Two points to reiterate within the maelstrom of commentary and punditry regarding Obama’s victory:
1) The Tactics — However brilliant a traditional, top-down campaign he ran with the help of the two Davids, the organizing act of going up to someone and challenging them to change their lives by getting involved with the political process is the basic cell structure of the Obama movement. As the Alinsky-ites taught him when he was a young man, good intentions don’t matter unless you gain power to bring them to fruition. It seems like Mr. Obama has grown up to be the toughest and smartest politician of our time — without wholly losing his idealism. He got us to donate our money and our time — not just to help him — but to help us. It would be hard to overstate how exciting this is, as a means to make our country more democratic.
2) The Substance — There is a rumor afoot, spread by the likes of Jon Meacham over at Newsweek, that the U.S. is inherently a "center-right" country, and that any attempts by Obama to implement progressive policies like universal health care reform or a carbon tax, are D.O.A. This is not really true — the U.S. has "left" periods (like abolition or the rights revolutions of the 60s) and "right" periods (like the last 8 years of militarism, more regressive taxation, suspension of civil liberties, etc). It is true that Americans from the right to the left are far more individualistic than European democracies, and therefore tend to be suspicious of public programs and collective solutions to problems. But the examples of popular programs like Social Security and Medicare show that Americans can be convinced.
We are at a rare point where one man — Barack Obama — has the mandate and the Congress to really bring change to the U.S. in terms of health care, foreign policy, financial reforms, and a host of other areas. The question is — what will he really lay it all on the line to accomplish? I’d love to hear some speculation about his agenda in the comments…
Accidental Blogger 
5 responses to “The Community Appears to be Organized (Andrew)”
I also think the US is essentially centre-right country. An obvious example to me is how voters in California supported Obama 67 per cent to 37, yet they voted 53 per cent versus 47 to ban gay marriage. This does not mean that Social Security, Medicare and health insurance for all cannot be sold. The first two programmes are in a shambles and need to be fixed and health care is a scandal in a country that is the richest in the world. The only problem is the $ 10 trillion national debt. You can’s make omlettes without breaking the eggs, so let us see.
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The community indeed appears to be organized – for now.
I don’t think that the classification of American voters as center-right or center-left is as simplistic as John Meacham or Manoj would have it.
Take Prop 8 in California banning gay marriage, which passed. Quite ironically, this may actually have been possible partly due to the increased turnout of African Americans voting for Obama. Unlike the white religious right wing, the AA community votes overwhelmingly for liberal candidates and fiscal issues but is very conservative when it comes to religion, particularly regarding homosexuality. A similar anti-gay measure passed in TX during the 2006 elections due largely to African Americans voting in sync with the Republican right.
People can be atheists and pro-life. Fiscally conservative and supportive of gays. Anti-war and anti-higher tax. There can be all sorts of opinions held by the same person which fall on both sides of the left-right divide.
President Obama will have to walk a fine line. He will need a well tuned ear and considerable power of persuasion to figure out which left or right issues the majority of the population is ready for and where he is most likely to be successful. In moving forward, he will probably anger many on the right and disappoint some on the left.
The way I see the current mood of the nation, the so called safe “left” leaning issues where the Obama administration can garner a majority support from Americans will be innovations in the field of environmental protection and green energy. Most Americans, including many evangelical Christians support progressive measures on these fronts. I have heard that First Lady Laura Bush is currently waging a pitched battle with Darth Vader Cheney on the matter of saving dolphins and other marine life off the coasts of the Mariana Islands.
As for health care, he probably is going to take incremental steps in the direction where he is likely to face the least resistance – universal coverage for children under eighteen and tweaking the insurance industry regarding pre-existing conditions and portability of coverage in case of job changes. Overwhelming numbers of Americans will line up behind him on such measures although they may oppose a universal / single payer system at this time.
I think most Americans also have battle fatigue and recognize the financial drain that the fruitless and immoral Iraq war has proved to be on the national treasury. While they are concerned about national security and terrorism, they may now well favor hard headed negotiations with their adversaries over reckless military aggression. Choosing one’s battle with care will be more appreciated than making enemies through unnecessary bullying. That is neither left nor right – just prudent.
I also believe as does the scientific community that the cerebral and forward looking Obama is going to be good for science and intellectual curiosity. And that too is not a left-right issue. Most Americans want their country to be the leader in cutting edge scientific and technological research – except for a handful of ignoramuses with the brain size of fruit flies, such as Sarah Palin.
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Brian Leiter’s post-mortem hopes for, rather than predicts, Obama’s putting the country back “on the rails.” I’m particularly fond of this desideratum: The “lunatic right”–in America, this is now mostly a redundant phrase–thinks that Obama is a “Marxist” and a “socialist.” One may hope they are right…. Personally, selfishly, I only hope the agenda doesn’t include any of the ongoing speculation about our fearless leader here at Berkeley Law.
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Also worth noting here is that while three more states other than California (Arkansas, Florida and Arizona) approved of anti-gay propositions on the ballot, anti- abortion measures failed in California, South Dakota and Colorado. Michigan voted “yes” on permitting medical use of marijuana.
As I said, left or right leanings are not written in stone. The very fact that a majority of Americans elected a black president of mixed race with an Arabic middle name who was variously described as a socialist, un-American and a terrorist sympathizer, says something about people’s ability to make up their own minds and see which side the toast is buttered. It becomes especially easy and pragmatic after being jerked around for eight years by an incompetent president they thought they could drink beer with.
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“Fiscally conservative and supportive of gays.”
Indeed, Connecticut, which is generally more fiscally conservative than California, and whose representatives on both the left and the right tend to be more centrist (though I would say, “less populist” is the better comparison), voted to reject a convention to make Prop 8-like changes to the state constitution by margins of 2:1.
Moreover, LGBT rights are hardly uniform across center-left countries. Italy, which notwithstanding its current leadership, I would describe as fundamentally to the left of the US, certainly on questions regarding government entitlement programs, is at least as bad or worse than the US in terms of LGBT rights.
One problem, of course, besides the complexity of political variables, is that America, notwithstanding Obama’s rhetoric, is not a monolith. Another problem, which has nothing to do with politics, is that, as Manoj notes, we’re broke. I agree with Ruchira that environmental protection and a ratcheting down of our militaristic foreign policy are the most likely areas for progress. Those are areas that will require more resources in terms of political will than in absolute dollars. I would ardently love to see universal health care, but am stumped as to where an Obama Administration would drum up the money for it in his first term.
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