Extraordinary

Now that the primary season is over, I can’t help but reflect on how extraordinary the results were. I’m not talking about the historic nature of an epic battle of a black man and a woman to become the first major-party minority nominee. Rather, it’s amazing to me that we got the two candidates we did.

Consider: John McCain’s campaign was dead in the water. He went from being the Republican frontrunner to being the nominee no one in the party wanted. Conservatives didn’t like his tendency to work across the aisle. Those who liked his maverick style didn’t like the way he was pandering to “the base.” The Straight-talk Express had jumped a rail and was out of touch with social conservatives and McCain’s own brand – the guy who did and said what he believed in regardless of whom it pissed off. His campaign was in debt, and Mitt Romney, Rudi Giuliani, and Mike Huckabee looked like they were going to divide the spoils.

But McCain rallied. He reorganized his staff and changed his message. After losing Iowa, he strung together a number of wins. He won close battles in states that didn’t apportion their delegates. Suddenly, the once-forgotten McCain was a powerhouse candidate. He knocked out Giuliani in Florida and took out Romney shortly thereafter. The man who looked as though he had lost his last, best chance at being president was the GOP nominee despite serious misgivings about him from the party’s conservative wing.

Then there’s Barak Obama. Before Iowa, Hillary Clinton was inevitable. She had the endorsement of the party powerbrokers, and it looked like she would charge through the early primaries. But Obama upset her in Iowa and then outperformed her on Super Tuesday. Suddenly, Obama was the frontrunner and Clinton was the desperate also-ran.

And then Obama twice failed to deliver the knockout blow. Clinton won a series of big states in March. In fact, after he won 11 contests in a row, Obama only won two more. Yet, despite the fact that Clinton kept beating him, Obama continued to stretch his lead. Superdelegates kept endorsing Obama instead of her, and a number of her superdelegates defected. Forget the fact that he’s the first black man to be nominated for president from a major party. It’s how he earned the nomination (and to an extent the fact that he won at all) that makes his campaign to date so extraordinary.