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Sunday, September 07, 2008

State of the Race

Corporate media has a vested interest in making the contest of Obama with McCain for the White House a "horse-race." Even pundit-types as awesome as Rachel Maddow play into this perspective to a certain extent (my love for Maddow is undiminished by this fact, such as it is). Never forget this.

Word is, that whenever McCain's face appears on the tee-vee people reach for their remotes and ratings drop like stones. And so, our for-profit "news"-outifts feel compelled to frame the race in terms that won't cost them eyeballs even if those are not the actual terms of the race they claim to be covering. Palin provides what Hillary provided before, a diversionary and surrogate figure through which to narrativize the contest with the charismatic Obama when the actual antagonist McCain loses them money.

Right now, right after their Convention and through the invigoration of their long-ambivalent (to McCain) wingnut base through the nomination of Palin the Republicans should be getting their best polling of the whole Election. The race is indeed tightening a tad for the moment by all appearances. But surely everybody was expecting this? Conventions generate bounces, we all know this already. How could they not? They amount to millions and millions of dollars of advertising dumped in an extended concentrated lump into the popular psyche. What has been flabbergasting to objective observers is that the fully-expected Republican bounce has been so underwhelming given that they've pulled out all the stops in this manner.

Republicans might manage to do little more than pull the race even -- and for just one moment in time as Whitney once so soaringly and campily crowed -- or even a slight pulling-ahead that looks fudgibly unimpressive at the margins of error. This is what is freaking people out? Honestly?

Writes Nate Silver:
[T]here has been some movement back toward McCain-Palin… [T]he one-night results from yesterday's tracking polls showed something like a 1-2 point Obama lead. If -- and this is a big if -- that is the extent of the GOP bounce, this is a somewhat underwhelming result for them. Last night and tonight should be among the best individual nights of polling that the Republicans see all year. If the best they can do is close the race to a tie, or an Obama +1 on those nights, they are not going to win the race based on inertia alone. [Emphasis added -- ndc]

What they need, rather, is actual momentum: enthusiasm, buzz, media cycles won, new narratives entrenched. And they might get it…. On the other hand, I think they may be making a major mistake if they follow through on plans to take Palin off the campaign trail. She is their narrative, buzz, momentum at this point.

Needless to say, Palin is so ill-prepared to appear Presidential that her exposure to the public in non-scripted situations is likely to generate "narrative, buzz, momentum" in all the wrong ways for McCain. And blaming this on the mean librul media really can take you only so far when you’re a Republican in a Change Election hostile to Republicans.

And I still think it remains to be seen just how generous will be the wingnut base presumably so resolutely mobilized by Palin to a woman who appears conspicuously stumbly and unqualified for assuming the job of Leader of the Free World and Commander in Chief of its mighty armies and so on and so forth. That wingnut base is deeply patriarchal and sexist, after all, among the other things that it is, and I don't know that this helps Palin in the moments when she's asked to pull off "Presidential" rather than just the role of wingnut talk-radio pit-bull.

Come what may, I understand, believe me, all the disproportionate panic and pessimism that springs up with every renewed demonstration of the deep deceptiveness, flabbergasting irrationality, and brutal ruthlessness of the Republicans. Progressives are on a hair trigger after seven years of madness and criminality. We've glimpsed the worst that can happen and we worry that it will happen again, and even more irrevocably, and the stakes are such that this seems at once all too imaginable and all too unimaginable at one and the same time.

But people need to panic less and work more. Obama is cool as a cucumber and we should be as well, else we'll make the very mistakes we're endlessly attributing to the campaign for fear we'll lose this chance at change. Biden's pushback against the Republicans yesterday was especially pitch-perfect and effective (scroll down for the YouTube clip). Under Obama the Democrats appear for once to be doing this thing with consummate timing, tone, and organization. Now, that's some change I can believe in. It gives one hope for the Administration to come (despite Obama's worrisome coziness with some Rubinaughts and DLC-types, for example).

If you still want to gloom and doom this dog and pony show, I can't stop you. But look at the Electoral College match-ups. Obama has never been behind nor will he be. Are you following the voter registration numbers? They are historically unprecedented, and even states that don't keep tabs on party affiliation note that young people predominate among new registrations. When turnout is high, Democrats tend to benefit, when youth turnout is high Democrats tend to benefit.

Look at the State by State races, look at the money race, look at voter registrations, look at party identification numbers, look at the disapproval ratings of Bush. They're losing and they're going to lose. This isn't boasting: the numbers say the same for those with eyes to see them. This isn't a recipe for complacency: the harder we work the bigger and more progressive our Congressional majorities will be and the easier our way to universal health care, progressive taxation, a renewable energy economy, a non-fascist Supreme Court, education for all, the renewal of international treaties and partnerships, and justice for the war-criminals and war-profiteers and war-propagandists of this debased epoch of Republican rule.

The media narrative should be about the coming landslide against a discredited philosophy and a party of "personal responsibility" that refuses to take any responsibility for any of its catastrophic mistakes, lowering taxes while started a war of choice based on lies and dismantling the infrastructure on which their own society depends for its survival with devastating results. That isn't the narrative we'll get, apparently, but it is far closer to the truth.

Obviously, don't rejoice until we win the day, and don't rejoice long when we do, because the effort to wrest the winning party from the control of the corporate-militarists is no less urgent than ousting the Movement Conservatives from power in this Election is. But all the foolish panic and dread people are feeling about this contest is unproductive and irrational, it seems to me, however understandable it may be.

3 comments:

ZARZUELAZEN said...

Well Dale,

To anyone who is not an American, the closenss of the race is utterly plerplexing. If it was the rest of the world voting - I'm in NZ by the way- it would be Obama-Biden by a landslide (80%+).

As it is, in the US Obama is just barely ahead, by the skin of his teeth, and I'm sorry to say, there appears to have been a swing to McCain-Palin. Tradesports betting markets now give Obama only a 53% chance, and dropping:

https://www.intrade.com/

A point to bear in mind, which must be depressing for Democrats: McCain is elderly and frail: should he die in office, it is Sarah Palin who would become president of the United States.

Dale Carrico said...

Slavoj Zizek has quipped (or was it a serious proposal?) that everybody on earth except Americans should vote for U.S. President, given the impact of the result of that contest on the planetary population and on the demonstrated lack of fitness of Americans themselves to make a considered decision in this matter. It is not difficult to imagine that under such circumstances Obama would beat McCain by an avalanche a storm surge and a landslide at once.

As for all the second guessing and hand-wringing about the race I simply think it is overwrought and pointless and unproductive. There are incomparably more signs of an Obama victory than a McCain one. The Obama campaign is performing with consummate skill, excellent messaging, timing, and tone, and impressive organization, quite apart from offering up incomparably better policies (I said better, not best) in a Change Election demanding just that.

If you are an American, vote for Obama, donate money to Obama, make phone calls for Obama, support progressive candidates who will shepherd an Obama Administration in the most progressive possible direction. If you are not an American, be sure that Americans you may know register in time and then vote for Obama, argue online and elsewhere for the importance of this election, and provide support for progressive organizations and publications that are supporting Obama or at any rate getting the truth out about Republican mendacity and recklessness and so on, wherever this is legal.

I really think there is too much bellyaching and panicking among progressives. Obviously, I get it. I've been railing about these crooks and warcriminals all my adult life, and endlessly on this blog. But, honestly. Get a grip, people.

And, yes, it has indeed occurred to me that should McAncient die he has chosen a sputtering End-Times anti-science death-cult lunatic to be our President.

Rather than wringing our hands that this genius "Rovian" move can grasp victory for the Republicans out of the jaws of defeat, my own belief is that this will come to be judged almost universally and quite soon as the moment of total bankruptcy that ended the Republican Party as a force in American politics (or possibly forced a reorganization of the Party into something so different that the Movement Conservatives who currently control the reins will have absolutely no home in it ever again).

liz said...

Hi Dale,
This is a former student from your 103b course at Berkeley. I don't have anything to add really. I just wanted to thank you for this post. A nasty and familiar pessimism has been plaguing me for the past week or so and what you’ve written is exactly what I needed to read. I became a fan of your blog back in the spring and let me just say, you couldn’t have picked it up again at a better time. I’m not a crazy-excited Obama fan (I wanted Kucinich), but I’ve become a much less angry person since seeing that he could and, by all accounts, will win the presidency. I’ve grown up under the reign of Bush conservatism—came out under it, struggled against my wingnut parents under it—which I think makes it particularly unsettling and depressing when it seems as though another flash in the pan morality play will keep the hellish fires burning.

Well, anyways, thanks for the post! Can’t wait to take your peer-to-peer course next Spring!

Liz