Political Predictions from America’s Heartland

I always had my eyes on the end game. Political events have borne me out.

Just before the flush of Super Tuesday elections, I e-mailed that the race for the Democratic nomination would be extremely close and that there was no guarantee of a Democratic victory in the general election, regardless of President Bush's negative ratings. I wrote: "...a significant percentage of voters will not vote on the issues but will vote according to emotional comfort level." Allowing for the strength of incumbency, my only error was in picking Hillary Clinton to eke out the nomination; however, I also declared that she would not become president.

I am an Ivy League intellectual and internationalist, and Barack Obama is my kind of candidate. Never before have I had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who so closely mirrors me and my beliefs. But Obama is also a generation ahead of his time—according to the U.S. census, twenty years from now, the minority population will achieve majority status in American society. At present, I fear the coalition of liberals / intellectuals / independents / Millennials / minorities /netizens is not large enough to overcome the silent majority represented by middle America without the addition of crossover voters.

My affiliations are frankly elitist (Cornell, Harvard—Office of the Assistant to the President / Harvard Law School / Harvard Business School / Graduate School of Design / Faculty of Arts and Sciences—Boston; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau; ABC News, CNN International, Hearst-Argyle) and I have traveled independently all over the world. However, I grew up in America's heartland, and I understand the strength of the heartland's ingrained values.

The election was Barack Obama's to lose until the evangelical base became energized by the presence of Sarah Palin. Evangelicals are not just religious fundamentalists. They are also people like my neighbors and family friends who believe in God, country, and patriotism. They are pro-life, even though they may believe in a woman's reproductive rights. Many of them are multi-millionaires, even if they attended state universities. Others are first-generation immigrants who came to America as physicians and military officers.

Given my environment, I may be an anomaly as a supporter of Barack Obama. I applauded the inclusive society and sense of innovation that his candidacy represents. But Obama's greatest misstep is that he and his advisers assumed that American is a meritocracy, that the people want a well-educated, literary, and eloquent change agent who will bring us into the future and provide equal opportunity for all. They groomed and presented us with one of the best America has to offer: the zenith of what America can represent around the world is, indeed, embodied in a bi-racial man raised in our most diverse state of Hawaii who lived in and imbibed the cultures of Southeast Asia and a classic African-American stronghold in Chicago.

Regardless of what the Republicans threw at them, the Democrats would win hands-down if Hillary Clinton were Obama's running mate. Obama demonstrated his conservatism by selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate. Biden, although an elder statesman, brought nothing of demographic importance to the party. With Clinton, there was a chance to create the irresistible double whammy of a minority-female ticket, but Hillary and Bill played nice too late. Obama and his people did not trust them. The nominating convention was not the time and place for the Clintons to redeem themselves, though they have done so admirably.

If Obama loses in November, he will not have a second chance. The seismic shift of his candidacy was predicated in part on its insurgency. For what is change but insurgency? Hillary Clinton will likely then be the Democratic nominee in 2012; however, if her positioning strategy was to let Obama be the standard bearer with the expectation that he would lose the White House in 2008, her strategy will backfire. Americans are predisposed to give an incumbent president two terms in office, and there is nothing Clinton can do to unseat a sitting president.

Here is my great fear: Sarah Palin will become America's first female president.

John McCain is 72 years old and could conceivably be in office until he is 80. He has already suffered a cancer scare. The probability is very high, given the stress of the job, that McCain could become incapacitated while in office. My family and friends in southwest Oklahoma have a strong tradition of public service, so we like and respect John McCain for his years of service as a Navy officer, a prisoner of war, and a senator: we understand his drive to be of service to his country. However, at some point, this sense of service was supplanted by an ambition to be elected president at all costs. McCain must have been rankled by the idea of an upstart taking precedence over someone who waited his turn. So he made a deal with the devil and master manipulator Karl Rove.

Rove knows the right buttons to push to elicit a visceral reaction, and I see his fingerprints all over the elevation of Sarah Palin. Hers is a Cinderella story come to life because Rove went trolling for someone who could steal Obama's thunder. As such, Palin had not been fully vetted.

Palin is the ying to Obama's yang.

A woman, a working professional and soccer mom: a member of the religious right and of the NRA. She is a natural in front of the camera, and her persona is approachable and salt-of-the-earth. To me, the Republican ticket is a manufactured creation, designed by Karl Rove in the same way that Sean "Diddy" Combs auditions the members of the boy bands and girl groups he matches up.

It is irrelevant, in a larger sense, to speak of someone as not having the experience to become president. Nothing in life really prepares one to be the leader of the free world. In America, anyone can win the presidential lottery. All we voters ask is that we have enough time and opportunity to get to know our candidates—their assets and liabilities—and an abbreviated general election season does not allow a thorough vetting of a relative unknown for a hand-picked spot on a presidential ticket.

Make no mistake:
1) the election will be a litmus test of the culture wars
2) the election will be won through coverage and momentum in the media news cycle
3) the election results will be closer than expected
4) Obama is very much in danger of losing the election
5) if the Republicans win as a result of unethical ploys or controversy, as in 2000, race riots will break out

I have accurately called every election since Ronald Reagan was elected (I knew Al Gore would not win...he seemed to have lost his sense of self during the campaign, which cost him votes, and George W. Bush's identifiable persona was someone you could have a beer with), but this is the first time I am calling the election a toss up.

Political psychology has always fascinated me. I was a dual government major at Cornell University before I switched to English and comparative literature and creative writing. In college, I spent my summers working at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. in competitive, paid internships with the Foreign Service and the Office of Public Affairs. I have run for and won elective office all the way from junior high school through college, and I was chosen for Oklahoma Girls State and 1st alternate to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. I learned more about the art of leadership and politics at the elbow of Charles Ogletree, Barack Obama's Harvard law professor and trusted adviser, who appeared in the campaign video shown at the Democratic convention.

What can Obama do in the time remaining to win the election? And if he loses, what will it take to elect a minority person to the Presidency? Hopefully, I will have time to mull over these questions before I head to Boston. This is for certain: in twenty years, any minority candidate will have to reach out and make substantial inroads into African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities.