After North Carolina and Indiana’s primaries, predictability settles in with the rest of the race.  Clinton will win West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico but not with the large margins she needs. Obama will win Oregon, South Dakota, and Montana.  The proportional system of the primaries negates any mathematical equation that erases Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.  Obama’s North Carolina victory secures his edge in the popular vote.  Clinton and undeclared superdelegates continue to move toward Obama while not a single Obama superdelegate has defected to Clinton (Former Clinton supporter George McGovern’s switch to Obama and call for Hillary to drop out of the race is one of the latest).  The numbers are clearly on Obama’s side and his declared next steps highlights the type of leadership we should expect in the general election and the White House.   It also calls the question on Hillary Clinton and us.

Since Obama’s first victory in the Iowa primary, his grassroots campaign bucked tradition and all expectations in a contest most experienced pundits and party activists had initially thought Hillary Clinton had already clinched with her early lead in superdelegates and high name recognition.  Obama broke all records when 1.5 million people donated to his campaign and built a war chest that surpassed both Clinton and McCain’s treasury.  His candidacy single-handedly brought in an impressive number of new voters and restored faith in the youth, which most political experts have dismissed as unreliable.  After the recent grueling several weeks of kitchen sink politics, most candidates would be re-adjusting their public message for the usual voter but instead Obama is launching the largest national grassroots voter registration effort in US history.  On May 10, his Voters for Change program will attempt to sign-up new voters in all 50 states.  Putting aside the media banter, the strategy and tactics of the Obama campaign is clearly about expanding democracy. 

With Clinton’s inability to trounce Obama in North Carolina and win with a large margin in Indiana, a state in which she served as a field director for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, she must respond to Obama’s new type of political leadership.  The traditional approach of checking off a list of interest groups and dividing up the electorate failed.  Additionally, this drawn out and ugly race has hardened some supporters to their candidate. Much has been paraded about a certain percentage of Clinton supporters retreating to McCain should Obama become the nominee.  Clinton is now positioned to be either a uniter or a divider.  This does not necessarily mean that she must immediately end her election bid but she must decide what kind of campaign she should run from here on.  Unfortunately, a choice of the politics of division only reaffirms that her campaign was all about her ego.  (Also, considering McCain has not hidden his commitment to continue the Iraq War and the fact that six of the nine US Supreme Court Justices will be over 70 years of age after June 20, 2009 and that there is a real possibility of the next president filling a significant number of judicial seats, Clinton supporters who vote for McCain were never Democrats in the first place and have masked the real reasons they stood behind Clinton).  The next few weeks will show what kind of leadership she ultimately represents. 

For us, Obama’s leadership model not only challenges Hillary Clinton but all Americans as well.  It places more responsibility on us.  The significance of his caucus victories is that his administration would require us to think about democracy beyond a simple vote and more about active citizenship and sacrifice.  It means more than checking a box on the ballot but getting out the door and engaging others.  Much has been raised about Obama needing to do more to outreach specific groups such as Asian Americans Pacific Islanders.   When we make such criticisms, we fail to understand the significance of his campaign and make the same mistakes of the Clinton team.  The grassroots nature of his operation requires us to make the effort to educate and involve others.  It is not just a slogan when Obama states, “I am asking you to believe.  Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”  We are called upon to be organizers and uniters like Obama. 

Bottom-line:  Change will only happen when we choose to make it happen ourselves.