Mama said knock you out

I guess I went to bed- after further reflection- feeling rather glum and the much needed sleep did nothing to change my mood. The way I have looked at this election to determine the candidate for the general election is that it is much like a boxing match. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton has always been the presumptive nominee (even in 2004 if she had wanted it!) and as such can be considered the defending champion. As in boxing the challenger has to knock out the champion with a tie going to the champ. The challenger has to always do a little bit more because the "judges" and even the "referee" (and the media) have a bit of in built bias bred from familiarity and comfort in favor of the champion. There's an advantage of a shared history there. I think Barack Obama run a great campaign until the week before Ohio/Texas/Vermont/Rhode Island but while he's knocked down Hillary a few times such as in Iowa, South Carolina, the Potomac primaries, and Wisconsin he just hasn't taken advantage of these opportunities and knocked her out.

 

Hillary meanwhile has gotten back up stronger this time as evinced by her very respectable fundraising numbers as of late. I don't know if other Obama partisans share my sentiments but I for one am a bit tired and wondering just what we have to do to defeat the Clintons once and for all. Now that we hear Florida and Michigan may do a revote I feel it just might be asking too much of Obama for him to knock out Hillary Clinton. It is true that he leads in the delegate count and that the math favors him but its also true that nobody wants the democratic party nominee to back into the general election. Nobody wants the candidate who is doing worse as we get closer to the fall campaign to be the one to get the nomination. This is the great unspoken reality of the battle for the democratic party nomination.

 

At the same time the whole thing is rather depressing because neither candidate has been able to fully galvanize the party behind them and I do not believe a shared ticket will necessarily unite the party particularly if the primaries go on as long as they threaten to. A Hillary only ticket campaign, in my mind, presents the greatest downside for the fall election because african americans I do not believe will easily forgive ignoring Obama while independents and defectors from the republican party will likely not vote for her while the republican party base will come out of the woodwork to prevent a restoration. I have never felt that the likelihood of a McCain victory in the fall is as high as I do now.