Intergroup Solidarity in the Run for President

April 22nd, 2008 Posted in Elections, Solidarity

We can think of the campaigns for nomination and election as a game whose rules are set by party committees, federal and state legislatures, news media, all under the critique of observers and participants. The rules and patterns and technologies have changed over the past two centuries. The process feels more democratic now, more influenced directly by the people as citizen voters even though certain cut-outs still remain where the direct vote is diverted by formula to a derived count.

The self-selected candidates are constantly winnowed by gate-keepers. Though there are many parties and individuals running the media and public attention goes to the two leading parties and toward the political professionals who hold or have held significant office.

The physical, emotional and financial demands on the candidates are considerable. Each must organize a support staff to mobilize actions, speeches, events. Travel is constant. The search for funds continual. One wonders when the candidate has time to think.

Constantly on display and spot lighted, still the public reading of candidates’ characters and ideologies tends to be purposely diverted to a constructed persona. We see the best foot. In the electoral mix there is some attempt to define the opponent by the sudden revelation of a past indiscretion, a slip that damages the image.

In form there is a direct relationship with the audience (the voters). The candidate and his/her team interact with the people as the lecturer does with his listeners—the sharing of information, ideology, emotion. There is also an episodic interaction between the candidates involving mild to serious conflict, each trying to throw the other off balance.

The journalists and commentators identify significant voting blocs as tending to support one candidate or the other. Shifting the vote to one’s favor becomes the major purpose, one voter at a time; but, even more importantly, to shift to oneself the votes of social-demographic groups identified by ethnicity, gender, age, section of country, socio-economic class, level of education. For me these sum up to three major fronts of contention that express our social order in process–ever present and continuing through and over election cycles.

(1) The Afro-Euro difference. Traditionally this is the race question. In the 1930s biologists and anthropologists showed that the biological distinction of large masses of people by continent is inextricably bound with distinctions of culture. So it is more appropriately characterized as a part of ethnicity, a concept that includes biological and/or cultural qualities as appropriate. Some see the two sides as involved in a zero-sum game. The advantage for one debited as a disadvantage for the other. This vision reduces the possibility of a resolving solidarity.

(2) Fundamentalist- Secular difference. This is a Church-State issue. The moral rules of our joint civilization that should be actively enforced by the state are in question. The fundamental side wants to impose more of these rules and to appoint more of their members to positions of power in government–in education and like institutions. The secular side wants reform and revision of some of these rules and wants to maintain a strict separation of the state and the religious spheres. The distinction can be resolved by the unity of an areligious (neither anti-secular nor anti-religious) center.

(3) Progressive-Conservative difference. The distinction is in political-economy. One side represents an almost pure support for business and business enterprise as the bedrock necessary for prosperity, democracy, and justice while the other wants governmental actions to balance the distribution of surplus to the various sectors of the population. It recognizes the distortions to social support nets and infrastructure by excessive bias toward one sector over others.

There are very active other fronts involving style of life (homosexuality), gender (rights of women), other ethnic group divisions (especially the American Indian and the status of illegal immigrants), and the current prominent issue of foreign policy and military action. The same type of analysis applies–there are two generally established and contradictory sides for each issue. The distribution of the people is treated independently for each front. Essentially the person with you on one issue might be against you on another. Any correlation is a matter of practical test.

Within each of these interest categories is a further diversity of actions, tendencies, attitudes–an internal politics that requires a separate analysis.

The outcome of the election turns in part on the voters’ readings of the candidates’ characters and ideologies, and in part by the informal coalitions of voters formed according to interest identities at the moment of decision. Which of these several fronts will the people see as primary? Ethnic difference, religious difference, political-economic difference, or style of life, gender, military policy or whatever is a matter of another practical test.

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More generally each front of contention can be overcome by the people’s social will or by social evolution. In England the distinctions of Norman and Saxon are no longer prominent. They all look like Brits now.

So in an election in which the two major candidates symbolize the political progress of two socio-political movements for social change–civil and economic rights for Afro-ethnics and for women–the possibility of overcoming these fronts would seem to be critical.

An overarching synthesis–the minimizing of ethnic and gender differences–might be out of reach, but an intermediate step emphasizing intergroup and inter-gender solidarity, if accepted, might challenge the negative karma in the body-politic, might weigh against the now weakening coalition of fundamentalists and conservatives.

Solidarity: the fostering of attitudes of loyalty, support, unity, and comradeship among the members of a social group or among members of different groups . It is often based on a narrow overriding social identity. It is symbolized by the linking of arms. Members of sports teams, of military units, of trade unions develop solidarity. It is usually asserted against an opponent of the shared identity who seeks to break the unity by appealing to other differences–the divide and conquer strategy.

The hint from the candidates is that the line of solidarity can develop along a broadly based populist political-economic program emphasizing the interests of the people in jobs, security, education.

So the question: is solidarity the answer?