Clinton and Obama Are a Team, Like it or Not.

Cross-posted as a critical comment at the AfroSpear's Skeptical Brotha blog and at MyLeftWing and at the Francis L. Holland Blog. Re-published as a guest post at the plezWorld AfroSpear blog.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share the same essential challenge in the 2008 election:  They have to defeat the white male supremacy paradigm - at least in terms of its hold over the 2008 presidential election - to end the 43 term white male monopoly of the presidency. 

If Barack Obama weren't Black, then everyone would speculate - even more than they do now - about his potential as a vice presidential candidate.  And he would look damned good as a vice presidential candidate on the Clinton ticket. 

We certainly ought not refrain from this speculation simply because he is Black.  Barack Obama obviously has a future and I believe his future can and should begin as vice president in the Clinton II Administration. 

IF he and Clinton are equally bought and sold to the Establishment, as Skeptical Brotha contends at his AfroSpear blog, then they have a lot in common that should recommend Barack Obama for participation in such a pairing.

Clinton IS going to win the nomination, and then half of all AfroSpear bloggers (and their constituents) are going to lose enthusiasm, unless Barack Obama is also on the ticket.

Field Negro says, for example:

Sorry Francis, I am still not feeling Hillary just yet. I just can't get past her flip flop on the Iraq war, and her slick attempt to weasel out of her fickle convictions.  Still, it would be nice to see America join the 21st Century and elect someone besides a white male as President.

However, the PlezWorld AfroSpear blog predicts:

HILLARY CLINTON will head the 2008 presidential ticket ( . . . ) I'm still pulling for BARACK OBAMA ( . . .)

Black folks will still come out to vote in droves, because for some reason you people still love the CLINTONS.  PlezWorld

As Skeptical Brotha observed, Barack Obama is NOT Jesse Jackson; he lives in a different historical moment and a radically different social context, and the proof of this is the reception he is receiving.  His success is heavily influenced and supported by his times, and the success of Jesse Jackson was a prerequisite to creating the times in which we now live, such as they are.

Jesse Jackson established himself and built a strong national network mostly in spite of the lack of white establishment support, and in spite of not holding elective office.  Meanwhile, Barack Obama has been able to corral considerable white establishment support even before the first national votes have been cast.  Just like Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both symptoms of a changed America in which Blacks and women have the right to vote, the right to run for elective office, and even the right to become president of the United States, if the public elects them.

They are symbols of the same phenomenon: the power of the franchise.  In this sense, they ARE a team, whether they know it and acknowledge it or not.

For both of them, success depends on the same challenge:  Vanquishing the white male supremacy paradigm.  If they cannot vanquish the white male supremacy paradigm, at least with respect to its power over the 2008 presidential election, then neither of the can become president of the United States.

However, if they unite their forces and their wills to make an historical change, to seek out a new American life and a new American civilization, then they (and all of us) can boldly go together where no woman or Black man has gone before.