Obama's Victory: New Media or New Vision?
Greg Mitchell and David Shorr have each made interesting points about the "new media". I am at a huge disadvantage as an economist, since I don't know much about political science and even less about electoral politics. I will admit that I was not convinced that Candidate Obama had much of a chance until fairly late in the campaign. That is when I began to see Obama signs on many of the lawns in my mostly white and working class neighborhood in mostly Republican Kansas. I was finally moved even beyond the audacity of hope on a boyscouting trip to the Ozarks, where I found the number of Obama signs lagging only slightly the number of McCain signs. I don't think these are the outposts of the new media.
My reading of this was, and remains, an intense dissatisfaction with the favor-the-rich, fuel-the-fear policies of the previous administration(s). I cannot recall campaign signs in neighborhoods such as mine in previous elections. Beyond the dissatisfaction was a palpable sentiment of hope. Greg did downplay the role of the economy in the election, and to some degree I concur: most people had no idea how bad things would get, and how quickly they would get bad. Still, most Americans had already had a fairly miserable 8 years of Bushonomics--and even the Clinton rising tide had left behind tens of millions. Many of them finally found a reason to vote. I recall that local activists had predicted a surge of votes by the discontented in the previous election--but Kerry simply could not move them. Obama did, and continues to do so.
When I saw the headline I imagined that demolition had already begun on the JEWISH settlements on the West Bank, and that somehow Hillary opposed it.
Dreamer!
That's the sort of demolition that SHOULD be happening, of course.
But maybe not in my lifetime.
March 4, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink