Yes, no, maybe, it depends.

Check out this great post at Andrew Gelman’s blog.

HT: The Monkey Cage.

Key passage:

Voters may be to the left of the Democratic party or to the right of the Republican party on specific issues, but, on the whole, most voters don’t have that sort of ideological consistency.

Even thought the post debate flash polls declared Obama the runaway winner, I have a creeping suspicion that this presidential race is going to tighten. The McCain campaign has been remarkably undisciplined at pinning the “liberal” label on Obama. While we might be embroiled in a financial meltdown, there are certain policy positions which are do not meet what James March called the “logic of appropriateness.” One of these, support for late-term abortions, Obama handled with aplomb in last night’s debate. I’ve been wondering when the Republicans were going to go after another of Obama’s “inapprorpriate” positions in support of state laws that provide driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. Well, here ya go:

This all might be a little too late. it is difficult to change public perceptions of a candidate with 19 days left to go in the election. But if there is an underlying distrust or soft support among working class white, an ad like this might just be able to pry 1-2% back to McCain or to the sidelines…especially if the Dow keeps rising. I’m just sayin’.

I suppose it’s not surprising to hear Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister say, “We are witnessing the collapse of the American Empire.” Nor is it a surprise from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (“American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road”). Heck, we even expect to hear it from good old Lefties like Immanuel Wallerstein or “liberal professors” like Michael Ignatieff in the pages of the New York Times (who buried the American Empire back in 2003). What we don’t expect is to hear is political and economic elites acknowledging either the United States’ status as an imperial power or that our position as world leader might be slipping away from us. As Ignatieff notes, in 2002, President Bush went out of his way to deny our status as an imperial power, first saying, ”America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish” and later commenting, “[the U.S. has] no territorial ambitions. We don’t seek an empire. Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others.”

But with the American economy collapsing, we’re beginning to see tears shed for the good ol’ days of empire. In the New Yorker, Nick Paumgarten quotes “a top-ranking executive at a major global financial institution” as saying,

“In the past, in difficult times, Americans just worked harder,” he went on. “But there aren’t enough hours in the day, or enough incentives to work harder, and there’s nothing to work on. People, in the end, will find a way to work their way out of it. They’ll pay down their debts. They’ll have to. And then everyone will get bored with doom and gloom and dip their toes in again.

“Still, this one is so bad. After 9/11, it took people only six months to get stupid. This time, it will take ten years for people to become stupid again.” He continued, “America will just be less influential. It will be poorer. It may be the end of the empire.”

Maybe, like a bad break-up, American elites can only fully appreciate what they had now that it’s gone. Or perhaps, we’re living through a moment where the language of radicals is suddenly more permissible. John McCain’s language of “class warfare” appears to be falling flat. Critiques of free market capitalism abroad. For example, centrist Fareed Zakaria writes, “in the long run, countries are likely to seek independence from an unstable superpower … We cannot keep preaching about democracy and capitalism with our house so wildly out of order.” On the Washington Post/Newsweek online symposium, “On Faith,” Willis Elliott, a progressive minister suggests, “We should have a funeral for two dead false gods, the market and the American empire.” We even see conservative Republicans calling for more regulation! Aren’t these all ideas that would have been labeled “communist” just a few years ago?

Of course, before anybody gets too “gleeful” about the fall of Empire and the possibilities for more equitable distributions of wealth and power, perhaps we should consider Hardt and Negri’s notion of the new imperialism. In Multitude, they write,

“…[the] contemporary global order can no longer be understood adequately in terms of imperialism as it was practiced by the modern powers, based primarily on the sovereignty of the nation-state extended over foreign territory. Instead, a “network power,” a new form of sovereignty, is now emerging, and it includes…the dominant national-states along with supernational institutions, major capitalist corporations, and other powers.”

Thus, even if America loses some influence, the imperial “network” will remain in tact. So, perhaps, we’re all a bit too quick to pronounce the end of empire and the theology of the market. Maybe the empire of today will just lose a little of its American flavor.

Hardly noticed in the angst and turmoil over the so-called financial rescue plan was the verdict in the O.J. Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial.  Much has been made of the confluence of 13’s: the verdict coming 13 years to the day after the former USC running back and Heisman Trophy winner was acquitted for the Brentwood double murders. After a 13-day trial, the jurors deliberated 13 hours to arrive at guilty verdicts on 13 counts of crimes committed on September 13. Thirteen is O.J. Simpson’s unlucky number

Besides the financial crisis, the other distraction from the third O.J. trial was the election of the century, pitting an African-American candidate, Barack Obama, born in the 1960s, against John McCain, the grandson and son of admirals, who is even older than the baby boomers who contested and occupied the White House for the last 16 years.  African-American blogger Jasmyne Cannick contends that O.J. has “finally run out of juice” now that his “ghetto pass” has been revoked.  O.J. could formerly count on the same blind support that saw Mike Tyson leave jail to cheers from African Americans following his rape sentence.  Singer R. Kelly had the support of at least some segments of the same community as he stood trial for child pornography and was recently acquitted.

Maybe the fact that O.J. came to this bitter end in relative obscurity suggests that the Black community has better alternatives than celebrities facing charges of rape, murder, and other serious felonies.  Maybe the customs officials in Black America have issued an honorary ghetto pass to Barack Obama, who has White voters as well as African-American voters clamoring for his attention.  The notion of Black jury nullification has given way to a transformative candidate who holds the promise of unifying a nation grown tired of wedge issues and identity politics.  Are you listening Jesse Jackson?

From Ben Smith

Somebody in one of our disciplines has to go out and test whether or not this is an effective GOTV (get out the vote) strategy. it’s a doable study if you could get data on video game purchases by state/county/city and compare it to early voting figures in those areas. Who’s with me?

It’s a testament to the orgy of cash the Obama campaign has on hand that it can venture into these untested areas to spread it’s message. it has targeted hearing impaired voters in Missouri, and has purchased a its own cable channel on Dish Network.

I wonder if any of you have any insight into whether cyberappeals would be an effective strategy for turning out voters?

I’ve been reading sociologist Amitai Etzioni’s thoughts on what he calls commutarianism.  He describes the Clinton presidency on the liberal blog, The Huffington Post, as defying liberal/conservative labels by being commutarian:

[Clinton] certainly did reveal some liberal proclivities, but his welfare reform was clearly in a conservative mode, and he capped most social programs in order to balance the budget. (He ended up generating a surplus which the Bush administration inherited and squandered). At other times, when looking for common ground, promoting volunteerism (AmeriCorps), and trying to defuse tensions between the races and between the religious right and the liberal secularists, Clinton was much more a communitarian than a liberal.

Communitarianism, a social philosophy centered around the concept of community, is hardly a household word and is very unlikely to become one. However, one should consider it — because Barack Obama is easily the most communitarian presidential candidate of all those we have seen for decades.

He later defines commutarianism as being focused on the importance of community, the common good, and service, contrasting it with divisive strategies such as identity politics.  

How does this fit in with the American ideal of individualism?  Hasn’t society become increasingly fragmented to the point where there isn’t a shared society or culture?  Could you just say that Clinton and Obama are simply being pragmatic in their approach?  Isn’t McCain a commutarian, as well?

Politics aside for a moment, I think there’s something to this idea of commutarianism, given sociological research on organizations, well entrenched in the workings of capitalism.  In task-oriented settings, you can have “communities of practice” that go beyond functional areas (e.g., marketing, finance, accounting, etc.) and even organizational boundaries (firms collaborating on innovations or dividing up specialized tasks).  It begs the question of what are the true drivers of collaboration in politics that go beyond immediate self-interest?  Is it trust?  Framing activities as uniting common causes?  All of the above?

I think it’s hard to be communitarian in certain contexts and one only has to look at office politics to see evidence of this.  Nevertheless, I think that as a philosophy that can be embedded in a set of values, commutarianism can foster a shift in priorities.  These shifts could be good or bad, so I don’t feel that commutarianism is a panacea.  I do feel that these shifts require a critical mass of shared values and the meanings behind them.  I don’t think a lot of this is new, but I think what is new is getting the general populace thinking and behaving in these terms and replicating this over time.

Why have the United States been unable to foster quality civic engagement in Iraq? The US government never adequately earned its authority in the country. Despite the advice of General David Petraeus and others, commitments to the basic welfare of Iraqis went undemonstrated. Schools and roads were left in disrepair or unbuilt. By the time the 2005 elections happened, Iraqi voters had little trust in US-led institutions for improving their own lives and prosperity, which led to the joint disaster in which Iraqis and Americans presently find themselves. Had the United States been able to establish legitimacy early, US diplomats would have been able to help stop Iraq’s internal conflicts.

So say Nancy Soderberg and Brian Katulis. For them, Iraq provides the most conspicuous example of a frequent problem for the United States. Their book, The Prosperity Agenda, presents a way of reorganizing the role of the United States in the world. US-led projects that raise global prosperity, they suggest, would be reciprocated with greater willingness to cooperate with other US political, social, and economic interests.

How can we reduce this thesis into something more measurable? Here’s one suggestion. more...

Thought I’d pass along a revealing new study by political scientists Melissa Michaelson, Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Donald Green on the factors associated with increasing voter turnout among low-income and new immigrant populations. The study is part of a larger initiative by the James Irvine foundation to increase voter turnout among underrepresented groups.

The authors found that personally contacting Latino voters was significantly more effective in increasing turnout than mailings or using pre-recorded phone calls. The study in a nutshell from a new America media article:

Using a control group that received no contact from outreach workers, researchers looked at voter turnout in the June 2006 election and found that the voters who had been contacted by volunteers were more likely to go to the polls on Election Day. Researchers identified the same trend in the 2008 primary election in California.

Here are the best practices culled from the study:

1. recruiting canvassers: stay close to home. Canvassers should ideally be drawn from the local community, either residents of the same neighborhood or representatives of a local organization or religious institution. Canvassers who are personally known to targeted voters are particularly effective at increasing turnout.
2. Canvasser training: get comfortable with the conversation. Good canvassing practices can enhance the effectiveness of a campaign. Groups that train to increase canvasser comfort with the script seem to be most effective in their outreach efforts. This training helps ensure interactions between canvassers and voters are conversational as well as informative.
3. Campaign timing: work the inal four weeks. Going to the ield too early can decrease a campaign’s effectiveness. Canvassing should not begin more than four weeks before Election Day.
4. door-to-door approach: personal contacts work best. Campaigns should ideally use face-to-face canvassing, although phone banks can be preferable for turning out widely dispersed or multilingual populations.
5. live phone banking: pre-screen, personalize and follow up. Phone bank calling is enhanced by pre-screening lists for working numbers (this increases eficiency and helps maintain canvasser morale) and by making follow-up calls to those who earlier expressed an intention to vote. While many communities can be targeted by English-speaking or bilingual English-Spanish speakers, effective phone bank calling in most Asian American communities requires a multilingual approach. The study found that turnout increased if the person making the contact knew the canvasser and if the contact was within four weeks of the election.

While this study provides great insight into increasing turnout, my hope is that we begin to pay equal attention to how new immigrant and low income groups form the political attitudes that shape how they vote in the first place.

It wasn’t too long ago that Geraldine Ferraro made her infamous comment theorizing that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Her sentiment that his race conferred advantages to him was reinforced by the writings of Shelby Steele. In his book on Obama, Steele suggests that Obama is a “bargainer.” Here is how Steele describes a bargainer:

Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him.

Here’s a good synopsis of Steele’s argument on NPR.

According to Steele, this perceived ability Obama has to absolve whites of past racial sins, makes him a particularly attractive candidate to many:

For many Americans — black and white — Barack Obama is simply too good (and too rare) an opportunity to pass up. For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers. And for blacks, here is the chance to document the end of inferiority.

Steele’s book title points to a downfall in a bargainer’s campaign:

bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don’t know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.)

Steele’s presumption that as the public got to know Obama, he would be exposed as the complex product of his mixed-race background that he is and his public support would fall. A look at the latest Gallup tracking poll 4 weeks out has Obama with an 11 point lead over Mccain. Why hasn’t it happened? Is Steele wrong? Has Obama had to hide his complexity to win? He has displayed a plodding, yet disciplined and effective, blandness since capturing the democratic nomination.

Steele also argues in the NPR interview that he can only win if he clearly specifies “who he is.” has he done so? You notice that “change” has largely been absent from recent Obama speeches? Has he become somewhat wonkish and more specific to address criticisms that he is merely an empty vessel of change? has the financial crisis eclipsed the main thesis of Steele’s book?

In all the years I’ve been following presidential elections, I’ve never heard someone from an audience call the candidate from the opposing party “a terrorist.”

Dana Milbank at the Washington post reported a similar incident at a Palin rally in florida where members of the crowd allegedly yelled “kill him” regarding Obama during her speech. Regardless of your political persuasion, this has to be a bit unsettling. I fear we’re charting into an emotional storm as this election draws near. My hope is that Mccain’s attack during tonight’s debate will be about Obama’s economic and social liberalism as reflected in his voting record rather than this absurd guilt by association.

All of us in academia can probably be tarred with a similar brush. Is anyone who works with someone with controversial views forced to resign their jobs? As a graduate student I taught in the Ethnic Studies department at the University of Colorado during the time Ward Churchill was a member of the department. Does that link me to Ward Churchill’s views? Should I have given up my teaching assistantship? Are all the members of the education department in which Bill Ayers teaches today complicit in his crimes and victims of poor judgment? How about all his students? Should they drop out of the university upon learning of their professor’s past?