Obama emphasizes the connections between people, the networks and the webs of influence. These sorts of links are invisible to some of his rivals, but Obama is a communitarian. He believes you can only make profound political changes if you first change the spirit of the community. In his speeches, he says that if one person stands up, then another will stand up and another and another and you’ll get a nation standing up.
The key word in any Obama speech is “you.” Other politicians talk about what they will do if elected. Obama talks about what you can do if you join together. Like a community organizer on a national scale, he is trying to move people beyond their cynicism, make them believe in themselves, mobilize their common energies.His weakness is that he never breaks from his own group. In policy terms, he is an orthodox liberal. He never tells audiences anything that might make them uncomfortable. In the Senate, he didn’t join the Gang of 14, which created a bipartisan consensus on judges, because it would have meant deviating from liberal orthodoxy and coming to the center.
How do you build a trans-partisan coalition when every single policy you propose is reliably on the left
You don't build a "trans-partisan coalition" by bringing together people on opposite sides of old coalitions. You do it by building a new coalition around new frames, issues, and ideas. By changing the narratives of politics, you change the terms on which partisanship is defined.
The Gang of 14 wasn't some noble effort by moderate centrists to preserve the republic. It was an effort by political insiders uncomfortable with change to defend the status quo. To them, "bipartisanship" meant a return to the stability of yesterday's political coalitions. And why not? It was around those old coalitions that their entire political careers had been based!
As with so many other things in national politics, DC insiders are almost always the last to see and understand how things have changed. It has been 28 years since Reagan realigned the nation, and coalitions can only last so long. The longing by so many in DC for a return of yesterday's definition of bipartisanship has to be understood for what it really is - a longing for a return to yesterday's world.
UPDATE: Here's one example - albeit minor - of how a single candidate can change "everything." Swampland:
I just got a call from a conservative marketing consultant I know. He is in a panic. "I am in the midst of a major crisis with a lot of people," he said. "Hillary Clinton is going to die today. Do you know what that means for conservative fundraising all over America?" I do. Big trouble. For most of the year, Hillary has been the only rallying point for conservatives, besides anger over immigration policy, which still divides some portions of the Republican Party. The consultant continued: "Emails are flying fast and furious to try to find out if she is dead and if she needs to be pulled from the copy" of direct mail pieces, which are set to be mailed. Some are going to try to just add Barack Obama's name, he said. Some may have to rethink the whole pitch. "There is a gigantic transition that will begin to take place," the consultant said. "The witch is dead, and life is going to change."
Conservative fundraising is now based entirely around yesterday's battles and yesterday's coalitions. Their fundraising appeals are premised entirely on reliving the 1990s. And as a result, the emergence of Obama, a candidate whose personal history and campaign narratives move beyond those arguments presents an almost existential challenge to the conservative movement. His emergence represents a "gigantic transition" to a new, unfamiliar world that is as yet only partially defined.
Realignment leaders, as Skowronek has made clear, are leaders who successfully control the meaning of their actions. They are leaders who create the frames by which they are judged. Reagan rewrote the rules, rules by which every president since has been judged. Think on it: Bush I was an explicit continuation of Reagan's regime. Clinton/Gore and the "New Democrats" were an attempt by the opposition to regroup and react, but they were judged by frames that were entirely outside their control (how else to explain the need for a "new" Democrat that wasn't your "usual" "tax-and-spend" liberal?). Bush II was a continuation of that same debate, as would have been Clinton II. Each brought their own unique spin, of course, but all were judged by definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" that were entirely outside their control.
Realignment eras, as Burnham explained, always see a huge surge in political participation. It isn't just that old voters change the way they think about politics; far more important is the fact that huge numbers of new voters engage with the system for the first time. And as Sunquist has pointed out, that is almost always because of an underlying generational shift.
Everyone is talking about the support that Obama has and is receiving from people 29 and under, but few people have really stopped to think through why. Consider this:
If you are 29 today, you were 24 when the Iraq War began, 23 on 9/11, 20 when Clinton was impeached, and 14 when he was elected. You were 11 when the Berlin Wall fell, and 1 when Ronald Reagan was elected.
If you are 25 today, you were 20 when the Iraq War began, 19 on 9/11, 16 when Clinton was impeached, and 10 when he was elected. You were 7 when the Berlin Wall fell, and you likely have no memory whatsoever of Ronald Reagan.
And if you are 21 today, you were 16 when the Iraq War began, 15 on 9/11, 12 when Clinton was impeached, and 6 when he was elected. You were 3 when the Berlin Wall fell, and you absolutely have no memory whatsoever of Ronald Reagan.
Meanwhile, in your brief young adult lifetime, science has come to consensus around the threat of man made climate change, and income inequality has risen to levels not seen in the US since the Great Depression. And the Internet? You can't imagine a world without it, because for you it has always existed.
And then, despite all that, in 2004 the "adults" who rule the world brought you an election fought around the details of a war that ended a full decade before you were born.
Hungry for change? These kids aren't hungry, they are damn near starving. And by the looks of things, through Obama, they are going to do something about it. The master narrative is being rewritten, and once the revisions are complete, all of us - young and old - will be living in a new political world.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
