blue primary blues

The American Presidential season is generally source of soul-destroying agony for progressives. Between the sliminess of the mainstream media, the hegemony of corporate money and cynicism of the professional political class, there is rarely much to find inspiring. Usually, I find myself keeping Max Weber’s famous dictum about the strong slow boring of hard boards nearby in order to keep from throwing myself from a window.

At first, this election cycle seemed to give us reason to be cautiously excited. If someone had told me two years ago that the Democratic Presidential field would be dominated by a young and brilliant black man, a skillful and talented woman and a Southern white man who is running on what amounts to a social democratic platform, I would have assumed they were stoned. For the first time in my life, there is almost no outcome of the Democratic Primary that wouldn’t lead to a politically meaningful campaign as opposed to our usual rearguard action.

As we approach the first set of votes, however, the soul crushing has commenced. Let us take it as a given that Senator Clinton is working within the DLC framework: a carefully honed appeal to skittish middle class voters, a reminder to everyone else that the Republicans are worth beating and an invincible fundraising and networking operation. The smart money is on her winning the nomination fairly handily. Campaigning for the first woman president, especially against a political party that will appeal to misogynistic fears of cultural upheaval will bring a high level of excitement to the race, at least for me. Nonetheless, it is depressing that after six or more years of building, of concerted efforts to reassert some kind of proud and vibrant liberal message, of watching the Republicans come so close to completely dismantling the legacies of social movements and rational public policy at every level, that the best that we could come up with is another centrist Clinton. Clearly, we have a lot more work to do.

Watching Edwards’ social justice message ridiculed because of his wealth, attractiveness and haircut is a stark reminder of the bizarre reality of America’s lack of a rational class discourse. Somewhere, a smart grad student is launching a dissertation in trying to unpack the irony and convoluted ideology that both feminizes and class-baits a candidate who is finally talking about rolling back the Reagan revolution in way that is meaningful to working-class voters. And I’ve heard these talking points from Democrats, even self-identified progressives: Edwards isn’t serious about reform because he’s rich.

The diminishing prospects for John Edwards should worry everyone. There is no hope of building a lasting progressive majority in America without winning back Joe and Jane six-pack. They won’t be won back permanently until Democrats are meaningfully leading on reorienting the economy in their interests. Edwards’ campaign is the most serious attempt at such a project that I have seen in my lifetime. It's a new realignment strategy, or what historians might call re-re-alignment.

Barack Obama is chasing realigment as well, but more semiotically than politically. I have watched Obama’s political career almost from the beginning, volunteering on his first successful run for office, and watching as he negotiated the deadly terrain of Chicago politics. He can talk to disaffected white working class voters, (including my family in central Illinois), inspires young and liberal voters across racial lines in an unprecedented way and, more than any other candidate in this race, exudes the optimism and infectious energy of the Kennedy era.

It may be possible to charismatically and symbolically forge a winning coalition. His is the most “fired up” organization, recruiting thousands of enthusiasts into politics for the first time, which is always a good thing. Obama is running on the mystique of the “new”, a trope which can be a powerful mobilizer but which often frustrates as a substitute for substance. In some speeches, Obama speaks of moving beyond the conflicts of the 1960’s, in others the 1990’s, rhetoric which casts Senator Clinton as stale, appeals to generations X and Y, and reassures white voters that he’s not going to burn the mansion down. It also pitches him as running against Washington, a posture that never seems to get old (and cuts both ways ideologically). Its smart politics, even if it’s a bit creepy, and I believe that he wants to win because he wants to do good things.

However, there are two major reasons I haven’t jumped on an Obama bandwagon: First, I don’t have a very clear sense of what Obama would be like as President. Is he a New Frontier liberal or a Third Way centrist? He sounds alternately like both. It’s hard to sift through with only a couple of years of a voting record at the Federal level, and a policy team that is all over the map. My friends who support him tend to point to his choice of metaphors and his biography to emphasize his transformative agenda, but I’m still smarting from the Bill Clinton burn. I’m not one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, (hell, I supported Dean), and so policy squishiness isn’t the bottom line for me, it’s the campaign.

Obama’s campaign, like his appeal, is centered around Obama: not a larger organizational project the way that Howard Dean’s was, not rooted in social movements the way Jesse Jackson’s was. An independent organization based in San Francisco called Vote Hope is trying to utilize Obama’s appeal to simultaneously contribute to his victory and to recruit, train and mobilize activists for the long-run. That’s a great project, and I care about it’s outcome. However, it’s the exception in a larger reality. The new Obama activists I have encountered don’t seem particularly interested in sticking around, moving the party, building organization or learning how to be leaders. I don’t have data on this assertion, but I’ve talked to other Party activists who have noted the same thing. They still need to be outreached to and engaged, but in most parts of the country, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, Obamamania seems more about fandom than movement.

It is a commonly held faith in most progressive circles that the left has fallen behind in its ability to present effective narratives and “big picture” vision. In part, the growing attraction to Obama in certain neighborhoods of the progressive base is that he seems capable of breaking that destructive pattern. More than any candidate in recent memory, both biographically and rhetorically, Obama offers a remarkably compelling story of what America is and could be. At moments, that narrative is just what we need: radical and pragmatic, honest and compassionate. Other times, however, it seems virtually contentless. “Different and new” for sure, but what that means is largely unclear. Politics won’t be realigned in this country without a set of broad, accessible messages from the left. However, those messages must be deeper than platitudes and hipness.

Let me also say that I don’t buy any of the campaigns’ rhetoric around “electability”. All three of the “top-tier” candidates, plus Richardson (and perhaps even Dodd and Biden) could win in November ’08. Edwards is not too pretty, Obama is not too black and Clinton is not too female to win the Presidency.

And that’s exactly why I’ve got the blue primary blues. This is a year in which the wind is at our backs. People really are hungry for change, and the other team is off their game. We’re gonna win. The stakes are higher than just correcting the dazzling incompetence and mean-spiritedness of the Bush Administration. Republican rule since 1981, including the Clinton interlude, has primarily been an era of destruction for social equity and solidarity, both institutionally and culturally. We have a real shot at pushing that back, not just restoring the New Deal and the Great Society, but moving beyond them, updating American liberalism for a more dynamic, globalized economy and finally allowing the best of it’s benefits to touch the lives of oppressed and marginalized communities. Great things are possible.

But not likely.

Next: The Second Clinton Presidency