A voice from UNDER the bus...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Hilary threw me under the bus quite awhile ago. I mean, I felt myself slipping in New Hampshire - seems about ten years ago, I think. By South Carolina... I was a gonner! I was under the bus as the Clinton Campaign started the effort to paint Barak as the "Black Candidate" as opposed to a Democratic candidate who happened to be Black.

Call it "dog whistle" politics if you will, I heard it loud and clear! (And last time I checked my DNA I was 100% human.) And it was pretty clear to anyone who cared to look that the Clinton crowd had decided to sacrifice the Black vote in an attempt to appeal to the older White demographic and the "blue collar" demographic (that one sorta throws me since most of the folk in my community are blue collar and Black).  As Super Tuesday approached, the Clinton bus ran over me and then backed up and did it again. I was simply not on their radar screen.

Hilary's current coalition is, by her own admission, based on White voters. Older White voters, mature women voters and those "hard working American White voters". And she is right, a large part of her voters won't vote for Barak. But it is also true that they wouldn't have voted for him if he raced in and saved them from a house that was burning down around them. (Come to think of it, he's trying to.)

If we're honest, there is a lot of the post WWII demographic, Baby Boomers if you will, who were raised in a different America. One where Blacks were segregated and minorities (and women) knew their place. They were the generation who, like me, lived on the edge of the racial divide, and they never really became comfortable with the change forced by history and "those other people". They didn't like integration, fought affirmative action, resisted feminism and women's rights - voted against Equal Pay, Gender Equality and moved to the suburbs to escape the integration of Urban life.

Hilary is right, a lot of them won't vote for Obama! But the truth is, she is making the same mistake with that calculation that she made with her campaign. Because time has passed her by - she is living a 20th Century dynamic in a 21st Century world. Thank God!

In fact, this election is about more change than is generally thought of. It is a not only about a change of political administrations and parties, it's also about a change of generational control.  Bill Clinton was it's leading edge... he was the leading edge of the Boomer Generation, Dub'ya is the trailing edge. The next wave is upon us and Barak is its leading edge - the transitional figure. And this wave is a lot less race, gender, culture myopic. This is the diverse generation - what's been called the "millennial generation." And whether the Clinton's like it or not, combined with the folks who were on the left-side of the civil rights movement and grew with it, they have the numbers and the impetus to take control.

So Hilary... I know some of your folks won't vote for a Black man for president. But if you were half the leader you say you are, you would have led them out of the 20th Century mindset and into the 21st Century, instead of building a barricade on that bridge Bill kept talking about. But it's not too late... you can still come on over - and we'd welcome you. Just let me out from under this damn bus!