Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 18:30


The most fundamental lie about the Tea Party movement is that it represents some sort of working-class populist base that is heart and soul of the Republican Party, in opposition to which are the wealthy liberal elites of the Democratic Party.  Contrary to his reputation for brilliance, Barack Obama has probably done more to make this absurd scenario credible than any other single individual over the past year and a half (if you think Glenn Beck makes anything credible, I challenge you to a duel, Funk and Wagnalls at 50 paces).

Well, I was checking out something else in the American National Election Study archives, when I noticed someone had created an ideology scale, simply combining attitudes on spending with ideological identification, and I thought this would be a useful way to underscore what a lot of hokum this kind of narrative is, since the reality is that conservatives are elitists, always have been, always will be, regardless of the fact some liberals--social liberals, primarily, may be as well.

Just to emphasize my point, I decided to divide things up by decade, so that the persistence of the pattern could be clearly seen.  The orange shows values higher than statistically predicted, the blue shows them lower.  The darker the color, the greater the divergence from expectations.  That means that the orange band from upper left to lower right--low income liberals to upper income conservatives--shows where the greatest deviation above statistical expectations lies.




Paul Rosenberg :: Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites

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Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites | 51 comments
State data (4.00 / 2)
Bush vs. Gore: 19 out of the 20 states with the highest median income voted for Gore.  Since conservative are located disproportionately in poorer states one can assume the ratios for many of these states are incredible.

Somebody should do a study on NY.  The state's median income has not done too well over the last 20 or 30 years but the number and wealth of the super rich have grown remarkably.  The state has cut its top tax rate by over 40% IIRC.  Otoh, the exodus of middle class NYers has been amazing.

I'd love to see ideological breakdowns by profession.  Lawyers, for example, would probably skew more liberal while CPAs would skew more conservative.  Doctors would skew conservative but internists (who make considerably less) would be far more liberal than surgeons, especially those who specialize.

You really can't win. (0.00 / 0)

Sorry, entered prematurely. (4.00 / 2)
You really can't win, because conservatives also say that liberals are impoverished moochers.

The germ of truth, as I've said, is that certain kinds of highly educated people tend to be liberal Democrats -- humanities and liberal arts majors especially, who aren't necessarily very prosperous.

[ Parent ]
"Lazy Mexicans Are Taking All Our Jobs" (4.00 / 2)
That's the way to cover all the bases at once!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
You'd Be Amazed (Maybe) (4.00 / 1)
But I have heard this from two clients who swear they are not conservative. Yet they apparently listen to Beck or Rush or somebody who has them believing the brown horde is swamping our emergency rooms with all of them on welfare. The strangest is in Arizona where brown people make up about 10% of the economy and yet the Legislature has decided to crack down on them just as the economy tanks when every input into the economy is needed most.

The reality, of course, is both obvious and nuanced. I don't see any middle-aged white boys humping mission tiles in 108 degree heat (or worse) on construction sites. And people who make money, even off the table, have to buy food and clothing and pay rent.

I'd humbly suggest this be one of the conservative myths you tackle.

[ Parent ]
There is a very large group of low-information voters (4.00 / 2)
in the broad political center who can't seem to make up their minds as to whether they prefer predominantly conservative or progressive policy approaches to today's major problems--or even as to whether they favor predominantly conservative or progressive ways of calling out and defining these problems. Thus the clueless types who simultaneously want economic stimulus and jobs programs AND lowered deficits. Or the nimrods who voted for Obama and Dems but expected center-right policies (and when they got them, complained).

Or, as in your example, people who don't call themselves conservatives but who listen to and respect the likes of Beck and Limbaugh. We've got some seriously confused, misinformed and functionally stupid voters out there these days, who seem to prefer complaining about whoever's in power than in figuring out what kinds of policies they really prefer--and why--and then supporting politicians who also favor such policies, and then pushing them to follow through with them.

One simply CANNOT have voted for Obama and/or not call oneself a conservative and like these far-right propagandists, without being a functional moron. And yet there are millions of them out there, claiming to believe in stuff that makes no sense. And, of course, they vote--thus Scott Brown. But because they vote, Obama and Dems have to figure out what makes them tick, and go after them in ways that are likely to inspire loyalty that extends beyond the election cycle. And NOT by pandering to their conservative prejudices, but by confounding them with superior progressive solutions. Stuff that makes sense and works tends to win over stuff that doesn't--but only if they're sold and persued with sincerity, confidence and aggressiveness, which Obama & Dems have yet to do.

When they stop feeling the need to continually water down, sell out, and apologize for progressive ideas and policies, and instead embrace and persue them aggressively, is when they'll finally win over this broad swath of confused low-information swing voters--both with the inherent superiority of these policies, and with the passion and conviction with which they persue them. If conservatives were able to dominate with just the latter virtue for 40 years, just imagine what progressives could accomplish with BOTH.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
The alienation of the white working class (0.00 / 0)
This is an old essay (2005) but still tremendously insightful: link

The political left once supported these workers, stood on the lines taking its beatings at the plant gates alongside them. Now, comfortably ensconced in the middle class, the American left sees the same working whites as warmongering bigots, happy pawns of the empire.... The left should take its cues from Malcolm X, who understood the need to educate and inform the entire African-American society before tackling the goal of unity. Same goes for white crackers. Nobody said it would be easy....

The working class people in my town are angry, but not especially angry at Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, or unseen fetuses. I think working class anger is at a more fundamental level and that it is about this: rank and status as citizens in our society. I think it is about the daily insult working class people suffer from employers, government (national, state and local), and from their more educated fellow Americans, the doctors, lawyers, journalists, academicians, and others who quietly disdain working people and their uncultured ways...

Yes, it is about values. It is about the values we have forsaken as a people -- such as dignity, education and opportunity for everyone....

Once we begin to look at the human faces of this declining republic's many moving parts, the inexplicable self-screwing working class voter is not so inexplicable after all.... College educated liberals and blue-collar working people need to start separating substantive policy issues from the symbolic ones. Fight on the substance, the real ground zero stuff that ordinary working people can feel and see -- make real pledges about real things. Like absolutely guaranteed health care and a decent living wage. And mean it and deliver it.

The Dems couldn't have screwed these people worse on health care reform than if they were trying to get them to never vote Dem again ever - for generations.  

[ Parent ]
and most will respond by not voting (0.00 / 0)
not by becoming teabaggers.

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[ Parent ]
Probably (4.00 / 1)
But I wouldn't write off the fact that people like Beck and Palin know how to use the appropriate cultural markers and are trying to organize the white working class while progressives are not reaching out to them, insulting them, and not agitating for the things they need, like holding a hard line on universal subsidized health care or raising the minimum wage or cramdown. Progressives have been pathetic at agitation and pressure for the economic issues for those at the margins and have just gone along with the Dems' and Obama's total focus on the middle class.
[ Parent ]
No lazy person is taking my job (0.00 / 0)
'round here the complaints are about low-paid, hard-working ambititous Chinese students, post-docs, and professors.



"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

[ Parent ]
I've spent most of my adult life in Universities (0.00 / 0)
in the "hard science" departments and laboratories - chemists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, physicians and nurses - those demographics. Conservatives are rare, but definitely exist.

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
You just made Tweety cry (4.00 / 5)
by destroying his mythical view of the average "real" American being some white working/middle class conservative guy in Ohio who hates deficits, liberals and taxes, and just wants us all to work together to implement conservative policy--just like FDR and LBJ.

I.e. Joetheplummer.

As for Obama, I never cease to be amazed at how his defenders continue to claim that he's a non-ideological pragmatist, when he's the EXACT opposite, i.e. a VERY ideological non-pragmatist, his ideology being the very unpragmatic (meaning fallacious) Kumbayaist belief that one can and really MUST work with and cave in to self-interested powerful interests and people who hate and want to destroy you, and that only thus can one achieve good things in politics. And it is by persuing such an ideology that he has made his (and our) enemies much more powerful than they should and could be. He wants to reason with people who want to kill him, politically if not literally. And it's precisely because he's such a process ideologue that he can't see the craziness of such an MO.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

I read that book (4.00 / 1)
It was assigned in college and written around OMG 40 years ago.  Obviously, Tweety has not learned much lately.
[ Parent ]
Conservative apologists are a nimble lot (4.00 / 1)
I can already hear the quick abandonment of the "liberal elite" argument in favor of the...

"This just shows the rightness of conservative values. All those conservatives at the high end of the income spectrum got that way due to adhering to conservative values. Consequently we should all emulate their conservative values so that we too can join the liberal... er... uh... I mean... Conservative Elite!"

They are a nimble lot.

Columns I would like to see, (0.00 / 0)
As if it was possible, a couple more columns would add a wow factor.

Percent of eligible voters for each income bracket.

Percent of likely voters for each income bracket.

The same stats would probably be interesting column wise, too.

BTW, I like making things complicated. It's a trait I have that's hard for me to resist.

"They pour syrup on shit and tell us it's hotcakes." Meteor Blades

Am I alone (4.00 / 1)
in thinking that conservatives don't think being an elite has anything to do with making a lot of money?  After all they knew how rich W was, and still treated him as one of the guys.  They knew that Obama had nowhere near the personal wealth of their leadership and still charged him with being elitist.  I think conservatives treat 'being an elite' as having to do with where you were educated (and how much), where you live, how you spend your free time, what you eat, how you like to dress, how much baseball trivia you know, did you play sports in high school, and things of this nature.  In short they care about social elitism and not economic elitism.  Part of the reason is that they,  by and large, accept the empirically false view that America is characterized by significant economic mobility.  So being rich needn't express any kind of distance from the common folk, after all the rich man got there through working hard and climbing the corporate ladder.  Or something like that.  This goes hand in hand with another false belief, that academics run the country, while corporations are just minding their own business and wouldn't give a shit about politics if the bureaucrats would just get out of the way.  They have a complete failure to understand how economically stratified the country is, and how insensitive the government is to the interests of the social elites.  

So finding out that liberals/progressives don't tend to be wealthy is not going to change their beliefs about elitism one bit.  They need to understand how power works first, before they can accurately identify the elite, or even the conditions that make someone elite.

Rationalize All You Want (4.00 / 1)
but the claim that liberal elites control everything is pretty damn hard to square with the fact that rich folks tend to be more conservative.

Not to mention the fact that conservatives just love to pretend they come from humble backgrounds.

In short: It's all a facade.  The claim that it's a real facade doesn't change the fact that it's a facade.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Slow Down (0.00 / 0)
How on earth do you get 'rationalization' out of what I wrote? I was putting forward someone else's position and then arguing that it expressed ignorance. I gave a brief argument that you don't understand the claim that you are arguing against, and so that your evidence is bound to be unconvincing to your opponent. It was supplemented with an even briefer case for the misunderstanding on your part having to do entirely with ignorance on the part of your opponent.  You misunderstand them because their account of what it is to be an elite is one  that a person could only hold if she massively misunderstood who has power and what confers power in American society.

In short, I wasn't arguing that you are wrong, but that you were speaking past your opponent.  The roots of the mistaken identification of academics and artists with the elite run much deeper than a simple ignorance of who tends to have more money.  Conservatives know that their leaders have more money.  It is one of the things they point to in recommending their leaders be the leaders of the country as a whole.

You can decide of course what your purpose is in your posts.  Are you trying to present arguments that can effectively be used against conservatives?  If so then you have to spend some time trying to understand what their position actually is.  Your post doesn't suggest you do understand what their position is.  Maybe developing arguments that might convince  conservatives isn't your goal.  I am not sure what other point their could be to the post you wrote.  Was it just 'We are not elitists by our own lights'?  

[ Parent ]
You're Overlooking The Lower Class Liberals (4.00 / 2)
It's not just that more rich folks are conservatives.  It's also that more working class folks are liberals.  And they've been as missing from your comments as they are from the conservative fantasy of liberal elites.

This is phony identity politics on the part of conservatives, where they create a false image of both liberals and conservatives.  You can rationalize all you want--and I realize you're doing it on behalf of others--but this is the essence of what's going on: conservative elites are projecting onto liberals.  Their whole shtick is looking down on others, controlling others, lording it over others, and they deeply resent anyone who doesn't play along with them.  So they make up this narrative where they project their Jungian shadows onto liberals--coming up with "liberal elites."  I've written about this before in my diaries on shadow elites.

So it's not that I don't understand what they're saying.  I just don't believe it, and I don't believe it on multiple levels, not just one.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
The facade that the elite are liberal? (0.00 / 0)
or that their liberality is a facade?

It's easy to buy a veneer of liberality.

But howls of agony cannot be faked, that's why you can know the state of play by who is howling.

[ Parent ]
Your 'analysis' is unconvincing. (0.00 / 0)
That's because you didn't even consider
1) what tiny fraction of the populace actually attended teabagger events and
2) I would tend to think that elite liberals, in fact, tend to be rich or well off. I mean, did Al Gore ever miss a meal? How many millions is Bill Clinton worth, now?  You haven't defined "those evil liberal elites" precisely, but if you defined them as either in the Presidency, Senate, or House, at least the first two categories are overwhelmingly likely to be millionaires.

I suppose you could wiggles out of 1) by citing a study that shows a pre-ponderance of self-identified teabaggers who don't attend teabag events, but who are poorer conservatives.

I don't think you can wiggle out of 2). Everbody knows that there's a severe recession going on, and it's hurting most everybody.

What you were probably successful at doing, though, is identifying a meme approved of by the Village. That doesn't mean that the teabaggers, themselves, have actually bought into it.  Surely, though, there must be some data, somewhere, that show what teabaggers think about Republican elites?

Well, how about it?


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Huh? (4.00 / 1)
(1) What the? How does this impact what I wrote?  I'm not the one who imagines the Teabaggers are some great mass movement!  That's sort of my whole point--that what these folks actually represent is the same old upper-middle-class Republican activist base that was the core of Joe McCarthy's support back in the day.  They like to impersonate representing the working class, because it makes them feel more authentic.

(2) Fuck? Stop the presses!  Rich folks are rich folks, no matter which party they're in!

I had no idea!

What you were probably successful at doing, though, is identifying a meme approved of by the Village.

Not just identifying--pretty hard to miss that--but refuting.  Can it be that you've stumbled across the purpose of this diary, even without a flashlight?

That doesn't mean that the teabaggers, themselves, have actually bought into it.

So?

Surely, though, there must be some data, somewhere, that show what teabaggers think about Republican elites?

I'm not yet convinced that "teabagger" has a meaning non-fluid enough that one could actually get data about them.   One can use the term loosely to include the GOP base that thinks Obama is a Kenyan Marxist Nazi, but as you yourself note, the folks who've actually shown up at these show demos are a pretty small fraction of that.

So, I'm really not sure (a) what you're asking or (b) why.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
They don't LOOK upper middle class, to me (0.00 / 0)
When I protested Bush when he came to speak in Trenton, I walked past long lines of people who were qeued up to hear him speak. And I must say, their clothes were very nice. (In sharp contrast to us protesters, who were plainly decked out. The absolute worst were some union guys, who wore purple tee-shirts, of the ugliest shade of purple, imaginable.)

Being rich is generally related to being insulated (think gated communities). And yet, you're trying to convince me that these sorts of people were the ones showing up at teabag events.

Sorry, you're going to have to try harder. And frankly, one of the most annoying things about the who teabag event was how nobody (save Gary Null, AFAIK) even seemed interested in talking to large numbers of them to get a good sense of just why they were there. I don't read the NY Times, regularly, so maybe they actually did some investigative reporting.

Most liberals' depth of curiosity stopped when they found out that corporations had funded their buses. Well, that's it - they're all lemmings, with no legitimate complaint or mind of their own! Oh, and didja hear - they're racists, too! Not 5 or 10 percent, but most all of them.

Now you're arguing that this same group of teabaggers are "the same old upper-middle-class Republican activist base". Funny, but why would upper middle class people need a corporation to drive them to the teabag event? Why didn't they take their Mercedes Benz's? Or better yet, have their chauffeur drive them in their favorite limousine? And what the hell happened to their fashion sense! Do they only get dressed up for Republican presidents?  :-)

At the end of the day, what would really impress me is polling with large, statistically significant samples. Otherwise, one's views of teabaggers are basically  Rorschach tests.

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[ Parent ]
I think the deliberately dress down when they protest (0.00 / 0)
to give the appearance of being working class. Remember, during the Bush era when the National Association of Manufacturers, doned hard hats to look like construction workers who in support of Bush's tax cuts?

http://www.commondreams.org/he...

I think the working classness of the teabaggers is pure astroturf.  Don't fall for appearances so easily.  
There is room for authentic populism on the left, but that doesn't mean the gop form is real.

My blog  

[ Parent ]
:-) (0.00 / 0)

From the 1970's to 2000s graph, conservatives in the 17 - 33 percentile weighed in at 10.7 percent, while those in the 68 - 95 percentile weighed in at 15.5 percent.

Thus, comparing the populations of our friendly, neighborhood conservatives who exist within those percentil ranges, we find that the upper income conservatives are about 50% more numerous.

Now, the call goes out about a teabag rally. If the upper income conservatives respond with equal enthusiasm, they will outnumber their lower income conservative brethren by 3:2.

But how likely are these two groups to be equally enthusiastic? They're certainly not going to be equally angry, at least not about economic things. The wealthy conservatives are doing quite well, thank you very much. One would hope that they are capable of caring enough about their fellow citizens to look beyond their personal good fortune, but really, is that the norm? For conservatives or liberals?

It'd be interesting to find out, but one thing's for sure - you can't figure it out by looking at these charts. These charts only allow you to make guesses as to which strata showed up for teabag rallies, but they're only guesses.

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[ Parent ]
I think they are pretty pissed off about national health (0.00 / 0)
insurance and the thought that they might be taxed.  Remember the brooks brothers riot?

My blog  
[ Parent ]
brooks brothers riot = 100's (0.00 / 0)
Tea Partiers = 250,000 according to Nate Silver

And we're to believe that a majority of them, say 130,000, were from the upper-middle class?

Perhaps if our wonderful main stream media had been more interested in facts, than in entertainment, they would have surveyed the tea partiers, and we would actually know, one way or another...

Here's a question, for those who believe that they know so much about the Tea Partiers: What percentage of Tea Partiers were registered Republicans, and how many were independents?

That seems like an easier question to have surveyed (and a more interesting one, in terms of the effects on the 2010 elections of a vibrant Tea Party movement), but I haven't seen any data on this question, either. I could easily have missed it, but perhaps our resident tea party experts have not.

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[ Parent ]
You Persist In Pretending That This Is A Stable Demographic (4.00 / 1)
Why, exactly, are you doing that?


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Pick any dates you please (0.00 / 0)
The Tea Partiers of today, the Tea Partiers of last summer, the original Tea Partiers, the whenever-date-Tea Partiers.

You still don't have any data on them to justify your extrapolations. If I'm wrong, then please produce such data.

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[ Parent ]
You're The One Who Started This (4.00 / 1)
Even though you yourself acknowledged that Teaparty attendees are a small minority, you've repeatedly insisted that they must be polled in order for critics to have any leg to stand on, however astro-turfy they may be.

It's this fundamental premise that most of the rest of us see as pure Versailles sophistry.

And since we reject the premise, we reject everything else that's based on it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
The relatively small numbers of Tea Partiers... (0.00 / 0)
Tells you that, statistically, you're going to have a great deal of trouble extrapolating to a superset. E.g., if you want to survey the health of Irish jig dancers, will you know anything significant from studying the health of the Irish, in general, whan only 3% dance the jig? Methinks NOT.

In your case, it's even worse than that. You want to make pronouncements about the Irish jig dancers, based on data drawn form the general Irish population!

Why not simply study the Irish jig dancers, if you really want to know what their state of health is?

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[ Parent ]
NO (4.00 / 1)
I'm making an argument about the political significance of Irish jig dancers, based on data drawn from the general Irish population.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
DemocraticDaily quote says most teabaggers are working class (0.00 / 0)
Link

Meanwhile, some people - "liberal elitists" to the Tea Baggers and their Republican friends - see a ton of irony in the Tea Bagger movement. Joseph Palermo does.
He teaches history at California State University-Sacramento. Last spring, the prof turned Huffington Post reporter at a Tea Bagger rally in Sacramento.
Palermo wrote that he heard speakers bash unions and the Employee Free Choice Act, even though "most of the people in the crowd were clearly working class."

(emphasis mine)

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[ Parent ]
Did HE Survey Them? (4.00 / 1)
Double standards much?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
No, but unlike you (0.00 / 0)
Palermo actually talked to Tea Partiers. Stangely enough, Gary Null, who talked to them and interviewed them on film, did not come away with the impression that you're trying to convey, either. Funny, that. So people like you and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who won't set foot at a Tea Party rally, find it next to impossible to say anything good about them, but a Null does, and a Palermo concludes that they are, indeed, working class.

And I'm supposed to take you and Maddow and Olbermann more seriously than Null and Palermo? Why?

What would settle the matter is statistically significant data, which you don't appear to possess. Unfortunately, you don't seem very interested in acquiring such data, were it to exist.

And that sort of attitude - by both people on the left and right - is disempowering the public. You'd rather believe in a comfortable prejudice than deal with the reality of flawed, but complicated human beings who do, indeed, have things in common with you. Tell me, Paul, if you were to ask the transpartisan dudes, of either the lefty or righty persuasion, whether or not they agree with me that you are making shabby extrapolations, and effectively treating what facts you do have like a Rorschach test, what do you think they'd say?

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[ Parent ]
you're intent on your point but we don't know what it is (4.00 / 2)
What I hear from the teabaggers on the issues is what I've said: rightwing populism / racism / balanced budget / nativism / amnti-tax / military strength. Not much to work with.

"Working class" and "middle class" are slippery concepts by now. They cover the whole middle 60%-70% of the population. The well-off end is pretty well off, the bottom end is  getting by. My guess (different than your guess or Palermo's assertion) is that they're mostly from the top end of the middle 60% (which would include some working class), and that they're not much different than the 30% crazified Republican hard core. Seemingly they've figured out that the establishment Republicans are cheating them and aren't going to deliver, but they still want what the Republicans promised.

[ Parent ]
Earth To Metamars! (4.00 / 1)
I never claimed to be speaking for the Teabaggers, reading their minds or whatever.  I did claim that

The most fundamental lie about the Tea Party movement is that it represents some sort of working-class populist base that is heart and soul of the Republican Party, in opposition to which are the wealthy liberal elites of the Democratic Party.

Key word here--now bolded so that you can't possibly ignore it--is "represents".

You've fallen for the very premise I was attacking--that the Teabaggers REPRESENT something essential--and want to debate me about what that might be.  But--and I don't know how many times I have to repeat this--this wasn't a post about the Teabaggers.  Check it out--the data is from the National Election Survey.  It starts in the 1970s.  It runs through the 2000s, showing very little fundamental change.  Has there been a national election since the Teabaggers appeared?  No.  So the data could not possibly be about the Teabaggers per se.  It's about what they're supposed to represent.

Now you're perfectly entitled to babble on about what you think they represent.  What you're not entitled to do is to falsely pretend that I've said something untrue about them in and of themnselves, when the post quite clearly never said any such thing.  It talked about their representation as an example of something else--something else that is in itself a lie.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
The claimed "representation" of them as working class populist (0.00 / 0)
appears to be accurate.

Ergo, the only part of the "representation" of them that should bother anybody as fraudulent is the part of the claim that they are the "base" of the Republican party.

If they are outnumbered by upper class Republicans (who are mostly not tea partiers), then, yes, the totality of the description, "working-class populist base that is heart and soul of the Republican Party" may be wrong. But, it would have been more enlightening if you had pointed out that only part of that description is likely to be incorrect.

Why didn't you point that out?

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the Tea Partiers have legitimate complaints. Even unintentionally or carelessly writing about them in a way that obscures these legitimate complaints will not help forge any sort of cooperative civic behavior. That may be of no interest to you, but it is to me. Even a slightly wacka-doodly Tea Partier has much more in common with me, economically and morally, than I do with, e.g., a Democratic President who doesn't really care about the economic prospect of the middle class, and has acquiesced in the potential indebting of the US to the tune of trillions of dollars.  

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[ Parent ]
Based On What (4.00 / 1)
The claimed "representation" of them as working class populist

appears to be accurate.

exactly?

A poll that you've taken secretly without telling any of us about it?  You've incessantly criticized others for not polling them, but you yourself feel just find pontificating about them without polling.  And frankly, it's getting to be way beyond absurd.  By now, it's downright Republican.

Here's a bit of reality: The original Populists weren't just a bunch of individual yahoos fed soundbites by corporate flacks & hacks.  They were a massively self-organized bottom-up movement that created an enormous organizational infrastructure of cooperatives, newspapers and political clubs.

The Teabaggers are nothing like that at all.  And as my charts clearly show, rightwing "populism" is characteristically not representative of the working class, it's representative of the upper middle class--folks who often like to portray themselves as "working class", if not "middle class", but who are far more secure--and far less representative--economically than they like to represent themselves as being.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I've ALREADY explained to you (0.00 / 0)
1) Gary Null and Palermo went to tea parties, and you haven't

and

2) Real data would settle the issue

Notice especially #2. Do you see it, now? Here, I'll quote a whole paragraph of myself:

What would settle the matter is statistically significant data, which you don't appear to possess. Unfortunately, you don't seem very interested in acquiring such data, were it to exist.

As to

And as my charts clearly show, rightwing "populism" is characteristically not representative of the working class, it's representative of the upper middle class--folks who often like to portray themselves as "working class", if not "middle class", but who are far more secure--and far less representative--economically than they like to represent themselves as being.

they show nothing of the kind. The ideologies your graphs protray along the horizontal axis are liberalism - conservatism. Nothing there about populism, either left or right.

435 Dem Primaries 2012
Coffee Party Usa
TheRealNews.Com

[ Parent ]
Quite RIght (4.00 / 1)
And the mere fact that they can afford to bus around to different events on the "Tea Bag Express" is enough to show something about their class.  Most working folks I know can afford to do that.


"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
They've been told to dress down (4.00 / 2)
In at least one case they've been ferried to events by one of the Koch brothers.

And people have talked to them. It's usually inarticulate rage with a racist-nativist component. They want to cut government spending by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. They're against the stimulus because people should tighten their belts. They're against the bailouts because government shouldn't subsidize anyone.

It isn't hard to cherrypick things that sound sort of OK, but the most of them don't think Bush was Republican enough. They even call him (I've seen it repeatedly) a "liberal" because he wasn't anti-immigration and didn't balance the budget.

Jane Hamsher has been flirting with the idea that the teabaggers can be worked with, and I have enormous admiration for her but I think she's wrong.

The most depressing thought I have as that this demographic may have been reachable 50 years ago but isn't now, after Fox News has worked them over.  

[ Parent ]
They can be worked with on issues where we agree (0.00 / 0)
like auditing the fed, and on sacking Rahm, but they aren't working class, nor populist.

My blog  
[ Parent ]
The conservative claim is not (0.00 / 0)
that elite liberals are rich.  It is that liberals are all elites.  Paul took that to mean that they are saying that liberals are rich, and I disagree with him here.  But what is important to see is that the conservative claim is a quite general claim.  It is about all or most liberals, not just the powerful ones.  So I think you are misidentifying the target (just like I think Paul is).  But the claim you are supporting, while it isn't exactly trivial, isn't that interesting.  If all conservatives were saying was the the democratic party leadership tends to be well off then they would be right (though it is important to note that the many major Democratic politicians actually have pretty humble beginnings.  Carter, Clinton and Obama all started out on the bottom half of the socioeconomic ladder), but that is not what they are saying.

I think my response here is fairly similar to Paul's, but I thought I would give it to you with the cursing or the condescension.

[ Parent ]
When the "wrench-turning" economy was decimated (0.00 / 0)
by foreign competition & automation; the Nixonians captured the working class white by pointing out that the Academic Elite and the Media Elite were looking to bus black kids into their neighborhoods, undoing a generation of white flight.

This broke the FDR coalition.

The Left just fell asleep after that, focusing on Eastern Spirituality, New Age cults, sex and drugs*. They only seemed to wake up as the internet revolution coincided with the horrors of the Bush era.

The ultra-rich just want us bickering so they can loot us and control us.

* Of which I too am "guilty" of all but the latter...

A digression to illustrate my own somnolescence:

While I was pissed at the Naderites for throwing the election to Bush, I remarked to a Professor friend of mine that in the uncertainty of a contested election, America had achieved Marx's dream of the withering away of the state... even I who was keenly aware of an imminent Middle Eastern War (I thought Caspian) and the onrushing Singularity was too naive to imagine just how evil our Elite had become. It wasn't until I came back to D.C. on leave from Iraq in 2003 that I saw that the people sipping champagne in the capitol were not at war, especially for "freedom" or Iraqis, nor did they give a shit about me and my men (the shit had only begun to hit the fan that week). Upon return to theater I shocked many by telling the formation that I had nothing to prove in Iraq and that our mission was survival, not anything from on high. Some didn't make it. They knew nothing of the "plans within plans" that constitute the world as we know it. Did they die for Goldman Sachs and other conspirators against our people? It is up to us to ensure that they did not.

[ Parent ]
Actually (4.00 / 1)
You seem to be overlooking the fact that the over-representation of liberalism among the lower incomes is also contrary to the claim that liberals are all elites.

This is is really the heart of the matter.  At its core, conservatives are claiming "We are the heart of America. We work hard, and liberals are just do-nothing parasites."  It's identity politics with a fabricated identity.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
but (0.00 / 0)
the thing about the "elite" label isn't about income and it really isn't even about social status.  It's about attitude -- conservatives really don't like being looked down upon, they don't like that liberals think that they're smarter than them or more generally better than them.

More Conservative Victimology (4.00 / 3)
conservatives really don't like being looked down upon

Of course not!  Especially since conservatism is all about preservation of hierarchy and looking down on others--serfs, peasants, slaves, women, blacks, Jews, Moslems, heathens, gays, whoever.

They can dish it out, but they can't take it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
hate to (0.00 / 0)
talk about something outside your point, but perhaps the graphs you use need to become a bit more effective in getting your point across.

I mean, they DO get the point across eventually, but there are other ways that might better communicate your idea.

While I'm sure you've seen his work (and perhaps read it), it's worth reading Edward Tufte's books on qualitative visual information. Very fast reads.

Keep in mind that I'm recommending him although I'm not a huge backer of his.  

Actually (4.00 / 1)
the number section is taken directly from its on-screen representation with only the raw numbers removed.  It was precisely the visceral impact of the crude shading (unchanged since God-knows-when) that I wanted to share with people.

Sometimes you don't want to be elegant. Sometimes the noise and rough edges is part of the point: No sophistication needed to see this.



"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
as you like... (0.00 / 0)
Just so you know, Tufte doesn't really look down upon crude vis-graphs. I'd argue that he doesn't really look at highly polished examples at all (which is one of the good things I can say about his studies). So, crude can be really good, I just don't think that's the case here.

[ Parent ]
Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites | 51 comments
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