Change is Becoming Reality

A new mood is taking over the Democratic Party. Friends and family of mine are changing their original positions of supporting Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination. My mother voted for the first time since the 90s today, for Obama. My young friends who are getting the first opportunity to vote and voting for Obama. People all across the country that have never taken an interest or participated in the political process are doing those very things now. Barack Obama is changing this country already, and he isn't even in the White House yet.

With his sweeping victories tonight, Barack Obama has won an amazing eight contests in a row. He has racked up a total of 21 victories thus far, while Hillary Clinton's political machine has only accumulated 10. Clinton replaced her campaign manager a few days ago, and tonight her deputy campaign manager resigned. The much-talked-about superdelegates may not end up playing as big a role as originally feared, as of right now, Obama has more delegates than Clinton--even if you include the superdelegates in the totals. Clinton is in trouble.

In a race originally thought to be easily won, if not dominated, by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama's message of hope and change have transcended both race, gender, and party. Eight percent of the votes he received tonight in Maryland for Obama were Republicans, and Obama captured 59% of Democratic primary voting women as well. He nearly split the white vote with Hillary in both states, dealing a huge blow to her campaign strategy.

In the states that Hillary Clinton has won, she has mostly defeated Obama by a narrow margin. In the Democratic primary process, delegates are awarded based on how many votes you get, not winner-take-all. In the states that Barack Obama has won, he has beaten Clinton pretty badly. Tonight he won Virginia with 64%, Maryland with 61%, and Washington, D.C. with 75%. He is not winning by narrow margins, which means he is gaining a substantial amount of delegates, something that Hillary Clinton wasn't able to do in the states she won. She wasn't able to pull away from Obama because he was barely losing.

There is, of course, always the issue of electability. CNN has been reporting polls show that in a matchup between Barack Obama and John McCain in a general election, Obama wins 52% to McCain's 44%. In polls measuring how Hillary Clinton would do in a matchup with McCain, the numbers are deadlocked at 46% each. This is just another example of how a Hillary Clinton nomination gives the Republican Party their best shot at keeping the White House come November. Obama gets Republicans and Independents that Clinton never could. He is a different kind of politician, introducing a new kind of politics. This is what I would call "change."