The Great Divides

America has always been divided to some extent by at least three factors: race, class and region. The Democratic Party convention is an opportunity to see what those divisions mean today, and where we stand as a society in dealing with those divisions.

With Barack Obama as the party's presidential candidate, race is the most obvious. In many ways this convention should show how far we've come. Obama will accept his nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Obama was two years old that day, and he is in many ways the fulfillment of King's dream.

Author Matt Bai makes a respectable argument that Obama's perceived lack of the lead he should have in the polls isn't due primarily to race. Still, race is likely to play a role in this election, and many people seem to understand that how it plays out will test whether America is ready yet to embrace its future.

For race is still a divider, especially in relation to class. With an economy that works so outrageously for the super-rich while deepening the divide between them and most Americans, who are increasingly struggling to maintain a middle class status, the class divide should be clearly favoring a Democratic Party united for change. But old habits die hard. You only have to listen to certain cable commentators talk about "working people" and "regular people" when they are clearly talking about white and not black people, or any other people of color. However, I noted a person being interviewed, identified as a Democratic Party strategist (I hadn't seen him before) who spoke about working people in a way that clearly included black working people--who make up a large percentage of lower income workers. I don't think the host quite got it.

This is perhaps where region also comes in. Barack Obama is the best chance the Democrats have had to move this party into its future--and out of the Northeast and into the Midwest and West. Senator Ken Salazar of the convention's host state of Colorado expresses some of the hope and the frustration with the Democrats' slow realization of this.

The West represents a future that centers on environmental concerns in tandem with economic. It represents a growing diversity and new populations--which is rapidly becoming the new American majority, of many races and nationalities not only in the same community but in the same family. The opportunities and the problems of the West are where America is heading, and the Democratic Party can ensure its future by taking the lead there now.

Senator Joe Biden is a good choice for Obama's VP this year, but he is a transitional figure from the East Coast. Obama's Midwestern roots and his compatriots in the Midwestern states and in the West are the party's future. We'll see if the media, still dominated by the Bos-Wash corridor on the East Coast, begins to get it as this convention goes on.