Political Parties, the American Vote, and the Meaning of the 2008 Election

Fifth in a series of essays

When his­to­ri­ans and soci­ol­o­gists look back on the 2008 elec­tion in the United States, they will not focus on the fact that the Demo­c­ra­tic Party nom­i­nated — and the Amer­i­cans elected — a black man for the first time. They will barely remem­ber that the Repub­li­can Party chose a woman as its vice-presidential can­di­date for the first time. The race or gen­der of a politi­cian, even when he becomes the leader of a coun­try, mat­ters much less in the long term than the poli­cies he enacts.

Still, elec­tions can serve as gen­eral barom­e­ters of the peo­ple of a coun­try. When peo­ple choose a can­di­date, they endors­ing not only his poli­cies. They are putting their faith in every­thing about him: his per­son­al­ity, his friends, and his upbring­ing. This is espe­cially rel­e­vant when a politi­cian becomes the head of state (as in the United States), and not only the head of gov­ern­ment (as in coun­tries with prime min­is­ters), because the head of state is the sym­bolic rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple as a whole. (The heads of state in coun­tries with prime min­sters are usu­ally mon­archs, like in Great Britain, or pres­i­dents who have no sig­nif­i­cant power, like in Israel.)

After Sen. Barack Obama was elected pres­i­dent of the United States, much of the entire coun­try erupted in cel­e­bra­tion — and even some Repub­li­cans, mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion party, could barely con­tain their excite­ment before and after the elec­tion (see here, here, and here). Clearly, the vic­tory of Obama touched some­thing inside most Amer­i­cans. (Peo­ple in many places in the world were also ecsta­tic, but that was pri­mar­ily a col­lec­tive sigh of relief that nei­ther George W. Bush nor his ide­o­log­i­cal twin, Sen. John McCain, would be pres­i­dent for the next four years.)

Obvi­ously, black peo­ple in the United States had a sig­nif­i­cant rea­son to cel­e­brate. But it was not just them who were inspired. Heather Havrilesky, writ­ing from the point of view of Gen­er­a­tion X in Salon, hints at the true mean­ing of the 2008 elec­tion:

But when we watched Barack Obama’s vic­tory speech on Tues­day night, we looked into the eyes of a real leader, and decades of cyn­i­cism about pol­i­tics and grass-roots move­ments and com­mu­nity melted away in a sin­gle moment. We heard the voice of a man who can inspire with his words, who’s unashamed of his own intel­li­gence, who’s will­ing to treat the cit­i­zens of this coun­try like smart, capa­ble peo­ple, wor­thy of respect. For the first time in some of our life­times, we believed.

The elec­tion of Barack Obama was the first moment that many Amer­i­cans — at least those of a cer­tain younger age, like myself — saw that the peo­ple and their votes tri­umphed over polit­i­cal scions, deci­sions by par­ti­san courts, party machines, and the so-called “pol­i­tics of per­sonal destruction.”

—

The first pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that I remem­ber was that of Bill Clin­ton. I was enter­ing and just begin­ning sixth grade dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic Party pri­mary and 1992 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. I do not remem­ber much, but I do recall that the pri­mary and gen­eral elec­tion were con­tentious. Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush essen­tially received the Repub­li­can Party’s nom­i­na­tion with­out a sig­nif­i­cant fight, but Clin­ton strug­gled for that of the Demo­c­ra­tic Party, at least in the begin­ning. The gen­eral elec­tion was also a bat­tle, with no one know­ing what effect inde­pen­dent can­di­date Ross Perot would have.

Of course, Clin­ton won. But between Clinton’s first vic­tory and Obama’s elec­tion, elec­toral cam­paigns took a turn for the cyn­i­cal and seem­ingly pre­or­dained. In 1996, Clin­ton and Sen. Bob Dole were seem­ingly guar­enteed to receive the Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tions, respec­tively. The pri­mary elec­tions barely seemed to mat­ter. More­over, Clin­ton was never in dan­ger of los­ing to Dole, at least accord­ing to polls at the time. So, the gen­eral elec­tion barely seemed to mat­ter as well. In 2000, Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore was never going to lose the Demo­c­ra­tic Party nom­i­na­tion to for­mer Sen. Bill Bradley. Gov. George W. Bush quickly dis­patched McCain to gain the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. Again, the party pri­maries did not seem to mat­ter. In 1996 and 2000, the pre­ferred can­di­dates of both party machines were the ones who won the nominations.

The noto­ri­ous pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2000, of course, was a his­tor­i­cally close bat­tle in which every vote, at least in Florida and other so-called pur­ple states, mat­tered. But the fight was ulti­mated decided by a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in a five-to-four par­ti­san vote. If one addi­tional jus­tice had been appointed by a Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent, Gore would have become pres­i­dent. The can­di­date pre­ferred by a major­ity of vot­ers did not win as a result of the archaic Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem. Regard­less of which can­di­date a per­son sup­ported, it was a trav­esty that a judi­cial opin­ion, and not the votes of the peo­ple, essen­tially selected a pres­i­dent of the United States. As New York Times colum­nist Thomas Fried­man wrote at the time:

The five con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices essen­tially ruled that the sanc­tity of [election-reporting] dates, even mean­ing­less ones, mat­tered more than the sanc­tity of votes, even mean­ing­ful ones. The Rehn­quist court now has its legacy: ‘In cal­en­dars we trust.’

In 2004, the party machines essen­tially chose the can­di­dates again. Pres­i­dent Bush was surely going to regain the Repub­li­can Party’s nom­i­na­tion. The Demo­c­ra­tic Party wanted Sen. John Kerry to win because his war record, as a result of his dec­o­rated ser­vice in Vietnam, was stronger than that of Bush. Kerry quickly over­came Sen. John Edwards to win the party’s nom­i­na­tion. How­ever, the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was also some­what dis­puted because there were many vot­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties in Ohio, the state that won Bush a sec­ond term.

—

Going into the 2008 elec­tion, the two front-runners for the Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tions were Sen. Hillary Clin­ton and for­mer New York City Mayor Rudy Giu­liani, respec­tively. (Clin­ton was the scion of Bill Clinton’s pres­i­dency, and Giu­liani had a seemingly-invincible glow in the age of a War on Ter­ror as a result of his admired response to the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks.) Both party estab­lish­ments backed them, and nearly all main­stream pun­dits were sure that they were going to win. Of course, Hillary Clin­ton lost to Obama in a close race that almost went into a con­ven­tion fight while Giu­liani quickly faded and the Repub­li­can pri­mary ended up being a fight between McCain and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

This year’s pri­mary elec­tions were the first time, at least in my mem­ory, when Demo­c­ra­tic and Repub­li­can vot­ers chose can­di­dates that were not the ones pre­ferred by the party estab­lish­ments and cor­po­rate lob­by­ists. (Most of Obama’s dona­tions, for exam­ple, came from indi­vid­ual donors as a result of his Inter­net out­reach.) The courts, of course, did not played a role in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion as well. On the lib­eral side, Obama was barely affected by the Right’s persistent-and-unfair efforts to tie him to Islam, domes­tic ter­ror­ists, and the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion — unlike the Repub­li­can Party’s suc­cess in “Swift Boat­ing” John Kerry in 2004. Most impor­tantly, the can­di­date endorsed by a major­ity of vot­ers was the one who won.

For the first time in recent mem­ory, the peo­ple were the pri­mary forces in choos­ing the two major pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. The vot­ers had the final say. And in a time in which so many major prob­lems are fac­ing the United States, it is impor­tant that the peo­ple have the final say. The elec­tion of Barack Obama, com­ing pri­mar­ily from a grass­roots beginning, might have just put an end to decades of cynicism.

Prior essay: Why My Gen­er­a­tion is Pissed Off