Race, Age, Gender, The War
Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 11:59:43 PM PDT
While Hillary's nomination is no longer certain, neither is a Democrat victory in the general election. In both parties the leading candidates have had to contend with serious insurgencies representing populist factions rebelling against the party leadership. The incredibly accelerated and compressed primary season has exposed the strains and fault lines in both parties. My sense, however, is that the tensions among Democrats are more likely to pull that party apart than those among the Republicans. The Obama Democrats carry both the idealism and the arrogance of youth, assuming much too readily that the world will fall in step with their obvious virtue, while Republicans see themselves as pragmatists in a world that must be coerced into marching in tune.
So many things that appeared inevitable in the presidential race as little as three months ago appear much less so these days. Six months ago it seemed that the race would come down to a final battle between celebrity New Yorkers, Rudy Guiliani and Hillary Clinton. Both were way ahead of the competition in most of the polls and both had the attention and apparent blessings of the media as well as a commanding lead securing big money backers to fuel their political machinery. Even after the first couple of primaries it was the common wisdom that the Democrats would be almost unstoppable in the general election no matter who got the nomination. Voter interest and turnout appeared to confirm that likelihood. But when people started actually voting the whole calculus changed rapidly and radically.
On the Democrat front terms that were once collective identifiers have been rendered absolutely meaningless in this election cycle. The mantle of 'progressive' which was once a useful way to define oneself in relation to its generic opposite, 'conservative', is now claimed by everyone. To look at the actual policy positions of candidates is to find very little to distinguish one from another. As for the term 'grassroots' it depends on whether you apply the term to women, the working class, white or black , men or women, that makes the case for either candidate being supported by the grassroots of the party. And the term 'Netroots', coined by Markos Moulitsas of the leading 'progressive' Democrat blog site to apply to the vast and mysteriously influential wave of online activists, defines little more than the typical over-inflation leading mostly white males with computers to believe that they are the center of the political and social universe.
While Hillary's nomination is no longer certain, neither is a Democrat victory in the general election. In both parties the leading candidates have had to contend with serious insurgencies representing populist factions rebelling against the party leadership. The incredibly accelerated and compressed primary season has exposed the strains and fault lines in both parties. My sense, however, is that the tensions among Democrats are more likely to pull that party apart than those among the Republicans. The Obama Democrats carry both the idealism and the arrogance of youth, assuming much too readily that the world will fall in step with their obvious virtue, while Republicans see themselves as pragmatists in a world that must be coerced into marching in tune.
Obama has proven mainly that he can win Democrat primaries in states like Alabama and South Dakota that are likely to vote Republican in the general election. He has shown in caucus states that he can load the room with his young followers. Yet, he has failed to win in the biggest state primaries, like California, New York, Florida or Michigan and likely in Ohio. These states are where the ultimate decision of who will be president is most likely to be decided. The Obama tsunami is wide but it is not yet very deep. When you ask people who are swept up in the wave what are his specific positions or how they differ from his opponent you generally get either vague answers or a blank stare. What is driving his campaign to this point is his undeniable rock star quality and charisma. Although this may work against Hillary I question whether televangelist speech making will be enough to carry a united Democrat party through to November.
Once upon a time I would have gone along with the flow and convinced myself that Obama and the wave of true believers was up to the task of going against ol' John McCain and his legion of ancient protectors. That was before slogging through years of Republican rule, watching America turn to shallow father figures like Reagan and Bush. This is the country that voted for George W. Bush TWICE, to the total amazement of virtually every thinking person in the rest of the world! John McCain has already begun to point out that Obama's 'platitudes' don't play in the 'real' world of threats and terror. Do you think that in the midst of a war, toward which most Americans feel rather ambiguous and uninvolved, that insecure citizens will turn away from another father figure and toward an unknown quantity whose main qualification for duty is 'hope' and a dream of things being different?
While the Democrats divide along lines of race, gender and age, Republicans will in typical stalwart fashion move behind the candidate which represents their greatest perceived strength as stalwart defenders of national security. Ultimately and, I believe, rather quickly, all of the factions of the Republican base, including the slightly disgruntled Evangelicals, will coalesce around the nominee. Meanwhile Democrats will fight a bloody generational battle, with more than a few echoes of 1968, when the party split along similar lines, thus losing the election to Richard Nixon while beginning its incubation as a new coalition between the working classes and those who received their initiation in the civil rights and antiwar struggles.
This election will be about the War in Iraq after all. The resurrection of John McCain has been born on the wings of an apparent success of the strategy he backed to essentially stay the course. McCain speaks with the authority of a soldier and of one who has governed for many years, while Obama is the young idealist in a dangerous world, who offers to lead us on a course the results of which are unpredictable. Can Americans trusting the wisdom of someone who has negligible experience in foreign relations and none in war, and who often speaks in parables about a world of wishes and dreams? Standing side by side with the war written BIG in the background and feeling increasingly insecure, the majority of Americans are unlikely to flock behind an unknown quantity.
As things stand, whichever Democrat finally gets the nomination will have pried it from the bloody fingers of the passionate supporters on the other side. He or she will have a challenging first task of pulling the party back together. If Obama wins he will have taken the carpet out from under those who have built the party's base for a generation. If Clinton wins she may alienate a movement that is giving birth to a whole new generation of party activists.
I wish us all well. In the end I will likely vote for whoever the party nominates, but I am at this moment much less confident of the inevitability of a Democrat victory. Obama has not yet made a convincing case to me (other than ever shifting poll data) that he can win in a general election against John McCain. So far I see mostly a rock star and a tidal wave of enthusiasm, a phenomenon that can turn on a dime. Having watched time and time again the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory I'm thus far less than assured of the outcome.
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