by Elaine Sihera

Created on: April 05, 2008

The Real Reason Barack Obama is Ahead in The Race

Barack Obama, against all odds, is slowly cementing his hold on the nomination for the Democratic presidential candidate. A year ago when he started, the pundits were excited by his presence, the first African American with a real chance at the top spot who dared to hope with such little 'experience'. But they knew best and many would have chuckled to themselves rather smugly at this seeming no-hoper taking on the giant presence of the Clintons, their cronies and their reputation. In fact, if one followed Hillary's campaign closely, by September of 2007, it seemed to be a done deal for her nomination. They seemed sure. But the problem with trying to be fortune tellers without the crystal ball is that something always goes awry.

Regardless of the predictions, Obama has calmly stuck with it, displaying a determination, vision and stickability which has defied all the learned politicos every step of the way. Now it seems that he might even be about to overturn Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania, which was entirely in her favour a few weeks ago. But this would be surprising only to those without the intuition to see what this man represents and why he will be the next president. Where the pundits have gone terribly wrong is deciding in a narrow-minded way what America currently needs, a view that has depended on three predictable things in this race, while missing the only other thing that really mattered.

First of all, they relied too much on past statistics and trends to dictate the state of this election. Of course, no other election in American history had the benefit of the Internet to the extent this one has done. With Barack's deliberate courting of the grassroots support and keenness to build a base from which people could feel a sense of inclusion and ownership of his campaign, it was bound to be a different kind of contest. While Clinton relied on her old funding streams, like the big interest groups, and same old pronouncements from the same old pundits, Obama was quietly nurturing that base which now stands at 1.3 million members on his website. It does not take much knowledge of math to work out that each person giving just $40 per month for every month of the campaign would be $52 million dollars per month, AND without even going near exceeding the limit for contributions per person!

Second, these great pundits kept harping on about his 'lack of experience', deliberately ignoring what he was capable of in

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