Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are bringing to the fore the most neglected demographic in more than half a century of empowerment of minorities.
In trying to explain why the surge for Obama failed to become a tidal wave on Super Tuesday, the pundits are honing in on the behavior of the largest silent segment of society--white men.
In parsing the results, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times concludes that 2008 has "cleaved the party neatly in two: the Clinton Democrats and the Obama Democrats. Age, race and gender have become the dividing lines; nothing comes close to mattering as much.
"The Obama Democratic Party is made up of younger voters (under 44), blacks, white men (to a more limited extent) and independents...The Clinton Democratic Party is the party of women, older voters, Hispanics and also some white men."
From this point of view, of all the demographic armies marching in lockstep, only white men have failed to jump into the ranks on one side or another and stay there.
According to the Times, "Mr. Obama split the white male vote nationally with Mrs. Clinton, but there was an important geographical disparity there: White men in California voted for Mr. Obama but white men in Southern states like Alabama did not. The question is what white men in Ohio will do next month, during what is shaping up as a critical showdown for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton."
May an aging member of this indecisive species suggest the trendiness of identity politics is going too far? If there is a split in the Democratic Party, it is more attitudinal than demographic.
Those who see the world as a set of problems to be dissected, analyzed and solved are more likely to be drawn to Mrs. Clinton. Those who believe that hearts are as important as minds in shaping the future may rally around Obama.
There is much to be said for both points of view and, if voters don't let themselves get stampeded into categories, they can make their individual decisions about what matters most to them.
After all these years of Bush mindlessness and heartlessness, they can't go too far wrong.
Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Sunday, August 26, 2007
How to Avoid Winning the White House
“I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Will Rogers’ classic definition of 75 years ago is alive and well, and the locus of disunity, after its little electoral scuffle in 2000, is Florida, which the Democratic National Committee is disenfranchising for the 2008 convention for leapfrogging its primary to next January 29th.
If there is some way to avoid winning the White House next year, Democrats seem bent on finding it. After helping Karl Rove steal the past two Presidential contests, they will have to work harder this time to undo the Party’s advantage in the polls after all these years of Bush bungling.
But when it comes to incompetence, never count the Democrats out. If they can’t find an unelectable nominee, they can always screw up the process of selection.
As a survivor of history’s most suicidal political convention in 1968, I can hardly wait to see the new forms of chaos they will devise for the next one.
Will Rogers’ classic definition of 75 years ago is alive and well, and the locus of disunity, after its little electoral scuffle in 2000, is Florida, which the Democratic National Committee is disenfranchising for the 2008 convention for leapfrogging its primary to next January 29th.
If there is some way to avoid winning the White House next year, Democrats seem bent on finding it. After helping Karl Rove steal the past two Presidential contests, they will have to work harder this time to undo the Party’s advantage in the polls after all these years of Bush bungling.
But when it comes to incompetence, never count the Democrats out. If they can’t find an unelectable nominee, they can always screw up the process of selection.
As a survivor of history’s most suicidal political convention in 1968, I can hardly wait to see the new forms of chaos they will devise for the next one.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Obama's New Politics and Old Friends
In all the to-do about Barack Obama as “new,” it’s easy to lose sight of his connections to the Kennedy era that transformed American politics half a century ago.
A lengthy Washington Post profile today is headed, “A Series of Fortunate Events” and summarized: “Barack Obama needed more than talent and ambition to rocket from obscure state senator to presidential contender in three years. He needed serious luck.”
True enough, but what strikes an older reader is the part played in his political ascent by two important figures associated with the Democratic idealism of the 1960s and 1970s.
Before he decided to run for President, Obama consulted those two mentors, Newton Minow and Abner Mikva.
“Shortly before Christmas 2006,” the Post reports, “he met with Minow and Mikva to discuss whether to run. ‘He was very worried about what this was going to do to his family,’ says Minow. ‘I think Michelle at that point was very dubious, not at all enthusiastic about his running.’ The two men, who have six adult daughters between them, said they thought it made more sense to run when Obama's children were young and relatively insulated.”
Obama, who barely knew his own father, was turning for advice to two men who had nurtured his career to that point.
At Harvard Law School in 1988, he had impressed one of his professors, Martha Minow, who recommended him for a summer internship with the Chicago law firm headed by her father, Newton Minow, who had been chairman of the FCC under JFK and is still remembered for his speech describing TV as “a vast wasteland” and helping launch the public television network that is now PBS.
"He was at the firm for only one summer,” Minow recalls, “and when we offered him a job to come back, he came in to see me and told me he was going to go into politics. I think he had that in mind very early."
Minow became a friend and adviser to the young man with "the combination of a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament."
In 1990, he came to the attention of Abner Mikva, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who offered him a clerkship, but Obama turned it down. A Chicago lawyer, Mikva had been a liberal Congressman who opposed the Daley machine, fought with the National Rifle Association over gun control and against racial discrimination. Later, he served briefly as chief counsel to Bill Clinton in the White House.
Mikva encouraged Obama in 2000 after he lost a primary and considered quitting politics. Four years later, when he was running for the Senate, Mikva “gave him more money than I've ever given anyone in my life."
Now Barack Obama is campaigning for a “new politics” in American life, but what he is offering clearly has roots in the best of the old.
A lengthy Washington Post profile today is headed, “A Series of Fortunate Events” and summarized: “Barack Obama needed more than talent and ambition to rocket from obscure state senator to presidential contender in three years. He needed serious luck.”
True enough, but what strikes an older reader is the part played in his political ascent by two important figures associated with the Democratic idealism of the 1960s and 1970s.
Before he decided to run for President, Obama consulted those two mentors, Newton Minow and Abner Mikva.
“Shortly before Christmas 2006,” the Post reports, “he met with Minow and Mikva to discuss whether to run. ‘He was very worried about what this was going to do to his family,’ says Minow. ‘I think Michelle at that point was very dubious, not at all enthusiastic about his running.’ The two men, who have six adult daughters between them, said they thought it made more sense to run when Obama's children were young and relatively insulated.”
Obama, who barely knew his own father, was turning for advice to two men who had nurtured his career to that point.
At Harvard Law School in 1988, he had impressed one of his professors, Martha Minow, who recommended him for a summer internship with the Chicago law firm headed by her father, Newton Minow, who had been chairman of the FCC under JFK and is still remembered for his speech describing TV as “a vast wasteland” and helping launch the public television network that is now PBS.
"He was at the firm for only one summer,” Minow recalls, “and when we offered him a job to come back, he came in to see me and told me he was going to go into politics. I think he had that in mind very early."
Minow became a friend and adviser to the young man with "the combination of a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament."
In 1990, he came to the attention of Abner Mikva, then a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who offered him a clerkship, but Obama turned it down. A Chicago lawyer, Mikva had been a liberal Congressman who opposed the Daley machine, fought with the National Rifle Association over gun control and against racial discrimination. Later, he served briefly as chief counsel to Bill Clinton in the White House.
Mikva encouraged Obama in 2000 after he lost a primary and considered quitting politics. Four years later, when he was running for the Senate, Mikva “gave him more money than I've ever given anyone in my life."
Now Barack Obama is campaigning for a “new politics” in American life, but what he is offering clearly has roots in the best of the old.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)