Hillary: The New Queen of Mean?

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So it's time to bring in the experts to set the people straight.

A Disconnect

Since the last brokered Democratic convention at mid-century, the huddled masses have been reborn as a nation of wired individuals. The greatest symbol of this shift is education. In 1900, only 2.3% of the United States' young adults were enrolled in college. By 1940 that proportion had inched up to 9.1%, but by the end of the century it had exploded to 55.7%. With tens of millions of blogs, 211 million Internet users, and more than two hundred million cell phones, these folks don't want to be cogs in some vast machinery of Big Politics or Big Business. They want a voice and they want their voices to matter. They don't want to simply take orders; they do want to make a difference.

This demand for voice is especially acute among the approximately 90 million Americans between the ages of 15 and 43. According to a major recent study of civic engagement by Rutgers Professor Cliff Zukin and his colleagues, these Americans are "disconnected" from conventional 20th century-style political activity, though they are deeply involved in community work where they can experience directly the results of their efforts.

Senator Obama's campaign has defied this trend, igniting hope among the young that the 20th century might finally be over. These "disconnected" Americans have gratefully made his campaign the richest, most broadly funded in political history. They have rebooted the Democratic Party in the process. Are its leaders really so freeze-dried they will squander this gift?

My teenage children watched Senator Clinton on the Today Show, mouths agape. They attended our local caucus with me and saw hundreds of our friends and neighbors gathered in the elementary school gym on that Sunday afternoon, despite an ugly Maine snowstorm. They listened to the thoughtful searching debates and saw us cast our votes. How could anyone suggest we didn't know exactly what we were doing? "What's the point of electing someone who doesn't believe in the American people?" they asked. "If she wants to ignore us now when she's only a candidate, what will she do as the President?"

Leap of Faith

Hillary Clinton has laid bare the urgency of Barack Obama's call for a new kind of politics more effectively than he could have done in a lifetime of speeches. We are already knee-deep in a new social paradigm based on inclusion, voice, and shared responsibility. If it still seems a little vague, that's as it should be. By definition, such a paradigm can't be imposed from the top. A new kind of politics, like a new approach to management, can only emerge by trial and error. It's a process of invention we must all share, just as no group of experts could have decreed Facebook, YouTube, Craigslist, or the blogosphere.

By planting her flag on the side of the elites, Clinton has crystallized what's at stake. The rules that give super-powers to superdelegates are anachronistic. The Democratic Party is on a collision course with history, racing to secure its place as the General Motors (GM) of U.S. political life—inwardly focused, out of touch, irrelevant. Senator Clinton should reject those rules and take her own leap of faith into a new century where most of us are already at work building a different community.

She should signal her trust in this community and insist the nomination be decided by popular vote and electoral delegates. Embracing the tactics of elitism might mean a nominating victory for Senator Clinton, but it would be a death knell for the Democratic Party. The biggest losers? That would be the American people.

Shoshana Zuboff is the author of The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. She was the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.