“It is very hard to run against a movement.” Those were the words of Vernon Jordan, a leading friend and supporter of Hilary Clinton, referring to Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency.
There is literal truth in those words.  The most important element in the rise of Barack Obama is that his candidacy is built upon a potentially powerful new movement capable of forging a progressive majority in the nation’s politics.

That emerging movement, led largely by younger voters, has been fueled by anger and disgust over George W. Bush’s tenure which has been marked by a highly destructive, illegal war, criminal neglect of climate change, assaults on the US Constitution, tax and other economic policies that have benefited the super rich at the expense of the middle and working classes, and a series of scandals that should have led to Bush’s impeachment. At this moment, there is a growing economic crisis created by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and by the escalating price of oil. All of these factors foretell a major, perhaps historic, shift in American politics from right to center-left.

Barack Obama is an attractive, articulate and talented politician. A former community organizer among unemployed steel workers in Chicago, a civil rights lawyer and a progressive State Senator in Illinois, he has captured that intense desire for change. “Change” has become the theme of his campaign, resonating so strongly with voters, that most of the other candidates of both parties have imitated it. Obama ties that theme of “change” to his movement building mantra when he declares: “change does not come from the top down; it comes from the bottom up.”

Symbolically, Obama is an unprecedented embodiment of change. With a Kenyan father and white American mother, he identifies himself as an African American in a country with a pervasive and often intractable tradition of white racism. `But he carefully does not run as a “black candidate.” Rather, He offers himself as an “everyman” who stands above race, class and gender – able to find common ground among Democrats, Republicans and independents. He presses the theme of restoring “national unity” and argues that most of the country is fed up with partisan bickering between the two major parties, between conservative “red states” and liberal “blue states,” between women and men, black and white, gay and straight, even rich and poor. He avoids speaking in ideological terms and even when calling for the right to health care, or to organize unions, or to be protected against thieving mortgage lenders – he speaks of collective will and building community across ideological lines. Such a politics of “unity” suggests that what is wrong with politics is the way it is conducted, rather than its service to corporate wealth and military power.

Yet, Obama’s “unity politics” has struck a responsive chord among vast sectors of the electorate that is frustrated by the paralysis of US politics but does not yet clearly assign blame for that paralysis to the obstructionist Republican right wing and to the many Democrats who have in the past accommodated the right wing stranglehold over progress.

Recently, in reaching across ideological and political lines, Obama has begun to draw a distinction between “bad faith” enemies like corporate lobbyists and right wing fanatics, and “good conscience” Republicans and independents with whom Democrats and progressives may have honest philosophical differences but who are welcome to support him. That approach provides an opportunity for conservatives who are fed up with the Bush-led ultra right to support Obama without being asked to renounce their conservative values. Polling data shows that such an approach has begun to result in clusters of Republicans and independents giving support to Obama in far greater numbers than to his primary opponent, Hilary Clinton.

Clinton, Obama’s remaining Democratic challenger pits her experience against Obama’s stress on change, ultimately linking the two by arguing that her greater experience is essential to producing change. And she too, as the first viable female presidential candidate in the nation’s history can also claim that her candidacy represents a historic turning point in the country’s politics. However, Clinton is tied to the corporate-oriented centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Pressed by sexist male critics to demonstrate that she will be a tough commander of the armed forces, she is an advocate of lavish military spending and hostility towards Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc., countries viewed by US policymakers as foes. Clinton’s vote to authorize Bush’s war on Iraq, and her subsequent vote to brand the Iranian Republican Guard as “terrorist,” underscores her aggressive outlook, despite her pledge under the pressure of strong public peace sentiment to set a timetable to remove US troops from Iraq.

Obama stresses his opposition to the Iraq war from the start, reflecting the views of an overwhelming majority and thus giving him a big advantage over Clinton. While neither Clinton nor Obama comes close to challenging US imperialism, Obama has signaled willingness to meet with US opponents and has voiced an openness to take major steps toward nuclear disarmament. Despite the fact that neither candidate has offered a coherent vision of their foreign policies, it is nevertheless in that realm that the differences between Clinton and Obama are sharpest, with Obama calling for an end to the outrages of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the restoration of multilateral cooperation in seeking to stabilize a dangerous world.

The strongly progressive voice of a young Barack Obama was muted as he climbed higher on the political ladder. His United States Senate voting record on domestic issues is only slightly to the left of Clinton’s. On the crucial environmental question, their programs for reducing fossil fuels and developing alternative energy are similar. Neither he nor Clinton have advanced a fully coherent and effective economic program to deal with the growing credit crisis and unemployment while Obama’s proposal for universal health care is perhaps slightly less progressive than Clinton’s.

However, a critical look at the respective programs of the two candidates misses the point and does not explain Obama’s explosive appeal. At this writing, he is winning primary elections in all parts of the country by huge margins. Political observers have contended that his support is based largely upon energized young voters, African Americans, and well-educated and wealthier white voters while Clinton draws support from older women, Latinos, and white workers. However, voting patterns in recent primaries show that both candidates have significant support across the spectrum of race, nationality, gender and class. Obama’s appeal, in particular, takes on the coloration of a powerful “rainbow coalition” of various racial groups, including significant numbers among the growing Latino population.


Symbolically and substantively, Obama has quickly begun to represent for many voters the embodiment of change. He calls for profound change in the political culture where cutthroat “business as usual” would be replaced by a progressive culture forged by a mass movement. That resonates powerfully with growing numbers of voters. Echoing Martin Luther King, He sees himself as the messenger of that rising mass movement, constantly proclaiming that the election is not about him, but about the dreams and aspirations of millions for a fresh start in the nation’s politics, for real change.

 Obama’s recent impressive string of crushing primary victories over Clinton were due not just to his inspiring appeal, but to the mobilization of hundreds of grass roots organizers, many with long experience in labor and civil rights movements in the past. Those organizers are skilled not only in identifying and bringing voters to the polls, but in building community activism to solve a variety of community needs from crumbling schools to collecting garbage. Hope for a sustained mass movement, without which no presidential candidate can effect significant change, lies in great part with those organizers and the promise that they may cement permanent progressive organizations at the grass roots.

Hopeful voters never really know what they will be getting once their candidate enters office. The power of corporations, militarists and other vested interests often frustrate the good intentions of the most progressive politicians. At this point, at least, Obama appears to understand that.
He constantly tells his vast crowds that they, the seeds of an emerging progressive majority, must keep the pressure on him and on all who aspire to power to make good on their promises.

“Hope” is another theme of the Obama campaign. He insists that hope is not just a sentiment, but is essential to change. The connection between hope and change is forged in his view by struggle. He brings his diverse crowds to their feet by reciting a litany of struggle that arose from hope – the hope of colonists for transforming change in the American Revolution and their struggle to win independence; the hope to end slavery and the struggles of slaves and abolitionists to achieve that goal; the hope for a better life in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the struggles to build the union movement and forge progressive reform through the New Deal; the hope to end fascism in World War II and the struggles of a generation to achieve that end; the hope for freedom and equality embodied in the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s; the hope for peace today and the struggles of the peace movement to end the Iraq war and prevent a war on Iran.

With all its flaws, ambiguities and question marks, the Obama campaign has sparked a powerful surge, especially among the young, for thoroughgoing change. Rarely in American politics, has the public heard Obama’s kind of rhetoric. Yet, the primary race remains close. Clinton, from the start, had an advantage in familiarity and powerful support from party insiders. The coming weeks will tell the tale. Stay tuned.