Why is Obama Losing?

Senator Obama is now trailing Senator McCain in many national polls. In fact, his national popularity has been falling ever since he received the nomination and made a decision to move toward what the pundits describe as "the political center."

The choice of Joe Biden, the foreign policy chair of the Senate who had resolutely refused to allow anti-war voices to testify before his committee at the outset of the Iraq war and who has been as dull and mainstream of the inside-the-beltway crowd could hope for, was only the crowning blow to the people who had been the energizers for the Obama camp. But there had been others: the capitulation to AIPAC and the most reactionary elements in the Jewish world rather than a strong affirmation of the Israeli peace movement perspective on the conflict, the emphasis on how Obama would increase military presence in Afghanistan rather than putting forward a challenge to the militarism that had led us into the fantasy that acts of terror can be stopped through military domination of other countries (his victory in the primaries had been won by representing himself as the candidate of the anti-war sentiment in the country, and it was that which made it possible for him to beat Hillary Clinton who resolutely refused to apologize for her having capitulated to the militarist reasoning); his vote for a bill that extended the power of the president to wiretap on national security grounds (though he had previously promised to oppose it); his capitulation on off-shore drilling while failing to unveil a visionary plan to solve the global environmental problem); his embrace of a Supreme Court decision that banned the city of Washington from imposing gun control; and his distancing from the netroots that had supported him from the beginning.

To understand why these betrayals of his core constituency made a big difference in how he is perceived, particularly after Senator McCain did the opposite by choosing as his running mate an obvious soon-to-be-darling of the Republican's core constituency, we need to understand the psychodynamics of American presidential campaigns. There, the first thing to know is that the issues are rarely the issue. What counts much more are two things: the level of hope versus the level of fear, and the degree to which the candidate seems to understand and care about the well-being of the people whom s/he is seeking to lead (or what we might call the elitism factor).

Anyone hoping to end militarism and create social programs to reduce poverty, provide universal health care, and address the global environmental crisis is going to face the charge from the media and the political Right that they are "unrealistic" and "naive." Few Americans have the background to understand the details of the programs being presented, and so the tendency of many liberal and progressive politicians to focus on the details feels like technocratic noise that people quickly turn off. What people need to hear is a plausible account of why it is possible to hope for a world in which people can take care of each other and trust others enough so that we don't have to militarily dominate the world.

To do that, Obama needs to address the source of our fears, and to put forward a visionary program (I've suggested a Global Marshall Plan to end both domestic and global poverty, provide adequate education and health care, and repair the global environment) that rests explicitly on a rejection of the fear-oriented policies of the Bush/McCain team. Some of Obama's most loyal supporters imagined they heard that from him at the DNC, but most of the country did not come away excited by some new vision that would provide a fundamentally new direction for American domestic and foreign policy. But to the extent that Obama instead tries to fight on the same terrain as McCain (who is going to do better at wiping out all those evil people in the Middle East) he loses, because if the world is as fearful as the Right claims, then people will choose a genuine militarist, not a lukewarm one. And if that is the nature of the period in which we live, then many will move to the Right, because that's where the social energy is going, and that reinforces the most fearful part inside themselves.

Moreover, switching from being the candidate of the progressives and the visionaries to the candidate of the political center is understood by many people as a transparent manipulation based on the assumption that Americans are too distorted and stupid to embrace what Obama really stands for, so the only way to win their votes is to pretend to be a mild-mannered centrist. Thus the elitism charge seems to stick, because "if he can't trust Americans to hear his real ideas, the ones with which he made his political career as a progressive in the Senate and in the primaries, then why," reason many Americans, "should we trust him, since he obviously shares the general elitism of the liberal world, an elitism that expresses itself in the assumption that if we don't vote their way, it's only because we are stupid or evil. and big fans of some kind of fascism or repression?"

It's not too late to repair this, but Obama would have to make a consistent and concerted effort to repair the damage he has already done by his surge to the Center.

Comments

[jsarets]

Obama isn't losing. McCain is winning. Palin is like catnip in white rural America. He's finally shored up the conservative base that still isn't particularly fond of him, but with Palin on the ticket, they're now on board. It's coming out the undecided column, not the Obama column.

So enough with the suggestion that the left is deserting Obama, because it's just not happening. What's going on is that McCain made a successful play for the undecideds, and Obama really isn't convincing or un-convincing anybody.

If Obama keeps campaigning like a front-runner, he's going to lose. He needs to be the insurgent, the man who succeeds against all odds, which isn't all that much of a reach given he is a multiracial community organizer running for POTUS. He needs to get back to the biography, because otherwise Sarah Palin's biography is going to determine the election.

[Shodedyam]

Thats all we needed, the whinings of Rabbi Lerrner to weaken our resolve. For the sake of my kids and yours, pull yourselves together and take heart!! Sometimes the movies say it best.

"Hold your ground! Hold your ground!
Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers,
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.

A day may come when the courage of men fails,
when we forsake our friends
and break all bonds of fellowship,
but it is not this day.

An hour of wolves and shattered shields,
when the age of men comes crashing down,
but it is not this day!

This day we fight!!

By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, Men of the West!!!"

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechreturnoftheking.html

[KathyinCT]

When was the last time the Rabbi ran a winning campaign?

Never? I see.

Axelrod and crew accomplished the impossible by beating Clinton. They have a plan in place now and we would all do well to think how this ENDLESS whining and hand-wringing affect undecided voters. Or is the Rabbi really an Obama supporter?

Look at it from this point of view -- you've got a P.O.W. who has been the darling of the media for decades, with a hot VP choice -- and the GOP is barely able to hold even. Perhaps we should be saying amazing that Obama is holding steady.

[clearthinker2008]

We won't know if Obama is losing until November 4.

[SamThornton]

While Rabbi Lerner articulately voices many of my own concerns about the Obama candidacy, I'm not sure either of us is correct in accepting the general media meme that candidates always veer toward the center in a general election and the particular idea that that's what Obama has done. I think it's likelier that we both erred in originally projecting on Obama our own liberal ideals, and that it's likely we aren't alone in that mistake.

Politicians like Obama and McCain are adepts at tailoring their message to their current audience. Part of that expertise lies in not disabusing an audience of that audience's assumptions about beliefs and outcomes they may wish a candidate to share with them. It's a case of ellipses speaking louder than words.

My own reading of the policy statements available on the Obama and McCain websites is that they are both pretty much in the mainstream of overall American political thinking. But, I'm not an expert and I could be wrong.

[tompoe]

Did we forget to mention the assumption that the corporate media is providing the basis for the rabbi's conclusions?

[Storm]

National polls only matter as a leading indicator of state polls, because they are taken a lot more often.

I don't see Obama winning clearly on the state maps anyway.

I agree with Rabbi Lerner that this is part of the reason that Obama has lost some of his energy. On the other hand, I think that he is also failing to play the character card in typical Democratic fashion. WIth everything happening on Wall Street, isn't it time to remind people of the Keating Five.

And, well, Carol McCain? Dirty, yes. But your "dirty" or your campaign ethics aren't worth the lives that will be saved by an Obama presidency.

[LizM]

I wonder if you might consider informing your readers and provide the names of those anti-war voices which Senator Biden refused to have come before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Thank-you.

[AuntSally]

Well said. I've written many, many notes to the Obama campaign on precisely this point. Obama needs his invigorated base to show up on election day. The problem: his invigorated base -- the young -- are no longer so invigorated. And this is a particularly fickle group when it comes to showing up to vote.

The old Obama brought them out in droves for the early primaries. Since then he's discarded two enormous opportunities to add action to his rhetoric: lead a revolt against FISA expansion, and take a solid stand for sanity in energy policy. Failed on both counts.