Last week I wrote that we should begin planning for the post-election season, and begin shaping and amplifying our preferred post-election narrative.  I wrote that the ideal post-election narrative would be that Obama won on the strength of a green-collar melting pot coalition, one which values diversity fundamentally, which is keenly worried about the state of the economy, and which supports Obama's economic program of a green-collar, universal health care economy.

The purpose of this narrative is two-fold: first, to cast the election as a mandate for a progressive economic agenda; and second, to shift the demographic center of political discourse away from white Christian men, and towards a more diverse cluster of demographic groups, including women, African Americans, Latinos, young people, non-Christians, and LGBT individuals.  This kind of shift would have a longer-term impact of reducing the subtler forms of racism, sexism, and religious bigotry which have insinuated themselves into electoral coverage.

Since last week, there have been a few important updates on this narrative.

First, the McCain campaign seems to have doubled-down on Joe the Plumber.  That move, combined with a McCain loss, is a big victory for the "melting pot coalition" narrative, as it supports the notion that campaigns which focus on white male heroes are bound to lose.  As the cherry on top, we'd like to see Obama losing among white men on Election Day while winning the election; that would underscore the notion that Democrats don't need white men to win elections.  It would also refute the idea that McCain lost because he ran a bad campaign (more on that in a bit), or that "Joe the Plumber" was an ineffective hero in capturing white male voters.  The Research 2000 internal numbers have moved a bit in the last week, but not much.  Obama is losing men overall by about 3-5%, and whites overall by about 15%; although we don't have good R2K numbers on white men specifically, it sees that he's losing this group pretty solidly, and I think that is a good thing from the point of view of narrative development.

Second, and related to the first point, Republicans are going all-in on ideological warfare.  David Sirota's been doing great work pointing out that this move plays right into our hands - if McCain represents conservatism, an Obama win is a progressive mandate.  My guess is that the all-in move is what has helped narrow McCain's gap somewhat, as some of his base is returning to the fold; note R2K's sharp uptick in McCain Republican support over the last week.

Third, Arizona now appears to be in play, and Ted Stevens was found guilty of lying on his financial disclosure forms.  However much these developments help ensure victory on Election Day, I'm not sure they really help our post-election narrative very much.  With Arizona, the danger is that Obama's victory will appear to be the result of a singularly awful campaign on McCain's part.  Similarly with Alaska, the danger is that a Begich victory, and, if it materializes, a 60-seat Democratic majority, will be the result of bad Republican Senate candidates, rather than a good Democratic message on the economy.

Fourth, the Obama campaign is taking a more progresive turn.  Mostly this turn is fairly quiet, and it's played out in Obama's media strategy.  He is aggressively pushing back against Fox News while providing interviews to progressive media like the Rachel Maddow show and the Daily Show.  Given that few people vote based on the internal mechanics of a candidate's media strategy, this move doesn't really support one election narrative or another.  On the other hand, it does suggest Obama has reason to believe that progressive media is increasingly important in modern politics, and conservative media less so.  Also, it's a signal for progressives that Obama is increasingly willing to play nice, and may be receptive to the idea of a progressive mandate.  In the week or so following Election Day, we should continue to push him to claim a mandate for progressive economic reform, and thereby to help close the triangle on this narrative.

Given all of these developments, I think the basic arc of the post-Election narrative is fairly clear:

   

1. Obama's victory was driven by a massive grassroots volunteer operation, which helped build a massive and very effective ground game. Obama says as much himself, and is visibly proud of his volunteers; he is likely to say something about that on Election Night and in the days following.  Sharing this talking points helps close the triangle, and suggests agreement between Obama and progressives on what comes next.
   
   
2. Obama's coalition is much more diverse than past winning coalitions; it's comprised of a lot of people who have very little in common with Joe the Plumber.  This basic fact has been true of Democratic coalitions for a long time, but there are a couple of factors which emphasize the point this year.  Most obviously, Obama himself is not white; he visibly represents the non-white-male coalition.  Also, the McCain campaign has been increasingly willing to race-bait in recent weeks, and Obama's supporters have rejected this sort of campaigning.  Finally, there are the simple demographic facts, which show Obama winning despite emphatic losses among white men.  Obama is unlikely to talk about any of this, so it will largely fall to progressives to amplify this point.
   
   
3. Obama's progressive economic program, contrasted with McCain's conservative program and combined with the economic crisis, propelled Obama to victory.  This is perhaps the most tricky piece of the narrative, but I think it's actually fairly intuitive.  There's no question that the sharpening economic crisis solidified Obama's lead; and it's also fairly clear that Obama has been talking about a green collar economy and universal health care for a long time, since before the crisis began.  At the same time, McCain's rhetoric has clearly favored a conservative economic program.  The contrast couldn't be more clear, and the fact that conservatism lost this round, big-time, is also obvious.

The real problem with this narrative is the basic problem of amplification.  My guess is that progressives will be dramatically under-represented on the network Election Night broadcasts, with only a few progressive pundits making it on air (here are Election Night plans for CNN and Fox; I'm not seeing anything too encouraging, and unfortunately it does't look like Sirota is slated for either; and I can't find anything about how prominently Maddow will be featured on Election Night.)  So we will likely need to do all that much more narrative work in the week or so following Election Day, to make up for our early defecit.

Again, I don't believe in counting chickens before they're hatched, and I'll be volunteering tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday; I hope you do the same.  On the other hand, I think we need to remember what happened in 2006, where we won the election and lost the post-election.  We need to start working towards progressive headlines on Nov. 5.