Commenter “Dax” and others have pointed out this piece in Tablet by David Samuels entitled “Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment: How Barack Obama built an omnipotent thought-machine, and how it was destroyed.” It’s very long, and quite a few bloggers are writing about it. However, I found it ultimately unsatisfying because I think that although parts of it are brilliant it somewhat misses the point.
For example, here’s Samuels’ description of what David Axelrod – whom the author sees as absolutely central to Obama’s success both in Illinois and on a national level – did to further Obama’s political career:
Permission structures, a term taken from advertising, was Axelrod’s secret sauce, the organizing concept by which he strategized campaigns for his clients. Where most consultants built their campaigns around sets of positive and negative ads that promoted the positive qualities of their clients and highlighted unfavorable aspects of their opponents’ characters and records, Axelrod’s unique area of specialization required a more specific set of tools. To succeed, Axelrod needed to convince white voters to overcome their existing prejudices and vote for candidates whom they might define as “soft on crime” or “lacking competence.” As an excellent 2008 New Republic profile of Axelrod—surprisingly, the only good profile of Axelrod that appears to exist anywhere—put it: “‘David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate,’ explains Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protégé.
I find that somewhat peculiar in terms of what I know of Obama’s political course in Chicago. His success actually depended on a number of other things, which I’ve chronicled in many posts. Chief among them were knocking out all his political rivals in the Democratic primary on petition signature challenge technicalities, and Axelrod’s greatest assistance involved releasing embarrassing court records of his opponents’ marital strife. Very old-fashioned stuff, although Axelrod had great allies in the conventional press to rely on to spread the word. Another aspect of Obama’s early career, this time on the national level, was avoiding challenging black incumbents such as Bobby Rush, and running in districts more white.
So no, I don’t think that Axelrod got people who were racists to change their minds and vote for Obama. Axelrod’s tactics helped the very person – Obama – who was uniquely positioned to exploit white voters’ desire to prove their supposedly post-racism beliefs. There was a host of voters who were eager to virtue-signal how incredibly tolerant and open-minded they were, and Barack Obama was the perfect vehicle for demonstrating that they really had overcome anti-black racism. Obama, the “clean and articulate” black person (one of Biden’s more unfortunate phrases but one of his more revealing), was the candidate who appealed to this impulse the most.
And yes, during the Obama and “Biden” administrations, businesses and social media and the MSM parroted whatever the Obama administration promoted. This certainly amplified the message, but I don’t think it convinced people not already disposed in the direction. If that’s what meant by a “permission structure” than I guess the phenomenon did occur, especially with phenomena such as gay marriage. But I think that the most important element was not giving permission but rather making agreement obligatory lest one be called a bigot and ostracized in various ways. So it wasn’t so much giving permission to agree; it was withdrawing permission to disagree.
But I don’t recall the public being in favor of Obamacare prior to its passage (see the early years in this chart). As for the Iran deal, also discussed at length in Samuels’ article, I don’t think the public ever bought into it. Only the party most faithful accepted any rationale for the Iran deal – and of course the ever-compliant MSM. So Obama didn’t enter into those things by convincing the public, whatever the media said and however the media helped. He accomplished them through Congressional machinations with the help of confederates such as Pelosi, and in the case of the Iran deal by ignoring any requirement that Congress approve it.
Biden was simply not as adept at any of this, even if he’d been in full possession of his faculties (which he was not). And although Obama was pulling strings behind the scenes, it was no longer working. Much of the public had found in Trump a spokesperson who was remarkably plainspoken and in the position of being an adult who functioned much as the child in the Emperor’s New Clothes story: Trump said what he actually saw and for much of the public it was what they saw, too, and felt relief at finally hearing someone say it loud and clear and in a non-mealy-mouthed manner. Plus, by 2024, the public had seen the left in all its manipulative power-mad glory, and increasing numbers of the public didn’t like it.
The American people have gotten mugged by reality, and that’s a pretty powerful experience.
