In my state, New York, thanks to the Tea Party favorite, Carl Paladino, Andrew Cuomo’s election as Governor was never in doubt.   In Delaware, thanks to Christine O’Donnell, Chris Coons easily became Senator, when it seemed that he was likely to lose against a mainstream Republican.  In Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who started and finished with low approval ratings, managed to be reelected, thanks to the Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle.  On the other hand, Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Rand Paul in Kentucky each impressively were elected to the Senate, assuring that there will be a discernable taste of tea in that great deliberative body.

As Paul put it,

“They say that the U.S. Senate is the world’s most deliberative body. Well, I’m going to ask them, respectfully, to deliberate upon this. Eleven percent of the people approve of what’s going on in Congress. But tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave and we’re sending a message to ’em.

It’s a message that I will carry with them on Day One. It’s a message of fiscal sanity It’s a message of limited, limited constitutional government and balanced budgets.” (link)

The language is ugly, but clear.  The political discourse of the Senate is about to be challenged, and this is the body where the Republicans are in the minority.  It will be even louder and clearer in the House, which I admit I find pretty depressing, both from the political and the aesthetic point of view.  It’s going to be harder to actually deal with our pressing problems, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Indeed, it is in spheres of aesthetics and discourse that the Tea Party has been most successful.  It’s not a matter actually of how many races Tea Party politicians won or lost.  They won some and lost some, but from the beginning the Tea Party’s great success has been how it changed the public discussion about the pressing issues of the day.  In my next post, I will discuss this more fully, comparing the Tea Party with the Solidarity Movement in Poland, on the one hand, and the anti-war movement, the Dean campaign and the Obama campaign, on the other.

Response to replies

But before I close today, I’ll add a few words on the responses to my posts on the elections.  To date, most of the people sending in replies appear to share sympathy for the Democrats and a critical attitude towards the Republicans, with one exception.  I welcome differences of opinion and thank all the repliers for their contribution to deliberate considerations.  I am not surprised by the general commitments of the people replying.  I actually think it is important to breakout of partisan ghettos, but know that they exist.  I need to take seriously someone who does breakout, so first a respectful, and I hope not overly defensive, response to Billy.

He criticized me for the title, “The Results Were Expected.”  I agree it wasn’t the best choice. I was writing very quickly on the night of the elections and the next morning, and also involved with my teaching.  The line was actually my first sentence and I didn’t have time to formulate a fresh title, so I just moved it up.  Billy construed the passive voice as an attempt on my part to deflect the responsibility of any one party for the results, in a sense discounting the voting on Election Day for having any meaning that needed to be confronted.  Somehow the word liar came into his formulation, but I didn’t understand that.  But he did pose a serious question: “Does that mean that there was no point in voting?”  Perhaps if he read only the title his would be a significant criticism, but given what I wrote in the post and in the one preceding and following it, clearly it is not what I mean, even if the title was unfortunate.

On great and small politics, Billy wonders why I think that the Republican Party’s small as opposed to great ends are in tension, and he seems to accuse me of crass partisanship in this regard.  But my point is simple, and not just about tax cuts.  In principle, the Tea Party, and its faction of the Republican Party, are for small government, going as far as to suggest that the Constitution does not permit health care reform.  But the Constitutional argument of limited government against health care should also be applied, in principle, to Social Security, Medicare, and, slightly off point, to the provisions controlling private business discrimination against African Americans in the civil rights legislation.  With such a commitment to private freedom, we could indeed responsibly have the sorts of tax cuts the Tea Party imagines, and there would be no tension between Republican Party politics, great and small.  But clearly this will not happen.  Short of doing such things, all the Republican talk about seriously balancing the budget is empty.  And Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln and I all agree with Billy that people have a right to what they have earned, but that commitment doesn’t mean that we also don’t have a responsibility to contribute to the public well being, including the public’s health.

I agree with Scott: the idea that the wealthy are the only ones who contribute to the public good and economic growth is about as convincing as Marx’s  “labor theory of value.”  It is an ideological declaration, nothing more.  I am still looking for a responsible conservative, though.

As far as Boehner’s tears, mentioned by Eric, Alex and Iris, I don’t know what to make of them, particularly as a person who has delivered newspapers, swept sidewalks, waited on tables, cleaned public toilets and worked as a stock boy to pay for my studies.  I see that work as a simple fact of life, not something to get all sentimental about.  And on Iris’s point about independents, I too find them a puzzle, probably because I think a lot about general principles and not about small politics, more about that later.  As Michael Correy writes, the issue of how small and great politics are matched is a serious challenge and should have appeal beyond the partisan to the independent, involving very serious thought and practical action.  I am a Democrat and a strong supporter of Obama because I think he and the leadership of his party are the ones who are trying to do this.

I particularly appreciated Silke Steinhilber in her response to Congressman Boehner silly remarks about the health care law. Not only because I agree with her, but also because she draws the analogy to the German situation in a telling fashion.  We live in the world where mindless fiscal hawks have run wild.  They are not only taking public goods away from us and our children, but what they are doing makes no economic sense.  We have to control deficits in the long run, but public spending is a way of getting out of recessions.  And crucially such spending also contributes to private good, as Ms. Steinhilber and her daughter understand at their playground.

The Republicans were combative:

Senator Mitch McConnell:

We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don’t. Choosing — I think what our friends on the other side learned is that choosing the president over your constituents is not a good strategy.
There are two opportunities for that change to occur. Our friends on the other side can change now and work with us to address the issues that are important to the American people, that we all understood. Or further change, obviously, can happen in 2012.

Governor Haley Barbour:

On behalf of the Republican governors, while governor’s races may be thought of as being separate or very different from what’s going on in Washington, in this case, even in governor’s races, this election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. And the policies of the Obama administration, the Pelosi-Reid Congress were repudiated by the voters.

Representative John Boehner:

Listen, I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country.
That means that we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that’ll bring down the cost of health insurance.

The President was conciliatory:

Over the last two years, we’ve made progress.  But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And as President, I take responsibility for that.
What yesterday also told us is that no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here, that we must find common ground in order to set — in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges.  And I told John Boehner and Mitch McConnell last night I am very eager to sit down with members of both parties and figure out how we can move forward together.
I’m not suggesting this will be easy.  I won’t pretend that we will be able to bridge every difference or solve every disagreement.  There’s a reason we have two parties in this country, and both Democrats and Republicans have certain beliefs and certain principles that each feels cannot be compromised.  But what I think the American people are expecting, and what we owe them, is to focus on those issues that affect their jobs, their security, and their future:  reducing our deficit, promoting a clean energy economy, making sure that our children are the best educated in the world, making sure that we’re making the investments in technology that will allow us to keep our competitive edge in the global economy.

These statements summarize the new political terrain, and they reveal very significant problems.  The Republicans speak as if the American people have one clear and unanimous voice that just says “yes” to them and” no” to the Democrats. They believe that they can govern in the name of the people, even though this election clearly indicates that the citizenry is not unanimous in its support of all their policy positions.  The overall vote went 52% to 45% for Republicans, mirroring the results of the last election, which went by the same numbers in the opposite direction. Exit polling indicates the public is evenly split between those who think the top priority is increased stimulus spending for the creation of new jobs and those who think the top priority should be reducing the deficit.

But the Republicans are demanding a populist enactment, the sort of position that the Founders tried to avoid by making the House more responsive, the Senate more deliberative, and separating power between the executive and the legislative branches of government.

The Republicans did win in this election cycle, while they lost in the last, and we have a representative structure that reflects this.  It seems to me that this means that the President’s position of bipartisanship, contrary to his critics on the left and the right, actually is the wise democratically mandated response to the voice of the people.  What the mandate for bipartisanship might and should yield is another question, which we should discuss in the near future.

The Republicans won. The Democrats lost.  Obama faces a significant challenge to his leadership.  The Tea Party has come to town.  Politics in the Capital are about to become very interesting.   The political scene has changed.  Now we must deliberately consider: what the play will look like, who the actors will be, what will be their roles, how will they play them, and are we in for a comedy or tragedy.  Some initial food for thought using Alexis de Tocqueville as our guide.

Tocqueville in the 1830s described two types of political parties, great political parties and small political parties.  He explained:

“What I call great political parties are those that are attached more to principles than to their consequences; to generalities and not to particular cases; to ideas and not to men.  These parties generally have nobler features, more generous passions, more real convictions, a franker and bolder aspect than others. Particular interests, which always plays the greatest role in political passions, hides more skillfully here under the veil of public interest…

Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith.  As they do not feel themselves elevated and sustained by great objects, their character is stamped with a selfishness that shows openly in each of their acts. They always become heated in a cool way; their language is violent but their course is timid and uncertain.  The means that they employ are miserable, as is the very goal they propose for themselves. Hence it is that when a time of calm follows a violent revolution, great men seem to disappear all at once and souls withdraw into themselves.

Americans have had great parties; today they no longer exist: it has gained much in happiness, but not in morality.” (link)

Tocqueville thought that the fundamental principles of American political life were established in the great debates between the Democratic – Republicans and the Federalists, between Jefferson, Hamilton, et.al, and that once the order was set, politics would be of a more mundane sort about dividing the spoils and pursuing narrow interests, battles between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum about who would deliver the goods. This is what he thought he saw in Jacksonian America.  He illuminated a contrast in the type of parties in democratic politics, but he missed the principled issues that divided the nation, which ultimately led to a civil war.  Contrary to his expectations the contrast between great and small parties is an ongoing aspect of democratic politics, not a thing of the past.  And it was again in play yesterday.  One of the remarkable aspects of the results last night is how politics, great and small, were both present, in sensible and confused ways, with intriguing practical consequences.

As I indicated yesterday, I think that we are living through a great debate about commonsense, concerning the role of the government in the pursuit of the common good.  It is ironically cast as a debate between two highly successful Republican Presidents, Reagan versus Lincoln, between “government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” and “government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.”  In Tocqueville’s terms this was an election about this great contrast, and the Republican Party, as the party of Reagan, achieved a great political victory over the Democrats, as the Party of Lincoln.

But clearly many of the people voting were not thinking about such abstract “great” concerns.  They want jobs and an economic recovery, were frustrated by the depth of the economic crisis and weren’t convinced that the programs of the President and the Democrats were effectively addressing their problems.  Deficit reduction sounds good to them, large government bailouts of Wall Street don’t.  But will that lead them to support libertarian positions on Social Security and Medicare, or for that matter repeal of the very desirable benefits of “Obamacare?” Probably not.  And it is beyond me how tax cuts for the very wealthiest and slashing of government programs that benefit the vast majority of the population is either a way of getting out of an economic recession or the road to political popularity.

As the Republicans, led by its Tea Party faction, attack government, as a matter of principle, the small concerns of the American people, those who want practical action to address their very real practical problems, will become disaffected.  But as the small concerns are addressed, those committed to high Tea Party principles will condemn compromise.  It strikes me that there are profound tensions within the Republican Party on these matters, between its identity as a grand and a small political party.  I don’t think the Democrats are so conflicted.  Their ideas about the pragmatic use of the state to address pressing problems permit them to both address small concerns and enact their fundamental principles.  Their challenge is to show that this approach works.  They were unsuccessful at this stage of the deep crisis. It is likely to be more successful as the crisis abates.

In the coming months and years the interplay between grand and small politics will define American politics.  The struggle for each party will be about commonsense, but also about practical everyday concerns.  More about this in my next post.

What Happened?

There will be all sorts of explanations to account for the election outcome, most of them connected to the limitations of Obama as a political actor, most of them, also, not really serious.  In the past two elections, the Democrats gained a large number of seats in traditionally Republican districts, and thus they were not particularly solid, and when times are tough, as they are now, it is not good for incumbents in marginal districts. I have nothing particularly to add to this. I recommend an excellent, realistic election preview of the likely post election storytelling by Bendan Nyhan, which I think gets it right.

Why?

But beyond the outcome is its meaning.  Although Nyhan and other election realists are surely on target when they underscore that the old slogan “it’s the economy stupid” goes a long way in explaining the results, the results’ meaning will be less clear and more important as we proceed.

While I’ve suggested in my most recent posts that the power and limitations of Obama’s speech-making will be revealed by the voting, I don’t think that this is of crucial importance in understanding the meaning of the elections.  That was how the battle looked on the ground, as Obama tried to maximize his and the Democrats’ advantage.  Now there is the question of where the country is at this moment and where it’s going.  The Republican victory does reveal Democratic failures, which need examination, which I hope we discuss here at DC in the coming days and weeks.

I think that the primary issue is commonsense.  I have long maintained that Obama, and the Democratic Party under his leadership, is not leftist, but centrist, that his project was to move the center a bit left and to change commonsense understandings of central problems: key are issues of race and difference, more broadly about American identity, and the relationship between the state and the economy.

These issues have been discussed on this blog in posts on “Gates – Gate,” “Park 51,” healthcare reform, and on Obama’s election itself.  While I don’t think that the results tonight will indicate a complete failure and repudiation of the Democrats’ approach under the leadership of President Obama, I do think that the election results will show how the Democrats have been engaged in an ongoing struggle about commonsense, which has thus far not been successful.

Since Reagan persuasively convinced the American public that the government is the problem, not the solution to our problems, America indeed has been a center right nation, as conservative observers often assert.  Reagan’s obsession with “welfare queens” added a touch of racism to the consensus he forged.  But there is nothing natural about this.  Obama sought to change it and made inroads with a record of legislative accomplishment and of course by his election itself.

But commonsense changes slowly, and there has been significant resistance, including an impassioned social movement, The Tea Party. In the coming months, in post – election posts, I hope to discuss the battle over American common sense with the D.C. community.   Why have people held firm in their obsessions about government spending and balanced budgets while in an economic recession?  Why must we take steps backwards, after moving so convincingly forward in electing Barack Obama in our struggle against racial, ethnic and religious discrimination and injustice?  Will the change again proceed?  What strategies and positions can facilitate this?  What strategies and positions will block it?

As we go to the polls today, there is the likely outcome, a significant Republican victory, and there is the possibility of the surprise finish, more muted Republican gains.  Times are tough, and people are thus looking for changes in their political representation, but despite this, indeed, because of it, to the end, Obama fought against the apparently inevitable.  In the climax of his fight, he explained his position:

“Around the country I’ve been trying to describe it this way.  Imagine the American economy as a car.   And the Republicans were at the wheel and they drove it into a ditch.  And it’s a steep ditch, it’s a deep ditch.  And somehow they walked away.

But we had to go down there.  So me and all the Democrats, we put on our boots and we repelled down into the ditch.  (Laughter.)  And it was muddy down there and hot.  We’re sweating, pushing on the car.  Feet are slipping.  Bugs are swarming.

We look up and the Republicans are up there, and we call them down, but they say, no, we’re not going to help.  They’re just sipping on a Slurpee — (laughter) — fanning themselves.  They’re saying, you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not pushing the right way.  But they won’t come down to help.  In fact, they’re kind of kicking dirt down into us, down into the ditch.  (Laughter.)

But that’s okay.  We know what our job is, and we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing until finally we’ve got that car on level ground.  (Applause.)  Finally we got the car back on the road. (Applause.)  Finally we got that car pointing in the right direction.  (Applause.)

And suddenly we have this tap on our shoulder, and we look back and who is it?

AUDIENCE:  Republicans.

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s the Republicans.  And they’re saying, excuse me, we’d like the keys back.

AUDIENCE:  No! (link)

D.C. reader, Eric Friedman, reported in a reply to my last post that his son heard these words on the Midway at the University of Chicago and found them to be particularly compelling.  We will see today how much of an impact they have had.

Barack Obama, Storyteller in Chief, has been going around the country making clear what he thinks the choice is in the upcoming election: the Republican position that government is the problem not the solution versus the Democratic position that good governance can matter.  As I examined in my last post, he is telling his version of the American story, supporting specific candidates and promoting specific policies, but also giving his account of the recent past and his imaginative understanding of what the alternatives are in the near future.  The specifics are interesting.

In Boston, supporting Governor Deval Patrick, the emphasis was on the economy and the kinds of tax cuts and public support that would benefit working people, the emphasis of all his speeches, but then a group in the audience called out: “Fight global AIDS!  Fight global AIDS!” And the President improvised around his central theme:

And if they [the Republicans] win in Congress, they will cut AIDS funding right here in the United States of America and all across the world.  (Applause.)  You know, one of the great things about being a Democrat is we like arguing with each other.  (Laughter.)  But I would suggest to the folks who are concerned about AIDS funding, take a look at what the Republican leadership has to say about AIDS funding.  (Applause.)  Because we increased AIDS funding.

He was highlighting a distinctive position that Democrats share in contrast to their Republican opponents, public investment can contribute to the common good, especially in difficult times.  And he makes his basic argument by citing the greatest of Republican authorities. (link)

But in the words of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, we also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.  (Applause.)     We believe in a country that rewards hard work.  We believe in a country that encourages responsibility.  We believe in a country where we look after one another; where we say I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.  That’s the America we know.  That’s the choice in this election.”

In Portland, environmental commitment was given a little bit more prominence.    In Seattle, he included in his list of accomplishments the withdrawal of 100, 000 troops from Iraq.  “Because of you (who supported him and the Democrats) there are 100,000 brave men and women who are back from a war in Iraq.”   In many speeches he denounces “All this money pouring into these elections by these phony front groups — this isn’t just a threat to Democrats; it’s a threat to our democracy,” as he did in Los Angeles, frontally criticizing the results of the Roberts’ Court 5 to 4 decision in the Citizen’s United Case.  But in L.A., he went on to declare: “which shows you how important it is who’s making appointments on the Supreme Court. I’m proud I appointed Sonia Sotomayor.  (Applause.)  I appointed Elena Kagan.  (Applause.)

And in Las Vegas he ended very strongly, supporting the Nevada Democratic candidates, especially Harry Reid, with quintessential Obama rhetorical passion:

Look, change has always been hard in this country.  This country was founded when 13 colonies came together in a revolution that nobody believed could happen, except they believed. They founded this country on ideas that hadn’t been tried before:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal — (applause) — that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  (Applause.)

Nobody believed that the slaves could be free — (applause) — except they believed.

Folks didn’t believe that women could win the right to vote, except women believed.  (Applause.)

Nobody believed that we could get workers’ rights, except workers believed.  (Applause.)

There were a lot of folks who said we would never get civil rights.  But we got civil rights because somebody out there believed.  (Applause.)

Imagine if our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents had said, oh, this is too hard; oh, I’m feeling tired; oh, I’m feeling discouraged; oh, somebody is saying something mean about me.  (Laughter.)  We would not be here today.

We got through war and depression.  We have made this union more perfect because somebody somewhere has been willing to stand up in the face of uncertainty; stand up in the face of difficulty.  That is how change has come. (Applause.)  And that’s the spirit we have to restore in 2010. (Applause.)

And if all of you are going to go out and vote, all of you knock on doors, all of you are talking to your friends and neighbors, I promise you we will not just win this election, we just won’t elect Harry Reid, but we are going to restore the American Dream, the Vegas dream, the Nevada dream, for families for generations to come.

God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.

Obama went full steam there and then, perhaps, because Reid is not a particularly expressive political speaker.  Perhaps it was because Reid has been a key player in the accomplishments of the past two years, as Obama sees it.  The way he supported him sums up what Obama has been doing on the campaign trail, indeed what he has been doing since he gave his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004, telling his story as a way to guide the American story.  I suspect that this will guide him and the Democrats and the nation in meaningful ways in the coming years, though I doubt it will prevent significant Republican gains on Election Day.  How big the gains are will reveal the power and limits of Obama’s storytelling around the country.

I am quite ambivalent about the Tea Party.  While I am appalled by some of the slogans and signs that have appeared in Tea Party rallies, I am convinced that this is a genuine social movement, a politically significant instance of the politics of small things, a political movement concerned with fundamental principles, engaged in a great debate about both the pressing issues of the day and the enduring problems of American political life.  As a registered Democrat and as a strong supporter of President Obama and his program, I am pleased that the actions of the movement may have made the Republican landslide in the upcoming elections less momentous, as the talking heads are now speculating, although I am still concerned that the movement may have given wind to the rightward shift of public opinion.  The emotional, irrational and often purposely ignorant political expression in Tea Party demonstrations is of deep concern, but I think the strong expression of fundamental political principles can and should be seriously considered and confronted.  I am unsure about what the Tea Party Movement’s impact on American public life in the very near term, i.e. the midterm elections, and in the long term, i.e. in the reinvention of American political culture will be.  As I have been trying to sort this all out, I am reminded of the insights of an old friend, Alberto Melucci, an Italian sociologist who presciently understood the meaning of social movements in the age of internet and mobile communications, before these new media were common.

The Theoretical Perspective of a Friend

Alberto Melucci

In series of important books, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age, and Playing the Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Alberto explored what it means to become involved in a social movement in our times.  He understood that the means of social movements may be even more important than their ends, and that they make possible a new sense of self and self purpose for their participants to emerge.  Further and most significant politically, they can change the basic social codes.  Alberto was mostly thinking about progressive new social movements, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights and the like.  But I think his approach illuminates the new conservatism of the Tea Party quite well.  He died prematurely on September 12, 2001, not observing the strange turn in global politics since that very day.  But he would have understood the Tea Party, as a social movement concerned with primary values, unconcerned with electoral priorities, forging new, in this case, reactionary, identities and values, a movement that is very much a product and a challenge of our times.

Challenging Codes

The Tea Party Movement makes its participants feel good about themselves and gives them a sense of purpose, as the participants frequently report on movement blogs and to reporters.  The Movement seeks to “take our country back,” supporting and attacking politicians of both parties.  They have specific ends against bail outs and the government handouts to the undeserving, from the poor to the mighty banks and corporations of Wall Street and Detroit.  They are for limited government and the constitution, as they understand it.  They imagine together a new future based on an idealized past and in their movement they enact their future.

The movement activists and candidates sometime seem to hurt Republicans more than Democrats, an outcome that seems to be irrational given their own voting records, but this is not as significant to them as one would expect.  They are concerned about a vision of America between its past and its future and their place in this America, and worry that this vision to which they are deeply committed is being lost, taken away politically by politicians they revile, and overlooked by too many of their fellow citizens.  When the fundamental concern with the American code is kept in mind, the Tea Party Activists are not as irrational as most outside commentators, of the left and the right, think.

September versus November

Karl Rove got caught up in this Primary Night last Tuesday.   In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, they agreed on fundamental conservative issues.  Nothing in their discussion suggested a questioning of the principles and practices of the Tea Party.  But Rove dared to frankly criticize the candidate who won her primary in Delaware due to Tea Party activism and support, Christine O’Donnell.  She was the candidate of true conviction against a moderate, but her odd behavior despite her stated purity would lead to electoral defeat.  “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not [evince] the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.”  Rove maintained, frankly concluding that “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.” (link)   For this assessment he was severely attacked by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and the full staff of Fox News, forcing him to retreat from his initial assessment. (link)

Rove was caught between the calculation of a political analyst and of a political partisan.  Since he cares most about the politics of the day, he could not be content with pronounced conservative purity.   He, on the right, along with most objective and Democratic partisan observers, noted that the Tea Party victory in the Delaware primary greatly increased the Democrats chances of maintaining their Senate majority.

But those who seek to take their country back, those more interested in the long march of changing the political culture, changing the code of politics as Alberto Melucci would put it, would prefer resolute cultural battle (most prominently Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, link).    Their movement is their message. For them the victory in September is more important than the increased chances of a defeat in November.

The Storyline

Obama proposed a transit plan to create jobs, reported in The New York Times as the storyline, but, it seems to me, the specific proposal was an illustration of his political message, not the message itself. The significant story: Obama was challenging the commonsense that seems to support the Republican prospects in the coming election, forcefully and clearly depicting an alternative commonsense that would support his Party’s immediate chances and also contribute to his attempt to reinvent American political culture. Far from Reagan’s “the government is not the solution but the problem,” Obama depicted how and explained why good government can help, and bad government can and has hurt. He wanted to turn the terms of debate from big government versus limited government, to good government versus bad government.

Obama is now drawing a clear line between those who support his policies and those who have been an obstacle to the change that at least Obama and his supporters believe in. He sought to draw the contrast between his administrations accomplishments and achievements, and his opposition. It was often an entertaining exercise, clearly meant to increase the level of passionate support for his overall project and to address the immediate task at hand, winning, or at least not losing badly in the upcoming elections.

The Declaration

Obama’s most telling declaration, biting in its critical thrust, revealing in its positive direction:

“When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save jobs — the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses and police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said no. (Applause.)  And the Republican who thinks he’s going to take over as Speaker — (boos) — I’m just saying that’s his opinion — (laughter) — he’s entitled to his opinion.  But when he was asked about this, he dismissed those jobs as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving.  (Boos.)  That’s what he said, I’m quoting — “government jobs.”
Now, think about this.  These are the people who teach our children. These are the people who keep our streets safe.  These are the people who put their lives on the line, who rush into a burning building.  Government jobs?  I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.  (Applause.)  I think those jobs are worth saving. (Applause.)
Well, you know what, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for middle-class families all across America.  It didn’t work out so well for our country.  All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  I mean, think about it, we have tried what they’re peddling.  We did it for 10 years.  We ended up with the worst economy since the 1930s and record deficits to boot.  (Applause.) It’s not like we haven’t tried what they’re trying to sell us.
Now, I’m bringing this up not because I’m trying to re-litigate the past; I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past.  (Applause.)”

My Speculation

All the talk of a Republican landslide, I think, underestimates the Obama effect once he focuses on electioneering. On Labor Day, he eloquently and dramatically drew the lines of the upcoming races. That the Democrats will not be as enthusiastic as Republicans may be the pre-Labor Day news. And it should be remembered that this battle is an episode in a long march to change commonsense about the role of government. The Republicans and their point of view in recent months have dominated public attention and discussion. This may have just changed.