I have very conflicted feelings about the upcoming presidential election, though I am not an undecided voter. I know exactly whom I’m voting for.
No, I’m conflicted because the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama has elicited such contradictory emotions. For a long time I have been at once extremely excited and deeply disillusioned.
This makes little sense, but it’s true. And in the past month, as Obama has built a solid lead over Sen. John McCain thanks to the financial crisis, and it has become clear that barring an unforeseen or unexpected event he will most likely win the election, more and more liberals are voicing similar feelings of ambivalence. If anything, the debates encouraged this tension.
“I hate to say it, but Obama is still the lesser of two evils,” a state politician, who is a Democrat, told me recently. This was after the first presidential debate. Obama had just skewered McCain for failing to use the words “middle class” once during the debate.
This claim received significant attention, and made McCain seem out of touch with “everyday” voters – the effect Obama’s campaign was hoping for. But it overshadowed a much sadder truth: neither candidate spoke of the “lower class” or the “working class.”
In fact, in all of the past 14 presidential debates going back to 1992, including this year’s, official transcript records from the Commission on Presidential Debates show that not a single candidate of either party ever used those phrases. Not once.
Imagine that.
To be fair, those are labels rarely used by politicians anymore. But in a combined 270 minutes of debating, Obama and McCain also never mentioned the more accepted term “lower-income” once. They didn’t even utter the word “poor.”
Instead, both candidates promised over and over again they would fight for middle class America. It appears the middle class is America’s new underdog. And the lower class? To hear politicians speak, it apparently no longer exists.
What America are these men debating in?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2007 the country’s official poverty rate was 12.5 percent. More than 37 million Americans live in poverty. In August of this year, the national unemployment rate rose from 5.7 to 6.1 percent, according to the latest report issued by the US. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 9.5 million people are without jobs.
Despite these appalling statistics, poor people and the working poor are ignored in presidential debates, on the campaign trail and by the mainstream media. (And we wonder why voter turnout is so low in this country).
It comes as no surprise that a Republican candidate like McCain pays no attention to lower-income Americans. His idol, after all, is Ronald Reagan. But that Obama, when the lights are brightest, pays equally little attention to those in need is more startling. Their similarity on this issue highlights Obama’s relatively conservative economic platform. More than anything, however, it is a reflection of how far the Democentric Party has moved toward the middle.
This is where my disillusionment with Obama begins. Obama is not simply blind to the needs of the underprivileged. He did not grow up rich, and in adulthood rejected a lucrative law career for one in public service. He spent his formative years as a community organizer. As a state senator, before he was catapulted onto the fast track to the presidency, he worked to improve the standard of living and quality of social services for his mainly poor, black constituency on the South Side of Chicago.
As a presidential candidate, however, he has had to campaign within an existing political system – and for a political party – that discriminates against poor people.
This reality speaks to the contradictory nature of Obama’s candidacy. He is perhaps more aware of the need for real structural economic reform to ensure a true equal opportunity society than any previous candidate for the White House, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. He has a specific plan to help lift people out of poverty that includes strong initiatives from job-creation to progressive tax relief. He has a deep understanding that America’s energy, health, education and economic policies represent a generational challenge that must be addressed.
To a certain extent, however, Obama’s hands are tied.
Obama’s failure to speak of poor people in the debates wasn’t because he simply forgot about them. Obama is a brilliant man who doesn’t forget very much. But he is also a politician running for the highest office in the country. And candidates for president have to appeal to the broadest majority of voters possible to be elected. In America, moving to the middle means riding the middle class highway.
Obama’s own shift in that direction, which began when he ran for U.S. Senate four years ago, has frustrated many who have followed his ascent. To cite only a few other examples besides his economic policy platform, he does not support unrestricted universal health care; is committed to alternative energy but also supports clean coal technology development and off-shore drilling; is committed to prolonging and intensifying the war in Afghanistan; and holds an extremely competitive worldview that advocates for continued America dominance, albeit one of a new and different kind.
My own coverage of Obama, going back to 2004, disinclines me to believe these policy positions really represent his value system. Obama is an exceptionally intelligent, disciplined politician with real moral integrity who I hope and believe could become, by modern standards, a great president.
He is a transformational figure who has proved Americans are more compassionate and less divided than we care to admit. His vision of social justice, of unity, is genuine and it is audaciously hopeful. (Pessimism is too easy; the best leaders inspire hope). Proof of all this is Obama’s success thus far; if he wins, he will have run one of the best campaigns for president in history.
Yet Obama very willingly adopted a centrist platform out of political expediency. Because of this, his promise has been somewhat compromised. Of course, all politicians, even the most gifted, have no choice but to make this sacrifice. That’s part of the deal and I don’t blame Obama for it. But understanding this reality doesn’t make it any less disappointing.