Barack Obama shouldn't be nominated because only DFHs like him:
The strategist also said Clinton's agents are making more subtle pitches.
"I've heard people start to say: Have you looked at the vote in Ohio really carefully? See how that breaks down for him. What does that portend?" said the strategist. "Then they point to Pennsylvania: In electorally important battleground states, if he is essentially only carrying heavy African-American turnout in high-performing African-American districts and the Starbucks-sipping, Volvo-driving liberal elite, how does he carry a state like Pennsylvania?"
I'm not sure how that is "more subtle," but whatev. We also invaded Iraq just because the DFHs told us not to:
I was distracted by the internal American debate to the occlusion of the reality of Iraq. For most of my adult lifetime, I had heard those on the left decry American military power, constantly warn of quagmires, excuse what I regarded as inexcusable tyrannies and fail to grasp that the nature of certain regimes makes their removal a moral objective.(...)
When I heard the usual complaints from the left about how we had no right to intervene, how Bush was the real terrorist, how war was always wrong, my trained ears heard the same cries that I had heard in the 1980s. So I saw the opposition to the war as another example of a faulty Vietnam Syndrome, associated it with the far left, or boomer nostalgia, and was revolted by the anti-war marches I saw in Washington.
Hell, conservatism itself is based on hatred of the DFHs:
At the heart of the Great Backlash narrative is the conflict between the oppressive force of liberalism and the righteous force of the American common. In the narrative, liberalism is an anti-Democratic force that produces and dominates a vulgar, atheistic, and elitist culture against of the will of the common, in fact specifically to spite the will of the common. Worse still for the humble, pious, martyred common, liberals do this because they have superior agency, and they do so without any possible hope of recourse or recall from the common people, because the common people do not have agency of the sort wielded by liberals. Like Capital for Marxists, for those in the Great Backlash "liberalism" is a social force beyond the reach of democracy that has full agency and that is able to impress its will on the fated masses against their wishes.
Of course, this oppression of the common man by the liberal elite is purely cultural. The control and production of vulgar popular culture is a necessary element of liberalism that exists in Hollywood, outside the realm of electoral politics. The control and production of scientific studies is a necessary element of liberalism, performed in anti-democratic academia where the common is not allowed. Production and control of the news media as a means of indoctrinating the nation with leftist thought is a necessary element of liberalism Control of the anti-democratic judiciary is a necessary element of liberalism as well. Rather than being a cause of other forces, liberalism is a social force unto itself, and control of anti-democratic, culture producing institutions is simply what liberalism does. Liberals themselves are elitists who control these anti-democratic institutions, and do so in order to deride, oppress, and otherwise thwart the decency of the commons.
I recently read a good book about the treaty negotiations after World War One called Parris 1919. One of the most striking aspects of the book was how virtually every decision made at the treaty negotiations was deeply based on the perceived cultural identity characteristics of a nation-state or group of people. Cultural chauvinism, today known as "civilization identities," was clearly the dominant ideological framwork of the age, even if different people interpreted the characteristics of cultures quite differently.
And so this still seems to be the case with contemporary American politics. Virtually every aspect of our political debate seems to be deeply based on a widespread conservative and institutional disgust and / or fear of Dirty Fucking Hippies, liberal elites, and brown people. Even Democratic frontrunners sometimes takes jabs at the DFHs when talking about anti-military, 70's love-ins, or about activists who don't need a president. While I am not entirely certain of the source of this cultural hatred, I do think it has resulted in American governance over most of the past thirty years to be about as effective as the Versailles Treaty. When government operates not for the benefit of the people, but rather to try and stick it to certain cultural groups, it is difficult to imagine a way for it to be effective.
Update: If anyone thinks that the electability argument presented above is serious, they should take another look at the primary season composite exit poll. Clinton is under 50% among primary voters under $50K a year, and at exactly 50% among voters who did not graduate from college. Even if one lays aside the preposterous notion that Democratic primary voters from a given demographic are representative of non-Democratic primary voters of that same demographic, let's just say that isn't domination. Truthfully, that anyone would take the first paragraph seriously is, quite frankly, a sad, narrow, and retrograde place for a Democrat to be. |
