Can Barack Obama become President?

I’m not a fortune teller. So I can’t say whether Barack Obama will become President of the United States. But I can say that it is possible, which is more than anybody in their right mind has been able to say during an election year before, in our country’s history. A woman may well be president, too, which heretofore was not a possibility, either.

The next question you might then want addressed is, is it likely Barack Obama will become president. The probability of this will be cemented between now and June 3rd, during the final primaries for the Democratic party. If Obama holds his own in battles against Hillary Clinton, when all the pledged delegates are counted after the final primary on June 3rd, Obama will be ahead of Clinton, we already know that.

But we also know that he will not have enough votes yet to actually win the nomination. For that he’ll need a good majority of the so-called “superdelegates” who may or may not vote what citizens in their own states voted for; they’re allowed to vote for whomever they want. Right now, Obama has a projected lead in their number, but a good showing in the remaining primaries will convince superdelegates on the fence and more or less guarantee the nomination to Obama.

One factor that might be key in deciding whether Obama will be the nominee to run against the Republican’s already-chosen John McCain will be how the Democratic superdelegates decide to play the game. If they honor the sentiment of the voters in the states the superdelegates are from, then Obama would have the edge. If they’re somehow persuaded to buck public opinion and support the “old guard” and “reliable” Clinton machine, then Obama might be out of it. But this latter runs the risk of having the Democratic Party labeled as “just like the Republicans”—whom critics consider a party of political hacks that don’t care about the voters so much as maintaining the establishment’s boring and predictable status quo.

But if Obama manages to secure the nomination, he then must face John McCain. McCain in many ways is tied to President Bush in major policies, but he has some differences, and because a black Liberal carries a lot of controversy with such a candidacy there will be some increased support for the conservative McCain as a result.

But too much would happen between the nominating conventions in the summer and the actual election in November, to make any further forecasting too speculative.

Though it’s not at all anything anyone publicly talks about, I have to admit to personally being frightened of some crazy gunmen shooting Obama, because he is so starkly different as a candidate. I was a young impressionable college student in the spring of 1968, and remember quite vividly the shootings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F.Kennedy. They were terrible, violent gut-wrenching events that drove the nation crazy for quite a while. God forbid some lunatic or group acts in that manner again.

I say that because it’s an occasional thought, maybe in the back of some peoples’ minds, but not anything Obama himself seems concerned about. He’s calm and outgoing, friendly, quick and witty in all his public appearances. He has charisma, a wonderful speaking cadence that re-introduces long-jaded voters to the excitement of political rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton, policy-wise, is not so different from Obama, so if you’re a voter who is interested in getting a huge push going forward for health care, for ending the war in Iraq, or liberal economic policies, for a restoration of at least some stolen civil liberties, then Hillary would be as good a choice as Obama.

For now, though it’s still early in the campaign. Republican McCain is taking advantage of the sniping between the two Democratic candidates; he’s painting himself as a man above the fray—presidential, calm, leadership-worthy. But this in-fighting among Democrats will be forgotten when one candidate emerges, probably sometime this June.

Barack Obama has as good a chance as anyone of becoming the next president of the United States. And that in and of itself is pretty amazing—an unheard-of possibility just a very short time ago.