A national mood swing
Change isn't just a political slogan, it's a national yearning that's put the Democrats back on the offensive.
'We can end a war. ... We can save the planet. ... We can change the world."
A few years ago, if you'd suggested that a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination consider airing these sentiments in ads broadcast during the Super Bowl, most political pundits would have said you were insane. The Super Bowl, watched by nearly a third of the U.S. population, is about football, beer and machismo. It's not about the antiwar movement, the environmental movement, the antipoverty movement or peace, love and understanding.
But on Sunday, Barack Obama aired a 30-second Super Bowl ad that drew unabashedly on the iconography of the American left -- and no one batted an eyelash. The ad offered images of rallies and protest marches, of poverty and environmental destruction, of the devastation of war and of beaming, hopeful, multiracial crowds. Broadcast not to a niche demographic of activist students or South Carolina African Americans but to a cross-section of football fans, the message was unashamedly nostalgic and idealistic.
The Obama ad highlights a recent sea change in Democratic politics, one that's impossible to understate. Just a few short years ago, Democrats were on the defensive. On national security issues, the party's Beltway power brokers anxiously debated how best to look "tough." That led easily into a depressing sort of "me tooism," as Democrats competed to show that they weren't the wimpy, soft creatures of Republic caricature but hard, chest-beating types, willing to embrace wars, abandon civil liberties and kill terrorists deader than dead.
On domestic issues, Democrats were also running scared. Most congressional Democrats voted to support Bush's ruinous 2004 tax cut, for instance. And in general, Democrats did their darnedest to avoid using words or images that would remind the average American of the 1960s. The conventional wisdom was that bringing up the antiwar movement or the women's movement or race or poverty would be a gift to the right.
No more. All of a sudden, Democrats are on the offensive. "Change" isn't just this year's most ubiquitous campaign slogan, it seems to be something that's already happening out there in the real world, in small towns, on college campuses and yes, even at Super Bowl parties.
