Another Great Post! (4.00 / 1)

See, I told you the first one was too short!

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 13:57:53 PM CST

Thanks (0.00 / 0)

Yes, it was too short - a teaser...!

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by: dreaminonempty @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 14:22:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

thanks (0.00 / 0)

These posts are great, I've already sent them around to several political junkie friends...

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by: cobblestones @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 14:33:11 PM CST

Thanks... (0.00 / 0)

I'll be posting in the mornings, keep your eyes out.  :)

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by: dreaminonempty @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 15:32:01 PM CST

[ Parent ]

interesting analysis (0.00 / 0)

i don't buy it for a second.  in the short run, i believe that the deepseated racism of the republican party is unsustainable beyond, maybe, one more election.  In the long run, political parties are just instruments, not ideologies, and will reconfigure themselves to come up with some other coalition, particularly as things change.  For example, the christian / socially conservative theme is one possible way the Republicans might eventually reorganise themselves - and they in recent memory have been more ruthless about how they reorganise themselves than Democrats have been, though I wasn't around in 1964, so I won't give them more credit than due.

However, there is another implication that are more interesting - this analysis leaves the Democratic party dependent on evoking fears of Republican racism in order to secure its base.  This, in turn, leads it to resist efforts to ACTUALLY deal with structural and institutional racism, since it and its politicians actually benefit from those things.  If progressive Democrats REALLY want to break the Republican party, what you want to do is build a supermajority including all these groups for as long as you can hold on to them (through inertia from prior Republican racism) while you reach out to working class White people and others.  But what is more relevant is that if you build a multicultural party (and include other aspects of diversity) but don't reach out to deal with social class, you end up with a not-very progressive party and set the stage for the eventual backlash - whatever the ideology it takes is.

Of course all this entails dealing with people as people, supporting social movements, and bolstering the institutions that do the same.  i note with a somewhat jaded eye that many of these analyses on OpenLeft about how nonWhite people are going to save the country from the Republicans are written in a space dominated by Whiteness :)

In any case, look forward to the specific breakdowns of Latinos and hopefully other groups- e.g. among Asian voters I know that Filipinos tend to trend Republican, Indians Democratic, and lots of other details.  Thanks for the analysis.

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by: dr anonymous @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 14:53:07 PM CST

I challege you! (4.00 / 1)

Good comment, thank you.  I challenge your creativity!  How could the Republican party reinvent itself to maintain its appeal to its dead-ender 20% base and reach out to minorities?  It's been trying, with Rove's outreach to Hispanics and Steele's What Up, Have Some Fried Chicken campaign.  I could see Republicans claiming the mantle of economic populism - but I still don't think those of us who have been kicked in the teeth by the Republicans as being not 'Real Americans' for so many years would turn around and vote for them now - maybe stop voting though.  Anyway, what can you envision?

Your point about Democrats is spot on, and people have been bouncing it around for a while now:  they have to be more than Not Republicans.  I think in the end it will be decided by the people, that the Democratic party will become more responsive to its many-faceted base as the people of the party take more control over its future.  That's the optimist in me speaking.  Eventually, of course, if we extrapolate using current party platforms, the Republicans should go extinct as their base dwindles, and Democrats should split into two, perhaps along class lines.

Are non-white people going to save the country from Republicans?  I know you said it somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I have a serious point to make about this, and that is that non-white, non-Christian people ARE the country.  Not a majority - not yet - but no longer so powerless either.  That is what I am hoping to bring to the fore with these diaries.  For decades, centuries, the white Christian male perspective has been the defined norm, and still is to a large extent - witness the Sotomayor hearings.  Any other perpsective is suspect until justified and explained and washed and dried until suitable unthreatening to the predominant perspective...  
 

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by: dreaminonempty @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 15:30:57 PM CST

[ Parent ]

By running on a pure Libertarian platform (0.00 / 0)

How could the Republican party reinvent itself to maintain its appeal to its dead-ender 20% base and reach out to minorities?

But that would mean a literal populist uprising sweeping out the neocons and the thieves from the party.

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by: Paul Goodman @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 15:59:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

But Libertarianism And Populism Are Hardly That Compatible (4.00 / 2)

White racists, colorblind or not so much may be able to delude themselves on this.  But how they dupe minorities into joining their mass delusion is a far from trivial conundrum.

The original Populists, after all, hated goldbugs like Ron Paul.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 16:44:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Gold is the new silver (4.00 / 1)

Electrons are now as much the populists' enemies as they are the libertarians'. How many times have even we ranted against the multi-trillion dollar ponzi schemes of our investment bankers? If you don't know anything economics, the idea of real money can be as exciting as the idea of real Americans, leaving the door open to all the fools like Ron Paul, who rail against fractional reserve banking, and toss in quotes from The Road to Serfdom. If you didn't know any better, you'd think that gold had become the new free coinage of silver. One of the many paradoxes of American politics, this, like how the Party of Lincoln became the Party of Rush Limbaugh in just under fifty years.

The truth, of course, is that money isn't just electrons, it's electrons and promises. It's the promises part we've screwed up, not the electrons part, but that won't dissuade the Ron Paul primitives. They don't trust anything they can't bite down on -- at times with good reason, I admit -- and as a result, we're gonna have a helluva time convincing them that money is a value-free abstraction, and that finance in its proper context is a good thing. Look at the aggravation Paul Krugman is getting, and he's a certified expert.

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by: William Timberman @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 18:00:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

but the riled up libertarian populists love Ron Paul (0.00 / 0)

because he's conservative, but he also quite genuinely appeals to an individualism (that i would guess is gendered).  he rails against the fed printing money and supports limited government.  and i don't know if his base is racist or not (certainly race blind - you can't point to the constitution as a good example of property rights and not be), but someone could come along who downplays the racism even further.

my point being - ideologically, libertarianism and populism maybe shouldn't be coherent, but then, neither should christnanity and capitalism.  but they are.  what happens is that people blend things together and empirically, it is probably true that ron paul and the kinds of things he talks about have a base (albeit a small one).  and he very much uses themes in american politics that are tried and true.  

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by: dr anonymous @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 19:27:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

And My Point Is (4.00 / 2)

that you can shove any two things together and make them fit, if your audience is willing. But what makes that audience willing is--at least in part--the fact that it is overwhelmingly white.

The fricken idiot compared a pair of gun-nut anti-income-tax fanatics to Martin Luther King, for gosh sakes!  Try selling that to the alienated black masses. Yeah, right.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 21:13:45 PM CST

[ Parent ]

but they're not JUST White (0.00 / 0)

that's one part of my point.  The other part is that I converse with a fair number of second generation Indian American conservative libertarians.  It's sad, but it's true.  

For example, some LGBT interests (which resonate with individual interests in some sense) could work quite well with a libertarian agenda.  Similarly, Nader's support in 2000 semed to include a fair number of people who might be inclined to support libertarianism and who feel disillusioned by the democratic party and probbaly would by a variety of factors in this particular agenda.

Similarly, White Christian evangelical social conservatives may dominate the Republican Christian base, but that doesn't mean the same couldn't be extended to Latino and Black and South Asian and other social conservatives.

Anyway, these are micro examples and the post is about a macro trend - I'm only attempting to say that we shouldn't assume triumph, because of the 'we' in question - the democratic party as a multicultural technocratic party might be able to continue to win elections, but the real question is where that leaves progressives.  Whether the Republicans can resuscitate themselves after their final collapse is a different story, but as I said in another comment, has to be explored in terms of what the content of the two parties would end up being, assuming no major massive hits to the stability of the two-party system, because you'll end up with two parties and one of them won't be democrats.

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by: dr anonymous @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 04:40:08 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Aha (4.00 / 2)

"the other part is that I converse with a fair number of second generation Indian American conservative libertarians"

So libertartarians are not just white, they also include people who they think wealth and education can make them white. That mistake has been made before.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 06:47:29 AM CST

[ Parent ]

but that's the whole thing (0.00 / 0)

and my critique of relying on nonWhite as an exclusive metric.  If 'White' is being replaced by 'multicultural elite' then although this might do a lot of good in disseminating nonracism in society, it doesn't preclude a significant portion of my peoples becoming the 'new White' (which is not white but post racial).

As interesting as it is a dilemma.

:)

Anyway, the one saving grace is that there's enormous lag time - people's party identification, in my experience, can LONG outlast their class or other interests to the point where it doesn't seem to 'make sense' why they're voting the way they do, at least on a surface level demographic approach.  White Southern men voting Democratic until @1994? is the xample in my mind.

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by: dr anonymous @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 08:13:26 AM CST

[ Parent ]

But there are only so many (4.00 / 1)

trust fund babies out there. And the Republicans already have the bulk of them.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 06:39:29 AM CST

[ Parent ]

how is it that the Democrats are so well funded then? (0.00 / 0)

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by: dr anonymous @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 08:13:55 AM CST

[ Parent ]

thanks for the response! (0.00 / 0)

i respond well to brainstorming and positivity :)  and trying to do this has served as a helpful corrective :)  it is, in fact, stretching my imagination to be able to come up with a long term solution for republicans, all else equal (whcih it won't be - articulated below - but that's the assumption you work on).

consider the previous republican base - or rather the ideas that went into it - racism, religiosity, and pro-rich policies.  this worked (well written about in other contexts by atul kohli) because the pro-rich policies can't garner electoral appeal overtly, so those who espouse them have to find other ways of mobilising enough of the populace to secure consent.  this includes fear, stifling critical thinking, and greed and promises of individual mobility.

i mention this to go into two further points - 1. there  were structural mechanisms that led to at least the possibility of the coincidence of pro-rich and specific kinds of broadbased political strategies and 2. pro-rich and pro-market are not the same.  when the republicans went off the deep end (both in terms of their class agenda and their social conservatism) what this meant was that it had ceased to be in the interests of the elite broadly - and you saw this in things like the iraq war, whcih was roundly criticised by the elite not for being immoral, but for being 'the wrong war.'  the 'right war' as always, is acceptable, even if nearly all wars by the u.s. are imperialism.

so right now, you have a democratic party that is pro-market (pro-corporate) and has found a way to win voters back by mobilising a concentrated base throuhg identity politics in order to promote a very similar technocratic, imperialist, and u.s.-elite based agenda.  not in the specifics, but in the generael interest that it serves (structurally - no conspiracy theories here).  how long can that last?  as long as it can.  but that doesn't mean a) there won't be a backlash and b) that demographic changes in the u.s. won't undermine the coalition's stability - to say nothing of the well known incompetence of the democratic party - which makes sense because it's an elite party that has to position itself as not-elite and further has gutted itself of all ideology and seemingly practical political ideas.

so how might it work 20 years down the road?  or maybe 10 if the democrats f"£k it up too early (or we do, collectively)?  well, the multicultural technocracy allows the creation of a capitalist class that is multicultural.  the obvious response is a fascist majoritarian populist movement.

so then the argument you're making is - well they don't have the people for that to succeed.  there are two ways to proceed at that point - that the republicans actually become outright fascist and attempt to undermine the state.  i think this is less likely because, like i said, i think it's structural - or circumstances change.  and also, they're already doing that, and i don't think they have the numbers or the preexisting conditions to succeed.

but there are certain themes that are always present if the party is going to be viable, and if it's not, then some other party will replace it.  among the themes might be religiosity (which will work with significant sections of the population if it's toned down to a huckabee level), populism, masculinism (would be interested in looking at the latino male vote for schwarzenegger - heard this was strong), peeling off the more conservative non-white sections (e.g. 2nd generation upwardly mobile immigrants like jindal), english-only, christendom, 'the west', libertarianism as pointed out below, bringing in conservative immigrants from elsewhere, perhaps a greater inclusion of a generation of more patriarchal women (which would be a shift away from the traditional pattern, but then, feminism seems to get short shrift right now from the democratic party), militarism (don't underestimate how important it is that not just the economy but society in the u.s. is increasingly militarised in terms of the military being the path of upward mobilitiy, etc.) dependent, etc.

or it might be something entirely new!  that we can't imagine something simply means that certain things haven't happened that we don't know about yet (e.g. it is very easy to imagine a world in 20 years in which the United States and China are major geopolitical rivals or a multipolar world with the U.S./E.U./China or a world in which oil-producing countries are a major force, etc.).  

you should not underestimate what a non-narrow 'postracial' populism can bring about, particularly if the movement continuies to fail to significantly incorporate a real understanding of social justice as a broad framework and social democracy as a broad aim.  but then the process of trying to build such a movement in the u.s. carries the seeds of its own destruction, because the specific claims will veer further and further away from 'the general interest' (i.e. 'the market' or 'the way that different power hierarchies weave together').  and as long as the democratic party and the progressive movement is dependent on that market, it will risk exactly what the republicans risk - having a moment of power at which its factions can accomplish so much that they start doing non-market oriented things and the market then turns on them and...sides with the other party.

it will take time-  no doubt.  but it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy - e.g. look at the way that the california marriage proposition was handled and the divisions almost immediately created between lgbt people and black people.  those tensions will be eased for now, becuase people are shit scared of the republicans, and with good reason - but what happens when they all start sounding more like huckabee and george p. bush than like glenn beck in 10 years?  and if the democrats are still touting this corporate line, which they have EVERY reason to continue to do.  At best, they can turn to a paternalist (i.e. progressive) line.  but a populist one?  that can only come from society - from institutions like trade unions and real ngos rooted in communities and alternative sources of financing and really building a better world and better model of the world.

unless something major happens - something like an attempted fascist coup - which is not out of the question, i guess - we are still in a two party system, and most of the impetus behind people's political work today seems to be designed to retain that.  that is how 'crazy' and 'not crazy' are defined in american politics - whether or not you serve that broad swathe of interests that is in 'the middle' - i.e. the market.

anyway, i'm not sure if that made any sense as a coherent narrative, partly because your question and your challenge were extremely good - but if i had to sum it up, i would say don't ignore the structure that remains stable even with changes - a person who is 'nonWhite' today may be a 'Christian' tomorrow or worse yet 'an Investment banker' in terms of how they vote.  And if not them, then they're children.  and don't ignore that VAST changes to structure can occur seemingly rapidly (in 1900, did people imagine the end of the british empire in 50 years?  in 1960, did people imagine the soviet regime's collapse in 20-30 years?)

all that said, the goal, i suppose, is to try to build as broad and deep and redistributive coalition as possible (in terms of power, nto just money) and make sure that in the moment that we have, we do as much as we can with it- both inside and outside our structural limitations.  and try to stay aware.

so thanks for pushing me to do that for myself :)  keep up the good work :)

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by: dr anonymous @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 19:21:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

addendum (0.00 / 0)

Eventually, of course, if we extrapolate using current party platforms, the Republicans should go extinct as their base dwindles, and Democrats should split into two, perhaps along class lines.

in practice, there may be vastly different consequences if the republicans evaporate and the democrats split in two than if the republcians resuscitate themselves.  but what you end up with in both situations is a two-party system, made up of cobbled together alliances. and as long as both parties - that systems - are tied at the hip to the market - then you're not going to have a neat break along class lines - you're going to have a hodgepodge of elite interests and popular mobilisation strategies.  in both - to different degrees.  this is why i think supporting systemic change, rather than simply opposing republicans, is something that progressive democrats - even those who think third parties are a waste of time in the current system - ought to be taking more seriously than they do.  things like isntant runoff voting, a SERIOUS push for other ways of financing elections, opposing imperialism not just for the sake of the other countries the u.s. affects but the effects that it has on american politics in terms of militarisation and an overall investment in world fuck-up-edness to sustain the well being of large swathes of the population, etc.

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by: dr anonymous @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 19:32:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Their only path to victory lies with the Ron Paul types (0.00 / 0)

combined with bad governance by the Dems.

Hence their strategy of

1: trying to reanneal the Ron Paul types away with teabagger lip-service

2: making Glen Beck the Establishment version of Alex Jones

3: Obstructing Obama

at least they're playing to win, with some on the left, I'm not so sure; it seems like many are playing merely to feel good about themselves and win a winning strategy is proposed they quip "that doesn't make me feel good about myself." (sigh)

Things that could scuttle their strategy:

1: Ending the war on drugs

2: Rolling back the surveillance state

3: Auditing / Ending the Fed and restoring the money power to Congress.

4: Ending the wars

5: and the Empire generally.

Who here isn't rabidly for the above?

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by: Paul Goodman @ Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 15:56:46 PM CST

the last five? (0.00 / 0)

a lot of people, unfortunately.  it's probably only about 5-10% of the politically active population that's for the latter.  Probably a lot more (witht he exception of the fifth once they realise some of the consequences) among the people, though who really knows?  it's not a live political debate yet.

one thing's for sure - i don't hear much about the 'peace dividend' - what happened to that?  did the magical end of the military industrial keynsian complex not materialise? :)

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by: dr anonymous @ Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 04:42:18 AM CST

[ Parent ]