Marching on

Looking for the silver lining from a disappointing Super-Duper Tuesday, I think of the Army of the Potomac, in the first two years of the Civil War. The Army suffered defeat after defeat: the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville. But it was never destroyed and its soldiers learned to march by marching and to fight by fighting. By the middle of 1863, the Army of the Potomac was the equal of Lee's Army of Northern Virgina. Then came Gettysburg.*

Barack Obama's campaign started with little in the way of money or organization; few of its members had the experience of working together. In this, it was much unlike the Clinton operation. Aided by the candidate's charismatic personality, the reputation earned in his spellbinding speech at the 2004 Democratic convention and burnished by a couple of best-sellers, the Obama campaign proved adept at raising money--competing with or surpassing the Clinton efforts consistently during 2007. Obama even won the first skirmish in Iowa.

Then came New Hampshire--somewhat like the Union Army that marched to Bull Run in its finery, accompanied by the cream of Washington society, eager to watch the rebels be vangquished, Obama and his people swept into New Hampshire on a huge Iowa Bounce. But the Clinton people, and the citizens of the Granite State, delivered a nasty surprise. The came the dust-up in Nevada. South Carolina was an Obama triumph (think Antietam), but Super Tuesday saw almost all of the high-profile states--New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts--fall to Clinton.

Yet Obama and his campaigners can say that they have withstood all that the Clinton people have thrown at them, and they are still standing. Indeed, NBC says that Obama has more committed delegates than Clinton. He has shown the resilience to come back from defeat. The candidate, who often seemed too laid-back and theoretical during the summer, has sharpened his message and is thoroughly comfortable with his stump speech. He is in a strong strategic position--he's got more money than the Clinton campaign, and in the next week he should do well--or better--in contests in Louisiana, Washington, the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

All analogies are flawed, and this one may well prove to be inaccurate. The Clinton people might learn from what has happened; Obama and his campaign could make serious, even fatal mistakes. But in the meantime, it's turned into a hell of a fight.

*Historical note: Contrary to popular opinion, Gettysburg did not decide the Civil War. The battle that did that was Vicksburg, the siege of which ended the day after Pickett's charge. Gettysburg decided that Lee's second (and last) invasion of the North would not succeed--that the war would not end in July 1863. This has nothing to do with the foregoing; I just wanted to set the record straight.