Obligatory election analysis II: Hillary wins, and why exactly is everyone surprised?

Is this the smile of a woman who thinks you're going to vote against her?

by Benjamin Wachs

I know, I know, it was fun and affirming to be caught up in post-Iowa Obamamania. There was even substance to it: he genuinely mobilized young people in a way few political candidates – or rock stars – do. He’s appealing to something noble in our nature, and if we decide not to be complete cynics about it then it will doubtless have a good effect on American politics. He is the first promise we’ve seen, in the living flesh, of an America no longer painfully obsessed with race.

He is, in short, a serious contender.

But Hillary has immense resources and a serious political machine of Democratic insiders – practically the whole Democratic machine owes its jobs to Bill Clinton – backing her candidacy. Did you think she wasn’t going to win some big ones?

Almost every major Democratic campaigner is working on her staff: she’s got the grown-ups, the professionals, and the influence peddlers. They’ve done this before … as has she. Obama has not. He hasn’t even served a full term in the senate – and I don’t say that to denigrate him, I mean: LOOK AT THIS, a guy who hasn’t even served a full term in Washington is taking on the entire Democratic power apparatus. It doesn’t take anything away from him to say he’s not going to not going to win them all. He can’t: the deck is stacked too heavily against him. By rights, he shouldn’t have even gotten this far.

Nor is it going to be an easy road ahead: both Iowa and New Hampshire effectively allow Independents to vote in primaries and caucuses, and it’s independents who are putting Obama on top. That cross-over appeal says a lot of good things about him, but what’s going to happen in states that don’t give independents a voice? The polling coming out of New Hampshire says registered Democrats preferred Hillary: the machine may crush him yet.

Yet judging by the media reports coming out of New Hampshire, a lot of people figured Obama was going to sweep from here on out. That’s the trouble with appealing to idealism: idealists demand big, symbolic wins – and then generally don’t want to be bothered with any hard work that comes next. The fact that seasoned journalists seemed to believe in an Obama sweep right along just goes to show the low quality of political journalists these days. I used to be one – I can vouch for the fact that they’re mostly idiots who specialize is finding new ways to say what everyone already thinks they know.

But I doubt Obama was one of those swept along in the hype. He may be cut off from the party apparatus, but the man knows how to build his own machine: talking to his campaign coordinators and watching his volunteers walk the streets, you see his roots showing through. The man cut his teeth as a street organizer in Chicago: he knows what he’s up against, and he knows that political victories are won block by block – not in the media. He took a calculated risk, running for president, that the country was ready to be idealistic again: and he may be right. But his campaign isn’t built like a love fest, it’s built like an engine … and every part needs to work if he’s going to go anywhere.

The interesting thing is that Hillary cut her political teeth in Illinois politics, too. She helped canvass the South Side of Chicago at age 13 – it’s a shared perspective that I suspect gives them a lot more in common than either will admit.

And they’re both gearing up for a ground war. State to state, Chicago style.