A Moment in Time

Super Tuesday sheds light on a narrative, years in the making, and unsung heroes who were there all along.

It’s come to this. Trump takes on Clinton (the Republican Party, the World). Perhaps it was inevitable.

Both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump won Super Tuesday in convincing fashion, as expected, inching closer to the nomination for their respective parties and its ultimate showdown in November. And their voices couldn’t be more different.

“America never stopped being great.” — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Somewhere in Florida, March 1, 2016

How audacious is this? What kind of blindly devoted patriot stands so loyally behind a country, where common wisdom would suggest it is all but in shambles and doesn’t win anything anymore? Perhaps only a mother, or someone who truly believes in their country and knows what it’s like to be knocked down and repeatedly attacked, yet keeps coming back. Hilary Clinton, winning decisively in the South, in the same states that she lost resoundingly to Barak Obama back in 2008, redeemed in large part by the African American community that hasn’t forgotten everything she’s done, and has tried to do, throughout the years in public office, while Republicans continue to look the other way.

They’re always looking the other way, it seems, and now they’re in a mess.

Faced with the juggernaut that is Trump, the party of the right is now scrambling to salvage what is left of it, and get behind the likes of either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, both hopeless cases, desperate to lead without a solid base.

Then there’s Chris Christie, the political animal and showman who, having recently bowed out of the race, would have you believe he knows exactly what he’s doing, standing unsettlingly behind the shadows of Trump, like a homely bridesmaid and unwitting pawn in a game that’s being played out far beyond New Jersey.

There’s a storm brewing in America, but it’s been brewing for ages.

Initially I thought this election was just about angry voters, the left and the right, the newly emerging Social Democrats versus the stubbornly resistant, old-school conservatives. At least, that’s what the media would have you believe. But now I see it as something less exotic and more familiar: the haves versus the have-nots, the privileged against the disenfranchised. White America against People of Color (and not only black).

This election is about breaking down barriers or putting up walls.

It’s an American story, one that’s never fully told and only partly developed under President Obama. And like that chapter, it begins with a mess. There are new faces, but the story remains the same. Perhaps some of them even know what they’re doing. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?

Don’t hold your breath.

I imagine most of them are like Chris Christie, outwardly pomp and full of puff, but on the inside not entirely sure what’s happening.