ABSTRACT
The 2008 Democratic Primary contest was an historic event. By February of that year, the field of nine Democratic Party challengers had diminished to just two: Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). After that month’s Super Tuesday primaries, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had secured a majority of Republican Party votes and pledged delegates and was considered the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Three members of a very elite political body, the U.S. Senate, had made the final leg of this long electoral journey, and the narrowing of the Democratic Party choices meant that for the first time in U.S. history the November general election would include a presidential candidate who was not a white male. Senator Hillary Clinton, long considered the Democratic Party front-runner, spoke in several early debates of how honored she felt to share the stage with Senator Obama, and of the importance of the Democratic party taking this important and past-due step to break the racial and gendered glass ceiling. While Senator Obama almost never discussed publicly his thoughts about being the first African American widely considered to have a viable opportunity to secure the nomination, he frequently complimented Senator Clinton as an admirable opponent, a savvy politician, and one with whom he, too, was honored to compete.1
