Writing this election day, a few hours before Obama's almost certain victory, I am sure that his election represents a great leap forward for America. Certainly, Obama's election represents the most significant advance, since the end of Jim Crow and the passage of the voting rights act, toward cleansing the moral stain from the body politic that is the continuing legacy of the system of chattel slavery -- in all its horror, brutality and injustice -- which was integral to the social and economic life of these United States for far too long, and which has continued to cast its long and dark shadow over American life ever since. Whatever else Obama accomplishes, if only on this one front, his election will have been of profound moral and historical significance.
Alas, as the contours of the ongoing economic crisis and of the Wall Street bailout have reminded us, there is more to what ails America today than our long and continuing legacy of racial injustice. Clearly, America also suffers from profound socio-economic injustice and from profound inequities of political power and influence that parallel these socio-economic inequities. On this front, that is, with regard to the moral imperative of socio-economic redistribution, I must admit that my sympathies are more with Nader than Obama, and my expectations for transformational leadership from Obama on the socio-economic and social-justice questions of the day are quite low, especially as he has surrounded himself with Wall Street plutocrats and establishment economists.
Ultimately, the solution to the problem of socio-economic inequity and injustice will not be solved until a new politics emerges on the ground. Indeed what America really needs in not so much a new President as a new politics. In Obama's early rhetoric (in Iowa) when he presented himself as the catalyst of something bigger than his own aspirations, he sounded this note, calling upon Americans to recommit themselves to an activist politics inspired by passion for the common good and the res publica. This note has not been sounded by him much since, and so it is an open question whether he (or anyone) will seek to build on the unprecedented levels of political interest and engagement which his campaign has engendered, and to transmute these publicly spirited energies into the genuinely participatory politics which could genuinely transform this country. Obama has certainly tapped into the collective hope for a very different kind of America, but how interested will he be in creating new channels of political expression and deliberation that look beyond the goal of his own election and reelection, and which look toward a revived polity and renewed civic life, when these new channels are likely to generate political ferment and moral demands for socio-economic change which will pose a challenge to the moderate and prudent course that no-drama Obama and his team are intent upon. Time will tell.
All this being said, voting for Obama was not a hard choice for me, mainly because I saw it as an important step -- not the last step and not the only step -- along the road to rectifying the legacy of America's primal sin of slavery. And while I hope for the best from an Obama presidency, and expect to be disappointed, I have no doubts about the intrinsic historical and moral significance of his being elected to the highest office in the land by the people of the United States, and that is enough to make today a day of profound importance and makes me proud to have been part of it by voting for Obama's election. And, with that said, now it is time to turn our attention to fight against those with a vested interest in the socio-economic status quo and to fight on behalf of creating the organs of a vitalized and active democratic body politic.
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