Two Body Blows to the Political Establishment

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

For the party establishments–Democratic and Republican–it was a bad night, as their favored candidates went down to severe defeat.

With Barrack Obama’s crushing victory over Hillary Clinton, the campaign scenario of the Democratic elite is now in the trash bin. Their calculation had been that Obama would never be able to match the Clintons’ fundraising. Wrong. Obama raised huge sums from small contributors, who can continue their support. A lot of Hillary’s big financial backers have already reached their legal limits. They thought Obama was another Howard Dean, headed for deflation as soon as the voters faced the moment of decision. Wrong again. Mrs. Clinton had the big feminist organizations in her corner and a good chunk of organized labor. They didn’t deliver, any more than the Democratic machine supervised by campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe and superpollster Mark Penn. They thought they could sink Obama with December’s slurs about drug use, Islamic heritage and color. They backfired.

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