The Democratic Gamble

Obama is First True Insurgent to Win Either Major Party’s nod Since 1976

NBC News
Political connections
By Ronald Brownstein

It’s difficult to overstate Barack Obama’s achievement in wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Rodham Clinton—or the magnitude of the gamble he represents for his party.

Obama is the first true insurgent to win either major party’s nod since Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976. In the modern primary era, the only other insurgents to capture nominations were Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Democrat George McGovern in 1972. And none of those three defeated a front-runner as formidable as Clinton. Obama’s campaign will likely be remembered as the most successful primary insurgency ever.

That itself defines some of the Democratic gamble. An insurgent campaign inherently upsets existing arrangements and assumptions. It trades the comfort of the familiar for the exhilaration and unpredictability of the new. Obama’s campaign is no exception. He offers Democrats new electoral opportunities with the enormous passion and activism he inspires. But his hold on some voting blocs and states that the party traditionally targets looks shakier than Clinton’s might have been.

Obama almost certainly presents Democrats with a better chance to redraw the electoral map and expand their coalition if all goes well. But, in a year so tilted toward Democrats, Clinton might have represented a safer bet to accumulate the bare minimum of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Compared with Clinton, “Obama has a much bigger upside,” says Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future. “And a much bigger risk.”

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25005363/