Am I like people like me, or like other people?

I think I have spoken before about the idea that I picked up from some marketing guru that a brand can be held hostage by its consumers. Do you know? Birkenstock may make a fine shoe, but there are an awful lot of people who will never buy a shoe from them because those shoes are Birkenstocks, and we all know about people who wear Birkenstocks. You may find them comfortable, but you are not wearing them to work. Unless you are, because that’s the kind of place that you work, but you see my point. If I were to wear them to work, my place of employment would be making the statement that this is the kind of place that hires Birkenstock-wearers, not the statement that one of their employees finds Birkenstocks comfortable. That’s too bad for Birkenstock, which after all is selling shoes, not hippies, but they can’t do anything about it. I mean, they can’t stop selling Birkenstocks to the kind of people who wear Birkenstocks, because those are their best customers, right? And as long as they do sell them to those people, then those are the kind of people who wear Birkenstocks, and people who don’t want to be associated with them won’t buy them. They are hostage to their customers.

Much the same thing happens in politics. Atrios over at Escaton calls it Assholes, Assholes, Everywhere, pointing out that “at this point in the campaign it should go without saying that every candidate has their asshole supporters, and generally neither the candidate nor their non-asshole supporters should be judged by them.” This is true, but not helpful, and Atrios is not altogether innocent of judging a leader by his followers himself. And why should he be? There are a ton of occasions where a leader should be judged by his followers. When the supporter is famous, it’s an endorsement. On the other hand, particularly when you get to the national scale, a lot of assholes are going to support somebody, right?

From a rhetorical point of view, one of the interesting if unappealing things that’s been happening in this race is the creation of the typical supporter of the other candidate. Sen. Clinton’s campaign has attempted to create the typical Obama supporter: young, black, urban, affluent, idealistic, naïve, overeducated, overcaffeinated, and overexcited. Sen. Obama’s campaign has attempted to create the typical Clinton supporter: old, suburban, ill-educated, old, uncomfortable with minority leadership, cranky, old, elderly and old. Some people, presumably, were persuaded that they didn’t want to be like that, for whichever that, and some weren’t.

Matthew Yglesias, over at the Atlantic, writes about the war in a note called Against Unity that “Paradoxically, a lot of folks find [Sen. Clinton’s] massive wrongness on this hugely important issue reassuring […] war opponents were all a bunch of hippies.” I think that’s something that was really very important at the time of the invasion; for a variety of reasons, the war opponents did come off as a bunch of dirty damned hippies. This was a massive rhetorical failure on their part (sadly, I cannot say our part as my eventual anti-war stance came late, late, late), and I get a trifle cranky when (some of) the people who were right back then blame everybody else for their rhetorical failure, but the point stands that Sen. Clinton was wrong about the invasion of Iraq, and Sen. Obama was right.

Happily, as various people have pointed out, Sen. Obama won the nomination of our Party largely because he was right about the invasion. It was close enough, in the event, that there were several things that, had they been different, might have changed the outcome, but one of them was certainly the war. But since the “base” (vaddevah dat means) of the party is strongly anti-war, Sen. Clinton’s campaign did not attempt to portray the typical Obama supporter as anti-war. Similarly, none of Sen. McCain’s opponents could usefully portray the typical McCain supporter as a hawk. I think the general election will be interesting, in that regard. Will Sen. Obama be held hostage by the anti-war “left”, or will Sen. McCain be held hostage by the pro-war “right”?

Honestly, I’m hopeful. Sen. McCain himself looks like the typical McCain supporter I would want in everybody’s mind, while Sen. Obama looks—well, Sen. Obama actually looks a lot like the typical Obama supporter Sen. Clinton’s campaign wanted in everyone’s mind, but he doesn’t look like a guy who wears Birkenstocks, does he?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.