I grew up in Cleveland. The last time a Cleveland sports team won a championship was 1964. I was 3. All my life I had to experience the excruciating pain of watching the Browns (under Bernie Kosar; damn that John Elway!) and the Indians (I still have nightmares about Tony Fernandez's 11th inning error in the 7th Game of the 1997 World Series) lose games inches away from championships. This has made me a total baby when watching Cleveland teams flirting with greatness. Last year I couldn't watch the Cavs in the NBA finals at all because I knew it would all end horribly and I'd be in a funk for days afterwards.
I'm starting to have the same feeling about Obama and the Democratic nomination. That, more than anything else, explains my long absence from the blog. I have been watching, slack jawed and gaping, as Hillary and the media has convinced America that Jeremiah Wright's views matter (and tell us something about Obama) and that Obama is elite and out of touch. And the Obama campaign has stumbled, making the same mistake that Gore did in 2000 and Kerry did in 2004, being pulled away from their message, scrambling to relocate their equilibrium. It doesn't really matter to me whether this ends with Hillary pulling off the political equivilant of The Drive or Obama following in Earnest Byner's footsteps and fumbling it all away, I can't watch.
So I have been thinking through what Obama needs to do. It's simple: he needs to win Indiana and North Carolina. Period. This race has become something entirely conducted in the headlines. The truth of things doesn't matter. Obama's impressive performance over a candidate that should have cakewalked to the nomination doesn't matter. The media (or as we bloggers say, MSM) wants this race to continue. And they are ignoring any realities or subtleties that get in the way. If America wakes up on May 7th and sees that Obama has won Indiana and North Carolina, and the media is dancing around calling it a "comeback" or "extraordinary" or claiming that it shows Obama's "resilience," it is over.
So, the question becomes, how does Obama do this? I have three contributions to make. Okay, four, the first is entirely personal and whiny:
1. Someone from the Obama campaign should call me! I signed up to volunteer in Indiana. To knock on doors and talk to voters. I live 25 minutes away, and my Dad grew up in La Porte. I have cute kids. I'm a balding, 40-something white man. I can show up on someone's porch and be mistaken for a member of the homeowner's church. But NO ONE HAS CALLED ME TO TELL ME WHERE TO GO OR WHAT TO DO! The Obama website has a handy, user-friendly volunteer sign-up feature, I gave them my name and my phone number. A messsage in response said I'd get a call from a local organizer. Nope. Never came. (Update 4/30: I just got an email from the Obama volunteer center getting me squared away with info for my volunteering effort this weekend in Indiana. So no worries.)
2. Obama needs to talk about poverty. Especially in North Carolina. He has to bring together his concerns about a number of interrelated issues and package it as a poverty plan. And he needs to tie his plan in a very public way to John Edwards' commitment to the issue. I've been beating this drum for a while, but I still think I am right. In an economy this bad, the middle class is concerned about falling into poverty, and the poor are concerned about sinking deeper. And the topic, and Obama's real commitment to it, is a great way to overturn Hillary's laughable claims that Obama is out of touch and elitist. My friend Tom Frank recently published a column in the Wall Street Journal, which is something I never thought I would write. He up-ends the issue about Obama's elitism with a light touch. What the media is getting worked-up about (and getting voters worked-up about) is a "crime of attitude." We don't like Obama's attitude. How dare he think he is better than us! But not voting for a candidate because you don't like his attitude, when everything else about him is right, is torturously idiotic. Yet, nevertheless, that's where we are, and Obama needs to demonstrate not only his concern for America's working class, but offer solutions. He should pledge to make sure that every child in America has a good school and a first-class education. He needs to promise every worker a living wage. It is time to revoice his commitment to repair the disintegrating social fabric of our poorest and most desperate neighborhoods. This was the work of his years as a neighborhood organizer. These goals can be achieved, or at least targeted, with federal legislation in the first 100 days of his administration. Obama needs to make that the pledge. And then pledge to eliminate poverty in 30 years.
3. He needs to talk about his plans to make college affordable for everyone. His plan is only a tiny bit better than Hillary's, but he can still get out there (especially in Indiana) and make a truthful claim that it is better. I grew up in a family where my mom and dad worried about paying for three kids' college bills. This is a worry that is universal across the American landscape. Unless you are in the upper ten-percent, college costs are a worry. And nothing makes you feel more like a failure than being unable to delivery on your promise to make your child's life better than your own. Finding a way to give your son or daughter a college education is one important thing you can do to help deliver on that promise. Obama has to stand up and say: I understand this, and I will help you guarantee that you can give your child the education that will open doors and transform his or her life. Indiana is a great place to have this conversation (and so is North Carolina). Indiana is a "hand-up" kind of state. Hoosiers don't like or trust big government, but they believe in giving everyone a hand, and then giving folks the chance to take it from there. Translated: if we give everyone a chance at a quality education, we have done a lot to level the playing field. I don't believe that and, in fact, without the work to improve the conditions and circumstances and life chances of children living in the poorest corners of America, the promise of a college education means very little, since they won't have the tools to take advantage of it. We need big government, because only big government can do this. But, if the goal is to find consensus--and isn't that part of the Obama vision--finding common ground with Hoosiers over paying for college is a commendable place to start.
4. Get everyone on the campaign trail. Obama needs to be out there ALL THE TIME! And Michelle needs to get out to Gary and Hammond, Indiana, just a short drive from her south Chicago home. And get the Kennedys and Robert Reich and Bruce Springsteen and the Arcade Fire and everyone else out to North Carolina, campaigning in the state's university towns. And, am I the only one wondering, where is Oprah? She can get a limo ride to Indiana in the time it has taken me to write this. And if she can convince 1000 women leaning toward Hillary to vote Obama, that's a big thing in a campaign this close. I've been mystified by Oprah's complete absence on the campaign trail, but the American media hasn't pursued the question. The Times of London did, and they concluded that Oprah felt like her empire was threatened by the anger of the thousands of women who supported Hillary and felt betrayed by Oprah. After announcing her support of Obama, message boards on sites associated with Oprah's media conglomerate became flooded with poisonous messages from upset fans. In their anger they saw that Oprah had sinned in two ways: she had failed to back a woman running for the presidency, and she had revealed her inner "racism," i.e., she was viewing the world through a racial prism and by backing a black candidate she had allowed her race to get in the way of sound judgement. The Times wondered--way back in January--if the assault on Oprah's message boards was spontaneous or orchestrated by Clinton. But they never followed up on the question, and neither has, as far as I can tell, any media outlet in the U.S. This might be because there is nothing there--these were authentic messages from distressed fans--or it could be because these message boards, which offer the rest of us a chance to give voice, have been celebrated by the media as part of the democratization of opinion made possible by the web. The media doesn't really want to draw attention to the fact that these message boards are employed by politicians and corporations to shape opinion and spin stories. I spent a few minutes looking at some recent threads on Oprah's message boards, and it turns out that Oprah has a lot of ugly, hate-filled fans. Some of this could be manufactured, but the one-sidedness of it--every poster seems to be a racist Republican witch--makes me think that Oprah was surprised by the reaction, and how awful, mean-spirited and creepy her fans were, and decided she needed to shut up about Obama, or risk losing her fan base. Still, some of the postings--calling attention repeatedly to "what we don't know" about Obama and his "plans" for America--sound a lot like the viral talking points the Clinton campaign has been spreading for weeks.
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