Sweet old lady (4.00 / 3)

And she seems like such a sweet little old lady....

There, of course, lies the heart of the problem.  Odds are, she is a sweet old lady.

It was never the Hitlers of the world that scared me; I just assume we can handle that small percentage of the population.  It is the 50%+ of the people who will willing follow them, in the right context, who terrify me.

Those willing to lead these people this way aught to be treated accordingly, as the real terrorists.

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by: Mark Matson @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 21:13:05 PM UTC

I Agree (0.00 / 0)

In fact, there are some who are very, very sweet, because they just assume the best about everyone they meet.

It's just those people, whom they never get anywhere near to, who are the cause of all the trouble in the world.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 21:37:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You Can Feel Her Fear (4.00 / 3)

Gayle Quinnel is a human being so consumed with fear and lacking intellectual curiosity that she is easy pickings for the likes of Rush Limbaugh's right wing propaganda.  She is an empty vessel for the hate and loathing openly, and loudly preached by the Republican party.  

Why? So they can carry out their power and wealth agenda, which doesn't give a rats ass about Gayle Quinnel.

Gayle Quinnel is why Barack Obama has to win this election by a large plurality as to dilute the Republican message so maybe, just maybe one ray of sunshine can get through to Gayle Quinnel.

I more than support Barack Obama, I believe in him.  I believe he has the power to bring people together, bring us together, as a country.

I'm a realist, it most likely to late for Gayle Quinnel.  Hopefully it's not too late for our country.

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by: steve katz @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 21:22:20 PM UTC

I try so hard to pretend these people don't exist... (4.00 / 2)

But in fairness, she makes a very convincing argument. Clearly, there are "all kinds of bad things" the mainstream media filter is hiding about Obama. And lots of people agree with her, including her many grandchildren. I'm sure she'll get back to us with the specifics. And, you know, it has to be all about job creation, also.  

"Don't hate the media, become the media" -Jello Biafra

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by: LandStander @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 21:25:43 PM UTC

The media's delusion (4.00 / 4)

...is that they have no responsibility for the consequences when they relay the hate speech of those they cover, that everyone in their audience is perfectly rational, that responsibility resides in members of the audience who are assumed to be able to reason through the propaganda.

But they can't and they don't and the press knows it. And we wind up with poor little old ladies whose own delusions are actually fed by the mainstream media.

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by: GlennWSmith @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 21:42:21 PM UTC

Absolutely. (4.00 / 1)

Why not attain her literature and address it point by point? They can do this with campaign ads, speeches, and the like, but regular folks haven't earned factual confrontation?

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by: sb @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 22:07:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Refuting her literature is useless (4.00 / 3)

because she'll never know it. She watches Fox, or listens to Limbaugh and Coulter on talk radio, and thinks the "mainstream" media is covering for an Islamic terrorist. She also will sooner or later fall back on the "They couldn't write these things if they weren't true" argument. This type of low-info voter is what everyone on the left is scared of. They "mean well", but they can't be bothered to really investigate the simplest facts. Islam is an inherited condition, his daddy had it, he has it, like a genetic disease. The South is full of these fools. They're what Jesus referred to as "the simple".

They can be treated in a couple of ways. We Dems tend to look after them, let them have their beliefs, and not pay too much attention. The Right cynically manipulates them at every turn, not just the GOP but other Right groups (anybody remember Jesse Ventura?). They're incapable of even voting their own self-interest because of the manipulation by their religious leaders. "Gay marriage angers God. He's going to destroy the world and everybody in it to get back at them there faggots that get married. We're trying to save lives here by outlawing homosexuality!"

Welcome to the world of Jacksonian democracy. Universal sufferage means letting these folks have a say so too. The GOP has gotten where it is today because of it's calculated manipulation of this group. AND, the plain fact is, we as Dems CAN'T use them. Our objectives are in conflict with their prejudices, and there is nothing we can do about it other than become the GOP.

As frustrating as it is, we've just got to let them go their own way, and try to limit the manipulation as much as we can through libel and slander laws. Look into what kind of things they were saying about Jefferson in 1800 some time. This race is STILL cleaner than that one was. Who was it who once said "The poor are always with us"? They're right, and we just have to accept it.

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by: Silence Doesnogood @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 22:32:50 PM UTC

Media manipulation works both ways. (0.00 / 0)

She's from Minnesota, not the South, so you might want to lay off the regional (some might even say "low-info") prejudices.

  The point is not that this woman will believe x, y, z.  Rather it's that if journalism isn't in the business of verification here, then it's strayed into exploitation and condescension, to which you seemed to have responded. Why would the media film the women at all, if not to elicit just the type you gave?  

 

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by: sb @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 22:53:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'm a Southerner, I address what I know (0.00 / 0)

I live in Northwest Georgia, in what once upon a time an idiot named Larry McDonald determined to be the most conservative congressional district in the country, therefore he had the best chance of being elected here.

The bottom of the socio-economic level here is exclusively GOP. Some of them don't vote, but almost without exception all that do vote GOP.

I talk about the south because I live here. I see the daily politics, the institutional racism. I've lived here since the time when Lester Maddox was governor and a lone lunatic white supremacist named J. B. Stoner ran for president every term on a segregation platform.

I was in fact responding to another thread, one where we were discussing what if anything could be done to either embrace these type voters or to minimize the dangers inherent in their rhetoric, attempting to continue a discussion of why the Democratic party can't seem to get it's message across to these voters.

Respectfully, my own experience is not that the upper classes are more likely to vote GOP. They are more likely to vote, but the education that most middle class folks receive means that they are more open to the arguments of the Democrats, at least here.

I understand your argument, Mr. Rosenberg, but in my experience, the attitudinal variables you mention are in fact taught from the entry level in the southern schools upwards, and that I know for a fact, having completed my education entirely in the South. Authority is largely vested in right wing clergy, as is social dominance. And this type of disinformation is in fact a daily occurrence in the in boxes of millions of folks who have access to the internet. My own father is constantly deluged with just this type of disinformation, in his case because he is a veteran and proud of his military service. That is another distinguishing feature of the authoritarian in the South, military service, and one that is in fact skewed towards the Right wing political viewpoint.

I'm speaking from my own experiences, from the email messages my family and friends receive and forward, from the interactions they have with others. The only point I was trying to make is that there is little to be done about this kind of disinformation. No, I am not in fact familiar with the latest statistical analysis of the prevailing conditions here in the South, All I have to go on is my own experience, And I was trying to point out that I in fact retain a certain amount of sympathy for these type voters, but that the thought that the Democratic party can somehow magically shift these voters to the left is most likely mistaken.

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by: Silence Doesnogood @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 00:01:49 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, Here's Some Data (0.00 / 0)

From my diary of last October 13, "Class Still Matters Among Southern Whites", where I go through the decades from the 1950s to now:

2000s: 1091 respondents:

2000s White South: Party ID By Income Percentile
Party ID (with leaners)	0-16	17- 33	34- 67	68-95	96-100	All
Democrats	54.5	47.9	35.7	33.7	20.5	39.7
Independents	10.2	16.3	14.1	6.3	9.1	11.5
Republicans	35.3	35.8	50.4	60.0	69.3	48.8
Col Tot Rs	187	215	347	255	88	1091

This comes from the American National Election Studies (ANES) Cumulative Datafile.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 02:02:16 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I see your point. (0.00 / 0)

There does seem to be a trend towards self-identification as Democratic in your data. I can't be sure it means anything without knowing what geographic areas were included, how you controlled rural versus urban population, how you contacted the population you surveyed and what the data from previous decades looked like, among other factors.

Some of the factors that would concern me would be the breakdown of actual voters versus self-identification, the number of students included in the lower percentile ranks (Athens would skew democratic heavily on this very scale because of the disproportionate number of students), whether you took the sample through calls to home telephone services and the size of your sample. If the totals along the bottom represent the sample size it's very small. Also. if the sample was taken via internet earlier in this decade you know that there was a bias there in terms of access.

Regardless and again respectfully, I'm not inferring that everyone in the South is like this, or that all the poor are like this. What I'm saying is that there is a percentage of the total electorate, call them low information voters, who are of lower socio-economic status and educational level, who are getting bombarded with propaganda and are unable or unwilling to evaluate the claims therein, and that the chances of reaching this population with democratic messages is small.

I'm also willing to admit that my experience may be skewed. I'm a white Southerner of the lower classes. You as a political scientist know that the lower classes tend to be left out of this type of analysis. I don't know a large number of traditional Democratic lower class voters, union members, non-Baptists, etc. But as far as my own personal experience, I stand by what I said. My hometown was in McDonald's and Barr's congressional districts, one of my uncles was a McDonald advisory committee member. I've seen huge shifts of local elected officials towards the GOP, and I've been threatened because of my bumper stickers. I also looked very closely at the vote tally for the primaries earlier this year, and at least here, my characterization stands.  

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by: Silence Doesnogood @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 02:44:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Please Read My Original Diary Linked To Above (4.00 / 1)

Where it says "Class Still Matters Among Southern Whites", in bold, that's a link to the original diary written last year tomorrow.  This is from the longest-running regular public opinion survey, done every election cycle since Harry Truman's day.  It covers everyone, but of course since it's a national survey, the sample sizes for the South aren't that large, which is why I have grouped them by decade.

I am not trying to deny your experience.  I'm sure that what you're talking about is real.  But we always have to guard against being overwhelmed by intense personal experience, so that we don't see the bigger picture, in which there are other, quite different realities going on at the same time.

One thing I would also point out is that your experience of being threatened could also account for other Democrats keeping quiet and thus giving a false impression that there simply are none of them at all.  There may be other dynamics at work as well that serve to distort the impressions you receive.

On the other hand, I would tend to put a lot of stock into what you say on the qualitative side.  There are challenges in reaching such people that are 9 times out of 10 best understood by people such as yourself, who live your lives surrounded by them.  It takes a combination of the sort of deep, on-the-ground experience you have, and the kind of high-level, eagle's eye vantage point that years of data can provide in order to come up with new ideas, new strategies about how to reach people.

It's bound to be very slow going at first, but it can be done, and I think that the success of the 50-state strategy so far is proof of it.  We've already won in some very Republican Southern districts, and while it may be different where you live, I don't believe it can be that different.  

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 03:12:03 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I'll close out my contribution by saying just this: (0.00 / 0)

Admittedly I left school without a PhD, but that was 3 years into grad school in experimental and school psychology. I know statistical methodology and survey research methodology, having completed somewhere around 7 graduate courses in the same. I know the difference in anecdotal versus experimental data. I'm aware that what I'm saying qualifies as anecdotal and thus is suspect. I'm also aware of the limited scope of my experiences. I'm familiar with central Tennessee, northern Alabama and northern Georgia, and to a limited extent south central Michigan, and that's it.

The older woman in the original posting was typical of what I interact with every day. She may be a member of the rank and file of the GOP organization, but I didn't get the idea that she was from the upper echelon of that group. I for one find it entirely plausible that her disinformation is acquired through mass mailings and the internet.

I see little chance of reaching these voters using present techniques, although it is always possible that new ones could be developed that do reach them. And, Mr. Rosenberg, I HOPE your research is correct. With the changing demographic situation it may be. I tend to leave the massive hejira of hispanic lower classes into this area out of my consideration, and that's a real mistake. Georgia is now 1/3 to 1/2 minority groups, and that does shift things. How many of these minorities are able to vote or do vote is another story, since I know that there are huge numbers of undocumented workers among them. BUT I do see it making a difference. On the other hand it alienates the group we've been discussing even further.

I also recognize that we're on the same side. I'm just concerned because I see overconfidence as an enemy, and expecting radical change in this group of people as a form of overconfidence. That's really the point I was trying to make. The Party needs to be cautious about assumptions that could damage chances of maximizing this opportunity. My thought is that we need to outreach among people we have a chance of convincing, and not worry so much about a demographic group that is at best questionable.

I'll leave it there. If I offended it was unintentional.

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by: Silence Doesnogood @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 15:02:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

If I could interject (0.00 / 0)

I am also a working class white Southerner who lives not far from yourself, in southern middle Tennessee.

Paul is on our side. When you get to know him better, you'll see it.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 12:17:52 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Just So You Know (0.00 / 0)

It's higher-income and more educated Southern whites who are more Republican.  The same goes for the white working class generally.  There is more to common sense than you seem willing to recognize.  What we're dealing with here has more to do with attitudinal variables such as rightwing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO) and the like, which are far more concentrated withing the rightwing political activist culture than it is among the general population.

And don't forget, this woman is a GOP party activist, and that's where she got this "information" in the first place.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 23:12:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

She's probably (4.00 / 1)

someone who gets a lot of information through slime emails, believing that if someone in her circle of friends forwards some information, then it must be true.  Because, hey, to refute such an email one would not only have to address its merits, which she and others may not have the capability to do, but also impugn the credibility of whomever sent the email.  

I do think that the rise of email rumormongering we have seen the past few years can be attributed to the growing access of older generations to the Internet, at least to some extent.  It takes some time to realize that the Internet contains a lot of bad information and that anyone can package such bullshit into an email.  I imagine that people most familiar with getting their information from network news/cable, which have certain standards of truthiness, may be quite susceptible to such tactics.  

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by: rfahey22 @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 22:58:46 PM UTC

I agree (4.00 / 1)

My mother, a dedicated progressive (she was writing letters to the editor to defend Clinton's sexual disgressions when I was having a hard time getting behind him), got into email to keep up with her kids and grandkids. Now she asks me almost daily to help her debunk the latest (anti-)Obama myth, yesterday it was Obama saying on CBS (?) that McCain had
"never asked me about my Muslim faith, I mean my Christian faith". She's a good woman, but she hasn't quite figured out that Internet is another word for putting any nonsense into print.  

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by: spandrel @ Sun Oct 12, 2008 at 23:25:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

a fascinating picture of the nexus between racism and race-baiting (4.00 / 1)

here we have an individual so gripped by fear of skin color that she cannot cite any specific examples of the talking points that she's already reproduced hundreds of times and made a critical mission of disseminating, not just to friends and family but to "the telephone book".

she doesn't need to remember the contents of the email because she doesn't need to justify her amorphous fears to herself. she only needed to see it once to rationalize those fears and give them a veneer of authority — the fact that the email exists is itself enough to give her the grounding to launch her campaign.

she's the perfect example of the type of individual the email (and by extension, the mccain smear campaign) is designed to motivate. she's not interested in learning if her fears are true. she just wants them validated. and now she's going to do something about it.

i'm glad you asked

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by: aarrgghh @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 08:30:32 AM UTC

Isn't it more like a <b>banana-shake of cavils</b>? (0.00 / 0)

Let's not trivialize Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" by applying it to every single rethuglican nutcase. What's missing here is Quinnel calling for violence against muslims. So, she's not on the same level as Eichman. At least, not yet.

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by: Gray @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 10:35:54 AM UTC

But That's Just It (0.00 / 0)

Eichmann wasn't calling for anything.  He was just doing his job, bringing the utmost efficiency to his task.

"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

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 13:14:29 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Uh, I wanted to hint at the "participation" issue... (0.00 / 0)

and that it's difficult to judge how far shallow thinking followers like Quinnel would go. There have already been some right wingers calling for mass murder of muslims. Ok, maybe those weren't important enough for Ms. Quinnel to toe their line. But it could also be that she wouldn't follow such a lead, out of genuine ethical concerns. Point is, we don't know. And then we should be careful before making such dire assumptions.

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by: Gray @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 15:31:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sure, but when her"leaders" call for violence (0.00 / 0)

to be visited upon those for which she has nothing but loathing, she will not stand up to stop it.  Without folks like Ms. Quinnell, the Eichmanns of the world would have a much more difficult path toward realizing any kind of genocide, or extended detentions without cause.


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

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by: SpitBall @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 13:32:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Remember this famous quote from Atwater? (4.00 / 3)

"Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"-that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me-because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

"Muslim" is the new codeword for "nigger." That's what she means by "he's got some Muslim in him."

It's also why a nice, rational, point-by-point rebuttal of her argument is not going to change her mind.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 12:24:02 PM UTC