LA Weekly

But back to the question? Are these the two to lead us into that final frontier? The more I see of Barack Obama, the more I think so. He's transcended whatever racial baggage some might want to saddle him with to such a degree that I think he's rendered the question of his race moot (albeit we're not in the South yet, but I don't feel like it's going to be any different there and may even be better). Though the friendly specter of Martin Luther King is raised a lot around Obama by pundits and politicos, and sometimes by Obama, too, it's really the spirit of JFK more than MLK that Obama exhumes. His campaign is the most poignant and persuasive iteration of JFK's generational change from a worn-out patrician past to a bold embrace of new possibilities and paradigms ushered in by turned-on young people. Obama isn't just a candidate, he's become a metaphor for dreams that aren't just tied to the dreams of a racial context, but to the dream that the agents of change aren't the politicians but the people of this republic. That we still matter, despite the past eight years. He seems to be giving the country its mojo back after eight years of feeling impotent in the face of the crushing cynicism and fear that's fueled the Bush administration for so long. People want change, but it's not legislative change so much as spiritual change. The change they want is in a large part internal -- they want to believe again and Obama is convincing them not so much to believe in him as themselves.

Clinton is a harder one to peg. She remains steady and sturdy, but hard to embrace. Though she won in New Hampshire, it doesn't feel like a momentum changing win. It feels like a pity win. And maybe she deserves it. But as a symbol or a metaphor, I can't quite put my finger on what she offers, besides the fact that she's a woman. Her voters in New Hampshire skewed old, and female, and, particularly old female. I never think that's a good sign. You need the young people, they're the one's who are looking forward. At a certain age it's more comfortable to look back. So Clinton won on the backs of the backward looking demographic? I don't see Clinton yet, in her support so far or in her message rising to the level of a metaphor that transcends the immediate story of her gender.

The other white meat, John Edwards, just doesn't seem to get any traction, even though he probably is the most potent agent of real change among the candidates on a policy level anyway. But somehow that hasn't been enough. He hasn't found his metaphor either. Or the one he has found -- the image of Eliot Ness, the untouchable, clean up man -- just isn't turning people on. It lacks the inspirational flair of Obama's. I wonder what he needs to do grasp the moment, to become something symbolic in the way Clinton and Obama have?