Creative Class

Another bad day yesterday for the stock markets with the Dow falling to its lowest point since 2003. With bad economic news accumulating, expect further weakening and the stock market slipping still further.

Even though Obama has surrounded himself with advisers like Paul Volcker and Warren Buffet, among others, the very fact of the election and the three-month transition will surely fuel greater instability, especially if it appears that Paulson et al are lame ducks, on their way out.

This introduces a most interesting political-economic dynamic. To allay any residual fears, should Obama issue a major statement on his plan for the economy? Should he announce his core economic team? Should he lay out details of how his team will work with current team to ensure an orderly transition? How long can this wait?

Is consumerism a possible forecast of an election? There’s a new store at Reagan National Airport, aptly titled, ‘America’ in Terminal B. While waiting for my flight last week, I popped in to check out the array of fun election gadgets. While cashing out with a few Obama bobble heads and a tin of Bush administration ‘indictmint’ mints, Richard asked the cashier which candidate was selling more products. She eagerly reported that Obama was way ahead in sales, outpacing McCain and Palin by double. Here’s a small shop titled America in one the busiest airports in the nation’s capital which already swings democratic but hosts tourists from all over the country. What do you think? Are people voting with their dollar?

Via The Talent Show.

Swing states in yellow – Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Virgina, and Colorado among others. Sure, Obama has a structural lead going into it, but whoever swings the swings will win.

Talk about post-convention bounce. A new Gallup poll has McCain now up by 10 points over Obama, 54-44.  Lots of fluctuation and other polls have it much closer. Alan Brinkley opines in the Wall Street Journal that in a post-partisan world, voters are driven by wedge issues and the “attractiveness” of candidates. An ABC poll says white women are flocking to McCain-Palin who lead in this demo 53-41. Quite a turnaround from Obama, up 50-42 before the conventions (data via pollster.com).

But such macro perspectives miss the underlying reality of American politics. It’s all about geography.

Obama has the creative class states wrapped up, no doubt; but these are highly concentrated.

The political geography of the election turns on a handful or so of swing states: Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada.

From where I sit, this poses a real challenge for Obama. Seems to me, the whole kit and caboodle turns on whether Obama can mobilize enough young people and black voters to turn those states.

Looking at this emerging political geography, which way do you think the election will swing?

Peter Culshaw reports on the first creative class election in The Telegraph:

According to American sociologist Richard Florida, it was the “creative class”
that swung victory for Barack Obama in the recent US Democratic nominations.  In Florida’s definition, the “creative class” includes people
working in the media, advertising, online, music and film industries, as well as
designers, artists. and other, often freelance, creative workers who
overwhelmingly supported Obama … We are witnessing the first creative-class election in American
history,” he says. “The creative class is an online class; it’s YouTube, its
MySpace, it’s music. And no one has caught fire with this class like Obama.”

While pundits have looked endlessly at how the Democratic race
was split along race, gender or education lines, Florida, a professor at the
University of Toronto who has written a bestselling book The Rise Of the
Creative Class, was more interested in “looking into how creative-class people
were voting in this primary season. On issue after issue, they preferred Barack Obama to Hillary
Clinton or John McCain by wide margins”.

The benefit for Obama of having this creative class onside is
almost inestimable. For a start, there were high profile music videos like
Will.i.am’s star-studded Yes We Can
- a YouTube sensation, watched online by more than eight million viewers –
and I got a crush on Obama by a singer calling herself Obama
Girl, both of which generated reams of free coverage for Obama.
Hundreds of less well-known videos also worked in his favour,
reaching out to a wide variety of voters, from the hip-hop Representin
Obama and the self-explanatory salsa song Latinos for
Barack Obama, to scores of indie, country, and folk tunes. The small number
of Clinton and McCain videos were outnumbered and looked clunky, embarrassing
and patronising in comparison. An even more important key to Obama’s victory was his success in
using the web to fundraise, attracting more than a million small donors. While
the policy differences between Clinton and Obama were not that huge, the idea of
a candidate not in the pocket of corporate lobbyists added to Obama’s appeal
among the online community, creating a virtuous circle of support.

John Cassidy, writing in the NY Review of Books, provides a fascinating look at the thinkers and thinking that are shaping the economic outlook and policies of Barack Obama (pointer via Mark Thoma).