Where did the movement go?
I just listened to a Fresh Air podcast, featuring a writer from the Washington Independent who covers the Conservative/Tea Party Movement. I was amazed as I listened to him describe their sophistication. I didn’t realize this, but they are having activists run for the lowest of offices—school board, city council, etc. They embody the very definition of a grassroots movement. When you pair that popular surge with the extensive conservative media network that already existed, you have an incredibly powerful political force.
Thing is, I thought the Obama-ites (part of me still wants to say we, part of me doesn’t) were the movement. I cannot tell you how many times during the course of the campaign someone looked at me and said, point blank and verbatim, “This is not a campaign. This is a movement.” Tea Party members are zealous, but even they cannot match the glazed expression of Obama supporters circa-January 2008. Will.i.am made a song, for Christ’s sake. Yet, now, after actually achieving what they set out to do, they are nowhere to be seen. How did this happen? I don’t know, but I am willing to posit a few theories.
1) Reality is not lopsided, media coverage is
I am not sure I fully buy this, but it is worth mentioning. It could be that the discrepancy between the two movements is not in how active they are, but in how much media coverage they receive. Certainly, when Muslim Americans converged on Washington to pray for (yes, for) the country, coverage was minimal. The march for gay rights got coverage but never on the same scale as the Tea Party.
Still, I have not seen a flood of Obama-ites signing up to run in 2010 the way conservatives are, and in general there just isn’t the same buzz. This could just go to show how powerful media coverage is, but that would just be going in circles. (I should add the caveat that I think the gay rights movement is kicking some ass).
2) Governing is never as sexy as shaking your fist
The Obama campaign stood in opposition to a failed regime. (I have no problem calling an Administration that embraced torture and called dissent unpatriotic a regime). There is something sexy and energizing about standing in opposition to something. Certainly, a campaign with a positive message will always out perform a negative one, but the most powerful campaigns will always give their supporters the sense that they are beating something back.
The realities of governing, in contrast to campaigning, are mundane. It is where the idealistic rhetoric of the campaign trail collides with the points of order of the legislature. There is a let down that comes with realizing that getting your candidate into office does not result in instant gratification.
3) There are more but I am tired and for some reason my left elbow is sore.
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I will admit that I myself have been lagging in my support. Nonetheless, I still get turned off by the things I hear coming out of places like CPAC—mocking classes in Native American Feminism, and just mocking people who do not conform to the “normalized” mold (i.e., those who are not white, male, straight, etc.) in general. Until they find a way to articulate a positive message about small government without reverting back to cheap culture war politics, I just can’t bring myself to support them.
