Joaquin B comments http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-April/026153.html
Doug Henwood on Barack Obama Joaquin Bustelo Quite interesting to read this Left Business Observer article about Obama that Louis pointed to. As a progressive/radical critique it is fairly standard, and has the merit of mostly not being strident and denunciatory in tone, unlike many other works of its genre. On the other hand, it suggests to me that it's a good thing Doug Henwood chooses to mostly focus on business and economics, rather than political analysis. I'm not going to go through point by point, just take a few scattered potshots. First, on the composition of Obama's supporters. "His original base consisted of blacks and upper-status whites." This is factually incorrect. It's clear that Obama has been groomed and supported by a significant collection of people in top Democratic Party circles, by definition "upper status whites," but his original mass base in this campaign was, overwhelmingly, young people. That's how he won the Iowa caucuses and virtually every other caucus: he can out-organize Hillary thanks to the thousand of young people he has inspired to become volunteers. "The black support is out of racial pride," Henwood observes. This line, lifted from countless primary gabfests on the cable networks, is idiotic. First, because Mrs. Clinton until shortly before Iowa had a huge lead over Obama in the Black community. It was only when the press started taking Obama seriously that this began to change, but the Black community did not shift massively to the Obama column until Iowa, when he showed he could get substantial support from white folks. Second, because it is not "racial pride" but rather a historic fight for the right to political representation and equality by an oppressed people that is involved. Blacks in the South were still being lynched for trying to register to vote a half century ago, when Henwood was growing up. That is why it wasn't until Obama became a plausible potential nominee that the Black community rallied to him, and also why they rallied so strongly once he became viable in their eyes. Henwood has swallowed hook, line and sinker the media narrative that Obama's white support is from the latte liberals, whereas the white workers rally to Hillary. This based on exit poll results, using education and income levels as proxies for class. But the difference in support for Clinton and Obama in those categories are a few percent. For example, in the combined 16-state democratic exit poll for super Tuesday, 46% of those with household incomes of $100,000 or more a year voted for Clinton, 50% for Obama, a 4-point advantage. Contrast that with the difference in generational support. In that same survey, Obama has a 14 percentage point lead over Clinton among people under 40. Clinton has a 2-point lead among those in their 40's, an 8-point lead among those in their 50's and early 60's, and a whopping 24-point lead over Obama among those 65 and over. Among white people in that survey, Obama carried those under 30 by 17 percentage points; whereas Clinton had a 28-point lead among white people over 60. This last group (whites 60+) weighs heavily in the poll; they were 21% of the respondents. This swing of 45 percentage points between the youngest white demographic and the oldest impacts the use of education levels and income as proxies for social status or class, because what are being read as "class" differences are in reality NOT that, but GENERATIONAL. For example, relatively few people graduated from College in the 50's or earlier; education levels are much, much higher among more recent generational cohorts. Also, incomes of retiree households tend to be significantly lower that of those very same people when they were still in the working population. And a retiree may not consider as "income" regular withdrawals from savings. Henwood extends his error of accepting cable TV conventional wisdom about WHY all those rich white folks were supposedly going for Obama. "[T]he initial white support was driven by his post-partisan, post-racial appeal," Henwood says. "Well-off whites love to hear a black man say that racism has largely receded as a toxic force, though it’s really hard to figure out what the hell he’s talking about in a world where black households earn about 60% as much as whites, and where black men are incarcerated at more than six times the rate of white men." Even before his speech on race, I think it was clear that what Henwood says here was drawn from tendentious misrepresentations of Obama's statements along the lines that race shouldn't divide us and that race shouldn't matter, not from paying attention to what Obama himself was saying. And as I've noted repeatedly on this list, the actual content of such a statement is entirely different when it is said by a white politician than when it is said by a Black politician who identifies with and is part of his community. And even if not every single time, Obama has made THAT difference in content repeatedly clear in debates and speeches. For example, this is what he said on the CNN-YouTube debate last July: "Race permeates our society. It is still a critical problem. But I do believe in the core decency of the American people. And I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions. Unfortunately we've had a White House that hasn't invested in the kinds of steps that have to be done to overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. And as president of the United States my commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care, is to close the disparities and the gaps, because that is what is really going to solve the race problem in this country." (The snippet is included in this video: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=XUn8HH_V0sk&feature=related>) And Obama's speech on race --the most serious treatment of the subject by any politician of Obama's stature in bourgeois politics that I can remember-- has demonstrated quite convincingly that the "post racial" charge against Obama is a phony -- as well as made explicit the limitations and illusions in Obama's views, when analyzed from the perspective of Black liberation and revolutionary socialism. The strongest part of Henwood's article, as it is generally of all the critiques of Obama, is where Henwood points out that Obama's positions and associations clearly show he is within the mainstream of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But I think Henwood very clearly reveals a blind spot as a political observer with his repeated claim --in fact, the central theme of his article-- that there is simply no content, none whatsoever, to Obama's call for "change" and his slogan, "change we can believe in." I've written here before about talking with my teenage son and daughter, and some of their friends, as to why they were for Obama, and receiving the repeated response, "because he's Black." Some might dismiss this as inane, but I think there is real content to the answer. And that content is, given the nature of the two-party system and the role played by Democrats, especially under Bush, "Black" has become a more meaningful political brand than "Democrat." The effect might be exaggerated because I live in DeKalb County, Georgia's 4th Congressional District, Cynthia McKinney country. The next CD over, mainly Fulton County, has long been represented by former SNCC leader John Lewis, the only one of the six conveners of the March on Washington still alive. Atlanta is the capital of Black America and identified very strongly with Martin Luther King and his legacy. But I believe, even if not as consciously, this is a real factor all over the country. Black is viewed --especially by the younger generations-- as a political brand. And the question is not so much John Lewis's voting record since 2000 or what the Congressional Black Caucus has been doing lately, because these are teenagers 13 to 17 years old, not political geeks or policy wonks. What Black politics is associated with are the causes and struggles Black people have been identified with that younger people heard about in school and in the popular culture. That gives "Black" its content ands force as a political brand among young people. They're supporting Obama the Black man, not Obama the Democrat -- no matter how much WE may understand that in this race Obama represents mostly the Democratic Party brand and not the Black brand (and quite independently of whether HE understands the contradiction between these two, which I doubt). Obama may not have been clear in laying out the content of the change he proposes in terms of specific laws and detailed programs. But he has been entirely clear about the DIRECTION of that change: against the war, for equality and social justice, for universal health care, against too much corporate influence in Washington (his whole rap about how they can have a seat at the table but not the whole table), against the scapegoating of immigrants, and so on. The impression of the kind of change he wants is tremendously re-enforced because it is a Black person saying it and one who identifies with the community and its history of fighting for social justice. And it is reinforced further by his whole line of argument that this is not a change HE can bring about, its a change "WE" have to fight for -- although Henwood (and others) are entirely correct in saying he's given this "popular participation" aspect of his rhetoric absolutely no concrete content aside from his campaign. Joaquín _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
