I’ve seen Barack Hussein Obama—the self-termed “skinny kid with a funny name”—sobriqued as many things over the past few months: domestic insurgent, kafir infidel, hope monger, cult leader, the black candidate, a presidential candidate who happens to be black, Kennedy reborn, Senator Galahad, etc. None of these are adequate. The moniker that best embodies everything he represents to us, the American People, and in particular to this generation is Human Prozac (credit Kathleen Parker).
We like Obama because he makes us feel good. It is that simple.
Now, even though we’re young and naive, we’re not complete idiots. We know he is less experienced on the national scene than Hillary Clinton. We know that his health care plan is probably not as comprehensive as Senator Clinton’s. We know that his chances of pushing Congress to actually get things done are slim to none. We know that real life isn’t like The Little Engine That Could. We know that we don’t get anything done by repeating that mantra “Yes, we can.”
Yet, we’re willing to sweep all these considerations under the rug. Why? It’s because we’re desperate to have something make us feel good about ourselves. It’s because the defining moments of this generation haven’t. There has been no giant leap for mankind, no Miracle on Ice; most of us are too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. In fact, the one defining moment of this YouTube-generation is something that reminded us of the evil side of the human spirit. The ensuing reactions showed us its fearful and hateful sides.
What Barack Obama possesses is an uncanny ability to raise our spirits. Just by his presence and his words, he gives us energy and optimism. We don’t even know what it is exactly about him, or what it is that Hillary lacks. Somehow, those chemicals in our brains start dancing and the end result is that we feel slightly better than we did a few moments before. This isn’t any sort of real happiness. We know this. We’re all being suckered by Obama. We know this. But we’re still allowing ourselves to be duped. We’re the cigarette smoker who has read that Surgeon General’s warning and continues to light up.
Is this fleeting pick-me-up enough to get us to vote for him? Yes! As crazy as that may sound, here’s our reasoning:
The differences between a Clinton administration and an Obama administration, or even a McCain administration, would be negligible to most Americans: Social Security is not getting fixed; there will be some half-hearted attempt at green energy; any attempt at a universal health care plan will probably get so watered down that it won’t be much different from the status quo; and our primary education will continue to suck. Abroad: we’re realistically stuck in Iraq for some time; the dollar will still be weaker than the Euro; China’s lack of standards and her pool of cheap labor will continue to dominate the global markets; people will continue to be slaughtered in Sudan.
Well, if this is how it’s going to be anyways, wouldn’t you rather have a president that makes you feel better about yourself? If this person is going to be on TV all the time, wouldn’t you rather have someone you liked listening to? All things being equal—or even some things being better under Clinton—we’d rather have someone who inspires us to believe that anything in our grasp if we’re willing to reach for it. Someone who makes proud to carry an American passport. I’m not sure why, but Hillary Clinton doesn’t do this for me. I suspect the same is true of the vast majority of my generation.
I recently read a wonderfully crafted piece “Goodbye To All That (#2)” by Robin Morgan in which she calls out the rampant sexism and misogyny in our society and shows how this election season has brought forth some of the worst. She is right. Hillary Clinton has been the target of wave after wave of toxic sexist and ageist sludge. Make no mistake: the glass ceiling still exists; anyone male or female who has worked in an office can tell you this. Morgan rallies us to take a stand against this injustice. She concludes by saying: “Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.”
Yet even after seeing all of this we still prefer Barack. Maybe we are all sexists. This is not sarcasm. I’m being serious. But the problem for Hillary is that, even if we weren’t all sexist, the people of this generation would still cast their lot with Obama’s. Those of us who didn’t live through the sixties don’t understand the struggles of that generation. We’re voting against Hillary not because she’s a woman or because she’s older. We’re voting for Obama not because he’s young—but because we are.
This is the challenge that faces Clinton. How does she tell us that things under her will be so much better that we’ll forget all about that Obama feeling? Well, for starters, she should stop casting herself as the hunter trying to shoot Obambi. This only makes a generation already on Prozac and Zoloft even more depressed. She needs to show her strengths instead of trying to expose his weaknesses. She is smart and strong, a policy expert and a true leader.
At the same time, she can’t play Obama’s game of trying to be that big amorphous feel-good blob. She can’t runs as a candidate who happens to be a woman. Instead, she needs to run as a candidate who is a woman. Therein lies her greatest strengths. Why don’t we ever hear about the Hillary that got a seven minute standing ovation as the first ever student commencement speaker at Wellesley? Why don’t we ever hear about her landmark speech at the UN Fourth World Conference that proclaimed “women’s rights are human rights”?
Barack Obama doesn’t have a vagina. He will never know what it’s like to be a wife, a mother, a woman who struggled against a sexist society and has risen to the top. Hillary needs to tell us more of her story. She can’t be afraid of alienating men in this endeavor. The American people, men and women, love a good story. They already know about Barry Obama, that skinny kid born of two continents. It’s time for them to learn about Hillary Diane Rodham, that white girl from Chicago who struggled against an unjust system to become one of the most influential people (man or woman) of the past half-century.
Nicole Bourbaki is a single mother who likes to claim that her child was immaculately conceived.
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