The Beginning of the Beginning

There has been hand wringing and discussion about the results from Tuesday's elections in Indiana and North Carolina. The blowout win by Sen. Obama in the Tar Heel State combined with Sen. Clinton's razor thin margin of victory in the Hoosier State have denied her any realistic chance of winning are party's nomination. The epilogue on this primary season will be written at a later date. Politics can be a cold business and to ask someone, after nearly two years of campaigning to abandon a lifetime ambition in one night, is probably too much to ask. The Clinton's are experienced enough to read the proverbial tea leaves and know that her campaign will not suceed. If she wishes to ignore reality and go further into debt to contest the last few races it frankly won't matter much (as long as she drops the 'kitchen sink' strategy and says nary a negative word about Sen. Obama for the next six months).

Tuesday night was not the beginning of the end. It was the end. Remember the old adage about a tree falling in a forest? Well if a campaign has no mathematical chance of succeeding and the candidate keeps campaigning, did the campaign really end. I would argue that yes it did!

With all of these contests and elections, the speeches and rallies we may have lost sight of the prize. The reality is that the only thing Sen. Obama has secured is the right to challenge Sen. McCain and end the Senior Senator from Arizona's bid for George W. Bush's third term.

Folks, this is the beginning of the beginning.

The unfortunate thing about the long primary season is that by going two months longer than normal, we do not have the luxury of having a training camp. When a football team prepares for the season, they take a couple months in the summer getting into shape. They prepare themselves for the upcoming campaign. Normally in presidential politics we have training camp period for a few months to prepare for the general election.

Not this time. For the past few months, John McCain has been traveling around the country and the world saying crazy things, proposing ideas that won't work, and just generally messing up. The bad thing is that we've been so busy attacking each other that we haven't been able to effectively counter his claims. With the beginning of the beginning, we can now focus our attention to Sen. McCain. Our campaign dollars won't be used for ads attacking fellow progressives they will be used to unite our party, build our base, and convince voters why four more years of Bush/McCain policies would hurt our Country.

The beginning of the beginning, whether or not Sen. Clinton is ready to admit it, is upon us. There will be over 100 voter registration drives across the US this weekend to kickoff the general election campaign. Here in the Flint area we will kickoff the campaign just like folks all over the country. For more information here is the link:

my.barackobama.com/voteflint

-Kyle