Back Home Again in Indiana

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Forty years have passed to the day since Senator Robert F. Kennedy began his eleventh-hour race for President by handily defeating favorite son Governor Roger Branigin and Senator Gene McCarthy to win the Indiana Primary in 1968.

It was the last time Indiana voters played a meaningful role in any Presidential election, primary or general. And Kennedy won by appealing in direct and equal measure to African-American voters in the north and working-class white voters in the south.

Last night, my home state of Indiana, the place where I first cut my political teeth, returned to its rightful place at the center of the political universe. And the Hoosier coalition that carried Bobby Kennedy on its shoulders remained polarized between two alpha-Senators whose very candidacies would probably not be achievable but for Kennedy’s legacy.

A few ruminations from a Hoosier expat:

• Last night was the first primary night since Iowa that the Clinton campaign was soundly defeated in the only game that matters at this point -- the expectations game. For our friend Ace Smith, North Carolina’s demographics were like laws of gravity: impossible to overcome. But consider this about Indiana: 1) it’s Senator Obama’s backyard, 2) 22 percent of Indiana Democratic primary voters live in the Chicago media market, 3) independents were allowed to vote and did in large numbers, 4) Obama led in several polls in mid-February by double digits, 5) Obama spent nearly twice as much on Indiana TV as Clinton ($5.6 million to $3.2 million) and 6) Obama had the high-profile endorsements of rising star Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel (he’s Indiana’s Gavin Newsom) and our own walking Mount Rushmore, legendary former congressman Lee Hamilton.

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Image courtesy MSNBC.