my age, the election, predictions, presumptions
my dad is convinced that the bradley effect will cost obama the election. i've tried to reason with him-- stressing the increasingly insurmountable lead he has in basically every poll. i think barring a last minute terrorist strike or news of a sordid affair with sister souljah, obama is sitting pretty at this point.
george packer has been writing some interesting things about the end of an era, documenting the palin gaffes, greenspan apologies and ineffective hate that's triggered the current GOP implosion. their old tricks don't seem to be working. my dad notices this, but remains fatalistic (he's a political moderate who supports obama). when we talk, i try to play the role of "realist" rather than "optimist," because what's happening seems to be "realistically" good...
one of the striking personal distinctions between the 2008 and 2004 elections is my age in relation to it. and my dad is almost exactly 30 years older than me. i turned 32 in september; he'll be 62 in december. four years ago i was 28, and he was about to turn 58. back them, i was still a part of the wide-eyed "youth" demographic... one of those supposedly naive optimists expected to applaud howard dean as if he were MLK marching to washington (i didn't). but in '08, i'm entering the boring "adult" demographic, and my dad is approaching retirement.
the funny thing about the mc cain/palin campaign is that it's been banking on my dad instead of me. i'm not convinced that right-wing hate has suddenly lost its use-value, but mc cain certainly didn't choose his hate wisely. for example, while a baby boomer might look at bill ayers and see a terrorist radical, to a dude in his early thirties he seems like someone they'd interview during an imaginary episode of david crosby: behind the music... another nostalgic 60's activist with tenure at some random university. when people my age hear about his romanticized generation, we remember how many of his peers voted for reagan when we were little.
and hell-- some of us don't remember reagan at all, which is why the "socialist" card doesn't seem to have much effect. hell, when i think of the soviet union, stupid bullshit like this comes to mind:
Click to viewcommunism isn't threatening anymore. it's not red meat for the right, and it's no longer the baby of the left. do sarah palin's supporters even know who hugo chavez is? do they really care? "joe the plumber" is *one year older than i am*... when he looks at barack obama does he imagine a black panther with his fist in the air? does he realize how closely his own image mirrors the "everyman proletariat" of the old left? his appearance becomes a strange tombstone for "red scare" tactics-- he's the bizarro tom joad of the far right. mc cain has an ad where random people say "i'm joe the plumber." it's the red scare in reverse-- government comes along and makes everyone the same. only in this case that "same-ness" necessitates an odd preoccupation with the tax rights of the extremely rich.
i think obama is gonna win the election tomorrow. and i'm gonna vote for him. rather than yap about why, i'll just say i agree with steven shaviro:
In the present circumstances, this means that Obama’s rhetoric of hope, no matter how vapid and empty it may actually be, still matters. Anyone who thinks that Obama will actually change things is in for severe disappointment if he wins. It’s pretty clear that Obama will do no more than restore Clintonian neoliberalism, in place of the revanchist militarism and rampant looting and pillaging that characterizes the current Bush-Cheney regime (and that McCain, for all his promises of “change”, will do nothing to alter). In other words, Obama may well rescue us somewhat from the nightmare of the last eight years, but only to the extent of restoring the status quo ante, with its foreign bombings and domestic “rationalizations” of the economy, that we rightly objected to in the 1990s. Nonetheless, the fact that Obama, Biden, and company pay lip service to humane values that they will not actually uphold is in itself a cause for hope, for maintaining a “hope we can believe in,” or (to quote a past Presidential candidate whom it is now taboo to mention) for “keep[ing] hope alive.”
as for mc cain, the cynic in me says he banked on the wrong type of hate. he's preaching to a silent majority that's thankfully begun to disappear. which isn't to say that hate isn't still with us, or that we've arrived at the "post-race america" conservative ideologues will undoubtedly spend the next four years pretending is upon us. my father might remember an era of "colored" water fountains, but i'll come to maturity in an america where one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is in prison (and we have that commie pinko joe biden to thank for much of the legislation). 21st century hatred is often invisible (and institutional). consider this presidential campaign, with its endless panic about racism and misogyny. there's obviously been boatloads of both, but (for my money) the nastiest hate has been directed towards muslims. as i watched rudy guiliani address the RNC a few months back, i invented a morbid game for myself: every time he mentions "islam," substitute the word "jew" instead. exhibit A:
And he will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad. For 4 days in Denver and for the past 18 months Democrats have been afraid to use the words "Islamic Jewish Terrorism." During their convention, the Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11.
sounds a lot more fucked up, doesn't it?
if i do get a president of color tomorrow, i hope he signals an era of less "invisible" bigotry. i'm sure that, a few months from now, obama will break my heart with an array of "centrist" compromises... but hopefully he'll have eroded some of the WILLFUL ignorance of the bush years as well. i don't quite swallow the "change" he's selling, but in my cranky way, this is about as excited as i've been about a political candidate in my lifetime. the side of me that wants to light the white house on fire and start over is probably alive and well, but i'm hoping that november 4th will allow me to showcase my kinder, gentler side.
P.S.- some predictions for the truly dorky (and just for the hell of it):
* obama wins by 3-5% of the popular vote
* obama wins PA, VA, NV, CO, NM, IA, MI, MN, NH
* obama loses FL, MO, WV, IN, NC and possibly OH
* that's 271- obama, 243- mc cain, in electoral votes
* if you're still reading this, i simultaneously love you and am concerned for your mental health
* and, oh, what the hell: palin, or someone a lot like her, will be the 2012 candidate... the GOP will find someone essentially like mike huckabee, but either non-white or female (bobby jindal?)... palin will spend the next four years undergoing a makeover of mark wahlberg-level proportions, and the party will bank on her protective-den-mother bullshit to kneecap an obama re-election... the faux-populism will continue (though with less emphasis on "real americas"), but neo-con foreign policy will head to the back burner... the most unpopular conservative image will be the mitt romney type (the fiscal, country-club CEO image), and people like him will retreat behind the curtain more convincingly... meanwhile, danschank will wander a mad max- like eco-dystopia, jobless, fueled by stolen oil, with student loan bureaucrats and collection agencies hot on his trail. with an ever-graying head of hair, and striking lack of virility, he will resemble dennis kucinich more than ever.
I, TOO, AM GREY-HAIRED AND ELFIN... AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE!!!