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Maureen Dowd, New York Times: (Hillary Clinton) showed again with her squeaker win in Indiana that for many white working-class men, she is The Man — more tenacious and less concerned with the judgments of the tony set, economists and editorial writers. Talking up guns, going to the Auto Racing Hall of Fame, speaking .jpg)
from the back of pickup trucks and doing shots of populism with a cynicism chaser, Hillary emerged from a lifetime of government limos to bask as queen of the blue-collar prom. Nobility is for losers. Hillary tore Barry’s wings off, and so psyched him out with her silly goading — “Enough about the speeches and the big rallies!” she cried — that he gave up his magical trump cards. Wandering around Indiana, appearing in neighborhoods and at diners without any advance notice, talking to handfuls of people, Obama strived to seem less lofty and more mortal. Hounded by Hillary, Bill and Rev. Wright, he just looked sort of numb. When Obama went to an 11:30 p.m. shift change at an auto components plant here, a Newsday reporter on the scene noted that many of the white men “were less likely to smile or look him in the eye or seem impressed with him.” In a restaurant in Greenwood on Tuesday, Obama approached an older white guy who waved him off, muttering afterwards to a reporter: “I can’t stand him. He’s a Muslim. He’s not even pro-American as far as I’m concerned.”
Rich James, Post-Tribune: Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. ought to just let it go. Get over it, already. He stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong and got whacked. But like a punch-drunk fighter, he came back for more and got smacked again. As Bob Knight’s wife once told him, "The horse is dead, get off it." McDermott, the last two weeks, has been sounding more like a Republican than a Democrat. You may recall he criticized the Gary Community School Corp. for taking some senior government students to the poll to cast an early ballot. If this had been Lowell or Kouts busing kids to the polls, you wouldn’t have heard a peep out of the good mayor. But these were Gary students. More specifically, they were black students. And McDermott assumed that because they are black, they would be voting for Barack Obama. The lion’s share probably did so. I couldn’t blame them. Obama is an impressive candidate — although word had it that some female students may have voted for Hillary Clinton. McDermott is a Hillary backer — not so much because of an admiration for Clinton, but because he was pretty much told that is the direction he would take. McDermott first said it was likely the students were being manipulated and would be voting for Obama. But then he said that’s not really what he meant to say even though he said it. What he meant to say was that it was an improper use of public money to bus high school kids to the poll to vote. "By that logic, could I use Hammond city buses and city gas to ferry people to the polls when I run for mayor?" McDermott asked. "It’s not that different." Well, mayor, yes it is that different.
Matt Tully, Indianapolis Star: Indiana loved its moment in the spotlight so much it refused to give it up Tuesday night.Long after the polls closed, long after North Carolina’s primary had been called for Sen. Barack Obama, long after many people had given up and gone to bed, the nation and the world waited for final results to come out of Indiana. They waited. And waited. After 1 a.m., it appeared Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had pulled out a narrow victory. But before the race could be called, several hours had passed and the national media had begun to poke fun at Lake County, where mayors bickered on CNN over delayed vote counting. The nation’s eyes were still focused on Indiana. The spotlight we’ve come to love was still shining on us. As the hours passed without a decision Tuesday night, I had a thought: Excuse me, Indiana. But it’s over. The candidates and the national media are ready to move on to West Virginia and Kentucky. It’s time to accept our fate.
Mark Barnett, Terre Haute Tribune-Star: The results of the Indiana primary piling up Tuesday night felt like the credits rolling at the end of a “Dr. Phil” episode. Now that it’s over, imagine Doc McGraw asking, “Did y’all learn anything from this?” Cynics will say no. But the past two months — particularly the last 13 days — have been like a massive group therapy session for Hoosiers, and most of us have grown from enduring it. (Of course, any of us who’ve felt compelled to groan while we’ve grown should be forgiven. After all, how many times did we hear attack ads remind us that gasoline costs $3.65 a gallon? The Democratic presidential candidates’ campaigns spent $8.8 million on TV commercials in Indiana, according to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. They could’ve bought Hoosiers 2,410,958 gallons of gas with that.) Seriously, being confronted by the nation to choose between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton forced open discussions at diners, dinner tables, offices, bars and classrooms about a possibility that seemed impossible not that long ago. America’s first female president or its first black president could emerge from a victory in the Indiana primary. Old apprehensions had to be dealt with and, hopefully, shed.
Tags: Mark Bennett, Matt Tully, Maureen Dowd, Rich James
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This entry was written by and posted on May 8, 2008 at 12:36 pm and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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