Obama for the masses
Listened to John Harwood’s interview with Candidate Obama on the Times’ website. You have to admire Obama’s self-possession. That said, the guy’s writing a lot of verbal cheques. It will be interesting to see if, provided he wins the election, Obama can actually turn any of it into meaningful legislation. His blueprint for change is just a little ambitious. Still, better to be ambitious than ambivalent.
Getting to the Oval Office is going to be difficult in the first place. While racial reservations are inevitable, Candidate Obama’s politics are also responsible for for his lack of popularity in some regions. Democrats from traditionally conservative districts are already distancing themselves from the presidential nominee for his decidedly left-leaning stances. Though I generally support Obama’s priorities, to say they’re liberal is no misrepresentation. Here in Oregon, at least so far as local punditry is concerned, Obama’s failure to captivate blue-collar America is due less to his politics and more to his ancestry. What infuriates me about these types of assertions is that they insult the intelligence of entire swaths of the population while at the same time exacerbating Obama’s problems in creating inroads. Surely some people see Obama’s race before anything else, but his aggressive, progressive politics are surely a greater reason for pause. While stately and articulate, his professorial idealism just doesn’t jive in places where desirable change means a return to the better days yore. To appeal in these places, Obama must step beyond the cult of personality that has formed in his wake and permeate an image of a reasonable, adaptable reformer. Though the candidate seems to understand the value in unity and pragmatism, he has been riding a wave of angry progressive supporters whose educated self-righteousness puts Obama’s greatest strengths at risk. Going toward the general election, Obama must shed his air of hopeful inevitability to truly reach undecided skeptics.
Paul Krugman wrote an insightful piece in the Times regarding race and politics at this juncture in US history.
In a related note, it’s curious that many of the people who were calling on Hillary Clinton to drop out earlier for the sake of the party now reject her as a VP candidate. Polling suggests that her addition to the ticket strengthens Obama against McCain, so wouldn’t it be in the best interest of the party that she run? Though Obama hardly wants the Clinton shadow lurking over him, how can he reasonably reject Hillary, with her 18 million supporters, as the VP candidate if that’s what will lock up victory?
