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Hope on a Rope

Emily you’re right: It would have been bad enough if this Democratic primary had seen voters tearing the party in half over the war or immigration or health insurance. But it’s dispiriting as hell to see them ever more hardened along race, class, age, and gender lines. These very angry, very personal fissures in the party make Obama’s insistence tonight that “we may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction” more dubious than ever. Many people who desperately wanted to believe that of themselves last January spent the better part of April torching their neighbors’ lawn signs.

Still, if tonight’s speeches were any indication, Clinton may be going down fighting, but she is going down. Without the fire of her Pennsylvania speech or scoring a knockout by any definition, she actually gave about the same speech as Obama—health care, gas prices, mistreated veterans, icky McCain, economy, fond nod to the grandparents—but somehow hers was all about Hillary, while his was all about us.

And if Clinton was going down fighting, Obama looked like he was finally, after months of wheezing and gasping, prying himself off the ropes. Somehow, Clinton is at her best when she’s on offense. Also when she’s on defense. But Obama reminded us tonight that he is at his best insisting that both offense and defense require games of “names and labels” and "distraction" and "exploitation." To that end, both he and Clinton congratulated the other, and each sounded welcome notes of reconciliation and party unity. But while she talked about “winning” and “victory” and “teams” and “tiebreakers,” he’d moved beyond it. Finally. 

And just by stepping back from these increasingly small fights, he maybe reminded us that we, too, are bigger than all that.

Read more XX Factor reactions to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.