A Pilgrim’s Digression

I don’t know whether to write about the change of seasons, or the economic crisis.  Instability seems to be the buzz word of the day: hurricanes in the west and mid-west, and the collapse of banks in the east.  With relief operations in full force in Texas, it seems like our government has a better grip on how to respond to that storm than it does our economic troubles.

I have to admit, the fall of Lehman Brothers seems pretty far removed from my own life, and with the price of gas falling back somewhat after a weekend, pre-Ike surge, the economic woe seems even more distant.  Besides gas prices, however, the one reminder I see every day that indicates trouble on the horizon are the number of For Sale signs in front of homes.  Many of those signs have been in the yard for months, if not a year or more.  A newly-built house at the end of our street has been up for sale for nearly a year.  I’m sure the owners never imagined it would sit empty this long.

A pleasant, brick family home across the street from where I catch the bus in Silver Spring has been up for sale for over a year.  I’ve watched for two summers as the grass in the yard grew into a hayfield and then was trimmed back after several weeks.

I take in these sights, and then I listen to the radio and TV and can’t decide whether to be worried or to just sit back and wait.  Most economists say if you aren’t a wealthy person (defined as having over $100,000.00 in a savings or investment account), you have no need to worry.  The housing situation, however, affects everyone.

The scenario that runs through my head concerns a change of jobs.  What if a person wants to change jobs, but the change requires moving to another city?  How is that economically feasible if the person’s home can’t be sold at a profit?  What if it can’t be sold at all?

Job loss, not changing jobs, is the big fear of most people, however.  Debt, mortgages..all seem like a millstone around the neck if you don’t have a job.  People are just holding on to what they’ve got, not making any big decisions, hoping the four horsemen pass them by.

A common theme on the news and talk shows (conservative talk shows in particular) is that with such a struggling economy, Barak Obama ought to be running away with this election.  Conventional wisdom says that Democrats do better when the economy is sluggish.

I’ve heard the same kind of commentary about Obama on other subjects.  “He ought to be doing better” with women, with working-class people, with older folks.  Conservatives bring this up to indicate that there is a fundamental weakness in his campaign, if not in himself.  Keep in mind it doesn’t take much provocation to make a Democrat jittery.  Liberals are natural hand-wringers.

I think where conventional wisdom goes wrong is in assuming that Obama is a traditional candidate.  He’s not, and he never has been.  Why should this election follow the template of so many others?  One has only to look at how Obama has opened the electoral map to see that conventional wisdom no longer applies.  Would Colorado and Virginia be in play if a white, male Democrat were running?  No, Democrats would be deploying the same old strategy that has lost them election after election: hang on to the Northeast, Illinois, Minnesota, and California, and try to pick up Ohio or Florida.

We don’t know how this is going to end, but to assume that the Obama campaign is in trouble because he “ought” to be further ahead in the polls demonstrates an acceptance of the assumption that this election will follow previous templates for victory.

Obama may win in a landslide.  He may lose in a landslide.  Maybe when voters go in the booth, many who said they would vote for him instead vote for McCain.  Maybe the voters will respond so overwhelmingly to the Palin charm that McCain wins handily…or by a thread.  Who knows?  I don’t.

And we probably won’t know until just a day or two before the election, when trends start to solidify.  I do believe that the economy is a winning issue for Obama, however.  McCain’s insistence that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” reveals a huge blind spot to the left of the Straight Talk Express, akin to the first President Bush’s ignorance about supermarket scanners and the price of milk.

If Obama continues to focus on McCain and his economic ignorance, he will win.  If he gets caught up in the culture war, he will lose.  Democrats always lose that battle, because it’s fought on Republican ground.

I was struck last night, listening to Hannity and Colmes, when Hannity trotted out this young woman from a Right to Life organization to accuse Obama of supporting infanticide (see the video clip, “Born Alive” on the Hannity and Colmes website).  As if her youth didn’t already make her unassailable as she insisted Obama would have killed her (she was born alive during a botched abortion), but she also had cerebral palsy.  Or as she called it, for inexplicable reasons, “the gift of cerebral palsy.”

Those are the kinds of soldiers Republicans use in their culture war.  How do you assail a young girl with cerebral palsy, no matter how big a nutcase she is?  Democrats can’t fight those battles and win.  They just can’t.

The economy is Democrat turf, however, and less susceptible to manipulation by scoundrels like Hannity.  E. J. Dionne had a fine article in today’s Washington Post.  I’ll quote the paragraph I found most relevant.

[The] so-called average voters understand the difference between low- and high-stakes elections. They develop a reasonably good sense of who is telling the truth and who is not. And though it sometimes takes a while — and a shock like this week’s economic news — these voters almost always turn on politicians who manipulate cultural symbols as a way to escape the consequences of their policies.

As Dionne says, Republicans are trying to squeeze out one more victory by fighting the culture war and assailing Democrats as elitists.  I really don’t think it is going to work this time, but not because conventional wisdom says Democrats “ought” to win this election.  It won’t work because this time, voters don’t have the luxury of voting for a candidate based on his stance on abortion, or gay marriage, or guns, or whether the candidate went to a state university (like most of us) rather than Harvard.

These are irrelevancies to people who worry about job loss, affording college for their kids, paying their mortgage, selling their home, and generally, just surviving in an economy that seems ever more precarious from day to day.