My only quarrel with Rick Perlstein is that he’s 3% high in his estimate:
The reactionary percentage of the electorate in these United States has been relatively constant since McCarthy’s day; I’d estimate it as hovering around 30 percent. A minority, but one never all that enamored of the niceties of democracy—they see themselves as fighting for the survival of civilization, after all. So, generation after generation, they’ve ruthlessly exploited the many points of structural vulnerability in the not-very-democratic American political system to get their way.
The whole thing is worth a read, because Perlstein does his usual good job reviewing wingnut history.
That said, now that we have the diagnosis, doctor, what’s the treatment? This is where we’re all struggling.
Chickamin Slam
Give them their own country and wall it off from the rest of us. God knows they love building walls.
Call it Galtistan or something.
Belafon
@Chickamin Slam: They tried that once. It was called the Confederacy. It had the unfortunate consequence of torturing millions of slaves.
cleek
there is no treatment. democracy means other people get a say, too. as long as they keep getting elected, we’ll have to put up with them.
Max Baucus worked in the White House?
Mustang Bobby
Ignore or placate them at our peril. Dog knows I’m a pacifist, but when it comes to threatening other people and their way of life, I’m with Woody Allen: looking for a large polo mallet or a sock full of horse manure.
Baud
No we’re not. Turn out in elections and elect Democrats, just like always. We’re only “struggling” because too many people are looking for some third way that doesn’t exist.
PeakVT
Defeat. They’ll learn in the long run, though of course you know what they say about the long run…
Violet
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
Probably 27% of cavemen back in the day didn’t want to mess with that fire stuff, because if animist god had intended cavemen to have fire, he wouldn’t have made it so dangerous and what’s wrong with raw meat and being cold anyway?
p.a.
Win elections and wait for them to die out if the demographics are accurate.
geg6
@Baud:
Yes, this. And I’d also add in having louder voices. I am sick and tired of being the polite one in any confrontations with the wingularity. No need to be obnoxious but never backing down works. In the vast majority of situations, I have found them to be cowards. Make them show what cowards they are and you’ve convinced a few people around you. Those few will start to tune them out.
So, it’s work your ass off to GOTV and make sure that the crazy isn’t taking up all the oxygen in the room whenever you find yourself confronted with it.
MomSense
We have to win elections no matter how much money the wingnut backers spend against us and we have to become our own media operation to tell our stories accurately and fairly because our media enable the wingnut.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@p.a.:
One of Perlstein’s points is that the 27 percenters keep renewing themselves, so expecting them to die out isn’t a viable strategy.
Rob in CT
@cleek:
This. There is no “treatment” other than beating them in elections. Crushing them, really, since just beating them isn’t enough in our system.
AliceBlue
@geg6:
This.
I’m also sick and tired of being told by various and sundry pundits that I have to “understand” them.
Eric U.
@geg6: my fox watching aunt posted something on facebook about the wingnut justification of the armed guys intimidating the 4 moms meeting about gun control. I couldn’t let that one go without comment.
I am still withholding my comments about an anti-tax person that has been living off of tax dollars for the last 30 years. Military retirement isn’t paid for out of taxes, or at least they are the right kind of taxes.
Matt McIrvin
Perlstein has always insisted that changing demographics are worthless. Earlier he was arguing that Kids These Days are no good because, though they might be progressive, they do stuff like Occupy instead of voting Democratic.
I don’t know, I think it basically all comes down to race/ethnicity. There are always going to be 27 percenters, but the question is whether they can make a race-based appeal to just enough other people to swing elections. In the past, whenever American ethnic demographics changed, the new groups were eventually assimilated into “whiteness” essentially so they could be pitted against black people. The question is whether Latinos, East Asians, Middle Easterners, etc. can become part of generic “white people” and motivated by white bigotry like Irish, Italians, etc. before them.
But I think it’s actually getting harder to do that because of changing attitudes about race prejudice in general; racism is alive and well, but everything has to be more and more coded. And Republicans so far have been really bad at pulling these groups into their tent with the usual appeals, in part because they’re still pandering to people who are bigoted against them.
Roger Moore
@AliceBlue:
Understanding them might help in a “know your enemy” kind of way.
AliceBlue
@Roger Moore:
I’ve lived most of my life in Georgia. I understand them in that way all too well.
Villago Delenda Est
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
Exactly. Even if Obama got his thin blah ass in gear and opened up the FEMA processing camps for these assholes, more would inevitably rise to take their place.
The only thing you can do is keep defeating them at the polls. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance…which sucks, because eternal vigilance wears you down, and fast.
So rotate it.
handsmile
@geg6:
Yes, it’s fundamentally about GOTV and winning elections for Democratic candidates. As for “louder voices,” it’s also about supporting, fully and unconditionally, those current Democratic office-holders who have them. You know, like these:
://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/
One important value of people like Alan Grayson, Sheila Grayson-Lee, and Bernie Sanders is that they are not polite. They don’t suffer Neo-Confederate fools in Congress at all, much less gladly. It’s their backs we should have and their example we should follow.
Chris
@Belafon:
Yep. That’s why all this “if only they could secede and leave everyone else alone” thing is a fantasy. They can’t “leave everyone else alone.” Their lifestyle is 100% based on other people paying for it, whether it’s their blue state peers subsidizing their economy or their nonwhite peers doing all the jobs they won’t. They’ve never pulled their own weight and they’re not about to start now, which is why they’ll never “go Galt.”
Zifnab25
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): Well, that can’t be entirely true. We’ve got a black muslim gay kenyan in the White House right now, so clearly the 27%ers aren’t dominating the discourse like they were under Nixon or Reagan or Bush.
A lot of modern politics boils down to GOTV in the right districts during key election years. We aren’t in some grand national debate about what to do. We’re in a street by street fight to get the people we agree with to show up and pull the lever. The Reagan Democrats and the Clinton Republicans just aren’t a serious concern anymore.
Clearly, demographics are shifting and political alliances are reshaping themselves. You have to be a fool to ignore the way Republicans squandered their appeal among Latinos, for instance. I don’t think we have to put up with a wack-a-loon Republican House indefinitely.
postmodulator
@AliceBlue:
Yeah, I understand them just fine, and that’s why I want them destroyed.
Lawrence
After taking the house and going 60+ in the senate, use federal power to dismantle their power base. First, decertify local law enforcement where it is used to support corrupt enclaves of white patriarchy. Shut down the local cops and use US marshals to prosecute rape, civil rights abuses, domestic abuse, all the things Sheriff Bubba is inclined to ignore. Second, put the screws to homeschooling. Hard. No Bob Jones approved textbooks, no young earth creationism. Hell, every high school kid in America should read Howard Zinn.
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab25:
You left out both socialist and atheist.
I’m afraid I must issue 10 demerits.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Asians voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008, so did the new immigrants (naturalized within the last 10 years). Only about one third of those new immigrants were Hispanic. GOP hates everyone who is not straight, white and Christian. A fact that is not lost on the groups the GOP needs to woo if it doesn’t want to become irrelevant.
Villago Delenda Est
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
/grin, duck, run like hell…
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: I counter the crazy wherever and whenever I can IRL. These bullies need to be confronted.
piratedan
we wouldn’t be having these problems if some damned TV exec hadn’t cancelled Matlock
Kropadope
@handsmile: I don’t think “not polite” is the term you are looking for. Sanders is vocal about his ideals. He ruffles some feathers, but he seems to be intellectually honest. Alan Grayson is a blemish on the body politic as bad as any the Republicans have put forward (granted, Republicans create these A-holes by the 100s).
Kropadope
@Villago Delenda Est: A Muslim atheist? ::Head explodes upon the realization that some people really believe that and aren’t just snarking::
MikeJ
@Kropadope: :
Daring to disagree with a Republican in public is a sign that you’re uncivil. You can yell “you lie!” at the president from the floor of the congress as long as the president is a Democrat though.
Kropadope
@MikeJ: Sorry, I refuse to operate by the RWMSM’s intricate network of double-standards.
flukebucket
As my Dad used to tell me, the only way to fix it is with a flame thrower.
Paul in KY
@Violet: And we liked it!
Redshirt
Here’s how we win. Ready? Take notes:
Win your town councils
Win your county councils
Win your district councils
Win your state government
Win your Senate seats
Win the Presidency
When people of good will and sincere intention to do good for the nation hold the levers of power, we’ll win. Until then, we are at the mercy of the media and insanity.
cmorenc
For starters, in our many daily face to face interactions with other people, we must not let viral speweing and spreading of wingnut memes go unchallenged. For example, just this past weekend I was refereeing at a big soccer tournament, and in a break beween games several of us refs were chatting about typical sorts of sports injuries soccer players and refs are particularly vulnerable to – from knee ligaments to achilles heel injuries to cancer risks from sun exposure. Talk turned to insurance coverage for repair to these injuries, and a fellow ref quipped about chronic soreness in his achilles heel: “I’d better get it taken care of now while my employer-provided insurance covers it, before Obamacare kicks in“. I politely challenge him: “Now why would your insurance coverage decrease under an ObamaCare-compliant policy, when the effect of the law is to require broader, rather than narrower coverage including for preexisting conditions?” He was unable to articulate any answer, because he had none. He was simply parroting a misleading meme he’d picked up from right-wing chatter among co-workers. The best he could come up with was that although his current insurance was one of those very-high deductible (first 5K per person) policies, his employer presently kicked in all but $500 of that 5k as a work benefit, but he felt that might somehow change next year with the arrival of Obamacare. Well now, why would that be? Nothing about the ACA would force his employer to drop that benefit except that they want to use that as an excuse to not incur the expense of providing it any more. At that, I left him pondering that point as we had to move back to preparing to referee the next game.
MomSense
And here is the model for how Democrats fight back when the largest expansion of the social safety net since the Social Security Act is under threat. I present the great SpandanC.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/11/democrats-pipe-fck-down-and-get.html
handsmile
@Kropadope:
On what specific policies and legislation is Grayson “a blemish on the body politic as bad as any the Republicans have put forward”?
I don’t give a f*ck about the man’s style. It’s what he stands for and against that matters to me. As to the allegation that Grayson’s style obstructs passage of desirable legislation, far more offensive style and content is the current measure of Neo-Confederate electability.
Kropadope
@cmorenc: Problem is, their favorite places to spew this nonsense are places of business. I’m not picking a fight with my customer who comes in spewing nonsense on a daily basis. Especially considering my experience with my nonsense spewing friends is that challenging them only causes them to dig in.
Challenging won’t work, I think the better thing would be to initiate these discussions ourselves. We don’t have to lie like they do, just find some simple little tidbits that everyone can agree on and work from there.
boatboy_srq
@Belafon: Secession is obviously not to be tolerated: if states could leave the Union then the Union itself would be about as useful as the League of Nations.
I’m still pretty firmly of the opinion that eviction, however, would be a reasonable approach. Don’t like what Washington is doing? Insist that you want to leave? Fine: here’s your state back. Oh, and we’re taking all the DoD installations, the 90% funding for your National Guard, and every last penny of the wingnut welfare you’ve been collecting. We’ll be awaiting your ambassador: got a SE DC plot all picked out for you. Don’t expect our Wall St banks to be too inclined to lend to you at reasonable rates, BTW: if you’re this determined to build your own (small) government with no tax dollars, they won’t expect repayment to be anything like certain – but you could always try Amscot.
pamelabrown53
Thanks for The Peoples View link, MomSense. I swear at how many of our elected Dems cower in fear at any bump in the road. Did anyone actually think that complicated legislation like the ACA would be problem free?
MikeJ
@Redshirt:
Don’t mourn, organize. I know many good, solid liberals who can’t tell you their precinct number[1] or who their rep in the state lege is. Find out. Find out who your precinct captain is for the local party. If there’s no capt in your precinct, volunteer.
[1] Yes, we’re all vote by mail, but we still have precincts as organizational units.
Kropadope
@handsmile: For example, “The only Republican plan is ‘die quickly'”. Not strictly speaking true. Taliban Dan? Last I checked Republicans weren’t trying to end women’s suffrage or opportunities for employment or education. It’s an emotional appeal to get people riled up, but we don’t need that. The truth about what the Republicans are offering is bad enough.
Alan Grayson threatens to turn “both sides do it” from a convenient (for Republicans) media narrative into reality. We can’t afford that.
Baud
@pamelabrown53:
We didn’t give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and we’re not going to give up now.
Tone in DC
@boatboy_srq: @boatboy_srq:
I disagree with you on this.
The embassy plot for Wingnutistan won’t be in SE Washington. Or anywhere in the DC area.
Three Mile Island seems appropriate.
Jeremy
The republicans squandered their chance with minority voters a long time ago, and attacking the first minority to become president in racist ways has made matters worse. They can put up all the tokens they have but it won’t mean a thing.
Hillary Rettig
@Baud: Agree.
The force of their resistence to ACA, gay marriage, and other progressive victories is a good proxy for the amount of our win.
NCSteve
There is a conceptually simple, yet politically impossible solution: give up on separation of the executive and legislature and adopt a parliamentary system. That way, people who win elections actually get to govern and people who lose them have to think of ways to win the next one rather than thinking of ways of sabotage the will of the majority.
(Or, of course, if they won’t let go of their dream of turning the people against democracy by rendering the country ungovernable, they could always begin a campaign of street brawling with opponents and racially-motivated assaults and vandalism. Hey, I didn’t say it was a risk-free option.)
MikeJ
@Jeremy:
Members of minority groups notice too. In many ways Asians should be natural republican voters since as a group they’re higher income. They vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and I think it’s because they’ve seen how Republicans treat other minorities,
handsmile
@Redshirt:
The diabolical genius of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was its recognition years ago of how much can be accomplished by manipulating the levers of power available through state and local elections.
The gerrymandering that will likely keep the House in Neo-Confederate hands for the next several national electoral cycles was brought about by GOP victories in state houses and governor’s mansions. State legislation of right-wing dreams has recently been signed into law by ALEC-supported Republican governors such as Walker (WI), Snyder (MI), and McCrory (NC). And Walker is now being touted as a “moderate” among GOP 2016 aspirants.
In other words, you’re absolutely right!
Jose Arcadio Buendía
@Matt McIrvin: I’m a fan of Perlstein’s work, but I think he’s overdoing the history repeats itself thing. History echoes, at best. Yes, the Tea Party is mostly the same as all of the things that came before it. It’s that little bit of difference that matters to doing something about it.
The cure is to consolidate the Obama coalition, but since a big part of that coalition spends most of their time shitting on Obama this will be hard to do.
nastybrutishntall
We should never have done the nasty with the Neanderthals. Shit’s like luggage, man. 27% crazy, everywhere you go.
handsmile
@Kropadope:
As for what is needed or afforded, I must say, with respect, that “we” disagree.
And a quotation from 2009 is not quite the “specific policies and legislation,” particularly since Grayson’s re-election, that I was seeking.
On the issue alone of “Republicans trying to end women’s suffrage,” I’d recommend you look into the recently-passed Texas voter ID legislation and its deliberate effect on Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial candidacy.
Jeremy
@MikeJ: Also many Asians are less hostile towards government. They support investments in education, health care, infrastructure based on studies. With the republican party becoming more extreme and anti government they are voting more and more for democrats. The racism doesn’t help.
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
LMAO
People who know DC will get why that’s funny…
MomSense
@handsmile:
And the only reason we have the Gov we do–is because he was the Mayor of Waterville. We have to win those local elections.
rikyrah
From the crackhead Mayor of Toronto:
TheGridTO @TheGridTO35m
Rob Ford just responded to “eating pussy” allegation by saying “I’m happing married, I’ve got more than enough to eat at home”
boatboy_srq
@Tone in DC: See Chris @55 on why I put it there.
Technically, any embassy has to be in the capital (a consulate at Three Mile Island, however, seems quite appropriate). So it has to be somewhere in the District. I just chose a neighborhood with a bit of rough justice served along with the site.
tazj
I’m also going to thank you for that link MomSense. I don’t know why the Dems don’t act as strong advocates for this law instead of running away. Aren’t a majority of these people lawyers? Isn’t it possible to make a strong argument that acknowledges the problems without trashing the whole law?
I’ve wanted to comment about the ACA for a few days. I just get so angry because of the bad experiences my family had before the ACA passed that I fear I will be trivializing the struggles other people are having now getting different insurance.
My sister died of breast cancer at 45, and her family was in debt because of her medical bills and feared losing the house. She and her husband had health insurance but it wasn’t very good. Other people in my family lost their health insurance and just had to go without their meds or a medical procedure until someone else in the family found out about it and could pay for it. How would you like to lose your health insurance in the middle of treatment for infertility, which also happened to me? (I know infertility isn’t the worst thing in the world, see above and I’m a nurse and I had a daughter die in infancy)
I mean all this crap has been going on for years for millions of people but now because some people are having problems everything has to turn on a dime and everything has to be thrown out the window? How about standing up for something and making things better? I hope Senator Mary Landrieu’s fix works without undermining the ACA. However, I’m losing my patience with stories about scared Democrats and men being charged more because of maternity care.
Kropadope
@handsmile: Sorry, getting ready for work, my research capacity/time is limited. Have a nice day though.
We’re slowly winning, I think maintaining the high ground is our best chance to continue that.
handsmile
@MomSense:
“We have to win those local elections.”
A fact that’s evidently crystal-clear to Mainers like you and Redshirt.
It’s just such a damned shame that your otherwise paradisiacal state is so infested with “independents” that may keep LePage from returning to Waterville.
FreeAtLast
Call me a rosy eyed optimist, but I think the reason right wing governors, senators and reps at all levels are so egregious now is that this is their last gasp and they know it. They are just trying like crazy to enact all their craziness, block anything else (including sane judges) and hope their way can be prolonged a little longer once the demographic time bomb explodes on them.
Elizabelle
President speaking right now re healthcare law.
On C-Span 2 and elsewhere.
ETA: He’s on all local DC channels.
White House scheduled this so as to preempt local noon news broadcasts, and get the ACA news out directly. Great!
Roger Moore
@FreeAtLast:
I think there’s something to the last dying gasp concept, but it’s clear that it’s not quite that simple. Some of what’s going on is an attempt to lock in gains while they have a chance (e.g. preventing liberal court appointments) but some is an attempt to rig the electoral system to prolong their control. I think there’s also a serious hope that sufficient sabotage to liberal attempts at improving government will bring more people around to their goal of dismantling government and undo some of their demographic problems. And demographic change is more like a glacier than like a time bomb; it moves slowly and with great force, but there are actually forces out there that can prevent the glacier’s apparently inevitable advance (e.g. global warming, coopting of non-whites).
J R in WV
If you think military retirement isn’t funded by your taxes, I have a small bridge in New York City for sale that might interest you.
Where do you think the military budget come from? From our taxes, just like pavement for the interstates, uniforms for the police and hoses for the firemen.
Hard working gainfully employed people all over the country pitch in part of their income so that people incapable of working can get disability payments, so that people get police and fire protection, so that government works for the general welfare. Hell, lifeguards at the beaches are paid for with taxes.
Sometimes the flow of funds from working people to the actual worthy government effort is obscure, but it’s always there.
So don’t go blaming on taxes, they’re a good thing, mostly. Except when someone diverts them into their brother-in-law’s back pocket; which is of course mostly illegal and prosecuted.
Just recently a county official tried to get the same price for tires on his private cars and the county was getting for sherrif’s cars. He got turned in, was indicted, lost his elected job, and can’t run for election again, even when he gets out of jail/home confinement. Taxes paid for his prosecution, another good thing!
I tell the accountant who does our taxes that we don’t want to pay anything xtra, but that we want to pay every penny we are obligated to pay, and for there to never be any excuse for the IRS to wonder how we’re paying so little.
rikyrah
Democrats, Pipe the F*ck Down and Get the President’s Back
Thursday, November 14, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 6:36 AM
The propensity of weak-kneed, ill-stomached, politically risk-averse fair-weather Democrats in Congress (and some outside Congress, including former Democratic presidents who have been utter failures in achieving reform) to drive a sharp knife in the first black president’s back will likely never cease to amaze me. Because of website problems that are currently well on their way of being fixed (and much of it is fixed) and unrelenting media barrage attacking the president for acts of insurance companies, active Republican sabotage, and hackers, evidently, some Democrats in the House (and some Democratic Senators) are threatening to sign on with a Republican bill to severely undermine health reform.
Even a year away from election day, and even following a string of elections that made victorious candidates in favor of implementing health reform (even Chris Christie’s New Jersey accepted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, and Virginia elected a Democrat who will now do the same for that state), Democrats are gun shy, cowering in the corner in fear of faux Republican and media attacks against the president and against letting health reform work.
Sadly, reflecting our media landscape and fearfulness of the president’s own party, nearly the entirety of the freakout is based on little more than hyped up stories that have been proven false and data even Democrats refuse to fully examine.
Yesterday was all the sky-is-falling over data. So, let’s talk about the data. Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services released enrollment numbers, showing only 106,000 people, or 21% of the goal to this point, had enrolled in plans through the federal and state exchanges as of November 2. But they have, along with the happy clappy media figures whose health care will never be threatened, absolutely refused to point to another crucial figure: some 1.5 million Americans have completed their applications on the exchanges.
Wait, what? What’s the difference? It’s simple. Completion of an application does not mean that the applicant has chosen and been enrolled in a plan. Once the application is complete, applicants have the option to choose and enroll in a plan from the many that are available to them. What could be holding up the evidently 1.4 million Americans who have finished their applications but have yet to choose a plan? A myriad of factors. Sure, website problems may well be one of the main factors that have kept people from enrolling, but so might the tendency to wait and evaluate all the options available to pick the best plan for oneself or one’s family.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/11/democrats-pipe-fck-down-and-get.html
Redshirt
@handsmile: Rest assured: Michaud will be the next Governor of Maine. And more interestingly, it will be his coming out that seals the deal.
Ripley
That particular chicken appears to be quite fucked out.
Kropadope
@Ripley: It’s the only thing that seems to be working for us. Don’t give it up. If some of you have your way the Ds will just become mirror images of the Rs. “Both sides” will be legitimized and I’ll be back to 3rd partydom.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: That’s why in the Indo-European traditions the fire-tender is a female goddess. “Nuuuupe, this is women’s work. Very mysterious, but that’s why we have mysterious lady bits. Do I criticize how you shape your arrowheads? Well then.”