Monday, September 5, 2011

Sort of political Monday

Who goes down with him?
By him I mean Obama of course. The more accurate question would be, "If he goes down, who goes down with him?" I'd say the odds of his winning are less than fifty-fifty. I base that on two things: 1) the economy is against him and 2) he's not a very good politician. But there are still all sorts of ways he could win. (Someone with only a forty percent chance of winning can win 4 times out of 10 after all.)

But what if he does lose? At this point, most people are focusing on the potential consequences for him, his administration and his party. I think the larger cultural consequences are more interesting.

For Obama's victory as not his alone.

The greatest tragedy, and the easiest call, is that an Obama loss would not be good for black men. It's not right and it's not fair but racist assumptions will be made and they will be made by the people who take the greatest pride in not being racist.No one will actually sit down and conclude anything but an Obama loss, combined with the memory of the Tiger Woods meltdown, will lead them to focus their attention on issues other than the how well black Americans are doing for a while. Nothing overtly racist will be said or done and lip service will be paid any time "race" is discussed but the related issues will slide onto the back burner for a while. (No one wants to talk about this aspect of it much, but the Tiger fiasco was a monumental event for white attitudes about black men.)

The other easy call is the media. who are, in any case, going down no matter what happens to Obama. They will go down a lot faster if he loses. The press and entertainment industries invested their all in the notion that this guy was a transformational president—not just another FDR or Reagan but another Lincoln—and he clearly isn't going to be that. Still, if he wins it will be possible to spin him as a success of some sort. If he loses, these people are going to look ridiculous. And they are in no position to recover from ridicule.

The final easy call is left wing feminism. This will be a bitter pill because liberal feminists swallowed their principles and dutifully surrendered when Obama started to take the lead from Hilary Clinton. That is the second time they have taken one for the team, the first being when they made a travesty of their most cherished values in order to shield Bill Clinton. Some sort of huge shake up within that movement is inevitable and an Obama loss will precipitate this.

The toughest call would be supporters of Keynesian economics. It's not enough, however, that Obama lose for them to be permanently diminished however. For that to happen he'd have to be replaced by a strong and successful president who clearly moved away from Keynesian policies and—this is the most important part—saw significant economic recovery under his or her tenure. If that happens, into the dustbin of history with them.

Who gains? I would guess that the paradoxical result of this would be a chance for regeneration within the Democratic party. There is a lot of rot and, as the cliché about fish and politics has it, the head rotted first. A revolt against congressional leadership that drove the current leadership into retirement would almost certainly be a good thing for the party.

The biggest beneficiaries, however, would be the angry white men who watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report. This group won't feel the loss any more than they feel the loss of their favourite team at the Super Bowl. They'll feel the need to redefine themselves following an Obama loss but that will be a net positive. I'd guess they would decide to focus on business and family and probably develop leisure interests other than politics. All of which would be very good for their mental and physical health. Every time I meet one of these guys these days I'm staggered at their seething anger. All they can do is sneer at everything.

2 comments:

  1. Are you sure they wouldn't just take up hating the Republican? It worked out pretty well last time...

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  2. In the short run some will almost certainly do that. We'll get a lot of irony impaired people saying things like "I hate X because he/she is so full of hate". I have this odd faith, however, that things will get better.

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