I've been closely watching the struggle for the democratic presidential nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It has struck me that Clinton seems to be powerless against "Obamamania." There are many factors — mostly negative ones against Clinton as opposed to positive reasons for Obama — but I think there is something more fundamental happening as well.

Much of the Obama phenomenon has been described as "Obama messianism." The overall effect of his trend is well-documented by the weblog http://www.obamamessiah.blogspot.com/. It is this secular messianism which is really what Clinton cannot beat. The antidote to the secular messianism of Obama is the not the simple secularism of Clinton. It is, instead, something deeper than politics, and something Clinton is absolutely unable to deliver, and maybe cannot apprehend, namely, that the only true messianism is represented by the person of Jesus Christ.

Think about it a moment. The state without religion must fill the vacuum religion leaves in the human heart. Take, for instance, the Romans. Rome was once a republic, but ended as an empire, with an emperor, and he was divine (with some qualifications, but the point is clear enough). Consider also the cult of personality which surrounded Marx and Lenin in the communist regimes. Politics without faith becomes a faith in itself, but it is hard to hold up banners that read "America" (or harder still, "the State") and get excited about it. Every movement needs a figurehead, and for American secularists, it is Obama. But this figurehead is more than a figurehead, he is a pawn in a wider movement for now, but after the election he will no longer be strictly beholden to the popular sentiments which propelled him past Clinton.

And that is why Clinton cannot win. She does not have in her advisory arsenal, or personal formation, a response to Obamas' specific secularism which takes into account the intangible desire in the human heart to be saved, and led, and powerfully so. She is unlikely to look at Obama and say "He is not your savior — Christ is!" If anything, she might say something like "He is not your savior, the state is!", or "welfare is!", or … it really does not matter — none of those types of answers work quite the same way as a charismatic, flesh-and-blood personification of this desire.

Hillary's inability to answer Obama comes at a time when America can no longer answer Obama itself. The rule that classical religious affiliation is a rough gauge of political opinion is breaking down almost as fast as the tendency of Americans to stay a member of the religion they were born into, as the recent Pew Forum Survey suggests. Into this vacuum, opposing secularist mindsets are becoming an ever more potent (anti-)force in American political opinion. As a result, America has lost much of its common sense about these things. Ignorance of history, apathy about identity, and uneasiness about where America is heading does not help matters either. And unfortunately, bad times rarely result in good decision making, or clear thinking.

With this in mind, we should not be concerned that Obama is winning, or that Hillary is losing. We should be concerned that America is choosing Obama above Hillary, because at least in choosing Hillary they are choosing someone they think would be a competent administrator of the public trust. With Obama, however, one could argue that people are choosing someone they think is not necessarily a competent administrator of the public trust, but rather someone they hope represents the definitive solution to all of America's pressing problems.

That is a far more lofty expectation, and a type of hope that Obama cannot ultimately fulfill. But that will not stop him from becoming President, because everyone wants to vote for Jesus.