The Meaning of an Obama Victory

Apologies for this post—the spirit here in Ann Arbor is one of optimism and, particularly, drunkenness. It’s comfortable for us to congratulate ourselves on an Obama victory, on a world-historical moment in American history, but the path for a truly progressive victory has not yet achieved itself. The next struggle will be one over the actual “meaning” of this victory: what does it mean that Obama has won? The Right will try and convert this Obama victory into an argument that American is, essentially speaking, a “center-right country.” It is up to the Left to appropriately engage in the struggle over this meaning, over what Hegel refers to as “objective Spirit.” The true struggle is before us, the next four years is open, despite being electorally settled tonight.

The far-Right insinuations of a vote for Obama being a vote for “socialism” already suggest a path for how the Left might confront this kind of a confrontation over the true “meaning” of an Obama victory: if Obama is “truly” a “socialist,” as the Right contends, then the meaning of an Obama victory is that American has officially condoned “socialism.”

An electoral victory is only the first step towards a truly progressive platform for the U.S.