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BY JESSE GOTTSCHALK

In print | Published January 22, 2009

Dear Democrats,
(Don’t worry, Republicans, I haven’t forgotten you, but in this first column of the Obama administration, I have some words for his Democratic supporters.)

2008 was quite a year, wasn’t it? You poured your heart, soul, sweat, tears and the contents of your wallet into a campaign that changed the way people campaign.

Some of you saw your allegiances change as the supporting characters slowly stepped aside, only to see many of them return for the grand finale (Clinton! Biden! Richar- well, at the end of 2008 he was still riding high). You gave Barack Obama the keys to the White House, as well as permission to change the locks once the Bush administration was safely outside.

Congratulations! Get ready for a much, much harder year.

That might seem surprising. None of the major adversaries of 2008 are in power – George Bush and Dick Cheney have vanished, John McCain has declared himself the “loyal opposition,” and Sarah Palin is safely back in Alaska. Democrats may not be happy with all of Obama’s policies, but when comparing him to the people who were calling the shots in ’08, they’ll probably be pretty satisfied.

So why is 2009 going to be the harder year? No one will disagree that a lot of work needs to be done to fix our policies, our politics and our priorities. Yet this was true in 2008. There are several things, however, that make 2009 different.

In 2009, the work that remains will be harder to do. Not everyone eager to bring about change worked for a campaign this past year. But many of them did, and for those people, finding another means to make change will be challenging. This is normal in non-election years in American democracy. Unless you are A) constitutionally empowered to create government policy or B) a well-connected lobbyist, it is much simpler to work for a change in politicians than in policies.

Everyone knows the tools they have to sway politicians – voting, volunteering, voicing opinions to friends and neighbors to try to persuade them – but what does it take to change American policy on Darfur? Or healthcare? Or gay marriage? It’s certainly possible for citizen organizations to influence these and other issues, but doing so takes creativity, persistence and patience with the fact that the results of effective activism will be subtler and harder to identify than the swearing-in of a new leader.

In 2009 this type of work will be harder to find. For many of us in 2008, it was impossible to not know ways to get involved – our inboxes were crammed with requests for help, our phones rang with auto-dialers recruiting volunteers, and practically everyone knew someone who volunteered every weekend. But now…?

For perhaps the first time, I’m thankful I signed up for 79 different mailing lists at the Freshman Activities Fair.

Both of these difficulties for 2009 are common to both Democrats and Republicans, and though serious, they essentially represent the status quo for American democracy. The last problem, however, is one that Democrats have not had to grapple with in a long time.

As for Obama’s swearing-in, the Democrats major political antagonists will be gone. Barack Obama is the President, and Democrats have firm control of the House and Senate. This is a gain for Democratic causes – and potentially a major problem for Democratic activism.

Why? Because activism is all about opposition, and people tend to be lousy at opposing people they generally support.

People have a problem with “cognitive dissonance,” which Wikipedia helpfully defines as “an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.”

In this case, because most Democrats are generally supportive of President Obama, they will tend to rationalize and defend many of the controversial positions he will inevitably take.

Think back to the Democratic primaries, when the policy differences between then-Senators Obama and Clinton were dwarfed by the candidates’ similarities. Despite this, on nearly every issue, strong Obama or Clinton supporters I talked to were convinced that their candidate was right. Why should somebody who joined the Obama campaign because of his leadership style necessarily assume his healthcare plan is better? This phenomenon is part psychological; it is also part political, with people afraid that defending a rival could be seen as a critical concession, and a sign of weakness. John McCain’s campaign tried to play on these fears, actually running an ad after the first presidential debate playing up the number of times Obama said he agreed with McCain.

It is true that not all Democrats suffer from this inability to criticize the leaders they support. For many, the reaction to this tendency goes to the other extreme, approaching complete cynicism about political leaders. This can be acceptable if it motivates people to work hard for change regardless of who is in power. There are several major risks to cynicism, however: it can discourage activism, it can keep people from understanding their leaders as people (which can be an important part of understanding how to influence them), not to mention that cynics tend to make uninspiring leaders. Cynicism may be better than following blindly, but it’s not what we need to affect positive change.

So, Democratic activists, here is your challenge: oppose your political leaders on something. That may sound silly – deliberately seeking a point of disagreement just for the sake of doing so – but that is an important step everyone should take. Why? Because if you’re only finding areas of agreement, then you are limiting your own ability to participate in American democracy.

You can lobby your Congressmen to support elements of the Obama agenda (something you may consider doing anyway), but you won’t be doing anything to influence the agenda itself.

You don’t need to do this right away. Give the Obama administration some time to give us a clearer image of its true priorities and policy preferences. After that? Find a disagreement. Tell people about it. Say, “I like what Obama is doing with the economy, but whatever happened to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” Ask whether he’s got the right strategy in Afghanistan. Question his biases, his details, his advisors. And don’t be afraid to admit it – you might even want to practice being vocally critical.

And what then? If you get through this, then congratulations, you’ve gotten around the third problem for Democrats in 2009. But the other problems are, of course, still there: the work will still be harder now, and the options will be harder to find.

It’s going to be a hard year. Let’s get started.

Jesse is a senior. He can be reached at jgotts1@swarthmore.edu

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