cross-sections of the people in the Democratic primaries is bringing closer the dawning of a new day in American politics.
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