Clinton has a campaign; Obama a movement

By TOMMY TOMLINSON

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — She was late.

Politicians are always late. That’s how it works. But the crowd had packed the gym at Forsyth Technical Community College an hour and a half early for Hillary Clinton’s speech, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Then 5:30 passed. Then 6. Then 6:30. Somebody tried to start the wave.

At eight minutes to 7, you heard the cheers and there she was, waving to the crowd of 1,200 fans, ready to give her third speech of the day, hoping to catch Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

She never once mentioned his name.

Her speech on the economy was much the same one she gave a month ago in South Carolina.

She talked about fighting the insurance companies and ending No Child Left Behind and bringing the soldiers home from Iraq. She talked about how bad a job President Bush has done and how she disagrees with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

But as she went through the speech, you began to notice how she talked about time.

She wants to start a race to find renewable energy sources — like we started a space race after the Soviets launched Sputnik.

Balance the budget

She wants to balance the budget and cut the deficit — like her husband did when he was president in the ’90s.

Politicians do this all the time. They look back to the best of what we have been and vow to repeat it. So it is natural for Clinton to do this.

It is also why she is losing.

Let’s be clear: She has not lost. There’s still time!

Please do not bet money on this.

For Clinton to win the nomination, she needs to trounce Obama in nearly all of the last 10 primaries; the Florida and Michigan delegates to be counted even though there was an agreement they would not be counted; AND a critical mass of superdelegates to lean her way.

It would also help if someone could find video of Obama high-fiving his pastor after a sermon.

All this is certainly possible, in a Dewey Defeats Truman sort of way. And there is no doubt that, even though she is despised by millions of voters, she is loved and admired by as many or more.

My guess is that she would have won the nomination — and would be our president — in a normal election year.

This is not a normal election year.

She has a campaign, but Obama has a movement. She was too slow to see it. Then again, most everyone was too slow to see it. It seemed to take only a few days for Obama to transform from strictly OK Illinois senator to an inspiration for millions of people new to politics.

This is the key — the new people. They have barely heard of Sputnik. But they have heard of Facebook, and when Obama talks about making social connections, bringing all kinds of people together, it sounds like the chord they have waited their whole lives to hear.

Obama’s poetry

This has only a passing connection to policy. Hillary knows policy. Obama knows poetry. And the poet has built a big fourth-quarter lead.

Hillary Clinton will not quit. Think about what she has been through in public life. Does she seem like a quitter?

What she may be is out of time. For so many years, ambitious women such as her were told that it was too soon for a woman to be president. And now, when the country finally seems to be ready, someone from another group that has waited all these years has stepped to the front of the line.

For this woman, in this election, it might be too late.

X Tomlinson is a columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.