[Marxism] From the bureau of electoral cretinism: Iowa Caucuses

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Mark Lause writes about Obama: "It doesn't take too much imagination to see
him caught in a Kennedy spiral. That is, he succeeds by tapping into vague
and ill-defined generational aspirations for a change. He could easily then
finds himself trapped by the logic of what he's expressing to chart a much
more reformist turn than he might otherwise be inclined to take..."

I'm half-convinced that Obama is serving to crystallize an until-now
atomized yearning for change. I've been seeing it expressed in various ways
at my workplace for months now, and only now with Iowa have I seen the
attitudinal shift taking place might be linked to Obama. 

My workplace in a way is an ideal barometer, not of the magnitude of such
changes but of their direction, because editorial decisions are a lot about
what we in the media think regular people are interested in, what their
attitudes and concerns are, what sorts of things they're focused on. 

It is not sharply focused politically on specific measures but rather is a
matter sensibilities, as I see it:

- A turning away from military solutions and militarism: very marked in reax
to the Iran intelligence estimate. 

- A turn toward "pragmatic" (as opposed to free-market dogmatic) policies
(health care, foreclosures)

- Exhaustion with the "culture wars" 

- Less emphasis on "standard of living"; more on "quality of life". Similar
to anti-"rat-race" sentiment of first half of 1960s.

- Green-ness (the "Clean Air Commuter" program at my workplace --which
offers free mass transit cards if you agree to limit your weekday use of
free parking at work to no more than four times a month-- has doubled in
size in the past year or so).

IF THIS IS THE CASE, or something like it, we should not (as is implicit in
Mark's comment) expect it to be reflected in many concrete promises or
proposals from Obama, but rather in his overall tone and stance, the image
he projects.

Mark adds, "Most immediately, thought, it will minimize the impact of a
radical strategy in backing McKinney as a means of mobilizing the black
community.  I'm not retreating from this idea, but it will force us to
moderate our expectations."

I think "minimize the impact" could well turn out to be an understatement of
gigantic proportions.

IF Obama takes off as I think he might, support for him among Blacks, and
quite possibly other "minorities," will be overwhelming, absolutely
CRUSHING. You can forget all the stuff about whether Obama is "Black
enough," that will be over. For as most Blacks will see it, this will be the
CULMINATION of more than a half century of struggle for equality and
inclusion in this country. And that will have a great deal of truth to it.
That Obama could get this far at all is a *reflection* of the gains Blacks
have made through their struggles, and by registering the gains, the fact of
his candidacy in and of itself will help to consolidate them.

The election, of course, will be about many, many MORE things than the right
of Black people to take part in the political life of the country on an
equal basis with whites, but it would be in some part about that, and for
the Black community, that would be an absolutely central question. 

Don't be fooled because everyone and their sister --including Jesse Jackson,
for example, who I heard on CNN a day or two ago-- will deny it. Denial is
the form that equality takes in this case: the issue IS that Obama being
Black NOT be the issue. 

I think under certain conditions, simply treating Obama as "one more"
capitalist politician and running against him is unlikely to work,
politically. Apart from a relative handful of radicals (of all races,
including Blacks) who already know what the score is with bourgeois
politicians, I can't imagine who that campaign could win over that you
wouldn't win over through analysis and propaganda *without* counterposing a
candidate to Obama. And I can imagine that campaign really alienating people
who otherwise might be won over months or years later.

I'm not sure what to do under a circumstance where the Black community goes
into political motion around his candidacy, likely dragging behind it the
best of the younger generation, and not just them. This is all highly
speculative, of course, but I can imagine circumstances where counterposing
a candidate of the left to Obama could be disastrous. Not likely to be so,
among other reasons because the left is too weak to do itself that kind of
damage, even if it won't be completely fragmented by this candidacy, which
it would be. But I can imagine it.

Because, if you're not going to address a campaign of the left to Blacks and
other minorities and to the youth, you've basically got no one to talk to.
And I don't think a lot of PREACHING about how voting for Democrats is the
original sin is going to work. 

In that connection, there is one item in the entry poll in the Iowa caucus
that we should think about: 

Edwards, who is running so far to the left that sometimes he almost sounds
like Nader, won the most support from those who described themselves as
"conservative," with 42%. Among those who classed themselves as "very
liberal" he got only 16% as compared to Obama's 40% and Hillary's 24%. One
way to interpret this is that Edwards got the pro-white/male supremacy vote
DESPITE his positions and BECAUSE just of who he is, just like Obama got the
biggest slice of the "vary liberal" vote based in part on who he is. And, of
course, Hillary Clinton's campaign workers have been totally out front about
the fact that she is a woman being a reason to support her, whereas in the
case of Obama, it's all being studiously ignored.

We will be getting another "read" on the dynamics of all this in New
Hampshire.

As a foretaste, CNN released a New Hampshire poll done on Friday, just after
the caucuses, and Saturday morning. Obama is up three and tied with Hillary,
who is down one percent. Edwards is also up three points. Although within
the "margin of error," those trends make sense and are probably real. 

But the poll also showed a key shift in one question -- "electability." Some
35% of the likely Democrat primary voters polled thought Obama was the most
likely to beat the Republican nominee in November, compared to 36% for
Hillary, in other words, a tie. Hillary is DOWN 9% since a survey concluded
last Sunday, only six days ago, and Obama is UP 13%. I suspect that by
Tuesday, the shift in sentiment towards Obama will be even larger. 

Normally the "electability" question is a real sleeper in these polls, the
kind of thing political analysts will occupy themselves writing
thumb-suckers about between Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), when the nominations
almost for sure will be decided, and next September, when people will start
paying attention again to the campaign. I say super Tuesday will decide
things because half the states are having contests that day, including some
of the largest, like California.

Nevertheless, in the case of Obama and Clinton, the "electability" question
is in large part a proxy for race and gender -- whether the fact that she's
a woman and he is Black will bar the way to victory in November.

As to whether Obama or Clinton could be elected, that question is being
settled *right now* by the bourgeois media and it seems to me pretty
decisively. The campaign of Obama and Clinton will be taken just as
seriously as that of an Edwards or a McCain. That COULD change in coming
months, but it is extremely unlikely. 

Of course, anyone who knows anything about the United States knows that
perhaps a quarter or a third of the electorate would NEVER vote for a woman
or a Black. But very few of those votes --if any-- are accessible to the
Democrats anyways. I think there is more of a question around Obama and the
unspoken and even unconscious feelings of superiority white people in this
country generally have, but that is more of an issue of having to be more
convincing than he might have had to be had he been white. And if the
elections are about "change", then being Black might automatically get him
"change" credibility that simply another rich white lawyer politician would
not have (see Edwards).

IF Obama beats Hillary by a good margin in New Hampshire, super-Tuesday a
month from now may just turn into a coronation, because of having won two
lily-white states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

And I'll tell you, these aren't the things I imagined I'd be writing after
Iowa. I though I'd be talking about how through all the chicanery of
scheduling the primaries that went on last year, the Democrats and
Republicans had succeeded in recreating that hallowed American institution,
the all-white primary. Which is a lot of why my gut is telling me there's
something more here than his charisma and his ability to say not much of
anything extremely well. We'll see over the next few days and weeks, but I
have a gut feeling Obama and his team managed to detect and are channeling
or riding a broader shift in social attitudes.

At any rate, a lot of very serious thinking about tactical stances will need
to be done IF Obama continues to build momentum. I'll tell you, the LAST
place I want to be politically is to be perceived in the Black community as
having opposed their first-ever chance to have a Black major-party candidate
or a Black as President in the White House.

Joaquín