Voting Obama

After remaining undecided in a presidential race for the longest time since 1992, I have decided in the end to pull a lever for Barack Obama in the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Discount my vote if you will, I'm always the guy who votes Adlai Stevenson and there's more than a little of Stevenson's brainy detachment and Ivy League deportment in Barack Obama. But Obama is a vastly more complex candidate than Stevenson was (or any of his successors, like Bill Bradley, might have been).

Parsing his candidacy means trying to unpack all sorts of American contradictions--black AND white, liberal AND conservative, ambition AND risk aversion. (It's strange to watch a far left group like MoveOn endorse Obama, a candidate who is well to the right of the group's constituency on things like gay marriage and economic policy.) That he's able to embody all this contradictory mess, and thrive because of that morphology, is Obama's greatest strength as a candidate (that and his soaring oratory).

I don't see myself as part of a movement, though my friend Tom, an ardent Clinton supporter, has continually disparaged Obama's supporters as starry-eyed Kool-Aid drinkers. Maybe. Obama certainly is more seductive than Clinton. And Obama and those closest to him may actually believe that he IS the black, Democratic Ronald Regan. Perhaps I'm willing to pull a lever on the chance that he just might be. He is, after all, the candidate who has white Republican men interested in voting for the black Democrat with the Arab-sounding name, a development that I never thought I would live to see.

But those are all things that the sports talk show hosts call "the intangibles." The intangibles may actually be more important to winning an election than anything else, but they're not what motivates the confirmed Stevenson voter.

My swing to Obama rests on more prosaic ground.

First there's economic policy, one of the few policy areas that actually separate Obama from Clinton. Obama, and his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee--a left-center economist at the University of Chicago and frequent guest on the great radio show Bloomberg on the Economy--offer an economic approach much closer to Bill Clinton's than to Hillary's--free-trade friendly, not hostile to markets, but relying on the kind of real oversight and regulation that has been sorely lacking over the past 8 years. Nowhere was the contrasting approach made more clear than in the candidates' response to the subprime mortgage crisis, with Obama basically cleaving to the path laid out by Henry Paulson--pushing private refi under federal cover for debtors who can actually afford their houses--and joining with Senate Democrats in a bill to re-write bankruptcy laws to make it possible for debtors to restructure mortgages on their primary residences. Clinton, on the other hand, proposed a moratorium on foreclosures and a federally mandated 5-year freeze on interest rates, policies that not only sound like pandering but also that would prolong the crisis and deepen the housing downturn by raising the cost of borrowing for those seeking new loans.

Second, although it borders on insane to suggest that a black man is the Democrat's most electable candidate, I think in this case it may be true. In a race versus McCain in November, Democratic victory will depend on our candidate's ability to lure white male Regan Dems and independents away from McCain. Many in those demographic slices today will tell you: "If it's Hillary v. McCain, I'm voting for McCain." Not all of them will do that in the end, of course, especially since a vote for McCain is a vote for an open-ended military commitment in Iraq and a federal bench full of Sam Alitos.  But enough might, even after a long campaign in which Clinton is sure to win over some of them. Obama's campaign has deliberately targeted Regan Dems, and successfully too. In the end he may be the Dem best able to draw potential McCain voters way.

Finally, as a tactical matter, the Dems strongest ticket this fall would be Clinton at the top, Obama in the number 2 slot. That would be a huge winner, a happening drawing crowds bigger than those drawn by the Led Zeppelin reunion. I dunno if Clinton would offer the two slot to Obama, and I don't know if he'd take it. But if he can win enough delegates to deny Clinton an easy path to the nomination, then getting himself on the ticket would be his choice. I hope my vote in New York will help put that option on the table.

Sure, Obama's green. In contrast with Clinton, who I'm certain could govern competently and expertly, Obama represents risk. But Obama is like a top prospect in baseball. I'm going with the high ceiling prospect.

Is he up to the job? It's true we don't know, but I also see no evidence that he's not. Just look at his campaign--a brilliant operation for which Obama has not received enough credit. As a national level neophyte Obama has gone toe to toe with the Clintons, raising as much money, staying focused on message,  building a coalition across party factions, kicking ass with the kind of ground game you develop coming up in Chicago politics and avoiding the kind of Willie Horton knock-down campaign that a candidate usually needs when running from behind. I'm flat-out impressed. During my brief, lamented career as a venture capitalist I interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs. One of the things I was looking for was strategic vision, but even more importantly I was looking for the ability to execute tactically on that vision. Obama looks to me like a guy who can execute.

Comments

[OutOfContext]

I really enjoyed the last two paragraphs...I like Obama but I don't feel like any part of a movement; I'm not a movement guy. The ground game and staying with the positive message even when times were tough impressed me the most.
I particularly like his style of attack and defense which is using the other's momentum to his own advantage.
He's a politician and he's going to do stuff I don't like to get elected (religious rhetoric for one) so I don't pledge my soul. But he's got a live arm, composure and command of the strike zone--I'll take that over the Dick Tidrow's of politics any day (any allusions to Dick Tidrow's nickname purely coincidental).

[WylieD]

I like a lot that you base much of your attraction to Senator Obama on his economic policy.

But here's the thing...how many of his supporters have the foggiest notion of their candidate's position on foreign trade and the home mortgage meltdown?

When was the last time Obama got up at one of his rallies and talked specifics about these?

I suspect that Obama's popularity with the majority of his supporters is based on their not knowing the specifics, which allows them to fill in the blanks any way this wish.

[Lutak]

How do either of the candidates represent themselves on the major issues?

Websites like the one listed below could ultimately determine why more and more Democrats will defect to John McCain's camp.

Unfortunately, there is little about Obama that a website like this says that can be argued with...that is, unless you've flunked Philosphy 101 in college or never got to college in the first place.

Check it out:

http://www.chilkootmarketing.com/index.htm

What can be done?

Sooner or later all of us have to reckon with our consience and our higher intellectual powers and when this happens we are invariably forced to choose between our higher principles or a particular candidate.

Which candidate is traveling down the wrong road with this?

Which do you think is going to win out?

Our higher principles or the physical attributes of a particular candidate?

Predictably, older voters will vote in favor of their 'principles'...obviously, because they are more concerned about what happens after death and fear he who has the power to cast both soul and body into hell after they die.

The younger voters in contrast, since they have more time left in life to recant, are more likely to be reckless and prograstinate with principle in favor of 'idealism'.

These are the young and youthful voters that Obama appeals to and also why a lot of us older folks see Obama as 'the Pied Piper of the niave'.

However, (which is the next question to beg itself): 'When does Barack's own conscience begin to bother him?'

Personally, I think Obama needs to start thinking about what he can do to 'remake' his image if he wants to win this election. I'm not sure that he'll want to be that person he's beginning to look like against John McCain...who today represents everything that America stands for.

BUT, if Obama thinks he can win going the way he's headed, then let him go for it.

But, as for me and many like me who still sit on the fence until election time in November, we'll still be thinking that we'll have to live with ourselves long after this election is over in November and maybe these are the thoughts that the new young voters haven't considered yet...and there's still a lot that can happen between now and November...

And, this probably means that Obama faces a huge political swamp ahead...one that he has created for himself.