OBAMA, BLAIR, AND THE POLITICS OF COALITIONS
Obama has won by a landslide, and both the House of Representatives and the Senate will have majorities for the Democrats.
Looking at the results, some aspects are immediately striking.
Firstly, the main urban centres voted overwhelmingly for Obama; with massive majorities.
Secondly, voter turn out was up dramatically, especially from the poor and from blacks and Hispanics.
Thirdly, the alternative candidates like Nader and McKinney were buried in the landslide, doing worse than their opinion poll projections would have suggested (although this decline in their vote may have been exaggerated by the greater turn out)
And finally, that America is a deeply divided country; the majorities for McCain in states like Utah and Wyoming were overwhelming.
The electoral strategy for the republicans failed. In order to win they need to mobilise the religious right wing, (often voting against their economic self interest on the basis of agreeing with the conservative social agenda); but they also need to win a large proportion of the urban, middle class vote on the basis of GOP’s economic competency, and being the party associated with self reliance and economic independence. They need to be the party of those who are the winners in the American Dream.
Sarah Palin delivered, and did a good job for the Republicans. She motivated and turned out conservative, small-town America to vote for McCain. The Republicans pulled off the Culture Wars trap, and the snobbish disdain heaped upon Palin by the urban liberals did further polarise the battle in the Bible belt, and the Republicans were the beneficiaries there. But McCain himself failed utterly, he floundered woefully in the face of the economic crisis; and his “good old army buddy” bellicosity and promise of many new wars was out of touch with a sombre nation, battle scarred from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama put together the most remarkable coalition. He was undoubtedly the preferred candidate of Wall Street, with huge campaign donations from big corporations, especially in manufacturing. But he also lit a fire of enthusiasm in the hearts and souls of millions of voters and tens of thousands of volunteers. Charges that there was no substance were belied by the detailed policy commitments that Obama has made on a whole raft of issues.
It is the nature of this coalition that has brought comparisons from some in Britain with Blairism and New Labour. This is a fallacious comparison.
All successful politics involves the building of coalitions between people who do not share identical viewpoints or interests, but who are united over certain tactical or strategic objectives. The failure of the Labour Party in the 1980s was its inability to reimagine itself to respond to modernity – the changes in economic and social structure that had marginalised the traditional politics of the left that was based upon aspects of working class experience that were disappearing. Hitherto, the electoral success of Labour as a mass party had been based upon it not only being the party of the working class, and the trade unions, but also its ability to build around that a much broader coalition around economic and political modernisation and social Keynesianism.
The Labour Party’s retreat from Keynsianism started as far back as 1976, with James Callaghan’s speech to conference eschewing state intervention as a recipe for getting out of economic crises; and with Chancellor Dennis Healey going cap in hand to the IMF, who in turn demanded cut backs in welfare spending. An equally decisive defeat came when Margaret Thatcher stole Labour Party’s image as being transformative and modern.
The diabolic genius of Tony Blair and New Labour was that Blair restored the notion within the party that it was necessary to build a coalition to win the election; because New Labour was predicated upon winning elections he was able to win over much of the “old Labour” machine to back him, and the left fell for the trap of defending polices that were electorally unpopular, without offering any alternative strategy for winning the election.
Where Blairism was tragically flawed however, was its own ideological capitulation to Thatcherism; which meant that the coalition they offered was to take the working class vote for granted while they triangulated around swing voters in marginal seats by pretending to be more Tory than the Tories. In politics as in much of life, whatever you pretend to be, you become. Blair promised good governance and the end to ideology; the criticism of Thatcherism was not that it was fundamentally wrong, but that it was too ideological, and the Tories were too inefficient.
So Blair’s victory in 1997 was a triumphant electoral rejection of Thatcherism, by a party who believed that Thatcherism had to continue. We should also be clear that the utter failure of the left in Britain to take the opportunities offered by the victory of New Labour doesn’t mean that the opportunities didn’t exist. The conservative, fractious and incompetent nature of the left meant that we were unable to gain critical mass for a credible left alternative to Labour, even in fairly promising circumstances.
Obama is not Blair, and the Democrat victory is not a repeat of New Labour. For sure, Obama distanced himself from Revd Jeremiah Wright during the election; for sure, Obama soft pedalled on his opposition to the death penalty, and on his support for affirmative action as the election went on. Electoral politics is about winning, and to a certain degree compromise.
But what Obama did not do is campaign like Blair did in 1997. The Democrats did not triangulate around Republican voters, minimising the differences between Obama and McCain. The groundswell included inspiring expectations and turning out the vote, and extending the Democrat vote among blacks, Hispanics, the working poor and unemployed; and the same time as convincing the establishment and the better off that Obama was a safer pair of hands for defending the American economy. It is going to be hard to put that back in the bottle.
Events in the outside world have delivered a fatal blow to the laissez faire economics of the Bush era, So Obama’s government has to be more interventionist, even if that was not his intention. Expectations of greater equality have been raised. As Angela Davis has explained, change comes about when a critical mass of people believes not only that the world is unjust, but that it can and will be changed. In such circumstances every community campaign, every strike and every single issue has the capacity to generalise and spread. There is a sea change in the political context, that change is going to come.
For a generation American working people have endured deterioration of their living standards, with a resignation that there is no alternative. Obama’s victory raises the question that things can also get better.
“Urban liberals”? “Snobbish disdain”? What utter, utter bollocks, Andy. Palin was a disastrous choice. Stop trying to sound like Ann Coulter. If you want to trail your coat behind a Tory, go to Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and see what the thinking conservatives had to say about this populist blockhead.
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 10:42 am
All candidates receive massive and covert funding from Zionists, just as they do now in the UK. That’s all we really need to know about what this one is going to do in the future.
Comment by suraci — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Obviously pleased with the result but now waiting for Obama to turn into America’s Blair.
A busted America, the Zionist agenda, Iran. I have a bad feeling about this …
Comment by Madam Miaow — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:15 am
“Another Dave” #1
I have never looked at Andrew Sullivan before, yes it is typical of urban liberal condescension, managing to criticise Palin in sexist and elitest terms, while also pandering to racism about her part native American husband.
Was Palin a disastrous choice for GOP? Well, their vote held up in Texas, Alaska and the rural mid-West and pretty, much collapsed everywhere else. This is pretty much the opposite of what people were predicting nine months ago, as I recall; when it was mooted that McCain would lose the right wing vote becasue he was seen as socially liberal.
The last two elections have seen the Republicans play the culture wars trap to great effect, and this time it still worked in polarising opinion to get the religious right solidly behind GOP. That was Palin’s job - and she delivered.
If there was some naive expectation that Hilary Clinton supporters would back palin, then that was always a pipedream. It was Mccain who had to attract them - and he failed to do so.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:35 am
But also what is precisely Obama’s position on Iraq. He believes there should be some kind of international troops present.
And majority of Black people voted for Obama so he will be under pressure to deliver and the contradictions this will throw up. And the tensions this will be put on the pro-capitalist Democrat Party.
Comment by Louise — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:42 am
Andy…. Really liked the Same Cooke tune….made me cry….just like “Si Se Puede Cambiar” by Andres Useche…You make a great Socialist DJ!
Comment by mark anthony france — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
Wait - so this isn’t like 1997? …How is this not exactly like 1997? Obama will not deliver on his anti war promises and likely not his wealth distribution either.
He is also for escalating the war in afghanistan and strongy for going into pakistan.
Today is a huge success because the american people have rejected racsism and the neo-con team. A new slighty radical america has become somewhat active and voted.
It is still a defeat to have a pro-capitalist, who wants to bailout the rich for billions of ordinary people’s money and escalate global wars. I’m sorry but I think that’s inescapable realism. Obama is another defeat for ordinary people, but rejecting the republicans and accepting a black man is a success. But on that latter point - how much did Thatcher do for women’s rights?
The neo-con team are largely dead and the american people more leftwing than they have been for some time. That’s it. That’s the celebration - Obama will be a disastrous disapointment if you expect his leadership proper to match the success of his election. For all his talk of change he will lead as a conservative.
Comment by Futurecast — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
How utterly ridiculous #7: when you say “Obama is another defeat for ordinary people”
The difference from 1997 was that Blairism represetnted the ideological, political and organisation defeat of the political left within the Labour party, and the triumph of the idea that a political coalition capable of wining electionss could only be built on neo-conservative basis. Blairism very effectivley marginalised political opposition from the left within the Labour Party (this also created a political space to the left of the labour Pparty - that we have been unable to fill, due to our collective incompetence, and the endemic sectarianism and conservatism of the hard left)
Despite being more ostensibly conservative in policy terms, the Obama campaign does not represent a defeat or marginalisation for the left. That is - the left in the USA are no more marginal now than they were before, and the expectation has been raised that radical change is not only necessary but possible. This is a very much better politial context than we had before, and to decribe things getting better as a defeat reveals a sort of ultamatism that has no resonance with real politics.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
“Obama is another defeat for ordinary people” yet at the same time is a “huge success”
I’m so glad i don’t live in your world. I also love the way you know how things will pan out in advance. So no need for agency, no role for the masses - all pre-determined in advance by reference to static one view of the past.
Comment by End of an era — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
Obama has delivered the masses and made sure that the anti-Bush backlash remains in manageable proportions. On the other hand he has drawn untold numbers into a movement situated in a world that is entering crisis and the possibility now exists to work within those masses for a socialist programme and organisation. All in all a great victory. It should be noted, however, that a large, much more organised and conscious fascist faction now exists within the Republican party where once fascists were relatively marginalised. Let’s work on those programmes folks and there is almost certainly going to be a wave of working class militancy on pay, jobs and homes as they feel emboldened by Obama’s victory.
Comment by David Ellis — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
‘7 FutureCast….”new slighty radical america has become somewhat active and voted.”
I went on Facebook earlier…[haven’t got as many friends as Obama] and over half of my ‘friends’ who are not ‘political’ have posted positive comments about Obamas victory…. They clearly are very hopefull that Obama will mean change… and already they feel confident enough in the immediate aftermath of his victory to start expressing a ‘politcal’ opinion in public. So even here people see to be ’somewhat’ activated by the US presidencial result.
This is not about foolishly having illusions in a bourgeois politician…. Yes things can all go extremely pearshaped but we should view this victory as the product of a real coalition and ‘the left’ should be part of that coalition… precisely because it has mobilised so many of the disenfranchised and oppressed. In UK we need to have a serious discussion about how political colalitions can establish deep roots in and mobilise multitudes of people around a radical agenda.
3 hours ago when i switch on the TV I wrote the following on another thread …
“The working class and the oppressed in the US have already scored a huge victory over reaction and although not exactly in the way they invisaged revolutionaries like George Jackson [writting from Soledad Prison in 1970] have been vindicated in how they percieved the ‘vanguard’ role of black people….
“International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the monster’s heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slaves of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. I don’t want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and licentious usurious economics.”
Now Obama stands at the Heart of the Monster…we will see how deep his committment to truth and democracy go.”
At the start of this discussion Andy Said …
“what Obama did not do is campaign like Blair did in 1997. The Democrats did not triangulate around Republican voters, minimising the differences between Obama and McCain. The groundswell included inspiring expectations and turning out the vote, and extending the Democrat vote among blacks, Hispanics, the working poor and unemployed; and the same time as convincing the establishment and the better off that Obama was a safer pair of hands for defending the American economy. It is going to be hard to put that back in the bottle.”
The American left should do all that is possible to ensure that mass participation in mobilisations are not like a genie forced ‘back in the bottle’…in the UK we have to find a way to coax the ‘genie’ out of it’s bottle again… then… maybe just maybe we’ll get our 3 wishes.
Comment by mark anthony france — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Andy you make some fair points about the role of the left 1997 v now. There are differences in terms of space created. But the candidates are the same right-centrists seen as left-centrists (only because the previous administration before them was a bulwark of reactionary ideas).
But 9# you seem to have missed the point entirely. Obama is a defeat and a sucess for ordinary people. This is a dialectic contradiction. You may not to live in a world of complexities and like things to work in a black and white function but we simply don’t. Basic Marxism can explain that - which I’m sure you are familiar with.
The fact is you and I both know Obama is indeed incredibly right wing on most issues. The fact is: now he is elected. So how much agency do the masses have? He is President now and will govern how he see’s best (perhaps with an eye to the polls, perhaps not). The masses don’t have much agency in bourgeoise politics at all - that’s the problem and why we need socialist soviet democracy.
Comment by Futurecast — 5 November, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
`This is not about foolishly having illusions in a bourgeois politician…. Yes things can all go extremely pearshaped but we should view this victory as the product of a real coalition and ‘the left’ should be part of that coalition… precisely because it has mobilised so many of the disenfranchised and oppressed. In UK we need to have a serious discussion about how political colalitions can establish deep roots in and mobilise multitudes of people around a radical agenda.’
You are coming across a bit popular frontist there Mark. The `left’, or more precisely the working class, needs to gain leadership of that coalition or it will undoubtedly be lead to its death as before. Just a small thing. Don’t want to come across as nit-picking. Agreed with most of the rest of what you said.
Comment by David Ellis — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Yes I’m increasingly amazed that Andy is sticking to this kind of analyses in the face of the facts. The myth of the US as a naturally conservative country is in ruins. The establishment hacks who bigged up Sarah Palin have been exposed as utter fools. The big difference between Blair and Obama, is a) that Blairs base was unorganised and b) that Blair did not inherit a global capitalist crisis. Obama’s main task over the next few years will be demobilising his supporters and bringing the GOP back into the mainstream. This is what all this talk of a purple America and reconciliation is about. The left, inside or outside the Democrats, no longer have any excuses to follow him on this. To continue to waffle on about the importance of ‘coalition’ politics in these circumstances is simply to help the new administration demobilise movements for social change. Its awful politics.
Comment by johng — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
two anti semitic slurs in the first three posts… business as usual at SU
Comment by darren redstar — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
#13… Dave Ellis… sorry for coming over all popular frontist…maybe I’m just fed up with being so dammed unpopular for so long!
I have to leave this discussion now to distribute a leaflet that calls for a lobby of my local council.. under the slogan “Change WE Need!”… the leaflet talks about ‘Blue Badge holders being targeted unfairly” “Saving our heritage from being bulldozed” and defending “service for young people that are threatend”…. the leaflet doesn’t mention… ‘imperialism, the war, socialism’ but instead talks of “truth, fairness” and a future “where elected representative are accountable”.
In my local community if more than 10 people turn up to this popular frontist event it would represent a huge and dramatic breakthrough… and represent the emergence of some forms of self-activity, confidence and participation.
The Fish need the Sea to Survive just like your comrade do [the trouble with ‘the left’ Dave is that we often seem high and dry and sufocating]…
If They Come In The Morning
(Jack Warshaw)
No time for love if they come in the morning
No time to show fear or for tears in the morning
No time for goodbyes no time to ask why
And the wail of the siren is the cry of the morning
They call it the law - apartheid, internment, conscription, partition and silence
It’s the law that they made to keep you and me where they think we belong
They live behind steel and bullet-proof glass, machine guns and spies
And tell us who suffer the tear gas and torture that we’re in the wrong
The trade union leaders, the writers, the rebels, the fighters and all
And the strikers who fought with the cops at the factory gate
The sons and the daughters of unnumbered heroes who paid with their lives
And the poor folk whose class or creed or belief was their only mistake
They took away Sacco, Vanzetti, Connolly and Pearse in their time
They came for Newton and Seal and the Panthers and some of their friends
In London, Chicago, Saigon, Santiago, Cape Town and Belfast
And the places that never made headlines, the list never ends
The boys in blue are only a few of the everyday cops on their beat
The CID, Branch men and spies and informers do their job well
Behind them the men who tap phones, take pictures and programme computers and file
And the ones who give the orders which tell them when to come and take you to a cell
So come all you people to give to your sisters and brothers the will to fight on
They say you get used to a war but that doesn’t mean the war isn’t on
The fish needs the sea to survive just like your comrades do
And the death squad can only get to them if first they can get through to you
Comment by mark anthony france — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
“Sarah Palin delivered, and did a good job for the Republicans.”
She did a damned fine job for the Democrats. The Republicans were in with a shout until she appeared on the scene.
“the snobbish disdain heaped upon Palin by the urban liberals”
The disdain wasn’t snobbish it was justified. People saw her as the fruitcake that she undoubtedly is. Lest we forget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj-on3kfWuE
Comment by Kevin Williamson — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Andy you are wrong on two points.
Firstly the Palin pick helped energise the right wing base of the GOP but alienated the independents and moderates that McCain needed to win the presidency. He could never manage this contradiction and the theory of triangulation practiced by both Blair and Cameron is that you assume your “natural” supporters have nowhere else to go and you court your opponent’s supporters. However the triple whammy of Bush, the economic crisis and the Iraq war .
Actually it is quite like 1997 when working class voters rejected privatisation and other neo con ideas, had high hopes change was on its way only to have them dashed. The key for the left is how it relates to workers high hopes by pushing for independent workers action against paying for the economic crisis and in doing so offers an alternative to demoralisation when Obama fails to deliver.
Comment by The Digger — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
Well, the issue of palin is peripheral I believe.
But it is misremebering the history to suggest that Palin buried the Republicans.
McCain was floundering badly, and was unpopular with the conservative GOP voters for his socially liberal views.
When Palin was brought in, the Republicans had a big bounce. For sure she also had a big effect in galvanising Democratic support appalled by her, but this was mainly in the states were the Democrats already lead by a country mile.
Any nuanced analysis shows that it was not the religious and socially conservative voters who abandined McCain, depiste the fact that they don’t like him. So Ppalin did her job.
You will also note that the Republic vote did not show signs of real strain even after the Palin interviews where she came over so badly. It was McCain’s panic coombination of over-reaction and under-reaction to the economic crisis that finished him off. The fatal day for McCain was when he abandoined campigning for a panic trip to Washington to talk about the economy.
Now, JohnG is as usual smug and self-satisfied about the “face of the facts”, but the facts are that McCain got around 60% of the vote in several mid west states. The residents of Wyoming (65.2% for McCain), Oklahoma (65.6% for McCain), Utah (62.9% for McCain) do not have different economic interests from the mass of Americans, but they have voted overwhelmingly for McCain based upon social conservatism, the small town Christian communities that see themslves as under threat.
So yeah, we can mock them for their religious naivity, and their narrow understanding of the world. But in truth, many of these Republican voters from the Bible belt have the same economic interests as working Americans elsewhere. Indeed, it is these mid-west states who a hundred years ago gave the greatest electoral success for the American left, in the 1892 election when the Greenback Labor party won four states.
Overcoming the social Culture wars, partly by stressing common economic interests, should indeed be a key task for the left.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
#18 “Firstly the Palin pick helped energise the right wing base of the GOP but alienated the independents and moderates that McCain needed to win the presidency.”
Well yeah, that was McCain’s job, to keep them on board. He failed.
“#18 Actually it is quite like 1997 when working class voters rejected privatisation and other neo con ideas, had high hopes change was on its way only to have them dashed. “
Yes, but a little more detailed analysis is required, as we have to reflect on whether labour can actually win a general election based upon “working class voters” alone; and whether the Blairite coalition of subordinating the interests of the working class to the presumed Thatcherite instincts of swing voters was the only possibele coialition that could have been built.
What if Labour has appealed to the people who see themselves as middle class on the basis of their shared economic and social interests with the more tradiitonal working class - that is built a coalition based upon socialism, but that refelcted the linguistic and cultural changes of the modern world?
Not all coalitions are the same. Obama’s coalition is not the same as Blair’s coalition. And neither coalition is what we actully need in England today.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
Andy in your OP you say “But what Obama did not do is campaign like Blair did in 1997. The Democrats did not triangulate around Republican voters, minimising the differences between Obama and McCain.” But New Labour’s real work of triangulation only intensified after the 2001 election - in 1997 don’t forget Labour backed a national minimum wage at a time when it was opposed by the CBI and Tories; called for a windfall tax on public utilities; set up SureStart; cut VAT on fuel back down to 5% (lowest allowed) etc.etc. Not socialism of course, but not as conservative as some people tend to remember - the problem was less what had been axed prior to 97 than on the fact that Blair wanted the rightward shift to intensify in office.
Comment by MichaelC — 5 November, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
#21
i think that is a false argument, because IIRC the election strategy was focussed around the 100 target marginal constituencies where Peter Mandelson was in charge, and where the message was as conservative as contextually allowed.
In any event, the intensification of Blair’s drift to the right after coming to power does not contradict the fact that the trajectory was already determined.
The key issue is that Blair accepted the argument that he was beyond “political dogma”, so there were certain Tory policies he could indeed campaign against which could be characterised as ideologially inspired; but Blair capitulated to Thatcherism by not understanding that Thatcherism represented a root and branch rejection of everythign that the labour movement stood for. And on the fundamnetal belief that the state has no role in running the economy, Blair and Brown agreed totally with Thatcher from before they came to power.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
“The fact is you and I both know Obama is indeed incredibly right wing on most issues. The fact is: now he is elected. So how much agency do the masses have? He is President now and will govern how he see’s best (perhaps with an eye to the polls, perhaps not). The masses don’t have much agency in bourgeoise politics at all - that’s the problem and why we need socialist soviet democracy.”
So did the masses sit back in the 1960s and leave it all to JFK and LBJ or did they march, protest, dodge the draft, riot, make love not war, etc etc. the election may be over but the struggle continues. It’s what ordinary people make of the election and the window for change that this opens up that will make all the difference. You seem to have written off them along with obama from the very beginning.
You claim tha i “may not to live in a world of complexities” but it seem that you are the one who have a one track view of the world. Your view’s not marxism but crude determinism. Nothing’s written in stone.
Comment by End of an era — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
Re #22, to an extent but they put together a broad coalition that was compatible with the demands of capitalist interests at the time - but so has Obama. The difference in context might have give him more space to talk about state intervention - but the capital markets required that anyway. Surely, Blair’s shift to the right is at least in part because the countervailing forces (TUs, popular movements, single-issue campaigns, civil society bodies etc.) didn’t have the organisational strength to pressure him to moderate his stance. The point I’m making is that the trajectory that Obama takes isn’t set in stone by the nature of the coalition he has built up to get him into power - it will depend on the extent to which social agents are able to defend the common good over and against the interests of capital. Simply expanding the scope for active state intervention is not in and of itself progressive - if the action of the state isn’t democratically accountable, and the intervention is designed to alleviate the strain of bankers and bosses.
Comment by MichaelC — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
Oh we’re back to absurd accusations of ’smugness’. Palin buried the Republicans. Those are the facts, agreed by every mainstream pollster. And of course its true that many of those who have interests in a shift to the left vote with the right. And Andy typically plays the smug establishment game of accusing me of patronising people with religious beliefs. Some evidence would be nice. As opposed to recycled arguments of the soft left in the Dems made before the election and usually mobilised to emphasis the limits of radicalism. But the way out of this isn’t making coalitions with the right. Look at Indiana. Look at Ohio. A figure who was percieved as a radical overturned massive Republican majorities. What your arguing is bullshit Andy. Yesterdays tune. You must stop this obsession with MT. It was rubbish then and its rubbish now.
Comment by johng — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
Michael C #24
“The point I’m making is that the trajectory that Obama takes isn’t set in stone by the nature of the coalition he has built up to get him into power - it will depend on the extent to which social agents are able to defend the common good over and against the interests of capital.”
no shit, sherlock holmes!
How does that contradict what i wrote on the original article:
“Expectations of greater equality have been raised. As Angela Davis has explained, change comes about when a critical mass of people believes not only that the world is unjust, but that it can and will be changed. In such circumstances every community campaign, every strike and every single issue has the capacity to generalise and spread. There is a sea change in the political context, that change is going to come.”
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
#25 ‘You must stop this obsession with MT. It was rubbish then and its rubbish now.’
John, could you please stop patronising the soft pseudo-commies? According to Andy, we’re going to have to be in a coalition with them, the FA and the Official Evangelical Church of Impending Armageddon in 2010.
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
Oh, and Cruddas, natch.
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:31 pm
I am mystified by your point at #25, John.
Often it seems you are so keen to contradict that you don’t bother to read and digest what the other persoan has actually argued.
Firstly, it is not at all clear that it was Palin rather than McCain buried the republicans. My analysis is that McCain was a weak candidate fighting a battle in very unauspicious circumstances, and within that palin did her job of shoring up the right wing vote in the Bible belt, but that was not enough. In previous elections it has worked for GOP, not this time. but this is a peripheral point, isn’t it. The issue in dispute there is the degree to which the Republicans are able to uses social conservatism to get some voters to vote against their economic interests. I think that even this election shows that this can be a winning strategy for the republicans with some voters in some states, it is a trade off for them becasue in so doing they can lose some votes or fire up some Democrats in other states. This time round the arithmatic of it didn’t work for them, but mainly I think because of McCain himself not becuase of palin.
But what I totally fail to understand is what connection there is in JOhn’s mind between this peripheral issue of whether palin was a disatser or not, with the main thesis that Obama has put together a different coalition than Blair. No one surely, least of all me, is advocating a coalition with Palin or the socially consrvative basis of her support???
John’s silly misreading of my analysis is confirmed by his examples of Indiana and ohio. For sure, Obama mobilised the enthusiasm of millions of voters, and tens of thousands of activists, and this is a core part of his appeal and the sucessful coalition he built. But he also mobilised the millions of dollars from corporate America that swelled his campaign funds to the point where he almost couldn’t find enough places to spend it. So, for sure, he inspired people to vote for a radical politician, but the nature of his coalition was that he also won over the majority of corporate America to back him.
It simply is true that Obama represents a political coalition; of the urban poor, blacks and hispanics, trade unionists, middle class liberals, manufacturing capital, General Colin Powell, uncle Tom Cobley and all. The fact of there being a coalition is not in any doubt. The question is what does the composition of this coalitioon tell us about the likely future.
This is where the comparison and differennce with Blairism is important, becasue by my remote observing, the scale of mass popular mobilisation and participation is much greater with Obama than woth Blair; and whereas blair represented a political and organisational defeat for the left that demobilised activists; Obama has radicalised and inspired activists.
That is a big difference.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
Can I just say (in a thick Norwegian accent):
George Wallace, David Duke, Thomas Robb, Pat Buchanan…Your boys took a hell of a beating!
Comment by Seán — 5 November, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
Andy - re #26. It’s not that I disagree with you about Obama. It’s that you seem to simply blame the fact that Labour swam with the neoliberal tide on the bad judgement of Blair and Brown, as though their response wasn’t conditioned by the political context of prolonged (if unsustainable) economic upswing on class consciousness.
Comment by MichaelC — 5 November, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS –
Obama wins – neo-cons routed
New struggles lie ahead
By Tony Saunois (CWI) 5.11.08
The overwhelming victory for BaracK Obama in the US Presidential elections and the major gains scored by the Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives represent a turning point for the USA. At the time of writing it appears Obama has won over 52.3% of the popular vote and more than 62 million votes. The massive increase in turnout – which at the time of writing is estimated to have reached 64% - the dramatic increase in registration and votes from Afro-Americans, Latinos and young people represent a crushing condemnation of Bush and the neo-cons as well as a generalised, if inchoate demand for ‘change’ amongst the mass of the US population.
In the run up to the election opinion polls indicated that over 90% of the population thought that Bush was doing a “poor job” and 80% considered the country to be on the wrong track.
The backlash against the Bush regime and the effects of the economic crisis has produced a mass politicisation in the USA reflected in this election. The huge Obama rallies during the election attended by tens of thousands, with over 250,000 turning out in the early hours of the morning for his victory rally in Chicago, indicate the massive polarisation and high expectations which have developed during the campaign.
continued at : http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2008/11/05usa.html
Comment by Neil — 5 November, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
#27 Inig Montoya
And the Church of England….. what a BOSTIN Coalition!
#25 JohnG…”What your arguing is bullshit Andy. Yesterdays tune. You must stop this obsession with MT. It was rubbish then and its rubbish now.” Why get so hot under the collar Mr G? You will end up making a rod for your own back I am afraid thats just the way the cookie crumbles. Don’t be so rude.
Comment by mark anthony france — 5 November, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
I would broadly agree with Andy’s analysis re the differences between 1997 and the Obama victory.
The key question now is who will come on top in this coalition of big business money and a huge layer of politicised youth entering activity for the first time, minorities, working class etc. I think we can all guess the answer to that one but nevertheless I don’t think we should rule out Obama being pushed further to the left than he intends due to presure from the masses under the impact of what is shaping up to be a catastrophic social crisis in the US. This is not to say Obama is the next Chavez, no matter how far he is pushed he will not be able to solve the problems confronting American workers and youth.
At that point things get really interesting. (Which I presume is what Andy is driving at?)
However I must strongly disagree with Andy’s analysis of Labour’s failure to build a coalition against the Tories as being the source of Labours demise.
“All successful politics involves the building of coalitions between people who do not share identical viewpoints or interests, but who are united over certain tactical or strategic objectives. The failure of the Labour Party in the 1980s was its inability to reimagine itself to respond to modernity – the changes in economic and social structure that had marginalised the traditional politics of the left that was based upon aspects of working class experience that were disappearing. Hitherto, the electoral success of Labour as a mass party had been based upon it not only being the party of the working class, and the trade unions, but also its ability to build around that a much broader coalition around economic and political modernisation and social Keynesianism.”
This is wrong, or at best completely secondary for the real reasons the working class not able to fully resist the Tory juggernaut.
It was not the case that ‘Labour’ as a party failed to build effective coalitions to resist Thatcher. The reality is that the right wing of the Labour party sabotaged coalition building of campaigns based on millitant resistence precisely because they were trying to operate a form of trangulation. They did not want millitant struggle because they wrongly calculated this was the only way to gain the electoral votes to defeat Thatcher. The proof of this is in the three big struggles of the British working class in the 80’s, the rate capping battle, the miners strike and the poll tax battle.
In Liverpool, Millitant was able to build a broad coalition in that city that won control of the city council, organised several city wide strikes, defied the Tories and crucially increased it’s vote in every single election, changes in modernity notwithstanding. What was the response of the proto- New Labourite leadership? A model to follow for the rest of the country? Nope, instead expulsion and betrayal.
We all know about Kinnock famously stabbing the miners in the back at Labour party conference (and before the trolls get excited Militant did not stab the miners in the back, if you don’t believe me, go ask Arthur Scargill) Did the Labour leadership use their influence to build a viable coalition in the trade unions to push for a general strike to back up the massive solidariy campaign going on across the country? Again no, the idea was to keep the peace to make themselves electable and of course they got their arses handed to them again at the polls since the right didn’t believe they were moderates and the left wasn’t too impressed with a record of betrayal.
Again with the Poll Tax. 14 million people taking direct civil disobedience, risking jail, organising in their neighbourhoods and so on. If that isn’t an effective coalition and a rock solid platform to win an election I don’t know what is? But once again the LP leadership response was to expell the people who suceeded where Argentinian dictators and Neil Kinnock failed and defeat Thatcher.
So it wasn’t so much that coalitions as such were not built by Labour. It is more correct to say that effective coalitions of the left (which had the only realistic hope of defeating the Tories in the 80’s) were effectively destroyed by the Labour right paving the way for sucessive Tory victories until the left became so ground down that the Labour party was finally able to bin any vestiges of being a vehicle for working class struggle. Only at that stage could an effective triangulation strategy be put into effect by New Labour. This was aided by the fact people were sick to death of 18 years of Tory rule, something the LP leadership itself had helped to bring about.
Comment by Neil — 5 November, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
Great post. Some thoughts.
1) Utah is always the most Republican state. That McCain won big there is no surprise. That he lost Indiana is huge. In many ways, I think the U.S. Civil War (finally) ended last night. There will still be skirmishes by the diehards, but really, it’s over. That “Rednecks for Obama” sign Andrew Sullivan posted said it all. Which is not to say all rednecks are racist, because they absolutely aren’t. Hell, Willy Nelson is a redneck…
2) Palin hugely energized the hard right flank of the Republican flank but cratered in polling everywhere else. She and the stock market crash are really what did in McCain. That and him having no new ideas too.
3) The neocon agenda is dead. The Republican Party will now have an internal war. Fascinatingly, all the old Rovian tactics of slime and sleaze simply didn’t work on Obama.
4) The door is now open for organizing and gains by the Left. After eight years on a Highway to Hell we can come out of the bunkers now.
Comment by Bob Morris — 5 November, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
#35 “Willy Nelson is a redneck”
Watch it he supports biofuels….
Virginian and North Carolina seem to have broken ranks with ‘the Confederacy’ too.
Comment by prianikoff — 5 November, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
Musician Steve Earle has described himself as a “redneck commie” so calling someone redneck doesn’t have to be insulting!
Comment by Bob Morris — 5 November, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
@35
‘Fascinatingly, all the old Rovian tactics of slime and sleaze simply didn’t work on Obama’
To apoint, are you sure they used them all? many commentators are saying they didd’t fully deploy the dirty tricks arsenal, particularly around the Pastor Wright debacle, at least the offical McCain camp anyway.
Comment by frenetic — 5 November, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
redneck is an anti-poor slag, like “white trash”. It comes from the fact that poor, rural whites in the south worked all day in the sun, so their necks were burned. It’s become associated with right wing politics for a number of historical reasons but really it’s just a class insult that some folks like Steve Earle have re-claimed.
Comment by redbedhead — 5 November, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
Andy,
It seems to me that you want it both ways. You write at length about the importance to electoral politics of building coalitions (with which I agree, although I can’t help but hear a little smackdown to SWP recalcitrants), and yet claim that Palin did her job.
Palin had two jobs. One was to shore up the base. The other was to help confound Democrats and independents - especially women - and get McCain into the White House. That’s called coalition building. And it didn’t work. He didn’t run just so the far-right would stay onside. He ran to keep the White House in Republican hands, and he failed.
Did he fail because of Sarah Palin? No. He failed because of Lehman Brothers and the perception that he wasn’t the man to dig America out of a hole created by the right.
You might have been impressed with Palin’ ability to shore up the bases, but poll after poll shows that increasing numbers of working class Americans were distinctly unimpressed with her.
And I shudder when I hear people on the left dissing supposed elitist liberals who are critical of populist blockheads and rabble-rousers like Palin. Frankly, it’s almost of a piece with the useful idiots of the HKE who went to the wall under Khomeini because they thought he was a preferable option to Iran’s ‘liberals’. If working class and poor Americans think that the Palins of this world represent their interests, then this is deeply unfortunate and we have a deep responsibility to engage with them, but I’m not going to humour them, and I’m not going to criticise others who see the same thing as I do.
(As for your Andrew Sullivan comments, you’re clearly picking and choosing what you want to see. Don’t be so obtuse.)
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 7:15 pm
Neil #34
I have some sympathy with what you are saying - certainly thee is truth in your description of the relationship between the hard left and the labour right in the Thatcher period that I experienced first hand.
But what i am questioning is whether social basis of either the miners’ strike or the poll tax was actually big enough and wide enough on its own to have built a labour election victory upon.
I worked in a building society during the miners strike, and it was interesting how many of the very low paid workers there, much lower paid than coal miners, considered themselves at that time middle class, did not support the miners, and voted Tory. Many of course did support the miners, but somehow the left wasn’t reaching them. Beyond them were the millions of skilled manual workers, and white collar professionals who identified with the Tories, but who objectively were working class.
The relevance to today is that somehow the left has to talk to people who consider themeselves middle class, and are put off by the iconography and language of the left; but who objectively have the same economic and social interests as more traditional workers. - we have to make a bridge so that we don’t change the fundamental substance or objectives of socialism, but we manage to connect it to people’s daily experiences and aspirations in a changed world. This is what I mean by coalition building - that has working class politics at its core, but also establishes itself at the head of a broader progressive agenda for change.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
Another dave #40.
“If working class and poor Americans think that the Palins of this world represent their interests, then this is deeply unfortunate and we have a deep responsibility to engage with them, but I’m not going to humour them, and I’m not going to criticise others who see the same thing as I do.”
But the way to win them over is not to disrespect them. My earlier thoughts on this stand:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2823
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
Andy,
But I’m not disrespecting them. I’m just not acknowledging that the Palins of this world are worthy of respect, and that those who criticise her are sneering liberals. I’ve read too much Hofstadter on the paranoid style in American politics to be taken in by such guff. Your earlier thoughts are all very worthy, but they’re nonsense. To equate a small-town resident without a passport with some know-nothing who seeks to be the next VP of the US is preposterous. And if you can’t see that the expectations of one are and should be different to the expectations of another, then you’re showing far less understanding of what people want from their elected representatives than the average voter.
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
> many commentators are saying they dind’t fully deploy the dirty tricks arsenal, particularly around the Pastor Wright debacle.
Someone said, well, they couldn’t. They spent so much time sliming Obama because he was supposedly Muslim that they couldn’t just turn around and attack him because of his Christian preacher. Heh. (There was a major anti-Wright ad run in the final closing days though.)
> rednecks
My wife has redneck in her family tree and doesn’t see the word as an insult. But maybe it’s one of those words best and only used by people who self-identify as being in the group.
Comment by Bob Morris — 5 November, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
Well Andy seeing as you think that I smugly patronise religious people I’m entirely unclear who should accuse who of misreading people. Yes Obama’s politics represent building a bridge between ordinary people and their exploiters. We know that. The Democrats are not a socialist and not a left wing organisation. However it is true that millions of oppressed and exploited people were inspired to vote for the Democrats because of the promise of social change. There is thus a huge constituency for progressive ideas in the US. And the utter failure of right wing populism is not some incidental unimportant trivial matter but a sea change. The fact that those areas were these forms of politics were strongest were the most resistant is hardly a surprise. But the main divide is going to be between those who respond to Obama’s election by pushing foward struggles for social justice and those who respond by suggesting that one has to be careful not to rock the boat and thus let the Republicans back. The first strategy will inevitably lead to a clash with the shape of Obama’s coalition (the theme of bi-partisanship is the ideological tool that will be used against those pressing for more far reaching social change), whilst the second strategy will do nothing to undermine the hold of right wing populism about social values: whose roots lie in the class divide that the democrats historically refused to challenge. The very close connection between these kinds of political identity politics and class warfare was one of the more interesting things about Simon Schama’s documentry history of the US.
Your analyses not only ignores these realities but objectively place you on the wrong side of the coming battles that the left will have to face.
Comment by johng — 5 November, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
JOhn - your smugness consists of your habit of not responding to what people are actually arguing, and instead lazily picking up on one or two words they ahve used, and then assuming their argument based upon the connotations that you have with those words. This comes over as a mechanism for making debate more confusing. It strikes me as smug becasuse you can’r actually be bothered to work out what the other person thinks before you lazily and grumpily respond.
What you describe as a “utter failure of right wing populism” was actually something like a 4% swing in most states, and with many states still registering large republican majorities. So it is not a catastrophic collapse in the right wing vote - the election was a landslide in the electrall college, and in some predominantly urban states; in the country overall, it was tighter than that.
Here are the 2008 results: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7697829.stm
Here are the 2004 results: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/americas/04/vote_usa/map/html/default.stm
Nor am I arguing bipartisnship - nor anything close. Only your lazy unwillingness to actually engage with what I write could lead you to say I am promoting bi-partisanship.
I have been absolutley clear that the the exciting prospoct of Obama is that it rasies expectations whereby a momentum for change from grassroots actovism might burst the banks.
With regard to the areas where the republican right still have a majority I argue quite the opposite of bipartisanship. I argue that what needs to be done is making common ground over the class and economic issues, and not picking fights over the Culture wars agenda. After all the most effective way for obama to fight the social issues is through the appointment of liberal judges onto the supreme court. Issues like the death penalty, gay marriage, abortion can then be fought state by state.
But any struggles over issues like health care or pensions will find many republic voters who have a clear economic interest in supporting radical and progressive change.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
Actually, one of the most interesting bits of commentary came from the loony David Frum, former Bush speechwriter. His argument was essentially that the Republicans are going to have to change a great deal or face oblivion because, looking at who voted Republican, showed that women, minorities and the educated voted Democrat. Translation: the religious Right and male rednecks voted Republican and that’s about it. I think that’s a bit over the top and McCain could still have won, which says a lot about how Republican America is in Presidential elections.
The culture wars stuff has always been over-hyped, I think. For instance, about eighty percent of Republican women voters are pro-choice. Outside the Christian Right, not many people give a toss about gay marriage. But what Republicans have always been good at is, and they’ve done well out of it. But once an economy has tanked, people turn off when they hear the similar scare-stories of the past - whether it’s Nicaragua being three days marching time from Texas, Grenada becoming a launching site for Communist infiltration, Iraq’s anthrax, etc. The Democrats could have put out a pantomime horse and won, which tells you a good deal about the Obama win and the Democrats, though not necessarily that much about how “conservative” America is.
The Obama team were apparently having crisis meetings in September when McCain started pulling away in the polls. It took the meltdown of the U.S. financial sector to swing the votes away from McCain. Hilary Clinton would probably have done just as well, perhaps better than Obama. This is a Blair-like moment: punish the party in power and hand it over to someone with a few warm words about “change”, “renewal”, “our moment”, “future”, etc.
Comment by Tawfiq Chahboune — 5 November, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
“What you describe as a “utter failure of right wing populism” was actually something like a 4% swing in most states, […].”
This is simply not true.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/votes.html
Only Wyoming, Tenn., South Carolina, Oklahoma, Miss., Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Arizona, Alaska, W.Va, Florida, Missouri, PA, Minn., Rhode Island, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Mass., Ohio and Alabama swung at 4.0% or under. As did DC (not a state). So that’s 22 out of 50 states. The swing outside these states was generally between 6% and 8%. Overall, it was a clear repudiation of right-wing populism. Even Alaska swung towards 0.7% to Obama vs. 0.4% to McCain.
Some of these states are already solidly Democrat, which means the swing isn’t likely to be as great (NY, NJ, Mass. RI). Think about where most of the other states are, and their history… They might have reaffirmed right-wing populism in the deep south, but it’s been rejected elsewhere.
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 10:02 pm
Apropos sneering liberals mocking Palin’s intelligence, have a look at these disgraceful comments, Andy…
http://socialistworker.org/2008/10/02/sarah-palin-feminist
http://socialistworker.org/2008/10/14/palin-drops-the-puck
or this
“From September 14, the explosion of the financial crisis represented the coup de grâce to the presidential aspirations of the Republican candidate who, despite desperate efforts (including an interview given to the ultra-conservative Washington Times — not be to confused with the Washington Post in which he strongly criticized the Bush administration), has been unable to get rid of the accursed legacy of the last eight years of George W’s inept mandate. That was compounded by the poor performance of his running mate, the Arctic Amazon of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and the unfortunate conduct of both of them in the three presidential debates and the vice presidential one. This completes the Republican debacle of today.”
(From Granma: http://www.granma.cu/INGLES//2008/noviembre/mier5/Obama.html)
Tut, tut…
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
#48
Another Dave.
So when I said that the swing was about 4% in most states, it was actually about 4% in nearly half the states.
So you are totaly over reacting to say that my statement “simply isn’t true” - it was broadly correct. Ii didn’t sample every state, but the overal trend was not a catastrophic collapse in the Republican vote, but a modest to good swing to the Democrats in a hugely increased turnout in a highly polarised election.
Anyone who thinks this represents the “utter failure” of right wing populism is overlooking the resilience of the right wing vote - the depth of ideological commitment to the Christian cinservative social values; and the polarisation whereby many McCain voters are fearful and disoriented by the Obama victory.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
Andy, It was a modest to good swing in nearly half the states, and a bloody good swing in the rest. And a chunk of those modest to good swings were off a high base. Your statement simply isn’t true, and your analysis is fallacious.
And it does confirm the utter failure of right-wing populism. For the first time in years many moderate Republicans realised how corrosive and destructive it is and either voted against it or didn’t vote at all. That it still resonates in certain states is hardly surprising. But the Rove coalition has been blown apart.
52.4% of the national vote for a liberal inner-city black guy. Think about that.
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
#51 Another Dave
This is a bit of tedious nit picking from you.
Of course the right wing coalition that held the republicans in power has been decisively defeated in this election. Nothing I have written contradicts that, does it? The issue in dispute is whether this represents an “utter failure” (by which i understand a catastrophic non-recoverable reversal in fortunes) for right wing populism. Frankly, there is life in the old dog yet and whether the right remain defeated is contingent on circumstance and human activity as every other aspect of the suddenly exciting American political landscape.
But to put this in perspective, the percentage swing to Obama across the USA is about half the swing that the conservatives need to become the largest party in the British House of Commons.
to argue that the hold upon millions of voters of conservative Christian social values has been irrevocably broken is a dangerous illusion. the truth is that the USA remains a deeply polarised and divided society over social and cultural matters.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
Andy,
What part of ‘crushing defeat’ don’t you understand? Yes, the US is deeply polarised, and yes, there are still millions of voters with conservative Christian social values. But since the last Congressional elections, the Republicans have not been able to keep these guys lashed up with the secular and moderate Republican middle class. Rove managed to pull this off. And now it’s fallen apart and it’s unlikely it can put back together.
The wingnut right isn’t going to go away - no one is suggesting it will. But as a force to win national elections for the Republican Party it has been seriously wounded. Which is pretty much all that matters to the Republicans. The hard-right base can believe what it bloody well likes - anti-abortion, conspiracy theories, gun nuttery, out-and-out racism - but if polling indicates that these guys are scaring the horses, they will be marginalised. If you can’t see this, fine. But I’m willing to make this prediction - Sarah Palin has no future as a national leader of the party.
Comment by Another Dave — 5 November, 2008 @ 11:44 pm
Another Dave
i am astounded at the bad tempered way you are making mountains out of molehills.
It seems now you have conceded that i was correct on every point. but you agree with me as if you are disagreeing, and in the most confrontational way.
I agree the GOp were crushingly defeated - due to the electoral system
I agree there are millions of right wing conservative voters, buut the GOP colaition has failed
I agree that palin is probably not going to have a role in national politics (unless she goes to the senate at some stage)
So the only differecne is that you thiink that the christian social conservative right will be marginalised. maybe, maybe not - i don’t see how you can be so sure, given that they were the most reliable voter turnout for Mccain.
So given that the difference between us is so peripheral, why do you use such confrontational language, It is like you are showing off.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 November, 2008 @ 12:16 am
“But to put this in perspective, the percentage swing to Obama across the USA is about half the swing that the conservatives need to become the largest party in the British House of Commons.”
But the british tories are not far right nutters mostly, or at least don’t portrey themselves in this manner, on some issues they were able to pose to the left of Blair/Brown.
Having Obama elected is gret in that a McCain victory would only demoralise progressies and create an allusion that only right wing nutters can win elections. But having said that i think his admin. will be worse and less receptive to internal popular pressure than even Blair or Brown, as there are simply no democratic channels for members to control policy. Labour parties with institutional union support are different.
Here in Australia the unions recently brought down the New South Wales Labour state govt because unions aligned withthe right and left opposed electricity privatisation, won a vote at conference against the idea, with the support of the rank and file, and refused to be run over on this issue. This sort of occurance is almost inconcieveable in the U.S. major parties.
Comment by Kieran — 6 November, 2008 @ 12:40 am
I was born by the river
In a little tent, and o
just like that river
I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long long time coming, but I know
A change is gonna come, oh yes it will
It’s been too hard living
but I’m afraid to die
’cause I don’t know what’s up there
beyond the sky,
It’s been a long time coming, but I know
A change is gonna come, oh yes it will
(I go to the movie and I go downtown
Somebody keep tellin me
don’t hang around)
It’s been a long time coming, but I know
A change is gonna come, oh yes it will
Then I go to my brother
and I say brother help me please
But he wind up knocking me
back down on my knees
There have been times that I thought
I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long time, but I know
A change is gonna come, oh yes it will
Comment by mark anthony france — 6 November, 2008 @ 12:47 am
Andy,
What a curious response. I’m at a total loss to see how you could conclude I’ve conceded you’re “correct on every point”.
You wrote an article claiming that Sarah Palin “delivered, and did a good job for the Republicans”. She did nothing of the sort. She helped shore up the base, which was half of her job, but there were two parts to her task. The other part to bring in the female vote and independents, which was necessary if McCain was to win, and which you resolutely refuse to acknowledge even as an issue. It’s as if energising your base is the only thing that’s important to you, and it doesn’t matter if you alienate swathes of other voters at the same time. (If that’s your game plan, I worry seriously for RESPECT.)
In this she dismally failed, because after the Couric interview, and Saksgate, these voters felt she was a massive liability.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/us/politics/31poll.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Palin%20popularity%20voters&st=cse&oref=slogin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/01/AR2008110100620.html
Now I acknowledge that she wasn’t the reason McCain lost - for that one needs to look to Lehman Bros. and the credit crunch. But given everything we have seen about her polling numbers, had the market not crashed when it did, it is highly likely that her inadequacies, and the related concerns that McCain was a poor and erratic decision-maker would have been the vote loser. You say otherwise. But you can’t be bothered producing any evidence.
(This is also why I directed you to the Andrew Sullivan site - not to read him so much, as he abandoned Bush and Co. a long time ago, but to read the testimonies of his fellow ‘Obamacons’, conservatives who had crossed over. Time and again, they cited the choice of the unqualified and unsuitable Palin as evidence that McCain’ judgment was seriously questionable.)
As for the good job, you might want to read this - http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581 - from the paragraph beginning “NEWSWEEK has also learned”. The knives are out for your good and faithful servant, with Steve Schmidt wielding them.
You then had a swipe at the supposed ’snobbish disdain’ of ‘urban liberals’. This language is straight out of the Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter playbook, and it has been for years. Far-rightists love to out-prol the left, especially the liberal left, and for some perverse and mildly suicidal reason, there are always a few people on the socialist left who are willing to join in.
There is no justification for socialists to mock and deride working-class people who don’t travel overseas, eat organic, or cling to guns and religion. But socialists have an obligation to recognise the poisonous political implications of these positions (well, perhaps not the organic arugula bit) when they’re being eagerly pushed by the Palins of this world.
You seem to think that Palin and the US wingnut right need to be treated with kidgloves because they’re articulating views that are dearly held by millions of Americans. But they’re not. They’re taking certain views held to a greater or lesser degree by millions of Americans (say anti-abortion, or anti-gay marriage), amplifying and exploiting them to make them appear the most important issue of our time, and presenting them in a faux-folksy populist manner that obscures the fact that they have even less in common with ordinary working people than their liberal critics.
Palin does not equal Joe Six-Pack. Their motivations are radically different, just as Nick Griffin does not equal some family on an estate in Oldham. We forget this at our peril.
You then claimed Obama garnered just a 4% swing in most states. He didn’t - he pulled much more than that, and in a number of those 4% or under states, he was coming off a high base already. Again, you just ignore this because it doesn’t suit your theory - then again, you claim at #4 that their vote held up in Alaska. They had a smaller swing to them there than did Obama - and this is Palin’s own state!
As for ‘confrontational language’, don’t be such a mardarse. I’ve seen you dish out far worse, even within this thread. If you’re so touchy, leave the psephology to someone else. It’s clearly not your strong point.
Comment by Another Dave — 6 November, 2008 @ 7:44 am
This is very interesting…
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/palin_fallout_is_starting_to_step/
Watch the Fox News report.
Comment by Another Dave — 6 November, 2008 @ 7:56 am
#37,39,44 “rednecks”
Another possibility is that the term refers to Scots Presbyterian Covenanters, who wore red neckerchiefs to symbolise their religious dissent.
They made up a high proportion of immigrants to the Mountain South during the 18thC.
Voting patterns in the South tend to favour local politicians, rather than being fixed into a permanent Republican or Democrat mould.
I notice that Steve Earle’s birthplace, Virginia, went Democrat.
I suspect West Virginia stayed Republican because of their pro-fossil fuel agenda and the importance of Coal in the local economy.
But it has a long history of union struggles - e.g. “Bloody” Harlan County.
If a credible left-wing “redneck” politician emerged, he/she might get a lot of votes in the South.
Comment by prianikoff — 6 November, 2008 @ 9:05 am
#59 Harlan is in Kentucky of course!
Comment by prianikoff — 6 November, 2008 @ 9:13 am
Another Dave
you whole approach to argument seems completely flawed. t is not that your language is confro national, but your ability to argue in a constructive way - you pick on details and peripheral issues, and worry away on them without trying to see how importnator otherwise these details are to the overall argument. That is unnecesssarily confronational on your part, becasue it seems that you are not engaged in a common serach for understanding, and a mutual iprovment of our understanding, but are just showing off you ability to argue about specific facts.
The overwhelming thrust of my argument was about the Democrats, and the nature of the coalition that Obama put together, and the comparion between that and the porcess of Blairism and New Labour.
Within that I made an aside that Palin had done a good job at motivating the Christian social conservative base of the Republicans; and that it was McCain who had lost the election. This is an entirley peripheral point to my main thesis about the Democrats.
However, you have picked upon this peripheral issue and claimed that if I am wrong on this then my whole analysis is wrong. This is simply a confrontational and incompetant method of debate from you. The main substance of my argument is about the Democrats not the Republicans
Broadly, in 22 states the swing to Obama was around 4%, and it was on average around 7% in the remaining 28 states, the overall national swing was in single figures, and nearly half of Americans who voted placed their mark by McCain/Palin. Nit-picking about the actual number of states doesn’t alter the fact that right wing populism still has significant political respnance, and the Obama lanslide is a product of the forst past the post nature of the electoral college system.
This is not to say that it was no a crushing electoral defeat for the GOP, and losing some solid safe areas will certainly cause them to question the very core of their identity and electoral strategy. But the social conservative right has not gone away, and has not “utterly failed”, becasue they were in fact the part of the GOP vote that held up best.
My point about palin is that it is a big mistake to assume that because she horrifies urban liberals (among whom I include the political left) that she has the same effect on all working people. In particular, there remain millions of working class and middle class Americans who have a deeply held religious faith that inclines them to conservative social values, and these beliefs are dearly held by them. It has been the strategy of the right wing to seek to force elections to be about these social issues, and thus cement the religiously inclined to them, against their real economic and class interests.
Did this fail this time? Yes and No. The strategy failed to get the Republicans to win, but it did not fail in cementing the religious right behind the Republicans. For sure palin may have cost some swing voters, we will never know if she lost more voters than she gained - but certainly the Christian social conservative right stuck with the Republicans despite the relativly socially liberal John McCain being the candidate. This was to a certain extent a sucess for Palin.
The very language you use of these voters being the “wingnut right” exudes a condescension, and exagerates further the culture wars stereotypes. They are not mad, sad or bad, they are simply ideologicaly conservative.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 November, 2008 @ 9:37 am
#59 “If a credible left-wing “redneck” politician emerged, he/she might get a lot of votes in the South.”
As there was in the 1930s of course with Huey p Long.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 November, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Andy,
Here’s my problem with the way you argue, and why I think taking this discussion any further is pointless.
I wrote - “You seem to think that Palin and the US wingnut right need to be treated with kidgloves because they’re articulating views that are dearly held by millions of Americans.”
You replied: “The very language you use of these voters being the “wingnut right” exudes a condescension, and exagerates further the culture wars stereotypes. They are not mad, sad or bad, they are simply ideologicaly conservative.”
It is clear from my sentence and my following paragraph that “wingnut right” referred to the ruling class ideologues who push far-right populism - Palin, Hannity, Coulter, O’Reilly, etc. I wasn’t referring to the voters. I was saying the wingnuts take voter concerns, amplify them and exploit them.
I’m not in the slightest bit condescending about these voters - I share a class and social background with them - and I know these people very well, but as an ideological tool I believe right-wing populism - wherever it emerges - must be continually challenged. (Or in other words, I refuse to accept that supposed ‘liberal’ issues such as gay rights and women’s rights are a mere shibboleth.)
If you’re going to get up on your high horse and lecture others about being nit-picking and condescending, take the time to actually read what the other person has to say. You’re unlikely to get too many people engaging you in serious debate if you misrepresent their views in this way and then chide them for showing off and engaging in irrelevancies.
Comment by Another Dave — 6 November, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
#62
I’m not sure that Huey Long was “left-wing” in the sense I had in mind.
(The difference between populism and socialism is a bit of a recurring theme here)
Long was more of a welfare-populist, certainly to the right of Norman Thomas’s Socialist Party in the 1930’s.
(Eugene Debs was even more left wing in 1920, when he stood as the Socialist Party candidate from a jail cell and got over 900,000 votes)
It’s hard to say how much appeal Long would have had in a national election, but he intended to stand in 1936 and, prior to his mysterious assassination, he seems to have influenced F.D. Roosevelt’s politics.
Comment by prianikoff — 6 November, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
When Thatcher was elected the left didn’t argue that she was articulating the concerns of working class voters so why anyone on the left would argue this about Palin after Obama’s election win is perverse.
Thatcher was a vicious champion for her class just as is Palin. It’s not “liberal” to point this out it’s what the majority of working class people in the US believe. Obama won because millions of working people knew that Palin and McCain represent the super rich. What they have yet to fully realise is that so does Obama.
It’s the duty of the left to be explicit about the disgusting and reactionary politics of Palin and to offer and alternative to Obama’s capitalist ideology. It is NOT our job to bolster the reactionary and right-wing rantings of ideologues who support McCain and Palin and the whole neo-liberal agenda. They have nopthing to say that is relevant or useful to working people and we need to expose them as the hypocrites they undoubtedly are rather than joining in their duplicitous arguments about Palin articulating the grievances of OUR class.
The recession is the perfect opportunity for ALL of the left to be really clear whose side it is on otherwise there will be a political vacuum created for millions of workers who become disillusioned with Obama that could be exploited by the far right. We have experienced what has happened with New Labour where the left has been politically divided and has had illusions in reformism that have led to the deplorable state we now find ourselves in. Now is not the time to be repeating tired old right wing propaganda about the so-called “liberal” left.
Comment by Ray — 6 November, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
motivated and turned out conservative, small-town America to vote for McCain.
Any
totally totally agree
after the financial crisis McCain was always going to lose, he got Palin simply to get out the vote, which she did
drill girl drill went down well
underestimate anti Washington anti Liberal vote in small town America
and if you look at the traditional “slave” states huge majorities for McCain/Palin
Comment by sam — 7 November, 2008 @ 9:20 am
“When Thatcher was elected the left didn’t argue that she was articulating the concerns of working clas”
but she articulate concerns and played on fear of working class people, she simply munipulated it
she played to ideas of empire (Falklands War)against anachy - trade unions out of (male dominated) control, and hyper inflation which hits the poorinflation….
the right to buy a council house
thats why a majority of trade unionists voted for her
if only the working class always voted left wing, it has the ability to be manipulated just like any other group and Thatcher did just that
and we paid a heavy price
Comment by sam — 7 November, 2008 @ 9:26 am
Hi there, I dont know if I am writing in a proper board but I have got a problem with activation, link i receive in email is not working…
Comment by Anonymous — 20 March, 2010 @ 12:22 am