If you’ve been paying even the littlest attention to the news lately, I’m sure you’ve noticed the race for the Democratic presidential nominee between Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Although both candidates are stressing change from the current government, making that their main theme, the race has been full of each candidate making malevolent accusations about the other and is leading the voting population to either love or loathe the candidate of their choice or their opposition.

Obama has been steadily leading Clinton by a slim number of votes. This race has brought out thousands of new voters, most likely due to Clinton being the first serious female candidate and Obama being the first serious male candidate. Initially, this seemed like exciting news for the Democratic Party, but taking a deeper look at the situation makes you think that this increase of voters could ultimately be a blessing in disguise for the Democrats’ opponents.

The conflicts between the two candidates could present a new problem for the Democratic Party in the future. As the candidates recruit new voters who passionately support either Obama or Clinton, they also are recruiting voters who believe in only one candidate and not the other – not voters who support the Democratic Party as a whole. And as the nasty race between the two candidates continues, voters become more and more fervent about who they specifically support.

Since the Republican Party has already chosen its candidate, with its race being somewhat less controversial, whatever issues supporters of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul had with John McCain can start to be cleared up already. The party can be recentralized and focused on keeping the Republican Party in the Oval Office in November.

As the Democratic Party lets the controversies between Obama and Clinton prevail, it continues to divide the party into two unfriendly halves. With the two sides of the party being so bitter towards each other it could lead potential voters to choose not to vote at all if their candidate doesn’t win the nomination.

Already I’ve seen people saying that they aren’t voting because they were John Edwards supporters and they don’t like Obama or Clinton – and when he was still in the race the candidates were more civil and looking out for the common good of the country.

But now, after the candidates have recruited voters for themselves and not the Democratic Party’s ideal of change, Democrat voting will be cut in half if the party isn’t able to recentralize itself.

At this point in time, the Democratic Party needs to just make a decision. Even though Obama has steadily won the majority of states, Clinton has won some of the most important and influential states, including Ohio.

The best thing to do in order for the Democrats to win the White House is to make an effort to centralize the ideas of both Obama and Clinton and possibly exercise Clinton’s idea of the “dream ballot,” with one running as vice president for the other.

Or the party needs to look at who will be able to win over the other’s supporters the most succesfully and name its nominee before the party is split any more.

Sally Zintak is an English literature freshman and can be reached at [email protected].