The big think

Barack Obama, the first “postracial candidate,” is heading to the Democratic nomination because of his near-universal support from black voters… The idea that Obama was a postracial politician dates to his famous keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. He set the postracial template himself… describing his father born in a small Kenyan village… His mother was “born in a town on the other side of the world”… Over the next three years, writers ratified this postracial definition of Obama’s own design. From this idea, a Democratic star arose.

Hillary Clinton can plausibly argue to the superdelegates that much of this is electoral bunk. In Indiana, her share of the white vote to his… was 60-40… In North Carolina, 61-37. They won’t buy it. Ever. The “first woman” running for president would have to be pulling 90 per cent of her own piece of history, women, to compete with his achievement. Obama has locked up 90 per cent of a constituency that Democrats not only must have to win in November, but that they’ve elevated to mythic status the past 40 years.

The Democratic superdelegates are products of their party — nice liberals, nice people. To stiff Obama’s black voters at this late hour, most of the superdelegates would have to be as hard and clinical about politics as the Clintons. They aren’t. Obama moves them and validates their commitment to the Democratic idea… The superdelegates are faced with choosing between the Clinton machine’s brutal demographic math and thinking well of themselves. No contest.

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Will the national electorate sing from the same hymnal? Barack Obama is going to run an aura campaign… a speech candidacy, a rhetorical candidacy, a JFK candidacy, the promise of another Camelot. Listen here to Barack… “I believe that this election is bigger than me or John McCain or Hillary Clinton. It’s bigger than the Democrats versus Republicans. It’s about who we are as Americans.” That’s as big as it gets.

Excerpted from Daniel Henninger’s ‘Obama vs McCain: Let’s Get It On’ in The Wall Street Journal, May 8