ISR Issue 60, JulyAugust 2008
Obama: What kind of change can we expect?
Obama has appealed to people’s hopes for change,
writes Lance Selfa,
but what he really offers is a good deal less
THE END of the Democratic presidential primaries
presents U.S. voters with an historic choice. For the first time ever, an
African American will head the ticket of one of the two major parties in
American politics. Senator Barack Obama’s achievement is even more
historic when you consider that he will lead the Democratic
Party—originally the party of slavery and the Confederacy—into
the November election.
That an African American stands on the verge of being
elected president is surely an indication of how far the U.S. has come in
only a few decades since the civil rights movement knocked down the last
vestiges of Jim Crow. The Obama campaign has already given millions of
people the hope that change in the American political landscape is finally
at hand.
To get to the nomination, Obama had to fend off a
strong challenge from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who embodied much of
the thinking and strategy of the Democratic establishment in the last two
decades. Clinton’s campaign could have been remembered for its own
historic quality as the most successful campaign for president by a woman.
Instead, it may be remembered as one of the last attempts to use
“white backlash” politics, pioneered in the 1960s and 1970s, in
a major national campaign. Clinton’s lowest point came in early May,
when she invoked the classic racist stereotype of “lazy”
African Americans, telling USA Today that Obama’s appeal was weak among “hard-working
Americans, white Americans.”
Although early June national opinion polls show a
close race between Obama and Republican nominee Senator John McCain, this
should be cold comfort to the Republicans. As an enthusiastic advocate of
the Iraq War, McCain is tying himself to the central policy of the most
unpopular president in polling history. And even though he admits that
economic policy doesn’t much interest him, McCain also promises more
of the same Bush policies that numbers approaching a super-majority of
Americans say they oppose.
Even conservative columnist George F. Will, writing in
Newsweek, cautions
that McCain supporters shouldn’t read too much into the current polls:
Because of [McCain’s] cultivated persona as a
“maverick” Republican, many—perhaps most—voters do
not know he is pro-life. When the fact that he is becomes well publicized,
and Democrats will make sure it is, Clinton’s female supporters will
stop sulking in their tents and will rally round Obama.
Something that millions of Americans think they know
about Obama—that he is a Muslim—is injurious. When they are
disabused of this idea, he will rise. McCain might think Obama cannot rise
high enough to win because he, McCain, can get the support of white,
blue-collar, culturally conservative Democrats who decisively preferred
Clinton to Obama in the primaries.
But there are fewer of these “Reagan
Democrats” than there were when that category was identified 28 years
ago. That label might not yet be as antiquated as, say, “Wendell
Willkie Republicans,” but its significance diminishes as the economy
and the educational and social profile of the electorate change. War-weary
Americans are preoccupied with domestic discontents, but McCain sounds at
best perfunctory when talking about things other than those that really
interest him, things that fly or explode—the sinews of national
security.
The amount of corporate money that has flowed to the
Democratic side this election season shows that a large segment of
Corporate America has already decided that the Democrats will win.
According to left-wing journalist John Pilger,
Despite claiming that his campaign wealth comes from
small individual donors, Obama is backed by the biggest Wall Street firms:
Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan
Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the huge hedge fund Citadel
Investment Group. “Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14
donors,” wrote the investigator Pam Martens, “consisted of
officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again
with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling
fraudulently made mortgages.”
Even conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch has
thrown his support to Obama. The reason? They know that the political
system has taken a severe beating under Bush and they believe Obama can
revive its credibility and blunt opposition. “Politicians are at an
all-time low and are despised by 80 percent of the public,” Murdoch
commented, “and then you’ve got a candidate trying to put
himself out above it all. He’s become a rock star. It’s
fantastic.”
This means that not only will the Democrats have a
vast money advantage that they can use to fight McCain even in so-called
red states, but it means that an important part of Corporate America, the
media, will give Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Aggressive political campaigning is still available to
the Republicans. Their operatives are gearing up for a season of attacking
Obama for his choice of church, his lack of military service, his sometimes
neglect to wear a flag lapel, and a host of other trivialities. Will it
work? With a campaign that will feature subterranean appeals to racism, it
would be foolish to dismiss the possibility.
But in an environment where a failed administration
leads a failed war, where all but the richest Americans face economic
distress, and where opinion polls show what appears to be a long-term
evolution away from the type of politics and agenda that the GOP has
championed for three decades, a Republican win in November is less likely
than a Democratic sweep.
So given that, what can we expect from an Obama
administration? Obama has made “change” the mantra of his
campaign, so it is only fair to ask what kind of change we might see. The
atmospherics of an Obama administration—coming to power in what may
be the biggest Democratic landslide in four decades—should be a
breath of fresh air after decades of mainstream political domination by the
Right.
On the other hand, it’s clear that Obama is
already shifting away from the inspirational “yes we can”
message of his primary campaign—which was always more rhetoric than
substance—into a more cautious and “responsible” posture
for the general election. He already shifted to the right in response to
Clinton’s attacks on him. With the nomination in hand, Obama appeared
before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and pledged his
commitment to Israel and to doing whatever is necessary to subdue Iran.
“I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bi-partisan consensus
that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats,” he assured the
crowd. He made no mention at all of Israel’s brutal strangulation of
Gaza, saying that, “We must isolate Hamas unless and until they
renounce terrorism [and] recognize Israel’s right to
exist.”
He repeated the Bush administration’s phony
claim that Iran poses a nuclear threat to Israel,
The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and
challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could
spark a dangerous arms race, and raise the prospect of a transfer of
nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its President denies the Holocaust and
threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is
real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.
Obama has also shifted his position on withdrawal on
Iraq. Writes journalist John Pilger, “Obama has now ‘reserved
the right’ to change his pledge to get troops out next year. ‘I
will listen to our commanders on the ground,’ he now says, echoing
Bush.” His criticism of McCain on foreign policy will revolve around
the fact that current policy is failing to secure U.S. interests in the
Middle East, not call those interests into question.
Obama is tapping into a deep reservoir of sentiment
for real change, but there is a tremendous gap between that sentiment and
what he actually offers. The things that ordinary Americans
want—decent jobs, housing, access to health care, and an end to the
Iraq War, are not really on offer by either candidate.
Journalist John Pilger recently compared
Obama’s campaign to that of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and it is an
apt description:
Kennedy’s campaign is a model for Barack Obama.
Like Obama, he was a senator with no achievements to his name. Like Obama,
he raised the expectations of young people and minorities. Like Obama, he
promised to end an unpopular war, not because he opposed the war’s
conquest of other people’s land and resources, but because it was
“unwinnable”…
The vacuities are familiar. Obama is his echo. Like
Kennedy, Obama may well “chart a new direction for America” in
specious, media-honed language, but in reality, he will secure, like every
president, the best damned democracy money can buy.
Lance Selfa is on the editorial board of the ISR and is author of the
forthcoming The Democrats: A Critical History.