My mentor and former boss Bill Galston has a sharply worded message for Barack Obama: “You are in danger of squandering an election most of us thought was unlosable. The reason is simple: on the electorate’s most important concern – the economy — you have no clear message, and John McCain has filled the void with his own.” Bill adds that Obama needs a tight diagnosis of the current fiasco plus a “focused, parsimonious list of remedies.”

I think voters have plenty of reasons to oppose the Republican ticket in 2008. Therefore, it doesn’t matter much whether Americans know about McCain’s changes of position or Palin’s tanning bed (or McCain’s lobbyist advisers and Palin’s ethics investigation). Nor will the election be affected much by my favorite issues–service, civic engagement, and political reform. It all boils down to what people think Obama would do about the economy.

As Harry Boyte argues on the generally lively and interesting By the People blog, Senators Clinton and Obama embody rival traditions that derive from the Chicago community organizer Saul Alinksy. Clinton wrote her undergraduate thesis on Alinksy, and Obama cut his teeth working for a Chicago organization in Alinsky’s orbit, the Gamaliel Foundation. That is a remarkable point of connection between the two leading Democratic candidates.

But Alinksy’s legacy is profoundly contested. One stream, which Harry labels “mobilization,” developed techniques to derive money, votes, and protesters from poor and middle class communities for the purpose of reform legislation. The mobilizers’ techniques included tools such as door-to-door canvassing and mass mailings, and a rhetorical style that emphasized victimization and outrage.

The other stream, which Harry calls “organizing,” developed equally refined and sophisticated methods for helping people to talk together and form their own opinions and agendas. The organizers’ techniques included (for example) one-on-one interviews, house parties, and meetings that shifted from one venue to another through the community. The rhetorical style emphasized assets, power and dignity, and unity.

Clinton and many of her supporters at the grassroots and netroots have been deeply shaped by mobilization. (I know and recognize this culture from working in “public interest” groups in Washington on issues like campaign finance and media reform.) Obama has equally been shaped by organizing.

Harry argues that Obama has not figured out–because no one has–how to translate the organizing approach to the huge scale and compressed timetable of national politics. Nor has he developed a strategy for overcoming profound cultural barriers:

Obama has not addressed the tension between the implications of civic agency and the immensity of the changes that would be needed for agency to become a widespread experience for most citizens. In recent decades customer service has become the dominant motif in government and elections alike: people are far more prone to ask “What can I get?” than “How can I help solve public problems?” Feelings of powerlessness are widespread after decades in which civic institutions like unions, political parties, congregations and schools have been increasingly shaped by experts who provide services to needy clients and demanding customers.

If I were Obama, I would probably try to win Pennsylvania–although I am not certain he needs to win there to take the nomination–by acting like a mobilizer. I would say: “Senator Clinton and I have similar goals for health care reform, but her approach will be defeated by powerful special interests, just as it was in 1993. Our campaign has enlisted millions of active supporters at the grassroots level. We will ask them to go door-to-door in their diverse communities, speaking language appropriate to where they live, making the case to their neighbors and friends for health care reform. They will inoculate us against the inevitable Harry and Louise ads of the 2009.”

This is a mobilizing approach, because it doesn’t take the time to develop long-term relationships, open a broad discussion of means and ends, or develop skills and agency. But it’s hard to see how you can use organizing rather than mobilizing if you’re running for president or facing your first Hundred Days in the White House. If I were Obama, I’d settle for mobilizing right now, but retain an ethical vision of organizing to use in other ways at other times.

I have my own preference in the Democratic primary, which is probably clear enough to regular readers. But this is a non-partisan, politically nonaligned blog that’s a vehicle for my work for various independent, nonprofit, civic organizations. In that spirit, here’s what I think the current Democratic primary debate is about.

It can’t be about “change” versus “experience” (vacuous categories drawn from exit polls), nor about nominating the first woman versus the first person of color. Those choices are beneath our dignity as a people. And the campaign cannot be about policy differences, because any differences between the position papers of Clinton and Obama are so subtle as to be completely lost in the legislative process. So I think the campaign is, or ought to be, a choice between two views of America and our future.

One view says that what’s wrong with America is the Bush Administration and its allies among Republicans and conservative groups. They really messed up the country through some unprecedented combination of malice and incompetence. To solve that problem, they need to be defeated, and it has to be clear that the voters have rejected them. (That way, they won’t just bounce back for another round). The ideal Democratic candidate is someone who represents a restoration of the situation before 2000, and none better than the wife of the last Democratic president. Further, Senator Clinton is thought to be especially tough and skillful in the face of the politics of personal destruction, which (according to this viewpoint) is the specialty of today’s Republicans.

This view is reinforced by: examples of Republican malfeasance, polls showing George Bush’s unpopularity, and evidence of Senator Clinton’s tactical/managerial skills. This view is undermined by: examples of social problems and bad government under Democrats, surveys showing a public desire for reconciliation, and doubts about Senator Clinton’s public appeal or political skills.

The alternate view says that what’s wrong with America started well before 2000 and implicates the whole class of political leaders, Democrats and Republicans (although not necessarily to the same degree). This whole class has lost the confidence and support of Americans because of unproductive conflict in Washington and because leaders haven’t called on–or even permitted–Americans to participate in solving our problems. The best president to bring about reconciliation would be a newcomer to the national scene, someone with experience in the nonprofit world, a progressive with the ability to understand and respect conservative views and a message of empowerment. Senator Obama fits the bill.

This second view is reinforced by: new voters entering politics to support Obama, the resonance of his message, and evidence that we could address important social problems through popular participation and broad, cross-partisan dialog. This view is undermined by: doubts that Senator Obama’s appeal is broad, evidence of unbridgeable gaps within the public, or arguments that Obama is only popular because of his personal charisma, which may prove evanescent.

That’s my best effort at a reasonably neutral summary. It seems an appropriate choice to put before the public. We should reason together and decide.

Harry Boyte recently had an epiphany looking at the map of where Senator Obama has won primaries or caucuses. Many Obama states–a band from Illinois across to Washington–have strong traditions of civic populism dating back to 1890-1939. Others were crucibles of the Civil Rights Movement in 1945-1970–a band from South Carolina to Louisiana. These were distinct movements but they had more connections than is often recognized. My favorite example is the way that Miles Horton went to Chicago to learn from Jane Addams before he started the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, the center that helped train Rosa Parks, among many others. Nick Longo recovers this story in his book Why Community Matters.

Harry’s analysis is as persuasive as explanations based on demographics or primaries versus caucuses. His epiphany is relevant to the outcome of the current election. In states where there is a civic populist tradition, people hear Obama’s rhetoric in a particular way (like a “deep note vibrating in a base drum,” Harry writes). Obama says, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to make change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.” People in states like Minnesota and Mississippi understand that it’s possible to unleash public energies to address serious public problems. So they presume that Obama is talking about public participation after the election–participation in our schools, parks, and neighborhoods.

In other places, however, Democratic voters do not have this frame of reference. When they hear, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” (a powerful echo of the Civil Rights Movement), they think that they are merely being asked to vote for Obama or to volunteer and give money to his campaign. In their minds, the campaign is the opportunity to participate–and they are not sure they want to join up. The aesthetic of hip-hop artists and starlets singing along to Obama speeches may not appeal to them. Some may share Joe Klein’s reaction (from TIME Magazine):

the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause–other than an amorphous desire for change–the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.

I don’t actually think that this is fair, but the perception inevitably arises when people don’t have experience with civic engagement. The smart strategy for the Obama campaign is to explain how President Obama will unleash the power of the American people after the election–how he will encourage Americans to cross differences and contribute their energies and talents to address social problems. That’s a concrete goal and it requires concrete policies and examples.

Shortly before the Iowa caucuses, a senior political scientist said to me: “When you met me, you first saw a Black man. What do you see when you see Obama?” This colleague was trying to understand how my white-person’s race-meter was responding to the Illinois Senator.

I believe that all Americans respond reflexively to the race of the people they encounter. And I believe that mostly negative stereotypes are triggered when we see someone as African American. The strength of these stereotypes varies, as does our ability to override them; but they almost always lurk beneath (even when the beholder is Black).

Thus we can presume that Senator Obama triggers racist stereotypes. But things are a little more complicated. First of all, I don’t think that it’s only the color of skin that moves Americans’ inner race-meters. We also respond to signifiers of culture and class, such as accent. That’s no less bad than responding to color, but it is a fact about the way we think. While Black Americans speak in every imaginable way, African American culture is marked by a set of accents that have a family resemblance to each other. Most African American accents are rooted in the American South. Senator Obama does not have such an accent, so he is less likely to trigger racist stereotypes.

Further, all kinds of subtle signs mark the Senator as upper-middle-class. Although African Americans belong to all social classes, stereotypes associate Blacks with the working class. Senator Obama thus evades some of the standard triggers of racial identity.

Finally, we don’t meet the Senator the way I met my political science colleague: face-to-face and with a handshake. We meet the Senator on TV. It’s a mediated relationship, the kind we also have with Oprah, Will Smith, Colin Powell, and many other African Americans. I don’t know the relevant psychological literature, but I suspect that mediation reduces the impact of stereotypes that are deeply connected to motives like fear.

So what will it mean if Senator Obama wins the Democratic primary and the general election?

Not that everyone is willing to vote for a Black man, because most people won’t vote at all, and many will vote for other candidates (reasonably enough, given their views on a range of issues). Adam Nossiter found plenty of examples of white voters for whom “mention of Mr. Obama merely provoked discomfort.” Even if he wins the election, most people may fall into that category.

Not that we have achieved racial justice, because race will still be a major determinant of the quality of schools, public safety, health care, and employment opportunities that one receives. And …

Not that the Obama voters have left racism behind, because they might not vote for a Black candidate who has a stereotypically Black accent or a working-class culture.

But it may mean that a governing coalition of Americans have shed racism sufficiently that they can overcome their reflex negative responses to dark skin–and that would be something.