Another case of politics as usual?
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WASHINGTON
OBSERVERS of African-American participation in politics are gushing over the long-term implications of the election of Barack Obama as president. "What we saw was really the emergence of the first multiracial, intergenerational, multiethnic political coalition of the 21st century," Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, told the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists this week. "It reflects the diversity of the country today . . . the trend line suggests that the coalition that Barack Obama and his supporters helped forge is unique, different, and recreated the political landscape. That's why this is a transcendent, watershed election."
David Bositis, a senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation's leading African-American think tank, detailed the collapse of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" that the Republicans have relied on for four decades. It did not matter that only 10 percent and 11 percent of white voters, respectively, voted for Obama in Alabama and Mississippi and white Americans nationwide still voted for Republican John McCain 55 percent to 43 percent. Bositis said Obama's explosive turnout of voters of color and younger voters, educated voters, and independents and moderates of all colors made it so that Deep South white voters lost "the ability to bring the rest of the country along with them."
Then there was scholar Ron Walters of the University of Maryland, deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential bid. "I am hopeful this can be a return to the politics of human investment," Walters said. "The war, the economic crisis are crystalizing into a very unique moment in American history. Very unique moment. I would argue the most unique moment in American history in terms of an election . . . Barack Obama was almost a perfect match for that moment."
But how solid or how ephemeral is that moment? It was unique indeed as so many different groups, with so many primary concerns, came together in the voting booth. The plethora of groups and causes is exemplified by Obama's own words on the stump. In one speech in the summer of 2007, he told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." He ascended in Iowa by saying, "We can end this war without George Bush. And if we don't, then it will be the first thing I do as president of the United States." He also said back then that healthcare was the second priority.
Of course now with the economic crisis, Obama last week said, "I want to see a stimulus package sooner rather than later. If it does not get done in the lame-duck session, it will be the first thing I get done as president of the United States."
Besides the shifting terrain of priorities, what is unspoken in the euphoria over his election is that a great deal of American power, arguably disproportionate power, resides in the America that did not cheer on election night in Grant Park. A hint was in this week's Business Week. It quoted
For the first time since 1994, the defense and healthcare industries gave a majority of campaign contributions to the Democrats - albeit bare majorities. They will expect to be first in line for loopholes from Obama. Resistance to modernization is likely from energy companies and the transportation industry, which gave about two-thirds of their funds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
For all the chaos this nation was thrown into by the $700 billion bank bailout, the
This makes the election less about transcendence than about whose agenda ascends in the White House.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.
