To Vilify Obama for his Ability to Inspire is to Ignore the Principal Lesson of the Last Three Decades of American Politics
From 1932 until the mid 1970s -- at least in our domestic politics -- progressive values provided the dominant frame for mainstream political debate. They defined political "common sense." By 1980, the Reagan revolution had changed that -- and rightwing values have framed the American political debate for the thirty years since.
That's largely because Progressives went into a "defensive crouch." Our candidates advocated "Republican-lite" positions. We refused to debate the fundamental differences between the progressive and radical conservative values. Chief among these differences is the central question of whether we're all in this together, or all in this alone.
Often our leaders retreated to the discussion of small, incremental policy initiatives that presumed the right wing's assumptions about the primacy of "private markets" over people, and the innate inferiority of democratically elected governmental institutions compared to corporations that are in fact unaccountable to the public interest.
In 1993 we had a Democratic President and Democratic Congress, but we lost the battle for universal health care. What we needed then, and what we need now, is a massive national mobilization to pass universal health care, change our labor laws, enact campaign finance reform, provide universal access to higher education and preschool, end global warming and change our foreign policy.
Leadership, more than anything else, is about mobilizing people into action. People take action when they feel empowered -- when they are inspired. They will not take action simply because they are "convinced" we are right. They will take action when they are motivated by inspiration to be a part of an historic endeavor.
And, in the spirit of Dan Quayle, a few quotes from the campaign:
"I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me."
-- John McCain (2/13/2008)
Uhh, yea, obviously not.
"All of our problems are interconnected, but we treat them as though one is guacamole and one is chips."
-- Hillary Clinton, speaking to a Latino audience (1/15/2008)
Way to get at the root of the problem, Hillary.
"A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive."
-- President Bush, after touring a genocide memorial, Kigali, Rwanda. (2/19/2008)
So, we should build more museums I guess. Museums really seem to get through to him.
Hillary's web site today, in addition to her "Help Make History" banner which was taken down during the race spat, sports a new banner reading "You Did It," referring to raising $10M since Super Tuesday. (Her web site doesn't mention if that includes the $5M she gave herself (great spin, btw), but it does say it's from 100,000+ donors. I can't imagine that she wouldn't include her own donation though.)
The Barack campaign sends me an email with a little graphic that updates to show the latest fund-raising total since Super Tuesday. Currently it shows $7.5M from 350,000+ donors.
Hillary - $10M from 100,000+
Barack - $7.5M from 350,000+
So who wins? In 2004, 95% of the House races and 91% of the Senate races went to the candidate that spent the most money, but that's not really what we've seen in this race so far, Romney is a great example and Huckabee has done well without much money.
OpenSecrets reports that the cost of this race has already outspent any previous presidential race. But people give money to candidates expecting them to spend it on their campaign, so maybe that's just indicative of so many people becoming interested and involved in these campaigns? Maybe the increasing amount of money spent is due to the increasing dissatisfaction people feel with our current administration.
Perhaps number of donors will become a new metric? Average donation per donor would be interesting too.
"The blue state/red state division is better expressed in terms of the persistent conflicts between the big cities and their rural hinterlands, over land use, water rights and environmental, class and cultural issues. Red states are simply those where the country can outvote the urban centres, while in blue states the opposite is true."
Interesting. Reading that sentence made me realize I've always thought this. Every time I see the red state/blue state maps, in the back of my mind I remember noticing that all the states with big urban centers are blue, those without are red. But it never formed into a cohesive thought or rebuttal of the "red state/blue state" conceptual model. All it took was for somebody to say it. Now I'll never think of the red state/blue state issue the same. Just thought I would share.
