Pushing Obama to the Left by Pushing Race: my comments on Wilentz's article on Obama

So, I will be responding to an article written by Sean Wilentz on Obama. Sean wilentz is a preeminent American historian and a Hillary supporter. here is a link to the article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-wilentz/barack-obama-and-the-unma_b_103353.html

Alright, so here are my two cents (or four):

1.One of the reasons why I find Wilentz’s article so interesting is because I think it forecasts what’s going to be the next big blip on the next media cycle. Namely, hillary supporters having given up the idea that she could win, are going to start flooding the airwaves to try and steer obama’s presidential campaign. Hillary might soon be out of the picture, but I don’t see the hillary supporters just packing up their stuff and calling it a day. I think they are going to make a huge move via the media to try and ‘hillarized’ Obama. And wilentz has just launched the first salvo. (In this regard, it doesn’t at all surprise me that Wilentz does not include numbers; his candidate lost; if his candidate had their numbers straight, it would have been david axelrod writing this piece.)

2.Another reason why I find Wilentz’s article so interesting is the inferences and implications that can be drawn from his historical analogies. His reference to McGovern is illuminating. The lesson Wilentz wants us to take from McGovern is that if you steer the party too much to the left and/or are too anti-war during the primaries, you are going to get your ass handed to you in the presidential elections. Clearly, if you want to win, like Andrew Jackson, you gotta grab the ‘shitholes’ and throw blacks under the bus. History has clearly demonstrated that democrats win presidential elections more often than not when they throw blacks under the bus instead of making them the primary constituency. On this note, he should have brought up the successful campaign by Rutherford B. Hayes, the successful tenure of FDR, and the failure of LBJ to get re-elected.

But why only bring up Jackson as your model for campaigning? His focus on Jackson is interesting because I think it sheds light on something he avoided mentioning at all. There is no mention in Wilentz’s article about unions and I think Wilentz harkens back to Jackson because that represents a time when there were no unions. One thing that seems clear to me at least is the absolute impotency of American unions during the primaries. I could be wrong, but I think in the beginning, the big unions either supported hillary, Edwards, or stayed out of it. I don’t think any large union supported obama in the beginning. Not only was a union endorsement meaningless, but the polls also suggest that the ‘white working class’ votes differently than union folks. Case in point was the primary in Nevada. Nevada is one of the biggest union states we got. The biggest unions in Nevada eventually endorses Obama, and gets their people to vote Obama. Well guess what, hilllary won. What the fuck does that say?

So the democrats’ traditional way of getting the working class vote is no longer available to them. That if they are going to be a workingmen’s party, they are going to have to go above and beyond being simply collaborating with union big wigs.

In this regard, wilentz’s point might even be more cynical than first appeared: we can’t rely on unions anymore; so if dems want to get that working class vote, then they are going to have to turn into Jacksonian populists. In other words, become rabidly racist.

3.Wilentz’ invective seems to clearly illustrate his misgivings about obama’s realignment of the democratic party. And I think Alex brings up a good point about how the dems have always pitted blacks against class. (Although I have to say that Clinton’s elimination of welfare screwed blacks and working class folks) But I am wondering if blacks and labor are ever going to get under the democratic umbrella, then it is going to have to be blacks extending their hands out to labor instead of the other way around. In my opinion, the general pattern with the democratic party is that when they have had to choose between the two, they tend to throw blacks under the bus. Because of the institutional racism that is endemic to the history of the democratic party and many working-class movements, I just think there is just so much distrust across the racial divide that it is impossible for any progressive labor candidate to cross it. In other words, if there is ever going to be a possibility for a progressive candidate who will be able to bridge these issues, it is going to have to be somebody who crosses over class divisions. As I have inferred from Wilentz, in this Jacksonian world of no unions, if a progressive candidate were to come out of the working class, that candidate would most likely be a rabidly racist fuck who will be pressured by Democratic leaders from all sides to throw blacks under the bus. If a progressive candidate were actually to emerge, it would have to be somebody like Obama. (on this note: I think there is merit to making an analogy to Jesse Jackson’s candidacy. Jesse was arguably the last time a candidate who had the possibility of being progressive had a realistic shot) Now don’t get me wrong, this is not an endorsement for Obama. I am just throwing out that he could be. I highly doubt it, but I wanted to throw it out there.

4. This leads to an interesting crossroads which gets back to Wilentz’s basic premise. Wilentz’s basic premise is that the white working class voted for hillary and not for obama because hillary is better on economics and obama is too much of an elitist. Thus, obama has to become more like hillary. But what if it were the case that white working class were voting for hillary and not for obama because of race? (there actually is data that supports this) If that were the case, what should Obama do? I think if it is about race, Obama has to become more progressive. The only way to really win over these racist folks is to really become a workingman’s party in the way Alex has described. No more bullshit band-aids, no more fake promises. Put it all out there. A hard-core class-analysis that is not afraid to say capitalism.

In this regard, I think there is a battle of discourse going on that will have a HUGE impact on the ideological orientation of obama’s campaign and it hinges on this question of whether the white working class is more economically motivated or racially motivated. Irregardless of what actually is the facts, at this point, I think it is urgent that everybody on the left pushes the race card because that is how Obama can be pushed to the left. By pushing the class card, we are left with wilentz’s ‘hillaried’ version of Obama. By pushing the notion that the white working class is primarily economically motivated, we are left with the same ol’ democratic politics that gets us nowhere. Ironically, if we want a more class-orientated approach, we have to push the discourse that suggests the white working class is primarily racially motivated. It is counterintuitive but I think it makes sense.