Hillary Clinton: Her Dream Deferred

By now Hillary Clinton has officially conceded and thrown her support to Barack Obama in his quest to become President of the United States. I got to thinking about why it took her so long to concede. I truly don't believe her reticence was meant as a slap in the face to Obama or to dishonor her allegiance to the Democratic Party. I just think it was emotionally hard. It seems that many people feel that those in the public eye are imbued with some sort of natural resistance to pain. The truth is that they are subject to the same frailties and hurts as anyone else. This thought helped me to begin to gain more perspective on how she must feel.

I am under the impression that Hillary Clinton really, really, really wanted to be President and I am certain we can all remember wanting something desperately. Perhaps your mouth waters at the thought of a long ago ice cream that toppled from its cone precipice just before your summer scorched tongue made contact. When I think of this, I am emotionally catapulted back to those hot summer days and tears and snot streaming at the loss of my ice cream. That was just an icream. I can't even fathom what it must be like to watch your chance at the presidency topple into the dust. If it were me I'd probably still be crying like someone stole my pink huffy bike with the sparkly streamers.

Just to drive home the point more succinctly, put yourself in Hillary's place. You have done everything right. You've put up with your husbands antics, ran for and successfully secured a spot in the senate. Established a following and struck when the iron was hot. So close was the mantle of ultimate power that you could almost feel it resting on your shoulders. Then to have this brash young upstart whose youth and inexperience should have all but guaranteed that he'd be relegated to also-ran status, come out of nowhere and co-opt your dream.

Add to that the fact that he's African-American. I don't offer that information as a way to insinuate the race card into this story. I offer it based on the dearth of historical data available about past African-American presidential bids. Perhaps Hillary fell victim to status quo thinking. The belief that things would be the way they'd always been. At the outset, there was nothing to suggest that Barack Obama would or could mount a brilliant grassroots effort that would energize a historically apathetic and lackadaisical populace to unify. However, he did. He crossed cultural, racial, age and religion barriers to unite people.

The voter turn out in this primary process was unprecedented. Many of the people voting were people who have felt disenfranchised and forgotten in the political process until now. I remember quite vividly seeing young African-American men in line during early voting. Some of them were tattooed, cornrowed and hitching up their oversized pants. They indicated that they'd never thought to voting or politics until now. Yet they stood patiently for upwards of three hours to get the chance to cast their vote. The chance to see these young men have a cause for hope where they'd had none before. That meant something. Regardless to what anyone thinks about Obama, he has given many a reason to believe that things can be different.