Lance ChristieBarack Obama and Electoral Politics in Utah:
This is my reply to some other folks on the Moab Area Progressive Network in a dialogue about Barack Obama and electoral politics in Utah:
(1) In respect to initiation of paradigm shifts, John is correct that these are not initiated by INCUMBENT mainstream politicians. They originate in “closets.†According to Peck’s Microtrends, it only takes one percent of the population to produce a culture-changing shift. The one percent in question rarely includes politicians holding office at the time - it may include officeholders on party fringes like Dennis Kuchinich or Ron Paul, but not mainstream incumbents. However, the propagation of the ideas from these idea leaders through the information leader structure of our polity results in the information leaders who are mainstream party leaders embracing the ideas and then nominating candidates for office that express them.
In looking at the history of politics in the US in the last century, I can find no instance in which a minority party that remained a minority party, or its candidates for office, ever acted as a vehicle for inducing a paradigm shift of national policy. If the minority party became a majority party, at least at the state level, and succeeded in electing its candidates to office (e.g., the Farmer’s and Worker’s Party of Minnesota, which elected a fellow you remember named Hubert Humphrey as governor), then much of the platform of such a successful third party would be absorbed into the platform of one of the majority parties (in this case, by the Democratic party which absorbed both much of the Farmer’s and Worker’s Party platform and Hubert himself, who became Democratic vice president and then the Democratic presidential candidate against Reagan).
One sees much the same phenomenon in business and culture generally. In The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism, Matt Mason makes a case that people at today’s cultural marginalia - punk rockers, graffiti artists, and DJs - are creating more efficient networks, better ideas, and a more benevolent style of capitalism. However correct Mason is about the present, the history of the past is clear that mainstream business practices and technologies of today started out being practiced by marginal people in small groups who were subject to derision and suspicion from the mainstream. When it became clear that the marginal folks had invented a better mousetrap, these ideas and practices were absorbed, accepted, and propagated through the culture by its information leaders to become the new conventional wisdom or Best Available Management Practice.
The thing which I perceive past candidacies by Ralph Nader to have accomplished was to keep certain ideas and issues on the table in the presidential debates which would likely otherwise have been ignored altogether. In particular, it appears to me that what Nader or Perot accomplished was to get issues onto the questions asked of voters by pollsters that would not otherwise have been asked. When polls showed a substantial majority of voters being in favor of or against an issue forced on the polling table by a minority candidate, typically a majority candidate would annex the issue into his stump speech platform if it seemed consistent with other elements of his platform. Whether this enrichment of the public debate had any effect on who got elected to office and what they actually did once in office is the subject of another analysis, but I don’t think you’d find much effect on actual enacted policy from minority candidate ideas. The main effect I see of minority party candidates in national elections is that they can legitimize talking about an issue which would otherwise be considered to be outside the realm of polite discussion, a resident of aluminum-hat wacko territory which is disdainfully ignored altogether by the corporate mass media. Once legitimized as a subject of political discussion, an idea attractive enough to survive may well find its way into mainstream party platforms in the future.
(2) Obama does indeed show a remarkable capacity to draw young people and politically uninvolved people into supporting him and the Democratic party. In Iowa, 41 percent of all the unaffiliated voters who participated in the caucuses voted for Obama (17 percent for Clinton), and participation of voters in the Democratic caucuses almost doubled over 2004 with almost all the additional attendees being people who had not participated in past caucuses of either party or otherwise been politically active.
(3) Vice Presidential candidates are typically selected by the party nominee and party brass for strategic and symbolic reasons: because they are thought to be able to attract people to vote for the ticket who would otherwise eschew voting for it. For example, when Rudy Giuliani was leading in the Republican presidential polls, there was open speculation about him needing to name Mike Huckabee as his vice presidential running mate in order to prevent the Christian right cultural conservatives from bolting the Republican party if Giuliani was nominated. Similarly, the buzz is that Barack Obama as Democratic nominee would need to name a white southerner like John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate as a warding spell to balance him being from Chicago in the industrial north and being a black person. Lieberman apparently represented a Jewish hawk fiscal conservative from the industrial northeast balance to Al Gore’s being a liberal environmentalist from below the Mason-Dixon line….or something like that.
Mike Dmitrich is not up for re-election in 2008. In respect to him, I have two points. First, the only alternative to Mike as long as he cares to run for re-election to his seat is electing a Republican State Senator. There is no apparent way to nominate an alternative to Mike through the Democratic Party primaries because of his solid support base in Carbon County. However, Mike is pushing seventy and had a bout with cancer, so running for re-election again is not a sure thing. Second, I know Mike pretty well and have found him quite receptive to embracing progressive ideas if I can frame them in language he can sell to the Republicans in the state legislature. I have the impression he votes for execrable reactionary bills a lot of the time either because he calculates the bills are going to pass anyway and he can gain “street cred†alias political capital with the Republican trogdolytes who control the Utah legislature which he can use later to win a winnable battle, or because no progressive has talked to him about how it is critically important to oppose the bill for stated cause. The best argument for opposing a Republican bill in the legislature is an argument showing how the bill violates stated Republican party principles of governance policy.
In respect to the Utah presidential vote, if Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate, then I would consider Utah’s electoral vote being Republican as a done deal. In fact, it is highly probable that Romney would win the presidency because of Hillary’s uniquely high negatives among independent voters, and among a substantial part of Democratic voters. However, if John McCain is the Republican candidate and Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate, it is quite possible that Obama could carry Utah and win the electoral college vote from Utah in 2008. There are a lot of conservatives who bear a grudge against McCain for one or another reason, while Obama has an amazing ability to fire up Democratic and independent voters to get to the polls and vote Democratic. If distaste for McCain discouraged enough Republican voters from going to the polls or led them to vote for third-party candidates in protest, while Obama produced very high Democratic voting turnout from non-Republican voters of all ages and sexes - which is what he has achieved in most primaries so far where independents can vote in Democratic primaries - then it is quite possible for Obama to win a majority vote for president in Utah. -Lance
February 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I’m old enough to remember that Humphrey lost the 1968 election to Nixon.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:23 am
After what has happened this election cycle the Republican party may not be able to count on the Mormon vote anymore. I for one have been disgusted by the hate and bigotry from my own party by so called “Christians”. I will never again hold water for the Republican party. I will no longer stay silent while someone from my party violates my values just because they are “on my team”. If a Republican violates my values I will go after him or her just as vigorously as I would a Democrat. If McCain gets nominated he is going to have to work extra hard to get my vote andif he dares name Mike Huckabee as his running mate I will vote Democrat this year even if it’s Hillary. I can’t believe I would say that but I would rather have a Democrat in office with a loyal opposition vigorously fighting for conservative values than have a Republican that undermines everything I hold dear.
February 5th, 2008 at 2:46 am
I Remember John McCain getting quite hostile about the money that was spent to rebuild Utah’s highways right before the Olympics. I wonder why Governor Huntsman is such an avid supporter. I’m skeptical of anyone who has been allowed to be as omnipresent as McCain on national commercial television. These networks are openly hostile to the American peoples concerns, (internet neutrality, FCC media consolidation, and election reform are ignored.) McCain’s campaign finance reform doesn’t seem to have done anything to get the money out of process.
I’m glad to see people like Ken as confused as we democrats have been for the last 20 years, not because I’m vindictive, but because it will help us work together to figure things out. It’s obvious we are going to have to unite to defend our values. Real values this time, not fake ones. The things that are destroying our society have nothing to do with what we’ve been taught for the last 30 years, and the young people are waking up to that fact very quickly.
It’s time to end the excesses and sheer corruption of the Republican party, but also of the Democratic party members who have gone along with it.
February 5th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Ken,
I never expected it to happen this way. I thought when you came to appreciate the evil essence of the GOP, you would come hat in hand and show some contrition.
What are we to make of this confusing statement? Are we to understand that your reason for supporting democrats is motivated by hatred toward republicans for abandoning your conservative principles?
Is this announcement really about principles, or humiliation over the fact that you have been used and abused by a bunch of sex-obsessed perverts masquerading as social conservatives and good Christians?
Hey, look at the bright side. The Democrats also do war AND kill innocent women and children in foreign lands.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:30 am
It doesn’t matter anymore, from any side of the social spectrum it is pretty obvious to all other civilised nations that Americans have no respect for one another, and each extreme is attempting to force their unbalanced will upon the other, and anyone in between.
The republicans are freaks for going to war amidst lies and obvious money grubbing influence peddling, and the democrats are freaks on their knees for going along with it, and with very few exceptions, licking the boots of the companies that benefit the most from this chaos. Some decades the democrats are the freaks that start the wars…, like Vietnam.
We have come full circle…we are truly again ruled by the licensed corporate oligarchy, and like our forebears, any description of “democracy” is only allowed within the confines of that elite group, and the profits of pillage that define them.
God help us, for it seems that even now as we head into another sham election season, we have no ability to help ourselves.
February 5th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Fox News’ Jake Gibson reported that McCain delegates at the convention were “instructed by the campaign to throw their support to Mike Huckabee.â€
If there is evidence that proves that McCain and Huckabee are in collusion with each other I would like to know if this violates any laws. If so there should be a criminal investigation of the McCain and Huckabee campaigns.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
RIP GOP - Death by suicide.
February 6th, 2008 at 5:48 am
“there should be a criminal investigation”. Now you’re starting to see more clearly Ken. Soon you’ll see why we should just go ahead and arrest all the remaining Republicans.
Most of the borderline Pubs have come over to the light. Only the “hardened” ones are left.
They could be rehabilitated in the nice private prisons they set up in the nineties.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Cliff, I’m not sure if rehabilitation can be very effective with the truely hardened, but there is always a need for shark food! Sharks gotta eat. I believe that approach would free up something like 90% of the money as well, if I’m not mistaken. Or maybe they could just offer it ($) up for the betterment of society and retain thier corporatiety, ya think?
February 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
“There should be a criminal investigation”.
…and it should rain candy canes on Christmas
This is sooo tiresome, as we all well know by now, there will never be one..with consequences.
Any proving the guilt of republicans just flashes the light straight back onto democrats like a mirror, as one of two things… or both..
1) Dumber than a box of rocks.
2) Complicit.
There will be no investigations.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I agree there will be no investigations because they all collaborate against all of us.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Cliff, the private prisons built in the 90’s? You mean when clinton was president?
many Democrats, including Bill Clinton, support prison privatization.
clinton supported private prisons in his omnibus legislation.
How quickly you forget, if you ever knew.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Here is an article about the “beautiful loser” shilling for the private prison industry during his terms as veep.
Just too good. Hit ya like a brick yet?
BTW the federal prison population DOUBLED during the years of the clinton administration. It’s in the article.
Lambs led to slaughter, cliff.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Do you know who obamas’ economic adviser is?
goolsbee, yale graduate…skull and bones.
So let’s see…
bush: 1 & 2 yale grad, skulls and bones
kerry: yale grad, skull and bones
*goolsbee: yale grad, skull and bones, Prof of E con job, at U of Chicago
*obamas econ adviser, whore to free traitor friedman and the globalists, supported nafta, and gatt, and the rest of the nightmare that is bleeding us dry.
What with brezinski and kissinger as obamas’ mentors in foreign policy, things can only….GET WORSE in an obama presidency!!
I can see the puppet strings when obama speaks. Pretty slick.
There’s nothing to it is there? It’s all just a coincidence. Move along…nothing to see here.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
as for obama himself, he is a columbia grad, another bastion of elite education.
Here he is defending columbias’ decision to allow ahmedinajhad to speak at the university.
Ah, the chaos factory at work…Hegel would be so proud.
Thesis vs. antithesis = synthesis.
The People are too stupid to be allowed a choice, he would agree.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Glenn,
The “O” also gradutated from Harvard Law.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
The link of obama shilling for columbias’ decision to let ahmendinajahd speak.
Albert, the tracks all lead to a set up. It’s just like the oprah show, the audience worshiping the opinions dressed as facts of that silly cow, and her huckster dr. phil, who I refer to as dr. phul, as in full of it.
Like the the oprah book list, obama is is stickered up, and fit for remedial consumption.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
That’s why I am supporting Hillary.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
…and they call it democracy. The lesser of 3 weasels.