Hillary Clinton

Now that Barack Obama has become his party’s presumptive presidential nominee and Hillary Clinton is poised to announce the official end of her campaign this weekend, Democrats should demand the so-called “dream ticket” if they want to guarantee the change this country desperately needs after the nightmare of George Bush.

An Obama/Clinton ticket would be groundbreaking in historical terms and, more importantly, a formidable juggernaut in the general election.

The main argument I have heard so far against such a ticket seems petty. Some pundits and even some Democrats declare there is too much animosity between the two and between their supporters. Former President Jimmy Carter even says it will not work because the two appeal to separate groups of people. So, the logic seems to go, the Democrats should just accept a different, probably weaker ticket because, well, these two and their hardcore supporters just cannot get along and that could create political problems.

That is exactly the way major elections get lost and the manner in which great governments lose their way. Democrats should not stand for one minute of it. This is an historical moment. Obama, Clinton, all of us, must seize the opportunity.

These two great leaders should use, not deny, their different strengths for the good of the country, and, really, for the good of themselves as leading stewards of a nation that has lost its way in the quagmire of the Iraq occupation, in the ongoing Bush war against basic civil liberties and in the darkness of America’s new world reputation as a nation governed by despicable torturers and liars. Their supporters will follow their lead if the reconciliation is genuine, if Obama and Clinton can transcend the corporate media’s exaggerations about egos and grudges.

They need each other. If he wants to win the presidency, Obama needs Hillary’s political experience, her vast appeal to important voter groups and her intelligence and drive. Hillary now needs Obama if she truly wants to accomplish her admirable goals of providing adequate health care to all American citizens while giving average, hard-working people a break from financial insecurity. As a powerful vice president, she will be positioned to do much more than she could do as a senator.

The Beltway crowd—mostly a conservative and pampered crew—focuses on the election “game” triviality as if that is what matters as Americans lose their homes in record numbers, as parents deny themselves medical care so their children can eat, as senior citizens play medicine roulette by only taking the medications they can afford under the tyrannical and abusive corporate system we now call “health care” in this country.

This election is incredibly significant obviously because Obama is the country’s first African American presidential nominee of a major party and because Clinton broke new ground as a woman presidential candidate, and that is something to savor and think about in terms of an historic shift in the nation’s consciousness. It foretells a new day in this country, a new paradigm. But this election is truly not about Obama, and it is not about Clinton, and that is much more than easy political sloganeering.

This election is about people standing up against the tyranny of the few over the many, against the tyranny of an imperial presidency and against the tyranny of a neoconservative federal government now staunchly opposed to its ordinary working people, to basic human compassion, to legal justice, to science, to rationality, to truth, to democracy itself.

The Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process, for all its faults, showed the world Americans remain passionately concerned about democracy and the world around them, and it showed the time is nearing for a major positive correction in the great American Democracy experiment. It is a new era.

So Barack, Hillary, we have work to do. Let’s trounce McCain in November.