What A Non-Obama Ticket Might Mean For Future Majority (Part 2)

Obama’s campaign draws comparisons to that of Howard Dean, most often in the context of his online fundraising and organizing.

Again, in keeping with my little formula, first an examination of the context of the race and then my thoughts on how it may or many not apply to hypotheticals involving Barack Obama. Caveat - my take on the context of the Dean movement is, shall we say "colored" by my participation in the Dean movement.

2. Dean for America – DFA was the culmination of a pushback movement against a conservative political punditry that enabled Gingrich’s slash and burn Republican destructiveness. For Dean, the progressive netroots (activist classes of 2000 and 2004) built new organizations, communication networks, and political structures precisely because the old structures had failed so badly from the impeachment of Bill Clinton leading to the midterms of 2002.

The Governor, an adversarial competitor who was unapologetic about his disagreements with the Conservative movement, and his “Deaniacs,” helped usher in a progressive wave predicated on the politics of opposition, an ethos based in part on Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign.

In my mind, this case is the least applicable.

More after the bump.
This Dean influx of new activists built structures that supplemented and plugged directly into the Democratic party apparatus, and several of them, including DFA (first ‘Dean for’ and then ‘Democracy for’ America) installed Howard as Chairman of the DNC. Deaniacs used Dean to change the Democratic Party.

This is starkly in contrast with many Obamaniacs who campaign for him in the same way as they do for single issue causes, as in an array of lifestyle affinity positions. Obama activists are not using Obama to change the Democratic Party as much as they are de facto Democrats merely because they are Obama fans - whether or not they see Obama as a better kind of Democrat, the next generation, if you will, is beside the point. What will these Obama fans do if the party does not put him on the ticket?

I think it depends on how he loses. If he legitimately implodes, that’s one thing. He may be able to use the gravity of his celebrity status to throw all of his support behind the eventual ticket.

However, if like Dean he is taken out via media assassination, that’s trouble.
It’s a 50-50 chance that such a hit job would come from Democratic Competitor’s opposition research. In which case, the Obama fans would lash out against the offending contender, the media and the party. With a strong endorsement of the winner (excepting of course if the leaker of the oppo is the winner) Obama might swing much of his wave to the party’s nominee.

If he is taken down by the media that has built him up, the Obama movement could potentially ebb and dissipate with a whimper. After raging against the media, the new Millennial politicos, robbed of the passion of a hot race with the possibility of “bold change” are more likely in this scenario to lose interest in the Presidential race entirely.

In a non-Obama ticket future, for Obama’s movement to have lasting power in the near-term beyond his direct spokesmanship, he would need to position his vision as squarely on the left of the ideological spectrum. The language he’s using to describe himself as if on another plane from the ideological spectrum altogether won’t allow him to do that.

Contrast that to the first line of Howard Dean's stump speech: "I'm Howard Dean and I represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party."

[ Part III – Here’s Where Bloomberg Comes In… is next]