Obama’s election was a cathartic event, his call for change having struck a chord with the electorate. Similarly, Nick Clegg seems to have captured the UK market for change. The media has been buzzing with talk of this being a transformative election. But can the appeal of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ automatically be translated in to tangible votes?
Obama used the traction gained from the shimmer and glow of his message to organise a formidable campaign infrastructure. Many of Obama’s supporters, just like those of Nick Clegg, were enthused grassroots groupies, first time voters, or undecideds. The Obama campaign used the two year long primary campaign to create an infrastructure that innovatively combined new technology and old community organising principles to reach out to these voters.
I participated in one of the community organising workshops, and then volunteered in the South Carolina primary and in Florida for the general election. There were moments of razzle dazzle but a lot of it was hard labour. The campaign’s get out the vote activity was based on three pillars. The primary task was to build a voter database using state records and consumer data. This enabled the use of micro-targetting techniques to identify both supporters and undecideds. The campaign also focused on training field organisers, using community organising principles to mobilise and manage volunteers. And finally, it concentrated on engaging the grassroots and building volunteer teams, so that each team was set up to run activities ranging from voter registration, data verification, phone banking, and door to door canvassing to getting out the vote on Election Day.
This infrastructure is now being used by the Democratic Party to prepare for the upcoming November midterm elections. The party has a ‘community by community’ plan, which aims to use the Obama campaign’s 13 million strong grassroots network, now called Organizing for America, to reach voters. Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee have set up a field operation that has already taken in pledges totalling 10 million volunteer hours. These hours will be used in the more tightly contested congressional and gubernatorial races to reach out to first time voters from Obama’s 2008 election and persuade them to vote Democrat a second time. Even though the message of change is now somewhat bespattered, mostly by Republican mudslinging, the organisational infrastructure remains intact.
The Obama campaign paid as much attention to collecting and organising voter ID data as it did to training field organisers and volunteers – a combination that was able to utilise the energy fuelled by Obama’s message of change in order to reach out not only to the stalwarts, but also to the first timers and the undecideds. The latter two groups, in particular, need to be cultivated and more or less corralled to the voting booth. Nick Clegg has the most to gain from such voter categories but given his late propulsion to stardom, one might be tempted to quote the question Sarah Palin put to Obama ‘how’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?’
It might work out just fine for Nick Clegg but I suspect it will be hard for him to capitalise on the initial success of his ‘hope and change’ narrative. Obama’s electoral victory was founded not just on the glitz of change but on the grit of organisation. How can the Lib Dems ensure that their fans will deliver on Election Day, when Clegg’s star went into the ascendant just three weeks ago, leaving little time for the long term labour that goes in to identifying, registering, canvassing, and getting your supporters to the polling booth. Will a three week wooing period minus the donkey work of a relationship be enough to get a signature on the marriage certificate?
Photo: Permanent Daylight 2010
The other thing that Obama had was a very clear narrative with a very specific ‘message of hope’ that was anchored in a progressive reading of US history. For example, his ‘not red or blue states, but a United States’ was reinforced by historical allusions to those moments when Americans ‘worked together.’ He also constructed his narrative as a progressive one: we struggled to achieve a better America – again with references to the work against slavery, for women’s votes etc.
The power of his ‘hope and change’ message was continually re-inforced by the critique of the ‘present’ and therefore the need for ‘change’ being accompanied by ‘hope’ that was realistic because we have achieved it before. The resonances were powerful because they used/conjured up traditional images of Americaness and deployed them effectively in a call for change.
For example, Clegg tried to present his party as ‘new’ and thereby severed any links with its ‘liberal’ roots which would have shored up his arguments re civil liberties against Labour and ‘social democratic’ adjuncts which would have positioned him well against the Tories.
Labour also failed to construct its own narrative of achievement powerfully enough and could/should have countered that it was the party of ‘hope’ because it has a long history of ‘progressive change’ and is the only party to give real hope to the people who are weighed down with burdens.
Political narratives drawing on national history have a different kind of resonance over the pond. The nations historical story is connected to its politics and the notion of natinality and citizenship in a very different way to the UK; and the US are always keen to continue the construction of their historical narrative because they are acutely aware of their lack of history as a young country compared with the longer histories of European nations.
Clegg was right to use a narrative about being ‘new’ in opposition to the ‘old’ politics. It went down very well.
The Lib Dems are pretty good at the grass roots activities for UK parties, but Nur is very right that all UK political parties are a long way from the kind of community organisation the Democrats are doing.
The Conservatives possibly have the strongest green shoots of this kind of activity with their Social Action projects.