I must confess there was a bit of an anti-climactic feeling seeing the Obama victory on Tuesday. I did feel the power of history a few month’s back in Denver when Obama gave his acceptance speech at the DNC. I even felt it at a Denver store when I saw what appeared to be a working class, down-on-his-luck black man looking at a gaggle of giddy white Obama supporters holding campaign signs. The man shook his head, amazed by what he called “all this love for a black man!” I certainly felt the power of history when I left a Borders store last night and all the papers were sold out. I did get a Smithsonian book of Presidents–from Washington to Bush. I figure that would be a collector’s item. The last all-white issue. It’s a new day in America.
But it’s not the end of Race Politics. It will be different. Obama, as I’ve said all campaign, is a race avoider. He’s smarter than the average bear. He’s calculated and ambitious. He’ll use race when necessary. But I doubt you’ll see him bending over backwards to make “a government that looks like America.” That’s what the white presidents say when they want to appease the diversity advocates. Obama at the top takes a lot of pressure off. Did you hear much about diversity on election night? Obama is essentially not a diversity guy. He’s a smart, wonky, person of color. This is going to be an administration about merit. It will take smarts, talent, and a little “who you know” to be part of this team. Flip through the Plumb book with that in mind.
Race politics will be different under the Obama Administration. It will be Obama’s hammer when he needs it. If not, we’ll be colorless.
A colorless race politics from the half-black, half-white man who could will it.
So if race is suddenly old hat, then what will be the rage?
Age.
Obama is the bridge between boomers and X’ers. The key thing going forward won’t be the racial divide, but the generational divide that will exist in America. The aging boomers represent a Senior Tsunami that will impact all social services and impact the inheritance of the young. This is a real issue folks.
Obama’s showing some respect by calling in guys like Buffett and Soros to advise. But I predict that in the Obama era, age discrimination will be much more common and older people will bond across race lines based on generational similarities.
The exit polls clearly showed some trends. Minorities were for Obama. Blacks were 96 percent Obama, 3 percent McCain. (Isn’t that with the margin of error pretty damn close to unanimous?) Latinos were 67 percent Obama, 30 percent McCain. Asians were 63 percent for Obama, 34 percent for McCain. That was pretty much as expected.
But analysts are saying that McCain’s age was more of a factor than Obama’s race. Those ageists went for Obama 78-21 percent.
When I saw that, I felt sorry for McCain. There were things that made him unworthy of the presidency. But not his age.
If that’s a harbinger of where we are going, we may have crossed over an unexpected threshold into a new era, where calls for racial justice are drowned out by cries for generational justice.