I am proud to live in Obama’s America too. Long time coming. Let’s work together now to bring us back into the international fold.

- Steve, November 4, 2008

There are many lessons to be learned from the recent U.S. Presidential election – but many more lessons commentators claim we have learned.  It’s been a month since the election, and it’s time to look back with some perspective.

• It was a historic election – this should not be understated.  A Black man was elected to the highest office in a country where 2nd-class citizenship and economic inequality was written into our laws just 55 years ago.  A woman was a serious competitor for the candidacy of one of two major parties in a country where gender inequality is still rampant and largely unaddressed.  This represents progress along racial and gender lines.
• It was a historic election – but this should not be overstated.  Despite the competitive candidacies of a person of color and a woman, racial and gender disparities are real and ongoing.  They are not merely anecdotal, but devastatingly economic.  The average white household made $48k last year; the average Black household made $30k.  The fact of Obama as president is not going to close that gap.
• Symbolism is real, and has very real effects. Cornel West on CNN:

In a sense it ["post-racialism"] doesn’t exist – it just means that white fellow citizens are more likely to vote for a black candidate who has qualifications rather than be preoccupied with his pigmentation.  “Post-racial” means less racism on behalf of white voters – and that’s progress, but “post racial” ought not to mean “black” people disappearing, as if there’s no such thing as “black” people anymore.

… As we see the glass ceiling actually pierced at the highest level, and the symbolic impact – My god, the impact on children … it makes a *big* difference.  That means the sky is the limit for them.  And of course the impact on white children as well, they understand that the sky is the limit for children across the board.

The challenge now is from moving from symbol to substance.  What kind of policies?  Will you accent working people?  Will you accent poor people?  Who will be your advisors?  What will your cabinet look like?  Symbols matter – but then we move to substance.

• “Progress” is only superficially defined by “more black faces in higher places” – yes, folks of color in positions of power is a part of moving forward, but that’s just the surface of progress.  In fact, having people of color in positions of power should be one of the last achievements in a democratic society in breaking down racism and building up a more equitable society.  The real achievement is when persistent and brutal conditions for everyday folks are addressed and resolved.  We are a long, long way from that, and it is entirely unclear whether Obama has the will or desire to “cash the check” he was given, as put by Bruce Dixon from the Black Agenda Report:

The day Obama takes office, there will be an incredible 1.1 million African Americans behind bars, a proportion eight times that of whites. Before the mortgage market meltdown the wealth of black families was about one eleventh that of whites. Since then, it’s fallen off a cliff. Whether we look at education, at wages, at morbidity, mortality, unemployment or mass incarceration the gaps between whites and blacks in the US are wide and still growing. With the nation’s First Black President installed, many whites will solemnly assure us that the US is not now, if it ever was, a racist society. The First Black President-elect seems to agree with them, having told us all a year before electing him that we were “90% of the way” to a non-racist society.

Will the First Black President be of any use cashing the check for real racial justice, not just for black faces in high places? The clock is already ticking, and every day is an opportunity to lead lost.

The day the First Black President is sworn in the US economy will still be, in the words of economist Michael Hudson a polite fiction, based on phantom assets, phony profits, inflated valuations, and outright fraud, a house of marked cards where even the bankers know not to trust each other. Millions of families will still face foreclosure, eviction and bankruptcy. Tens of millions more are in debt up to their necks, afflicted with ever-rising interest rates thanks to the tireless efforts of Obama’s running mate Joe Biden, sometimes known as the Senator from MasterCard.

In his first true test of presidential leadership, while still a candidate the First Black President lobbied reluctant Democrats and urged them to pass the Bush-Cheney trillion dollar no-strings-attached parting gift to Wall Street, money that could have been used to fund education, jobs, infrastructure, human needs, and debt relief for ordinary families.

• This was not a landslide victory. It was clearly an electoral landslide, with a projected 365 to 173 vote difference.  But the popular vote was 53% to 46% – a difference of 7%.  McCain was dealt a hand of 8 years of Bush, embarrassing responses to 9/11, the largest Wall Street disaster in a lifetime, the ruins of Katrina, Republican corruption after corruption, an incompetent campaign with incompetent vice president, without a real message of substance to people who work for a living, and a sitting president who might be the worst president in the history of history, whose very name he could not freely speak aloud.  Ignoring everything about the Democrat’s candidate – MIckey Mouse should have handily beat the Republican party by 20 points.  That this was settled by a difference of 9 out of 129 million voters says quite a bit about the Obama victory.  That the Obama campaign spent 3/4 of $1 billion dollars to get such a margin of victory indicates something very wrong with our political system.
• As for that $750,000,000 spent by the Obama campaign, Noam Chomsky points out:

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: “The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington.” Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama’s campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.

• The victory of Obama over McCain means that we have a little more time than we otherwise would have. A McCain victory would have meant continued economic disaster, a greater pace towards environmental ruin, slightly more lethal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a tremendous blow to a great deal of (if not misplaced) hope for those millions of people, particularly youth and folks of color, which would make re-mobilization difficult and done from a less positive place.

Posted under Culture, Economy, Politics