Obama has disempowered black preachers? Hardly... (0.00 / 0)

The work I do that pays the mortgage has me hanging around a lot of Atlanta black preachers, and they do not look disempowered from where I sit.  They are split, with one wing in Rev. Wright's corner, and a far more numerous wing loudly joining Obama's coronation parade, buying what I think is the flawed reasoning current among many blacks that Obama is "fooling" white folks to get elected, and will really turn out to be good for black interests, even though he campaigns as though he disowns the opinions of ordinary black folks on anything that touches upon the racial divide.

A lot of these preachers are hoping that faith-based patronage of one kind or another will be continued or extended to them, that an Obama administration will continue the Bush practice opening the federal spigot preferentially to them, only more so.  Doesn't sound like "disempowerment" to me.

This may or may not get him elected, but the black end of it is only stable if Obama and his allies can shut up or muzzle everybody, black and white, to his left.  Those who favor a complete and early withdrawal of troops and mercs from Iraq, for example, must be marginalized and rendered invisible.  The emergence of such  voices is a deadly danger to Obama, whose DLC-inspired strategy depends on  his appeal to Republican leaning whites, whom he must convince that he is more conservative than all those angry blacks.  The weak point of it is that all the Repubs have to do to beat Obama is prove that he is really ain't as conservative as many voters thought he was.

And again, Obama's choice to slug it out in a fight for the center is pretty much what every Democratic candidate since Dukakis has done, usually with bad results.  The only reason it worked for Clinton is that billionaire Ross Perot drew off a few million Republican votes in 1992.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

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by: bruce.dixon @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 19:00:20 PM UTC

fair point (4.00 / 2)

What I mean by disempowered is 'routed' around the traditional black power structure and forcing the leaders to follow him.  Just as many top bloggers are cheering on Obama, but have exercised no leverage on his campaign, so too are preachers and CBC members doing the same.  They don't have a choice.

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by: Matt Stoller @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 19:50:48 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They have choices. To follow but attempt no leverage is a choice (0.00 / 0)

and it is the choice many bloggers, preachers and others have made.

It's why, as I observed in another post, black bloggers are now beating their chests about being included in the Dem convention, but silent on what the party's and candidate's positions and platform ought to be.  There was a time when to be a "black activist" implied endorsement of some core principles deeper than identification with any particular candidate.  It's as though many of us have unilaterally disarmed or been disarmed by the nomination of a black guy.

Now the Code requires us all to shut up and salute.

Can this be a good thing?

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

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by: bruce.dixon @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 20:04:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Lamont strategy again? (0.00 / 0)

"It's actually the 2006 Ned Lamont strategy writ large"
Uh, sry, I don't see the connection, Matt. Lamont - black preachers???
Could you pls be a bit more verbose?

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by: Gray @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 20:31:43 PM UTC

Not necessarily a feat that can be replicated. (0.00 / 0)

(To start with the extremely obvious:) Obama is both 1) black, and 2) individually extremely charming and charismatic.  Both ingredients are vital for this union of white liberals and black voters to work as it has.

To go around the standard white liberal information aggregators -- bloggers, MoveOn staff, magazine editors, leadership of Environmental, Labor, other movements -- and speak directly to the white liberal electorate requires a good use of the internet, and being extremely charismatic.  One could possibly substitute having a very strong, germane, and unique message (think Howard Dean) for the charisma; after all, Obama has been running with a general election, rather than a primary election, message almost all this time, so it hasn't been the message really that has won him the primary, as much as it was his identity (black; liberal past; charisma).

As the internet deepens in the future, this feat of going directly to the electorate should get easier, and it should become more possible to substitute a compelling message for a compelling personality.  (Ron Paul's bubble was entirely message driven.)  But for now, getting the attention of the white liberal electorate really depended on Obama's charismatic personality, and the hook of the obviously historic nature of his candidacy, and then his second hit of going directly to the black electorate also depended on both of those very strongly.  So for now, this isn't a process that could be repeated by anyone else, seeking to form this same coalition and without these gatekeepers.

But by 2012, or better yet 2016, it damn well should be possible.  The ability to get a compelling message disseminated, recognized, supported, and then covered in whatever is left of mainstream media should be well within reach by then.  Which means politics really could change fundamentally, because it's the narrowness of permitted messages that is really choking off our politics this last 50 years.  If you can use words like blowback and actually win nominations in the future, then the country might could be snatched from the jaws of defeat.

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by: texas dem @ Tue May 27, 2008 at 20:44:15 PM UTC

and the internet cant influence (4.00 / 1)

where it does not penetrate. especially in rural oregon, many voters were much more likelt to have either seen a merkley ad (or a dscc ad on behalf of merkley) on tv, or were touched by a dscc robo-call than to have been touched by the novick campaign which had to focus much of its effort on GOTV for likely supporters.  in portland, even the non-political blogs got into the novick act, best exemplefied by the spoof "A Beer With Sleeve Nohooke":

end the blurring--vote steve novick for u.s. senate in oregon

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by: petrichor @ Wed May 28, 2008 at 04:58:32 AM UTC