Seniors put Hillary over the top

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By Ellen Goodman | Thursday, May 01, 2008 |

BOSTON — By now there are so many sports metaphors littering the campaign coverage that it’s hard to tell CNN from ESPN. The Pennsylvania primary not only had its wrestling matches, boxing rings and slam dunks but almost turned pinochle into a contact sport.

But let us take a minute to replay the seniors event. It was the over-60 crowd that helped Hillary wrestle (sorry about that) her 10-point victory in Pennsylvania. Voters older than 60 chose Clinton by 62 percent to 38 percent. That’s almost the mirror image of voters younger than 30 who chose Obama by 60 to 40. In some actuarial twist, every birthday between 30 and 60 sent more voters into the Clinton camp.

Go figure. The quality that mattered most to exiting voters all across the age spectrum was who “can bring about needed change.” Yet the two groups on either end of the voting-age bell curve picked opposite change agents.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns have been long characterized as “hope” and “experience.” Their notions of change come out of their life stories.

Clinton might well have been an Obama girl at Wellesley. Even in 1992, the Clintons were the new kids on the block, the “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” couple. Bill was the man from Hope, the cross-cultural candidate who combined traditional values with liberal goals. He preached a “third way” on policies such as welfare reform.

But in Washington, he walked directly into the right-wing propeller. That year, George W. Bush became governor of Texas by beating Ann Richards, and Hillary Clinton replaced Ted Kennedy as the pinata of the Republican fundraisers.

What did she learn from this? That you have to wrest change, inch by inch, bill by bill — and sometimes from the cold, dead hands of the right wing.

What did Obama take from his life lessons? A child of two races and cultures, he grew up with a strong motivation and talent for building bridges. Obama was raised by the mother who was an anthropologist, not the father whose own hopes and ambitions were thwarted by lingering tribal enmities. He made his way from Hawaii to Harvard Law School riding the cusp of change.

He seems to dismiss the Clinton years as just another chapter from the old annals of food-fight politics. Obama believes, “real change doesn’t begin in the halls of Washington, but on the streets of America. It doesn’t happen from the top down, but from the bottom up.”

It’s not news that both these candidates share the same fundamental goals. But one believes that change is fought for in a kind of trench warfare. The other believes that it can come in a transforming wave.

The last two standing Democrats have great personal strengths and not a few flaws.

To some, hope is just another word for naivete. To others, experience is an excuse for cynicism. What people believe about this seems to fall along the actuarial table.

So Pennsylvania was a senior event in the extreme sport of politics.

For the moment, older voters are singing a refrain from the “Music Man” song, “the sadder but wiser girl is the girl for me.” In Pennsylvania, their experience kept Hillary’s hope alive.

Contact Ellen Goodman through ellengoodman@globe.com.