[R-G] Couple of Thoughts [New Hampshire]

[Hunter Gray]

Nice to see that issue of We! Magazine, Norla. [Apropos of the Redbadbear list.] Warms the current cold chill in our Snake River Valley.

Hillary won in New Hampshire -- indisputably -- but her victory margin was mighty small. This keeps her going -- but, for Obama, I don't see this as anything more than a manageable rock on the way along the river. His support is obviously broad, even if some of the "youth" fell down on the matter of actually voting. [I suspect his campaign will tighten up that and other dimensions as it moves forward.]

It appears that the older Democratic vote went pretty much for Hillary. In addition to whatever effect her last minute "tearing" [real or contrived] may have engendered among many women, I wouldn't be surprised if the not-too-covert Clinton defamatory campaign against Obama [e.g., the "cocaine" thing which, of course, had surfaced from the Hillary campaign early on via her New Hampshire staff] played some role -- especially in the older age ranks.

And I wouldn't be at all surprised if racism was lurking in a number of "older" New Hampshire minds. [Iowa, which I know pretty well, has never seemed to me to be "especially" racist. It has its challenges in that dimension but it's a state full of small colleges [several of them genuinely first-rate] and several significant universities. The University of Iowa is a Big Ten school. Iowa's cosmopolitanism is much higher than many of our East Coast friends realize.] I've felt that one of Romney's problems in Iowa was his Mormon faith -- he had others, too! --and I think an Obama problem in New Hampshire could easily involve sub-rosa racism. The Granite State is not Massachusetts and, although I haven't been there for a long time, I think some parts of New Hampshire are closer to parts of Maine in racist attitudes -- at least among many of the older people. [In Maine, there is plenty of anti-Native stuff.]

I have a strong hunch that as it proceeds, the Obama campaign can transcend the negative dimensions of the race thing in most parts of the country. In most instances, Obama's campaign doesn't seem to have any substantial problem in drawing women. The role of some components of the organized labor bureaucracy in their "be-safe oriented" support of Hillary strikes me as yet another indication of the old "security-at-all-costs" -- with consequent lack of creativity and movement. That can change as the Obama campaign increasingly reaches the rank-and-file. [I shall always, of course, remain a good union person.]

Ultimately, I suspect much of Edwards' support -- and perhaps even his endorsement as well -- will go to Obama.

The Obama campaign has "Movement" around and within it. The Clintons do not have that -- and never can. But the Obama phenomena is not, as I alluded in an earlier post, the Millennium. Thoughtful radicals, both outside the Democratic Party and within, have their [our] visionary work cut out for us.

We always do.

Yours, Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]



HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 

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