Gracious In Victory

Today is Monday, one day before the Oregon and Kentucky primaries, and a very fateful and historic day for the Barack Obama campaign. It is a day after Barack spoke to a crowd of 75,000 people on the shores of the Willamette River, a setting symbolic in its pristine beauty and openness. It is also the state that will mathematically secure this nomination for Barack, and although we may not hear him declare victory tomorrow night, this country, including Obama supporters, Clinton supporters, McCain supporters and the media know that the Democratic nominee has been selected.

While even the most cynical political pundit or staunchly conservative Republican strategist concedes that Obama has essentially secured this nomination, Hillary Clinton and her campaign marches on, and it is obvious that Obama supporters all around the country are growing increasingly more frustrated to see the Clintons continuing to claim that they are still in this and consistently changing the finish line or the metric under which the nominee is chosen.

I must say that I am equally frustrated, but there is a great amount of satisfaction in winning. During this transition period, though, we must focus our attention exclusively on Obama and figuring out our best ways to support him, provide our most positive reinforcement to him and not do anything to thwart his efforts in any way to clear his path toward the nomination and give him the best chance to defeat John McCain in the fall.

I am a member of numerous mybarackobama.com groups, and there have been dozens of recent posts accusing Hillary or Bill Clinton of a myriad of crimes, indiscretions, subterfuge and the like. Simply put, we must move on. Raising negative issues about the Clintons is non-productive, and is simply not helpful to the Obama campaign. Digging up info on Clinton is absolutely delicious in its irony and satisfaction to us, but at this time in history, we will demonstrate a tremendous amount of class and graciousness by keeping these pieces of information under wraps and locked away in the vault.

I believe strongly that history will not treat Hillary Clinton and her campaign very kindly, but we must leave the culmination and ultimate disposition of the Clintons at this moment and point our attention to our candidate. He faces a very determined and mean-spirited opponent in the general election, and as much as we are tempted to continue battling Hillary Clinton, that fight is over. Let’s turn the page and allow Barack to more effortlessly pivot into his new position as the Democratic nominee for president.

In the meantime, we do have a job to do. Thousands of Clinton supporters will be doing the same thing, except their pivot to Barack Obama is a much tougher, more challenging and in some cases almost feels like an impossible task. We must welcome them to this campaign, be gracious and even magnanimous in our patience and understanding of their profound disappointment at no longer having their candidate, and giving them time to learn what it is to get fired up, excited and energized and yes, ready to go.