Common places and simple metaphors capture hearts and minds, and that’s what senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did to try to win the race to be the democratic nominee to be president of the United States. They brought a message that was common place to a big number of Americans. In fact, the greatest number of Americans that participated in a presidential nomination campaign.

THE SUPPORTERS

The hard numbers say both candidates have almost the same support in terms of people who voted for each one them. Each one got nearly 18 million votes with a difference of 300.000 between them depending on the way you count or consider the votes. Anyway, Mr. Obama has clinched the nomination. And although Mrs. Clinton had almost the same support in raw numbers, we can say they’re basically tied. Each one got the equivalent of 6% of the total U.S. population support on their own.

These hard numbers should be enough to understand that the democratic party has no one leader, but two strong leaders to rely upon. And of course that’s why they got such an incredible support.

Back to July 2007 and most of the world thought the next democratic nominee would be Hillary Clinton. But in the last five months the establishment was broken and Mr. Obama finally got the nomination and became the first african-american citizen to represent the democratic party for the presidency.

What an Election Means?

In every election you give your vote to whom represents best your ideals and interests, or at least, is near yours. For the democrats the stake was they’re chosing the leader who will restore the country to what they think it should be.

In his book “Learning to Lead” (1997) Warren Bennis states clearly what to do if you want to lead people:

“If you want to be a Leader the first thing to do is to get them to buy into shared objectives. Then you have to learn how to generate and sustain trust. The trust factor is critical”.

PRESENTING SHARED OBJECTIVES

The first thing a candidate has to do is to present shared objectives, in this particular case, deal with the issues people cares about, and inspire them with a clear vision of what the candidate believes the country needs to go or become. May be, that’s why an example of shared objetives is found in almost every speech the candidates give while in campaign. Let’s take the next excerpts:

“I’m in this race to take those tax breaks away from companies that are moving jobs overseas and put them in the pockets of hard working Americans who deserve it. And I won’t raise the minimum wage every ten years I will raise it to keep pace so that workers don’t fall behind. That is why I am in it. To protect the American worker. To fight for the American worker.”
– Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, November 10, 2007

In this excerpt Mr. Obama is addressing several issues at once, taxes, jobs and minimun wage. They’re told in a crystal clear way, this is certainly an appealing message to the “hard working Americans” and it’s hard to ignore it.

“I know that people face tough times. But what I’ve been impressed by is the resourcefulness and resilience that the people here and across the United States use to face whatever challenges they confront, because they believe they can keep working for a better tomorrow. The American Dream may bend under the weight of challenges we failed to meet and presidents who have failed to lead. It may bend, but it will never break, because that’s what keeps so many of us going; the thought of a better life tomorrow and a better future for our children. ”
– Hillary Clinton, Speech in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 1, 2008.

Now, Mrs. Clinton is talking about the American people, and the dream that all the people is after. This an appealing message also and can hardly be ignored.

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