Comment

A New Era?: The 2008 US Elections, Public Opinion, and the Mass Media

Deepa Kumar

In his thorough analysis of US polling data in Constructing Public Opinion, Justin Lewis argued that the range of acceptable public debate in the mainstream media in the States goes from right to center. This is because the political elite, the Democrats and Republicans, who set the terms of discussion in the media have views that are virtually identical on all the major issues, and which fall to the right of the political spectrum. Since the 'primary definers of news' set a right wing agenda, positions to the left are often viewed with suspicion and hostility. The end result then is that the public is presented as more conservative that it actually is. When opinion polls show public support for liberal positions, such as a government run health care system or greater spending on education etc., the media simply ignore them or distort them in one way or the other.

As a result of this representation, most people have come to see the public in the US as being, at best, apathetic and, at worst, reactionary. Certainly, the McCain-Palin campaign had hoped to exploit this understanding of the American public to advance their agenda. Through the campaign, Obama was called a Muslim (which apparently is a attack on his character), of associating with 'those' radical black preachers, of being an 'uppity' black, a terrorist sympathizer, a 'redistributor', and finally a Marxist and a socialist. Yet, all of these efforts to cajole the 'reactionary American public' backfired. Barack Hussein Obama pulled off a landslide victory. And voter turnout is estimated to be around 65%, the highest since 1908.

This victory marks a significant blow against racism and a shift leftward. Even while one acknowledges that the changing demographics of the US voting population has reduced the relative importance of the white vote, while boosting that of Blacks, Latinos and other immigrants, whites still constitute a majority. Exit polls estimate that 43% of whites voted for Obama, with white women outnumbering men. Contrary to the claims of pundits, many white workers enthusiastically voted for the Black candidate in the 2008 election. Obama's victory would have been impossible without them.

Obama held his election eve rally in Northern Virginia. Apart from being the state where the first battle of the civil war was fought, General Robert E. Lee commanded the army of North Virginia and defended slavery till he was forced to surrender. It is no small feat that one hundred and forty three years later, a black man won not only Virginia but the presidential elections in a country founded on slavery. This shift is a decisive rejection of the Republican conservative agenda and particularly of the so-called 'Southern strategy', i.e. appealing to the backlash against the civil rights period. Without a doubt, the political tenor of the US has shifted leftward.

Most analysts have presented Obama's victory as a backlash against the Bush presidency. Certainly, the Bush administration will go down as being one of the most despised in recent memory. As Americans went out to cast their vote on November 4^th, the latest CBS News Tracking Poll revealed that Bush's approval rating was down to 20%, the lowest ever recorded for a president.

But the story is bigger than the Bush years. Starting in the 1970s, the political elite sought to curb and bring under their control the progressive movements of the 1960s-the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the struggle for gay liberation and so on. While the Republicans led the right wing backlash by reaching out to evangelical supporters who would then become their base, the Democrats weren't too far behind. The Democratic Leadership Coalition, founded in the mid-1980s, was based on shifting the party away from its association with social movements and in a more conservative direction. Thus, even when Democrats held a majority in both houses, and/or when they held the presidency under Clinton, affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay rights came under attack.

The bipartisan consensus on the economy meant that over the last three decades the vast majority of people in the US have seen their incomes stagnate or deteriorate, while a tiny minority at the top have seen their wealth increase dramatically. However, the conservative neoliberal agenda pursued enthusiastically by Republicans and Democrats alike has come to an end. On the eve of what looks like the worst economic crisis since the great depression, the majority of people are skeptical about the Washington consensus. They have voted along class lines, rejecting the traditional race barrier that has divided the US working class.

Obama won because he gave voice to, and helped shape, the desire for change by offereing a different kind of politics than what is usually on display in Washington. He offered hope to a silent majority that has willfully been kept out of the public debate by the corporate media. He effectively tapped into the anxiety and fears of the US working class in a way that Clinton failed to. Clinton's message was about a return to the Bill Clinton years; but the vast majority wanted far greater change. In short, what the failure of the attack campaigns against Obama shows is that the country is more to the left that media pundits would have us believe. It has been for a while, but has gone unnoticed till now. Opinion polls have shown popular sentiment shifting leftward on nearly every social issue, from the Iraq war to same-sex marriage in recent years. The presidential election, avidly covered by the mainstream media, has allowed the silent majority to register the shift leftward in a way that commands one to take notice. The era of Republican hubris and agenda setting is over. But what does this new age represent?

Will Obama deliver on his promises? Will he bring us socialism? As Obama himself explains using the language of the free market, 'John McCain calls this [his tax plan] socialism, I call it opportunity'. Even a brief perusal of Obama's positions on everything from the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to social issues shows that his agenda is far from radical, if anything he has run a solidly centrist campaign as he himself has acknowledged on many occasions. He has not only defended himself against charges of being a socialist in free market terms, he has done little to take principled positions on oppression and racism. He is against gay marriage, and this in part explains the defeat of same sex marriage referendums in three states. When charged with being a Muslim, his campaign did not argue that there was nothing wrong with being Muslim. Furthermore, he has not accepted a single invitation to speak at a Mosque. He initially defended his pastor Jeremiah Wright only to denounce him later. He failed to mount a defense of the 'terrorist' Bill Ayers's anti-war activism, or of Rashid Khalidi, who was presented as an 'extremist' and 'terrorist sympathizer' for his support of the Palestinian cause.

While an Obama presidency will likely see the passage of some progressive legislation, it will not usher in anything close to the change that his supporters hope for, and certainly not socialism. For that sort of change, the silent majority has to organize independently and flex its collective muscle. The passage of ballot measures in California, Colorado and South Dakota in support of abortion rights, is an indication of the progressive shift. Yet, bans on same sex marriage in Arizona, California, and Florida is a move in the opposite direction. This is both an indication of contradictions within popular consciousness, and an example of how political elites will continue to set the terms of debate until a progressive left, independent of the Democratic Party, can organize around a different agenda. Perhaps the biggest travesty of a center-right discussion in the media is the failure to reflect upon the US's radical traditions and socialist history: a collective memory that is badly needed to press for social change in this new era.

What is largely kept out of public consciousness is that the first half of the 20^th century was dominated by radical politics. In the early part of the century, prominent writers like Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Theordore Dreiser, and Frank Norris either spoke for socialism or criticized capitalism harshly. Sinclair's book The Jungle, which exposed conditions in the meatpacking industry, and was first published in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, sold millions of copies. 'Muckrakers' or investigative journalists raked up corruption and misery everywhere. Workers stood up and fought back against unjust conditions through strikes and other struggles. And in this context, millions would be inspired by the idea of a society based on human need rather than the greed of corporations. The Socialist Party and the anarchist IWW grew enormously out of this activity. Running from jail for speaking out against World War One, Eugene Debs the Socialist Party candidate won close to a million votes in 1920.

The 1930s similarly saw a rise in struggle against the conditions produced by the Great Depression. Between 1934 and 1937, millions of workers went on strike and created the most powerful unions in US history. In that struggle, the American Communist Party grew from 7,000 members in 1929 to 80,000 by 1938. Michael Denning argues that the very culture of the US was 'labored' during this period as artists, writers, musicians, cartoonists and a whole host of others supported the working class movement. In 1942, a poll conducted by Fortune magazine found that 25% of Americans favored socialism and another 35% had an open mind about it.

Today, the history of these radical and socialist traditions in the US is all but unknown; McCarthyism and the business assault took care of that. With the destruction of the left, radical media also disappeared ceding ideological hegemony to the conglomerated media system we have today.

Yet, the experience of living under a capitalist society has a way of shattering in the minds of its victims the propaganda spewed out by the corporate media. The American Dream is a myth, and most people in the US know that despite television's repeated claims to the contrary. The key question then is what will happen after the 2008 elections. When Obama inevitably disappoints his supporters will they turn to the streets? Will they organize in their workplaces? And will they reclaim the legacy of radical struggles in the United States? I hope so.