The audacity of hype

For those of you who’ve been following the “Obama in crisis” myth that’s been doing the rounds, Sunny rightly reubts by pointing out that unless a massive majority of the uncommitted superdelegates decide en masse to disregard the popular vote, alienate their party’s most dependable voters and ‘roll the dice‘ in favour of a woman with more baggage than Terminal 5 and a bigger electability gap than Gordon Brown, the Illinois Senator remains the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party.

Nonetheless, we shouldn’t underestimate the scale of the challenges Obama faces, nor can we easily-dismiss the weaknesses in his electoral coalition that’ve been exposed by both Clinton’s kitchen sink strategy and the Republicans’ nomination of John McCain. To be specific, his weakness among older voters, the white working class and hispanics, whilst exaggerated, is certainly large enough to be exploited by an opponent who enjoys considerable goodwill amongst these groups.

This isn’t something that’ll damage his electability too much if he balances the ticket with a Vice Presidential pick whose presence can win enough reluctant working class and/or hispanic voters who haven’t been impressed by him thus far. Unfortunately, there’s probably only one man in the entire party (aside from the Clintons) who can claim to have a genuine appeal amongst both groups, and electorally he’s something of a busted flush. Which narrows the choice down to these two men; both strong, experienced and effective politicians able to win over considerable number of voters in his weakest areas and not only be genuine assets to the campaign, but to the country once elected.

I believe they call this a win-win.