The end of the Obama illusion?
By Jesús Arboleya Cervera
As overwhelming as it may seem to us, the Democratic defeat in the recent midterm elections is not a rarity in American political life.
It has been quite common for the party in government to lose posts in this type of election, particularly if the economic situation is as unfavorable as it is today.
It is also a recurrent punishment to demagoguery, because in the presidential elections that precede them the candidates, guided by political “market studies,” promise what they already know they can’t deliver.
What’s relevant at this moment is that the expectations generated by Obama transcended the usual patterns of campaign debate in the United States, generating the illusion that he was an original phenomenon, the initiator of a new course in U.S. politics.
For those of us who believed it impossible for a black man to occupy the presidency of that country – and that includes Colin Powell, who refused to try it – Barack Obama’s victory represented the emergence of a social movement that could transform many aspects of U.S. political life.
Of course, it wasn’t only a question of the candidate’s race. Although moderate, his discourse differed from the conservative patterns that had ruled U.S. politics for decades and tackled, in a different way, the problems that affected that society and its relation to the rest of the world. When current senator Rand Paul, talking to his Tea Party colleagues, said that “we’re going to take our government back,” he knew what he was saying.
“Yes, we can” meant the hope of transforming the existing reality, so “no, we couldn’t” constitutes a terrible deception. Because another inevitable reading of the result of this electoral campaign is the influence regained by the most fundamentalist sectors of the U.S. right.
Ever since the Democrats lost the majority that led Roosevelt to power and kept them in the presidency for 22 consecutive years, the difference between the parties was decided practically by the extreme ends. Bush governed for two terms thanks to the consistent support of the most conservative Americans, and Obama won because he was capable of mobilizing many who, until that moment, did not feel represented by any candidate and generally did not vote.
What happened is the consequence of the Democrats’ reluctance to embrace Obama’s promises, which caused many voters to abstain. Meanwhile, the conservatives fully exploited the fears of the white middle class and, supported by enormous economic interests, worked at grassroots level to stimulate Americans’ most basic and selfish feelings.
The indiscriminate use of military force, the preservation of privileges and the rejection of the less favored, xenophobia and racism, the selective application of human rights, religious intolerance and contempt for the care of the environment are the doctrinal premises of these sectors, which explains the fear they generate everywhere.
That is why these elections have had repercussions on the international stage, where Obama was the most popular U.S. president since Kennedy raised similar hopes for change.
It would be a mistake to perceive these results as an exclusive phenomenon of the United States. The extreme right is advancing in almost all the developed countries (for reasons that I shall analyze in future articles), offering inverse processes that are occurring in Latin America and other parts of the Third World.
Obama was right when he admitted he had lost touch with the American people. But it remains to be seen what people he referred to, whether to the excluded sectors that took him to power or if he’s thinking about hewing to the requirements of the establishment so he can win the conservatives. The latter seems impossible, because it wasn’t for that reason that he was elected the first black president of the United States.
Jesús Arboleya Cervera is a writer and professor of history. He lives in Havana.
