"Mashed Potato & Gravy" - Not yet...

This is one of the most interesting, intriguing and excellent expressions I've heard over the recent months. Donna Brazile is a veteran Democratic strategist and a current CNN contributor. I've started to appreciate and even enjoy her analysis and commentary with each passing day. However, this particular one was definitely the best of what I've heard from her. She used this metaphor to describe the current composition of the Democratic party. She suggests that the party today is constituted by an equal number of Caucasians' (mashed potato) and African-Americans' (the gravy).


The main point here is that the potential Democratic nominee will have to appeal to every voting block or ethnic group in the country and can't really take anyone for granted. Some analysts like her have feared that over the months the bitter primary campaign has kind of polarized and carved the party out into various groups and factions. The theme is that the party is characterized by not any single voting group/block but rather is a coalition of every block in America. A better way of branding the party should be - "Unity in Diversity." But, that precisely is the greatest obstacle the nominee will face this fall. The importance of bringing the party together can't be stressed more. So, when talking about the issue of electability I think the question of which candidate will do a better job of uniting the party in November will arise.


Sen. Hillary Clinton has time and again spoken about the urgency and inevitability of having a Democrat in the White House in January 2009 and is confident she can bring people together in trying to achieve that goal. Does she have the math to back all her claims?


Sen. Barack Obama is running a campaign on the platform of unity. He has extensively marketed the need for unity to get things done and solve the problems this country faces in an age of meaningless bickering (that seems to have taken over Washington politics). His quote from his famous keynote address at the Democratic convention at Boston in 2004 struck a chord with the national audience and made him a celebrity - "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America." Can these same words win him the Presidency?