Obama and the Minority Majority
- Opinión
The election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African American president has been heralded as proof that the
This did happen—even in some pretty unexpected places and demographics. But the real key to Obama's victory is that the white elite no longer have a stranglehold on
Census data had been pointing to this change in composition for a decade or more, leading the right to issue dire warnings to defend "real Americans" and their values. But the so-called "minorities" were either excluded (through imprisonment, voter suppression, denial of citizenship, and other mechanisms) or alienated from effective political participation. Obama managed to unleash and unite the strength of this new diversity. This has profound implications for
Triumph over Exclusion
The Democratic convention provided the first sign that the party might not be seeing red and blue states but rather colors—and differences—within its constituency. For the first time in history, minorities made up the majority of democratic delegates. Of the delegates, 24.5% were African-American, 11.8% Hispanic-American, 4.6% Asian-Pacific-American, 2.5% Native American, 5.8% GLBT, and 3.7% with disabilities.
Step two was to increase registered voters among groups that were previously excluded and had excluded themselves from the political process. The voter registration and "get out the vote" efforts of the Obama campaign and its allies increased voter turnout among these groups. Some of those efforts preceded the elections. For example, since the 2006 immigrant demonstrations, the We Are America Alliance registered nearly 500,000 immigrant and immigrant family voters.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos comprise the largest and fastest growing minority group in the country: 46 million people, or 15% of the population, On Nov. 4, the Latino vote increased 32% to around 9% of the total, and 67% voted for Obama. In four battleground states that went to Bush in 2004—Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia—the Latino vote for Obama was over 70%, according to statistics by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials based on results and exit polls.
Clarissa Martinez de Castro, of the National Council of
The political weight of "New Americans," naturalized citizens and their children born after 1965, has been growing steadily. They made up a full 24.4% of registered voters in
However, in looking at the new political landscape in the
African Americans increased their proportion of the electorate from 11% to 13% and voted 95% for Obama. The number of Asian Americans eligible to vote reached seven million and also reported high turnout. Another group denied a voice in government because of the political influence of wealth also make up part of the minority majority: the poor and much-mentioned middle class. Over 60% of those whose family income is under $50,000 voted for Obama.
Toward a Transformative Presidency
The Obama campaign didn't create the new minority majority, but it did mobilize it.
Campaign strategists did not do this because of special interests. Although they offered statements and policy platforms tailored to specific sectors, the unity message trumped identity politics. Obama's message to downplay the race factor of his candidacy, while not ignoring it, carried over into the campaign's approach. A combination of the candidate's charisma, hard work in the field (especially by unions in blue-collar swing states
When the economy crashed, wedge issues flew out the window. Immigration, expected to be a wedge issue of the right, never took off as expected, and with the economy it became secondary even for many immigrants. Latinos interviewed by me, the Los Angeles Times, and others had the economy first and foremost on their minds, and most believed that Obama was the candidate to address these concerns.
Rosa Goodnight of
When the financial crisis reduced the issues to one—63% of voters listed economy as their number-one concern—the election became a referendum on change that the candidate of change easily made a central part of his message.
The Minority Majority's Challenge
There are only two ways this affirmation of diversity and unprecedented level of citizen participation can end up not making a difference in the future course of the nation: if President Obama shuts out his grassroots supporters and governs as an autocrat, or if the populace—awakened by the drama of the elections and the referendum on change—considers its role over and returns to the semi-hibernation that characterizes representative democracy between elections.
There are signs that neither of these will happen.
For example, in
Uniting Domestic and Foreign Policy
Some analysts write that Obama's ability to create a transformative presidency depends on the depth of the crisis, as though the cracks must widen in the system for something new to break through. This view is based on the classic transformative presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Interestingly, history has again become relevant and widely discussed—highly unusual in the nation Gore Vidal dubbed "The United States of Amnesia."
We might not have to reach a total breakdown to arrive at a transformative moment. The ideological and logical argument for an unfettered market system has collapsed in the eyes of the minority majority and much of the world. Right-wing messaging made this election primarily a competition between the free-market system and government-led redistribution of wealth. Now they have to accept that the latter prevailed. And we have to build on that.
The mobilized minority majority calls for stronger state intervention to create jobs at home, regulate the excesses of monopolistic capitalism that led to the crisis, and reduce the privileges of "Wall Street" over "
Comparisons between Barack Obama and FDR abound in the media and among policymakers. TIME magazine's cover of Obama as FDR under the title of "The NEW New Deal" reflects the similarities between the two men and the reforms they represent. FDR came into office during a crisis, and instead of postponing foreign policy reform to address the domestic crisis he united the two in a restructuring of the economy and a non-interventionist "Good Neighbor" policy abroad, especially in
In our globalized age, the union between domestic and foreign policy is far more pronounced than in the 1930s. Digging the
The minority majority that elected Obama overwhelmingly believe the
Progressives who ignore the new political composition and the potential for it to forge new democratic directions for the country do so at peril of being sidelined in a historic moment. Their cynicism also reflects disdain for precisely the people—the poor, people of color, youth, the GLBT community, and others—who pinned their hopes for a more inclusive
The responsibility now lies not only on President-elect Obama but on the people who elected him to ensure long-term, citizen-based solutions to the problems that confront the new administration. The agenda cannot be to convince them that their hopes were misplaced and their expectations misguided. The change that came about with the triumph of the mobilized minority majority creates a platform to move forward, inside and outside the presidency.
- Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in
Source:
Del mismo autor
- El sesgo político de la OEA y el futuro de la región 20/03/2020
- The OAS and Democracy 22/02/2019
- La OEA y la democracia 21/02/2019
- The Organization of American States Shouldn’t Be Run by Regime Change Zealots 30/01/2019
- Trump’s new trade order 09/11/2018
- The People Won, But Can They Take Power? 18/07/2018
- “Seguridad” que mata 14/06/2018
- A desarmar la violencia patriarcal 09/05/2018
- Disarming Patriarchal Violence 03/05/2018
- U.S Support for Honduras’ Fraudulent Election is a Betrayal of Democracy 08/02/2018
Clasificado en
Clasificado en:
![S'abonner à America Latina en Movimiento - RSS](https://www.alainet.org/misc/feed.png)