'Getting ahead'                     [Het Parool, The Netherlands]

Financial Times Deutschland, Germany

Obama and Clinton:

The Yin and Yang

of U.S. Democrats …

"The two could annihilate one another instead of their opponents of the opposite party.  … Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will have to come up with something if they don’t want their enormous forces to neutralize one another."

By Sabine Muscat

Translated By James Jacobson

February 6, 2008

Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)

The reason the Democratic race remains unsettled after Super Tuesday has a name: Missouri. This state in the Midwest has always proven to have a good sense of the candidate that would ultimately prevail.

So yesterday, Missouri voters issued their long-awaited verdict: 49 to 48 for Obama. In none of the other 22 states in which Democratic primaries were held, was the result so close. But the overall results from the other states demonstrated a similar stand-off: 11 for Obama, 11 for Clinton – if she wins New Mexico, where the vote count hasn't been finalized.

The split of the democrats in choosing between the first woman and the first black man who compete for being President cannot be described better in words than this election graph [not shown], in which two semi circles of the same size overlap. Obama and Clinton are the Yin and Yang of the Democratic Party. They could battle one another to complete exhaustion. Obama, the healer. Clinton, the problem solver. The programs of the two politicians are confusingly similar, but their biographies and political styles split the party.

Not is wasn't only through the lens of Missouri that both sides could claim victory last evening. Clinton won the states of California and New York, which send the largest number of delegates to the Party Convention. This gives her great images, but it wasn't decisive, since according to the proportional electoral systems of these States, Obama won delegates from them too. It may have been of even greater symbolic significance that Clinton won in Massachussets, where she beat Obama even though he had the backing of Senator Edward Kennedy - younger brother of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963.

But Obama can be content. As expected, he cleaned up with Black voters in the southern states, such as Alabama and Georgia, while as in previous elections, voters with Latin American roots tended to vote for Clinton. But just as he did in early January in Iowa, with great victories among the white population in the Midwest Obama showed that he's not just a candidate for Black Americans.

Now it all depends on the number of delegates that the two candidates can scrape over the next few weeks. It could be a process with a long duration, and in the extreme case it could go all the way to the party convention at the end of August, where undeclared Superdelegates get the last word. This kind of struggle is an opportunity for both candidates, but also a grave risk: that the two could annihilate one another instead of their opponents of the opposite party.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will have to come up with something, if they don’t want their enormous forces to nuetralize one another.

CLICK HERE FOR GERMAN VERSION

[WORLDMEETS.US Posted Feb. 6 4:32pm]