Good article.
What if Obama Loses?
Even a few weeks ago, that question would have been a punchline. Now it is a legitimate inquiry. In our 50-50 nation, the election could go either way.
The always interesting Russ Smith predicts that some Democratic activists would cry “vote fraud” and decry “Swift Boat-style” ads–and, of course, attack the fly-over sections of the country for their boneheadedness. Of course. Any political party dominated by lawyers is constitutionally unable to avoid being sore losers.
But the most interesting aspect of Smith’s analysis looks back at the shock among Democratic shock troops when Sen. Kerry lost in 2004. Smith writes:
Today, John Kerry is mostly a pariah in Democratic circles, seen as an effete and cautious campaigner who couldn’t even beat the laughable George Bush. Yet people, and the media, forget how shocked his supporters were four Novembers ago, so certain that Bush’s Supreme Court “selection” in 2000 would be overturned.
An article in The New York Times shortly after the election described the utter devastation felt by New York City residents, who gave Kerry 75 percent of their votes. Dr. Joseph Zito, a retired psychiatrist, told the reporter, “I’m saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country—the heartland… New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realized we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what’s going to injure masses of people is not good for us.” A friend of Zito’s, a native of Wisconsin, added, “New Yorkers are savvy. We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say.”
But who says New Yorkers are elitists?
A Beverly Hills psychologist, Cathy Quinn, told a Los Angeles Times reporter—also days after the Kerry defeat—that she’d seen an increase in the number of patients, who were suffering from “despair.” Quinn predicted to the Times’ Melissa Healy that the “postelection” blues would worsen the emotional health of people already plagued by feelings of loss, anxiety and depression.
Obama is much more than Kerry could ever be. Obama’s biography is straight out of a Democratic dream factory; his being touches and excites every element of the vast and varied Democratic party coalition. He and his wife are activist lawyers; he is connected to both the 1960s radicals (Ayers et al) and the Daley Democrats who beat them up in 1968 (Michelle’s father was a Daley ward heeler). Obama is not only an environmentalist-surfer from Hawaii, but he is a better public speaker than Keanau Reeves. He is an author-intellectual yet he can emote. He is telegenic and fit, yet has one perfect flaw: he is struggling in his fight against cigarettes. He has no problem with his wife earning more than he does while he decries the fact that, on average, women earn less than men in the some positions. He is Christian, but not born-again. And so on. He is an absolutely perfect incarnation of the liberal dream.
If Obama is rejected by voters, liberal activists will face a difficult moment. Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, sure. There was something wrong with them. A failure to connect. A remoteness. A coldness felt in some feathers of the left wing. Bill Clinton was an electoral success, but something about him didn’t sit right. The drama. The southerness. The welfare reform. The zaftig valley girl. Activists can understand why voters might have punished Hillary for the sins of Bill.
But Obama? He is perfect.
A rejection of Obama can only mean one of two things: a rejection of the 1960s formulation of liberalism (the current formulation, alas) or that America is deeply racist. Too many of them will go for the second hypotheses.
Too many think that elections turn on identities, not ideas.
If Obama loses–and it is still a big ‘if’–too many liberals will fail to heed the message that voters have been sending them since 1981. Seventy percent of the country is tired of 1960s liberalism. Indeed many find the hippie vision frightening: A country too ashamed of itself to fight its enemies, too unsure of itself to praise its own history,govern its children or corral its criminals,and too resentful of the rich to allow the economy to make more of them.
And I predict that, if Obama loses, liberals won’t ask the key question: If, instead, we had tried 1990s Clinton-DLC liberalism, would it have worked?
BTS