Features » September 17, 2007

Obama’s in the Eye of the Beholder

Can the junior senator from Illinois be both a stalwart progressive and a post-ideological unifier?

By David Moberg (Tama, Iowa)

Barack Obama speaks during an 'Evening in the Park with Barak Obama' on July 3, in Fairfield, Iowa.

Every August for 46 years, until she retired two years ago, Duffy Lyon carved the butter cow sculpture that has occupied a place of honor at the Iowa State Fair. But newly inspired, this summer she crafted 17 pounds of butter into the campaign logo of Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama, proudly displaying her creation at an Obama forum on rural issues here.

“He’s the kind of person who will represent us the best, better than Hillary,” she says. “He’s for people who haven’t got things.” Prominent dairy farmer Joe Lyon, like his wife an active 78-year-old independent who Bush turned into an ardent Democrat, adds, “We’ve got to have a change in Washington. I think it’s been a calamity—war, giveaways to the well-connected. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it in history. And we’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg. I don’t know how long it will take to straighten out.”

Many Democrats—and a surprising swath of Republicans and independents—think that first-term senator Barack Obama represents the best hope (his constant theme) to turn the country in a new direction. Whether attracted by his inspirational speeches, his fresh face, or his early opposition to the war in Iraq, people respond to Obama’s personal story and what they think he represents for America, as much as to the policies he advocates.

But there are two Obamas running for president—or at least two political personas that voters see. One is the politically progressive Obama, leading in the national polls over rivals such as former Sen. John Edwards to be the left alternative to front-runner Hillary Clinton’s centrist, establishment politics. The other is the post-partisan Obama, who will bring people together and transcend the morass of Washington politics that he is running against.

Both reflect Obama’s political history, but the big question—for both his campaign and his potential presidency—is: How compatible are these two personas? To what extent does striving for post-partisanship conflict with—or complement—progressive political goals?

One Obama, two Obama

Progressives often see Obama’s career as evidence that he is a champion of grassroots democracy, and issues like ethics reform and national health insurance. “People have choices to make in life, and choices give you some insight into what they believe and what their values are,” says Henry Bayer, director of AFSCME District Council 31 in Illinois. “Here’s a guy who had his pick of what he could do, the world was open to him, and he became a community organizer, then went to law school, did civil rights and voter registration work,” before becoming a reliably liberal state senator.

That personal history counts with voters. After an Iowa Federation of Labor candidate forum in Waterloo, Amalgamated Transit Workers Union local political director Lon Kammeyer—a bold “Live Union, Die Union” tattoo on his massive forearm—praised Obama for his candor about his experiences growing up and for his willingness more recently to campaign against Wal-Mart. “I like Barack,” he says. “To me, he’s just worked his way up, working with people who didn’t have anything.”

But many admirers—especially young people, people turned off to politics, and less partisan voters spanning the ideological spectrum—do not view Obama as a progressive or even a champion of the downtrodden. They see him as a plain-speaking, uncorrupted, new force for change who wants to solve common problems and unite the country.

Pat Nelson—a politically independent, middle-aged, elementary school teacher—volunteered to help at an Obama rally held in August on the Cass County Fairgrounds in the small town of Atlantic, Iowa. Not a close follower of politics in past elections, she says she’s paying more attention this time. “Whenever I listen to Obama, I get the feeling he’s not a Republican, not a Democrat, but asking what can we do as a group to solve problems, and that intrigues me,” she says. “We need to get over what Democrats and Republicans are for and think of what’s important for the country.”

Jim Lynam, 65, and his daughter, Emily, 20, both liked Obama’s stand on the war in Iraq and the environment, but it is his charisma and novelty that excite them. “To me, he represents fresh air, change,” Jim says. “I would support Hillary if she’s nominated, but I wouldn’t be happy because she brings old ideas. You know what she’s going to say. She’s not inventive. It’s politics as usual. She speaks to please the audience. But he’s not as corrupted by the system as people who’ve been swimming in it for years.”

Even highly partisan, liberal Democrats, like 77-year-old retired union house painter Herbert Abraham and his 53-year-old wife, Nancy, a home care worker, admire Obama’s post-partisanship for a practical reason. “Of all the candidates, I can’t think of one that can get crossover votes besides Obama,” Herbert said at the Atlantic rally. “He can win, and we want the Democrats to win.”

Indeed, in an intriguing University of Iowa Poll in early August, Obama received more support from Republican voters—6.7 percent—than all of the other Republican contenders except for Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. And Obama argues that he can expand the politically viable territory for Democrats more than other candidates by both inspiring Southern blacks to vote and attracting more rural, religious voters.

All together now

In his stump speeches, like the one he gave at the Atlantic fairgrounds, Obama pits the “generosity of spirit and decency of the American people” against the corruption of politics, adroitly making himself the vehicle of his listeners’ most noble impulses. Large crowds turn out for his campaign, he says, not because of what he’s doing but “because Americans all across the country are desperate for change. They want something new. They want to take this country in a new direction. Part of it is a response to the last six years and the sense that the challenges and difficulties you face here in Atlantic and people are facing all across the country have not been dealt with. We’ve got a lot of petty politics and a lot of negative advertising but when it comes to the challenges of this country, Washington hasn’t done the job.”

——————— PAGE BREAK ——————-

In an engaging and authoritative manner, he ticks off Bush’s policy failures—healthcare, education, energy, global warming, economic inequality, official contempt for the law, corruption, and a “war that never should have been authorized.” But he often warns that simply changing parties in power is not enough to change the politics in Washington.

“Our government has to reflect our deepest values, and our deepest values involve not just thinking about ourselves but thinking about other people,” he says. “If there are poor people in Cass County, it impoverishes us all. That idea that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, that we’re looking after our seniors, our children, our disabled, the vulnerable—that notion has to be reflected not just in our religious institutions, not just in church. It has to express itself through our government. We’re all in this together. We rise and fall together. We’re not just on our own.”

With almost identical language during the same week in Iowa, Edwards and Clinton talked about “shared prosperity” and the need to recognize “we’re in this together” instead of thinking that “you’re on your own”—political framing terms promoted by the progressive think tank, the Economic Policy Institute.

Bold is better

Yet much as the candidates have converged in rhetoric and some policies, they have staked out differences. Clinton, who hews to an establishment foreign policy view to make herself appear tough, tries to paint Obama’s modest but laudable candor and openness on foreign policy as naive. Obama counters that judgment is more important than experience. “Nobody has a longer resume than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,” he says, “and that hasn’t worked out so well.”

Both Obama and Clinton have talked about bringing all interested parties to the table to create universal health insurance. But Obama, who like Edwards distinguishes himself from Clinton by refusing contributions from political action committees and Washington lobbyists, also says, “I don’t mind insurance and drug companies having a seat at the table. I just don’t want them buying all the chairs.”

And Edwards, in a pointed critique of Obama, Clinton and “corporate Democrats,” argues that it’s necessary “to take the power away” from “entrenched powers,” not invite them to make a deal on health care, energy or other major problems. At a UAW hall in Ottumwa, Iowa, Edwards said, “The idea that you can cooperate and negotiate with these people and give them a seat at the table is a fantasy.” Instead, he said he’d announce his health care plans from the White House lawn, then warn Americans how corporations would attack his proposals. “We can’t be cute about this,” he said. “We’ve got to take these people head on.”

That criticism strikes at the fault line between the progressive Obama, willing as he often suggests to mobilize popular pressure to bring change, and the post-partisan Obama, intent on bringing everyone together to resolve issues without political conflict.

After years of enduring Bush and the Republican right, “most Democrats are not in any bipartisan unity mindset,” says one veteran Iowa political strategist, who is advising another campaign. “They need some red meat.”

Progressive Democrats in particular want a presidential candidate who will take advantage of the recent leftward shift in public opinion. Obama appeals to the party’s left: He edged out Edwards in a straw poll of participants in a June conference organized by Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), a D.C.-based group that mobilizes progressives within Democratic politics, and he and Edwards were virtually tied in an early summer survey of supporters of Democracy for America, a national group that grew out of Howard Dean’s campaign four years ago.

But Robert Borosage, co-director of CAF, says Obama has “run a very cautious campaign and chosen to make himself the voice of responsible centrism.” With his timidity on issues such as health care, energy and trade, Borosage says, “he’s almost Hillaryesque in his caution on positions he’s taken. You have to take a lot on faith that he’s carrying a progressive banner, but he hasn’t been around long enough to know where he’ll come down. He’s stirred a lot of excitement among young people and people not much engaged in politics, but other progressives have increasing questions about where he is: Is he the new triangulator or one of us?”

William McNary, president of USAction, a national network of statewide progressive citizen groups, personally—but not organizationally—supports Obama as a “genuine progressive” who will “expand the boundaries of American democracy,” and heal the rupture with the rest of the world Bush caused with the war in Iraq. But even McNary, who has long known and worked with Obama, says, “If I had to offer any criticism, he’s a bit cautious for my taste. People have to see someone who is putting forth bold proposals, not weak, timid programs. Bolder can be better.”

In Iowa, where Edwards remains the frontrunner, some polls show Obama gaining strength. State Senator Joe Bolkcom, a lead organizer for the Working Families Win mobilization project of Americans for Democratic Action, sees Obama as inspiring young people much like Howard Dean did four years ago. “One of his main messages is the corruption of special interest money in politics and how that distorts what the country needs now,” Bolkcom says. “That’s a message that’s strong here, and that was one of Gov. Dean’s messages.”

And John Norris, the field organizer for Sen. John Kerry’s upset victory in the 2004 Iowa caucus, contends that older, more experienced Democrats are now joining young Obama supporters, and that Obama has more of an opportunity to grow his support than the more established candidates. “Is he progressive?” Norris says. “In my mind, yes. Ideology is important to me. I don’t know there’s a great deal of distinction among top candidates, though I think Obama is more progressive than Hillary, who’s moved to the right.” But Norris also supports Obama because he has the “capacity, insight and approach to re-establish our ties with the world community” and the “enormous capacity to excite a new generation about public service.”

“He fundamentally understands that we have to change the way we do politics in Washington,” says Norris. “I think everyone else is cynical that we can make a fundamental change. I think you have to start with that fundamental belief or you can’t get anything done. He’s lived that as a community organizer, working for change from the democratic roots. If you’re going to change Washington, it has to start in the countryside.”

Can Obama resolve the tension between his post-partisan and progressive personas, and the differing camps of voters they attract? Unless he does, he may not have the opportunity to win the presidency, much less fundamentally change American politics.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  I honestly wonder whether the broad electorate wants bold departures at all.

  Here are five bold departures.

  1. Publicly fund campaigns and mandate TV, cable, and radio time in equal proportions for all candidates. Not “both candidates”, all! Eminent domain law will be the basis, except that air time will be paid for.

  2. Open up the televised debates once the various parties (all of them!) have made their nominations. Make them more like symposia, every candidate allowed to tell his or her party’s position on the issues that face the nation. No more presuppositions about who has a “chance to win”. It’s not for a news organization or the conglomerate that controls it to prejudice the issue by filtering who gets to speak their piece to the country. Save digital, full-time copies (not excerpts) on the web, so people can peruse them at leisure, to make sure what the candidates really said in their own words. Again, all this can be at public expense.

        (it would be cheaper than a week at war!)

  3. If you insist on goddamn voting machines, mandate 100% hardcopy backups, not just idiotic little receipts that could never in a thousand years be re-collected. Electronic data will be compared for congruence with the (100% recycled) paper record. Local and state election boards can bear legal responsibility for keeping this honest.

        (personally, i’d abandon the things… all of the companies that make them have a direct interest in who wins an election, objectivity is impossible… but so many of you all seem insistent upon them, and so i insist on backed up data)

  4. Evidence of disenfranchisement of legitimate voters, messing with the count, stealing or destroying ballots to freak the result, should not only be a federal offense (as now), but the penalties should be vivid and scary, e.g. general population, no Club Fed. Also big-ass fines that would intimidate even people as rich as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. Also bar the perps from public office forever, e.g. if a Secretary of State (state-level, of course) should be involved in such a thing. Make it stick. One or two real-life convictions would deliver the message.

  5. All contesting parties should have representatives at the vote-counts at the local, district and state levels, overseeing the process, all together with the official tabulators. All will have a shared interest in a true count by way of the competitive relationship among them. Count slowly, and do it twice by mandate. If results vary, do it again until the actual numbers are found, agreed upon by all, and are not disputed by the partisan reps nor the members of election boards. The press and public can wait for accurate results, no more half baked winner-projections that may influence vote patterns in westward time zones.

  I said above I wonder if the voters of America really want any truly bold departures, and I further honestly wonder whether Mr Obama or any one of the candidates from any of the parties would endorse a single one of these new directions. But they sure would “expand the boundaries of American democracy”.

  If that’s their agenda.

  Posted by Kuya on Sep 18, 2007 at 9:44 AM

  David Moberg’s article raises several pungent issues:

  (1) By focusing, realistically, on Obama’s potentially conflicting “personae,” Moberg highlights the degree to which national politics, even at the grass-roots level, hinges upon successful public relations. In other words (and I say this without cynicism), is it possible to imagine a presidential candidate nominated, let alone elected, without being “branded” successfully to a consumer-electorate?

  (2) Questions of authenticity—e.g., Is He Progressive Enough? or Is He Post-Ideological Enough? or Is He Black Enough?—have seemed to dog Obama more than the other Democratic contenders. Whether or not such questions are valid in the first place, are they being applied uncritically to this candidate?

  (3) In the ensuing months, we certainly will be subjected a ruthless barrage of dirt-digging and fact-spinning by all presidential campaign teams. Should Obama’s team deliberately act to keep their guy above the fray? If so, how?

  Posted by francis frank on Sep 19, 2007 at 4:28 AM

  I honestly wonder when people are going to stop supporting the democrats, and realize that no matter who they vote for, a vote isn’t going to represent, democracy, freedom, equality, or any serious change. To believe that voting for Obama, or any other clown, democrat, republican, or otherwise, is going to seriuosly produce any real difference in this government is flat out stupid. Has no one realized that there is little difference between any of the administrations, democrat or republican? All the liberals and progressives believed that voting in the democrats was going to produce a serious change on this war, yet, here we are, almost a year after they got into congress, they have yet to end the war, more neoliberal economic policies are being enforced, they have done nothing serious to challenge the Bush regime and it’s policies of rejecting our rights, and it really has done nothing different from the Republicans other than minor things. The only thing they’ve done is attempt to end the war somewhat, as they refuse to cut funding which would effectively end the war. They are too afraid of being seen as not supporting the troops (after all, neither party is concerned with the lives of the Iraqi’s, only the American soldiers which are over there killing).  Most of the candidates for Presidnet who speak of ending the war don’t even want to seriously end it, they just want to reduce troop numbers, and continue to conduct counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism operations. A new direction is needed which certainly isn’t going to be provided by your government, and until we realize that, then no serious freedom, or change will ever come about.

  Posted by anarcho-liberation on Sep 19, 2007 at 6:36 PM

  Dear Anarcho-Liberation:

  In broad principle, I agree with your critique of the U.S. electoral system.

  Yes: Powerful people exert power and get results. Yes: People who exert said power very often are ignorant and make horrible decisions.

  Your vote is pretty much as impotent as mine in directly causing those in power to be less ignorant or make fewer bad decisions.

  Nevertheless, Anarcho-Liberation, your sweeping rhetoric about “real difference” (as well as your more or less random use of pronouns) suggests that you have not yet formulated an organized thought about U.S. politics, let alone paid attention to the politics in your locality.

  I respect your passion, but does you passion have a practical direction?

  Posted by francis frank on Sep 21, 2007 at 4:15 AM

  Francist frank-
  I do have an organized thought about US politics. My “real difference” is not what you consider to be “real difference” obviously. You might vote democrat because they promise a better healthcare system, or because they are promising to bring about “real change”, they are going to hold corporats accountable, or some other nonsense that they preach, but its obvious that they won’t. Both parties are now bought off by corporations, and both parties will represent corporate interests, so while they talk tough now, once they are elected, any difference they make which is actually reflective upon their care for the people will be minimul. None of them are going to deconstruct the US empire, they won’t address the power that corporations have, they won’t seriously try to bring change about in the world and stop US aggression, and they won’t be giving us our rights back, nor will they give us any more freedom or equality. The capitalist system will continue, and they will probably further disaster capitalism (as naomi klein calls it), we will continue to be wage slaves, and there will continue to be those in poverty, while an elite group filters in billions of dollars a year. We will continue to be oppressed as we have before. There is a practical direction, although you probably won’t f ind it to be practical, nevertheless, the practical direction is to abolish the State, and all hierarchical institutions which are oppressing us. It is to set us free from our masters, and to stop being slaves. Such a solution I see in anarchism, or Social Libertarianism (as some obviously like to cower away from the term anarchy, an example can be found with Spain during the Spanish civil war). It is to create a true democracy, a country which is actually ran by the people collectively, and all decisions are made collectively, not by a few elite people. I’ve paid attention to your politics, and your politicians and “leaders” haven’t given any reason to keep this system, for they may speak of freedom, and they may speak of change, but in the end, they don’t care about you or me, which is why we must take charge and provide ourselves with that which they are refusing to give us. Anarchy as preached by emma goldman, rudolf rocker, peter kropotkin, of course, not as the “chaos” type that the mainstream has propagated the idea to be.

  Posted by anarcho-liberation on Sep 21, 2007 at 5:03 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 7 posts.

Also featured Trending Toward Inanity
An Unholy Alliance
On Strike Without a Union

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by David Moberg

• Out of Control
  Too big to regulate, the banks need to be broken up.Posted on November 18, 2009
• Labor’s New Leader
  The AFL-CIO stakes its future on Richard Trumka. Posted on October 16, 2009
• The Retail Devolution
  Two new books explore corporate evil.Posted on September 25, 2009
• Who’s Got the Power?
  Progressives find themselves outmaneuvered on healthcare reform. Posted on August 17, 2009
• Not Your Parents’ Labor Movement
  Why the Republic sit-in failed to inspire other worker actions.Posted on August 3, 2009