Holding the New Democratic Majority Together: The Road Forward
23 November 2008 5:00 am by Taylor Marsh
Guest
post by Allan Rivlin, Sheri Rivlin
Part 1: Reading
the Election
Part 1 of this series looked at election returns and exit polls to illuminate
the challenge Obama faces in holding together the majority that just elected
him. In addition to the liberal progressives that make up the base of the Democratic
Party and young voters who made up the base of his campaign, Obama broadened
his appeal to middle income, moderate, independent swing state voters in the
suburbs and exurbs where he won this race. In order to maintain this majority,
and his power as president, Obama will need to chart a course that continues
to hold the loyalty of all of these voters.
Part 2: The Road Forward
Immediately after Barack Obama won the presidency commentators began interpreting
the election and giving the new President advice. Conservatives like Charles
Krauthammer (who actually started spinning the election before the votes were
cast), William Kristol, and House Minority Leader, John Boehner have been employing
the assertion that America is a “center-right” nation to warn the
new administration against a dramatic shift to the left, while liberals like
Jesse Jackson and Mark Green responded to this thread with their own assertions
that Obama must move dramatically to take advantage of the progressive mandate
he has just earned.
Often this advice has been taking one side or the other in the false choice
between aggressive progressive leadership and cautious centrist accommodation.
This is an oversimplification for several reasons. First, it is conflating two
dimensions into one. The choices of aggressive vs. cautious and center vs. left
are independent. Obama has the option, for example, to be both bold and centrist.
Additionally, the choice between “center” and “left”
is also a false choice. At a minimum, a third possibility of splitting the difference
between these two options, call it “center-left” must be viewed
as a more likely path than either pure progressivism or centrism.
What would a post-ideological President do?
What is amusing in all of this is that Obama should not, and is not likely
to, follow any of this advice. The campaign that worked so hard to avoid ideological
labels is unlikely to embrace them as it heads into the White House. The Obama
team accurately read the American electorate as neither right nor left, nor
center-right, nor center-left. The vast majority of Americans is weary of ideological
bickering and interested only in backing leaders who can do something about
their problems.
Obama seems to understand something that many pundits and ideologues do not.
Americans are increasingly anti-ideological and pragmatic. Obama gets this and
said so on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. “What I don’t wanna do is
get bottled up in a lot of ideology and, ‘is this conservative or liberal?’
My interest is finding something that works. And whether it’s coming from
FDR or it’s coming from Ronald Reagan, if the idea is right for the times
then we’re gonna apply it. And things that don’t work we’re
gonna get rid of.”
It may frustrate some liberals but America did not reject George W. Bush because
he was too conservative. America rejected Bush because he did not have answers
to their problems. Many of the conservatives that are trying to spin this election
seem to be missing the point by acting as if their biggest problem is a lack
of votes, when in reality the conservatives’ biggest problem is a lack
of ideas.
Even though he has resigned his Senate seat and is asserting that Bush should
be given the opportunity to serve out the remaining weeks of his term as America’s
only President, it will not be easy to stay out of the issues of the day, and
once he is in the Oval office, it will be impossible. The challenge of the moment
is the automobile industry bailout and while it will not be easy to satisfy
the competing interests of the auto industry, labor unions, environmentalists,
and our trading partners, this seems to be just what Obama has in mind.
“A bridge loan to somewhere.”
After initially endorsing the concept of an auto industry bailout, and then
hearing criticism from British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, among others that,
at a minimum makes the proposition seem more complicated, Obama set a higher
bar for working out a compromise that could lead to a sustainable American automobile
industry. Again in the 60 Minutes interview, Obama said, “My hope is that
over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the
discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that
assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the
stakeholders coming together with a plan [that answers the question:] what does
a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like? So that we are creating a bridge
loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere. And that’s, I think,
what you haven’t yet seen.”
Difficult policy problems like these are not going to be made easier by false
choices and ideological rigidity. This even extends to the ideology that unites
his supporters. Even though the driving force in his victorious election was
a rejection of George W. Bush, Obama seems willing to work with some Bush holdovers
and some Bush policies, realizing that anti-Bush is an ideology in itself.
Finally we learn what “change” really means.
Obama is defining “change” not as a rejection of the Bush Administration’s
ideology, but as a rejection of ideology itself. This makes some of his liberal
progressive supporters very anxious, but if Obama can find the centered path
between the available options that represents real progress without forcing,
he may earn the enduring support of all of the factions that helped him win
the election.
It will be a challenge to some of Obama’s progressive supporters to have
the patience with their newly elected leader to let this post-ideological strategy
play out. That’s why Obama started immediately lowering their expectations
with his very first speech as President elect.
Part 1: Reading the Election
To The Editor: (Responding to Part 1) The in-coming President, you rightly
note, has taken pains to hold the expectations of his long denied followers
within achievable bounds. The trick is how can he do it without dampening the
wave of enthusiasm of his younger supporters who are, because of their age and
idealism, especially prone to becoming unraveled at the first sign of disappointment.
There will be, as you also note, inevitable disappointments. So what to do?
Two things: First, the President-elect should not waste a minute in getting
his supporters behind his call for “Change That We Can Believe In”
that catapulted him into office earlier this month. If there were but one body
of opinion within the Democratic Party, the task would be relatively easy. But
the Democratic party, more so than its Republican counterpart, is a highly diverse
coalition of interests and passions. Fence building across various parts of
that coalition should be taking place now, as it already has with respect to
Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Second, the President and his Administration will need to strike while the
iron is hot. Doing so will help maintain the broad momentum behind his election
victory. It enjoys the additional benefit of keeping the Republicans off balance:
which is exactly where they deserve to be kept after 8 disgraceful—even
by their own shoddy standards—years of governance under George W. Bush,
and his Congressional enablers.
