There’ve been a few tense races for the Clinton campaign where they have nearly faced what would have been sold as virtual elimination. Two of those moments in particular have drawn special attention from the media, and given rise to great tensions among the netroots and activist set. There was Nevada, where the system faced legal challenges from Clinton supporters and where there were accusations of impropriety against Clinton-supporting caucus-goers after the fact. Most recently, there was Ohio, where Obama momentum was effectively squelched and reversed in the last 72 hours, leading to a surprisingly definitive Clinton victory amidst charges that her campaign was “going negative.”

What was the common denominator in the Clinton campaign’s popular vote Nevada victory and the across the board victory in Ohio?

This guy:

The Hillary Clinton campaign today announced that veteran Democratic operative Robby Mook would serve as the campaign’s Nevada State Director.

“Robby is an outstanding organizer, and I’m thrilled he’s going to run our Nevada campaign,” said Clinton.

And here again, from HuffPo:

Rival candidate Senator Hillary Clinton is also deploying her most battle-ready field marshals to Ohio. While both campaigns have had skeleton teams in Ohio since January, now the big guns have unpacked their bags and set up their state headquarters in Columbus. They’ve also brought their entourage of top managers, field directors, GOTV staffers and consultants with media buys planned, along with scheduled campaign events and candidate appearances.

Behind the scenes of the Obama-Clinton race to capture Ohio’s 161 delegates, the biggest jackpot of states still in contention, it will be a killer match between each campaign’s point man: Paul Tewes and Robby Mook.

Mook’s resume is impressive; Deputy Field Director for Dean’s New Hampshire effort, work for Kerry and the DNC in states like Wisconsin and Director of the 2006 Coordinated Campaign in Maryland. What doesn’t get much mention is the fact that he’s a Vermonter who got his political feet wet working for the Democratic House Campaign back in the late 90’s, and working as the Statewide Field Director for the Vermont Democratic Party in 2002, where we were both jammed into a tiny, windowless box of a room as officemates.

What really tells me how far Robby has come is this quote, also from HuffPo:

Mook and Marshall are naturally good managers. And they work at being good managers. They see it as a major ingredient to winning–something that makes campaigns work.

With all due props to Robby, that’s half right – and in being half right it sells Robby short. In my opinion, Robby is far from being a natural manager. His clarity of understanding on what needed to be accomplished and how to get there was always spot-on (refreshingly so) – but the guy was constantly second-guessing himself and lacking self-confidence in managing staff in his first outing as a boss. Hell, I was often worried about him, and more than once wanted to go shake the hell out of a couple of his field staffers who seemed to be exploiting his unsteadiness.

No, the fact is that Robby has clearly become a good manager through focus, determination, hard work and smarts. You know – the hard way. And on his way, I suspect he’s learned an awful lot more about how to win than a dozen “naturally good managers” could possibly walk through the door with. By November of ’02, he’d had to knock a couple heads to get staffers in line, and I suspect that was only the briefest prologue to the lessons he went on to pick up in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and elsewhere, before becoming a Clinton campaign powerhouse and cementing his reputation and future in the business once and for all.

So congrats from me, and I’m sure from all your other old buddies from the old days. You’ve earned it, and I have no doubt that this is only the beginning…

Beyond the appeals to race and gender, there is another dynamic at play in this primary fight. A struggle to define what kind of people the Democratic party speaks to.

This primary fight is certainly about the politics of identity. To ignore that would be silly. The reaction to photos of Obama in African Dress proves that many see the Clinton Campaign as saying that America is not ready for a Black President. This primary fight is about Race.

And this primary fight is certainly about Gender. A post by Monica Guzman at Seattle PI lead me to a Washington Post Article in which some feminist leaders claim that:”There are some people who promote Barack Obama because they want anybody but a woman. Would they like a white man instead of a black man? Of course. But they’ll take a black man over a woman. I never thought, in 2008, that we’d still be dealing with this.”

(This has been a debate over at Green Mountain Daily for sometime- with NanukFC challenging male bias every step of the way.)

But there is another dynamic going on here. The press, in it’s attempt to see around corners, has given us a lot of demographic information about the two camps. In addition to race and gender, we learn that the Obama camp is dominated by the young, the educated, the technically connected and savvy- people well able to compete in a global, and technology driven economy. Clinton, on the other hand, finds her support among those who are dependent on the “old” economy- blue collar and service workers- according to an article on CBS News, these are the people who respond to Hillary:

Clinton surely knows that as she promises to lower the costs of going to college, offering debt relief for people who graduate and go into teaching, or nursing, or law enforcement. “And I want to say something about all the other people who don’t go to college,” she adds. “You know, most people don’t go to college and graduate. And these are the people who build the buildings that we live and work in. They keep the economy going. They do most of the jobs in our society. I want to pay more attention to you.” She promises job training and community college programs.

At the same time, we’ve seen, recently on Green Mountain Daily, an anti-Clinton you-tube screed called: “The Clinton Hillbillies“. Which lampoons Hillary as a carpet-bagging fake, and, by inference makes the point that her supporters are a bunch of beer drinking, tobacco spitting in-bread morons.

This race is dominated by the question of who will get the historic honor of being the first (X or Y) to be the first (X or Y) President in American history.

But on another level, I’m wondering if we are witnessing the Democratic party making a choice about which type of American we want to serve and help- and, if so, I’m wondering if it’s possible to enlarge the tent again?

cross-posted at http://rip-and-read.blogspot.com/

Per the Rutland Herald:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will review Entergy Nuclear’s “fitness for duty” program during an scheduled security inspection after the second violation in the past six months.

An administrative assistant whose job duties include testing Entergy Nuclear employees at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant for possible drug and alcohol use was suspended for two weeks after she was found to exceed allowable alcohol limits, according to the NRC.

So let me get this straight: the woman responsible for making sure people at VY aren’t doing such thing as, say, drinking on the job, has been, well, drinking on the job.

This is the sort of thing that makes me all twitchy.

AP's Lisa Rathke reports today that superdelegate Billi Gosh of Brookfield is standing firm in her support of Hillary Clinton. Her position comes despite the fact that Obama won in every county of Vermont.

“The Obama train was steaming down the track and we have derailed it,” said Billi Gosh, of Brookfield, national committee chairwoman.

Is this a case of a superdelegate going her own way, no matter Vermonters vote? Your thoughts?