Obama at Manassas

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 56, 2009, Pages 5-40

  Davis, Mike ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 64549141180     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (76)

1. Befitting the capital of an empire, Washington DC has the nation's most affluent suburban fringe. As Thomas Frank points out in The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (New York 2008), five of the seven richest us counties with populations over 250,000 are DC suburbs in neighbouring Maryland and Virginia (pp. II and 277). On the strategic role of emergent suburbs in 2004, see Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey, 'GOP Plants Flag on New Voting Frontier1, LA Times, 22 November 2004;
2. and Gregory Giroux, 'A Line in the Suburban Sand', CQ Weekly, 27 June 2005.
3. Jon Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities, Baltimore 1997, p. 6.
4. The Manassas rally can be viewed on YouTube. Unless otherwise attributed, exit poll data is from Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, the pollsters for the National Election Pool (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and ap), and can be accessed from any of the sponsors' sites. County-level presidential returns are from the New York Times's updated map at elections.nytimes. com.
5. Kristen Mack, 'Prince William, the State's Bellwether', Washington Post, 12 November 2008.
6. 'Blue Virginia', 2008 Election Brief, Metropolitan Institute, Virginia Tech.
7. V. O. Key, 'A Theory of Critical Elections', Journal of Politics, vol. 17, no. 1, 1955;
8. and Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Sections and ike Mainsprings of American Politics, New York 1970. For an influential critique,
9. see David Mayhew, Electoral Realignments, New Haven 2004.
10. Burnham, Critical Elections, p. 6.
11. The national turnout of 56.8 per cent (as a proportion of the universe of registered voters) did not break historical records, partly because of a relative decline in votes cast on the West Coast and in New York where Obama's victory was assured. On the other hand, there was a dramatic increase in voter participation in the Deep South (by both whites and Blacks), the Intermountain West, Latino counties and smaller industrial cities of the Midwest. See 'New Voters, New Power Bases' with map, NYT, 6 November 2008.
12. Internet politics' moment of conception, however, was the creation of MoveOn.org in 1998. Carl Cannon, 'Movin' On', National Journal, 2 December 2006.
13. Joshua Green, 'The Amazing Money Machine', The Atlantic, June 2008.
14. Federal Election Commission: www.fec.gov.
15. Matt Bai, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, New York 2007, p. 7.
16. Obama won 39 per cent of the white vote in Virginia compared to Kerry's 32 per cent; and 35 per cent in North Carolina, compared to 27 per cent. See Charles Franklin, 'White Vote for Obama in the States, Part 2', Pollster.com, 15 November 2008.
17. Dave Mann, 'Turning Houston Blue', The Texas Observer, 17 October 2008.
18. Michael Teitelbaum, 'Census Estimates Show Clout Again Likely to Go West and South', CQ Today Online News, 23 December 2008.
19. In addition to the slim Obama victory, Democrats-including two Japanese-Americans-took control of the Salt Lake County Council. The consequences are likely to include domestic-partner health benefits, collective bargaining for county employees and an independent redistricting commission. The capital of Brigham Young's Deseret thus continues its recent evolution toward the left. See Jeremiah Stettler, 'In Salt Lake County, election shifted power swings to Dems', The Salt Lake Tribune, 6 November 2008.
20. The major exception was the former steel region around Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania, but Obama easily carried the state with the help of crossover voters in the formerly Republican suburbs of Philadelphia.
21. James Barnes, 'Obama Pulls Off a Hat Trick of Outreach', National Journal, 8 November 2008. Rather unbelievably, exit polls in Indiana indicated a slight decline in Black voters' preference for Obama vis-à-vis Kerry.
22. 'Exit polls show that nearly a quarter of voters questioned said they had been contacted by the Obama campaign about coming out to vote, compared with 8 per cent for the McCain campaign. Of those contacted as part of the Obama effort, almost three-quarters said they voted for him'. 'State by State', NYT, 6 November 2008.
23. Although the Nader campaign was ignored in the national media this time around, his 17,000 votes in Missouri certainly vexed the hopes of local Democrats.
24. National and state politics do not necessarily recapitulate each other in the United States. For example, five of the states comfortably won by Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008 have solid Democratic majorities in their state houses (Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia).
25. Alec MacGillis and Jon Cohen, 'Democrats Add Suburbs to Their Growing Coalition', Washington Post, 6 November 2008.
26. Chris Cillizza, 'Five Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions', Washington Post, 16 November 2008.
27. See also Richard Cohen and Brian Friel, 'The New Centre', National Journal, 7 March 2008.
28. Alec MacGillis and Jon Cohen, 'Democrats Add Suburbs'.
29. Swing suburb list from Robert Lang, et al., 'The New Suburban Swingers: How America's Most Contested Suburban Counties Could Decide the Next President', 2008 Election Brief, Metropolitan Institute, Virginia Tech, p. 5.
30. Robert Lang and Patrick Simmons, '"Boomburbs": The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Suburban Cities', in Bruce Katz and Robert Lang, eds, Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000, Brookings Institution, Washington DC 2003, p. 104.
31. Lang, et al., 'The New Suburban Swingers', p. 2.
32. Lang and Thomas Sanchez, 'The New Metro Politics: Interpreting Recent Presidential Elections Using a County-Based Regional Typology', 2006 Election Brief, Metropolitan Institute, Virginia Tech, p. 5.
33. Ken Billingsley quoted in Nick Miroff, 'Diversity Blooms in Outer Suburbs', Washington Post, 3 November 2008.
34. 'A Happy Slowdown?', CEO Confidential, Goldman Sachs, 8 September 2006.
35. David Sherfinski, 'Sick Suburb', The Examiner, 10 December 2008;
36. and Mary Kane, 'At the Frontline of the Foreclosure Crisis, Counties Go It Alone', Washington Independent, 24 November 2008.
37. Mary Kane, 'Foreclosure Machine Grinds On Through Holiday Season', Washington Independent, 4 December 2008.
38. Poll statistic from Dallas News, 5 October 2008.
39. Press release, 'National Centre for Suburban Studies Releases Results of Only 2008 Presidential Poll to Focus Exclusively on Suburban Voters', Hofstra University, 29 September 2008.
40. US Census Bureau News, 'Minority Population Tops 100 Million', 17 May 2007.
41. Kevin Pollard, 'Swing, Bellwether, and Red and Blue States: Demographics and the 2008 US Presidential Election', Population Reference Bureau website, October 2008.
42. Indeed, voter participation in the United States remains extremely low by world standards. About 100 million eligible American citizens did not vote last year, despite $1.6 billion in political advertising by both parties.
43. Scott Keeter, 'The Aging of the Boomers and the Rise of the Millennials', in Ruy Teixeira, Red, Blue and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics, Brookings Institution, Washington DC 2008.
44. Karlo Barrios Marcelo and Emily Hoban Kirby, 'Quick Facts about us Young Voters: The Presidential Election Year 2008', CIRCLE Fact Sheet, Tufts University, Boston.
45. Andrew Levison, 'How Democrats Can Keep and Expand the Support of the Younger White Working-Class Voters Who Voted for Obama in 2008', The Democratic Strategist White Paper, 2008, pp. 1-2.
46. Almost but not quite true was the assertion by Stephen Ansolabehere and Charles Stewart: 'had Blacks and Hispanics voted Democratic in 2008 at the rates they had in 2004, McCain would have won'. See 'Amazing Race: How post-racial was Obama's victory?', Boston Review, Jan-Feb 2009.
47. Jody Herman and Lorraine Minnite, 'The Demographics of Voters in America's 2008 General Election', Project Vote research memo, 18 November 2008.
48. The median age of the Hispanic population in 2006 was 27.4, contrasted to 36.4 for the population as a whole. Census Bureau News, 'Minority Population Tops 100 Million', 17 May 2007.
49. Barnes, 'Obama Pulls Off a Hat Trick of Outreach'.
50. See William Frey, 'Melting Pot Suburbs', in Katz and Lang, pp. 155-79.
51. Algernon Austin and Marie Mora, 'Hispanics and the Economy', EPI Briefing Paper 225, Washington DC, 31 October 2008, p. 1.
52. Kristen Mack, 'Activists Want Answers on Panel Choice', Washington Post, 23 September 2008.
53. Nick Miroff, 'Prince William Immigration, Housing Ills Seen as Linked', Washington Post, 5 October 2007.
54. Arlo Wagner, 'Prince William Sees Exodus of Hispanics', Washington Times, 13 March 2005 (reprinted with jubilation on various Minuteman websites).
55. Nurith Aizenman, 'In Northern Virginia, a Latino Community Unravels', Washington Post, 27 March 2008.
56. Julia Preston, 'Immigration Cools as Campaign Issue', NYT, 29 October 2008.
57. Jeffrey Sachs, 'The Tarp is a fiscal straitjacket', Financial Times, 28 January 2009.
58. The presidential debates can be viewed at www.youdecide2008.com.
59. Bai, The Argument, p. 177.
60. Journalist David Leonhardt spent a year interviewing Obama and his original economic advisors from the University of Chicago, trying to decipher their economic philosophy. He was struck by the modesty of their approach to economic inequality and fiscal reform as contrasted to their bold proposals about rationalizing healthcare, rebuilding infrastructure and carrying out a transition to renewable energy. 'As ambitious as Obama's proposals might be, they would still leave the gap between the rich and everyone else far wider than it was 15 or 30 years ago. It just wouldn't be quite as wide as it is now'. See 'A Free-Market Loving, Big-Spending, Fiscally Conservative, Wealth Redistributionist', NYT Magazine, 24 August 2008.
61. Even the New York Times editorialized on the dangers inherent in Obama's reliance upon investment bankers for economic wisdom: 'Another question clouding the labour agenda is whether Mr Obama will give equal weight to worker concerns- from reforming health care to raising the minimum wage-while the financial crisis is still playing out. Most members of his economic team are veterans of the Clinton Administration who tilt toward Wall Street. In the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped labour concerns. If Mr Obama's campaign promises are to be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again.' NYT, 29 December 2008.
62. Walter Dean Burnham, The Current Crisis in American Politics, New York 1982, p. 101.
63. Hilda Solis, Obama's new Labour Secretary, is already compared to her great predecessor in Roosevelt's cabinet, Frances Perkins. But Perkins has been endowed in most liberal hagiographies with powers she did not possess. If at critical moments in the class war of the 1930s, she was a superb advocate for unions inside the administration, her ordinary vocation was as pacifier charged with keeping labour insurgents in line behind FDR's slow-moving and piecemeal reforms. Robert Reich's frustrated experiences as Clinton's Labour Secretary are cautionary in the same respects.
64. Obama has also left the light on in the White House for wayward neo-conservatives. No modern Democratic candidate has had so many admirers on the right, to name just a few: columnist David Brooks, Senator Chuck Hagel, former UN ambassador Ken Adelman, and William F. Buckley's son Christopher.
65. Clinton had a legitimate basis for making a fight. If the results in Florida and Michigan (disqualified by the Democratic National Committee for violating its scheduling rules) are counted, she won the popular primary vote by more than 100,000.
66. Steven Greenhouse, 'After Push for Obama, Unions Seek New Rules', NYT, 9 November 2008.
67. I apologize to supporters of Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader, but the congress-person from Cleveland had no chance of winning a major primary and Nader, however admirable, has never been an effective populist. Only the Edwards campaign, in my opinion, had the potential of forcing Clinton and Obama programmatically to the left.
68. Quoted in Ronald Brownstein, 'Style & Substance Among The Dems' Big Three', NationalJournal.com, 2 January 2008.
69. Harold Meyerson, 'For Labour, Armageddon', Dissent, Fall 2008, p. 40.
70. Consideration of Obama's foreign policy lies beyond the scope of this essay, although his appointments clearly signal continuity.
71. For a fascinating reflection on New Deal-era economic theory, including a possible synthesis of the ideas of Keynes, Hansen, Means and Schumpeter, see Theodore Rosenof, Economics in the Long Run, Chapel Hill, NC 1997.
72. Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), which argued that the Founding Fathers' politics were approximately the sum of their material interests, is still worth a visit, even if modern political and economic historians tar him as a vulgarian economic determinist.
73. Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, Chicago 1995, pp. 22-3. Ferguson, of course, acknowledges that voters also become more active: 'only if the electorate's degree of effective organization significantly increases, however, does it receive more than crumbs.'
74. The Republican share of Silicon Valley's presidential contributions dropped from 43 per cent in 2000 to barely 4 per cent in 2006, simultaneously as the Democrats endorsed an 'Innovation Agenda' supporting R&D tax credits, a doubling of funding for the National Science Foundation, and so on. See the August 2006 beltwayblogroll at nationaljournal.com; and Jim Puzzanghera, 'Pelosi likely to speak up for tech industry', LA Times, 13 November 2006. The earlier history of the Democratic courtship of Silicon Valley is chronicled by Sara Miles in How to Hack a Party Line, New York 2001.
75. Steve Hamm, 'Whatever Happened to Silicon Valley Innovation?', Business Week, 31 December 2008.
76. The major exception to declining federal support for innovation, of course, has been the war on terrorism's huge investments in surveillance and advanced war-fighting technologies-a sector that Obama is unlikely to neglect.