But every once in a while a combination of political opportunities arise to create new possibilities centering on a particular individual. The last such moment in American politics was in the late 1970s, when a conservative public mood and a rising coalition of social conservatives and anti-government business interests united behind Ronald Reagan to break the post-Great Society political stalemate of that era.

Barack Obama’s campaign for president has the potential to lead a similar breakthrough. While we cannot know at this time what the outcome of the fall election will be, signs of a broad electoral mobilization around the Obama candidacy, alongside forecasting models all pointing to a very large national Democratic swing, suggest the possibilities of an important new turn in American electoral politics.

Obama’s candidacy, and likely ascension to the presidency has, in my view, three potentially critical implications.

It is the first clear expression of an emerging progressive majority in American politics, centering on minorities, women, and educated middle-class social issue liberals. This “McGovern” coalition has now grown in size, partisan loyalty, and geographic concentration to govern, with Obama as its titular leader.

Second, a reasonably successful Obama presidency will likely make an important, if as yet unknowable, contribution to undermining the American racial state. Obama embodies in his own biography the emerging demographic reality of the United States. But beyond that, his post-racial political rhetoric and policy initiatives push underlying racial tensions in new, if unpredictable, directions, which at a minimum will shift the terrain.

Finally, if he wins Obama will assume the presidency with broad public support for many of his central initiatives which will end the worst excesses of the Bush Administration. The most important of these would include ending the war in Iraq, fixing the administrative incompetence and cronyism of the Bush years, reimpose higher tax-rates on the rich, and end America’s isolation from the world (in terms of both foreign and environmental policy).

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First, the election revealed startling divides within the feminist movement. While women under 40 tended to direct their excitement towards Obama, many older, “second wave” feminists ferociously supported Clinton. As the race progressed, accusations of betrayal, capitulation to the patriarchal status quo, and ascribing to limiting body-politics over true feminists principles were hurled from the pages of newsprint editorials and blogs across the generational and political fault lines.

The primary also battered the tenuous alliance between mainstream white feminists and politically activist women of color, as many black and Latina women were infuriated to see their points of view again rendered tangential distractions to “core” or “true,” women’s issues. Most dismaying for many was the fact that debates about the primary seemed to devolve into an “oppression sweepstakes,” in which Clinton supporters repeatedly emphasized the primacy of gender, while seeming to dismiss the significance of race and racism all together.

There are many other issues arising from this primary that scholars will debate for some time. Views about Clinton’s legacy for women, for example, are widely contradictory. While some held the former first lady to be a true feminist hero, others found her political tactics to be repugnant and anti-feminist at their core. From the beginning, Barack Obama’s candidacy was seen as much more potentially historic and transformative than Hillary Clinton’s. Furthermore, racial innuendoes designed to undermine Obama received much more analysis and condemnation from the press than the often more blatantly sexist rhetoric directed at Clinton. Why this was the case is an open question. We must also ask, To what extent did race help or hinder Obama in the election? Did his gender privilege in fact “override” the racial disadvantages he faced? Is there any truth to the claim that within the realm of politics at least, gender is a more significant hurdle than race?

The 2008 primary was remarkable, historic and triumphal in many ways. But it also led to acrimonious intergenerational and ideological debates among feminists, aggravated the divide between activist women of color and the “mainstream” women’s movement, occasioned a wellspring of black fury towards the Clintons, led to the specter of legions of angry white women declaring they would stay home or vote for McCain before they would support Obama, and unearthed an undercurrent of misogyny among liberal white men, as they, ironically, found their voices as champions of racial justice. Given these realities, the final question we must ask is, how do progressives of all stripes go forward, together, from here?

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US racial structures are often the subject of discussion in the public sphere in a surprising number of places around the world; traditionally in Brazil, the discussion had to do with the visible aspects of racism in the US (lynching, Jim Crow, ghettoes) to reaffirm that Brazil’s supposedly fluid system of racial categories is less racist and more democratic. More recently it has had to do with affirmative action currently tentatively implemented in some universities: in absence of US style racism, the argument goes, Brazil should not need US-style solutions. But now the discussion, not always polite, has turned indignant. “How can it be that a more racist country like the United States can have a Black presidential candidate?”

Obama sounds post-racial (and post-political); the language of racial injury is seldom part of Obama’s lexicon, and there is little in his pronouncements about redress of racial injustice. Nonetheless, his very presence on the national stage in the United States seems to speak to the successes of US-style multiculturalism and affirmative policies (strategies that are racially explicit but work within structures) to publics around the world, despite his actual biography.

What has traveled is the unlikely, unbelievable, image of a Black Man running for president. This holds up an uncomfortable mirror to societies whose self-narratives are about merit and that deny the very possibility of identity politics and affirmative policies. How many sons of African or Arab immigrants have run for elected office in France? Or for that matter, how many Afro-Cubans hold prominent posts in the Cuban government? Or even more starkly, how many Black Lawyers are there in Brazil?

Certainly some of the social significance of Obama’s campaign and eventual presidency has to do with these types of global implications. The point for progressives is to exploit the tensions they generate, without falling into a celebration of the end of US racism or becoming trapped by the limits of post-racial post-politics.

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For example, my first election interview was with Don, vice president of the local bank, a big wheel at the Chamber of Commerce, a known name and leading citizen, and an Obama supporter. “He seems able to bring a couple of the sides together and find consensus”, Don had said, while “the others are running along the same old party lines”.

In a local context, these sentiments seemed only too natural. The economic “restructuring” of the 1970s had swept the captains of industry and populist politicians that once vied for local control from public life. In their place emerged new leaders like Don, who believe that uncertain economic times require avoiding “divisive” issues and reorienting civic life towards consensus driven “partnerships”: coming together to beautify downtown, create cultural amenities, and generally encourage economic development.

Ironically, Obama’s seemingly idealistic message of post-partisan cooperation appeared refreshingly pragmatic in this local context. This won Obama high profile supporters at a time when he was stumping in mostly-empty school gymnasiums, thus making the crucial Iowa caucus win possible.

In an election of historic firsts it is important to not overlook this one: Obama’s message attracted those with an increasingly dominant role in the economic and political life of the cities I studied—and I suspect this was true elsewhere. This could be a significant re-alignment, as further evidenced by nervousness about Obama among some traditional Democratic constituencies. Most probably assume that this nervousness stems from prejudice, but I think this misses the complexity of the situation.

On a local level, governing through “partnerships” often serves to sideline the contentious perspectives of actors insufficiently organized to have a “seat at the table”. If the Democratic Party is orienting itself towards those who favor a similar style nationally, those sidelined locally could loose their seat within the Party. Even a politics without “sides” produces “losers”.

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Obama, a former community organizer, has succeeded so far because of personal courage and politically sophisticated get-vote-out organizing and fund-raising—implemented by technologically savvy staff making creative use of the Internet—and because overwhelming majorities in Democratic caucuses/primaries are voters of color and liberal/moderate whites. African Americans have shown record-setting political astuteness and muscle.

Obama’s candidacy has also revealed the systemic reality of U.S. racism. The overwhelming majority of whites voting in Republican and Democratic primaries/caucuses (taken together) voted for white candidates; absent major scandals or health issues, a substantial majority appear likely to vote for war hero McCain in November. The number of racialized attacks on Obama (e.g., Muslim religion, Wright, and Rezco) by whites in mainstream media and hundreds of mainstream (YouTube) and supremacist Internet sites has been dramatic and is growing (with many 527 Republican-group ads coming).

The naïveté (misrepresentation) about “open-minded, not racist” white voters and neglect of social science data on explicit/backstage, implicit, and duplicitous racism by the media—including progressive blogs—indicate that colorblind thinking and rhetoric are central in covering up the continuing impact of what I term the “white racial frame,” the centuries-old, white-constructed racist frame rationalizing white prejudice and discrimination against African Americans—including likely large-scale white voter decisions against a black presidential candidate in November.

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Unfortunately, the so-called movement behind Obama’s candidacy, the policies Obama advocates, and the pronouncements on race Obama has issued so far may not produce the change we all want and that his campaign has taken as a slogan.

The reasons why his election may not be a progressive event in American history are: (1) Obama does not represent a genuine social movement, (2) his policies are centrist, and in the last few weeks, he has moved clearly to the right, (3) a large portion of his funding comes from elites (through “bundling”) and they have received preferential access to Obama, (4) he has taken a problematic color-blind, post-racial approach to politics and policies, and (5) his rise to political stardom means something different for whites and non-whites making even the symbolic value of his election a problematic matter.

Rather than hope, his election may prolong hopelessness and reduce the space for open racial contestation. With no social movement in the horizon, the only option at this juncture is for progressives to force Obama to commit to a few basic things or risk losing their support. Otherwise the Republicrat candidate will win and Obamerica will look very much like Bush’s America.

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