User Submitted Blog Post: A Black Brown?

An underdog Democratic politician demonstrates the danger in presuming that the party's nominee for President is a done deal. Despite beginning with many of the most powerful people in Washington on his opponent's side, his campaign generates a remarkable groundswell of grassroots support, calling the wisdom of party insiders in the Democratic National Committee into question. Suddenly people who never thought of donating money to a candidate because they have little to give are realizing that, when enough little people contribute, the big people seem to diminish in size. It's like something from a Frank Capra movie, only its happening in the Computer Age. The American Left, though rightfully suspicious of anything that happens under the auspices of the party that has rejected its concerns again and again, starts to believe again in the mainstream political process. The prospect of removing President Bush is palpable. All over the country, individuals who had sworn they wouldn't be fooled again are fired up by the conviction that they can make a difference after all . Hope is back in a big way.

The year is 1992. And the candidate responsible for this excitement, which will linger into November even though he has left the stage, is Jerry Brown.

The man once known as "Governor Moonbeam," when he presided over California in the 1970s, emerged from the political wilderness that year as the prophet for a progressive populism recalling the years of the Great Depression. By insisting that all of his campaign funds come from donations of $100 or less and by advocating for a flat tax without loopholes, Brown managed to appeal to a wide range of Americans, from traditional Democrats, to independent Progressives, to Libertarians normally hostile to the party famous for "Big Government." Because he eventually lost to the early favorite Bill Clinton, however -- in part because he angered New Yorkers by saying he would consider Jesse Jackson for his Vice President -- the importance of Brown's achievement has been obscured. People forget that, had it not been for the interest in Brown's campaign, many of the voters who eventually rallied to Bill Clinton's side might have stayed home. And they underestimate the degree to which Brown's platform, with its unconventional blend of priorities from both the Right and Left, contributed to the support of Ross Perot, whose decision to run as an independent candidate ultimately cost George H. W. Bush the Presidency.

It is time, though, as the parallels between Brown's situation in 1992 and Barack Obama's in 2008 make clear, to reevaluate his campaign's legacy. For the template Brown constructed -- and which Howard Dean used to build an early lead before the 2004 primary season -- is turning out to be the best one for the current political conjuncture. This is not to imply that Obama is simply mimicking Brown's campaign. By being more flexible in courting donations and less fixed on the policies he is promoting, Obama has been able to generate support in quarters that saw Brown either as an annoyance or a threat. As many critics have noted, Obama is, at times, stunningly diffuse in articulating his agenda. He is for hope and against despair. But most of the line items in the budget for his political theology remain redacted.

If Obama's platform is diffuse, however, his political organization is a model of high definition. This is where the influence of Brown's campaign in 1992 is most apparent. By decentralizing both his command structure and his financial donors, Obama was able to create the impression that he was the best Democratic candidate for people who feel excluded from what goes on in Washington. Unlike Brown, he has plenty of big donors and a good deal of political action committee support as well. But his campaign still appears to be markedly different from Hillary Clinton's because of how his financial records get reported. What Obama seems to have realized is that the best publicity a candidate can hope for requires no advertising budget at all. In a political landscape where the ability to raise money grants the imprimatur of legitimacy, showing that you are raising large sums without relying on the usual suspects is actually more important than the television buys their donations make possible.

Had Jerry Brown been able to take advantage of the technological changes that are benefiting Barack Obama, where even passing excitement can be expressed economically with a single mouse click and where momentum is measured first and foremost in that form of economic expression, he might well have defeated Bill Clinton, the Democratic National Committee's handpicked candidate. To be sure, Obama is also deriving enormous benefit during the primaries from his appeal to voters of color, one which Brown could never have matched. Unlike Jesse Jackson during his campaigns in the 1980s, however, Obama is not foregrounding race at the expense of other concerns. He's less like a Jesse Jackson who happens to be successful, than a Jerry Brown who happens to be black.