Why Isn't Obama Ahead by a Landslide as the Economy Collapses? The Psychodynamics of the 2008 Election Come Into Fierce Relief
If Obama understood how to answer these blue-staters and their all-too-ready-contempt for the Americans who don't agree with them, he'd have a far greater chance of winning this election. I hope the readers of this note with try to reach him with an analysis I present below of what is going wrong. Unfortunately, many of Obama's own supporters have bought into the "It's the economy, stupid"reductionist view of human needs that gives them no alternative way of understanding. Because if all that people care about is their own material well-being, then they must be irrational to even consider supporting McCain. But that's not the whole story of who we are as Americans.
I remember having these kinds of elitist thoughts myself when Reagan was first elected, but in the twenty-eight years since then I've engaged in a systematic study of the psychodynamics of American politics, and come to realize how very misguided that put-downish analysis of middle income Americans.
What I and my colleagues working on what was originally anNIMH-funded research project on stresses at work and stress in family life -- we ran groups and did interviews with over ten thousand Americans -- discovered is that for a large sector of Americans, the issues are not the issue in a presidential campaign. So they can easily agree with the liberal or progressive candidates on the issues, and hence in any polling appear to be closer to the Democrats than the Republicans, yet in the polling booth it is not those issues that determine their vote.
Instead, what shapes the consciousness of Americans are two psychodynamic issues: the level of their fear vs. the level of their hope, and the degree to which they feel recognized and respected by those who are seeking their vote. One of the terrible problems with the people who have pushed Obama to present himself as more "centrist" is that they don't understand how their role in pushing the candidate away from his own deepest truths has undermined his campaign and made him appear less authentic and hence less trust-worthy. So lets explore these issues.
The level of fear is never static. Though most of us have been subjected to an intense barrage of messages that tell us that we are surrounded by people who only care about themselves, and a world filled with terrorists who seek to destroy us, and that the only path to safety for ourselves or our country is to dominate and control others before they dominate and control us, we've also been exposed to a different set of experiences in which we've learned to recognize that many people who seem hurtful or scary can sometimes be moved by our acting in a sensitive and caring way toward them, and that love and generosity generate more security than attack and attempts to manipulate others.
Truth is that both of those voices are always in most of our heads, and that while our individual psychological history may determine that one or the other holds greater weight, at any given period a set of circumstances (e.g. 9/11 for fear or the collapse of the Soviet Union for hope) may shift social energy more in one direction than another. For that reason, static analyzes that focus on whether a given person grew up with a more patriarchal/domination oriented family or a more nurturing and cooperation oriented family are inadequate, because they fail to notice the way people can transcend their previous conditioning and move in a new direction if the fear or the hope, the domination or the love/generosity aspects of their consciousness are most effectively touched. Reinforcing the voices of hope inside us is the most important task of progressive politics, and that doesn't happen simply by saying "lets be hopeful."
Watch the Republicans and they know how to touch the voice of fear, and reinforce patriarchal/domination views while ridiculing anyone who might be "soft" or "naïve" (e.g. in believing that negotiations would be helpful with Iran or Russia or Venezuela). That same wisdom is not there with the Democrats--they seem unable to affirm that voice of hope, love and generosity in people that must be massively reinforced, particularly in the face of it being put-down and systematically ridiculed. Obama mentioned the right issues (care about others, peace, social justice, ecological sanity) but his talk, and most importantly his campaign and his ads stay away from that, imagining that they can mobilize people around some modified version of the "it's the economy, stupid" consciousness, as though Americans only care about or get scared about the economy.
Of course, they do care about the economy, and there probably will be a bump toward Obama in next week's polling. But they also care about the lack of loving connections in their lives, the level of futility and meaningless in their work, the well-being of their children, and the possibility of peace in the world.
Obama needs to help people see that these very important elements in their lives have been undermined by a society that fosters selfishness, materialism, and a "looking out for number one"consciousness that is endemic to the competitive capitalist marketplace, cheered on by the media, and brought home into personal lives in ways that undermine our capacities to sustain long-term loving relationships undermine our ability to make sacrifices for our communities, and encourages disrespectful or even self-destructive behavior in some of our children. But until Obama and other Dems present a tough and hard-nosed defense of values like generosity, caring for others, and an insistence that our well-being cannot be achieved apart from the well-being of everyone else on the planet, they will continue to be perceived as out of touch with the real worries of many Americans, and weak and afraid of their own values and unable to embody the hope that they need to stimulate in others.
Obama and many other liberals/progressives appear to not really believe in the possibility of a world of love and generosity, and that reinforces the voice of fear in many people who could be won to a politics of hope if anyone appeared to be hard and powerfully into taking those values and showing how they applied concretely in domestic and foreign policy.
An Obama campaign weakens hope (no matter how many times it uses that word) if it can't say clearly the following:
1. The economic crisis is not going to be solved solely by new economic policy wonks -- because the basic cause of our economic meltdown is the selfishness and materialism that has been fostered by a politics that says our highest obligation is to "look for number one." We need a new ethos in our economy, and institutions that will enforce that ethos, based on the notion that we have a responsibility to care for others, and that anyone running corporations, banks, insurance companies, health care institutions, food, or energy related institutions has an obligation to put the common good at the top of their agenda when making decisions, and should be held legally responsible when they instead make decisions based solely on advancing their own profits and not on the welfare of the public which they serve. We need to develop mechanisms to reward those people and those institutions that do make caring for others and social responsibility a high priority when making decisions in the board room or in the way that they conduct their economic life. And we need A New Bottom Line, so that institutions and social practices are judged rational, efficient, and productive not only when they maximize money or power, but also when they foster love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological responsibility, and enhance our capacities to respond to the universe with awe and wonder. And if we need to bail out corporations, then we the people whose taxes are going to do this ought to have the right to own those corporations which, if the claims we are being given are true, would have collapsed without out money and gone bankrupt. Regulation, fine -- but those corporations should, if they need our money, but under our democratic control.
2. War is the wrong path to achieve security while generosity and caring for others is the right way, so while we intend to keep a strong military on our shores, we should give equal weight to an equally important strategy: showing that we genuinely care about others, repenting and paying for the damage we did to Iraq, and exploring the possibility of a new Global Marshall Plan that would dedicate 1-2% of the Gross Domestic Produce of the advanced industrial countries each year for twenty years (with the financial help of other G-8 countries) to once and for all end both domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and repair the global environment. This is House Resolution 1078 introduced by the first Muslim in the Congress, Keith Ellison, and the details of the plan can be read here. Can we afford it? If we could afford an $85 billion to bail out AIG corporation for the sake of its
3. Saving the environment is not an optional choice but a pressing need, both because our biblical mandate to care for the planet is being undermined by Republican policies that give priority to the rich and the corporations, but also because our future and the future of our children is being undermined at this very moment by polluting our waters, our air, and the products we consume.
4. We not only need to give better pay and attention to teachers, smaller classrooms, and better facilities, but we need to give equal attention to building a new curriculum in our schools that teach how to care for others and the environment, how to communicate in a non-violent way, and teach basic values like generosity, gratitude, responsibility, respect for others, forgiveness when we've been hurt, and how to respond with awe and wonder to the grandeur and mystery of the universe are miseducating our youth.
5. We need to reject the voices in the Democratic party and in the liberal and progressive world who do not adequately understand the legitimate hunger of people for meaning and purpose in their lives that can transcend the materialism and selfishness of the competitive marketplace. There is a religio-phobia in some sectors of the Left in this country that we must challenge, even though we understand that some of it comes from a righteous indignation at the way that some elements of the religious community have forgotten the message of love and caring of the Bible or the Koran and have instead used religion asa justification for sexism, racism or homophobia. We reject that kind of interpretation of misuse of religion, but we must no longer allow ourselves to be portrayed as anti-religion or insensitive to the hunger that Americans have for a return to the traditional values of love, kindness, generosity, individual as well as social responsibility, gratitude, and forgiveness of each other's transgressions. We must affirm unequivocally that we want to strengthen families and create a world that sustains and supports loving commitments rather than only prizes the lone individual out for him or her self. And we intend to challenge overtly the elitism that leads some people in our society to dismiss others who disagree with them as on some kind of lower intellectual or spiritual level. We are populist not only economically, but also in spiritual terms, validating the spiritual hunger of the American people, and on their side in the struggle against the forces that destroy community, family and love.
The point here is that not only must Obama return to his visionary self in order to re-activate the many young people who for a while thought his campaign was about something new (but who have lost some of their excitement as Obama has made compromise after compromise with the ideology of militarism and taking care of the powerful at the expense of the powerless), but that he must do so in a way that appears to be solidly behind a progressive worldview, not apologetically trying to sneak it in bit by tiny bit while allowing the Republican worldview to dominate the ideological debate. When he gets into the television debates, for example, he should actively question the assumptions in questions raised by the television-stars who "moderate" them.
The realists will say, "first get him elected, then we'll raise these more visionary issues." But what I've learned is that it is precisely the willingness of the Republicans to tie their programs to their own value system that makes sense to ordinary people, and that if the Democrats were to start doing that also, and appearing to be hard and tough behind an alternative worldview to the militarism, selfishness and materialism that has been presented as the "common sense" of contemporary political discourse, they would be more effective and more likely to win votes in this election. Doing so would strengthen the hope part of the consciousness of everyone, whereas appearing inconsistent or weak in advocating for what I've described above (and what I call a "spiritual progressive" agenda which we've defined more fully in the Network of Spiritual Progressives' "Spiritual Covenant with America" at strengthens fear.
On the other hand, the video released by Obama on the economic crisison Sept. 17 doesn't really do much to strengthen our more hopeful side. His remedies are superficial and traditional and don't really focus much on what can be done to challenge the ethos that led us to this mess. He talks about greater levels of regulation (and so does McCain -- wow, what an interesting snoozer as they debate exactly which regulations or regulatory bodies will do the best job). He says that we shouldn't be spending money in Iraq on the war, but then he doesn't take the war is the wrong approach, but instead says "we shouldn't be spending our money there -- it should be brought home and spent here" (as though we already were spending too much abroad and needed to concentrate on taking care of ourselves more). Far from sounding visionary and hopeful, Obama sounds like an upbeat technocrat. So soon the argument will be "how much regulation is too much" and "how much spending abroad is too much" instead of about what values guide our economic and foreign policy thinking. No wonder if those are the discussions we will hear, more people will find excitement in talking about Sarah Palin! And more people will think that the message of ending wars and militarism is just utopian nonsense, and that will make them more inclined to listen to McCain who will make his case as someone more experienced in handling things from within the militarist paradigm.
In short, moving to the Center politically is counter-productive not only because it is morally incoherent but because it strengthens the very fears in people about the possibility of a world based on peace and generosity and caring, and hence strengthens the appeal of the McCain/Palin rhetoric of being tougher than anyone else on the planet. For Obama to try to compete on that terrain has proven to be a big mistake. In each area of his political agenda he needs to articulate how his specifics flow from a worldview that is fundamentally at odds with the selfishness, materialism, "looking out for number one" and militarism that has dominated national debate and which always tips in favor of Republicans or conservative Dems. If he keeps hammering at the differences in worldview, and does so in ways that employ the language of the spiritual progressives and the religious traditions of the American people, we will see the expected surge in his support because of the economic meltdown turn into a permanent and landslide-ish level victory.
The answer of liberals has typically been: "the American people are too selfish, stupid or reactionary, so Obama has to be careful and just hint at what we fully believe. They would never buy these lovely ideas that we believe in."
Here we get to the second major mistake of the Democrats, liberals and progressives. Their contempt for the American people, manifested in their unwillingness to say clearly what they really believe (e.g. that the war in Iraq is not just a tactical but a moral error, or that a budget that under funds the needy is an ethical distortion, or that allowing the marketplace to destroy the global environment is a sin not just a question of differences in economic theory) is immediately understood by the rest of the population as elitism and disrespect.
What I learned in my research was that a large group of Americans feel disrespected at work and disrespected in many of the encounters they have with others. They can feel that the Republicans are telling them their own truth--that militarism and self-interest are the key to a good world, but that Democrats are not telling their truth--that love and generosity are the key to a good world--because the Democrats disrespect them so much that they feel that "ordinary Americans" couldn't possibly respond to their message if they told it straight. It is this disrespect that gets triggered by Democrats' caution (they even pick a vice-presidential candidate like Joe Biden who has been hawkish rather than peace- and generosity-oriented whereas the Republicans pick a woman who actually embodies their values). It's not which of these sets of values are better that matters to many people as much as which choice reflects respect for the American people. To the extent that the Dems hide who they are, it's easy to tag them as elitist scum.
Look at the coming debates through this framework: how much has Obama challenged the fundamental worldview of the Right versus how much is he trying to show that he can manage the existing military and economic system within its current set of assumptions. And how much does he speak to the heart of people, not just to their heads, appealing to their better instincts while clearly defining what is wrong with the market materialist and militarist worldview.
So it comes down to this: recognizing that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet, affirming that love and caring are not "soft" but powerful ways of living as individuals and as a nation, rejecting fear-based ideologies (that people will always only care about themselves), and developing respect rather than dismissive elitist attitudes towards those with whom we disagree politically. Until the Democrats get this and convince everyone else that they do, the once again put themselves in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of , Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Obama and his staff are doing what they need to do to get people out to vote. That's the key. All of the polls in the world aren't going to win an election. It's the ground game. Going door to door and talking to people. That's what wins elections. Democrats are out registering Republicans by millions of voters. In Indiana alone they have registered 500,000 new voters. So, if Obama can motivate people to go out and vote or better yet get them to send in their absentee ballot McCain will not win. Just a side note, few Presidential elections are blow outs, even when times are bad. After Watergate,Jimmy Carter barely beat Ford by less than 2%.
"I hope the readers of this note with try to reach him with an analysis I present below of what is going wrong. "
That is confusing.
Um, other than with point #5, I think Mr. Lerner has either been asleep or disinterested.
I hear those talking points daily - and the campaign has done an outstanding job of staying true to those points, while avoiding undue emotional sparring matches with a taunting right. Articles like thse make me more convinced daily that many of us out here just want a role in charting out a course that's already been well studied and is being carefully navigated.
I am a religious progressive. My family and I are devout Catholics who are completely turned off of the policies and voices of the conservative right. That said, I think point #5 misses the point. What frustrates progressives that I speak to is not that people choose to worship or believe in God and model their lives around a set of moral standards based in a religious context. Their gripe, and one that I am agreeing with more daily, is that religious institutions and special interest groups have become increasingly intrusive in the processes and discourse behind the formulation of public policy in modern America. In other words, the infusion of my beliefs, or Rev. Dobson's, or Pat Buchanon or even the writer into the laws that govern us and the policy decisions that shape our future is unhealthy and an unfair intrusion on those who choose to believe something else - or in nothing at all.
Sorry, I need to vent.
Barack Obama has better political instincts than most Democrats, so why are they always trying to second-guess him? Sadly, Huffington Post has lately been more about what pundits think he needs to do to win, than what he is doing right, and what he's done right all along.
I love the fact that Barack Obama, son of a single mom on food stamps, became the first African American editor of Harvard Law Review. I love the fact that he went to Chicago to help people who had lost their jobs when factories closed. I love the fact that when he got to the Senate, he started working on ethics reform, trying to weaken the influence that moneyed interests can have on legislators (The ethics stuff doesn't get talked about, I think it's important). I love the fact that he crossed the aisle to work on budget transparency, controlling the proliferation of WMDs, and immigration. For a first term Senator his record is pretty damn good. The BS about him having no legislative accomplishments needs to be debunked. I love the fact that Barack's voting record for vets is way, way better than McCain's.
The left wing echo chamber is resonating doubt. We need to get on message and resonate confidence
You should be a surrogate. Great post and probably what most of us *spit* liberals are talking about.
I love the fact that you've written this post. Thank you!
I agree 100% Jonathanu. As a white man I am deeply proud of Barak Obama and all that he stands for and has accomplished so far. He has the real potential of being one of our greatest presidents in history, if history gives him that chance.
This year the problems go far beyone the economy. The problem is mainstream media, cable news in particular. During troubled times people turn to cable news for news. Right now, CNN and MSNBC are airing a live John McCain Campaign Rally at length. It's a giant John McCain commercial.
It's time to take back the media. Hold them accountable for spinning. We should be hearing who will be held accountable for the mess we are in. Instead, we get John McCain. Spinning for votes. I had to turn off my television. I couldn't watch the news channels without watching a McCain Campaign Rally. They did it yesterday at lunch time. McCain Campaign Rally during lunch, nauseating.
Wisdom. Thank you Rabbi.
Why haven't the pundits or MSM asked why McCain is not leading by a landslide? After-all, he is the one they seem to want elected. Could it be that voters are seeing through the menagerie of BS he spouts and are perhaps not so enthused by his choice for VP who spouts more BS than he does? This isn't a sport with winners and losers who will play the same game from the same playbook with a different opponent next week. This is real and for better or for worse, will effect this country's future. I don't see a very bright future if we resort to electing those who or not only stuck in the past but are also stuck on stupid. I once heard a speaker say that " it's one thing to don't know. But it is a terrible thing to don 't know and don't know that you don't know!" Those to whom this can be ascribed are at the heart of the electoral idiocy. Some are even running for office! Yup! Yup!
Pssssst...
Ixnay!
Maybe Im the only one, but I am getting tired of all the "pundits" and self-appointed advisors who constantly come out and say "Obama needs to do this", "Obama needs to do that". Obama has done VERY well, thank you! Look how he [as a Black man], an unknown and a highly educated man [and remember we dont value education in this country!] beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries, despite her FORMIDABLE election machinery. Obama has done it! He will now do the same, despite the same odds, and despite the nation's fascination with the latest bimbo attraction.
The rest of us need to do our part to make this happen: donate, recruit, work the phone banks and vote! Above all else, we need to have some faith in Obama and in the majority of the American people that they want highly skilled, intelligent and educated folks running this country.
"Obama has done VERY well, thank you! "
He hasn't done anything yet.
You are a glass half empty kind of person, eh?
you know very well what Anita-meant.
No, you are not the only one. During the primary I became tired of pundits saying what Obama needs to do to win.
This was an interesting take as far a it went.
But Rabbi, with all due respect, you are not a sociologist, a psychologist, psychiatrist or even a political scientist or historian.
So it is hard for me to take your article seriously, especially as it doesn't take into account new research that shows that liberal or conservative beliefs may arise out of genetic predispositions. It also doesn't account for regional or ethnic differences and there is nothing to also demonstrate that your sample was demographically sound. It doesn't account for Jungian psychological differences arising out of the various backgrounds of the people involved.
It is fine to resort to the easy shibboleth of religious figures, who decry materialism and self-interest, but the fact of the matter is, if you are paying attention, religious groups who would supposedly agree with your assertions vis a vis morality, have only been too glad to allow their faiths to be polluted by the compromises and conveniences of politics. I await an article by you discussing this.
Tikkun, btw, is terrific.
I find your point about liberal or conservative beliefs may be genetically predisposed very intriguing. While I'm sure environment and upbringing plays a central role, I for the life of me cannot understand how so many people's brains on the right could be wired so differently than mine.
I see greed, selfishness, xenophobia, racism, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, fear of change, authority driven as being associated with the conservative/right wing movement as plain as day. Yet many, many of these people would look at me as a liberal/progressive as some kind of lunatic. How in the heck does that happen?
Maybe it is genetics!
You're reading way too much into this Rabbi lerner. It is all about race. When 17% of people in the Pennsylvania primaries openly admit that race is a factor in casting their vote (27% in W. VA.). that's a problem. That figure does not include those that feel the same way but will not openly voice that opinion.
Truly, Obama would be crushing McCain in the polls right now if it were not for racsim in America. Obama has been under constant bombardment by the McCain camp to paint Obama as a muslim, jew, anti-christian, racist, fist-bumping terrorist, socialist, facist, communist, too inexperienced, too young, not black enough, too black, consorting with felons, consorting with lobbyists, not american (kenyan, indonesian), madrahssa educated, elitist.
Did I miss any?
All of these slights against Obama are used to stoke primal fears and racism by the right wing.
What is McCain called "Maverick" or now the buzz word is "Reformer" (Though lately he is earning --of his own making-- the title LIAR)
Don't try to cloud the truth with excuses. To do so is not only disingenous, it perpetuates the lie and fails to root out the real problems in this country. Stop acting like the elephant in the room does not exist.
You're truly on to something, I like that.
Perhaps I'm just too close to the subject but I seem to recall that in the year 2000, a sitting Vice President with impeccable credentials and coming off of the 8 best years in our nation's recent history, a budget surplus, a war in Kosovo that was over and people feeling real good about themselves (and he even had military experience when his opponent had none) and yet he lost. (I know the election was stolen but it could not have been stolen had it not been so close to begin with). Then in 2004, we had a man who had done precisely what you suggest; John Kerry had shown his love for humanity by protesting against the war that he had so heroically fought; yet he was trashed. So while I love your piece and think it is precisely what we need, I fear it is not going to get Obama elected. we forget that it is not the American voter that we are trying to convince in this electoral gang warfare. This is a battle between the people who wish for leadership and the corporations who control ALL access roads. They make the rules, they play the game, they referee the game and they alone are the arbiters of the replay decisions. See Bush V. Gore, Y2K.
I keep saying this to my liberal friends...
I agree, but so many of these people are so mean-spirited, bitter, cocky, and righteous that it is EXTREMELY difficult not to cherry pick the obvious stupidity of many of these folks. But in general I think you are right, if you call someone stupid, you have made an enemy for life.
Well Rabbi,
Maybe we want the basic morality of our country to change. So we see the lies of the McCain campaign and the shallowness of Palin, and wonder why Americans don't have the brains and the morality of rthe rest of the civilized world.
We see our country torturing and holding people without representation and we hope that Obama will stop this nightmare.
Wonder if that bothers you at all. And if not, then why.
Perhaps the problem is that the conservative Chrisrians act like the Taliban and we would rather live in a country where one group's religious beliefs don't occlude science and the intelligent design of the Constitution.
McCain is speaking right now, well sort of. He just keeps repeating himself.
It is sad. He has nothing to offer, he is the maverick of nothingness.
He can't even stay on message, just co-opt Obama's message.
Screaming about the Wall Street the HE and his friends created!!!!
People are not are stupid as you libs believe or better yet, you libs are not near as smart as you believe with you marxist education. You keep harping on the idea that it's capitalism that's to blame for the financial failures. Obama points his skinny little finger at McCain saying " It's the lobbyest like the ones who work for McCain, who are to blame" offering no specifics.
Leftists only know marxist economic therory. Here are some specifics. The failed Lehman Brothers, who endorsed Al Gore in his run for president, were heavily involved in Gore's "Carbon credit" scam. Freddie and Freddie were run by Clinton cronnies. Franklin Raines looting Fannie and Freddie, is now an Obama economic adviser. He's not the only Obama's adviser. There's Daniel Mudd, Jim Johnson and Jamie Gorelick who also raided the coffers. Don't forget Barney Frank Chairman of the congressional commitee who oversees Freddie and Fannie who was asked about the troubles with Fannie at the Dem convention. He said : "It's not that bad". The final nail is when the dem leaders adjourned with the excuse of ignorance.
I can't help believe that the collaspe was engineered by the libs as a election tactic to blame the current administration. Another example of how obsessed they are for power. If capitolism is so bad, then why dose Amierca have the biggest world economy. Even China wised up by implimenting capitalism to make it a leader in production and raising their standard of living.
Obama in only two years in the senate collected $126,000 from Fannie and Freddie employees, second only to another commitee chair, Chrs Dodd. Follow the money trial and you'll find the culprit.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
