When Andrew Sullivan first wrote "Goodbye to All That," believing that the candidacy of Barack Obama could be the beginning of a "truce" in the culture war, he was largely placing the blame on the narcissism of the baby boomers. The culture war as Sullivan was writing about it is largely over, (not to dispute the ongoing salience of abortion rights or marriage equality), but as Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin write today, a different kind of culture war has taken its place, one over what it means to be an American:
At a moment that finds the right energized and seemingly ascendant, the battles over morality-based cultural issues such as gay rights, abortion and illegal drugs that did so much to drive the conservative movement and dominated the political conversation for more than 30 years have abated, giving way not just to broad economic anxiety but to a new set of emotionally charged issues.
To the extent that this new culture war resembles the old one, it is in the reversal of roles -- it is the right that is now largely defined by an identity politics that perceives persecution, and possible extinction, for a culturally constructed usually white, conservative, "real American." This isn't just about Obama or his agenda, which borrows heavily from earlier conservative ideas, it's also a response to anxiety over economic insecurity and fear of ideological annihilation through demographic change. Hence the burgeoning Islamophobia and calls to repeal birthright citizenship.
I think a large part of what appealed to liberals about Obama was his ability to acknowledge discrete strands of American culture as equally legitimate. His fundamental task in the 2008 election, with the wind at his back, was to persuade the American people that he was one of them -- his failure to do so would be the only thing to bring defeat. Obama didn't start that argument, but for the first time in a long time, he helped the left win it -- and the right has been in a state of rage ever since.
But if Obama's election was a referendum on what it means to be an American, then the right's response can be seen as a large-scale attempt to challenge the legitimacy of the results. This can be seen as an element of almost every genre of right-wing criticism, from the birther fringe to the far more common accusations of "European-style socialism." Sadly, Obama didn't end the culture war; his election just ushered in a new one. To the right, Obama's election wasn't a call for truce, it was a deliberate escalation.
