I don’t find much use for Cole’s “Democratic Stupidity” tag, but I’m beginning to despair that we could stand to be a little less… sensitive to the feelings of our opponents, and a lot more honest about their goals. Ed Kilgore notes the “GOPers Bobbing and Weaving on Cultural Issues“:
As a follow-on to my expression of fury about Joni Ernst having it both ways in the Iowa Senate race, Will Saletan has an instructive round-up on candidate debates around the country in which Republicans are notably on the defensive concerning their views on abortion, marriage equality, and other cultural issues. This is happening not just in blue or purple states, which you might expect, but also in places like Texas and Arizona. It’s sure a role reversal from the behavior of the two parties on cultural issues not that terribly long ago, isn’t it?
But I wouldn’t take much solace from it, particularly if Democrats and/or the media let GOPers get away with their rationalizations, evasions and sheer flip-flopping on such issues. Remember 2010? That was supposedly the year when Republicans were putting aside all those divisive “social issues” to focus like a laser beam on the “fiscal crisis.” It was immediately followed by an epidemic of antichoice legislation in Republican-controlled states, and then the “religious freedom” campaign of 2012…
We’re well past the days of “My opponent may be misguided, but I’m sure s/he is sincere in their beliefs”. Either Joni Ernst and Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell are theology-addled nitwits, or they’re Kochsucking shills for the robber barons, or they’re just plain lying to voters. Possibly all three!
To quote Mr. Charles P. Pierce:
… The great failing of the Democratic party over the past three-and-a-half decades has been the party’s failure to take political advantage of the obvious prion disease that has afflicted the Republican party since it first ate all the monkey-brains in the mid-1970’s. Whether this was out of cowardice, incompetence, or an overly optimistic view of the inherent sanity of the electorate, is no longer an issue. The failure to make the Republican crazee the Republican party’s standing public identity has encouraged the increased spread, and the increased virulence of the prion disease, with disastrous consequences for the rest of us. Why, in the name of god, would you not call Michele Bachmann crazy? Because it might offend the people who vote for her? It’s supposed to offend those people. Those people beg to be offended, and, by doing so, you at least inject into the discussion the notion that the Republican party has thrown its marbles gleefully to the four winds. A few elections later, that may become the general opinion. After all, the Permanent Republican Majority wasn’t built in a day…
Consider, for a second, how many Democratic candidates had to labor under the narrative that their party was “soft on defense” because a narrative had been established for that in 1972, when a decorated combat pilot named George McGovern was routed by history’s yard waste, Richard Nixon, and how we then watched the celebrated rise of Ronald Reagan who, when McGovern was crash-landing his crippled bomber, was defending the bar of the Brown Derby against the infiltration of starlets. Imagine if, after electing the fools and lightweights to the Senate in 1980, the Democrats were able to construct and sell the notion that the Republican party had surrendered itself to its fringe. If they’d been able to do that, Joni Ernst could be seen as a symptom and not a senator…
pseudonymous in nc
I remember being shown how to make a puppet from a hand mop and a plastic lemon. Can’t think why Joni Ernst brought that to mind.
I honestly think the problem lies with the permanent Dem campaign management class, which has decided on a template and will stick to it right to the point of grim defeat. When your opponent is a nitwit and a liar, they have no way to say that. Also too, fuck civility.
amk
pierce nails it. dems are wusses.
Violet
Democrats treat Republicans like the crazy uncle on Thanksgiving. You don’t call him out because it’ll upset mom and the rest of the family and you don’t want to risk being the one to ruin Thanksgiving. Some family members might even speak of him fondly–“Well, you know Uncle Billy. He’s a little old fashioned. But he’s got a good heart.” Uh huh. Good hearted racist Uncle Billy.
Meanwhile, because no one called him on his crap he doesn’t get confronted on it and he doesn’t change. Might even get a bit worse next time.
srv
God Bless America
LosGatosCA
I think the Democrats are wusses meme has a little more credibility than Mr Pierce understands. Even when Republicans LOSE elections they still get the Daddy jobs.
Greenspan and Bernanke are conservative Republicans who managed the FED for 13 of the last 14 Democratic presidential years. Cohen, Gates, Hagel have run the DoD for about half of those 14 years. Clapper, Comey, etc. run the CIA, FBI, etc.
You absolutely NEVER see any Democrat appointed to any of these positions under Republicans. And Democrats have to turn to Republicans because the Democrats don’t have the experience, or the stomach to get the experience in sufficient numbers.
Want a different image? Try a different approach..
Culture of Truth
At what point is this a cop out? 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? At what point is it “The great failing of liberals…”
or is that never?
LosGatosCA
I think the Democrats are wusses meme has a little more credibility than Mr Pierce understands. Even when Republicans LOSE elections they still get the Daddy jobs.
Greenspan and Bernanke are conservative Republicans who managed the FED for 13 of the last 14 Democratic presidential years. Cohen, Gates, Hagel have run the DoD for about half of those 14 years. C lapper, Comey, etc. run the CIA, FBI, etc.
You absolutely NEVER see any Democrat appointed to any of these positions under Republicans. And Democrats have to turn to Republicans because the Democrats don’t have the experience, or the stomach to get the experience in sufficient numbers.
Want a different image? Try a different approach..
srv
Americans love heroes, but crashing airplanes is apparently ixnay Esidentpray. Except Harrison Ford maybe.
Frankensteinbeck
Because every Democrat who listens to NPR would write you off. Because the truth was usually racism or misogyny, and a whole lot of nominally liberal people freaked out if you said those words. Even given the insanity we’ve witnessed over the last five years, a lot of folks here, on this blog, get their ire up if racism is invoked. Yes, for 30 years, going on the attack only served one party – the party that thought gibbering and foaming at the mouth was good policy.
srv
@LosGatosCA: Paul Volcker, anyone? anyone?
Of course, Paul was the first Reagan Democrat, if you know what I mean.
@srv, oh, I forgot George HW!
ruemara
@Frankensteinbeck: case in point, blaming the President for his potential assassination due to problems at the Secret Service using language that repeats the “lazy, stupid” meme & referencing watermelon in a cartoon regarding the President, is not racist unless you can find a KKK membership card in his/her wallet. Or something to that effect.
Gene108
Politicians do not attack the opposition directly. This is usually done by surrogates in the media.
For example, Bush & Co never said opposing the Iraq war or questioning Shrub, Jr. was tantamount to treason. Surrogates in the media pushed those points.
Politicians really do not want to get stuck with calling someone something really nasty. They let others do it for them.
The media is heavily slanted in favor of Republicans. Democrats do not have enough favorable hacks in the media to keep the public riled up against Republicans. The people the Democrats do have, like liberals such as Rachel Maddow, are not dedicated partisan brawlers. They are just as likely to nitpick on something they do not like about Democrats to prove their intellectual prowess.
If you really want to keep slamming Republicans you need a dedicated group of partisan hacks, who will not go into self-introspection on shit like drone strikes, NSA surveillance or the failures and short-comings of the PPACA.
The bomb throwers on the Right push the narrative de jour to the exclusion of all else. They never do self-introspection or criticism of Republicans, unless the Rephblican is openly running against the narrative; no matter how bug-fuck crazy the narrative, such as the Congressman from South Carolina who got slammed for pointing out the stupidity of the “death panels” narrative.
There is no acceptable middle ground in this matter. Self-introspections and self-criticism are seen as tantamount to admitting you are wrong, which opens the door for opposition attacks.
Either Democrats and their media supporters go all in, into polishing any Democratic policy turd or we just have to deal with the fact their will be imbalance in what the media pumps out in depicting the two major parties.
Frankensteinbeck
@ruemara:
This was the point of the Reagan Revolution, convincing White America that racism was over because nobody said the word ‘nigger’, so nobody ever had to guilty and racists could keep on abusing blacks with plausible deniability.
EDIT – Oh, and convincing the racists that rich assholes would abuse blacks for them. Reagan locked those two things together.
@Gene108:
Yep. I’m pretty sure we would have to give up having nuanced positions or caring if we’re right at all to do that, so I’ll pass.
dance around in your bones
I don’t know. I just filled out my sample ballot in California and voted straight Democratic. (Yes, I researched each candidate on the Tubes)
I’m never voting for a Republican again (not that I ever did).
Oh! I also responded to a lil teenage boy who was doing a ‘survey’ for a poll – it was basically write it backwards ‘HEY!! we want to frack the SB coastline!!’ NO!
I had to be real careful not to write the wrong answers. I’m still shocked by the huge oil wells that are drilling off the Santa Barbara coastline – I mean, they are SO careful about the height of the buildings and staying to the same low-key Spanish type houses (or Victorian) but apparently they are now fracking in SoCal and bringing it here.
Perhaps I’m stupid and hadn’t noticed it before ( I’ve been busy) but that shit is fucked up in such a beautiful place. Or frankly, in any place.
Mandalay
I don’t know whether this has already been mentioned, but since it’s really good news it can’t hurt to repeat it….
Gene108
Just want to add that the crazy bigoted small minded crawe consider barbaric and uncivilized used to be the conventional wisdom 2 to 3 generations ago, such as blacks and whites using the same public restroom would destroy the moral fabric of America, or women playing sports would physically destroy their ability to have kids and turn them into lesbians.
We can pretend that everyone is rational or the folks, who held the above as truths begat children and grandchildren and they have continued their irrational narrow minded world views.
The biggest mistake Democrats have done is act as a speed brake against Republican policies. If Republicans get everything they want, the policies usually suck so bad the voters turn against Republicans, such as in the PA governors race or even in KS.
Big R
Can I get a fisking of this:
http://theweek.com/article/index/268985/how-liberals-are-unwittingly-paving-the-way-for-the-legalization-of-adult-incest
I’m not quite hyperventilating.
Mandalay
@Mandalay: …And the only way he’ll ever be leaving jail is in a box….
Big R
Then we have this, from the same guy, which while still facile and juvenile, is at least not wrong. I’m getting whiplash.
http://theweek.com/article/index/268820/libertarianisms-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-idea
Big R
@Mandalay: Wait, wasn’t Corey involved in the Trayvon Martin case?
Gene108
I remember, for about a month, after Obama was sworn in the media would actually call out Republicans, who just got “religion” on the deficit and how Republican policies* helped lead to the financial meltdown.
For whatever reason the media decided to go back to accepting whatever Republicans said in good faith by about March.
* The Republican response to the causes of the Housing Bubble and financial meltdown is something the Democrats cannot emulate nor do I really want the Dems to. The Republicans blamed the causes on President Carter signing the Community Reimvestment Act into law, the FHA under Clinton pushing for non-traditional mortgages to increase home ownership in lower income brackets, and Comgressional Dems wanting to make increased home ownership a public policy goal in the 00’s.
Villago Delenda Est
The Dems should be going for the vulnerable throats of the Rethug maggots. Show no mercy. These people are fucking evil.
Tree With Water
When Digby still posted comments, she and I often disagreed as to who was more culpable in the rise of the reactionary governance: the media or the democratic party. She wasn’t wrong, of course, but consistently laid the primary blame at the feet of the mainstream media. I would invariably counter by goddamning gutless democrats who had forgot the inherent power of political rhetoric- I mean forgot to the point of near extinction. I’ve been sickened since 1980 by their refusal to fight the good fight with words and actions that serve the interest of the rank and file. Those interests have been sold down the river for decades, and the country-at-large has been driven into the ditch as a result of their betrayal. But what really pisses me off is the bastards did it all with eyes wide open.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Tree With Water: I used to have this debate with a friend of mine. I was on the Digby side. Sort of.
Actually my argument was that it’s not either/or, there’s plenty of blame to go around. My friend would just say nah, the Democrats are lousy, can’t blame the media.
I don’t see how you can not. They at the very least share the blame. It’s a whole Beltway/Villager establishment geared toward the wealthy, but David Gregory (or Tim Russert or Chuck Todd or Stephanopolopus/Cokie, it doesn’t really matter which) inviting John McCain on every week to spout right wing talking points are as much the problem as some Democratic politician on the panel refusing to call out John McCain is. If “the media” really were as liberal as the talking point has it, they’d do nothing but laugh at some lunatic has-been like McCain and otherwise ignore him.
I was reading an online chat with L. Lessig about campaign finance reform, which is his big thing, get it out from under the influence of money or we’ll never get anywhere and so on. I suggested to him that even if that were addressed somehow we’ll never get anywhere without also dealing with the propaganda machine, i.e. the huge corporate mostly Republican talking point delivery system that passes itself off as news. He said that he agreed, but couldn’t think of any way to deal with it that would be constitutional.
That may well be, and I mean if he can’t come up with a way then I certainly can’t. The point stands though, without dealing with that, it will all continue the way it’s been. That I’m sure of.
Tree With Water
@Bill E Pilgrim: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and John Oliver don’t have any trouble talking turkey about the the GOP, do they?
Well,, I’m tired of the argument. Goodnight.
One last thing: it would be a very healthy development if democratic politicians dropped the insulting charade that the GOP is an honorable opposition, and begin thinking in terms of it being the party of American fascism (corporate control of government).
James E Powell
For some reason, this argument tends to come up whenever we approach an election day that looks like a bad one for the Democrats. This time, it’s because the Democrats, well past all understanding, are going to lose the senate. And they are going to lose it to batshit crazy assholes.
People always argue who is to blame – Democrats or press/media. They don’t want to address the reality – a very large percentage of Americans, and probably the same percentage of the human race, is batshit crazy assholes.
Americans weren’t conned into voting for Reagan’s bigotry; they picked him because of his bigotry. And this year, they are going to elect an anti-New Deal/Great Society senate that does not believe in science, women’s rights, or any of the decent things in America’s social/political universe. These are the “let him die!’ voters. These are the Real Americans. Not a majority of the country, but state by state, a majority of the voters.
Major Major Major Major
@James E Powell:
–H.L. Mencken
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This.
It’s true that “Democrats treat Republicans like the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.” But the problem with upsetting Mommy is that Mommy in this case means votes.
There’s a reason MLK was as furious at milquetoast white “moderate” phonies as he was with unapologetic KKK style racists.
John Revolta
@Bill E Pilgrim: Well, we can start by getting them to restore the Fairness Doctrine.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Tree With Water: Well yeah, so why don’t people in the country reflect the views of Bernie Sanders then?
The problem isn’t that no one is calling out the right wing, the problem is that most people don’t even hear that side of the argument.
They hear “both sides do it”, at best, and at worst they hear FOX News saying that Democrats are evil (or the Boston Herald or the Washington Times or Rush Limbaugh or on and on and on).
If Bernie Sanders comes right out with the unvarnished truth and it has no effect, that’s not an argument against what I’m saying, that’s making my point. The opposite of what he says is pumped up and broadcast 24/7, with a very large loudspeaker. Of course people believe it, it’s what they hear. From politicians as well as pundits, definitely. Plenty of blame to go around.
Chris
@James E Powell:
Good God, THIS.
Which isn’t to say that the media, the Democratic Party, or anyone else is blameless or haven’t helped the process along, but you really can’t get into “who to blame” without leaving a large heap of it for the public. There’s only so much any institution can do when insanity’s gone mainstream.
Related – I’ve never actually read “what’s the matter with Kansas,” so I don’t know if this applies to the original book. But the reason I hate that narrative is that it so often seems to assume that there’s a large demographic of good honest well meaning salt of the earths that just happens to have been conned by soulless, cynical manipulators. (I rarely read that on blogs like this, but I seem to encounter it all the time in real life – maybe I just run in the NPR circles. And it’s usually accompanied by the notion that we elitist city-slickers must have offended them with our arrogance and our dismissiveness and our latte sipping and Volvo driving and contempt for their Traditional Values, and that we need to do some soul-searching and find humility and reconnect with those noble Simple Folk). Sorry, but I’m not letting their voters off that easy. As you say – they weren’t conned.
Bill E Pilgrim
@James E Powell: Yeah but the other side of that is when polled on actual issues, Americans come out vastly more “liberal” than the idiots they’ve elected.
Voting against your own views is a form of insanity in itself, it’s true, but the idea that this is just a “center-right country” that elects center right politicians has been debunked over and over.
It’s just nuts to imagine that propaganda doesn’t work, it often does. And people in the US are subjected to a very large, very organized, and very well-funded propaganda effort all day long.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Chris:
FWIW, that’s not remotely what the message of that book was.
I think you’re trying to engage in imagining some sort of basic essence, and it doesn’t really exist. People can have their own flaws and also be susceptible to propaganda. Which can be one of the flaws.
You can’t dismiss the power of propaganda though, you really can’t.
Chris
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I suspected that it wasn’t the original message of the book. As I said – anecdotally, it’s just something that I run into far too often. (Like “both sides do it,” which is often derided on these blogs, but really is something that I run into with far too many people who really ought to know better IRL).
Not sure what you mean by “basic essence.” I don’t think there’s a clone template for all Republican voters or even all heartland Republican voters (or even all Southern Republican voters) – everyone has their own path. I’m just agreeing with what I took to be Powell’s point, which is that a huge chunk of the responsibility, at the end of the day, rests with voters.
(You can, of course, make similar points along the same lines about the “too cool to vote” allegedly left wing crowd).
Chris
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Voting against your own views is a form of insanity in itself, it’s true, but the idea that this is just a “center-right country” that elects center right politicians has been debunked over and over.
I always thought “center right country” was true but meaningless. It’s easier to just do nothing and continue on your trajectory than it is to actually enact changes (be they progressive or regressive) – not least because most of the people running the show, by definition, are the people for whom the status quo is working just fine, and also because ordinary people are naturally wary of anything new, since they have no way of knowing if it’ll work out. So, in that sense, all political systems are biased towards the “center right.” I agree with it, but it doesn’t really say anything about America or capitalism or whatever. It’s basically the “doing nothing is always easier than doing something” principle applied to politics.
mai naem
You guys forget the lazier than shit public who don’t show up to vote. You can overcome even the voter suppression stuff if enough people actually show up at the polls. It’s not people who can’t show up. It’s people who plain get off their asses and spend half an hour every 2 years to vote. People who’ll drive half an hour to go to the casino every week and do a bunch of other things that take more time, but not vote.
Another Holocene Human
@srv: God Bless America is a good gloss on that, that song is as fascist as they come.
Another Holocene Human
@Culture of Truth: At what point has the Democratic party had true “political advantage” for more than a few months?
Sure, the D’s had moments they could have obstructed, but didn’t. Not sure blind obstructionism really counts as #winning, voters don’t seem overly fond.
As soon as the Democratic party tries to do anything liberal the voters–the voters, not just the 1% who are careful to buy the entire Senate, the voters freak like the reactionary racist revanchist fraidy-cats that they are and put the GOP back in power or at least split the difference.
And don’t forget a compliant media. The whole point of O’Keefe and Breitbart’s shtick was to pick off the most liberal appointees in the executive side one by one. They wanted Obama out in four years so he wouldn’t get to replace too many GWB appointees or appoint too many judges, and they’ve thrown ever brick they can in the works to try to stop confirmations after Mittens failed to get called back for the second round of job interviews.
Kay
@Chris:
I hate it too, but for a different reason. The theory is about populism. It says that Democrats abandoned populism (economic issues) to focus on social issues which allowed Republicans to divide the country on social issues and obscure Republican economic policies. It’s an okay theory, but in practice it leads to Democrats adopting this narrow version of populism where “social issues” are excluded in order to bring voters on board for economic populism, and what THAT meant was throwing gay people and women (and usually black people, although they weren’t included in the theory) under the ‘ol populism bus. It ended up as tiering economic issues over civil rights issues in order to appeal to, IMO, white working class men.
It’s the same kind of fight liberals and Democrats have now with “brogressives”. There the complaint is civil liberties take precedence over civil rights, womens rights and economic issues.
I don’t think liberals have to choose, or should choose. I don’t think they have to trade civil rights and womens rights for economic populism. Populism doesn’t have to be dumb, and it doesn’t have to be geared to white male working class.
Another Holocene Human
@Gene108:
Where have I heard this theory before.
Heightening the contradictions only works when the opposition is STUPID. You mentioned two famous own goals but fail to mention the horrors of what is occurring in NC, LA, FL, OH, MI, WI, TX, MS … all the people that die due to their policies will not become undead, only some of these states have a hope to eventually top their GOP leadership, only after so much misery and tears, many have no hope at all and the GOP plan is to keep people so beat down they give themselves a beatin’ iffen they haven’t felt the blow in a hwhile.
Chris
@Kay:
If that’s the case, then I’ve heard that notion as well (there used to be a commenter here who in a couple of threads hammered on and on and on about the fact that we had to choose between economic populism and social issues and that the correct choice was OBVIOUSLY economic issues).
And I agree with you. It’s idiotic. (Most of all in an age when the population in general and the working class in particular is increasingly diverse).
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: You are so right about that. I remember some guy came to our CLC selling some sad sack shit like he was a pro-life pro-labor Republican. I’m thinking, is not access to appropriate reproductive care a frigging LABOR issue as in I HAVE KIDS WHO DEPEND ON ME FOR ALL OF THEIR NEEDS*. ???
*-not me literally but more than a few of my coworkers, for Pete’s sake!
At some point he called me at home trying to sell his crap. I kept asking him questions and he got really nasty and hung up on me. Lol.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: That commenter is deluded. I look around me in florida and who cares about economic populism? Mostly latino activists. You think they don’t care about social issues? I may have a bridge to sell you in Bay Biscayne.
And African-American unionists are a huge and powerful voting block. You don’t think they vote on issues like racism, the justice system, transfers to impoverished communities (not necessarily working people, but includes a lot of working poor, no doubt), etc? And when voter canvassing I have not even found that many Black men who are much into reproductive rights wedge issues. Most of them are pro abortion on demand. “I think that should be the woman’s decision,” would be a typical comment. (No guarantee said man is not pretty unreconstructed about other issues of male-female relations, but abortion is just not the totem it seems to be for some whites.)
And what about the Jewish retirees in Broward and Palm Beach County? Judging by how they vote they are very interested in social issues. I wonder how their life experiences might be informing THAT.
Where are the white male unionists who are so deeeeply concerned about economic issues? Oh, they’re out there, some of them spend their own money to take the fight to Tallahassee every year. But they aren’t the majority in their demographic in their bargaining units. Far from it. Even among union members, not the freeloaders, there are just so many guys who have either ragequit voting, or who have bought into hate radio or Alex Jones paranoia radio and vote out of rage and spite when they vote at all. Just ask them, they’ll tell you about how illegal mexicans are taking their jobs and bankrupting the hospitals with free medical care and how bums and foreigners are ruining the country. They don’t care that Rick Scott is destroying their children’s future and their prospects right now. They’d rather wank about “those people” and their “culture” and hold pity parties and shit fits about Central American refugees and some dumbshit who got caught trying to run guns into Mexico.
Kay
I think Democrats did okay on “social issues” this cycle, but I think they misread the electorate on economic issues. I think people are still scarred from the economic implosion, and they were not looking for “ladders of opportunity” (which involves risk) but instead were looking for economic security. Democrats made a deliberate decision to go for “opportunity”, probably because it’s positive and forward-looking but I think that ignores what people went thru with the implosion and that’s why they aren’t connecting with them. It sounds wrong to me, clueless and out of touch, and I’ve thought that since January.
The “skills gap” is a loser, politically. Whether Democrats know it or not, it sounds like they are blaming working people for the fact that they haven’t made an economic gains. I hear it loud and clear and I’m a lawyer, not a working class person. It actively pisses me off, and I’ll be voting a straight Democratic ticket, despite the Democrats horrible economic message.
You can’t fucking lecture people on the economy, and how people have to “step up” and take advantage of all the opportunity out there! They don’t want to hear it right now. They want to know they aren’t going to fall off another cliff, that they have some economic security. No ladders. You can fall off a ladder. I think they got bad advice, and I think they got it from people who were not really affected by the economic implosion, and want to “move on”.
Kay
@Chris:
It kills me everytime I hear it, because they don’t hear it. I think that comes from where they’re standing, which is in the white male space :)
It’s part of that “real voter” bullshit. White males are our REAL voters and we LOST them kowtowing to you people and your so-called civil rights! That isn’t what the book said, but that’s how the book was twisted.
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
Don’t you feel that whole shtick is dated, though? This is rural Ohio and our white, male, old labor people have moved considerably on social issues. I never hear “gay marriage and abortion” anymore, and as late as 2004 I was still listening to long, agonized lectures on it. What they haven’t moved as far on is race. I still get this cranky defensiveness that black people might be getting special favors from Democrats. There’s less of it overtly in Ohio because the fact is Democrats don’t win in Ohio without black voters, but I still get hints of it.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Yep. (Also live in Florida).
Ground zero for the “white, working class, and Democrat” demographic, I think, is the same now as it was in the New Deal years – the Northeast and Midwest. But it’s still a shadow of its former self (partly thanks to the things you describe. Racism and religious fundamentalism are anything but unknown up there, too).
@Kay:
I am completely with you on all of that. Especially on “opportunity vs. security.” The “opportunity” obsessed American Dream (or at least how it’s being sold nowadays) very much pisses me off, because it’s come to mean “ignore all the problems of the Little People – it doesn’t matter, because you have an opportunity to rise in society and not be one of them anymore?” (“But what about those who stay behind?” “WHO CARES?”)
Gvg
I think it would help if the anti trust laws were enforced on the media conglomerates. there are far too few actual owners. In fact I think the anti trust laws need to be enforced on ALL kinds of business, industry’s and especially finance/banking.
Kay
@Chris:
It’s just very simple for me. Don’t send the VP to Cleveland to tell them to retrain and climb the ladder of opportunity. They don’t want to climb right now. They want to keep what they have. They’re risk-averse. They should be! They got hit by a train! It’s rational.
The VP is better than most Democrats at it and even he can’t do it. It’s a bad message. They’re not listening because it doesn’t address their issue, which is security, not opportunity. We just hired a new clerk in the law office and she is traumatized because she was unemployed for quite a while. There’s no other word for it. We don’t expect her to figure the whole place out in 2 weeks but she seems to feel she has to or we’ll tell her not to come back from lunch or something. She’s coming around, but I can feel how scared she is.
Chris
@Kay:
Well, yeah, the other reason it’s a stupid argument is that the white working class isn’t uniformly conservative on social issues either, plus, it remains more likely to vote Democrat than rich and middle class whites (whether in spite of social issues or because they agree on that too). It makes sense – the less wealthy you are, the less you can afford to indulge hobbyhorses like governing other people’s lives.
But still – even today and even with those caveats, the white working class vote just isn’t the lock for liberals (even economic liberals) that it used to be the last time the Democrats were big in politics.
raven
@Chris:
Like when they won the presidency and both houses?
raven
Jesus who gives a shit about Mika’s “incredible” family?
Kay
@Chris:
They have done some good with it, opened it up. The “younger working class women” thing worked really well here. They are my clients, so I listen to them every day. They are socially liberal and economically populist. It worked so well Republicans here tease me about it, about how we “found” those women in 2012 and got them out to vote. Republicans know it. That’s why the Romney people were making those gaffes about “nail techs and waitresses”. That’s who they’re talking about.
Chris
@raven:
No. I meant “big” with some actual consistency, not just a two-year fluke that happened because people were unusually pissed off at the other party. I’m talking “big” as in actually being the dominant party of the era, the way Democrats were “big” during the whole middle chunk of the century and Republicans were “big” in the last few decades. (They may no longer be, but we haven’t replaced them yet).
@Kay:
I agree. (And I can empathize, having been un and underemployed pretty much ever since graduating college, though thanks to my family I’ve had it far better than many).
I would just add that in general, “security” takes priority over “opportunity” for me. People need to have a strong floor before they start building upwards.
Kay
@Chris:
Right! Everyone knows this! You have to have a basic security level before you’ll take a risk. That hierarchy of needs thing people are always quoting on the internet.
They had this horrible rude awakening, where they didn’t have what they thought they had. Telling them to just jump in and revel in that “uncertainty” and see it as “opportunity” strikes me as a little cold, and also “privileged”, quite frankly, to use the popular term. They’ll get to “opportunity” themselves, given time. You don’t have to push them off a cliff and tell them it’s really skydiving, and fun!
Mr. Twister
All of the above, bad MSM, lame Democratic candidates, low information voters, etc. Hell, there’s a guy running for senate in Colorado who is claiming a bill he co-sponsored (Federal personhood) doesn’t even exist, and he seems to be getting away with it.
Dave
Obviously the larger turnout of presidential elections matters but I wonder if on top of that Democrats do better in those years because the campaigns are so large and there is so much coverage that it creates a media situation that is at least closer to parity.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Holocene Human: Not to mention, the wins from heightening the contradictions tend to be short term. The voters will turn against the Republicans for a couple of election cycles, but when the Democrats don’t fix everything, they get even madder and it’s back to the Daddy Party.
Revolutions happen in times of rising expectations that have been disappointed. That means that they’re often counterrevolutions against a just-installed new regime: 1994, 2010. There are time lags in the feedback response that muck everything up.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: Democrats were “big” then because the party still included unreconstructed Southern machine pols and their racist supporters. Woohoo.
Chris
@Kay:
Yes to all of this, but with just one additional point. Yes, they’ll probably get to the “opportunity” themselves in good time. But if they don’t, that’s okay too. The world needs cashiers, janitors, and all these other “lowly” jobs we look down on just like it needs brain surgeons and rocket scientists. People should absolutely have the opportunity to reach for something higher, but they shouldn’t be in a position where they have to reach higher just to have health insurance or food.
Quoting another blog commenter (Helmut Monotreme, Sadly, No!) from a month or so ago –
And my own approving comment was – the reward for being extraordinarily smart, hardworking, talented and educated is supposed to be “you get rich,” not “you get to break even for the first time in your life and discover what it’s like to be economically secure.”
What’s more, despite my earlier comment, I don’t think what you or I are saying is actually incompatible with the American Dream notion. Jefferson wanted a nation of self-sufficient farmers (not dirt poor, not filthy rich, just self-sufficient). Lincoln’s original “free soil” Republican Party was all about giving the regular farmer a fair shake. There’ve been plenty of economic populists who’ve stood up and demanded that the superrich lay off the little guy, not so he could get rich but simply so that he could breathe. The American Dream isn’t supposed to be “if you’re not first, you’re last.” It’s supposed to be “come here, be willing to work, and you’ll be able to carve out a decent living for yourself.” Or at least it was: since Reagan, it’s become that caricature I can’t stand. And that’s got to go.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I really don’t see how that contradicts anything I said, but okay. I’ll just agree.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
@Chris:
You (and all) have had really good comments. Enjoyed this thread. Agree on the bad messaging.
Agree especially that people need a floor before they start reaching for the sky (the “opportunity” and “ownership” society). I am appalled at the deal being offered the average American worker. It’s an employer’s market for most.
Shakezula
I started to write something long, but:
Just. Vote.
In part because it will be fun to see what happens when, despite Operation Disenfranchisement, the GOP receives its pimply ass on a silver platter.
You think they’re acting crazy now? I bet we can get Jorange Boner drunk ranting on the floor of the House and at least one Republican governor barricading himself in the Governor’s Mansion. It will be awesome.
phoebes-in-santa fe
All I want to know is HOW CRAZY does a Republican candidate have to be to turn off the electorate and why it hasn’t happened this cycle? Look at Senate races in Missouri and Indiana – both who went for Romney in 2012. Both had Democratic senators who were expected to lose their seats (actually, in Indiana, the seat had been Democratic but was now open). Both Republicans were seen as bat-shit crazy and Democrats were able to keep the seats.
Okay, where’s the low-water mark, say, in Iowa, this year? How crazy does Joni Ernst have to be?
Archon
Southern whites were the bedrock of FDR’s coalition. The civil rights act gets passed and in one generation they go from New Dealers to “government is the problem” Reaganites. That wasn’t because of a “messaging” problem from Dems, unless you think the message of “black people should have rights” is a problem.
If anything the Democrats messaging problem is trying to pretend their is a message that will appeal to both working class black people and white bigots.
Paul in KY
@srv: Sen. McGovern’s campaign never touted his wartime hero experience.
Bokonon
I believe that the Koch brothers and groups like ALEC see their activities and expenses as an investment – in keeping their adversaries on the defensive, and controlling the nation’s political discussion, so that it stays favorable to them and doesn’t swing in a leftist direction.
People like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and institutions like right-wing talk radio serve the same interest – which is deflect enough of the electorate’s attention for the wealthy and corporate America to get the space they want to operate.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: There aren’t too many of those & you would pick up a lot of nominally Democratic-leaning voters who love that red meat stuff.
Paul in KY
@Gene108: Good points, Gene.
Paul in KY
@Tree With Water: Me too! FDR & LBJ sure loved to call them what they were. Harry Truman also would savage them.
The thing is, what those Presidents were saying was right.
Paul in KY
@Bill E Pilgrim: You need the politician or their flack putting the meme out there so the courtiers have to talk about it.
If you wait for the media to bring it up, it’ll never get brought up (due to reasons you mentioned).
Paul in KY
@Bill E Pilgrim: You need someone with a bigger megaphone than junior senator from Vermont.
Paul in KY
BTW, that is one creepy ad. Seems to me Mr. Crist could take the line ‘Say Yes to Rick Scott’ and then show, point-by-point, all the anti-woman things he is for & cap each point with his leering skeletor face and ‘By all means, say yes to Rick Scott’.
Turgidson
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
I try to have conversations with fellow liberals/Democrats (albeit NPR types mostly) about this and they accuse me of being too hard on Republicans and those who vote for them. OK, maybe I am.
But it sure as shit seems to me that the voters of this country expect something approaching perfection from Democrats (eg they get TWO FUCKING YEARS of something approaching full control to try to turn this ponderous yacht of a country around), and if disappointed at all, will kick them out with a steel toed boot. Meanwhile, it seems like all the GOP has to do is not be (or pretend not to be during a campaign) batshit, glue-sniffing, drano-drinking, utterly braindead, fraudulent assholes and they get an astonishing amount of leeway. It’s public record that Joni Ernst and Tom Cotton are barking mad, but it doesn’t fucking matter because they manage not to vomit all over themselves in public. Braley is getting shat on for a “chicken dispute” that is mostly made up and one snide remark about Grassley (who fucking deserves it, IMO, after the “pulling the plug on grandma” bullshit) which have no bearing on his abilities or positions. And Pryor has just been written off for dead since the beginning despite a long track record in his state.
It’s maddening. I have more or less stopped following political events for the time being because it’s just so fucking depressing. I know “they win” if I stay withdrawn, so I plan to plug back in eventually. But right now I’m just too tired of it.
Paul in KY
@Turgidson: I am sure you are not ‘too hard’ n Republicans. Maybe those friends of yours are ‘too stupid’?
Turgidson
@Paul in KY:
Nah, they’re not stupid. I think they just don’t follow the GOP’s daily mountains of atrocities as closely as I do and prefer to believe in the inherent non-idiocy of other voters.
Elizabelle
FWIW: Democrats have not lost a single seat yet. Nor gained one.
Early voting has begun in many (most?) states, but still time for lots of GOTV contact.
Bedeviling that Ernst in Iowa and Gardner in Colorado may be up in the “likely voter” polls. Dems need to get more of their voters out. It’s that simple.
Crazy might have a ceiling. I pray that it does, and Ernst and Gardner and assorted other crazees hit it.
Paul in KY
@Turgidson: You certainly know them better than I. Keep on trying to cast the veil from their eyes.
Matt McIrvin
@Shakezula: It sounds as if the vote-suppression measures are being rolled out in earnest this year to a much greater degree than they were in 2012, when a lot of them got temporarily suspended. Voters got so incensed by the situation in 2012 that they came out in crowds and overwhelmed the vote-suppressors. The electorate in 2014 is probably going to be less motivated, but people need to blow the horn on this.
StringOnAStick
As for crazy and vicious, I just read a GOS diary about a dem running for a state seat in MI. His opponents put out some ads telling people to call him and tell him what they think, but instead of his number (that they have used before in other “call him” ads) they give that of his mom. His mom is in hospice care for CHF, and they gave her direct line phone number. Think about the level of evil that takes.