news from the primary front

As promised a couple days ago, here are a few words on Obama's victory speech after the Iowa caucus.


As one of you noticed Barack Obama uses a rhetoric and a rythm that echoes the way preachers speak, just like MLK was inspired by Baptist sermons. For instance he uses a lot of repetitions : "you have done what N.H. can do in four days, what America can do in 2008", "we are one nation, we are one people".
In terms of content, it's interesting that he also uses inspirational words : hope, unity, honesty, and change of course, which is the motto of his campaign ( in the background you hear people chanting : "we want change". And its only later that he mentions policy without really getting into specifics ( health care, unemployment, tax cuts for the middle class, promising to "free this nation from tyranny of oil", war in Irak). It's a lot more about what he calls his "vision for America" and his belief that "in the face of impossible odds people who love this country can change it". Obama says the peopple who have voted for them have "torn down barriers".
This reminds me of the kind of rhetoric you would hear during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, at least coming from the non-violent branch of the movement who relied on similar concepts and hopes for a better society, who aimed at fulfilling the true nature of America.
The way he delivers this speech is extremely inspiring and emotional, let's take a quick look at the content.
I would like to emphasize the way he casts himself and his supporters as people who have overcome great antagonism. They have won in the face of adversity, they had ennemies who apparently said that "this could not be done", they have overcome the "cynics". I'm not sure of whom he is referring to when he says all this. Is it Hillary Clinton and her supporters ( she has attaqued him for political reasons because she thinks she is more prepared for the job and because she does not agree on some of his policies not because she is an ennemy of hope and change!), or the press, or the political pundits? Basically he is positionning himself as the hero of the American people who fights the political system of Washington which has appeared as corrupt and has alienated the voters. And I do wonder if it's not simply a way to make his victory even more outstanding and unique. Is he creating artificial ennemies over which he has pacifically won?
The last point I'd like to make is on the very interesting way he defines his victory in the Iowa caucus as a historic moment , as the starting point of a new era (video : 9'30). "This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington has always said was inevitable". He repeats the phrases "this was the moment" and "this was the place". What is striking is that he compares himself and his campaign to the Patriots who freed America from the British, to the militants of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery and Selma (video : 12'00) he describes his life story as typically American and himself as the embodiment of the American hero. So he uses historical references and the key moments of the past to prop up his victory (limited and small) as a new defining moment in American history. Basically, if he does win the nomination and the presidency this speech might be studied as the beginning of it all !
The final is grand :
"Together ordinary people can do extraordinary things because we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States we are the United States of America. And in this moment, in this election we are ready to believe again"

This week's edition of The Economist is about the American primaries and offers several artcles and profiles of the candidates. You can either buy the printed edition or read it on the web :