Not Wanting Change

[kurt_cagle]

It occurred to me, after reading a number of posts here about Republicans and even some (mostly elderly) Democrats who were terrified of what an Obama victory will bring, that these people are not necessarily motivated by bigotry (though some may be) or fear of taxes (though again some may be). They are terrified of change. These are people that have created their own internal worlds and, for all that they may doubt seriously that Bush was in fact all that good for the country (and by extension McCain will likely not be either), both of these men represent the status quo - they will not make the world change in ways that will upset these people.

Obama, by definition, represents change. He is a young mixed heritage man seeking a job that has only been held by middle-aged white men. His stump speeches are about change, and for all that he has framed the debate in terms of how such change will generally be for the benefit of the majority of Americans, it is still change.

One of the factors I've long noticed among the religious evangelical crowd is the degree to which external change is abhorrent. It is different when they are the agents of change, and there's a certain amount of acceptance that some events are simply "God's will", but the latter are big things that they can't do much to change. However, when external change threatens not only your ideology but even your world view, the results can be terrifying - and hence the certainty that change is coming, no matter how benign, can prove utterly debilitating.

Democrats are not immune to this effect (we as a species tend to be pretty linear, and change represents non-linearity) but overall they also tend to be more philosophical and resigned to change happening, even when its bad. That's why Democratic leaders often do better when times are poor - they are more open to looking at alternatives and assessing the future possibilities than Republicans are, and are usually much more well grounded in terms of their ability to handle change. I think that's also why protests are so different between the right and the left. The right tends to focus on the agents of change, and are generally far more adept at partisan, ad hominem attacks than the left is - they go after the agent of change rather than attempting to coerce those people in authority to change their strategies. The left, on the other hand, is far more process oriented. For instance, they were more likely to attack a given policy (such as the Iraq war) rather than to attack Bush directly. That doesn't mean that ad hominen arguments are exclusive to the right, or that Republicans don't fight against policy as well, only that the overall strategies towards the opposition tend to reflect this bias.

If Obama wins (and I believe that he will, but that it likely won't be the monumentally one-sided landslide that people are predicting) it will be because he has managed to both convince those that are seeking change that he is the one capable of making that happen, and for those that are afraid of change that he understands their fear and will try to make things as undisruptive as possible.

Obviously, there are those that also see in Obama someone who will jeopardize the benefits that they have gained from the Bush years, and overall, I think those people deserve to be very nervous. They benefited at the expense of many others. That particular gravy train is likely to at least slow down somewhat, at a time when it needs to, but it will do so anyway - we're still just seeing the receding waters. The tsunami is coming, and that change will make the change coming from Obama seem insignificant. I feel confident that he's the kind of person who can at least get people away from the lowlands before the wave strikes, and be capable of directing things after the wave hits, because he knows how to handle change.