YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN A GREAT GIFT, AMERICA...:

Obama's Elite Power Base (Joel Kotkin 01/02/2010, New Geography)

Rather than the “good old boys,” Obama’s core group hails from what may be best described as the “creative class” – the cognitive elite, or, to borrow from Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Postindustrial Society, the “hierophants of the new society.” They come not from traditional productive industry, but the self-conscious “knowledge” sectors – such as financial services, the software industry, and academia.

From early on, Barack Obama attracted big-money people like George Soros, Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon far more effectively than his opponents in either party. As The New York Times' Andrew Sorkin put it back in April, "Mr. Obama might be struggling with the blue-collar vote in Pennsylvania, but he has nailed the hedge-fund vote.”

Other bastions of support could be found in Silicon Valley, where Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist John Doerr were all early backers. Obama, the former law school professor, also did exceedingly well with academics, and many of his pivotal wins in the Midwest rested heavily on both votes and volunteers from college constituencies.

Finally Obama gained the early support of public-sector unions, now arguably the dominant power within the Democratic Party. Together, these groups now enjoy the lion’s share of influence inside the administration.

In contrast, the representatives of traditional Democratic sectors such as industrial labor unions, Latinos, or even many African Americans were slow to join the Obama bandwagon. Even after they joined his electoral coalition, they have received little in the way of succor from the president and the administration. [...]

In the short term, Obama’s loyalties have gained him political credit even in hard times. Support from Wall Street and Silicon Valley assures access to big-money sources and influences the upper echelons of the establishment press, particularly in New York. Meanwhile, the academy and the public bureaucracy provide a cadre of political shock troops who may be needed to rouse an increasingly disaffected Democratic base in the 2010 elections.

But Obama’s class strategy also poses considerable longer-term risks. The cognitive elites – clustered in places like Washington, New York, Boston, or Silicon Valley – tend to only talk to and listen to each other. This often makes them slow to recognize shifts in grassroots opinion on such issues as the health plan or global warming.

...the chance to see what life would be like if Adlai had beaten Ike!

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 3, 2010 7:49 AM