All over but the crying?
My brothers and I are very political - if sort of heterodox and roll-your-own in our political positions. But with my brother dave's background as an activist, my brother John's work as a political analyist and campaign manager for the NRDC and my own background in strategic planning, it all makes for some pretty awesome (and awesomely informed) political conversations. Sometimes i wish the Grant brothers had a left wing talk radio show, if only because what passes for politically left radio in the US right now is just knee-jerk pablum.
Johnny fired off the following conversation starter in an email his morning regarding the Potomac wins for Obama yesterday. I was happy enough with what I wrote to slap it up here.
1) Was last night the tipping point for Obama? He's won 8 in a row!
JG
1) I think that last night will be remembered as the moment people began recognizing as the tipping point. The real corner was turned back on Super Tuesday. It was supposed to be the knockout blow, and HRC spent her war chest accordingly. When Obama fought her to a standstill on ST, his fund raising went into hyperspace. His ability to accelerate his operational tempo coming out of that race, surging onto prepared ground, marked the beginning of the end. However, John, you have good point in this - I think that if HRC could have taken VA, it would have let all the air out of the BHO "groundswell" narrative. Now she HAS to take Wisconsin, or at least blunt his margins. Anything that burns some of the luster off this grassroots-underdog-latter day JFK story is good for her. Which is of course a shit position to be in, pissing on "hope". Just ask the bush administration how fighting an idea works out.... And ask any media planner how fun it is to make last minute buys. Getting into the message-space in WI will be expensive, and with a $2+ to $1 fund raising advantage, it is an expense HRC can ill afford, especially going into expensive markets like Dallas, Houston and Cleveland.
The marketer in me wanted to see the segmentation out of last night's contests. I figured that if he was able to eat into her core demos, then that was some very serious, transformative shit. And that corrosion/co-option was evidenced in spades - he grabbed white women in MD, he grabbed Latinos in VA, he grabbed blue collar voters in MD and VA. Meanwhile, his conversions on AA's and white dudes (???!!? wow! the Gibson/Glover effect rolls on!) continue to power into unprecedented internet-fueled hyperspace. As the idea of not having to listen to the Clintons for the next 4-8 years while simultaneously beating the tar out of the GOP begins to become a reality, look to white men to defect asymptotically. Even Texas is not impossible if this tectonic restructuring continues.
Her last minute re-entry into WI plus staff reshuffle seems to indicate that its FINALLY dawning on them - this is the end of the Clintons & the DLC's centrality inside the DNC power structure. To date, they have played the Terry McAuliffe game, speaking to base in tested, program-framed phraseology while simultaneously ignoring "unwinnable" territory. It's a strangely corporate, marketing fueled strategy and Obama's rise to prominence has been a stinging repudiation of it, if nothing else. If they lose to Obama, that's it, they are cast into the outer darkness.
If he blows her out in WI and fights her to a standstill in TX and OH, its all over but the crying.
**********
And now I'd like to take the briefest of moments to explain the white dude love for Obama, a phenomenon that seems to be building across every socio-economic strata. At first, it was predominantly professional white men, but the results out of the Commonwealth of Virginia show that even blue-collar white Dem dudes were going for Mr. O in a big way. Why? Let me speak of the two creatures that nobody in the Democratic Partly likes to speak of, except in the glowing, sunshine-filled politically correct rhetoric of ten thousand singing tomorrows. Those creatures are gender and race. These factors aren't at work in an explicitly negative way, but they are at work. There are generational and cultural dynamics in play, but it all basically cooks down to two simple axioms, which I will unpack:
1) Gen X white guys are now grown men, and thoroughly sick of being preached to by their Boomer Moms.
2) Gen X white dudes feel that black dudes are fundamentally cooler than they are, and have secretly wanted a black friend since boyhood.
Point One - Shut up, Mom.
Am I projecting here? Sure I am. But I cannot be alone in this feeling - Gen X men, despite the legendary protraction of our adolescences, have come of age. We are all grown men now. We have moved out of our folks basements, finished up our degrees, gotten traction in our careers, even become fathers. In all of these things, across every income and education level, we are united in one simple fact: WE ARE TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF LISTENING TO BOOMER BULLSHIT. The moralizing, the empty sanctimony, the hippy-haze that right or left they all seem lost in. Their idealism has brought the US to its current, tragically-fucked state.
So it is really galling to listen to Hillary’s moralizing - after her triangulating, boomerish support of the war in Iraq. After her husband’s proclivities destroyed Gore’s chances by galvanizing 3rd party wingnuts like Nader & harpooned us with 8 years of GWB. Yet I am still talking history & policy here.
The truth is that when Hillary starts talking, all I can hear is my mother, at her worst. Nagging, wagging her finger, getting up into my process. It’s not a rational thing. There is something about the pitch of her voice, her tired face and kicky haircut. I just can’t stand it. Some nasty well of deep adolescent resentment in me geysers to the surface, it alloys with the fact that in the full bloom of my manhood I don’t have to put up with this shit. Basically, hell would have to freeze over before I would vote for a Republican (unless I could travel back in time and vote for TR), so I find my eyes searching the horizon for someone, anyone else to vote for. And I know that I cannot be alone in this. This a generational style issue meeting up with a lifecycle dynamic - Gen X has arrived at adulthood. All of which sets up Point 2.
Point 2 - Hey Mom, this is Barack, my new friend.
And I want the rest of you cowboys to know something, there's a new sheriff in town. And his name is Reggie Hammond. So y’all be cool. Right on.
Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours
There was a new cultural phenomenon in the 80’s, the buddy picture. Now, there have been buddy pictures for a long time, but they arrived at their full cultural weight in the 80s. These buddy pics were aimed at a young male audience, and they featured something new - a black man and a white man working together as equals. Usually the black guy was the comic relief, but he was almost always cooler than the white guy. And this was part of the appeal - despite some of the fucked up gender politics and their overall reactionary rhetoric, action movies of the 80’s almost universally offered this axiom: black dudes were equal to whites, and the racial frission made for a cool movie.
The value proposition was the same: the black dude was respected as an equal, the white dude earned the cultural capital of not being a total redneck fucknut. Was it jacked up that the white guy was the dispenser of respect in this scenario? Sure, but that was exactly the fucked situation the films & TV shows sought to explore and correct. 48 hours, Lethal weapon, Miami Vice, Magnum PI - Gen X guys, both black and white, secretly wanted this cross racial partnership in their own life.
Then along come Obama. At just the time that Hillary is antagonizing them, here comes BHO. He’s just plain cool. Witness the shit-eating grin on Tim Kaine’s face as Obama laid a very cool quasi-dap handshake on him at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Virginia. Tim Kaine is a great governor, a great leader, but he isn’t cool. But Obama is, and Obama is his friend. There is a kind of reflected coolness that comes from the association.
The coolness gap is real, despite the fact that nobody knows how to talk about it. But Obama knows how to use it, and has used it to get to white men. It taps into a powerful cultural archetype that was laid down 2 decades ago. As insufferable as supporting Hillary is, it is equally gratifying to support Obama. It’s a difficult, potentially impossible generational dynamic for Hillary to overcome.
Obama / Nolte 2008!
Johnny fired off the following conversation starter in an email his morning regarding the Potomac wins for Obama yesterday. I was happy enough with what I wrote to slap it up here.
1) Was last night the tipping point for Obama? He's won 8 in a row!
JG
1) I think that last night will be remembered as the moment people began recognizing as the tipping point. The real corner was turned back on Super Tuesday. It was supposed to be the knockout blow, and HRC spent her war chest accordingly. When Obama fought her to a standstill on ST, his fund raising went into hyperspace. His ability to accelerate his operational tempo coming out of that race, surging onto prepared ground, marked the beginning of the end. However, John, you have good point in this - I think that if HRC could have taken VA, it would have let all the air out of the BHO "groundswell" narrative. Now she HAS to take Wisconsin, or at least blunt his margins. Anything that burns some of the luster off this grassroots-underdog-latter day JFK story is good for her. Which is of course a shit position to be in, pissing on "hope". Just ask the bush administration how fighting an idea works out.... And ask any media planner how fun it is to make last minute buys. Getting into the message-space in WI will be expensive, and with a $2+ to $1 fund raising advantage, it is an expense HRC can ill afford, especially going into expensive markets like Dallas, Houston and Cleveland.
The marketer in me wanted to see the segmentation out of last night's contests. I figured that if he was able to eat into her core demos, then that was some very serious, transformative shit. And that corrosion/co-option was evidenced in spades - he grabbed white women in MD, he grabbed Latinos in VA, he grabbed blue collar voters in MD and VA. Meanwhile, his conversions on AA's and white dudes (???!!? wow! the Gibson/Glover effect rolls on!) continue to power into unprecedented internet-fueled hyperspace. As the idea of not having to listen to the Clintons for the next 4-8 years while simultaneously beating the tar out of the GOP begins to become a reality, look to white men to defect asymptotically. Even Texas is not impossible if this tectonic restructuring continues.
Her last minute re-entry into WI plus staff reshuffle seems to indicate that its FINALLY dawning on them - this is the end of the Clintons & the DLC's centrality inside the DNC power structure. To date, they have played the Terry McAuliffe game, speaking to base in tested, program-framed phraseology while simultaneously ignoring "unwinnable" territory. It's a strangely corporate, marketing fueled strategy and Obama's rise to prominence has been a stinging repudiation of it, if nothing else. If they lose to Obama, that's it, they are cast into the outer darkness.
If he blows her out in WI and fights her to a standstill in TX and OH, its all over but the crying.
**********
And now I'd like to take the briefest of moments to explain the white dude love for Obama, a phenomenon that seems to be building across every socio-economic strata. At first, it was predominantly professional white men, but the results out of the Commonwealth of Virginia show that even blue-collar white Dem dudes were going for Mr. O in a big way. Why? Let me speak of the two creatures that nobody in the Democratic Partly likes to speak of, except in the glowing, sunshine-filled politically correct rhetoric of ten thousand singing tomorrows. Those creatures are gender and race. These factors aren't at work in an explicitly negative way, but they are at work. There are generational and cultural dynamics in play, but it all basically cooks down to two simple axioms, which I will unpack:
1) Gen X white guys are now grown men, and thoroughly sick of being preached to by their Boomer Moms.
2) Gen X white dudes feel that black dudes are fundamentally cooler than they are, and have secretly wanted a black friend since boyhood.
Point One - Shut up, Mom.
Am I projecting here? Sure I am. But I cannot be alone in this feeling - Gen X men, despite the legendary protraction of our adolescences, have come of age. We are all grown men now. We have moved out of our folks basements, finished up our degrees, gotten traction in our careers, even become fathers. In all of these things, across every income and education level, we are united in one simple fact: WE ARE TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF LISTENING TO BOOMER BULLSHIT. The moralizing, the empty sanctimony, the hippy-haze that right or left they all seem lost in. Their idealism has brought the US to its current, tragically-fucked state.
So it is really galling to listen to Hillary’s moralizing - after her triangulating, boomerish support of the war in Iraq. After her husband’s proclivities destroyed Gore’s chances by galvanizing 3rd party wingnuts like Nader & harpooned us with 8 years of GWB. Yet I am still talking history & policy here.
The truth is that when Hillary starts talking, all I can hear is my mother, at her worst. Nagging, wagging her finger, getting up into my process. It’s not a rational thing. There is something about the pitch of her voice, her tired face and kicky haircut. I just can’t stand it. Some nasty well of deep adolescent resentment in me geysers to the surface, it alloys with the fact that in the full bloom of my manhood I don’t have to put up with this shit. Basically, hell would have to freeze over before I would vote for a Republican (unless I could travel back in time and vote for TR), so I find my eyes searching the horizon for someone, anyone else to vote for. And I know that I cannot be alone in this. This a generational style issue meeting up with a lifecycle dynamic - Gen X has arrived at adulthood. All of which sets up Point 2.
Point 2 - Hey Mom, this is Barack, my new friend.
And I want the rest of you cowboys to know something, there's a new sheriff in town. And his name is Reggie Hammond. So y’all be cool. Right on.
Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours
There was a new cultural phenomenon in the 80’s, the buddy picture. Now, there have been buddy pictures for a long time, but they arrived at their full cultural weight in the 80s. These buddy pics were aimed at a young male audience, and they featured something new - a black man and a white man working together as equals. Usually the black guy was the comic relief, but he was almost always cooler than the white guy. And this was part of the appeal - despite some of the fucked up gender politics and their overall reactionary rhetoric, action movies of the 80’s almost universally offered this axiom: black dudes were equal to whites, and the racial frission made for a cool movie.
The value proposition was the same: the black dude was respected as an equal, the white dude earned the cultural capital of not being a total redneck fucknut. Was it jacked up that the white guy was the dispenser of respect in this scenario? Sure, but that was exactly the fucked situation the films & TV shows sought to explore and correct. 48 hours, Lethal weapon, Miami Vice, Magnum PI - Gen X guys, both black and white, secretly wanted this cross racial partnership in their own life.
Then along come Obama. At just the time that Hillary is antagonizing them, here comes BHO. He’s just plain cool. Witness the shit-eating grin on Tim Kaine’s face as Obama laid a very cool quasi-dap handshake on him at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Virginia. Tim Kaine is a great governor, a great leader, but he isn’t cool. But Obama is, and Obama is his friend. There is a kind of reflected coolness that comes from the association.
The coolness gap is real, despite the fact that nobody knows how to talk about it. But Obama knows how to use it, and has used it to get to white men. It taps into a powerful cultural archetype that was laid down 2 decades ago. As insufferable as supporting Hillary is, it is equally gratifying to support Obama. It’s a difficult, potentially impossible generational dynamic for Hillary to overcome.
Obama / Nolte 2008!