Obama's Election Research Articles

Obama, Where Art Thou? Hoping for Change in U.S. Education Policy

In this essay, Wayne Au carefully considers the educational stance of Barack Obama by exploring the president's speeches and his personnel and policy choices. Au considers the election of Obama as a moment of possibility for change in American education,but also questions whether Obama's hopeful message about education will be fully realized, given the decisions the administration has made or said it will make. Finally, he calls for individuals to build a movement that demands educational justice in order to achieve the vision of equitable education set forth by Obama.

An Insurrectionary Generation: Young People, Poverty, Education, and Obama

The Baltimore Algebra Project is a student-run, student-staffed nonprofit that employs public high schoolers and recent graduates as math study group leaders and as organized advocates for quality education as a constitutional right. In this essay Jay Gillen draws on his experiences as a facilitator of the Algebra Project to argue that only a generation of young people—and particularly young people in poverty—has the potential and the necessary boldness to break the caste system of schooling. In this struggle, they follow their ancestors who "earned" the insurrections required to break the slave and sharecropper systems. How young people in poverty interpret Obama's election, asserts Gillen, will determine what Obama means for educational justice.

Education for Everyday People: Obstacles and Opportunities Facing the Obama Administration

In this essay, Gloria Ladson-Billings describes her reaction to Barack Obama's election and her desire to share these historic moments with folks she considers "everyday people." She then looks to the future of education in the United States and highlights obstacles to the Obama administration's meaningful engagement with education issues. Ladson-Billings uses the frame of interest convergence to suggest that this new administration has the opportunity to engage in pragmatic politics and to put forward polices that simultaneously promote both the interests of public school students—particularly those from disenfranchised communities—and national interests. She illustrates this argument through a chronicle imagining a future discussion among the president's cabinet. Finally, she closes by describing the power of the president's inauguration for uniting diverse communities and broadening the definition of everyday people.

Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of American Politics (review)

Reviewed by: Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of American Politics Kenneth J. Bindas Cedric Johnson . Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of American Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. 320 pp. $60.00 cloth/$20.00 paper. Cedric Johnson's Revolutionaries to Race Leaders comes at a perfect time, for in it he analyzes the struggle for legitimacy within the Black Power movement in the sixties, and how myriad internal debates and external attacks both formulated and re-formulated the political dialogue and opened the door to more traditional political activism. Not that he is entirely supportive of the mainstream entrance of black people into the established political process, for one gets the impression that he would be more comfortable with a more separate political party with some power that better represented African American interests. Yet Barack Obama's election as President in 2008 reaffirms Johnson's basic point, that the Black Power movement arose in response to the limitations of liberal democratic reform, and while it worked toward an indigenous ethnic political ideology, debate over tactics and policy inevitably divided the activists and allowed for race to subsume the larger discussion of economic opportunity. [End Page 530] Johnson begins with an excellent discussion of the tone and import of Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka to the emergence of the Black Power movement. Cruse "concluded that industrial workers were no longer the central protagonists of historical revolution," but that "colonized peoples—with blacks as America's domestic colony" would be the leaders in the social transformation (4). By resurrecting Cruse, Johnson provides a foundation for understanding the divisions that would emerge within the Black Power movement, which he understands in one instance as having been "elite brokerage over popular mobilization" (40). While Cruse outlined the value of cultural identity within the new political debates, Baraka worked to produce art and inspire the interconnection between black aesthetics and black politics. Baraka believed the militants could bring about the mobilization of the black working class (whereas Cruse feared the militants' romantic view of revolution), and worked hard to help promote ending black political exclusion. Yet the ascendency of black people into leading political positions in cities like Newark, Detroit, and Cleveland exposed the divisions between the radical social-transformation ideology of the militants and the pragmatic political expediency of the elected officials. Section two of the book provides detailed accounts of the organization, operation and impact of 1972's Gary Convention, African Liberation Day, and the evolution of the National Black Political Assembly. These chapters are very informative, but the nearly blow-by-blow accounting makes for dry reading. The Gary convention sought to build a black united front and outline clearly the political and social goals in the National Black Political Agenda. Also, while the convention drew over 2,776 delegates and 4,000 alternates to the March event and produced the above-mentioned National Agenda document, it also revealed significant divisions "which posed a serious challenge to the pursuit of operational unity" (87). In the preamble, the framers of the Gary Declaration outline the basic humanistic values of the struggle for black political power and voiced in Obama's campaign: "we move for nothing less than a politics which places community before individualism, love before sexual exploitation, a living environment before profits, peace before war, justice before unjust 'order' and morality before expediency" (108). Divisions between the more ideological radicals and practical activists made the Gary event seminal, but both groups found long-term unity difficult to maintain. The same holds true for the creation of African Liberation Day, as the desire to raise consciousness over the complicity of U. S. corporations doing business in repressive states in Africa brought initial unity to disparate African American political groups; long-term unity proved difficult, however, largely due to "ideological conflicts within" the converts to Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory. The May 1972 event, held in Washington, D. C., drew between 15,000 and 30,000 participants and led to larger nationwide events the following year, but power struggles over the legitimacy of race and class "isolated radical activists from each other, and perhaps, more...

Minstrel Politics or “He Speaks Too Well:” Rhetoric, Race, and Resistance in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

This essay examines the rhetoric used to describe President Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign and in the first months of his presidency. Questioning proclamations that the election of America's first black President heralded a new post-racial era, the essay argues that the use of certain, seemingly benign rhetorical appeals by Obama's political opponents represented attempts to attach characteristics to him that re-circulated notions first disseminated in American popular culture through blackface minstrelsy. The essay concludes that Obama's election challenges deeply embedded assumptions about the proper “place” for African-Americans in politics and society. Therefore, Obama's ascendancy to the presidency evolves racial relations into an even more complex and relevant dynamic than before his election.

Obama and the New Age of Reform

This Article is an initial effort following Barack Obama's election in 2008 to assess his basic account of politics, and its likely implications for policy efforts during his Administration. Rather than a new brand of politician, Obama actually represents an historical throwback. In particular, his belief in the capacity of competence and expertise to help people achieve social consensus and to transcend the petty differences of ordinary politics touch upon essential elements of Progressive Era reformism. And, like many Progressives from the early 20th century – such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – Obama structured his campaign around a message deeply tied to the ideal of professionalism and its distinctive vision of the American dream. His personal story suggests the possibilities of success through meritocracy, educational achievement, and high status employment. In today’s climate, it is a story especially compelling to upper status voters, students, and African Americans, and has allowed him to create a powerful political coalition. Each group sees Obama’s election as fulfilling the promise of the civil rights movement and as proof of the continued vitality of equal opportunity.Nonetheless, one wonders whether or not an Obama Administration can transcend the limitations that plagued earlier Progressives. Such reformers were deeply wary of viewing social problems as the product of fundamental differences between haves and have-nots and therefore structural in nature. Instead, many argued that professional elites with the right training and know-how could rule both efficiently and wisely. This progressive vision failed to appreciate the extent to which American life remained subject to real political disagreements – disagreements that could not be papered over by talk of consensus. It also dramatically elevated the role of professionals in collective decision-making, and, in the process, diminished non-professional and blue-collar accounts of respectability and middle class achievement.

Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial

In his article Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial Michael Janis examines aspects of U.S. president Barack Obama's election in the context of the epistemology and history of racism. Following an introduction to the history of racism in Europe and in the U.S., Janis discusses the media in the U.S. and in Africa in relation to African American and African politics. The debates on race ignited by the campaign are considered in the light of Africana perspectives on relations between Africa and the West and on the history of slavery and colonialism. Based on selected data in the media of the U.S. and Africa, Obama's critical reception reveals that the post-racial remains contingent upon reparations and the historical contextualization of Western hegemony. What remains to be seen is the extent to which Obama's vision of the U.S. will draw from the African internationalist perspectives with which he is aligned. Michael Janis, Obama, Africa, and the Post-Racial page 2 of 12 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 11.2 (2009):

From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism. By Joseph E. Lowndes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 224p. $35.00.

Amid swirling talk of a “postracial” politics in the wake of Barack Obama's election as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Joseph Lowndes offers a needed reminder of the central role played by race in American political culture. Nowhere is the discourse of race more apparent, according to Lowndes, than in the supposedly “color-blind” politics of modern U.S. conservatism. Using language that fashioned New Deal liberalism as a “racial synecdoche” (p. 158) for all that conservatives reviled in the four decades following World War II, conservative strategists forged a triumphant pro-business Republican platform that could simultaneously claim to be postracial while serving as the key vote getter of closet racists throughout the nation.

The State of American Federalism 2008-2009: The Presidential Election, the Economic Downturn, and the Consequences for Federalism

The most consequential developments for American federalism in 2008–2009 were the presidential election and economic recession. After several years when states were the primary innovators on many issues that topped the policy agenda, the economic downturn drew renewed attention to federal policy-making, given the greater resources and capacities of the federal government. Although federalism was not a dominant issue in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama's election and sizable Democratic congressional gains had important implications for federal-state relations by putting federal power in the service of a different set of policy goals, encouraging state experimentation on a different set of policy issues, and producing a greater willingness to respond to state pleas for financial assistance.

Obama: the new contours of power

Barack Obama's election as US president marks a historic cultural shift in US political life, and is a major victory for progressive forces. But what is the nature of the broad-based alliance that placed him in the White House, how was it forged and from what did it derive its strength? The global economic crisis has shockingly exposed the bankruptcy of hitherto dominant and unfettered neoliberalism and opened the way for setting a genuinely progressive social and economic agenda. This article analyses the challenges that face the new administration and the balance of progressive forces that could make a profound and lasting difference to US society.

Letter from America: the political economics of US healthcare reform.

Obama's proposals are incremental and reflect the lesson learned by Hilary Clinton: that small steps are required to address big problems and the fact that there are no simple ‘magic bullet’ solutions to improving its performance. Lack of universal coverage and uncontained costs lie at the heart of the ‘broken’ American healthcare system and the current reforms do not offer an easy or assured approach to reducing both in the near term. Despite high expectations, the proposed investments are likely to be inflationary and any cost savings are likely to be longer term. Aspiring to universal coverage is more feasible than reducing costs that require some stakeholders to lose in order for the government to achieve its savings. The economic price attached to the current reforms is considerable and so controversy is inevitable. Nevertheless, Obama's election and his proposed reforms mark a significant political milestone. It was small step from the free market ideology of Friedman, Hayek and others to the assertion by President Gerald Ford that ‘a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have’ and President Ronald Reagan's later claim that ‘government is the problem not the solution’. So long was the shadow cast by this stance that President Bill Clinton subsequently felt obligated to maintain that ‘the era of big government is over’. In his November 2008 victory speech President Obama told Americans that ‘we have never just been a collection of individuals’, signalling that the political pendulum might be swinging away from the dominant conservative ideology of recent decades that has emphasized the self-interested individual. During his inauguration he went further, to declare that the ‘stale political arguments … no longer apply’ and in respect of healthcare that, ‘the question today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families … find care they can afford’. There is increasing consensus that the need for government regulation of the financial markets is a matter of degree. This was given voice by Obama during his inauguration speech when he stated that despite its strengths, ‘without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control’. Though it is not clear how far-reaching health reforms will eventually be, it is reasonable to assume they involve stronger state involvement and the time when the US healthcare system has been an open playing field for free market ideology may now be passing.

Taking Stare Decisis Seriously: A Cautionary Tale for a Progressive Supreme Court

To better understand stare decisis and to normatively explore our constitutional future, this article assumes that President Obama's election signifies a constitutional shift similar to the one occurring after President Nixon won in 1968. From that contentious, self-righteous era to the present day, all American Presidents selected Supreme Court nominees who were more conservative than the members of the Warren Court majority, much less that aggressively liberal duo, Justices Brennan and Marshall. Justice Stevens, appointed by the moderate Republican President Gerald Ford, is arguably the most liberal member on the Court. It is impossible to predict how far the country may tack leftward. Nixon's initial electoral triumph was an uncertain beginning for modern conservatism that hardly satisfied his party's more militant wing: he was more liberal domestically than any President after Carter (whose own administration began the process of deregulation which eventually degenerated into catastrophic speculative frenzy). It is possible that Obama's administration will readjust existing norms or fail, suddenly reviving modern conservatism. If this essay's prediction is accurate, how should a gradually more progressive Court evaluate conservative triumphs over the past forty years? Should an emerging liberal majority overrule most closely contested constitutional decisions-those five-to-four and six-to-three cases won by conservatives that have been the focus of most liberal political and academic ire? Should this new bloc confine those determinations to their facts, thereby stripping supporting reasoning of vitality? Or should they let most of these constitutional sleeping dogs lie? The answers to those questions partially reside in one's attitude toward the doctrine of stare decisis, a doctrine which means, at a minimum, that new Supreme Court Justices should presumptively integrate their constitutional jurisprudence into the existing framework even though they would have decided many prior cases differently had they had been on the Court when those cases were originally argued. Ultimately, this hypothetical liberal Court should not transform constitutional law by overruling many previously contested cases and/or by construing them narrowly. Nor should it create a wide range of new rights. Aggressive use of both forms of judicial activism could undermine our nation's desperate need to address wealth inequality, environmental problems, energy independence, racism, and sexism. To support that claim, we utilize important disputed cases, won by conservatives, as exemplars of the numerous justifications for a robust conception of stare decisis. This approach creates a more complete descriptive model of stare decisis, useful even to those who will disagree with our particular substantive conclusions.

Japan debates the Korean peninsula: implications for future policy and U.S.–Japan relations

Abstract Japan's debate about South and North Korea grew livelier in 2007–2008. As the strategic environment changed, right-wing opposition to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's supposed “Asianism” and center/left renewed hope for regional reconciliation produced a sharp exchange centering on the Korean peninsula, in which the U.S. figured importantly. Anxieties about national identity deeply rooted in history were compounded by the triple shock of the U.S. delisting the North as a terror-sponsoring state, the U.S.-caused global financial crisis, and Barack Obama's election victory. Troubled by George W. Bush's second-term foreign policy shifts, many Japanese people were unprepared for a new president more sympathetic to multilateralism. On North Korea, conservatives warned that U.S. policy was isolating Japan, but instead of refocusing on broad national interests, they pointed to the abductions issue as justification for a more independent foreign policy. On South Korea they welcomed the election of Lee Myung...

The problems facing Obama

As everyone knows by now, the election of Obama was greeted with great joy and relief in the United States-and elsewhere. The racist and reactionary campaign that McCain, surprisingly, decided to run did not have the effect he hoped for. Until then, a moderate and decent man, McCain was persuaded that he could only win by using and condoning extremist attacks. Symbolic of this turn was the choice of Sarah Palin, who played on all the traditional right wing fears and added many more, dividing the country into the real America, that would back her and the others, urban, elitist, intellectual and of course black, who would not.

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?

AbstractBarack Obama's election as the first Black president of the United States has stimulated much discussion about progress toward racial equality in the United States. Opinion surveys document that White Americans reliably perceive the rate of progress toward racial equality as greater than do Black Americans. We focus on two psychological factors that contribute to these diverging perceptions: (1) the tendency of White Americans and Black Americans to adopt different reference points to assess racial progress, and (2) the general tendency to frame social change as a zero-sum game in which Black Americans' gains entail losses for White Americans. We review research examining how these two factors contribute to racial polarization on the topic of progress toward equality. We also draw on excerpts from Barack Obama's speeches and writings to demonstrate that he often frames issues in ways that, our research suggests, has the potential to substantially bridge these racial divisions.

BARACK OBAMA AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN RACIAL POLITICS

AbstractIn 2008, following a campaign in which racial issues were largely absent, Americans elected their first Black president. This article argues that Obama's election does not signal the dawn of a postracial era in U.S. politics. Rather, it reflects the current structure of racial politics in the United States—a division between those who favor color-blind policies and seek to keep racial discussions out of politics, and those who favor race-conscious measures and whose policies are often political liabilities. The Obama campaign sought to win support from both camps. Only if pervasive material racial inequalities are reduced can such a strategy succeed in the long run.

The D&T Report

The D&T Report

POST-RACISM?

AbstractDoes President Obama's momentous election victory signify a new, post-racism era in America? Many observers, such as a New York Times science editor, think so. But, unfortunately, this claim is premature for a host of reasons. [1] It took “a perfect storm” of interlocking factors to elect Obama. [2] Many bigots actually voted for Obama. [3] Two logical fallacies underlie this too-optimistic view. [4] Racist attitudes and actions repeatedly occurred throughout the campaign. [5] White Southern and older voters both demonstrated that rank racism remains. [6] Increased turn-out of young and minority voters was crucial. The paper closes by considering what changes in American race relations may take place during the Obama presidency.

Barack to the future

Barack Obama's election bid harnessed technology as never before. Mark Harris evaluates the world's first 'open source' campaign.

The US elections and the global recession: what's next?

On 4 November, 2004, Americans elected their first ever African–American President, Barack Obama. The historic event has been hailed by the news media as signifying the breakdown of the last remaining racial barrier in US society. That’s the good news. The bad news is that President-elect Obama confronts a crisis like no other incoming President has faced since Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to office in the midst of the Great Depression. The country is fighting two wars, and the global economy just collapsed. At least American voters picked the right team to deal with the economic wreckage. In most exit polls, fixing the economy was foremost on voters’ minds, and their enthusiasm was evidently not aroused by Senator McCain’s economic advisors, who included the likes of fellow Republican Phil Gramm of Texas, who opined during the election campaign that America was a nation of “whiners” stuck in a “mental recession”. (For the record, Senator Gramm was also one of the key figures in the deregulation of the investment banking industry in 1999 that scrapped the laws and protections passed by Congress in 1933 after the last great market crash). In one sense, therefore, the election of Obama was a resounding repudiation of the economic policies of the last 8 years. Market deregulation, laissez-faire and corporate greed did in the economy. The subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting credit crunch are spilling their toxic effects to the rest of the globe, even to countries that were initially believed to be insulated from the shocks, like China. Yet it seems like yesterday that commentators were applauding the sagacity of the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s stewardship of the economy—does anyone remember Bob Woodward’s act of hagiography published not so long ago, entitled “ Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom ” …