Diversity and bumper stickers
The other night on MSNBC Keith Olbermann (interviewing Frank Rich) made a comment about the lack of diversity at televised McCain-Palin rallies. Other than the few outspoken African American Republicans who appear at rallies or who make their living as a pundit on political shows, the Republican candidates are in a sea of white faces. The Obama-Biden rallies have more ethnic variety in their crowds. Frank Rich agreed, and both seemed to come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has abandoned appealing to non-white voters.
The McCain-Palin signs and bumper stickers are all the same too – white letters against a dark blue background, the font and colors evoking a military uniform. There are a few “rogue” bumper stickers in support of McCain (or in opposition to Obama) that are from another source, with slogans like “NObama” and urging a vote for McCain.
In the part of Los Angeles where I live, Obama yard signs, T-shirts, and bumper stickers are everywhere. And the campaign materials are not uniform. There are the campaign website-issued blue or white bumper stickers with red and white stripes in a blue “O”. Numerous other stickers, the red, white, and blue “Hope” stickers with Obama’s face, and signs with every imaginable pro-Obama slogan and image, have proliferated in Los Angeles over the last few months.
Other candidates running for office usually have one visual theme that is associated with them. In Santa Monica, the popular City Council member Bobby Shriver, brother of Maria and brother-in-law of the governor, has a spiffy blue, white, and green sign as the visual component of his brand. Even the miscellaneous write-in candidates are associated with the same signs all over the city.
Before Tuesday, I hoped that the unlikely coalition of voters as represented by the wildly varying Obama bumper stickers and other campaign flair meant that he would win. Now that he’s won, I hope that the sea of diverse faces (black, white, Asian, Latino, rich and famous, anonymous, and many in between categories) at his acceptance celebration in Chicago, will continue to unite under one banner and never again take our country’s political process for granted.
