Back in 2003 or so, when I first wore my anti-Bush t-shirt with the slogan "A hard reign's a gonna fall", I got a fair amount of smiles from my mostly Democratic neighbors. But even though I'm painfully aware of how much more continuity Obama's brought than change, I definitely would not expect a similar response if I were to don a "Dump Obama" t-shirt.
Can anyone tell why?
Here's the block I live on (2000 census, but the overall racial/ethnic mix hasn't changed that much):
And here's the 8-block census tract:
Of course there's no way to tell, but I generally get the impression that most of those pushing to "Dump Obama" are not only white, but travel in mostly-white circles. Well, the faces I see everyday when I step outside are not. About 1/4 white, tops. That's what I see. And that's a pretty fundamental reason that I think all this "dump Obama" talk is pure poppycock--or worse.
Starting with a series of three posts back in early April 2005, The Future of the Electorate, The Future of the Electorate, Part Two [page missing, alas!], and Maybe It Is A Battle Of Civilizations, for a little over two years now I have argued that a pluralistic vs. monoculture vision of identity politics, specifically based largely in ethnicity and religion, is the fundamental difference between the Democratic and Republican coalitions both now, and probably for the foreseeable future.
This is something that Democratic strategists sort of half-realize, but really don't want to. Like zombies, they just can't help themselves, they've got to chase after the brains of white people. But the more sophisticated strategy is what might be called--hearking back to the 1990s--the "Benetton Strategy", in which a basically bland universalist marketing strategy is accessorized with a broad pallet e of different skin tones. Obama represents the latest incarnation of this--but he still has that old zombie hankering that he just can't quit, which caused him to pre-compromise everything he started.
While it's pretty much obvious to all of us by now what a sure loser that is, this realization has not penetrated the core of the pluralistic identity culture that Chris wrote about. Disappointment and frustration have certainly touched many in that core, but that's about it.
To go from that stage to outright rejection is still a very, very long and difficult journey. One person who has posted here has some idea of how that journey might be charted--at least for one specific constituency, and that is Bruce Dixon, whose sights are clearly set on the state-level politics of Georgia, which neatly circumvents the national level politics of Obama as its chief focus, and takes aim squarely at an overwhelmingly important issue that state-level Democratic have almost entirely abdicated: mass incarceration. No state is better primed for such a strategy, and if it should show signs of initial success, it could well spark imitators elsewhere. But it is not a "Dump Obama" movement, and indeed it's potential success is in large measure dependent on establishing itself outside of the entire parameter system implied by the "Dump Obama" narrative.
Bruce's strategy is probably too radical for my precinct, at least to begin with. But he's not trying to get his start here. With a foothold established elsewhere, people in my precinct could well be won over. There's certainly nothing in it that would automatically repulse the majority of them. But a "Dump Obama" t-shirt most assuredly would.
Of course there is more to politics than wearing a t-shirt. But it's often a useful test to consider, "If I want to persuade people, what sort of t-shirt would I wear? What would I put on my bumper sticker?
"The labor movement: The folks who brought you the weekend," is still a tough one to beat for historical purposes. But what about fighting for the future? That's a whole lot tougher. But tough as that might be, it's far, far tougher still if you devote yourself to a strategy that would never pass the t-shirt test in the heart of a core constituency.
A similar sort of thinking seems to persist with many who are justifiably frustrated with the Democrat's failure to substantially break with Republican rule:
And I invited Bruce to write, because he wasn't an Underpants Gnome. He might be right, he might be wrong, but he had a track record of paying attention to results, and he had an empirically testable strategy in mind, in place of a "?" at Step 2.
Bruce's Step 2 is something like, "Organize against mass incarceration at the state level on the Green Party ticket". Maybe it will work. Maybe it won't. But it's a plan. And we can both learn and profit from it, even if it does not succeed on its own. As such, even if it should fail, it can be part of a larger historical learning process, a part of the journey that eventually leads to success.
And this is my challenge to everyone else on this site. This is the Underpants Gnome challenge:
Come up with something credible to replace "?".
Come up with a bumper-sticker I can put on my car.
Come up with a t-shirt I can wear in my precinct, and have it be a conversation-starter, rather than a conversation-ender.
