generalspeaking

Monday, October 29, 2012

Minority Report: Nothing Changes

Assemble enough minorities in a social-political melting pot and the minority represents a sizeably impressive pressure group. Convince enough of them that their best interests lie across ethnic and colour lines and a voting bloc of very useful proportions results. When an important political competition is underway between black and white each side drops all social inhibitions toward appealing to base instincts and goes for the jugular.

Twisting the truth here and there, appealing to the vestigial but still resonant authority of the clan; rouse the public from its bored indifference to convince them to get out and vote rather than sit back and grouse, and opportunities present themselves that have less to do with authority and reliability in outstanding leadership and more to do with competitive advantage requiring to be heeded and leveraged to a compelling win.

"If you look at the demographic changes and the future of the United States, very soon you're not going to be able to win an election banking on middle-aged or older white men", according to a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. This was a message directly applicable to the American Republican Party, whose support is largely there; with middle-aged/older white males. They are now in descent.

It's not as though the Republican election machinery has completely ignored the need to appeal to minorities; they've made the effort.

"You can bet that every black church, every black political organization, every black social organization, every black neighbourhood is going to get calls, visits and pushes [from the Obama campaign] to get them out", assured a senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies in Washington.

There are certainly some critical, pivotal-voting states that are assured to the incumbent. A biracial president whose enormous appeal still resonates with his Democratic supporters despite four years of more of the same. In political, administrative terms there isn't, actually, that much separating the Republican and Democratic candidates in their platforms. Although their platforms are mirror images, their delivery is different.

And therein lies the uncertainty of what might occur under a Republican administration as opposed to the current Democratic one. The Republican white majority (90%) vote objects to America apologizing for its policies to any foreign country; their heads are unabashedly unbowed, defiant and proudly American. President Obama has given his country an apologetic face, an unfamiliar and unwanted one.

"The enthusiasm gap this time has been a problem, and I think [the Obama campaign] has been struggling to overcome it. There's a lot to recover there", said Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School of Government professor at Harvard. Starting with the "Barber and Beauty Program", which sees the distribution of campaign literature through salon owners. That's pretty clever, making envoys of community-based service providers.

"He has to win the hearts of the people again" said Bishop Janice Hollis, a black Pennsylvania pastor, whose own heart has cooled toward President Obama. The Coalition of African American Pastors had condemned the Obama administration for its outright support of "the highjacking of the civil rights movement by homosexuals, bisexuals and gender-confused people."

Bishop Hollis, who signed on to that public condemnation has seen that initiative win her a backlash from her own black community. She is receiving hate mail from black voters damning her for any negative statements muddying the reputation of the country's first black president. How could she, as a black woman, commit to that? She is undecided how she will vote and has not attempted to persuade anyone else how they should vote.

What she has experienced, she explains, is black-on-black racism. "Black voters are going to want the first black president to have a second term. I think they'll be there for him", said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington. "I'm not saying the Republicans will never tap into the black vote. But the Republicans are going to have to launch a huge re-start in their strategy.... If they don't get blown away this time, they'll get blown away some time soon."

But of course, it's not just the black population that will vote massively for the Democratic ticket. It's also the Hispanic vote, and it's large and it's influential, and President Obama has, as previously, got it excited in their support for him, and wrapped up. Another demographic, the liberal Jewish vote that tends to vote Democratic is his as well, with a smaller, Orthodox group moving toward the Republicans.

"Colour, race - those things don't matter to me", claims a Bronx voter who says he isn't certain who will get his vote this time around, or even whether he'll deign to vote at all, though he previously voted Democrat. "It doesn't seem to matter who's in power, everything stays the same. Nothing changes."

Labels: Democracy, Human Relations, Marketing, Prejudices, Social-Cultural Deviations, That's Life, Traditions, United States, Viewpoint