Dominated by economic turmoil and fueled by unprecedented amounts of cash, the 2008 presidential campaign has proved momentous for African-Americans, women and young voters.
The race’s many twists defied early predictions -— that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic primaries and that the war in Iraq would trump other concerns. It gave instant cultural prominence to hockey moms, the Weather Underground and Joe the Plumber.
Nearly two years and billions of dollars later, the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain is down to the voters. Its larger meanings are a Rorschach test of political perceptions.
“My biggest takeaway from this race is that the Obama campaign is showing us that people on the right and on the left have more in common than the last eight years have shown us,” said Morris Reid, a Democratic strategist. “If he wins, I think you will see this town become much less partisan.”
President Bush ran twice as a new breed of Republican, promising to mend sharp partisan differences in Washington. But during his eight years in office, the two parties in Congress became more bitterly divided.
“This election means a massive potential changing of the guard,” said Garth Jowett, an expert on political propaganda at the University of Houston.
Jowett compared the 2008 campaign to Kennedy’s 1960 election, saying both represent a generational shift, with young voters playing a key role.
Whether the race ultimately proves a net positive for women remains an open question. For some, Clinton’s defeat in the primaries proved a tough political lesson and was widely received as a setback.
“I think McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate has rebounded against him,” Jowett said. “More women seem insulted by McCain’s belief that he could drop her in and get their vote.”
But the way that money is raised and spent may be the biggest change this year. The Internet fundraising seeds sown by Democrat Howard Dean in 2004 came to flower for Obama this year, as he outraised McCain significantly through a heavy reliance on small donors in the early going.
That advantage allowed Obama to back out of public financing and spend more than $600 million while McCain was bound to the $84 million required by the law. Obama was the first candidate to reject the public financing arrangement since it was created in 1976.
African-Americans, long a reliable bloc of the Democratic Party, are expected to turn out in unprecedented numbers for Obama. In once-solidly Republican states such as Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, Obama has been leading in the polls for months.
“This is a remarkable American story,” said John Brabender, a Republican communications consultant. “We all have to be in awe of people voting for and being willing to vote for an African-American for president. … At some point, I think people will look back with some amazement.”
That said, a key lesson from the 2008 race could involve polling, Brabender added, if prognostications about Obama’s advantage don’t bear out in the final tallies.
