The Kennedy endorsement of Barack Obama shows a growing distaste for the Clintons, suggests Gerard Toal.
Democrats in Washington DC these days are an excited and nervous bunch. On the one hand, there is great excitement that the party has two outstanding candidates for president of the United States. The American public is eager for political change and voters are turning out in record numbers to support the Democratic contenders.
All this bodes well for a Democratic victory in November. On the other hand, a divisive conflict has broken out within the party over the rival candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton which could imperil victory in November.
Clinton was long the clear frontrunner and signed up most of the top Democratic organisers to her campaign. But Obama matched her in fund-raising prowess and, running an inspiring campaign, defeated her in Iowa and in South Carolina.
After Clinton's defeat in Iowa her campaign quickly recalibrated and went after Obama's message both openly and covertly. The open attack was on Obama's supposed lack of experience, the contrastive argument that he would not be "ready for the job on day one".
The covert attack was on Obama's strategy to create an inclusive coalition of support which transcends the traditional categories of American politics. Simply put, the Clinton campaign needed to reassert these divisions and drive women, whites and Hispanics from a potential Obama coalition. Clinton's "teary moment" in New Hampshire started the process of getting white women to re-identify with her campaign.
Other Clinton surrogates, led by the former president, have advanced the rest of the agenda, calling out Obama's blackness in subtle and not so subtle ways. Thus, Bill Clinton compared Obama to Jesse Jackson and accused the Obama camp of "playing the race card" after a spat over Martin Luther King jnr's influence.
The tactics of the former president have provoked an intense reaction among Democrats and political pundits. One of the most respected veteran liberals on Capitol Hill, Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont, endorsed Obama, saying: "We need a president who could reintroduce America to the world and reintroduce America to ourselves." Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in 2004, also endorsed Obama and condemned Clinton.
Now, in a significant double whammy for the Clinton campaign, JFK's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, have come out for Obama, anointing him the new generational heir to JFK, a mantle Bill Clinton once held. The endorsement is significant because Obama's charisma and uplifting rhetoric have long summoned Kennedyesque ghosts. The Kennedy clan endorsement gives him authentic branding.
One thing the Kennedy clan did not do was call out Obama's Irishness. Obama, if elected, will be the first Irish-African-American president: O'Bama to his Irish-American supporters. That Obama's Africanness eclipses his Irishness is a measure of how the discourse of blackness still overpowers in the US. But the fact that Bill Clinton's blackening strategies were themselves called out, and that Obama has been embraced by Irish-American icons, is a sign that politics is shifting.
Obama has staked his campaign on a compelling post-racial and post-ethnic narrative - a more radical version of JFK's own struggle to transcend WASPish suspicion of his Catholicism - where he features simply as a JFK-like Democrat who happens to be black. It remains to be seen if this will work.
Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate and the Clinton family has many loyalists in the Democratic Party. But party elders are nervous because her compelling narrative - that she would become the first female president of the US - is clouded by the fact that she is the wife of a former president who has lost none of his power to polarise.
Unfortunately, her road to the White House is harder because of the culture wars of the Clinton years. Obama appears to have greater potential to construct a broad electoral coalition for the Democrats and create the momentum they need to pick off vulnerable Republican seats in the Senate.
But fear and loathing are powerful passions in American politics and the Republican attack-machine will use them against Obama. Already he has been the target of scurrilous strategies to evict him from an insider American identity.
Besides the inevitably sly blackening strategies, look also for the use of the polarities Muslim/Judeo-Christian, terrorist/patriot and tyrant/hero (as in Barack Hussein Obama vs John McCain) to summon emotive frames around him.
But, in the end, the most consequential distinction may be a visual one with little narrative. If Obama and McCain are the nominees, a 47-year-old faces off against a 72-year-old in November.
As with JFK, the best-looking image on TV will win.
Gerard Toal is professor of government and international affairs at the school of public and international affairs in Virginia Tech, Virginia