The Obama Doctrine

Obama and Yglesias want you to get stung.

Kulturkrieg

The Blue Meanies lost this election.  After the delicious Schadenfreude and gloating, well-meaning liberals have been admonishing conservatives that we all would benefit if they learned from their errors.  This is the civic-minded, Gallant thing to say.

I don't want them to learn anything.  These people fear modernity, and they fear complexity.  Their entire philosophy is grounded in keeping the mass of humanity in a perpetual state of fear, ignorance, and cruelty.  They are not going to turn to each other and say, "I always knew there was solid evidence for climate change," or "It doesn't affect me if other people form a same-sex marriage or get an abortion."  At most, they'll swallow hard and claim that America welcomes all hard-working immigrants (particularly if they're Catholic).

The notion that a polity requires "two healthy competing ideologies" is a conceit of those who profit from presenting the spectacle of this "competition."  Compromise junkies like Obama look on decades of reactionary obstructionism and conclude that—this time—accommodation will be met with reconciliation.  In fact, despite fleeting moments of clarity, cultural conservatives are preparing to bury their heads even deeper up their own hateful asses, and hoping they will learn anything other than to be more adroit liars is fruitless.

Demographically, they are doomed.  The sooner they become an electoral irrelevancy the better.  For all of us.

Please remember Veterans Day.

A Stronger Loving World

Like everyone else, I didn’t—couldn’t—trust the polls.  Also, the day before the election I finished Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Tradition 1742-2004, and it seemed jejune not to expect the Republicans to do whatever they could to steal the election again.  As Campbell illustrates, few American elections are entirely untainted by fraud, but only the closest are truly susceptible to having their outcomes altered by voter suppression, ballot box stuffing, and bald vote-buying.  Even if the election couldn’t be delivered to the Republicans outright, I was certain that the outcome would fall within the ever-widening "Margin of Litigation," such that legal challenges would prolong the final result for weeks.

Nevertheless, over the final week the more rational part of my brain grasped the objective structural disadvantages working against the Republicans and could posit no plausible scenario for a Republican victory (I had no experience or instinct by which to judge the "Bradley effect," and I regarded it as akin to belief in ghosts; succumbing to one’s fear only gives it more power).  The capacity of the American electorate to be stampeded by Republican fear-mongering had seemed inexhaustible, but I gradually came to tentatively accept that Bush’s "mandate" had run its course by mid-2005, and that the hangover had been painful enough to fill the electorate with resolve, if not remorse.

So, as CNN called Pennsylvania for the Democrats, it seemed possible that we might see a result by the time the polls closed on the West Coast, and I decided I could risk the company of friends.  Ohio had been called for the Democrats by the time I arrived at the party, but I wouldn’t take the champagne out of the fridge until I had heard a concession.  With the giddy Stockholm syndrome of a viewer who cannot walk out of a schlock horror movie, I half-hoped Palin would muscle McCain away from the podium and refuse to concede.  When the phrase "Senator Obama’s victory" passed McCain’s lips, I popped the cork, but I did not feel joy so much as relief.  It was as if I had awakened from a seven-year-long Philip K. Dick fever-dream, escaping from a cartoon world where even the authoritarian thugs cannot help indulging in self-parody just to show that they can get away with it, and returning to a universe where logic and accountability apply.  The world we have regained is not unplagued by fear, malice, or stupidity, but we have remembered that we are also capable of maturity and thoughtfulness, and I drank to that.

The Audacity of Cogency

I rarely listen to political speeches, and I never presume that my reactions to political rhetoric have any relation to the speaker’s wider perception by the public.  I read the text of Obama’s speech yesterday morning, and I watched it several hours later.  From the media/blog reactions to the speech (less than 24 hours later), it doesn’t seem to have changed anyone’s mind, but that’s only one way to evaluate rhetoric.  I doubt that polling people’s reactions would be any more illuminating.

The content of the speech wasn’t dramatically different than anything I’ve heard or read from many similarly lucid people over the last 20 years.  Like many speeches by Obama and unlike those of his contemporaries, it treated a complex subject with the thoughtfulness and candor it deserves, keeping the audience engaged while indulging in very few soundbites or applause lines.  He tried to start a discussion rather than bring it to a conclusion.  Most of all, Obama expected his audience to rise to the level of the conversation instead of stooping to their baser emotions.  Therein lies the risk, more than just grasping the "third rail" of race, for if the last 40 years have demonstrated anything it is that Americans hate being reminded to do their homework.

All Saturday's Parties

Clearly, the unprecedently high turnout at the Washington Democratic Presidential Caucus on Saturday was due not to fervent opposition to the Republicans or to the stellar nature of the Democratic candidates but rather to the undetermined nature of the Democratic race on the day of the caucus.  If the delegates had been more unevenly distributed, I doubt even half of the participants would have attended.

Four years ago in one of the bluest districts in the state, 24 voters showed up at my caucus to allot five delegates.  This Saturday, deep in the heart of Darkest Bellevue, 49 voters assembled to allot their five delegates.  I asked the PCO how it had been in her precinct 2004, and she said less than a dozen voters had turned out.

Despite the overcrowding, the organizers ran a smoother operation, and the sign-in and tally went off in short order.  The initial tally:

	Obama	34
	Clinton	10
	Uncommitted	5

The PCO invited each candidate’s caucus to put forward a speaker, and the Clinton camp was represented by an older woman wearing a Red Hat festooned with buttons and a T-shirt with a silkscreen of the SF Chronicle front page announcing Clinton’s husband’s 1992 electoral victory.  She spent her minute describing Clinton’s ostensible experience and connections with international leaders explicating the worthless cavils that Clinton issued when she voted to give Dubya a blank check.  A younger woman asked to speak for Obama and she, too, highlighted her candidate’s international perspective.  The voters found both of these testimonials somewhat inapposite and quickly focussed on how each candidate would fare against McCain.  The final tally:

	Obama	36
	Clinton	10
	Uncommitted	3

Four delegates were allotted to Obama, one to Clinton.  Amusingly, of the Obama supporters who stayed that long, only three (including the PCO) stepped up; the roster was only filled out when the PCO warned that otherwise the missing delegate would go to Clinton, and Red Hat was still hovering.  Once again, I signed on as an alternate.

Comfortingly, everyone I talked to said they would vote for the Democratic candidate in November, whomever that turns out to be.  It was almost like a party.

So Say We All

The candidate whose positions most closely conformed to mine was John Edwards.  He correctly identified the corruptions of our corporatist government, made combating inequality a centerpiece of his campaign, and was convincingly contrite about his early support for this maddeningly stupid war.  He was the best candidate in a delightfully strong field, and I was sad to see him drop out.

I am previously on record as opposing casual participation in the candidate nomination process.  Nevertheless, "they set up the rules," so if the Washington State Democrats are gonna let a pleb like me participate in their caucus, I won’t surrender the field to others who don’t share my distaste.

The differences between Obama and Clinton are slight when compared to anyone the Republicans would nominate, but they are there.  Most significantly, Clinton’s positions and voting record on the war and the expansion of executive power are dismaying, and the contrast with Obama is stark. As these are key issues for me, I support Obama for the Democratic nomination.  From her statements and actions, it is clear that Clinton’s only objection to the Iraq war is that Richard Holbrooke wasn’t in charge of it.  Furthermore, this was her opinion not only in 2002 but through 2008, as well.  This demonstrates that Clinton shares her husband’s (and her husband’s advisers’) conviction that foreign affairs are abstract concepts that don’t affect elections.  In short, Clinton has an ambitious domestic agenda and is willing to accommodate Republicans and neo-cons in order to enact that agenda, leaving messy international problems to the Best and the Brightest.  I am not, and I doubt Obama is, either (at least not to the degree Clinton is).

And what of that domestic agenda?  Almost all Democrats agree that we have an historic opportunity for genuine health care reform, and I even think Clinton’s proposed plan (at present) is marginally better than Obama’s proposed plan (at present), but not so much as to outweigh other issues (and neither plan is as good as Edwards’s was).

I don’t pretend to any proven ability to judge "electability," but I can say that when he speaks Obama is qualitatively more inspiring than Clinton.  Clinton may know her stuff, but when she speaks she’s preaching to the choir.  Of course, this is another reason why amateur demographers and pollsters like me shouldn’t have a voice in candidate nomination; we should be asked (in the general election) who we like, not who we guess other people would like.

On Saturday, I’ll go to my first caucus in my new precinct, and I’ll let you know how it differed from four years ago.