Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Elections

With Al Gore’s winning of Nobel prize for peace, the presidential election in the US is again catching attention of the people around the world. The recent statistics suggest that Hillary Clinton leads the democratic field with 51 percent of the votes and even beats Obama by being more preferred among the black democrat voters. She is now thought to be the only ‘winnable’ candidate against Rudi Giuliani.

Barak Obama did make some news in July this year by raising $33 Million, as compared to $27 Millon of Clinton, and he also led one of the polls in South Carolina. However that was nothing compared to Clinton’s leading position in national polls, multiple polls in Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa. I attended the rallies of both Clinton and Obama and I could gauge that Hillary campaigns are more appealing to a general audience. I still think Obama’s policies are more intensely and practically thought but would take months of education before they are paid attention to, by the ordinary voters. However, the way Obama raised the fund from 350k people as small contributions really speaks a lot about the candidate’s emerging grass-root support. Moreover, it has helped Obama to prove to the public that Clinton is not the ‘inevitable’ democrat nomination. Clinton did outperform Obama in the third quarter but still he managed to raise $20 Million as compared to $27 Million of Clinton. Definitely the funds help the candidates in doing advertisements and Obama needs it more than Clinton.

Both Clinton and Obama are special candidates to me as they both introduce some amount of diversity into the US politics. Clinton as women is a welcome change in American politics. Lot of people acknowledge the fact that America , though a much celebrated democracy, is not yet ready for a women as their president. An average American male voter tends to discount the fact that women could lead a nation. However Clinton never seems to be stressing on this issue much because a lot of females will not support her as they thought she was not a hardliner during the Monica-Clinton issue. But Clinton is obviously more popular, more appealing and she is relatively more experienced with issues she is talking about. In her campaigns, she does put forward a convincing argument to elect her as the next president. In my observation, in terms of her potential, she is an average presidential candidate and might end up the same way George Bush is now.

Obama is obviously has more potential. When you listen to him, you know that he will learn things faster and take a different approach to the American problems. There is a ‘hope’ , as he puts it, around him that we could expect the problems will be addressed in a different way by breaking all the existing rules – something Clinton would never even try to do . Also, he being a black definitely make it more interesting as, if elected, its telling the world that this is an equal opportunity country. Of course it’s a narrower view of the whole diversity issue but its definitely something the rest of the world looking forward to see. However, the recent polls show that black democrats would not vote for Obama – because he is not black enough for them.

So what Al Gore’s Nobel Prize means in this context? If Al Gore decides to contest (he repeatedly declined it) I am pretty sure these two democrat candidates will be soon out of the race. Al Gore brings everything that people are looking for to fill in the vacuum. Popularity, experience and moreover he is a male, white, non-catholic. Al Gore does not require the last three discriminatory or derogatory qualifications to win an election but that will solve the problems of lot of American people, when it comes to choose someone as president.

I would still prefer Obama, if I had a vote :)