I started this as a comment to Booman’s post last Friday on Obama and that Generational Thang but it quickly grew so I thought I’d turn it into a diary. I’m close in age to Booman, though I’m actually a couple of years older than Booman. I graduated High School in 1984, he graduated in 1987. I found that much of what he had to say really resonated with me.
I grew up in a multi-racial working-class town in the Northeast. I find that I personally relate a lot more to John Edwards than to Barack Obama even though John’s a southerner and a boomer and I’m a Gen Xer from the north. I do agree with Booman that the frame The Creative Class leaves out much of the democratic constituency. While it’s a beautiful construct and does a great deal to explain regional competitive advantage and generational dynamics, as a political strategy I think it’s a path straight back to the angry white man politics of the Reagan era which reached their zenith under Bush II. And that’s quite possibly the crux of the problem. Does an Obama candidacy ignore the realities of class, work, and professional stratification in the U.S? Or does Obama represent a path to the future?
A little over a week ago, I had the privilege of hearing former Vice President Mondale speak at a small Friday evening gathering on the history of the DFL. The DFL, which stands for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, is Minnesota’s version of the Democratic Party. It was formed in 1944 via merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties. Until that merger, Minnesota Democrats hadn’t had much electoral success. The Farmer-Labor party was the true challenger to Minnesota Republicans and had a really strong presence in the farm towns and union strongholds of Greater Minnesota. The Farmer-Labor party even elected a number of governors in the first part of the century. Between 1945 and 1948 a youth movement fueled by returning veterans surged through Minnesota politics and the newly formed DFL. Hubert Humphrey was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948 on a platform that was a curious combination of reform politics, cold war liberalism, and anti-racism. For a broader view of cold war liberalism and it’s legacy see also Beinert’s View of Cold War Liberalism Today, and From Cold War Liberalism to Neoconservativism.
Humphrey’s 1948 speech at the National Democratic Convention is considered a classic. He challenged the Democratic Party “to get out of the shadow of states rights and into the bright sunlight of human rights”. Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond, stormed out of the convention and formed the Dixiecrats in response. Thus began the long slow migration of southern democrats away from the Democratic Party. That revolt culminated in Nixon’s Southern Strategy of 1968 and Reagan’s masterful coalition of disaffected blue collar and southern democrats, or angry white men as author and commentator Thomas Frank calls them. But enough of the history lesson. That evening, the former Vice President and former Congressman Don Fraser repeatedly took pains to emphasize the young ages of all the activists who transformed the DFL and Minnesota politics between 1945 and 1948.
Several times that evening Vice President Mondale emphasized the need for young people to take over the reigns of the party and lead. And we’re not talking about forty year olds he said. He emphasized that during Humphrey’s ascendancy in 1948 the oldest person on the campaign was 32 or 33. Towards the end of the party Vice President Mondale was chatting with the Chair of our 3rd Congressional District who happens to be a good friend of mine, so I got to listen in. At one point he pointed his finger at the wall and said we have to tell them (young folks) to lead, we just point and say GO! And let them go where they will.
The Vice President also made a very insightful remark about the recent election in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, which just elected Minnesota’s first African-American and the nation’s first Muslim to Congress. For those of you not familiar with this race, it was a very bitter race with clear divisions along race and class lines and an entrenched establishment fighting tooth and nail against an emerging establishment. The Republicans chimed in too (in a district where the Green Party is the real second party) lobbing whatever bombs they could at Keith Ellison, who unfortunately, like a lot of us, carries a lot of baggage. Vice President Mondale said (and I’m trying to get as close to his words as possible) that no matter how painful that election was for the party it was a really important victory and it was about the future more than anything else
That evening and those comments really got me thinking about where we stand now after our successes in 2006 and what 2008 really means. Then the blogs erupted about Obama.
As many of the posters have pointed out, an Obama candidacy is really about the future. It’s a candidacy that has very strong appeal to Gen Y and to younger Gen Xers and I’ve even seen boomers get excited about him. I was at Target last week and started thumbing through his prominently displayed biography. I began to wonder. Could Barak Obama be this generation’s JFK or Bobby Kennedy? A charismatic figure with the ability to move history forward?
I’m not a huge Obama fan. As I mentioned above, John Edwards resonates a lot more with me. I was a huge Jesse Jackson supporter after Gary Hart crashed and burned and worked on Jackson’s campaign as a volunteer field organizer. Jesse spoke to my heart and to what I knew was real more than Obama does. Bill Bradley and Howard Dean are my ideal democrats. I kinda like the idea of a Gore presidency.
I don’t think Barack Obama is as progressive as his rhetoric or his image suggests. I think he would be more effective as a candidate and as a president with a well entrenched progressive base in the states, suburbs, and cities moving him towards progressive reforms on the scale of the New Deal, rather than as a one term U.S. Senator running for President with all the entrenched D.C. interests still in the party pushing him towards corporate centrism. Like JFK, Obama’s image may be much more liberal and progressive than the reality. But maybe a post-race, progressive image is what we need to get out from under the Bush dynasty and the legacy of angry white man politics. Maybe a post-race, progressive image is what is needed to move us in a new historical direction.
While Edwards reminds us of who we’ve left behind (which increasingly includes the suburban professional middle class) in our march to a new world order and Gore points to the increasing global threats of oil-based economies, unregulated trade and industrialization to our future, Obama provides an image of compassion and a voice of empathy that is grounded in a moral language that resonates with the vast majority of Americans, as well as a voice that really seems to resonate with Gen Y and the Internet Generation.
Perhaps we should listen to our elders like Fritz Mondale, collectively point our fingers and let out a resounding GO! Maybe it’s time to let our younger brothers and sisters, our children, and our grandchildren take the lead and put this country back on the path of enlightenment and progress. My gut tells me this is the way to go, but I still have some reservations. Is it too soon? Can Barak and Gen Y handle the inevitable republican backlash from our successes this year? Will we end up with a Clinton-Obama ticket and yet another family restoration rather than a path to the future?
