Obama in 2008 tried to straddle the fence on many social issues as he sought to appeal to voters across the spectrum. He often said he wanted to find “common ground” between both sides and was seeking “common-sense solutions.” The issues he led with were: National security and foreign affairs issues; Taxes; The Economy; Energy and Environment; healthcare; and finally social issues. The economy and national security dominated the campaign, social issues received little attention.
His support for social issues was with the majority. Obama supported abortion rights without much qualification. He supported a ban on the medical procedure partial-birth abortion only if it allowed exceptions to protect the mother’s health. This was a nice way of telling the pro life people he was with them and the pro choice people he was also with them as the mother’s health exception is almost always allowed. He opposed the legalization of gay marriage but favored allowing civil unions and gay adoption. He opposed a federal constitutional amendment and a California amendment to ban gay marriage. He supported the death penalty for some crimes. In each instance he was with the majority.
During his administration he was not a leader on these issues. He did not repeal “don’t ask don’t tell” until July of 2011 after public opinion began to change. It can be argued that Justice Scalia did more than Obama to end gay marriage. Scalia’s dissent in Windsor gave Courts the road map to legalize gay marriage and was cited by every District and Appeals Court that ruled on this matter. Many of the successes on these issues during the Obama administration can be attributed to the fact that he did not go to war or lead with these issues but simply nudged them along. Obama understood the divisiveness of these issues and took the pragmatic approach. He realized that to pass other key issues that benefited the middle class he could not go to war with Republican America. His approach did not mean he did not support these issues or even that he didn’t want to go to war.
What were the issues that were at the forefront of his campaign? He opposed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and proposed a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. People were tired of the war and the majority of people new it was a mistake. Obama proposed reducing taxes on middle and lower income individuals, while raising them for high income earners.The economic recession and the emerging financial crisis made the economy a central question in the campaign. He claimed that the problems stemmed from too little government regulation of the financial markets and the people agreed. Obama emphasized development of alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and more reliance on energy efficiency. He also favored imposing a windfall profits tax on petroleum companies. In general, Obama favored more federal government regulation and subsidies to promote energy efficiency and to develop new energy sources. Wind, solar, windfall profit tax on oil companies, subsidies to promote energy efficiency and new energy sources were all issues the public supported. He was supporting the fight against global warming without making global warming the main topic of discussion.
Obama made health care his battleground. One major issue and one major win. Here he led with preexisting conditions, health insurance on parent’s policy for children until age 26, elimination of gender discrimination, minimal essential coverage and free preventative services. In trying to pass Obamacare he attempted to accentuate the parts of the program the majority supported.
We can learn how to win again from Obama and his campaign. Find out what the issues are in your locale and what the majority feeling is about them, more important find out how each voter feels about these issues. Can we unite around these issues or part of them? How do we present these issues to voters and get their support for them? What are the issues that divide us and why do they divide us? Do people support part of a divisive issue and would it be a victory if we just got that part passed? If people do not agree with us or worse yet disagree with us, we cannot expect to win their vote. Obama took the issues that concerned people and took a stand that was supported by a majority of the people. He accentuated the positive, tried to down play the negative and stay away from the divisive.
Look at the 2016 U. S. county by county voter map. See how red it is? Well we had better think about how we are going to get white rural working class voters to vote for Democratic candidates if we want to build our bench, win state legislative, school board and local elections. Calling them racists and just getting out our base is not going to do it. In rural America our base is not enough and is most likely not enough anywhere to win elections. When we see that Trump got 18% of the white working class voters that voted for Obama something besides racism and prejudice was driving these voters. Had we had them or a decent part of this 18% (20% in Pennsylvania) we may have very well won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Do you suppose that would have made a difference in the first 100 days.
It will take a grass roots effort to get in touch with voters. We must know what they are for and what they are against. We must not only ask for their vote but be able to talk to them about issues they support and our candidate supports. But that is not enough, in an election campaign we must know enough to stay away from the issues a voter and our candidate have differences of opinion on. We must be able to talk intelligently about these issues of disagreement, give a short succinct answer of why our candidates supports the issue and then get back to the issues of agreement. The Obama campaign was a master at this with his volunteers in 2008.
If we follow Obama’s lead we can win. But I can assure you we will not win back white working class voters support by calling them racists because they voted for Trump. Some Trump voters are racist and prejudiced but many are not. It is those that are not racist or prejudice that we must focus on and win over. Just like minority groups all white people are not the same. Bring out the base, bring back the white Obama working class voters and expand on that group and we can win again. Obama gave us the road map let’s use it.