Before the Texas primary, a friend roped us into doing some get out the vote calling on behalf of Barack Obama. We were given a script, which encouraged us to mention why we were supporting him.
Although I was an Edwards supporter who found Richardson's overall positions closest to my own — and Clinton's much closer than Obama's — I confess to leaning Obama on the intangibles. But given the opportunity to articulate my reasons in 15 words or less, I must also confess to a sense of dis-ease and less than full commitment.
I don't particularly like the way Clinton has been going after Obama, but I do think a tough critique of the Obamaphenomenon is necessary, and I find some of the best coming from Max Blunt at Radical Left. Here's one sample:
The greatest difference between the top-down messaging of marketing and political campaigns and the messages of mass movements for change is in the scope of what they demand, and who they demand it from, and how those demands are backed up.
The goal of marketing campaigns is to get large numbers of people to change or affirm habits of consumption. Political campaigns need to get out their vote and win the election for their candidates.
The objectives of marketing and political campaigns are time-limited, respectful of authority and strictly inside the bounds of law and decorum, whether shopping, registering voters, canvassing, calling house meetings, or getting out the vote.
Mass social movements aim to alter relations of power. They are impolite and sometimes operate outside of or in defiance of the law.
They make impossible, reckless, irresponsible demands, like respect, human rights and the vote to people who didn't have them - like stopping an unjust war, halting foreclosures and gentrification, like guaranteeing the absolute right to organize a union, to strike and to win a living wage.
But the Obama “movement” demands nothing from the candidate except to get elected.
And an earlier one:
Obama is a way for liberal and moderate whites to “pat themselves on the back for not being too prejudiced.”
Obama’s race encouraged a lot of “progressives” not to do their homework on him or on the U.S. political culture he reflects.
Of course, it’s all premised on Obama being a "good [bourgeois and right-acting] black" – one who promises not to actually confront white supremacy in any meaningful way.
Like the white-friendly media mogul and mass Obama marketer and ally Oprah Winfrey, Obama expresses and capitalizes on whites’ partial transcendence of “level-one” state-of-mind racism.
At the same time, he reassures them he will honor their refusal acknowledge and confront the continuing power of deeper, “level two” state-of-being” - societal and institutional – racism in American life.
