For millions of Americans, Barack Obama and his message have inspired intense support, enthusiasm, and even exhilaration. But there's something paradoxical about Obama's appeal to an important segment of his supporters.
Aside from African-Americans, Barack Obama's strongest support has come from affluent whites with college degrees or beyond, especially younger voters. Upscale middle-class progressives have been the core social and cultural constituency for the post-1960s "new politics" wing of the Democratic Party. In contrast to Obama's disproportionate support among professionals, academics, college students, and the like (not to mention political journalists and pundits), the core of Hillary Clinton's support turned out to be in constituencies at the heart of the classic pre-1968 New Deal coalition, above all white working-class voters (supplemented by Clinton's greater appeal to Hispanics and to middle-aged and older women). That's a compressed and incomplete picture, but few would deny that it captures a lot of the story.
These two wings of the Democratic Party's base have cohabited with varying success for the past four decades. This year they polarized fairly sharply between Clinton and Obama.
Clinton and Obama don't differ substantially in terms of specific issues and programs. But their campaigns have been organized around different orienting visions of politics and political leadership. Clinton based her campaign on the well-established model of interest-group liberalism, which she used effectively to mobilize the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party. The fact that this familiar message resonated with her supporters in tone and content isn't mysterious.
But Obama's appeal to so many upscale white progressives does have a puzzling aspect. People often talk about Obama's soaring rhetoric, but what's the content of that rhetoric? To put it in terms that the Founders would have understood immediately, Obama has made civic patriotism and republican virtue central to the message of his whole campaign. He has consistently championed a politics of solidarity, active citizenship, national community, and the common good. Like Lincoln, Obama portrays the United States as a nation defined by certain constitutive ideals and charged with the project of imperfectly but continually striving to achieve, extend, and enrich these ideals in concrete ways ("in order to form a more perfect union"). Furthermore, Obama affirms and celebrates "the promise of America" (adding that "I know the promise of America because I have lived it"), while insisting that to fulfill that promise requires constant effort, civic engagement, shared sacrifices, and conflict as well as cooperation. The most crucial requirement ("the great need of the hour," in a formulation borrowed from Martin Luther King) is active moral and political solidarity -- not only to empower oppressed and underprivileged groups, but to bind together and revitalize a more comprehensive national community.
(Obama is popular around the world, but it's no accident that he drives some hard-core anti-Americans up the wall. For example, the Australian/British journalist John Pilger dismissed Obama as "a glossy Uncle Tom" who believes, along with Clinton and McCain, that "the US is not subject to the rules of human behaviour, because it is 'a city upon a hill'"--whereas in reality it is just "a monstrous bully.")
Historically, those themes have often been prominent in American politics, including progressive, reformist, and radical politics. (Let's not forget that the Pledge of Allegiance, which Obama has pointedly quoted, was originally written by a Christian socialist.) But in recent decades they have become increasingly unfashionable in some quarters--including those that have produced many of Obama's most passionate supporters.
Nowadays many (not all) self-styled progressives distrust any patriotic talk and regard appeals to solidarity and the common good as mystifying bunk or dangerous propaganda. Instead, serious discussion of politics is supposed to focus exclusively on competing interests, and much allegedly progressive discourse has gone beyond valuing diversity to supporting an irreducibly fragmented "identity politics" based on fetishizing "difference." (The main alternatives to balkanizing ultra-"multiculturalism"--more accurately termed "plural monoculturalism," as Amartya Sen points out--are often varieties of abstract legalism or cosmopolitanism equally allergic to the notion of national community.) From this perspective, Obama's invocations of "the American people's desire to no longer be defined by our differences," and his expressed conviction that "this nation is more than the sum of its parts--that out of many, we are truly one," should sound heretical. Ditto for his insistence that we have and must pursue "common hopes" that reach across our differences, aiming for more inclusive solidarity and effective recognition of the "larger responsibility we have to one another as Americans."
Put bluntly, the core of Obama's message would appear to be completely incompatible with the proclaimed beliefs of many of his most ardent progressive supporters. (And we haven't even mentioned the religious imagery of compassion, covenant, and redemption--analyzed thoughtfully and provocatively by Philip Gorski--with which Obama sometimes links his political message.) So what gives?
Three partial explanations, not mutually exclusive, strike us as plausible. First, the fact that Obama is African-American probably helps to make his appeals to American civic patriotism (along with his religious imagery) more acceptable in progressive circles than they would be coming from a white candidate. Second, some of Obama's supporters--and critics--probably assume that all this stuff is just empty campaign rhetoric that Obama doesn't really believe himself. We suspect they're wrong about that.
But the most interesting fact is that many of Obama's progressive supporters don't simply accept or tolerate his message. They are moved, thrilled, and inspired by it. As Gorski perceptively noted, this response suggests that Obama's message speaks to profound hopes, concerns, and emotions that--for good or ill--run deeper than explicit beliefs and positions. We hope so. For decades progressive politics in America has too often crippled itself by unilaterally surrendering the discourse of national community and the common good--and, with it, some of the key animating principles of active democratic citizenship. (Todd Gitlin and others have rightly decried this folly.) If Obama can help make these notions respectable again for self-styled progressives, that alone would be a valuable contribution.
Andrei S. Markovits teaches political science, sociology, and German studies at the University of Michigan. His most recent book, on European anti-Americanism, is Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton University Press, 2007).
Jeff Weintraub teaches social and political theory and political sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He also blogs at: http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/
It's not the idea of community that gives me as a progressive pause--it's what we've been asked for too long to commune around.
Barack Obama has offered the country a true new deal for civic pride. He wants us to enter public service and is willing to reward people who do this just as handsomely as he wants to reward people who enter the military for the same ideal. The biggest draw of all is the way he has shown us that he has far better judgment than most leaders we've had since before Eisenhower/Nixon took over in '52. He is working for a national community around virtues we can support with our consciences. He is working for common good that is truly for the common, not the few and the privileged.
The reason you are confused, then, is because you commit the sin Bruce Lee warned about: you are fixated on the finger pointing away at the moon and missing all that heavenly glory.
Listen carefully to Obama's speeches. He is not saying that racial divisions don't exist. He is saying that there are still problems but that there has been progress. That we have to strive to move past racial divisions. He is calling us to action. It took optimism to move past segregation. If civil rights leaders just sat around complaining about racism, but never did anything about it, never believed in a better world, where would we be now? It is going to take optimism. It's going to take the dream of a colorblind america to fulfill the promise of the civil rights movement.
Her record is anti-New Deal and pro-corporatist.
Talk about out of touch with reality. Jeesh.
You may want to substantiate your outrageous claims if you want to be taken seriously.
If only we knew our place! How dare we challenge the status quo!
BTW- overrepresented is called winning. Our victories are your tragedies... but from the tone I'd say with confidence you too are opposed to the New Deal while posing as a defender.
I and most Obama supporters I know are excited to be excited about being American again. I mean, the fact is, the American brand has really suffered over the past 8 years, and we are thrilled that we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves.
So that's why we don't distrust his message. We're not against patriotism. We're just against Bush's definition of it.
Let us remember that when next we hear, "he says he is a Christian." A leader who leads by example!
The guy is just phenomenal on every level. What can I say? I just loves me some Barack Hussein Obama!
Obama's multicultural, childhood experience in another country is reflected in his foreign policy/diplomacy priorities. Which progressives consider a higher priority than many.
I am perplexed with claims Obama has no substance. Tabula raza? At a charter school in Denver yesterday he was asked about immigrant children who need to learn English, his three points:
The issue is clouded by ideology which needs to be removed.
He believes all children should be bi or tri lingual.
His approach is to "look at the data and the science" to determine how best to create effective programs.
This is my preference in a candidate. They don't need to be experts in every area. I want someone who grasps the problem and the goal, and has the judgement to use science, experts and out come data to create new solutions. Obama's unique background gives him insight. He moved to Indonesia at 6, and learned the language going to school there.
however, I maintain my right to be "allergic" to the Repugnants of today.
This is something that perhaps you should research better. In the recent past, there has been a major push for the "plural monoculturalism" as you call it, but in the last year I've seen a major push in the opposite direction, not from the neo-con side, but from the progressives that I know, and in my OWN thinking! This is why Obama appeals to the kind of voter who would previously have found his ideals to be in complete opposition to their own ideals!
We are a new generation of progressives. We're not moving to the right or to the left, we're moving forward, and that's how America will rise to meet the challenges and unleash the potential of an uncertain future.
Be well, CF
I choose Obama for his policy platform. He proposes to remove lobby control over government. He is proposing diplomacy before war. These stances are VERY different than Clinton or McCain. You don't need to dissect his speeches to understand why Americans believe in his plan.
But if you are so curious why 75,000 people show up to see him speak: Obama's message of service reflects us; we are not forgiving him for his message, we are thanking him for saying the things we have lived. For example, I am a progressive and proud civil servant, like many progressives I know. I also lost my brother to this war. My brother volunteered for this war because he, as part of a progressive family, believed in service. Consequently, Obama's stance that diplomacy must be attempted before sending people into war is one that resonates deeply for me.
Obama will not be transforming the people who vote for him. Obama will be representing us.
(p.s. you state: "the fact that Obama is African-American probably helps to make his appeals to American civic patriotism (along with his religious imagery) more acceptable in progressive circles." I assume you are implying that Obama is held to different standards because of his race. This is ridiculous. The world has changed (at least for my generation), and we are looking for the right president, regardless of race or gender.)
"Obama is a STATESMAN that happens to be a politician"
"Clinton and McCain are POLITICIANS that will NEVER be statesmen"
Sounds like the same old politics from the same old politicians to me.
Viva Hillary!
This no longer flies. Sorry. After two incredibly personal and thorough books, hundreds of pages of policy papers, almost two decades in government, Obama has shared more about who he is than any other politician on the scene.
the guy just "accomplished" the most stunning, ground-breaking, successful and competent presidential primary campaign in living memory. I'd definitely hire him to run my country.
I believe the authors know that the most profound changes in social progress of the kind that attempt to liberate folks come from the middle and upper middle classes: Are intellectuals the only folks that make for profound social change? Probably so. They are tpyically best equipped to see the Big Picture. Are they elitists? Not necessarily unless things like the theory of evolution, true justice under the law or the belief that no nation can be called a true democracy when 2% of the population possesses 90% of the nation's wealth. If that's elitist then I'm a large -'E' Elitist.
The magnitism of Obama is very similar to the kind of adulation FDR drew before and during his first, second and third terms. Like FDR, Obama can see beyond tribal concerns without discounting them. Like FDR, Obama tells us that fear is our greatest enemy going into the challenge to set our nation back on course.
Progressives, and many others, see that Obama (or more accurately, what Obama represents) may be our very last chance to save ourselves from ourselves .... and the kind of values the Clintons currently represent.