Before Tuesday’s primaries, Senator Clinton described Texas and Ohio as her “firewall,” the last bastion of defense where she, once analogized by TIME to an “immovable object,” was to halt Senator Obama’s “irresistible force.” At stake was her entire candidacy. Lose one primary and it was over. In the end, she won both. The fire reigned and her wall didn’t crumble. In the aftermath of the collision, the firewall towered mightily, and the Democratic battle for nomination prolongs.
Repeating the now familiar patterns that have largely characterized this election so far, the impression of a generational battle reasserted itself once again. The oldest age-group (65 years and above) veered towards Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive experience candidate, while younger voters (17-29 years) voted overwhelmingly in favor of Obama, who often emphasizes the value of judgment. And this trend illustrates the differing outlooks the generations were brought up on.
The youth vote, in a way, is a projection of their understanding about the American ideal of renewal and reinvention. John Judis’ essay “American Adam” suggests that Obama’s emergence is partly a function of the electorate’s desire to “create a future without reference to the past.” In this sense, it is not merely an exhibit of the discontent with the current Bush administration, but a desire to overturn the old order and replace it with a new start. The youths’ enthusiastic embrace of Obama’s message, thus, is not a denial of the problems America faces but an assault to solve them, done through a new beginning.
Moreover, Obama’s ascension arguably reflects a youth rejection of a traditional top-down management premise. This age-bracket’s leaning to Obama is a projection of their own experiences with an organization’s integration, where companies’ increasingly diffuses executive roles and holds multiple-stages of shared collaboration. It is a belief that a bureaucratic rank-and-file system no longer suffices on its own, instead evolving into a cooperative and process-oriented approach to developing solutions.
Contrastingly, the older generation’s relative preference for Mrs. Clinton is a probable extension of their belief in refined wisdom’s importance to confronting challenges. This brand of experience, at least in politics, was on full display on Tuesday night. Mrs. Clinton’s unshaken resilience when faced with an impending defeat, at least according to several polls, is admirable. She refocused her message and subsequently convinced voters that she was most qualified to lead the nation in a time of crisis, an illustration of the necessity of relevant experience.
But this belief about experience has its own flaws, as TIME’s report of a Florida State University experiment on experience shows. Experience, in a traditional sense, implies authority and mastery over a certain task. But according to the experiment’s results, experience matters little in the face of novelty, as seasoned professionals committed the same mistakes that a novice did when presented with a same simulation. And in an increasingly changing world, where new challenges range from climate change to China’s awakening, experience may not be as necessarily critical as judgment is.
So how will these two radically differing strands influence the remaining races? It’s impossible to know. At any other time, backed by the party establishment, an outstanding political team and one of the most popular president in recent memory, Mrs. Clinton would have normally swaggered to the nomination. But this is not a normal election. This is an election without precedent, where an inspiring African American candidate is competing against a very credible female candidate. There is no indicator.
Early media estimates suggested that the final delegate count from the races was still unclear, despite her triumph in the three states. The story of the “irresistible force” versus the “immovable object” continues. Stay tuned.
Stay tuned! ZACH HAN hopes that the Democrats can decide on a nominee soon, and you can agree at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.
