Why is Barack Obama Electable?
Ann Clurman: There has been a very well-known shift in power from marketers to consumers. Consumers have been really good at celebrating how smart they are, how empowered they are. We've been picking that up for at least a decade. What I think is really significant is what we're calling "personal authenticity." And what that was, that kind of reached a critical mass in 2004, it was a coming together of a number of values and trends that we described as consumers really working on internal clarity of their values. Not only were they kind of trying to understand what was really important to them, they began to develop the courage to act on [those things]. And part of that meant moving out of your comfort zone -- and I think that is very important to what's happening today. But also, this desire to get life right became a passion. What we're seeing today is a massive shift beginning to surface and that shift is not just being caused the last four or five weeks.
I just got one of those breaking news e-mails, and apparently Advertising Age has named Obama the marketer of the year.
And so I think that it's that power, but there's a second item too. Through the appointment of several high-level Cabinet members in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice for example, and Colin Powell, the ascendancy of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice has made Americans comfortable with black Americans in positions of high, high responsibility and of power. Seeing Condoleezza Rice negotiating around the world with world leaders has made many Americans comfortable with the idea of black people in leadership positions. None of that was possible eight years ago.
Russell: I really agree with what Peter is saying. This financial crisis and the feeling that things are going in the wrong direction have been a long, long time in coming. If you look at men's incomes, men's earnings, among men who work full time, their earnings peaked in 1986. That's more than 20 years ago. So for the past 20 years, why have household incomes been increasing? For one reason only: the working woman. And now, virtually every woman who is going to go to work is at work. That boost to household incomes is over. The only other remaining boost to household incomes is that we have the baby boom generation right now in peak earning years and that has kept the numbers from falling.
Clurman: It really does. I think one of the reasons people are not quite as hysterical about what is going on is that they realize a lot of other people are in the same boat. Everybody is getting hit hard here. It's very interesting. We call it the "new responsibility marketplace," but it's kind of not here yet. It's coming, and slowly but surely we're going to see this rolling out. People are realizing on some level that it's time to pay their proverbial piper.
Clurman: They understand on some level. Some people who are up there intellectually understand this problem, but I think on some gut level, people understand that we have got a lot of really serious problems and what's happening is the economy has acted as a lightning rod for some serious thought about where are we going. Global warming, I forgot to mention that one. What's happening to the planet, what's happening to our lives.
Salon: But I don't see people going to find scapegoats.
Clurman: That's why there's an accountability and responsibility happening. What we saw in '91, during that recessionary period, we saw the baby boomers looking at the world collapsing around them and pointing fingers and whining and saying, "This isn't my fault." And now what we're seeing, because the times are different and the demographics are different, what we're seeing is people looking around and saying, "We've got some serious issues here and we've all got to take some modicum of responsibility." It's not enough to just change your light bulbs [from incandescent to fluorescent]. We've got to do something more about what's fundamentally wrong here.
"Only 60 percent of the 18-to-29-year-olds are non-Hispanic white. "
Francese: There's a fourth item that I want to add to that. That is the vast number of young women who are going to college. The best-educated man in America is 55 years old. But the best-educated woman is only 35. So women are going to college at significantly higher rates than men, and there are many, many more young college-educated women than there ever were before in American history.
Salon: Is it that women were just going to college at a disproportionately low rate and that they've just caught up with men? Or is there something else going on with gender roles?
Francese: No. There are a couple of reasons, in my view. One, we've obviously over the last 30 years made the switch from a manufacturing, construction-based economy which favors men who are not college graduates to an office-based employment category in which most people now work in offices and that favors women. Women can work in offices equally as well as men. And they are actually a majority of the professional managerial workers according to the Census Bureau data. They're 51 or 52 percent. Women are just as capable of taking managerial and professional jobs and doing them just as well as men but those jobs usually require college degrees. So women, who mature earlier in life than men, do go to college in greater numbers, significantly greater numbers. That's a fairly recent development.
Russell: I totally agree with what you're saying, and actually the percentage of women who go to college out of high school has been significantly higher than men for the last 10 or 15 years as women poured onto college campuses. It's totally true that women are much more educated than men. And if you look at married couples today, in 2007 for the first time among married couples, the percentage in which the husband is more educated than the wife is lower than the percentage in which the wife is more educated than the husband. There's been a real change in family life.
Unfortunately, our political system is set up so that the rural areas have a great deal of political power, in the Senate. I think that trying to play up this rural vote can be effective because so many Americans relate to it. But ultimately, the suburban and urban voter should numerically take precedent.
Francese: Only 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas.
Salon: Is there anything else that strikes you, non-Sarah Palin related, as awry in terms of what the candidates are talking about? Cheryl, in your book, I saw based on poll analysis that 65 percent of the American people consider themselves moderates. That certainly isn't the tone in politics or on cable television.
Russell: Right, most Americans are in the middle of the road. But there's been such a partisan split in the media that's taken place, with the different cable channels focusing on different camps and talk radio, that it's driven a wedge between Americans when in fact there's very little difference between most of them.
Russell: Both factors are involved. The number of boomers, and that voting increases with age. Interestingly, the millennial generation we've been talking about is 19 percent of the vote this year. And that's up from 13 percent in 2004. Generation X is 20 percent, and the older generation, which is people older than boomers, 63-plus, is 23 percent. The millennial generation, in terms of the size of its vote, is almost as large as the older generation.
Francese: That's new. That's one of the reasons Barack Obama has a chance.
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