Listening to the post election analysis of Obamas second win of the White House, I have been struct by several recurring themes.
The first is the importance of exercising ones right to vote, perhaps the first ethical obligation in a democratic polity. Republicans led a concerted attempt to suppress the vote using tactics such as voter IDs, restrictions on voter registration and early voting, scrubbing voting roles, misallocating voting resources (e.g., polls, machines) to deter poor and minority voters, and collaborating with corporate executives to threaten the jobs of workers who voted for Democrats. The strategy backfired, and long lines of poor, working class, minority, youth and women voters refused to let the election be stolen using such tactics.
The second was the astonishing volt-face of staunchly conservative Republicans in the face of defeat. Former immigration hawks were suddenly talking themselves into immigration reform in the hopes that this might improve the partys prospects in the future. It may with some Latinos, but I suspect the same changes that appear to be turning the nation into a center-left majority (at least as defined by right-wing criteria) are working their way through Latino citizens as well.
The third was a scientistic discourse around demographics. Commentators treated the changing demographics of the electorate as if it were a Durkheimian social fact that explained the election on its own. Little attention was paid to the internal diversity of those demographics (which falsify the social fact approach), or the causal connections between demographic as a statistical generalization, and the agency of voters in demographic groups choosing a candidate or ballot issue. I am not saying there is anything wrong with discussing political demographics per se. When it obstructs deliberation on the interpretive foundations of political participation and decision making, however, it ranges from distracting to misleading.
The final theme was the burbling issue of class. Many Americans like to pretend we are above class politics, comforting ourselves with the myth that all American have equal opportunity no matter what their circumstances. As the studies of religion and capitalism by Max Weber and R.H. Tawney convey, this theology serves two purposes. It legitimates extremes of wealth and poverty, and justifies blaming the victims of inequality.
Yet no set of elections since the Great Depression have so centrally raise the issue of class. Populism and equal opportunity was pitted directly against trickle-down market fundamentalism. Mitt Romneys fundraising remark that 47% of Americans are losers and leeches put the matter in stark relief. (Edit: Romneys post election remarks to the effect that Obama bought the election through gifts to minority and women voters reinforces the plutocratic interpretation of the 47% remark). Equal opportunity may be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating a just society, but it was still quite heartening to see poor and working class voters choosing Obama in overwhelming numbers.
Image: The Guardian.