Some Thoughts Post-Election

I'm still on something of a high from Tuesday night. We elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. Here are some thoughts that I take away from this, both as an American and a liberal.

We are the Cool Kid of the World Stage Again: I just got an email from a friend of mine in Italy. He told me that he listened to Obama's acceptance speech and cried. In Italy! "You have no idea how much the world loves this man," He wrote. We have all heard this before. Andrew Sullivan has not talked about much else in the last two years. Indeed, if Obama has a mandate with his electoral victory, it seems to me that it is a mandate for a more nuanced, diplomatic approach to foreign relations. This was a candidate emphasized early on was that he would talk to our enemies, and again, whose name was Barack Hussein Obama. Who was raised for part of his life in Indonesia. Whose father a Kenyan. Obama made his internationalism part of his platform in the democratic party, and while de-emphasizing it in the general election, Obama never backed away from his claim that he would talk to our enemies. I am very hopeful about all of this.

Is America a Center-Right Country, or Was Obama's Victory a Mandate for Progressivism?: As Dave Sirota, Bill Scher, Matt Yglesias and a number of others have shown, the Beltway insiders, cable news folks, and the like, are warning Democrats not to over-reach, NO! That is America is a center-right nation and will always, always, always, be a center right nation. It seems pretty clear that this claim is, frankly, retarded. Rick Perlstein titles his book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the Liberal Consensus, for a reason. From 1929 to 1964 there was a liberal consensus in America. It was caused by something called The Great Depression and series of policies known as The New Deal. Following WWII, this country experienced the greatest economic boom of its history until 1964, and indeed of any country's history, and the idea of an active government was so obviously right that when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 he was called a kook. So we have a precedent in this century, of almost three decades, of America as a nation of the center or center-left.

A lot of the Netroots are chomping at the bit for major progresssive change now, now, now! They see the current election, the democratic congressional majority, and the economic collapse as a temporary window which must be taken advantage of for real progressive change. Otherwise it will close, people will "snap out of it" and just want to keep the Fed out of their lives. They also argue that Obama's win really did constitute a progressive mandate because McCain and Palin called him every epithet for a left-winger in the Republican playbook and lost by seven million votes. "Voters knew exactly what they were getting when they elected Obama," the netroots says, "They knew he was liberal, they knew his voting record, they believed that he would raise their taxes and they still supported him anyway." True. But they also knew that Obama was emphasizing a tax cut for the middle class. That policy advisors were largely members of the Clinton administration and the Washington establishment. His candidacy was, for these very reasons, met with approval from the MSM. And this too, was a reason why voters supported him. The logic of the Netroots is a bit desperate here. They want to push Obama to the left so they are saying that his victory represented a victory for progressive policies. And it did, in certain ways. Obama ran on a platform of Universal Healthcare (although his plan wasn't really universal, his rhetoric was pretty liberal in this area). He ran on a platform of transforming the nation's infrastructure with new, green technology. This too was a bold, liberal idea. But there was a reason why voters didn't think Obama was a "scary liberal." He didn't reach out to the Netroots, for starters. This, perhaps, would have been the best indication that Obama was committed to using his election as a mandate for progressive policies. Yet he did not.

So am I saying that Obama is not really committed to a progressive administration? Not exactly. I think he understands something about his election, and about the current moment in our history, that many of the Netroots would like to ignore. The truth is that for almost the last thirty years, since 1980, we have been a center-right nation. The constant refrain that one hears from the media on this point is not so much out of any ideological bent, as it is based on the effectiveness that conservatives have had controlling the political discourse in this country for the last thirty years. It is a kind of Ministry-of-information-logic: we are currently a center-right nation, therefore we have always been a center-right nation and will always be a center-right nation. But again, there is a reason for this, it is not just a media creation. For the last thirty years the Right has managed to trash the idea of government as a positive agent of social change. The logic was stunning in its tautology. By fucking up government and running huge deficits conservatives then claimed their own ineptitude as a governing party was proof that Government Was the Problem. Part of this was the Democrats fault too. By the late 1970's, they had become bad at governing too. And Bill Clinton, while governing effectively, managed to nevertheless trigger widespread disgust in government from his inability to keep his dick in his pants. And now we have the legacy of the Bush years, possibly the most inept and corrupt administration in American history. It has led to unnecessary war, botched crisis operations of Katrina, and now a global (!) financial collapse, bringing America to the brink of depression.

This has led to a curious paradox, I think, within the American public consciousness, and one that Obama is acutely aware of going forward. On the one hand, people are scared. Big things are happening that threaten to run over them, to leave them unemployed, uninsured and bankrupt. The housing market is tanking, public pensions are tanking, the stock market is tanking, and in the last two months 500,000 American jobs were lost (almost equal all of what we lost in the previous eight months of this year). People are scared, and they don't know who else to turn to at this moment of crisis except government. On the other hand, I think that it is naive of the Netroots to think that this is the equivalent of a vote of confidence in government to socialize healthcare, for example. If anything, I think the last thirty years have left American more distrustful of government than ever, but they are willing to suspend that belief because they have no place else to turn. And so, it is for this reason that I am distrustful of this first-100-day-is-everything meme. At this point it appears that democrats have been given an opportunity to regain public trust by rebuilding the economy. And it can go either way. Democrats have not shown much of an ability to pass legislation, not in the Bush administration or in the Clinton administration. If it turns out that this bailout comes back a year later, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted, the tide could easily swing back to the Republicans. But lets assume that an Obama administration does rescue the economy from collapse ushers in a revitalized economy through a series of smart stimulus packages and infrastructure projects. The mid-terms come in 2010, and it seems to me that this is the real mandate for progressive change. Everyone in the media seems to assume that this is a repeat of 1992-94. A democrat comes into the presidency with large congressional majorities, only to completely lose Congress two years later. I think it is pretty clear that this moment is not a repeat of 1992. But continued dominance of Congress by the democrats in 2010 will prove it. And that, in my opinion will be the moment to push for universal healthcare. Its what would be the 'long view.' But I think that it is this long view that Obama is thinking about when he takes office.

Mainstream and not.

This is pretty interesting.

One of the things that is most interesting about these polls is that they illustrate how liberal the American public is on certain social issues. It's encouraging to read that 90% of Americans favor sex-education programs and that just 15% favor abstinence only. There's a pragmatism there that is refreshing. (Quick note: the Christian Right is usually about 15% of the electorate, so thats probably where it comes from). Nate makes the argument that democrats should use social issues against republicans where Republican philosophy is outside the mainstream. I think that sex-education is probably the most promising, of the issues that Nate brings up, for this approach.

Nate doesn't give much detail on abortion polls, but the divide in America over abortion is striking. More polls here and here. Most people believe Roe vs. Wade should be legal, but most people also believe that there should be more restrictions on abortions. This isn't surprising, considering the fact that American abortion laws are less restrictive than most countries in Europe.. As an otherwise conventional liberal, I can attest to the ambivalence I feel about certain abortion laws we have in this country; its not an issue where I feel myself to be on particularly firm moral ground, particularly once we start getting into the third trimester of a pregnancy and beyond. Anyway, the point is that the abortion issue also reflects a healthy pragmatism on the part of the American electorate; it is our abortion laws that are not particularly pragmatic--as opposed to those of western european countries, which are less dogmatically pro-choice.

I find the vast support for hate crime legislation rather fascinating, particularly given how unsympathetic mainstream America is to other features of discrimination and oppression (such as disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans in poverty and/or in jail). But I also don't think that most people will hold it against Sarah Palin for being against hate crime legislation. My guess is that if you asked most Americans how much they cared about hate crime legislation the response would be 'not very much'. Given that 70% of Americans will consider voting for someone who disagrees with their views on abortion (an extremely hot-button issue) its hard to believe that Obama could make much of an issue out of Palin's opposition to hate crime legislation.

Its not clear exactly what Palin's position on global warming is. I'm pretty sure the quote that Nate uses is in response to questions specifically about climate change in Alaska.. If it does turn out, however, that she is a straight-up denier of global warming--in the James Inhofe mold--that could be a huge problem. Nevertheless, I suspect that its not quite the case. As Nate's conclusion here illustrates, Palin's position on global warming is not really defined. That means she will almost certainly define it in a way that is passable on the national stage.

The rejection of evolution as an empirical, scientific theory, by the majority of Americans, is quite striking, except for the fact its not just Americans, half of the British population also share a similar disbelief. As cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom has points out repeatedly in his excellent book Descartes' Baby, the theory of evolution is, for whatever reason, profoundly counterrintuitive to the human brain. Children, are even when raised in secular households, are naturally predisposed towards a creationist view of the world. Another way of putting this is to say all of us are naturally predisposed towards creationism. This is not conditioning but, ironically, the way that evolution has wired our brains to think. In this sense, it makes sense that so many people reject evolution because they are predisposed to reject it unless they are conditioned to think counter-intuitively.

I'm going to try and post more about evolution and its conflict with human perception in the coming days. But for now, we can at least feel comforted to know that the majority of Americans reject evolution not because of some weird aspect of our culture that makes half the country ignorant. If its a cultural problem, as we sometimes think, then its a multi-cultural problem, one that across different countries and regions.

Obama's Speech: The Partisan Divide

I had been saying for weeks that Obama needed to pivot towards a more traditional democratic platform during the convention and away from the post-partisan stance that he often struck throughout the primaries because he was running against Hillary Clinton and--by definition--Bill Clinton's administration. Obama's speech did that. Here's how you know. After his speech, commentators did something that they don't usually do when commenting on an Obama speech: the split down partisan lines in their reviews. Progressive commentators loved the speech (as did I). Most of the 'nuetral' pundits such as John Dickerson, Mark Halperin, Marc Ambinder etc. also found it very effective. No surprises so far. Obama gives a good speech, we all know that. But the conservative reaction was mostly negative. This was particularly striking among more sophisticated conservatives like Ross Douthat, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks, who have been demonstrated quite a bit of attraction to Obama throughout this election. Ross captures conservative frustration pretty well.

But from where I sit, to the right of the political center, Obama the generic Democrat is a big disappointment. He started this campaign with two promises: That he'd tell us what we needed to hear, rather than what we wanted to heart, and that he wouldn't be captive to the old left-right divide in American politics. But there were no tough choices presented in last night's speech, no hard truths told. There was just the promise that we can have it all: Energy independence (within ten years, no less!), universal health care, an army of new teachers, tax cuts for the middle class, the working class, and the upper-middle class, zero capital gains taxes on small business owners, a perpetually solvent safety net, plus a dose of protectionism - and all of it paid for by (unspecified) spending cuts, and tax hikes on just five percent of America. Meanwhile, the speech's concessions to conservatism were largely pro forma - an acknowledgment that fathers matter, that programs can't solve every problem, and that government "can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework" - and its proposals for common ground (reduce unwanted pregnancies, keep AK-47s out of the hands of gang members, etc.) were equally thin.

Again, if you're a liberal, none of this is going to sour you on Obama's speech, or on the candidate: Why should he concede anything to the Right, you might say, given the disasters of Bushism, and given that the political wind is finally blowing liberalism's way? Which is fair enough. But for those who aren't liberals, but who have been drawn, in varying ways, to Obama's transformational promise anyway, his claim to stand for "new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time" looks a lot more hollow today than it did a year ago.

It will be interesting to see how McCain responds at the Republican convention. Assuming that it happens in anything other than a procedural sense because of Gustav.

The Palin Pick

So, I am of the opinion that McCain just handed the election to Obama by picking Sarah Palin. Check that: I think the election will still be decided in the debates. But I think it just got a whole lot harder for Americans to take McCain seriously. I've been ranting all weekend how hypocritical and cynical the McCain campaign's choice was. But because I haven't written about it and because Andrew Sullivan's posts on McCain's choice have mirrored my own feelings on the pick, from surprised, to confused, to alarmed, to upset, to fully enraged, I will let his posts speak for my own feelings. Most movement conservatives are ecstatic about the pick like Kristol and almost all of the writers at National Review blog, The Corner, but some, like David Frum are pretty skeptical. The point I want to make is that there is a lot of skepticism, disbelief and contempt surrounding the Palin pick in the blogosphere, even on MSM blogs like Time and Politico. Sure, I am biased, but this seems to me to be the proper reaction. The Palin pick is transparently gimmicky, it fulfills every requirement that McCain needed to politically, except the actual requirement of the Vice-Presidential office itself--being able to step in and take over if the President is unable to fulfill the duties of his office. This is the big meme going around the blogosphere.

Not on the Sunday news shows, however. The disconnect between the blogosphere and television news is stunning. I just watched 'This Week', and it was like walking into an alternative universe. Not once they bring up the fact that McCain only met her once. Not once did they talk about how closely she was vetted. It was an "exciting pick" according to Cokie Roberts. George Will, who I have a weird sort of respect for because at least his opinions are usually coherent, makes the incredible statement that McCain's base is now more fired up than Obama's. The only one who seemed really skeptical was Stephanopolous himself, but he seemed like a kid in High School, who knows that what he's hearing is bullshit but doesn't want to appear too uncool by harshing on the vibe. Admittedly, when Stephanopolous interviewed Lindsey Graham he actually pressed him really hard on the hypocrisy and cynicism of McCain's choice. But once roundtable started, it just became ridiculous.

Meet the Press was a little better, principally as a result of Doris Kearns Goodwin, who specifically brought up the impulsiveness of McCain's decision-making process. But there was still a lot of the 'McCain's restoration as a Maverick' meme. But it really is like entering a parallel universe in comparison to the blogosphere. The same things have happened, in the same temporal order. None of the facts have been changed. But the interpretation of what they mean could not be more different.

The General Election

I'm an Obama supporter. I've watched so many of his speeches, its amazing that I could still be impressed with any new ones. At times he's amazed me, other times he's disappointed me. Over the last 17 months Obama has changed how we talk about politics. But I have also seen him get caught in the old paradigms of the 1960's; he cannot dismiss them completely and in some cases (William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) he has simply tried to avoid conflict altogether by joining in the villainization of controversial, but nevertheless complicated, figures. But Thursday night, I was worried. The first night of the convention seemed stale, the second night better, but still nervous, uncertain, the atmosphere seemed to lack a certain confidence. It got better with each night. But Obama's speech brought the energy to a new level. It was, as Andrew Sullivan points out, a frank argument for liberal democracy. I felt like I was watching an episode of the West Wing or the American President or another of those political dramas of the 1990's in which the ideological power of liberalism was under siege by the far right, but still managed to reign supreme. Watching these shows today, one can see the anxiety that surrounds their mythology of liberal heroism, an anxiety reflected by the political climate of the Clinton years, but a heroism that somehow avoids the real world constraints that were placed upon the Clinton administration. All of these shows struggled with the basic problem of liberal self-esteem during the 1990's, the nagging fear among liberals that what they believed was somehow out of sync with the rest of America, the confused bewilderment that they were being rejected by the very constituencies (the working class) that they wished to help. These cinematic fantasies of liberal triumph acknowledge such feeling of isolation, particularly on wedge issues such as gun control and immigration, but somehow the Josiah Bartletts of the world remained unswayed by this storm of intolerance and in doing so ultimately move the country in their direction. Obviously, the Clinton administration turned out quite a bit differently.

But times have changed. Obama didn't use the word liberal, but he made the case for it, even briefly touching on wedge issues like gun control and abortion that Democrats have typically avoided. The reason is not because Obama is stronger than Clinton was. Its that the political climate is different. In his speech, Obama did something that he had never really done before. His rhetoric for change had always placed the blame for political stagnation in the context of "the last thirty years." He has claimed that it is not a question of Democrats or Republicans being right, but a question of moving past the culture wars. In the primaries he ran against Hillary Clinton, and to large extent the Clinton legacy. The puzzling thing about this rhetoric, perhaps the reason why it leaves people uneasy, is that throughout all his talk of post-partisanship, Obama's core principles remain firmly grounded in the liberal idea that government can be force of good for its citizens. In his speech Thursday night, for the first time, Obama explicitly acknowledged his own candidacy as an extension of Clinton's presidency, and in doing so introduced a new meme into the race. That his presidency will fulfill the promises that Clinton's began but left unfinished. That Obama embodies the liberal aspirations of the democratic party, which can now leave the world of cinematic fantasy to which they were relegated in the 1990's, step forward naked, exposed, but unashamed, onto the national stage.