Glenden BrownThe middle is further left than you might imagine (updated)
So I made the mistake of wearing an Obama t-shirt to work today. I’ve gotten no work done and instead have spent my day engaged in a series of political discussions - of varying complexity and length - with an array of coworkers of varying degrees of hardcore republicanism.
What I discovered in these discussions surprised me: Even the most dedicated Republicans want government regulations. They want effective regulation that isn’t burdensome, but they want the government to protect them from things like the financial meltdown. They want government to be first and foremost competent - they want it to do things well. The interesting thing here is that competent government isn’t a partisan value - say what you will about the first President Bush, he believed in and ran a relatively competent government. Same for Clinton. They saw to it that government did it’s job effectively.
In addition, what I have long considered a progressive value - seeing government as a safeguard for all of us - is something everyone I’ve talked to today shares.
I think in these conversations I’m hearing the ground work for a real consensus going forward.
So, what then, given that these are Obama’s positions, is opposition based on?
I also discovered something else - for many of the McCain supporters, their opposition to Obama is based not on his actual policy positions (for instance none of them had read his healthcare or tax plans but they all opposed them on the basis of its purported socialism) but on a caricature of him as a person - the biggest issue really was “he is a militant black man.” When I asked for any evidence of that charge, the claim was, “He listened to Jeremiah Wright’s sermons.” Nothing he’s said or done, but the mere act of listening to his pastor.
I’m not sure why an angry black man scares people, but apparently even the idea that someone might be an angry black man scares them. In some sense, opposition to Obama is based on the Fox news image of Obama, not the real world image of Obama.
Addendum:
These conversations at work, btw, have reminded or taught me that there is a lot of work to do in explaining why, for instance, Jeremiah Wright or other African-Americans are angry - and why they have a right to be angry. The idea that, yes, the formal institutions of Jim Crow are part of the past, there are still valid reasons to be angry. That Wright has engaged in some fast and loose conspiracy theories makes sense in the context of his life and work; the idea that after forty years, racism is alive and well sits uneasily with a great many white Americans. They feel uncomfortable hearing a truly powerful proclamation of black pride and to their ears it becomes racism - just like the racism of Jim Crow.
I’m probably not the person to do the teaching. But it’s time to have that discussion. For many whites, the real issues are always economic. They (we) have a hard time seeing that skin color is important as well. It’s a function of privilege - the privilege of being white means that we don’t ever have to think about race unless we want to.
Addendum 2
I had someone come up and talk to me and say, (I’m paraphrasing but not by much), “I guess it’s okay if you’re voting for Obama because he’s not Bush.”
October 31st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I think it’s a common attitude among Americans. We’re baffled by others who seem to be (or really are) angry at our country, whether they live here or in faraway places like Iraq. We tell ourselves, “what have we done to those people to make them hate us?” Most of us have personally done nothing.
But imagine if it happened to us, the comfortable Americans. What if we were unfairly denied the right to vote or frequently got stopped by the police for no reason– because they don’t trust people who look like us?
What if we had to submit to being searched at a checkpoint by Iraqi soldiers on the way to work every day, or if we got awakened in our houses in the middle of the night by armed men who didn’t understand English but had the power to arrest and throw us behind bars for years without even charging us with anything?
October 31st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Your description of your republican colleagues was that of a Democrat.
The ones that CANNOT break with the tribe give reasons why they CAN’T vote for Obama.
Never do you hear them say why they like McCain.
But make no mistake (great post by the way), its pure tribalism. If the science is correct, about 25% of them have given you signals that they might vote for Obama.
Most of them will not vote.
October 31st, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Hey Cliff, I’ve noticed that same phenomenon, that we can hear all these made up reasons for opposing obama but none for supporting McCain. It is about tribalism.