How to be useful?

That's the thing I've been wondering since last night. How can I, ebog, myself, personally do my part to help insure Obama becomes the next president of the United States? Hillary Clinton and her dead-enders don't think Obama has a chance in hell of becoming POTUS, so they're not just going be useless moving forward but flat out detrimental. I think these people could actually see him becoming the Democratic nominee - TO THEIR INCREDULITY AND CHAGRIN - this because they're the kind of self-hating "liberals" who believe their party is self-destructive, weak-willed and uniquely susceptible to racial bullying. These kind of White Resentment Democrats completely agree with Rush Limbaugh that black people get things handed to them on silver platters, and up until last night they imagined a future for the party where the mark of its strength would be its ability to resist being "mau-maued". The dream of such a Democratic party probably ended last night - provided of course, Obama wins.

So: how to be useful? Blog? Volunteer? Phone bank? Donate? What are you planning to do?

Make no mistake. The Clinton surrogates (not to mention the Clintons themselves) who will be campaigning for Obama over the next few months will do so half-hearted and with the fingers crossed. They just don't believe a black man can ever become POTUS. That's not saying they think it would be a bad or anything were such an event to occur (some of my best friends, and all), it's just that they don't think it will happen given what they think they know about America. That's why Hillary Clinton was willing to praise McCain and attack Obama in the same breath:

[h/t Ta-Nehisi]

That, or they're just terrified that politics, like popular music or big league sports, will be transformed by the rise of Obama in ways that will make it difficult for the average white politician to effectively compete. I have had my issues with The Hope, in that there are aspects of it that strike me as the political analogue of the Oprah-approved Secret, but I have never bought into the idea that Obama supporters are "cultish." Some people connect with Obama so deeply not because they're pre-disposed to be mindless followers, but because this particular candidate offers those who are properly configured unique and novel ways to connect. Obama's race, his youth, his demeanor, his facility with popular culture, his message, his looks, his interactions with his wife, his embrace of the internet, his calm, all of it - as the total candidate package Barack Obama just offers more facets, channels, textures and hooks for people relate to and latch onto. The difference between him and Hillary just at the level of candidate craft was often like comparing an analog broadcast tv with a digital HD in surround with TIVO. If you'd never experienced the new and better version of the tube, people who spend a lot of time fiddling with it and all those features might seem cultish to you as well.

Every black "first" changes the game they enter irrevocably, for the simple reason that overcoming the structural obstacles between them and the playing field often calls upon them to be "better" in some aspects than most of their white teammates, sometimes heroically so. The irony here, of course, is that Hillary Clinton had a chance to be a first too, but she squandered it by clinging to the most regressive elements of her party and the most shameful riffs in American political rhetoric. Nobody jumps from a minor, chitlin, girls or other marginal league to national "majors" that they were previousl excluded from by offering solid familiar fundamentals. They do it by offering something so unusual that it makes up for them being negroes, minor, chitlin, girls or marginal. They do it by being useful.

There's a risk of exceptionalism and essentialism in the idea that black participants by definition bring new qualities to any field of endeavor that they've been previously excluded/absent from (whatever the reason). But the one thing you can safely say they bring is the experience of being excluded from the job on the basis of race. I imagine that there are gigs where that specific background and experience adds little to a person's conduct of their job, this even as the reduction of an inequality increases the general amount of good and justice in the world. But I don't think the presidency is one of those jobs. I think a black president is by definition a better president because of the unique understandings, rhetoric, ways of connecting to country, types of moral suasion, demons and, yes, pressures they will be under. There are things that a white Democratic president might do that would be simply impossible for a black Democrat to do. Oppose reductions in mandatory drug minimums, for example.

But since so much about racial psychology is contradictory, hand and hand with the fear that Obama can't win is the equally racist fear that he can't lose. This fear about Obama isn't that he'll be, as Pandagon's Jesse Taylor put it, "Blackazoid, the Nubian Avenger, here to right all the perceived wrongs black people illegitimately feel were heaped on them since we solved racism in 1963," but that he'll be Oprah, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. This fear worries that no "regular" white person will ever win again once Obama has changed the game, especially not in a nation where millions and millions of potential voters recognize a Hova reference when they see one. And yes, I know there are lots of white stars in the NBA. White folks know them too, and know that they're Croatians and Canadians and Spaniards and so on.

The beauty of this terror is that it encompasses not just the black body that inspires it but all those bodies - black and otherwise - that are sympatico with that originating black body. White Resentment Democrats don't just resent black people, they have issues with the young and the cool and the internet and youtube and loud music and the agile - everything really that leaves them feeling out of touch and falling farther behind day by day. They disdained Kerry for being a "snob" and they would have resented John Edwards for being too good looking. Hillary doesn't represent these people, she roused them from a stupor in hopes of using them against Obama, and now she's about to slink off and leave the mess for him to fix.

But it's amazing, isn't it? A black nominee for the president of the United States! And not some Colin Powell ex-soldier bullshit aimed at the lizard brain, his blackness painted over in a protective layer of medals. Who woulda thunk it?