Someone smart wrote this in early 2007.
At its heart the GOP has two basic camps* – business conservatives who bankroll the party and the social conservatives/theocons who staff it. In that light one could say the towering achievement of Bush’s term as POTUS was that he defied the centrifugal forces of majority power and held the GOP’s unlikely coalition together as firmly and as long as he did. If so, his towering failure will undoubtedly be his adamant support of this immigration bill.
I have tried for days to think of something that could wedge the social cons apart from the business cons than immigration but I just can’t do it. The Chamber of Commerce loves our current system because one can pay illegals practically nothing and they will thank you for it. In their view any fix to the current system has to keep bringing in large numbers of people with poor language skills (can’t have them reading those OSHA flyers on the wall) and a weak bargaining position, e.g. guest workers. Otherwise Americans had better get ready to start paying more for hotel beds, restaurant meals and packed meats.
The key problem is that the thing that the business cons need more than anything is exactly what the social cons desperately want to end. This issue has no conceivable middle ground because the social cons want less of precisely the same thing that business cons need more of. The historical calm between these two camps lasted and could only last as long as party leaders had the good sense to keep the issue off the front burner altogether. Any move to change the status quo would necessarily set off contrary demands that could easily spiral into open warfare.
Pushing immigration now was a dumb move by Bush, but it was far dumber than I think most people realize. Hilzoy has argued that the immigration is really a convenient outlet for Republicans to vent their deeper disappointment over issues J through Z, and I’m sure that there is plenty of that, but I think that the president’s screwup is more profound than Hilzoy lets on. The president’s party is reeling from Iraq, rudderless and lacking in leadership at any level, facing political losses as bad or worse than 2006, and now his own mulish push on immigration has lit the fuse on a wedge-shaped charge** that could split the party in two.
***
(*) There are two kind of people in the world: those who see two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.
The GOP can’t keep reallocating money upwards if they rule over a rabid but shrinking demographic of white people. Karl Rove knows that rich people need latinos. Marcio Rubio bloody well knows it, for all the good it did him. FOX News keeps those rabid white folks voting, but it also keeps them rabid. You could point at a lot of ways the GOP painted themselves into this corner but I think immigration is the alpha and omega of their problems.
And now they have the perfect wedge-shaped charge. He doesn’t tap dance. He doesn’t give a crap what the Chamber o’ Commerce wants. For rabid white FOX viewers the guy is all dessert, all the time. At this point I suspect he really could win the nomination, but overall I take that as a good omen. Those rabid white folks already vote. But latinos don’t vote, not in anywhere near their potential numbers. I think the idea of a country ruled by Trump will give latino Americans all the reason to show up in November.
Remember the first rule of politics: once a new voter starts voting they keep voting. And party loyalty is a potent thing.
p.a.
Hold the shadenfreude, isn’t the quote above a bad thing for progressivism? These new voters won’t all be Medicare eligible.
Baud
And he’s got the same nym as you!
Hildebrand
Except for when they don’t. See: 2010, 2014
sparrow
When I was 16, I was a young, passionate conservative. I was deeply upset that my parents (who had instilled the conservative groupthink and tribal identity, I mean, “conservative values” drop-by-drop) did not particularly care about the political process and never voted. I ragged them to no end about it, and eventually they started voting, just in time for me to start my slide towards realizing I’m not a (big-C) conservative after all. Four years later I was a Gore voter in my first election and now obviously the resident commie of BJ.
They still vote straight republican tickets every election. They are not even terrible people, but it was and will forever be a tribal identity for them.
There is a wonderful parallel description of the same human phenomenon in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Wives and Daughters”, from victorian-era England:
MomSense
@Hildebrand:
There was a huge difference in the way we ran the campaigns in 2010 and 2014. I wish the DNC could hire those OFA people to run the midterm elections.
Hal
In their view any fix to the current system has to keep bringing in large numbers of people with poor language skills (can’t have them reading those OSHA flyers on the wall) and a weak bargaining position, e.g. guest workers. Otherwise Americans had better get ready to start paying more for hotel beds, restaurant meals and packed meats.
Oatler.
Every man-jack is revolting!
Botsplainer
The bigger take from that piece is the stuff that is implied but unspoken:
– The endemic racism in social conservatism; and
– The ease by which the Chamber of Commerce fiscal types get social conservatives to covet what little scraps the lower class get.
Hildebrand
@MomSense: Indeed, the DNC has been awful at doing the work of winning elections, its as if they didn’t learn a thing from Obama’s team. It also seems that they assumed that because people came out for Obama that they wouldn’t have to work to keep them coming out to vote.
Shakezula
Assuming they aren’t prevented from voting by the state’s disenfranchisement efforts which may be abetted by employers who find they need everyone to work double-shifts on election day.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Politics is hard.
“All politics is local.” “Politics is tribal.” “It’s the economy stupid.” Etc. Lots of those aphorisms are discovered after the fact. They can be helpful, but they’re not laws and they may not apply in times of rapid change.
One would think that the Immigration Bill fiasco, Reince Priebus’s Autopsy Report, “demographics is destiny” and the like would have substantial impact on the politics of the nation by now. And maybe it will.
But politics is chaotic. “Black swan” events can suddenly make the best laid plans moot. Change is rapid now in many respects, but there’s huge inertia in human affairs as well.
There’s lots of talk about the danger of the banks or the economy imploding before the election. I don’t see it. The stock market is chaotic because there’s so much speculation from people who are desperate for “historical” returns in this new environment of slow growth and low or no inflation. And money can move around the world instantly, so slightly slower growth in China can cause panic in Wall Street. But Wall Street isn’t the economy; the banks are in much better shape than 8-10 years ago (though some of them are still effectively insolvent without the extraordinary backstop they got from the Fed). Janet isn’t going to suddenly raise interest rates, and that’s how the Fed causes normal recessions. There’s no reason to, because there’s no sign – still – of inflation. I think we’ll keep muddling along at 1-2% growth for the next year or so. Depending on how HRC and Team D does, growth could take off in 2017, but that’s more of a wish than an expectation…
Although it would be nice, I don’t expect to see the Teabaggers implode in November even if they lose big. After the GOP destroyed Iraq, killed thousands of Americans there, hollowed out the DOD and ran up a huge bill to rebuild it, blew up the economy, drowned New Orleans, and imposed a shroud of stupid over 47+% of the country’s voters, they’ll still had the state governments, they still had the courts, they still had the media, they still had a big bucket of gravel to throw in the gears of government to stymie progress, and they still had 45.7% of the popular vote in 2008. Trump or Cruz has probably has a 45% floor to build on. Kasich probably has a higher one…
The political death of the GOP and the Teabaggers will be a whimper, not a bang, even if Trump wins the nomination and HRC takes 49 states. They’re a zombie party and will keep fighting back.
The way to make sure they can’t destroy the national government going forward is for Team D or independent commissions to have control (or at least a substantial role) of redistricting in 2020. If the GOP can continue to control that, then then 2020s will also be very difficult.
That’s my feeling at the moment. It could change in a couple of months – don’t hold me to it. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
Good call on the immigration bill. I hope like hell you are right about Latino turnout, Tim. If HRC is the nominee, maybe that’ll help us since Latinos seemed to prefer her to Obama in the last D primary by a significant margin. Don’t have a clue why or if anything has happened to change HRC’s standing since then, but it seems to have been a thing, so here’s hoping that translates into higher turnout.
If Trump does win the nomination and go up against HRC in the general, I’m a bit nervous about how immigration will play out with the electorate. I’m not confident that the party’s official stance on immigration is aligned with Democratic voters. My hope is that Trump’s sheer buffoonery will make the issue moot for Democrats who aren’t on board with party policies.
@MomSense: More competent staff is always a plus, but I’m not so sure it would make a significant difference. Some people just need the drama of a presidential election to get them off their asses and to the polls. Off-year election turnout drop-off predates the Civil War.
Elizabelle
Business conservatives want cheap, poorly educated (undocumented) immigration. Tis true. But an unregulated spigot is hardly in the already here working class’s interests, and you and they know it. Trump is hitting that concern hard, and successfully.
We don’t have enough jobs, and in most sectors, wages are less than they should be. We don’t have the social safety net that European taxes provide.
Automation and technology and insane scheduling, along with globalization and outsourcing/”rightsizing” are already reducing the supply of jobs out there.
Trump is speaking to that economic and social insecurity, even if he has no solutions and is scare-mongering and scapegoating.
Immigration is a net positive for our society, when regulated. It’s also a bit of double-edged sword, and holds some perils for Democrats too. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants. That does not mean we have unlimited resources or an environment that’s not already reeling from stresses.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
Bingo!
rk
I was listening to a radio show (no ideas who it was as I never listen to the radio in general) and the discussion was about the recent CNN interviews with Trump supporters. So they asked Trump supporters to call in. Well it was an eye opener (for me at least). All problems are because of illegal immigration. One woman called whose son had gone to college, not got a good job and was living at home. He had some medical issues and had to go to the hospital (full of foreigners she said). The bill was humongous and it was unfair as they used her income as his since he was living with her. I fail to see how this is the fault of illegal immigrants or how Trump will fix it. An older man said all he sees on trains and everywhere are non whites and that his ancestors were from Italy and they adjusted, learned English unlike today’s immigrants. The host mumbled something about little Italy and Italian enclaves, but that did not sink in.
Finally a Mexican-American woman called and said something fascinating. She was a child of illegal immigrants, was now a naturalized citizen. She said she was hurt by all this talk as her parents and her had never been on welfare and worked hard all their lives. She then asked “when immigrants or pioneers first came to America, did they adjust to the Native American way of life and learn the language, did they follow Native American traditions?” How much of Native American culture did they adopt.
I told this to my daughter (who is in a science class full of Asian kids) and her response is “what’s stopping white kids from taking science and engineering classes?, or opening Dunkin donut Franchises or running gas stations or motels?”
Sorry for the long post, but this kind of talk gets on my nerves. My last thought on this was that it wasn’t illegal immigrants who tanked the economy, not did they take us into two wars, not did they make college education unaffordable.
None of these people know what even the problems are, but the solution to all is a baseball bat to the head of an immigrant.
p.a.
@MomSense: @Hildebrand:
Yes. Yes. Yes. The DNC knows better than the people who engineered* the nomination and election (twice) of a modestly known African-American with an alien-sounding name to the office of POTUS.
Stand aside kids we’ll take it from here.
*not meant in its negative political connotation.
gf120581
@rk: They don’t want an answer or a solution. They want a scapegoat. And Trump loves giving them just that.
dogwood
@p.a.:
I don’t think the DNC or the RNC actually run elections. They mostly just raise money.
Zinsky
I wish that progressives, and many people on this blog, would get over this notion that this candidate (read, Trump) or that position is going to “destroy the Republican party”. It ain’t going to happen! The GOP base is so tribal and so despises the poor, blacks, Hispanics and all positions liberal, that they could run Satan or Hitler and it wouldn’t matter to them. The GOP leadership could call for mandatory enemas twice a day for all Americans and it wouldn’t matter. Their hatred is so deep and so puerile that policies and positions that are completely contrary to their stated “values”, don’t matter at all to them. I can only conclude there is some sort of neurochemical basis for the fact they cannot experience cognitive dissonance like liberals.
Germy
@Zinsky: I hate to say I have to agree. I’ve moved around quite a bit over the past thirty years, and I’ve never lived in a town that wasn’t controlled or heavily influenced by republicans and their friends in real estate and development. I’ve never lived in a town where some fucking neighbor didn’t ruin a conversation by spouting fox news talking points.
Anecdotal, I know, but I’ve been hearing talk about the “end of the GOP” and yet they frame the narrative.
Baud
@Germy: Thirded.
Big Ol Hound
@rk: What’s stopping white kids from these jobs? Snobbery and financing. They think they are socially above these professions and there is no “secret” family network of loans to buy into these business ventures. No banks will work with small business start-ups but the Asian families will.
Ksmiami
Like I said republicans are a cancer in America and all their policies mean death and destruction. That’s the talking point for the Democratic Party.
Germy
@Ksmiami: That’s what they say about us. They use zesty eliminationist rhetoric about liberals.
Hildebrand
@Betty Cracker:
I lived in Deep South Texas for the last ten years (lived about 20 miles from the border – in the last six months I have relocated to Detroit), and the ‘this is the year for breakout Latino/a turnout’ line felt as likely to come true as an actual chupacabra sighting. I hope someone has an actual plan, something other than ‘Trump is a vicious bigot – that will get the Latino/a vote out’, because for a lot of folks in the Valley, ignorant bigotry in the general American population is assumed. Folks need to vote ‘for’ something, working up people to vote ‘against’ Trump won’t cut it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I read a couple of years ago that one of the most powerful lobbies in almost every state in the union are car dealers. They have lots of cash, they care a lot about obscure state regulations, and even the biggest of them– one of Marco’s sugar daddies is a billionaire car deal– tend to think of themselves as “small businesses” (one of the most abused terms in modern politics), IMHO. I imagine it’s the same way with builders. “Literalist and Sons: Homebuilders”, just a family business trying to live the American Dream. Now, State Senator Puffinstuff, wouldn’t you like join us in our sports ball skybox to talk about that environmental waiver and whether that new four lane road is going to be built near our new two hundred and fifty unit exurban gated townhouse community, Downton Abbey Falls Glen Acres? Your nephew would like a no interest loan to buy a Great Hall Unit on Dowager Countess Lane? He is a young man of discernment and great promise!” (And, no, I have no idea how this actually works, as may be obvious to those who do)
p.a.
@Zinsky: But their authoritarianism might be the wedge that breaks the party up, for an election if not permanently. If, say, Trump loses and feels himself cheated and runs as an independent/new party and lots of his R followers follow Dear Leader. Kind of like Perot, although IIRC Perot’s support while more conservative than not, was not overwhelmingly so.
I doubt this will happen; not sure Herr Trump has the attention span for it, or the desire to self-finance beyond the primaries.
Another disturbing similarity to Perot seems to be Trump’s appeal to working class, shakily Democratic whites. Except for those without employer health insurance, this admin doesn’t have much to point to as positive for them (well, beside saving the world economy from collapse. But even that was done in a ‘preserve the 1% way). And the whole point of PPACA long term is to decouple health insurance from employment, and few workers with employer silver-ish or better health insurance are going to be better of in the exchanges.
gelfling545
@Betty Cracker:
I’d say also that the 2000 election was an anomaly because of the perceived historical nature of Candidate Obama. I’m pretty sure a lot of people wanted to say they participated in a historical “first”.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Car dealers and real estate agents are the most powerful lobbyists people don’t talk about.
Frank Wilhoit
“…the idea of a country ruled by Trump will give latino Americans all the reason to show up in November….”
…except that, wherever they do show up, Trump’s people will break their heads open. (And local law enforcement will in no case intervene.)
Matt McIrvin
There’s a guy trolling the hell out of LGM lately who is a full-on Nazi, or acting like one, and he’s super excited about Trump. By “Nazi” I mean that he literally singles out the commenters with Jewish names and chortles about how they’re going to be murdered in death camps. Says Trump is going to exterminate all the black people too, using terms I’ve not even seen generally used by your run-of-the-mill racist but only the most hardcore of white-supremacist chuckleheads.
I wonder what happens when somebody finally gets the gumption to directly ask Trump how he feels about his Stormfront fans. Because these guys are increasingly unafraid and feel their plans for mass extermination are being legitimated.
sivapith
Is it crazy to think that if Trump wins the nomination we might have finally hit Peak Wingnut?
Baud
@p.a.:
I’m not confident there is really anything the Dems can do to get them back that doesn’t involve throwing another constituency under the bus.
Frank Wilhoit
@Botsplainer: For the n’th time, it’s not racism. It is sadism. It looks like racism because racial targets are easy to identify and therefore convenient; but the target is always a target-of-convenience. If one target becomes more expensive, for any reason, another target can be swapped in.
Have you not noticed the nanosecond agility with which the hate already jumps from n1ggers to k1kes to sp1cs to fagg0ts to towelheads to eggheads to, etc., etc., etc., etc.? Push one place and it pops up in another.
shomi
Here I thought one of you hacks was going to get through and entire blog post without mentioning “Trump” once. You never fail to disappoint.
All we need now is for Cole to come out of the Republican closet and tell us how great Christie is and that he should be the nominee.
Matt McIrvin
@shomi: I’m concerned about a major party front-runner whose fans like to brag about how they’re going to start a new Holocaust dwarfing Hitler’s when their guy gets in; aren’t you?
Germy
@Baud:
Also the least fun to do business with, because we get hosed every time. No coincidence they influence republican politics.
bemused
The 2007 piece is brilliant. Conservatives have always used up natural resources, assets, human labor for profit and power with no hesitation, bleeding everything dry. They don’t question if their greed will bite them back some day. They’ve used their own voters in the same way never imagining their loyal flock would rebel or are in deep denial, blinded by lust for profit and power.
Ksmiami
@Germy: I’m saying it about their policies- it’s just the truth.
amk
@rk: great post.
p.a.
@Baud: Part of a political party’s job is education. The Rethugs farmed the process out to Fux years ago, to their advantage for a while. They’re reaping the whirlwind now.
Not saying the Dems need a captive media outlet (although newspapers served this purpise since the Atlantic colonies). I guess it’s impossible to pound home the message that immigration reform and integration into the national economy helps EVERYONE? That the undocumented actually DON’T get benefits except those bennies that benefit EVERYONE: schooling for the kids and emergency medical treatment (example: ask an anti, do you really want someone with the flu to go untreated and turned out into the general population?).
I don’t pay much attention because my beliefs are set and I know how I’m voting (in the generals if not always the primaries). But from what I have noticed I only see progressive candidates even trying to make these kinds of points. Is it not worth the effort?
schrodinger's cat
@rk: When things get tough it is human nature to blame those who you perceive to be different than you are. Immigrants are the tailor made scapegoats. Check out the comments on this blog when the topic is H-1B visa holders, for example.
D58826
OT but the latest flair up on mail gate are the 22 ‘top secret’ documents. According to the obviusly biased GOPers it doesnt matter that the documents were not marked top secret when they went to Hillary’s server. A top secret document is a top secret document period. end of story. criminal indictment tro follow.
Now I’m confused for several reasons on this.
1. If the document isn’t marked top secret then how is a person supposed to know it is top secret. Obviously some things will stand out – the nuclear launch codes for example but I would suspect that most stuff iis not that obvious.
2. The reason why we know these documents are top secret is the various agencies reviewed them prior to the court ordered release. It is at this time (i.e. in past few weeks) that they were marked top secret. Again how is a person in 2011 supposed to know what some spy decides in 2016?
3. If the court hadn’t ordered the release and just suppose the documents had been marked unclassified on a state department server then they would never have been re-evaluated. If the court hadn’t ordered them released they would have remained unclassified even if on Hillary’s server.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
Perfect description of the current GOP: an ever increasing percentage of an ever shrinking demographic…
Hopefully they’re headed for the same fate as the dinosaurs and dodos…
Betty Cracker
@gelfling545: At the risk of triggering dismissive rebuttals, I’ll note that an opportunity to vote for the first woman on a major party ticket would be historic too.
@The Republic, Blah Blah Blah…: Remarkably similar to the more guns, fewer gun owners phenomenon.
dogwood
I don’t think the Republican Party is gong to disintegrate. Any party that relies on the Solid South and white southern sensibilities will always have problems. That voting segment is culturally conservative, nativist, racist and populist. These people are an albatross when it comes to presidential elections, but they’re solid gold for maintaining congressional control.
Davis X. Machina
Welcome to a new Republican party, dedicated to the principle of herrenvolk democracy.
I’m not sure where the real-estate developers and car-dealership owners eventually wind up, politically, but they’re being tossed out of their own party.
Hedge-fund managers, and the serious money, OTOH, just float serenely above it all…
Baud
@p.a.:
They’re progressive because they believe in the things you said. Not all candidates are, and it’s hard to fake it effectively.
Hard to say whether it’s worth the effort without considering the alternatives. I don’t see much basis for thinking that the arguments you’re making will influence the voting habits of white, working class voters.
MomSense
@Hildebrand:
Locally there was definitely a lot of resentment toward OFA and an attitude in 2010 and 14 that we finally get to do things our way. I have learned to stay away from all the committee meetings so I just log into virtual phone bank and make calls from home.
Baud
@D58826: It’s bullshit and it always has been. Maybe some information will eventually come out that has real teeth to it, but this isn’t it.
The Republic, Blah Blah Blah...
@Betty Cracker: I’d wager there’s a really high percentage of overlap between the two groups, official card-carrying membership aside…
Therein lies the GOP’s central dilemma, or one of them… their base is indeed rabidly, fanatically loyal… it just keeps getting smaller all the time due to natural attrition…
Davis X. Machina
@Betty Cracker:
That comes later, and automatically, after we supplant the existing finance-capltalist mode of production.
patrick II
I used to tell my gop friends who wanted to stop immigration and deport illegal aliens that their party would never find a bill “perfect” enough, in spite of the many bills that have been introduced over the years. They and their fellow travelers may want an all-white america, but the big boys who actually pay the senators and congressmen want cheap labor, especially undocumented labor with no rights or power. Thus republicans in congress would always go through the charade of wanting more border security, or higher walls than any particular bill had, but would never ever actually pass any kind of immigration bill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: You mean local Dems resented the OFA people? “Outsiders telling us what to do”?
I know a lot of people blame Obama, and/or his campaign muckety-mucks, for folding their tents, but a lot of the complaints I see (like calls to bring back something called “The Fifty State Strategy”) seem to assume an unlimited pool of 1) money 2) people to hire with that money
benw
@Zinsky: pretty much agreed. The GOP base it super-tribal. I’d just add that the RW media bubble helps them stay tribal and avoid the dissonance. But on top of that, the centrist media is what will really keep the GOP rolling. If Trump (or whoever) loses the general badly (please please please), the IMMEDIATE talking point will be that it’s the candidate’s fault, not the party or any of their loony, useless, incoherent policies. Trump can go down in flames and the GOP won’t suffer.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The people who still talk about the 50 state strategy also seem to hate blue dogs. Finding conservadems who could actually win elections in R+ districts was a key component in the 50 state strategy.
Hildebrand
@MomSense: Good lord, that makes my head hurt. Why would you resent success? Gah, don’t answer that – people will always reinvent the wheel if it means that they can take credit for this ‘new’ thing that they have made.
Emma
@Hildebrand: if their own survival isn’t enough to vote for, what can the Democratic party offer them?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No dismissive rebuttal from me. I’m constantly surprised that this isn’t discussed and appreciated more.
My phlegmatic nature resists those undefinable things like “charisma” and “connecting with voters” (John Fucking Roberts, Samuel Fucking Alito, Citizens United, Hobby Lobby. There. I’m excited and connected), but Obama appealed to me personally more than any presidential candidate I’ve seen– precisely because of the “Everybody chill the fuck out” vibe. I wish HRC had more of those intangibles, a part of me wishes she had more clearly identifiable achievements than “she’s kept her head down and ground it out for thirty-five years”, but she’s done that, and far more often than not fought in the right direction (Yes, I know, AUMF and the dread Speaking Fees, she’s still the best we’ve got).
Baud
@MomSense:
Yep. The last straw for me at Daily Kos was when they started gloating about the blue dogs who were decimated in 2010.
D58826
@Baud: That’s what I figured but didn’t want to overlook some deep dark mysterious secret. The overuse of the top secret stamp has been going on for years. Read somewhere that they even stamp top secret on the lunch menu at CIA headquarters. The system seems designed more for CYA than national security.
The latest buzz also includes that Sid Blumenthal will be some kind of Chaney like presence in a Clinton WH. They do love old Sid.
dogwood
@Emma:
Nobody can actually offer them anything. They want things to be the way they used to be, which never happens. Changing times always brings out the ugly reactionaries. America is no more immune to that than any other country.
D58826
@Baud: Yep. As current events now show even if the blue dogs didn’t vote yes on every piece of progressive legislation they did allow the democrats to control both chambers of congress. Thus Nancy and Harry had some degree of control over the agenda. Nancy’s house would not have vote 55 times to repeal Obamacare, created the Benghazi special committee or the planned parenthood special committee, among other things.
feebog
I’m wondering if the Republican part may become the wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries. Seriously, they already have a party- The Tea Party that they astro-turfed from the top down. They reportedly have political operations that already rival the Republican party in terms of data bases and outreach. God knows they have enough money. The only thing that will stop them, or at least stalemate them is a bunch of lesser billionaires and millionaires getting together and outright opposing them. Of course a lot of them already are in terms of backing candidates for the nomination, but that’s fragmented because their are so many clowns in the car. What is more likely is that some of these millionaires and billionaires decide “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and instead of a Republican Party they just rename it the Koch Party.
dogwood
@D58826:
And the blue dogs voted yes more often than they voted no. Even letting the loathsome Joe Lieberman keep a toe inside the tent helped with the repeal of DADT.
MomSense
@Hildebrand:
It becomes a turf war over who gets to use the office, “poaching” volunteers, etc. we had a combined campaign field organizer who was so fed up by the OFA bashing he finally told them that we made more calls for the local candidates than they had.
Baud
@D58826: Yep. Eighty percent of the battle is being able to set the agenda.
Davis X. Machina
@D58826:
There’s a deep, atavistic, longing for a Vanguard Party — small, hard, ruthless, disciplined, dedicated — to lead the revolution ticking away in the souls of a lot of progressives. With it comes a mistrust of mass political parties, and the compromises they entail.
In my cynical moments, I suspect it’s because such folks know who would staff the vanguard… them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I didn’t gloat, but I did wonder if it ever occurred to Blanche Lincoln that her constant trolling of Obama didn’t help her. And as I type this, I stop wondering. I’m sure Blanche and Mark and all the others are untroubled by a shadow of a doubt, and if anything think Obama dragged them down. Hell, more recently, I saw that Mark Udall, a decent man and a shitty campaigner who I think would have won but for Ebola and ISIS porn, said that CO swing voters who broke for Gardener were trying to send a message to the president.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Right. I don’t mean to lionize Blue Dogs. They suck in many ways. But they are not the enemy, especially if they hail from swing districts.
schrodinger's cat
@patrick II: Exactly, if you want to stop illegal immigrants, prosecute those who hire them and not just with fines.
Brachiator
. The inertia of youth often keeps people from voting. Civic duty, or even the threat of Trump triumphant, may not motivate Latinos to vote in large numbers.
And here is the bottom line (from Pew):
By comparison, only 27 percent of white voters are millennials.
The Democrats could use a strong “get out the vote” effort to help seal the deal, especially with Latinos. But this may be a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, there is time to get it done if they have the will and the smarts to do so.
MomSense
@dogwood:
And Joe would have been there on climate change legislation which is why the calls to punish him for 2008 would have been cathartic but foolish.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
IMO, it’s not necessarily immigration per se that needs to be regulated — it’s employers. If companies were not eager and willing to hire illegal labor to the point that companies like Tyson have been caught actively recruiting illegal workers, we would have much less of a problem.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Tech companies use H1B visa holders to bring down wages for local workers by claiming that the “prevailing wage” is much lower than it actually is so they can hire H1B workers instead. This is not the fault of the H1B workers, but it’s weird to insist that we can’t point out that they’re being exploited.
Hildebrand
@Emma:
Well, for starters, a belief that the Democrats see them as something other than a mere voting block to use. Folks in the Valley often believe that, at the state and national level, they are simply pawns in somebody else’s game.
D58826
@Baud: And in the end all they became was dead dogs. But the larger point is there are not enough progressives to carry the day so compromise is in order. We don’t need purity tests and the democratic equivalent of the RINO. As hard as it is to admit sometimes the other side has a good idea. Co-opting Romneycare and turning it into Obamacare wasn’t such a bad idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: Since my old grandma said you should try to find at least one good think to say about anybody, I’ll say he’s been a lot quieter in retirement than I was expecting. Evan Bayh, too.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: You can point it, and you make a fair point. I would however like to point out a few things
1. Other industries besides tech use H1-Bs.
2. There are hardly any other mechanisms for skilled immigrants to work in the United States. It provides a bridge to the Green Card for employment based immigration.
3. Yes many corporations (Indian and US) have gave gamed the H1-Bs to the detriment of their workers (both the H1-B holders and their American counterparts)
4. An easy fix would be to make it easier for people to self-sponsor themselves for the temporary work visas and immigrant visas (GCs)
Miss Bianca
Tim F et al., you may be interested in this article – don’t know how accurate it is, (it is BuzzFeed, and I find them hit-or-miss) but it seems to suggest that the possibility of a Trump nomination/presidency is, in fact, motivating Hispanic residents to become citizens and vote:
(I hope this link thingy works – I’m kind of an involuntary Luddite when it comes to this sort of thing) (I also can’t remember whether I originally found this article thru’ BJ or somewhere else, so my apologies if I’m feeding you something you’ve already digested!)
I live in Colorado and worked as an ESL program administrator for a number of years. I’ll be interested to make contact with some of the agencies they list in CO to see what’s going on. I sense an article of my own coming up…
Brachiator
@sivapith:
No. This insanity is a mathematical function that always approaches, but can never reach, Peak Wingnuttia.
Miss Bianca
Oh, crap, the link didn’t work…
this one will
Brachiator
@rk: Good posts. You nail many of the issues here.
PaulW
My thought is that we’re seeing the results of the RINO purging that’s been consistently weeding out BadThought from the GOP ranks since 1994. That the Party has done so much to promote and reward only Active-Negative (I ascribe to Barber’s Character traits) types of elected officials that Active-Negative personalities are all they have left to offer the nation.
http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2016/01/notes-before-madness-is-official.html
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. Watching CSPAN and the Democratic training session on how to caucus. Held at the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union hall. Second question I hear: ” without checking ID how will we know there aren’t illegal immigrants voting illegally because they’re illegal?” (paraphrasing).
They think wealthy interests are bringing in low wage workers in to drive down wages in trades. Before anyone tells me the plumber needs to suck it up and accept the inevitability of lower wages, national Democrats REGULARLY promote skilled trades training. Democrats claim there is a shortage of skilled trades workers, so the ‘ol “competition!” brush off probably won’t fly.
Someone will have to talk to people like him and persuade him because if he thinks it’s about cheap labor he isn’t going to support it. Can you blame him?
dogwood
@PaulW:
These kooks don’t fit Barber’s true meaning of anything. Active/Negative doesn’t mean nihilistic. The idiots are arsonists.
PaulW
@Brachiator:
the only way Trump becomes Peak Wingnut is if his nomination drives 10-30 million voters out of the Republican ranks (switching to NPA or Democrat), the popular vote going 70 percent for Hillary (even for her that would be ridiculously high) to Trump’s 27 percent, and the Electoral College giving Hillary every state except South Carolina, Alabama, and Idaho.
Also, it would require ALL of the challenged Senate seats (34 this cycle) going Democratic (meaning even the safe GOP seats switched) and enough House seats (with GERRYMANDERED safe districts everywhere!) switching Democratic to give Dems full control of all elected branches. And that would be at the national level. With a wave like that, the odds would favor enough state-level legislative and governor elections going full Dem as well.
At that point, Peak Wingnut would have proved itself, that the Far Right’s rage hit a brick wall. But it still won’t end, because those f-ckers believe themselves absolute, and will never admit they failed.
Emma
@Hildebrand: so they would rather be dead than choose the lesser of two evils?
PaulW
@dogwood:
The Establishment candidates – Jeb, Rubio, Christie, Kasich – for the most part are very much like Nixon: they DO respect the political institutions more than they want to destroy them (they merely want those institutions to serve THEIR needs, not the needs of the nation). Cruz and Huckabee and Trump and Fiorina and Carson are true arsonists, but that still falls under A-N because the other three types – Active-Positive, Passive-Positive, Passive-Negative – are not destructive personalities (P-Ns are too Passive to do anything about it, they’d prefer letting the systems fall to entropy rather than fire).
PaulW
Re: Latinos coming out to vote.
People will register and turn out to vote when they have a direct personal vested interest in the results.
The Hispanic communities are well aware of what a Trump win will mean: they saw it in California back in the 1990s, and it drove them to the ballots to vote the Republicans out of power because of it.
When a voting bloc discovers they are going to be the target of mass deportations, loss of jobs and access to schools and health care, and the likely focus of violent attacks, that voting bloc is going to turn out AGAINST the political party – hi, Republicans! – promoting those methods.
There STILL needs to be – and there’s been some headway already – a massive GOTV registration drive among the Hispanics in key states to encourage Democratic turnout. Just because Trump (might) wins the GOP nomination doesn’t mean an easy ride for Dems.
Uncle Cosmo
FTR there are in fact 10 kinds of people in the world;
Those who understand binary & those who don’t.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
IMO, it’s not necessarily immigration per se that needs to be regulated — it’s employers.
Totes agree. And until a Democrat or Republican says that, and puts in measures to enforce, it’s all just talk, talk, talk.
We don’t need a wall, and no wall would be sufficient. (Laser sharks, etc.)
If one cannot get a job, the tide will stem.
And make an example of the employers, bigger ones first.
I hope Disney gets sued up the wazoo — successfully — for what they did with their IT department. One of the most flagrant uses of the H1B program that I have ever seen. Although glibertarians will tell you — “everyone does it.” Make the mouse an example. Maybe “everyone” will stop then.
D58826
wELL for those hoping for a meteor strike to put us out of our election misery the good news is
Unfortunately it won’t get here in time for the 2016 election. Actually it won’t get here for another 30 million years (sigh)
Frankensteinbeck
Last I heard, Trump’s favorability with Latinos was a whopping -50, while other GOP candidates were in slight positive territory. That has to make a difference.
The GOP white base will not abandon them or get less motivated. Ever.
For those who think the GOP is exploiting economic nervousness, read @rk‘s post. Scapegoating comes first, THEN it attaches whatever problems the racist can find to the target of their hate. These attitudes flourished in the 50s, when these same whites felt secure.
@Frank Wilhoit:
Your point is well made, but think of racism as a malignant cancer. They start out hating one thing, and it spreads. Hateful people become racists, and racists become hateful people. It’s a nebulous cloud, with lots of people on the fringes even, not one simple and obvious category.
Hildebrand
@Emma: The folks who vote, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats – in 2012, Hidalgo County (where I lived) voted for Obama at 70%. This is the statistic that gets the campaigns drooling. The other shoe dropping? Hidalgo County had record turn-out – a whopping 46%. Number of eligible voters in the county is about 320,000 – so getting that county to turn out would move the dial.
Why don’t people vote? Because they feel that no one, and I mean no one, listens to them, or addresses their problems/concerns – infrastructure, jobs, education, ease of border passage (many have family on both sides of the border), these are the central issues. Additionally, politicians in the Valley are not well respected – patronage and nepotism were the norms for generations. Nobody expects that anything will change.
The 2014 gubernatorial race drew 25% turnout in Hidalgo County. So many of my students expressed a deep frustration that no one running for office has ever really made the case that they give a damn about the people in the Valley – other than seemingly as a way to get their way somewhere else in the State or the Country.
You want them to vote? Don’t treat them as mere cannon-fodder for other fights.
Mr. Twister
@D58826: According to a tweet I saw, the 22 emails contain the Benghazi stand down order !
D58826
@Mr. Twister: That’s a lot of e-mail for a stand down order. Must have been the full operational plan for the attack as well
cokane
Good post, Tim