Today we are not as well off as we once were, especially when you compare now to the late 1970's. It is simply a fact of life that describes the core economic effects (on-the-ground and at the kitchen table) of multiple Reagan and Bush trickle-down economic experiments, and that of the Clintonian free-trade debacle; on the American economy. We have lost millions of jobs in hundreds of industries, and the American industrial economy is not as strong now as it was when we were growing up.
Some people bash immigration policy or immigrants themselves when looking for someone to blame for the problem. Others blame the degradation of America's “moral fabric” as a reason. These same people do in fact “cling” to religion or their guns, or their racist or anti-immigrant sentiments when looking for someone to blame for the loss of what they knew as a better time in America. Waxing emotional and longing for a more innocent, more prosperous, and what they see as a better American life; they often point the finger at others for the problems that exist in the American economy today as a way of explaining why they vote a certain way – as if it is necessarily the single answer to the woes they suffer from in their daily life.
Think it isn't true? Look at the current dust-up over last week's "bitterness" comments from Barack Obama and how he has been attacked on all sides at a seemingly holier-than-thou level by pundits and opponents alike, and then tell me there isn't something deeper at work here. I say the manipulative power of "the wedge" is hard at work here.
The super-mega-all-that-and-a-buffet-to-boot-churches in the suburbs have thrived on stirring the "wedge" pot. The usually white male pastors of these churches, rarely afraid to get political when it suits them; would rather spew cloaked hatred for homosexuals, jews, african-americans, liberals, and anyone else who challenges their agenda than point to the fact that they are once again begging for money to go to their own coffers to to build even bigger mega-churches -- or speak about the strength of spiritual unity in dealing with the world's problems. These same leaders are the ones to preach “conservative values” from the pulpit, neglecting to mention of course that the conservatism they so readily endorse is the same brand of political schlock that has caused a major portion of their congregations to be looking for work more often and at a lower pay grade than ever before.
The gun lobby, with its powerful stranglehold on the Republican Party and even much of the Democratic party as well, has its message well-inserted in the debate. Aligning within the “God, Gays, and Guns” idealogical platform that even now persists as a right-wing modus operandi that drives today's debate on the Right; the gun lobby looks us right in the eye across the dead bodies of 25 Chicago Public School children and recites the 2nd Amendment as a justification for the average person to have a “right” to own an automatic weapon. Anyone who dares challenge that idea must be a gun-hating liberal fag, elitist hippy jew, or worse...a Democrat.
If all of this ilk seems to sound just a bit “off” it is because it is just a bit off. What I'm really talking about here is the use of “wedge” issues in the modern political campaign. American campaign strategists are masters at the manipulation of the electorate through wedge issues, and there is a wedge for nearly everything that a voter can identify as their “issue” when choosing a candidate. Rather than uniting behind a single candidate or ideal, "wedges" gain their power through identifying and exploiting political division.
Karl Rove, often chastised by the left as a “master manipulator” of wedge issues in political campaigns, for years has successfully served Republican candidates -- including sitting President George H.W. Bush, through identification and seeming diabolical tweaking of “wedge groups” within the electorate to achieve a desired result. Democratic candidates, never ones to deny the power of learning from their mistakes, in the last several elections took Rove's bait, and did everything they could to become as good at “wedging” as Rove and his numerous imitators across the country; the result being a limited amount of success in the last Congressional elections.
Now along comes Barack Obama, speaking an uplifting message of unity against division; ignoring (some say transcending) party lines and racial stereotypes, inviting all to rise up in a populist message the likes of which has not been heard from U.S. Presidential candidates of any stripe in my lifetime. His message of unity, rising above, and growing beyond the things that have made us different; against other candidates that themselves are the product of wedge elections and wedge-driven campaigning, seems almost an alien concept. It certainly has caused many pundits to pooh-pooh the message in almost an indignant fashion; scoffing at him and his band of Chicago-based idealistic “kids” as just another group of greenhorns who aren't “ready on day one” to lead.
In explaining the phenomenon, even Obama himself has stumbled in describing exactly what the impact has been, that of wedge issues, on the self-perception the electorate holds, and exactly why we are so “bitter” as a whole. The use of the word “bitter” has been criticized by Obama's enemies in the week since he made some oddly-posed comments to a group of well-off San Francisco-based donors about what he was experiencing out on the campaign trail. (For you wedge-aficionados out there read that group as “rich San Francisco liberal elitists.”)
The problem is, Barack Obama probably said out loud what a lot of people say in their heads when talking about the “average working-class voter.” In referring to that voter as “bitter” and “clinging to religion” and “clinging to guns” Obama revealed himself within the lens of the “professor” in a way that is not probably very beneficial to him as a candidate for President of the United States. He may have been right, and I would argue he probably is right...we are “bitter” about the current state of our lives and the economy; but he said it out loud where a blogger/reporter was present—the result being a front-pager on the Huffington Post. That usually isn't the way one would want to be candid with a group of donors when you're wanting to cast yourself in the populist bent as a unity candidate, whether you believe it or not.
So what to do, what to do? Well I would argue, nothing more than he has done. We knew based on Karl Rove's own comments that the Right was going to try to cast either candidate on the Democratic side in the wedge model through whisper campaigns and overly-simplistic labels that their base would understand. I.e. if the candidate ends up being Obama..the labels will be “closet Islamist, elitist radical black guy.” Yep, that should cover it...just enough negative labels to scare the bejeezsus out of the “proud Christian, patriotic American white soccer moms and dads” out there into voting for the chosen "Republican maverick, Christian “War Hero” white guy...in this case John McCain.
If the candidate would be (in a snowball's chance in Hell at this point) Hillary Clinton, well she's just a “liberal elitist carpetbagging millionaire liar,” and a Clinton to boot.
You see where I'm going here? Either way the Republican party will find a way to push the wedge issues and put more fear and division out there in an effort to hold on to power in the White House.
What should not happen, though, is for the Clinton campaign to latch on to the politics of division and push the wedges, no matter how tempting it is, in a vain attempt for Hillary to become the Democratic nominee. Unfortunately I don't think she nor her husband; having been the victims of, and having defeated in the past, the Republican hate-machine; can resist that temptation. They love power and the prospect of being back in The White House way too much. They hate to lose, and they hate to lose way more than they hate the politics of division. So, we can expect that both of the Clintons will continue to hammer away at Obama on this small gaffe as a way to push their own mis-cast new found populism. Heck, they've got, what--$100 million or so to throw at the problem in order to win, right?
Hopefully Obama's core message of unity, rising above wedge politics, will win out in the end. Those of us who are indeed “bitter” will hopefully rally around the candidate that speaks to our “better angels” and prove that wedges do not make us a stronger union, but simply produce a weaker result. Hopefully we as an electorate will not be distracted by this attempt by our economic, social, and class-war overseers to frame the debate for us once again, by appealing to our fears and yes, our “bitterness,” and drive us to the “grandpa” candidate that makes us feel that “its going to be alright.”
This is a fight for the next 8 years of our country's direction. We should not hesitate to look Grandpa and the Clintons in the eye and tell them that their brand of “wedge” politics time has passed, and that we are fed up with the status quo. We must show them that in fact it is time to transcend that divisiveness and go with a candidate that speaks to uniting our country, even if that means having to accept a few of our chosen candidates' rhetorical mistakes along the way.
