Well, thank God THAT’S over
Our long national stimulus for political consultants and media companies has finally ended. What do we have to show for it? An electoral map that is still nearly identical to the national schism during the Civil War, a lot of BuzzFeed slide shows, a “theater of the absurd” moment as Karl Rove blew up Fox’s coverage and Megyn Kelly’s legs literally ran away… and for some, a hangover of epic proportions.
In my view, while a little morning-after gloating can be expected, any talk of a mandate for the Dems’ philosophy of government is overstated. Tell your friends as much. The President barely won the popular vote. The composition of Congress didn’t change much. As noted by the New York Times this morning, most counties actually shifted right in 2012. Moreover, thirty statehouses are occupied by GOP governors. That’s not the result you get when you win decisively on the issues.
More interesting to me than the talk of mandate is the coalition that the President has put together. Lindsey Graham, the GOP Senator from South Carolina, famously remarked this summer, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Or as Matt Lewis reported GOP strategist Chuck Warren said to him “To be frank, we’re a Mad Men party in a Modern Family world.” That proved true last night. The coalition that elected Obama in 2008 re-elected him in 2012. The GOP’s erosion among non-elderly, non-white constituencies concerns them deeply, as it should. The way out is not clear. But that’s not the news, in my view. The news to me is that our quadrennial national debate continues to substitute identity politics for an actual discussion at great cost to the system. That’s what a coalition is, of course. And coalitions are much more important to the “ground game” at get-out-the-vote time. We’re not unique as a country in this regard. What is unique (and ironic) for a nation such as ours, is that this appears to be so because we will seem to do anything to not talk about class, even by reducing our elections to generalizations about race and gender. Our elections become about mobilizing the Hispanic vote, or about “soccer moms—” as if the issue of providing day care to the Gomez family so that mom can work doesn’t impact dad too.
Even more concerning to me is that once again the election was still one giant pander to the actively voting middle class. The only mention of the 45 million Americans who live under the poverty line was to blame them for crimes of dependence perpetrated against the rich. Too much Medicaid. Not enough bootstraps. It begs the question: what would a campaign that was genuinely about “the least among us” even sound like these days? We used to have them. But that language would be stale and borrowed now. For an ex-political wordsmith, it’s a serious question even if it is also a rhetorical one. Our politics are only ugly because we have forgotten how to be beautiful. It is beautiful to have cares for others beyond yourself because empathy is part of what makes us human, as is weeping at a piece of music or leaping to cheer a touchdown. These are things that belong in politics.
As a result, this election was the triumph of tactics over inspiration. Given the very lack of mandate, what can be said is that the Republicans got out-smarted and out-worked in the battle ground states. (Let’s also not forget outspent, despite the idiot’s tax levied on Sheldon Adelson and others thanks to Citizens United.) I don’t think laypeople understand just how sophisticated the Obama operation was. (A primer here). What they experimented with in 2008 leapt forward in 2012. Once again, the man made history. Only this time, he didn’t do so with the color of his skin but with the content in his databases. The only comparison one can make from recent years is what Google did to the advertising industry— destroying 100 years of clichés and assumptions while creating a new, superior reality for matching people with their material desires. There was advertising before AdSense and after AdSense. The Obama operation took trillions of pieces of consumer data, a la Google, and then married it to behavioral economics to create engagement strategies that left the GOP looking positively… 2004. One couldn’t help note it when listening to Romney Ohio Chair Ted Strickland proudly talk about the “many thousands of doors” the GOP’s Ohio teams had knocked on. The Obama crew did too, but when you opened the door, they already knew what magazines you read and whether you liked to Supersize your value meals. If that spooks you out, turn off your computer. Because it’s the way the world works now.
A final first note: speaking of 2004, my friends with whom I served on John Kerry’s campaign have noted just how similar this campaign was to that one. An embattled incumbent (is there any other kind?) A challenger emerges from a fractious field because he “looks good on paper.” He is charismatically challenged. By spring, he emerges cash poor from a hard-fought primary. The money starts to come in, but not before the incumbent’s surrogates label him with a devastating critique that neutralizes his natural advantage: “Swift-boating” in the case of Kerry, “Bain” in the case of Romney. The 47% comment would come later, but it stuck in part because of how effective the early critique had been.
So, while I am glad to get back to the work of reforming health care, today is not a day of celebration for me. I want to finish what we have started with the ACA, flawed as it may be. But the far bigger project is to finish reforming our politics. I sense we’ll be done with Health Reform first.