There is a big spiritual lesson to be learned from yesterday’s Democratic Primary election results: Tell the truth. All the time. About everything. The results in both North Carolina and Indiana showed that people want the truth, not political pandering.
By now you all know that Barack Obama won North Carolina massively — by 14 percentage points — and that Hillary Clinton won Indiana meagerly — by something just over 1%, or less than 23,000 votes out if millions cast statewide. The Clinton campaign had hoped for a much larger margin of victory there, and was even talking in recent days about an upset in North Carolina — or at least holding Obama to a victory spread less than double digits, “which is the standard they held us to in Pennsylvania,” her strategists declared.
Well, actually, Clinton did not meet that standard, having won Pennsylvania, after all was said and done, by 9 percentage points (something that the Clinton campaign does not point out). And Obama did meet that standard in North Carolina.
The Sen. from New York centered her campaign over the past week or two around a populist appeal, using as her “hook” the fact that she supported the summer gas tax holiday proposed by Sen. John McCain, while Obama opposed it. Obama countered by telling the truth: The gas tax holiday would save the average American around 30-cents a day over three months, or something like $28 in total for the summer.
Obama said it was a sham and a shuck-and-jive shell game to impress voters with the appearance of some sort of solution to their economic woes, but without real substance. Typical political pandering, he declared. The kind of politics we are tired of and want to change. He said that not a single economist could be found who asserted that the gas tax holiday made economic sense. To which Hillary Clinton replied that she had no intention of listening to the opinion of economists, who she described as “elite” and out of touch with working class Americans
Well, working class Americans are not dumb. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina showed that on the gas tax holiday issue the vast majority of them (something near 70%) said that Clinton was simply using the idea as a political tool and that the gas tax holiday had no real economic value. Failure to gain any traction from the gas tax issue is why Clinton lost North Carolina massively and won Indiana meagerly. Nobody believed that her stance was a sincere effort to help people economically, but, rather, was simply politically motivated.
In fact, Hillary Clinton scores the lowest of all the candidates in just about every poll when it comes to “trustworthiness” and “honesty”. Obama scores the highest.
And in his victory speech in North Carolina yesterday, he made it clear that he understood that. He said he got into the race for president because he wanted to end politics as usual — which he called the politics of polarization and division and distraction. He added: “We will end it by telling the truth — forcefully, repeatedly, confidently — and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change.”
Then he returned the compliment that he has received from the American people — those folks who say on those surveys that he is the most trustworthy candidate. He said…

…that he, in turn, trusted the American people.
“The other side can label and name-call all they want,” the Illinois senator declared, “but I trust the American people to recognize that it’s not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda’s leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it’s not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies — like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.
“I trust the American people to realize that while we don’t need big government, we do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators; a government that stands up for the middle-class by giving them a tax break; a government that ensures that no American will ever lose their life savings just because their child gets sick. Security and opportunity; compassion and prosperity aren’t liberal values or conservative values — they’re American values.
“Most of all, I trust the American people’s desire to no longer be defined by our differences. Because no matter where I’ve been in this country — whether it was the corn fields of Iowa or the textile mills of the Carolinas; the streets of San Antonio or the foothills of Georgia — I’ve found that while we may have different stories, we hold common hopes. We may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction — towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
“That’s why I’m in this race. I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this moment in history. I believe in our ability to perfect this union because it’s the only reason I’m standing here today. And I know the promise of America because I have lived it.”
Then he said he had no illusions of what kind of race it will be in the Fall should he become the Democratic nominee. He said he knows what his political opponents will do.
“Yes, we know what’s coming. We’ve seen it already. The same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn’t agree with all their ideas. The same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy in the hope that the media will play along. The attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences to turn us against each other for pure political gain — to slice and dice this country into Red States and Blue States; blue-collar and white-collar; white and black, and brown.
“This is what they will do — no matter which one of us is the nominee. The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they’ll run, it’s what kind of campaign we will run. It’s what we will do to make this year different. I didn’t get into race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for president because this is the time to end it.”
That is the kind of talk that inspires people, that speaks to people’s higher spiritual values, that does not pander politically, but tells the truth and says it like it is.
Yesterday I spoke about the Republicans of Indiana — where it is legal to cross party lines and cast votes in the other party’s primary — who were planning on voting for Hillary in order to simply keep the contest going, keep the messiness in the space, keep the contention alive in the Democratic Party…and maybe even pull out a long shot and move Hillary into the nomination, because they would rather see Clinton run against McCain than Obama. Why? Because they believe that Obama has more appeal to Independent voters than does Hillary, and would therefore make a tougher opponent in the Fall.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was said to have been urging Indiana Republicans for days to cross-over vote and pull the rug out from under Obama by voting for Hillary. His call to sabotage the Obama campaign was referred to by the electronic media last night as “the Limbaugh Effect.” I mentioned it in this blog yesterday. And it apparently achieved its desired effect. There is little question that Clinton won her squeaker-margin victory in Indiana last night with the help of Republican cross-over voters. She can send a note of appreciation for her 1%+ margin to a pile of folks in Indiana who have zero intention of voting for her in the Fall, should she become the Democratic presidential nominee. The only question now is whether she will have the honesty to admit that, or will try in her stubbornness to describe the Indiana squeak-through as a “great victory.”
And the dirtiness, the low-ball approach, of the Clinton campaign continues today. The Washington Post carries a story this morning written by Perry Bacon Jr. and Anne E. Kornblut which reports that “A Clinton adviser said the situation was increasingly becoming one in which ‘she cannot be nominated and he can’t get elected.’ ”
Wow, what a great way to support a Democratic candidate. Pat Buchanan, the arch-conservative commentator, said it perfectly on MSNBC during last night’s coverage: “Hillary Clinton is running against Barack Obama as if she were a Republican.”
Hmmmm….
AND WHILE WE ARE DISCUSSING THIS…IT IS IMPORTANT for us to take a moment to look at something far more serious that is happening right now on our planet…in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), where it is said that up to 100,000 people may have died and hundreds of thousands more are struggling and suffering in the aftermath of the massive cyclone that hit there.
Right now the problem is food and shelter for many people. If you are interested in helping the World Food Programme sponsored by the United Nations, you may go directly to its website to do that, or you may go to FoodForEveryone.net, an outreach of the Conversations with God Foundation, which sends to WFP all of the funds it collects at the end of each business day. In the past week, over $10,000 has been sent to the World Food Programme.
So perhaps we might stop for a moment and say a prayer for the people of Myanmar…