Open Left - 2008 Presidential Election

Project Vote Analysis Documents a More Diverse Electorate in 2008

project vote — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:24:57 GMT

The November 2008 election saw dramatic increases in participation by traditionally underrepresented groups, including Americans of color and young voters, according to a new research memorandum released by Project Vote yesterday.
In the memorandum, Douglas R. Hess, researcher and author of 2007 Project Vote report, Representational Bias in the 2006 Election, analyzes newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, the definitive source of demographic data on registration and voting in America. The analysis examines participation in the 2008 general election by race/ethnicity, age, and income status, resulting in the first comprehensive picture of who voted in 2008 compared to 2004.

"The exciting story from 2008 is not that overall turnout increased, but that the electorate we heard from at the polls more closely resembled the true demographics and diversity of the American people," said Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote in a press release yesterday.

Historically, participation among African-Americans, Latinos, and young voters has lagged disproportionately behind other groups, but the Project Vote analysis suggests that this situation improved in 2008.

* African-American turnout surged from 60.3 percent in 2004 to 65.2 percent (an increase representing over 2 million voters) in 2008;
* Latino-American turnout increased by 2.5 percentage points from 47.3 to 49.7 percent (also an increase of over 2 million voters).
* Asian-American turnout increased about 3 percentage points from 44.5 to 47.8 percent (more than 600,000 additional voters).
* Turnout among young Americans between ages 18 and 30 increased by about 2 percentage points (an increase of 2.3 million voters).
* More than 5.4 million more votes were cast in 2008 than in 2004, and 4.9 million-or 91 percent of the additional votes-were from people of color.

The largest turnout rate gains were among young minority Americans. While White turnout in the under-30 age group was essentially unchanged between the two elections, turnout by African-Americans under 30 increased nearly 9 percentage points, which represents nearly 700,000 additional African-American voters under 30. Asian-American youth turnout also increased by an estimated 9.6 percentage points, and Latino youth turnout increased by 5.2 percentage points.

While these increases in participation are encouraging, Hess points out that there is still room for improvement. There still appears to be significant disparities in participation based on income, for example. While comparisons to 2004 based on income were not readily available for technical reasons, in 2008 there was a 20 point gap in the registration rate between Americans from households earning $25,000 or less per year and those earning over $100,000.

"Moreover," the memo says, "although there were gains among young voters, only half of voters under the age of 30 voted in 2008, leaving over 21 million citizens in that group alone sitting on the sidelines on Election Day."

Realignment Watch: Presidential Vote Shift vs. Gallup Party ID

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:21:40 GMT

On Thursday, Kos posted a diary listing the states that fell into three categories of shift in voting margin for president from 2004 to 2008: those that had shifted to the GOP, those that showed no shift, and those that shifted to the Dems by 10 or more points. I took those states and compared them to the Gallup Party ID shifts from 2002 to 2008, and this is what I came up with:

There were 12 other states which also shifted Democratic by 10 or more points in party ID from 2002 to 2008. This is the strongest indication that the partisan vote shift over 6 years significantly exceeded the presidential vote shift from 2005 to 2008.
The states on the chart above that shifted 10+ points toward the Dems in the Presidential vote from 2004 to 2008 did not all shift in party ID more than 10 points. But their average shift was 15.1 points. In contrast, the 12 states not on the list that shifted by double digits did so by an average of 15.7 points, further reinforcing the point that there is a stronger partisan shift than was reflected in the presidential vote shift.

The clear implication is that if Obama succeeds in turning the economy around by 2012, he should win a much stronger mandate for his second term, and Democrats as a whole should be in a commanding position. But, of course, the chances of that are very much dependent on the 2010 midterms, which could be a good deal more challenging, given how questionable it is whether things can start to turn around before then.

There is also a clear implication here that Versailles will not like at all: given the uncertainty that things can turn around by 2010, Democrats would be very well-served indeed to send as many populist signals as possible between now and then. If they can't turn the economy around by then, the only thing likely to save them is if they are seen as consistent fighting on behalf of ordinary people, which will then position them to say, "We know it's tough, but you know we've been fighting tooth and nail for you, and you know it would only be worse if not for us. Don't pull us out in the middle of the fight, and we will turn things around. If not, who knows what will happen to you."

Bernard Goldberg's "bias" against the facts

Karl Frisch — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:55:29 GMT

Hey folks, I wanted to share my latest column with everyone here at OpenLeft -- a review of Bernard Goldberg's latest book, "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media".

-K

That certainly didn't take long. Just shy of a week after Barack Obama took the oath of office, becoming America's 44th president, the nation's foremost right-wing publishing house has released a new tome by Bernard Goldberg that seeks to trash the supposedly liberal "mainstream media" for being in the tank for Obama.

The three-ringed circus of liberal media bias cryptozoology is nothing new for Goldberg. He's been part of this factually challenged freak show for years. This isn't even his first book on the subject -- he wrote 2001's creatively titled, Bias.
Goldberg's latest screed, A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media (Regnery Publishing, January 2009), though with a significantly longer title, preaches the same decades-old gospel of bias, refusing at all costs to let facts get in the way -- truth be damned.

Case in point.

In the first chapter of Slobbering, Goldberg writes that the media were "championing" Obama and cites as proof a June 2008 broadcast of CBS' The Early Show, which ran a segment called "Five Things You Should Know About Barack Obama," featuring biographical fluff on the then-Illinois senator. Goldberg goes on to contend that CBS' Jeff Glor sounded "more like Obama's campaign manager than a network news correspondent" during the segment. However, like so many other glossy television profile pieces during the long presidential campaign, CBS' report was only one-half of a set. Just days later, CBS would air a segment titled "Five Things You Should Know" about Sen. John McCain, featuring such trivia as McCain's high school nickname, television and movie cameos, and enjoyment of bird-watching and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's fictional character Borat. Not surprisingly, Goldberg's book makes no mention of the McCain segment.

CONTINUE READING...

Karl Frisch is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, research, and information center based in Washington, DC. Frisch also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the web as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign-up to receive his columns by email.

Over-Running The Table

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:03:31 GMT

At DKos yesterday, Jed L posted the following map in a FP diary "Obama Won 197 Of 196 Battleground EVs": It's a map of supposed "battleground states" from the Washington Post's Dan Balz and Alec Macgillis on June 8, 2008:

As Jed L notes, Obama did indeed win more battleground EVs than the Post had identified just over a week after Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination. And therein lies a tale quite opposed to the current narrative of a "center-right nation."
Jed's Story

From the map, Obama did fail to win one battleground state--Missouri--by a few thousand votes. But he picked up one "safe McCain" state to make up for it--Indiana--and he added the Omaha-area CD from "safe McCain" Nebraska, to go one over running the table, so far as the over-all score was concerned, winning 197 of 196 bettleground EVs.

Jed L draws one conclusion from the map, and he's got a good point. But I'd like to draw another. Here's Jed's first:

Perhaps they could have avoided publishing such an embarrassing map if they had taken into account that even though the horserace numbers were close at this point, Democrats had a huge advantage in mobilization and intensity and were unlikely to lose any state that they had won in the four previous elections.
Six states on this battleground list had voted Democratic in the previous four elections -- MI, MN, NJ, OR, PA, and WI. Obama won those states by a combined 56%-43% margin, all by double-digits. If the WaPo had excluded these six states, here's what their electoral vote estimates would have looked like:
GOP Leaning: 174
Dem Leaning: 248
Battlegrounds: 116

This list of battlegrounds would have been far more reasonable, even without Indiana. But unlike the chart that was actually published, this table would have made it clear that Obama was in charge of the campaign
Showing Obama's big advantage might not have been Fair & Balanced™>, but so what? The point of reporting isn't to be Fair & Balanced™. The point of reporting is to accurately present the truth. And that makes Nate Silver one of the best political reporters out there.

Jed's 100% correct, especially in light of Post anti-ombudsman Deborah Howell's post-election hissy fit about how biased her paper had been. But there's another story here as well. The Post actually didn't ignore the fact that there were a handful of traditionally safe Dem seats in their "battleground" column. Indeed, that was pretty much their point:

Recent races for the White House have turned on a small group of swing states, and the 2008 general election is likely to be no different. But campaign aides to both Barack Obama and John McCain say their candidate can "change the map" in November and pick off states that traditionally have fallen into the other party's column.

This was the underlying supposition on which their map--and much of the following campaign coverage--was built. Of course it was a wildly mistaken supposition, but it was not entirely arbitrary. McCain had spent the better part of decade positioning himself as "maverick" who could appeal to independents, and the press loved him for it. This positioning went back to a very conscious strategy to pick up Perot voters, the same strategy the GOP had used to capture Congress in 1994.

It was not an illusion that the GOP had captured Congress, which is why I say that the map-changing supposition was not arbitrary. It was not simply based on competing campaign spin. The spin had a rationale. But the reporting never explained that rationale. Well, now is the time to do so. And explaining the roots of that rationale leads to a slightly longer story than the one that Jed had to tell.

Roots Of A Problematic Realignment

According to Walter Dean Burnham's account of realignment theory, realignments happen because party systems reach their limits in terms of their problem-solving abilities. An early warning of this is generally the emergence of prominent third-party movements--such as that of Ross Perot. However, Burnham was also the first to cite the period just concluded as an anomalous one--characterized by divided government, rather than one dominant and one subdominant party. He therefore referred to 1968 as a "de-aligning" election. And this produced a deeply anomalous situation, a party system that never functioned well enough to deal with the problems it faced.

Now, to be honest, the American political system is never all that effective in problem-solving. For example, even with the election of our first black President, the legacy of slavery is still with us. Just look at a map of counties where Obama did worse than Kerry. But we do, generally, at least begin to make progress on managing the most intense, intrusive consequences of those underlying problems.

But 1968 was different. That de-aligning election did not come about because the previous party system had failed to solve the problems before it. Quite the contrary, that de-alignment happened because the party system was too ambitious at problem-solving. It wanted to solve problems that some people really didn't want solved. This was the downfall of LBJ's Great Society--not that it might fail, but that it might succeed. For the Great Society was 100% American--it was John Winthrop's shining City on A Hill, only not just for a select few, but for the most sprawling diversity of humanity ever gathered together in one nation.

Oh, sure, there was a war--Vietnam--that was hugely unpopular. But that war was not one the LBJ wanted to fight. It was a war he thought that he had to fight in order to remain in office and pass his Great Society agenda. And even with Vietnam, the Great Society could have continued under Humphrey, were it not for the southern-centered defections over race, capitalized on by Wallace, as well as Nixon's sabotage of the Paris Peace Talks.

Nixon resented the grandeur of LBJ's vision. Johnson was born about as much of an outsider as Nixon was, but he was much more of a classic American optimist. Although Nixon's whole career would revolve around portraying others as un-American, it was his own lack of characteristic American optimism that made think he could only win by tearing others down. And that was the very basis of his politics.

Rather than continue LBJ's trajectory of confronting our contradictions and overcoming them, Nixonian politics meant a new trajectory--a trajectory of denial, deceit and projection. One of the most central features of this, early on, was the recasting of the Vietnam War. Nixon knew two things: it could not be won, military, and it could not be lost, politically. There had to be an illusion of victory, even in defeat, and part of gaining that victory required the recasting of the core mission of the war itself.

Enter Ross Perot. Perot's activism on the POW issue played a major role in Nixon's effort to recast Vietnam as a war fought to rescue American prisoners of war held by Hanoi. I know it sounds ludicrous, but this actually happened. It wasn't the only thing that happened. But it was a major theme, made all the more politically necessary as anti-war Vietnam Vets emerged as Nixon's most fierce critics. Perot's mythologizing of the POWs--especially the historically unprecedented conflating of MIAs and POWS--allowed us to forget the monstrous atrocities that we were even then still committing in Vietnam.

If we were fighting to rescue our captured soldiers, then we were returned to the theme of white America's first best-selling genre--the captivity narratives born of the early conflict with New England Native Americans, known as King Phillip's War. And the theme of the captivity narratives was never that we had wronged those who in return had captured some of us. No. The theme of the captivity narratives was that we needed to get right with God, and then we could go back to pleasantly plundering everything in sight, always careful not to enjoy it too much.

Fast Forward From Nixon/Perot To Reagan/Perot

This is the vision that Ronald Reagan fully embodied. He represented a full-blown re-mythologizing of absolutely everything. And those who dared point out that everything he said was a lie, they were just a bunch of kill-joys.

Except, they were right. One of the key promises Reagan made was that we could painlessly just do away with all that caring about the poor stuff. We could care about ourselves, and the poor would just take care of themselves. We could cut taxes, and the budget would just magically balance itself.

It didn't happen.

But it was such a powerful myth, such a happy-faced version of Hitler's Big Lie concept, that Democrats didn't know how to fight it. And thus the deficits boomed--producing, ironically, a classic Keyensian-style expansion, albeit a weak one, which was credited, deceptively, to the free market ideology of Milton Friedman. At the same time, Reagan's boundless, unfounded optimism also meant we paid no attention to the devastation of our domestic industrial base. Instead, we welcomed a new economic dogma that told us that trade was always good--even if we were always the ones on the wrong side of a multi-billion dollar trade imbalance.

The American people remained highly ambivalent throughout all this. They liked Reagan's optimism. His policies, not so much. Throughout the 1980s, public support for increased social spending grew continuously, whether anyone was listening or not. Liberal Democrats--not your yuppified latter-day latte drinkers, but Tip O'Neill type children of the New Deal were listening to the people, but were at a loss to craft a new presidential election-winning narrative. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats argued that the problem was not how to puncture Reagan's happy-talk illusion--but how to join it.

Out of this impasse--after George H.W. Bush proved much less a showman than Reagan--H. Ross Perot again stepped forth, leading the charge to cut the deficit, and fight the outsourcing of American jobs. It was, in fact, a profoundly anti-Reagan conservative agenda. But it was also, in a way, a conservative anti-conservative agenda. It styled itself an All-American, no-nonsense, no-ideology, just hands-on, pragmatic, fix-what's broken, no pointy-headed-types allowed type of no-nothing populism.

While Tip O'Neill-style liberal Democrats could have won Perot voters back by showing how their policies could fix the problems facing us, the conservative Democrats strategy of emulating Reagan could not. Bill Clinton split the difference. First, he ran a Tip O'Neill-style campaign, "Putting People First," and then he governed within the box that Reagan built, albeit with a different end in mind. As Mike Lux has previously explained, shrinking projected investment spending, turning increasingly to deficit reduction, and, of course, passing NAFTA without any of the previously promised offsetting labor or environmental safeguards.

Newt Gingrich jumped at the opening this created, and began aggressively courting Perot and his legions. After all, now that a Democrat was President, why not make balancing the budget job one? Of course the Perotistas got snookered by Newt. The "Contract With America" was written just for them. No Christian conservative elements appeared in it at all. But once Newt & Co were in power, things changed. And so did Newt's majority, as the GOP House majority became increasingly more Southern. It was a strategy that could only succeed by plunging deeper and deeper into fantasy--such as the six-year obsession to impeach Bill Clinton for something, anything that could prove he was evil, evil, evil.

In the 2000 election, John McCain wanted to position himself in line with Perot, capturing the broad middle, and while taking advantage of the Newt-lead over-reach to pick up conservative support as well. But Bush out-maneuvered him. By being a governor well outside the Beltway, taking un-earned credit for education reforms that Perot had actually had a big hand in, and adopting the language of "compassionate conservatism" Bush pulled off a far more skillful finessing of the Gingrich/anti-Clinton disaster.

But, of course, all that was pure show. Beneath the surface, Bush was merely more of the same than anyone could imagine--more extreme, more irresponsible, more delusional in his own grandeur than even Newt Gingrich ever was. Then, eight years after he missed his shot in 2000, John McCain wanted to try again. But it was eight years too late for that. Things had moved on. Positions had hardened. The chance to meld Perotistas with social conservatives--if it had ever really existed in the first place--was long gone by 2008. Against the right opponent, those two constituencies still might be united in voting "no", but there was no way left to unite them in voting "yes." George W. Bush had seen to that. He had acted out in spades what had previously only been implicit, or acted out symbolically. He had recapitulated Reagan with all the vicious charm of Richard Nixon.

And so, the Washington Post battleground map reflected the last gasp of GOP strategizing along the path first charted by Richard M. Nixon in 1968. The fact that Obama swept virtually all the states in question--plus one state and one CD that was not--clearly shows the end of that era. This is what realignment looks like. The map has changed. More importantly, what is behind the map has changed in ways that still remain obscure, even to those whose campaign helped change it.

But that's only the beginning. As with the realignment of 1896, most of the winning party's establishment has formed all of its assumptions under the old order, and has not the slightest clue of what a new order should look like. Barack Obama may not be William McKinley, but he's not Teddy Roosevelt, either. At least not yet. And this is even more true of those he has surrounded himself by.

The 1896 realignment was one of the more uncertain, ambiguous ones in American history. It was halfway between the sharp clarity of 1932, and the utter confusion--no, make that delusion of 1968. Right now, 2008 seems very much like 1896. What has been rejected, what is now the past, is far more certain than what has been affirmed, than what the future is. For that, the real struggle has only just begun.

Promising News On 2004-2008 Voting Shifts Via Pollster God Charles Franklin

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:23:15 GMT

We've all seen this county-level map, showing how isolated the shift toward the GOP was since 2004, against the much broader pro-Obama tide:

But this past week, Professor Charles Franklin, of Political Arithmetik and Pollster.com, has added considerably more to the picture of how broad Obama's win was, first by looking at race, then by looking at different demographic groups. Details on the flip.
Race and Support For Obama

First, Franklin looked at race ("White Vote for Obama in the States"), comparing state-level support for Obama to the percentage of blacks in the electorate. As many had noted, the shift away from Obama in the upland South corresponded with counties having small black populations. How did these compare with other parts of the South, they wondered, where increased black support could mask increased white antipathy. What Franklin found looked pretty dramatic in the way of declining support beyond a certain threashold (click image to enlarge):

However this was due to just a handful of Deep South states, as can be seen in the lower right quadrant.

As DemFromCT noted at DKos, "White Vote And The South":

I have no intention of doing any South bashing....
But for now, that right lower quadrant is the GOP's regional base; by 2012, TX will be a swing state.
And the GOP? Beyond that right lower quadrant, they've got more work to do than we do, if they ever want to be a national party again.

Responding to feedback in the comments, Franklin did a second post ("White Vote for Obama in the States, Part 2"), which, above all produced this graph, showing how relatively little Obama's performance differed from Kerry's (click image to enlarge):

Yes, Obama underperformed him in the Deep South, but that was already a hard sell for any Dem. Franklin's comments are worth quoting at length:

For states below 25% African American, the trend line for Obama is above that for Kerry, indicating a general improvement among whites. (Note this is the TREND, individual states may differ-- see below.) But in the deepest of Southern states, which are also the states with the highest African American percentages, Obama falls below the Kerry vote. Now this is based on just four states, GA, AL, MS and LA, but those are also the states in which Obama had his worst performance with white voters.
So in terms of the overall trend, Obama generally improved among whites, but the shift in trend towards the right of the chart is significant....
Three of the four deep south states dropped clearly below their 2004 white support for Kerry. Georgia did not, matching it's 23% white support for the Democrat in both years. Mississippi, the lowest state in 2004, shifted from 14% to 11%, while my home state of Alabama dropped from 19% to 10%, claiming the prize for lowest white support for Obama of any state in the Union. Louisiana went from 24% to 14%, the largest point drop of all.
One other southern state registered a notable drop, Arkansas fell from 36% white support for Kerry to 30% for Obama.
Other states that declined in white support did so by small amounts and for obvious political reasons: Alaska, Arizona and ... Massachusetts.
Two other non-southern states showed small declines: New Mexico (43% down to 42%) and West Virginia (42% down to 41%). All these last five are inside the confidence interval for no change.
There were a number of states with considerable increases (labeled in the chart for a five point or greater gain.) The most interesting are North Carolina (up from 27% to 35%) and Virginia (up from 32% to 39%.) Clearly Obama could not have won those states on the white vote alone, but those shifts amount to roughly a 5-6 point boost in statewide vote share, certainly enough to matter.
Also interesting are traditional red states Indiana and Kansas, with gains from 34% to 45% and from 34% to 40% respectively. Also Montana and North Dakota are notable, with gains from 39% to 45% and from 35% to 42%. While the Democrat didn't win three of these four states, these shifts demonstrate that they are no longer as out of reach for Dems as recent past elections might have suggested.

Support For Obama Across Demographic Groups

One reason Obama improved his standing with white voters in some significant red states outside the Deep South is the sheer breadth of his increased appeal across almost all demographic groups, which brings us to Franklin's second focus.

First is a chart showing the relative sizes and shifts of 83 demographic groups. Those above the diagonal shifted toward Obama from Kerry's 2004 performance, those below it shifted away from Obama. Tellingly, only three groups moved away--"small town," "decided last 3 days," and--perhaps surprisingly "gay". (Click image to enlarge):

For close up of central region in a new window, click here.

A different view of this data arranges all the demographic groups in order of how much they shifted (click image to enlarge):

In today's world, with today's targetted communications and the kind of diverse volunteer base he has, this sort of broad-based gain amongst almost all demographic groups is extremely promising. Of course he has to govern well, and solve some very difficult problems. That goes without saying. But what these graphs show is that the gains earned since 2004 are so broadly distributed that Obama is exceptionally well poised to reap the just rewards for any success through demographically specific communications.

Of course, marketers are now using even more fine-tuned ways of identifying people, so I'm not suggesting that Obama will use these specific groups to map communications strategy. Rather, I'm saying that this analysis shows extremely broad potential for even more targetted outreach to effectively persuade.

A 53% win is nothing to sneeze at after the past 40 years. But this analysis should persuade anyone that we have very strong potential to significantly increase that margin in 4 years. Naturally, solving realworld problems comes first and foremost. But if we do that this data shows a very strong indication that we can reap the rewards of long-term political dominance.

Realignment Redux

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:58:26 GMT

Beyond the sheer mendacity of the 'center-right nation' meme, there lies serious discussion of whether the election we just had is, indeed a realigning election. The mendacious meme and the serious discussion are clearly related: if this was a realignment, then we can say, "Well, maybe it was a center-right nation, but it isn't anymore." There's just one problem: no one can quite agree on what a realigning election is. I can sympathize with this confusion, have struggled with it myself, but I've come to a embrace the view that realigning elections can only be understood by their place in the periodic cycles of American party systems-as I'll briefly recap on the flip.

On Tuesday, at DKos, DemFromCT called attention to two similarly-themed pieces that stopped short of calling 2008 a realignment-but did so on what I regard as dubious grounds:

Stu Rothenberg and Jay Cost have interesting pieces up about the realignment idea. Based on Obama's historic win, they both see this as more than a usual election, and less than a realignment.

Rothenberg's approach is to look at the good news for the Dems, say, "that's a lot," and then look at the not-so-good news, and say, "but there should be more if it's a realignment." Cost's approach eschews the term "realignment." Instead, he compares this election with 1860, 1896 and 1932, and concludes that it doesn't compare. While both writers make some good points, they miss both the complexity and the simplicity of a realignment. The complexity is that they are messy things, they don't always look the same. The simplicity is that one thing is certain: you can never go back again.
Realignment Refresher

Before turning to the look at what Cost and Rothenberg wrote, I want to provide a quick refresher on how I see realignment-a view that's primarily based on Walter Dean Burnham' work. The main points are:

(1) Realigning elections generally define the end of one party system and the beginning of another. The election of 1800 was the sole exception, as the first party system hadn't fully gelled at the time of the first partisan election in 1796.

Party systems are defined by a constellation of issues, political narratives, semi-stable party coalitions-usually with one dominant and one subdominant-and stable or slowly-changing methods of political organization and communication. They last roughly 32-40 years, before succumbing to an accumulation of new problems and issues that draw out new constituencies, typically manifest in increased third party activity. The following table summarizes the six party systems we have had so far:

Table 1: Party Systems & Balance Of Victories: House, Senate And President Summary Table
	Number of Victories			Percent of Victories
Party System	Dem	Fed/ Whig/ Rep	Split	Dem	Fed/ Whig/ Rep	Split
First: 1794-1822	12	2	1	80	13	7
Second:1826-1858 *	9	1	7	53	6	41
Third: 1860-1894	1	9	8	6	50	44
Fourth: 1896-1930	3	12	3	17	67	17
Fifth: 1932-1966	13	1	4	72	6	22
Sixth: 1968-2006	3	2 1/4	13 3/4	16	12	72
* 1824 Election anomalous, not included. See text.

The Sixth Party System, just concluding, is the only one without a clear dominant and subordinate party, as divided government was overwhelmingly more common.

(2) Realigning elections are not necessarily landslides, though they can be. More often, they are followed by landslides, which confirm the initial turn in direction signaled by the realigning election.

(3) Realignments are seen in the House as well as the Presidency. The House is where we see evidence of realignment closest to the people, requiring at least two consecutive wave elections. But it's Presidential elections that definitively alter the course of national politics. Realignment either appears first in the House, then the Presidential election, or in both simultaneously.

Rothenberg's Argument: On the One Hand/On the Other

Rothernberg begins his article by admitting the obvious: this was no mere hiccup. He then goes on to cite several different sorts of evidence of the gains Democrats have made, electoral, demographic, and in terms of issue support. He begins like this:

The big question that everyone is asking is whether this month's general election marked the beginning of a political realignment that will create a new dominant party. Have Americans shifted their loyalties and fundamental assumptions about the parties and about the government, or did we just witness a short-term reaction to years of bad news?
Let's be clear: The election results in 2006 and 2008 constitute the kind of one-two punch that is rare in modern American political history. It would be silly to portray this year's election as a minor hiccup. The nation elected a liberal African-American Democrat from the North as president, and it gave him a majority of all votes cast.
Moreover, in the past two elections, Democrats gained at least a dozen Senate seats and at least 50 House seats, taking total control of Congress. At the state level, they now have 4,090 state legislators to the GOP's 3,221.

But after touching all the bases mentioned above, he says:

Democrats and liberals would prefer the story to end here, but it doesn't. Other data paint a different picture.

And then goes on to make four main counter-points:

First, in an election with a highly unpopular Republican president and a severely damaged Republican brand, the Democratic share of the presidential vote increased from 48 percent of the vote in 2000 and 2004 to 53 percent of the vote in 2008, hardly a landslide figure or evidence of a new dominant political coalition.

I, for one, think the Democrats seriously under-performed what they should have. Although much improved over their past performance, they were still far too cautious for my tastes. I think that Obama should have gotten 55% at a minimum, and could have gotten it by pressing McCain more forcefully for his decades-long deregulation mania, among other things.

But just because the Dems fell short of what they could have done doesn't mean this wasn't a realigning election. The three most frequently cited examples of realigning elections (see below) are 1860, 1896 and 1932. The winning percentages in those elections were 39.8, 51.0%, and 57.4%. If the Wall Street meltdown had begun in 2005 or 2006, it seems quite likely that Obama could have made up at least half the gap between his 52.7% and FDR's 57.4%. Maybe even all of it. As it was, Obama did better than two out of the top three examples. I said above, "Realigning elections are not necessarily landslides, though they can be."

Second, one of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) biggest problems among core groups was a 5-point drop among white men. President Bush carried 62 percent of white men in 2004, while McCain won only 57 percent of them.
The drop easily could have been caused by growing concerns about the economy, as well as the lesser salience of national security concerns between 2004 and 2008, rather than a fundamental shift in partisan loyalties.

As Chris has pointed repeatedly, the GOP's greatest problem is not among their core groups-it's that their core groups are shrinking as a whole compared to ours. So even if this 5-point drop among white men was temporary, the longer-term drop in the relative size of the white male electorate is not.

Third, the lack of any statistically significant shift in self-described ideology of voters also argues against a fundamental realignment. In 2004, 21 percent of voters called themselves liberals, while 34 percent said they were conservatives. This year, 22 percent said they were liberals and the same 34 percent identified as conservative.

Unfortunately, we have very little evidence about how realignments affect people's ideological identifications, if at all. What is important, however, is party identification and voting-although even here that's not necessarily immediately true. When it comes to both those, Democrats are doing fairly well, but Rothenberg comes up with a new "problem":

Finally, the 2008 exit poll found far more Democrats turned out than Republicans. In the exit poll four years ago, self-identified Democrats and Republicans each constituted 37 percent of the sample, but this year 39 percent of voters were Democrats compared with 32 percent of Republicans. Fewer Republican voters meant fewer votes for Republican candidates.

And that's a problem for a Democratic realignment? How?

Rothenberg:

While this change could reflect a fundamental shift in self-identified partisanship, it could merely be a dip in GOP turnout caused by any number of factors (possibly dissatisfaction with McCain's candidacy, the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate or the issue agenda of 2008) or a one-time shift in partisanship. Party ID, after all, reflects the popularity of the party at any moment, and the damage to the Republican brand certainly could have caused a short-term dip in GOP identification.

Except that Pew and Rasmussen both show long-term data telling us that the party ID gap opened up a couple of years ago:

Furthermore, the GOP only got party ID close for a few years. The future looks even better for Dems, given the demographic trends cited repeatedly by Chris, as well as the huge youth vote margin.

Rothenberg continues:

At this point, it is far too premature to claim that 2008 was anything more than a dramatic reaction to an unpopular president and to a party hurt by its own ineptness. Obama will have a chance to change the nation's political landscape. But his election, by itself, isn't necessarily a sign of a new partisan alignment.

But, of course, that's just the thing: no election by itself is a sign of a new partisan alignment. Realignments are creatures of larger historical patterns, along with more immediate occurrences that get folded into them. The truth is that 2004 was probably a much better candidate for realignment up through September 10, 2001. 9/11 altered the pattern, but did not obliterate it. History has patterns to it, but they are always loose enough to allow for significant variation, as well as human action, individual and collective, for good and ill. So it has been this time, too.

Cost's Cut-Rate Theorizing

Cost first sets out to muddle things by calling the very notion of realignment into question:

Barack Obama's decisive victory last Tuesday has some wondering whether this was a realigning election.
"Realignment" is an overused term, and some scholars have questioned whether it is a profitable category to apply to elections. Temple University's Robin Kolodny wrote this a few years ago:
Realignment has been in trouble as a theory for explaining party identification and electoral behavior for some time. The most obvious problem is that there has been no full realignment since 1932, and no consensus has emerged on what, if any, partial realignment has taken place in 1968, 1974, 1980, or 1994.

Yale University's David Mayhew wrote a cogent critique of realignment theory in 2004, arguing that the facts don't fit the story so well.

The problem with all the above is that it's written without regard to (a) the cycle of party systems, and (b) the combined importance of House and Presidential elections. Mayhew's arguments (which fill a book, but are summarized here) are election-centric, marginalizing the very historical context that's key to making sense of realignment.

Things become much clearer simply by keeping points (a) and (b) in mind. Viewed from this perspective, it should be evident that none the elections mentioned above--1968, 1974, 1980, or 1994-fit the second criteria for a realigning election. However, in terms of party systems, it's quite clear that from 1932 to 1966 the Democrats were the dominant party, while 1968 onward was an era dominated by divided government, unlike any other in our history. (See Table 1 above.) Therefore, it makes eminent good sense to refer to 1968 specifically as a de-aligning election, as what it produced was a dealigned electorate, rather than a realigned one. We cab also refer to it generically as a realigning election, but should only do so with respect to the characteristics it shares with the true realigning elections: those that come from its pivotal role in initiating a new party system.

As for the other elections listed above-1974, 1980, and 1994-these are all significant elections on the time-scale within a particular party system. Again, referring back to Table 1, we see that all party systems involve some back-and-forth, with subordinate parties holding power some of the time, along with divided government. Therefore, the shifting of power within a party system is not unusual. Such shifts in power do not alter the underlying dynamic. The closeness of the 1976 presidential election after the Democratic House wave election in 1974 indicated that the basic dynamic of divided government had not been overturned, but merely disrupted. Likewise, the Democrat's wave election victory in the House in 1982 was a normal corrective indicating that 1980 had not fundamentally altered that dynamic either. Similarly, Clinton's easy re-election in 1996 negated any thought that 1994 could have been a realignment away from the dynamic of divided government.

In short, Cost has tossed out a barrage of objections for which answers do indeed exist, answers which take us beyond the perspective of merely looking at one election in isolation, which is the key to understanding realigning elections. Interestingly, however, it is just such a larger perspective that Cost then returns too-but not one that is fully integrated across time. Instead Cost chooses to look at three of the five realigning (plus one dealigning) elections in our history, not in terms of the party systems they ended or began, but simply in terms of certain big issues they involved.

This sort of arbitrary choice of three of the most extreme examples naturally has the effect of distorting all the conclusions drawn from it. It's perfectly legitimate to use extreme examples to highlight certain aspects of any phenomena, but such an approach always carries with it risks and blindspots. If used consciously, with the awareness of its inherent limitations, such an approach can be quite valuable. But if used in isolation, even in denial of a larger context, it was easily lead us far astray, which is what Cost proceeds to do, however unintentionally.

I'll skip quickly through the brief particulars of each, then focus on how he ties them together. First, 1860:

Upon James Polk's election in 1844, the Union was equally balanced between slave and free states. The addition of so much territory during his term disrupted that balance. The South wanted to extend slavery to the Pacific. A growing segment in the North wanted to limit it to existing slave states...
By 1860, the stage was set....
Lincoln won less than 40% of the popular vote, not having appeared on the ballot in most Southern states, but his Electoral College victory proved how politically powerful a unified North could be: 180 for Lincoln, 72 for Breckinridge, 39 for Bell, and 12 for Douglas.

Lincoln's 40% "landslide" (actually, 39.8%, but who's counting?) should forever remind people that realigning elections and landslides are anything but synonymous. What is significant is not the size of the victory, but the change in direction, the irrevocable close of a door on the past. That, however, is not Cost focuses on, as we shall see.

Next, 1896:

By the 1880s, the Democrats had returned to electoral competitiveness by accepting many of the political premises of industrial development. The end of Reconstruction and the Panic of 1873 ultimately gave them control over the House for eight of the next ten Congresses. The lone Democratic President of the era - Grover Cleveland of New York - favored the gold standard, which was good for industrial interests in the East but hard on farmers in the South and Midwest.
The grievances of farmers and rural people found expression via the Populist Party.... in 1896 [when] William Jennings Bryan captured the Democratic nomination, promising "free silver." His opponent, William McKinley, supported the gold standard. The election of 1896 was fought over the currency issue, and the result produced a sharp industrial-agrarian divide.
Though the South is joined this time by the Mountain West and the Great Plains, the divide again favors the North. McKinley won 271 electors to Bryan's 176.

This was yet another stunning "landslide"-McKinley won 51.0%, of the popular vote. Note that two examples in a row have a sectional theme that proves decisive in the electoral college.

Now, 1932:

This was a significant election not simply because the Depression began under the GOP's watch. It also had to do with the party's response. President Herbert Hoover failed to address the crisis to the public's satisfaction. Meanwhile, the Democrats nominated New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, who had a great last name and a solid reputation of his own, having mobilized his government to fight the Depression in the Empire State.
Unlike in 1860 or 1896, a very broad transregional consensus emerged. As famed newspaper editor William Allen White later observed, the election of 1932 signaled "a firm desire on the part of the American people to use government as an agency for human welfare."

Here the pattern of the two previous elections is broken twice-First, FDR won a true popular landslide, 57.4% of the popular vote (as well as winning xxx in the electoral college). Second, as noted by Cost, it was not a regionally-based consensus.

So what do these elections have in common, then? According to Cost:

While the particulars of these elections are different, they tell a similar story about the political parties. In all three, the parties had to manage issues of great importance that could not be ignored. This is why we remember Lincoln's "House Divided," Bryan's "Cross of Gold," and Roosevelt's "New Deal." They each took clear stands on issues whose resolutions would determine the course the nation would set.
What's more, there was little room for common ground those years. Either slavery would expand or it wouldn't. Either the government would authorize the free coinage of silver or it wouldn't. Either it would take a more active role in the economy or it wouldn't. Practically speaking, the differences could not be split.

This is not quite true, however. Bi-metalism was not the only issue in 1896-the tariff and government regulation and relief were also major issues raised by Bryan. And while supporters of the gold standard insisted it was all or nothing, there certainly could have been a limited allowance for silver-backed currency. It didn't have to be an all-or-none proposition.

Likewise, in 1932, the issue of government activism clearly could have been a matter of degree, scope and purpose. In short, the expansion of slavery was by nature a lot more inflexible than the issues underlying the elections of 1896 and 1932-and this was so in past because the preceding decade had been dominated by failed attempts to find some workable compromise for controlled expansion of slavery. Yet, it should be noted that the issue of the expansion of slavery was itself an evasion of the underlying issue of slavery itself. In short, these were elections of great moment, when great change was afoot and could not be avoided. Yet, that did not mean that it was straightforwardly addressed.

Lincoln's "House Divided," speech had been given in 1858. In 1860, he secured the Republican nomination by striking a more measured tone. It was the South's hysterical reaction to his election that made it seem far more sharp and decisive than it actually might have been. Roosevelt's "New Deal" was little more than a placeholding phrase in his acceptance speech until after the election, and even then it was extremely fluid, changing substantially from the first to the second incarnations.

Many commentators here have raised the point that Roosevelt ran on a balanced budget and didn't say much about what he intended to do, striving to portray him as a more Obama-like figure. They have a point that Cost's presentation tends to obscure, even though Roosevelt also had a clear record as Governor of New York that spoke of sweeping, progressive government activism. Thus, both Lincoln and Roosevelt were undeniably figures of fundamental change who campaigned in a way that downplayed the scariness of change that some people always feel more than the hope and opportunity. The same can clearly be said about Obama.

Bryan, on the other hand, failed to win, in part because he represented a weaker political coalition, and in part because he did not seek to temper his message of fundamental change. 1896 is still legitimately seen as a realigning election, but it remains difficult to explain why, unless one considers the party system perspective.

What Cost says next is certainly true, and indeed it's an important part of what happens when the old party system starts to run out of steam, and can't respond to new issues as they arise-which is why third parties tend to become more active before most realignments. However, it needs to be tempered by what I've just said. Cost:

So, these issues upset the normal functioning of the parties. By their nature, parties select issue positions and emphases in pursuit of electoral majorities. Obviously, no party can undertake a full-scale reinvention of itself. However, in pursuit of a majority, it can frequently "finesse" matters. It can slightly alter some positions, it can equivocate or obfuscate on others, and it can emphasize particular issues or personalities depending upon the audience. The goal is to string together an electoral majority among the diverse elements of our large Republic.
In these years, this process was disrupted to some degree. Issues of great salience dominated the political discourse and forced the parties to stake out relatively clear positions. There was little room for finessing. Thus, votes from those years can be seen as opinions on the critical issues more directly than votes from other years.

One can clearly see where Cost is going with this. There was little room for finessing then, but differences were blurred in this campaign. Yet, as I've argued above, both Lincoln and Roosevelt did take the edge off their campaigns-knowing full well that this would not mitigate the objective needs once they took office. Bryan did not take the edge off, and he lost. McKinley won in part because his candidacy was sufficiently blurry-it was a victory progress, and Bryan was cast as a voice of the past. Thus, McKinley was a "progressive" without all the reformist aspects that term would soon acquire. And, indeed, the very blurriness of what McKinley's win meant, and what "progressive" meant was to haunt the entirety of the Fourth Party System.

Cost continues:

So, examining the parties and the issues they handled this cycle might help us understand how 2008 stacks up against these three elections. Did the parties behave similarly this year as they did then? Were the issues similar?
I think the answers to both questions are negative, which cuts against the hypothesis that this election was a "realignment." For starters, there was no central, defining issue that disrupted the normal party process. Instead, both candidates covered a variety of issues, few in any depth. There was also a scarcity of clear contrasts between Obama and McCain. Indeed, on the subject that might have emerged as a realigning issue - the financial bailout - they voted the same way.
Relatedly, both candidates made the search for common ground a defining feature of their candidacies. McCain would cite Hillary Clinton just as often as Obama would mention Richard Lugar. There was no House Divided, no Cross of Gold, no New Deal. There was the promise of pragmatic governance and a change in tone toward bipartisan conciliation.
This evidence disfavors the idea that 2008 was like these previous elections.

The evidence Cost sites is certainly true. But does it mean what he thinks it means? I would argue not, and for one simple reason: it ignores the nature of the party system we've been living under, a party system dominated by divided government. Divided government has had a paradoxical result: it fails to accomplish much in dealing with fundamental problems, but it manages to project the blame onto "partisan extremism" when it is actually the lack of a strong dominant party that's primarily at fault, if we look at how our political system usually operates.

Under this divided setup, it is relatively more difficult for voters to assign praise and blame, which is why the generic claims of "partisanship" and "polarization" are so rhetorically appealing. The fact that Obama and McCain both ran as "trans-partisan" "reformers" was thus a reflection of the limitations of Sixth Party System. Both were trying to break out of its limitations, but doing so by accepting the flawed logic that the system itself has generated to excuse its failings. Thus, Cost is correct that the pressing issues were suppressed, but what he ignores is the degree to which suppression of the issues has been structurally reinforced throughout the Sixth Party System. One cannot understand realigning elections without understanding the party systems that precede them, and differences in party systems will produce differences in realigning elections.

The most dramatic proof of this is the dealigning election of 1968. It was so different from other realigning elections that it doesn't deserve to be called one in any meaningful sense except that it brought one era to an end and began a new one. And yet, this difference is perfectly understandable, in that the New Deal coalition, which dominated the Fifth Party System, combined Northern liberals and labor with Southern conservatives. As the South gradually industrialized, and more and more blacks moved north, and as the Cold War took hold, and America had to compete with Russia in appealing to the Third World, it was inevitably that eventually this odd-couple pairing would fall apart.

Yet, the longstanding decentralized and regionalized nature of American politics effectively decoupled the presidential and congressional trajectories, resulting in a presidential realignment, without a congressional one-something never seen before. Furthermore, once established, this divided government structure took on a life of its own, as accountability became increasingly difficult for people to assign. And thus, we had divided government under most of Clinton's term, as well as during all of Nixon, Reagan's and Bush I's.

The fact that the dealigning election of 1968 can only be understood in a party system context holds an important lesson for us in thinking about 2008. It is far more different from 1860, 1896 and 1932 than 2008 is. It did not produce-even fleetingly-a unified dominant political party. And yet, it did produce a distinct break with all that went before it. If it belongs to the family of realigning elections-however qualified that belonging may be-then we need to approach 2008 in similar terms, viewing it in the context of the party system preceding it.

In effect, Cost is rejecting 2008 as a realigning election because he rejects realignment itself. Seeking clarification by looking at extreme cases, he essentially abandons the sort of contextual approach that really gets at the heart of the matter.

Of course, Cost is hardly alone in this. Quite the opposite: Cost's ready abandonment of theoretical frameworks is directly analogous to the "transpartisan" abandonment of "ideological rigidity" and "partisan extremism." It represents the kind of small-bore pragmatism that is incapable of successfully grappling with problems on a systematic basis adequate to actually solving them.

This is the basic mindset of the old order, brought in by Nixon and the Southern Strategy. It is a mindset that is dying, even though Barack Obama still embraces it himself. The problems looming now are simply and obviously too big for such an approach. Even apart from their differing political philosophies, John McCain was simply incapable of ever recognizing this. Obama, I believe, is not. And thus, the practical necessities of governing and dealing with the outsized problems we face will move Obama forward toward the more systematic-and hence "ideological"-thinking that a new order requires.

Versailles vs. America: "Center-Right Nation" Edition

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:05:14 GMT

David's done yoeman's work here-and elsewhere-documenting the pernicious Versailles meme that despite the stunning victory won by Obama and Democrats running for Congress, America "remains a center-right nation" and therefore Obama must not enact his planned agenda. I finally got to the end of the 98-page post-election Democracy Corps report, "The Change Election Awaiting Change", and on page 94, I found something directly relevant to this pernicious Versailles meme: the American people overwhelmingly believe the exact opposite: that Republicans should give Obama the benefit of the doubt, and try to work with him to acheive his agenda.

Indeed, this sentiment is much more far-reaching than the core support for Obama's agenda in the first place. The reason is simple: the American people believe in democracy, they believe in elections, and they believe in giving their elected leaders (not the unelected Versailles punditalkcrazy) the opportunity to act on their electoral mandates. Here's the finding (click for a fill-width version):

There is nothing surprising about this, really. The Versailles consensus has been wildly out of touch with the American people at least since Ronald Reagan came to Washington. That's when they began promulgating the myth of how the American electorate had moved sharply to the right, when the underlying polling data showed nothing of the sort-in fact, it showed the American people becoming increasingly liberal and pro-activist government throughout the 1980s. But Versailles remained oblivious to all that, and lionized Reagan for bringing about a transformation in public attitudes that had very little on-the-ground reality.

On the other hand, the American people shared virtually none of Versailles' hated of Bill Clinton. While they were disgusted with his involvement with Monica Lewinsky, they had no desire whatsoever to impeach him, and his approval ratings during the impeachment drama remained higher than Ronald Reagan's were throughout most of his presidency. When they couldn't bring down Bill Clinton, Versailles did the next best thing: they initiated a smear campaign against his Vice President, Al Gore, when Gore ran for the presidency in 2000. Manufacturing a bogus record of lies and exaggerations, they made Gore out to be exactly the person that George Bush really was, and we have suffered eight long years as a result of Versailles' mendacity.

Enough! The people have spoken. And after speaking, they have spoken again, even more emphatically: respect the results of the election. Let Obama govern as promised to, to bring about significant change from the politics of the past, not to continue it.

If This Is Center-Right....

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:30:24 GMT

As Media Matters pointed out, Brent Bozell is a little confused over whether Obama is a socialist or a Reaganite Conservative.

Socialist (From the October 27 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends):

BOZELL: This is the arrogance, I think, of the Obama campaign, but it's a well-placed arrogance in the sense that they've gone through this entire campaign without being questioned seriously by anyone except for this news network, the Fox News network, which is why they studiously avoid the Fox News network. But when you go through the entirety of the campaign saying the kind of things that you're saying in the debates, where on, for every question, you've got a redistribution of wealth answer, where you've got socialism, where you've got the government controlling every aspect of life. You don't expect a reporter to ask you, "Is this socialism?" Because the media don't ask that question. Well, some uppity reporter did -- and look what happened, they cancelled her. And, by the way, she won't be going to the ball, either.

Reaganite Conservative (From the November 7 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom):

BOZELL: There's a lot of work that needs to be done. But here's the key thing, Bill, that really isn't being reported: Anyone who looks at the exit polls this year will find two fascinating results. Number one, this country remains every bit as center-right as it's been for a generation. And number two --
HEMMER: You don't think that's changed -- you don' think that's changed at all?
BOZELL: No, it hasn't. Look at the exit polling. The number one issue was the economy, nothing came close. The American people are fiscally conservative, and the fascinating thing, Bill, is that Barack Obama ran as a Reaganite and won over the fiscal -- the public as a fiscal conservative. That's what the polling data shows.
HEMMER: You said there were two things. What was number two?
BOZELL: Well, number one is that the public is conservative; number two, Barack Obama won as a conservative. That means that Barack Obama does not have the mandate to enact the left-wing agenda he wants to enact. He didn't run on it, he ran from it. So, this is not necessarily bad news for conservatives.

But what happens if we just ignore the confusion, and go with #2? What does a Reaganite Conservative look like these days?
First, the election. To restate the obvious: People elected the more liberal candidate and increased the congressional majorities of the more liberal party--in both houses. Doesn't sound too conservative to me.

Number one, this country remains every bit as center-right as it's been for a generation.

Well, it's true that the center-left popular vote in the 2000 election (Gore plus Nader) was similar to where we are today (51.1% in 2000, 52.6% in 2008). But in 2000, Bush didn't lose Florida by so much he couldn't steal it, and he didn't lose North Carolina, Virginia and Nebraska-CD2 at all.

Nor did Democrats hold an 80-seat majority in the House for a generation. Winning the House vote by 7.2%.

But, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, let's roll with it.

Second, the exit polls. Bozell is 100% correct that the economy was the number one issue. Fully 63% of the people said so in the exit polls, and of them, 53% voted for Obama, compared to 44% for McCain. Another 9% cited health care--a more specific economic concern, and those voters went for Obama by a much wider margin--73/26%. But does this mean "The American people are fiscally conservative"?

Well, 75% said the country was on the wrong track, and they voted for Obama 62/36%. Just 20% said it was going in the right direction, and they voted for McCain 71/27%.

On the economy specifically, just 7% said it was "excellent" or "good", and those voters went for McCain, 72/26%. A whopping 93% said it was "not so good" or "poor", and they went for Obama, 54/44%.

Neither of those sound too conservative to me, considering that conservatives have been running things for virtually all of the last 8 years.

Furthermore, 51% said the government "Should Do More", and they voted for Obama 76/23%, while only 43% said government was "Doing Too Much", and they voted for McCain 71/27%. Again, that doesn't sound too conservative to me.

Lastly, did the exit polls show that people thought they were voting for a conservative? Well, not so much. 42% said that Obama was "too liberal", compared to just 4% who said he was "too conservative", while 50% said he was "about right". What's more, 3.7% of the voters thought he was "too liberal", but voted for him anyway. Just 2% of voters thought he was "too conservative" but voted for him anyway.

But, hey, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, let's roll with it.

Third and finally, let's look at another poll , this one from Celinda Lake, polling for the Change To Win labor federation. This was a poll of working Americans--non-supervisory workers to be exact.

SUMMARY
In the 2008 election, workers soundly rejected the Republican economic frame of deregulation and government inaction, choosing Barack Obama to be their next President. Workers believe he is the candidate least influenced by corporations and CEOs (of whom they blame for the current economic crisis). They believe he would do a better job of improving their personal economic situation, improving wages and conditions, and that he is the candidate that best represents the American Dream.
An astounding 84 percent of working Americans feel the economy is on the wrong track with only ten percent saying it is on the right track. Among younger workers the gap is even starker, with 87 percent who feel the economy in America is on the wrong track, and just seven percent feeling it is on the right track.

This intensity carried over into working Americans' enthusiasm for voting in this election. Almost 7 in 10 working Americans (68%) felt more enthusiastic for voting in this election compared to elections past, fully 19 points higher from the fifth American Dream survey in September 2008. Only 12 percent felt less enthusiastic and just 18 percent felt the same. Among workers under 30, 71 percent felt more enthusiastic.

For working Americans, the single most important issue in deciding their vote for President was the economy and jobs (72%), followed by health care and prescription drugs (26%), and the war in Iraq (23%). Likewise, 81 percent said the state of the economy and jobs itself would influence their vote for President either a lot or a little (58% a lot, 23% a little), with only 18 percent saying it would make no difference. The state of the economy and jobs influenced younger workers even more, with 84 percent reporting it would influence their vote for President (59% a lot, 25% a little).

Barack Obama scored a decisive victory, winning working Americans 51 percent to John McCain's 39 percent, with 10 percent either not sure or voting for a third party candidate. Obama's victory was even more convincing among working Americans under 30, winning by 24 points, 58 percent to John McCain's 34 percent, with nine percent either unsure or voting for a third party candidate.

American workers recognized the role Republican anti-government policies had in creating the current economic crisis, and now soundly reject these same policies, signaling the end of the Reagan era. Sixty-eight percent agree that we need to reform government to make it work for us, and that our government has to be part of the solution, while only 27 percent agree with the Republican frame of government is the problem and not the solution.

A comfortable majority (56%) of American workers say the current economic crisis was actually the result of deregulation and a lack of corporate oversight that let greed run wild. They believe that we need more government oversight and enforcement to hold corporations accountable. Barely over a third (37%) believe too much government regulation interferes with the proper functioning of the free market, and that we need to let the free market function to create jobs to grow our economy. As a result, almost three-fourths of working Americans said it is extremely important to them personally that their candidate for President represents working people (73% rate 10 or "extremely important").

Despite the economic crisis and the problems in government, American workers believe the American Dream is still obtainable. Only 19 percent believe they may not or will not be able to obtain the American Dream while a solid majority (73%) either have obtained it (15%) or believe that it is still obtainable (58%).
The cornerstones of the American Dream in the eyes of workers remain having a job that pays enough to support a family (82% extremely important, 94% total important), being able to ensure children have the opportunity to succeed (79%, 92%), having a secure and dignified retirement (74%, 17%), and having affordable quality health care to depend on (73%, 17%).

Working Americans feel most strongly that the best steps the President and Congress can take to make the American Dream more attainable are making sure employers keep their promises to employees with regard to pensions and health care (72% extremely effective, 87% total effective), followed by enacting health care reform to guarantee that every American has access to quality affordable health care (66%, 81% total), cracking down on oil speculators and price gouging at the pump (62%, 79% total), and ensuring equal opportunity and equal pay for women and minorities (61%, 79% total).

Solid majorities believe it is Barack Obama over John McCain who has the best vision for restoring the American Dream (54% to 31%, and 64% to 23% for workers under 30) and who really represents the values of the American Dream (54% to 27% and 60% to 27% for workers under 30). Two-thirds of working Americans believe Obama can make a difference in helping people achieve the American Dream (43% a lot of difference, 23% a little).

Similarly, working Americans perceive John McCain as the candidate who is most influenced by big corporations and CEOs (46% McCain, 23% Obama, 15% both influenced by corporations and CEOs). Among workers under 30, forty-nine percent perceive McCain as more influenced by corporations and CEOs, with just 17 percent for Obama.

So, in short, focusing solely on American workers, Lake found even stronger manifestations of all the trends shown in the exit polling--and more explicit rejections of the conservative, Republican, Reaganite worldview. And, she found that voters were enthusiastic--not disappointed that they didn't have a "real conservative" to vote for.

But, hey, if that's what a center-right nation looks like.... Well, I say let's roll with it!

Republican Socialists of America

Paul Rosenberg — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:30:00 GMT

So, John McCain has taken to calling Barack Obama a "socialist". Why? Because Obama wants to "redistribute" the wealth. Of course, every time you tax someone, you redistribute wealth. And every time that government spends some money that benefits someone, that, too, redistributes wealth. By McCain's criteria, every government that ever existed in human history was "socialist." You might think that's sort of a whacked-out extremist position, somewhere two football fields to the right of the John Birch Society. And you'd be right. Because by John McCain's standards, I'd like to introduce you to four of the most prominent members of the Republican Socialists of America:

Join me on the flip, and I'll tell about them.
Theodore Roosevelt

"I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold"
--John McCain, NYT, July 13, 2008

Where I come from, you'd never pass high school if you thought Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative. Sure, he was an imperialist. And he liked to conserve our wilderness areas. But he was in an almost constant state of war with the conservative bosses of the Republican Party, and when he felt that his protege, William Taft, had betrayed him by going over to their side after he left office in 1908, he ran against Taft on the Bull Moose ticket, and utterly destroyed the Republicans, reducing them to third party status at the polls.

So, Teddy Roosevelt, a conservative? Not so much. In fact, when it came to socialism, this is what Roosevelt said in his autobiography:

Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the workingman, I have often been called a Socialist. Usually I have not taken the trouble even to notice the epithet. I am not afraid of names, and I am not one of those who fear to do what is right because some one else will confound me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord. Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high-minded and honorable citizens, who in reality are merely radical social reformers. They are oppressed by the brutalities and industrial injustices which we see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this title mistakenly applied to me.

So, it looks like Roosevelt would have voted for Obama, if he were still around today. And it looks that way even moreso, if think about his tax proposals. Although the income tax did not exist when he was President, Roosevelt was a firm proponent of it--as well as the estate tax. Talk about a tax-raiser, he was a tax-creator--or at least, he wanted to be. The following passages are from his 1907 State of the Union. First, on the income tax:

When our tax laws are revised the question of an income tax and an inheritance tax should receive the careful attention of our legislators. In my judgment both of these taxes should be part of our system of Federal taxation. I speak diffidently about the income tax because one scheme for an income tax was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; while in addition it is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working, and great care would have to be exercised to see that it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded it would, of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man. Nevertheless, a graduated income tax of the proper type would be a desirable feature of Federal taxation, and it is to be hoped that one may be devised which the Supreme Court will declare constitutional.

Next, on the inheretance tax:

The inheritance tax, however, is both a far better method of taxation, and far more important for the purpose of having the fortunes of the country bear in proportion to their increase in size a corresponding increase and burden of taxation. The Government has the absolute right to decide as to the terms upon which a man shall receive a bequest or devise from another, and this point in the devolution of property is especially appropriate for the imposition of a tax. Laws imposing such taxes have repeatedly been placed upon the National statute books and as repeatedly declared constitutional by the courts; and these laws contained the progressive principle, that is, after a certain amount is reached the bequest or gift, in life or
death, is increasingly burdened and the rate of taxation is increased in proportion to the remoteness of blood of the man receiving the bequest. These principles are recognized already in the leading civilized nations of the world....
A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood.

Roosevelt goes on to sharply distinguish this from socialist proposals ("In your face, McCain!" as noted Roosevelt scholar Homer Simpson would say):

We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country-a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves. But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories.

Of course, I'm not actually aware of any socialists of any real stature who actual made any such arguments. But, Professor Simpson does get easily enthused, and must be allowed to have his say from time to time.

Back to Roosevelt:

Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.

So, Roosevelt quoting Lincoln to the everlasting humiliation of McCain/Palin Republicanism.

Sweet!

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower firmly rebuked the reactionary wing of the Republican Party. In a 1954 letter to his brother, Edgar Newton Eisenhower, he wrote:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.5 Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

He did cut taxes, though. In 1953, when he took office, the top marginal income tax rate was 92%. Ike thought this was outrageous. He cut the rate to 91%. That's well more than twice the top rate that Obama proposes.

Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon tried to implement a form of negative income tax as a way of substituting direct cash payments for bureaucratic forms of welfare assistance:

Nixon had experienced the sting of poverty as a child, and he never forgot it. But while he sympathized with the poor, he also shared many Americans' conviction that the welfare system had grown into an inefficient bureaucracy which fostered dependency and low self esteem among welfare recipients and contributed to the breakdown of families by providing assistance only to households which were not headed by a working male.
With the assistance of Urban Affairs Council secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nixon created the Family Assistance Plan. FAP called for the replacement of bureaucratically administered programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, and Medicaid, with direct cash payments to those in need. Not only single-parent families, but the working poor would qualify for aid. All recipients, save the mothers of preschool age children, would be required to work or take job training.
Nixon revealed FAP in a nationwide address on August 8, 1969. Heavy criticism followed. Welfare advocates declared the income level Nixon proposed -- $1600 per year for a family of four -- insufficient. Conservatives disliked the idea of a guaranteed annual income for people who didn't work. Labor saw the proposal as a threat to the minimum wage. Caseworkers opposed FAP fearing that many of their jobs would be eliminated. And many Americans complained that the addition of the working poor would expand welfare caseloads by millions. A disappointed Nixon pressed for the bill's passage in various forms, until the election season of 1972. He knew a bad campaign issue when he saw one, and he let FAP expire.

What's more, as can be seen below, under Nixon, the tax rates--particularly on high earners--were as high or higher as they were under Kennedy and Johnson:

Ronald Reagan

Even more than Teddy Roosevelt, McCain likes to associate himself with Ronald Reagan. But though Reagan talked a good conservative game, when push came to shove, he often switched directions. In fact, he not only rolled up record deficits, he raised taxes, saved Social Security, and greatly expanded the same type of negative income tax measures (refundable tax credits) that McCain is railing at Obama for.

In my earlier diary, "John McCain Makes A Fool Of Himself, Again--Obama the Socialist Edition", I brought up the most successful form of negative income tax in US history--the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC). It was introduced under Republican President Gerald Ford, and then expanded under Ronald Reagan:

Enacted in 1975, the initially modest EIC has been expanded by tax legislation on a number of occasions, including the more widely-publicized Reagan EIC expansion of 1986. The EIC was further expanded in 1990, 1993, and 2001 regardless of whether the act in general raised taxes (1990, 1993), lowered taxes (2001), or eliminated other deductions and credits (1986). Today, the EITC is one of the largest anti-poverty tools in the United States (despite the fact that most income measures, including the poverty rate, do not account for the credit), and enjoys broad bipartisan support.

Reagan also helped save Social Security, in partnership with House Speaker Tip O'Neill, as Joshua Green explained in an article for Washington Monthly in early 2003, "Reagan's Liberal Legacy":

Reagan also vastly expanded one of the largest federal domestic programs, Social Security. Before becoming president, he had often openly mused, much to the alarm of his politically sensitive staff, about restructuring Social Security to allow individuals to opt out of the system--an antecedent of today's privatization plans. At the start of his administration, with Social Security teetering on the brink of insolvency, Reagan attempted to push through immediate draconian cuts to the program. But the Senate unanimously rebuked his plan, and the GOP lost 26 House seats in the 1982 midterm elections, largely as a result of this overreach.
The following year, Reagan made one of the greatest ideological about-faces in the history of the presidency, agreeing to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security. In almost every way, the bailout flew in the face of conservative ideology. It dramatically increased payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought a whole new class of recipients--new federal workers--into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits, and did so in the most liberal way: only those of upper-income recipients. (As an added affront to conservatives, the tax wasn't indexed to inflation, meaning that more and more people have gradually had to pay it over time.)
By expanding rather than scaling back entitlements, Reagan--and Newt Gingrich after him--demonstrated that conservatives could not and would not launch a frontal assault on Social Security, effectively conceding that these cherished New Deal programs were central features of the American polity.

Ragan also raised taxes a lot more often and more freely than any conservative would dare to admit. Here's just a snippet of what Green has to say on that:

The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, "there is no justification" for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period. In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan's administration were aghast. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, "the conservative president's support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance." When Reagan's conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, "Walter Mondale would have been proud."

What's more, when he was governor of California, Reagan faced a budget crunch, and responded by agreeing the the Democratically-controlled legislature to respond with a balance of spending cuts and tax hikes raising the highest tax bracket. That's a step that the so-called "moderate" Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger has been either unwilling or unable to take.

Ronald Reagan: Socialist!

Oh, and I almost forgot this one:

John McCain

Back in 2001, John McCain was one of just two Republican senators who voted against Bush's tax cuts. As the Washington Post recalled earlier this year:

In 2001, just days before Bush's first tax cut passed, McCain lamented on ABC's "This Week" that, "I'd like to see much more of this tax cut shared by working Americans. . . . I think it still devotes too much of it to the wealthiest Americans."

John McCain.

Another Republican Socialist of America!

Deep Red Swing State--In Time, That Is

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:15:00 GMT

Here's another way of looking at how deep red the different swing states are that we're looking to take this cycle--a look at how seldom they've gone Democratic. (The "LAST" column records the last time they went Democratic pre-1960.)

This was inspired by a little back-and-forth about Montana vs. North Dakota. Although Montana extends the geographic reach of blue farther georgraphically, the fact that Clinton won there as recently as 1992 means it's not really that deep red in time. At least not compared to North Dakota, which has only gone Democratic once since Harry Truman won there in 1948. Make of this what you will in the comments.

(Paul's excellent swing state table can be found in the extended entry--Chris

2008 Swing States-When They Voted Dem

State

2004

2000

1996

1992

1988

1984

1980

1976

1972

1968

1964

1960

LAST

Colorado

1948

Iowa

1948

Indiana

1948

Florida

1948

Georgia

1956

Nevada

1948

1956

1936

Missouri

1956

Montana

1948

Ohio

1948

Virginia

1948

Bottom line: the last time all these states voted Democratic was 1936, FDR's landslide followup to the realigning election of 1932.

John McCain Makes A Fool Of Himself, Again--Obama the Socialist Edition

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:15:00 GMT

John McCain is a blithering idiot, much like G.W. Bush, but every once in a while he manages to tell the truth, as when he confessed, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He should have stuck with that, because his recent attempts to sound knowledgable have been cringe-worthy at best.

McCain recently attacked Obama's alleged "socialism," using the narrative trope of "Joe the Plumber" supposedly unmasking Obama's "hidden plan". This trope, of the simple everyman unmasking the "so-called experts" is a perennial favorite of rightwing populism, and McCain got lots of jollies from using it. Just one problem: the "hidden plan" he unmasked wasn't hidden, wasn't socialist, and wasn't even new. It consisted, quite simply, in some folks getting tax credits beyond the taxes that they owe. And, as this chart from Visualizing Economics makes clear, many low-income taxpayers already pay negative income taxes, largely thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, first signed into law by that old Marxist, Gerald Ford, and later expanded by Comrade Reagan.

Here's how the Boston Globe described McCain's use of [Not] Joe the [Not] Plumber to attack Obama as a socialist:

In his weekly radio address today, John McCain uses the ubiquitous Joe the plumber to all but accuse Democratic rival Barack Obama of being a socialist.
McCain reminds listeners of the story of Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man who complained to Obama last weekend that his tax plans -- to end the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 -- would put a crimp his plans to buy a plumbing business.
In an exchange recorded for posterity on a YouTube video, Obama told Wurzelbacher that in the economic crisis it would be good to "spread the wealth around."
"Joe, in his plainspoken way, said this sounded a lot like socialism," McCain says in his radio address. "And a lot of Americans are thinking along those same lines. In the best case, 'spreading the wealth around' is a familiar idea from the American left. And that kind of class warfare sure doesn't sound like a 'new kind of politics.'
McCain adds that the "spread the wealth" philosophy "would also explain some big problems with my opponent's claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?
"Well, that's the key to Barack Obama's whole plan: Since you can't reduce taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe. In other words, Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington."

You know, it's just too bad that McCain never got the hang of Google or Wikipedia, because then he could have found this:

Earned income tax credit
The United States federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC) is a refundable tax credit.

And if he'd learned how to click on a link, he would have discovered:

Tax credit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Refundable tax credit)
The term tax credit describes two different concepts:
* The first is a recognition of partial payment already made towards taxes due.
* The second is a state benefit paid to employees through the tax system, which has the effect of increasing (rather than reducing) net income....
Tax credits as a form of state benefit
Tax credits may be characterized as either refundable or non-refundable, or equivalently non-wastable or wastable. Refundable or non-wastable tax credits can reduce the tax owed below zero, and result in a net payment to the taxpayer beyond their own payments into the tax system, appearing to be a moderate form of negative income tax. Examples of refundable tax credits include the earned income tax credit and the additional child tax credit in the U.S., and working tax credits or child tax credits in the UK.

Hence, the chart above.

In the immoratal words of Nobel Laureate in Economics, Homer Simpson: "D'oh!"

My Election Projection--From October, 2006

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:30:00 GMT

I'm really not temperamentally suited to being any better than any of you at making number-crunching prediction this close to the election. Yeah, I'll toss some numbers out--maybe. But my heart isn't it. I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in dreaming big, making impossible predictions. Which is where October 2006 comes in. Because that's when I first let my thoughts about 2008 start to slip out... thoughts that had been seriously brewing since Katrina, 13 months earlier. Because that's what I do best.

Now, I didn't write specifically about 2008. Nostrodamus I am not. But I wrote about 2006 in terms of realigning elections, and I said that what was an overlooked key to them was two consecutive wave elections in the House. Well, it's pretty obvious what that means. We're about to say "hello" to number 2.

Here's a chart from my October 20, 2006 post, "What A Dem Landslide Could Mean", with a bit of explanatory text:

The chart below shows the House share controlled by Democrats (top, blue line) and the percent change in share (bottom, red line), regardless of whether its a gain or loss. The yellow lines mark the three realigning elections-two definite (1896 and 1932), one questionable, at best (1968). The dotted purple lines mark the congressional elections of 1974 and 1994:

As you can see, the volatility of House elections has declined significantly in the last few decades. Not shown on this chart is what happened in 2006--another wave election, smaller than 1994, in fact, a little bit smaller than 1980. But, of course, it started from a place of greater strength than GOP was before 1994. So being poised for a somewhat similar wave election this Tuesday, we really are set up for the first true realigning election since 1932. That's what I predicted two years ago, and I'm sticking with it.

More on what it means--and maybe what's ahead--on the flip.
About 10 days after that diary, I wrote another one, " Beyond Red & Blue---The Possible Underpinnings of A November Sweep", which got into the question of challenging the reigning narrative as one of the key ingredients in pulling off a realignment. I'd like to excerpt some parts of that diary, to ressurrect my thinking at that time--and then comment on it a bit.

My underlying argument is that the biggest, unrecognized gap in American politics is between extremist movement conservatives and ordinary conservative voters, and that compared to this, ordinary liberals and conservatives have a good deal in common. It's the reigning narrative that hides this, and that needs to challenged and overcome. Here's what I said about that at the time:

It is the movement conservative narrative that construes politics in terms of liberal/conservative polarization, and obscures the degree of overlap between liberals and conservatives by demonizing liberals. The realigning potential of this election consists in part of ~~the~~ fragmenting [the] grasp of the ultra-conservative narrative.

Explaining the nature of that potential is the purpose of this post.
I will do this in three parts: (1) De-mythologizing liberal/conservative polarization. (2) Highlighting the conservative/ultra-conservative split. (3) Discussing the potential for narrative reconfiguration.

Skipping through most of the post, here's what I say about #3:

(3) The potential for narrative reconfiguration.
To date, the most comprehensive, up-to-date work dealing with conservatives narratives comes from cognitive linguist George Lakoff. Lakoff's work centers on cognitive metaphors, and the more general phenomena of cognitive and linguistic frames. These are not narratives per se, but they are the underpinnings of narrative. Furthermore, Lakoff's own work is not primarily directed in a way to help us work on opening up the conservative/ultra-conservative gap. It illuminates the differences between liberal and conservative worldviews-and even, more subtly to the differences between what he calls "ideological conservatives" and "pragmatic conservatives." But even this last distinction is not the one I'm aiming for. It's not what isolates a mere 1% or so of the population.
The effective core of conservatism is identity politics. It's what binds ordinary conservatives with reactionary ultra-conservatives. Mostly, it's about race, religion and ethnicity, depending on these to over-ride class. But opposition to unions is also part of the mix. Free and Cantril found a striking correlation between operational conservatism and opposition to power-sharing with outgroups:

This opposition to organized political power is easily translated into everyday language: "They're okay, as long as they know their place." Although the nature and degree of such exclusionary attitudes has certainly altered over time, the GOP's reliance on anti-gay initiatives and hysteria about illegal immigration are clear reminders that the basic logic remains firmly in place.

And, of course, we've seen a whole carnival freak show of GOP boogeymen fantasies trotted out this time to try to smear Obama. Nothing new under the sun.

But here's something important, about the differece in how liberals and conservatives approach challenging problems, and starting with the thread of different approaches to the immigration issue, I move on to the question of how to frame an open-ended identity politics of inclusion--which, I think, is a good summary of what's been key to Obama's success:

Moreover, the example of illegal immigration shows that there can even be a rational foundation for such fears. Illegal immigration is a problem-it's just that it's part of a whole complex of problems tied to neo-liberal "free trade" economics that conservatives have no intention of examining, much less challenging. It's much easier to blame the victims with the darkest skin color. This is the essence of the liberal/conservative split: liberals engage in systematic analysis, seeking out complex patterns of cause and effect, while conservatives are quick to place blame on entire groups of individuals who in reality have very limited power or choice to do things differently, given the systemic forces they face.
Writ large, the problem that liberalism faces is just this: how to promote policies that change the systemic forces people face, when conservatives keep insisting that the problem is the people themselves. The answer, of course, is that conservative rhetoric only goes so far. Despite the hold it has, only the hardcore ultraconservatives steadfastly refuse to embrace liberal policies that work. Furthermore, new such policies can be introduced, but they need to be framed in the right sort of rhetoric.
Ironically, the best example of this is recent years is probably Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, with its rhetoric of "putting people first," and standing up for those who "work hard and play by the rules." Clinton's campaign rhetoric was pitch perfect-ironically, since his GOP-lite governance did not deliver what it promised. Yet, the answers are there, if we combine that sort of rhetoric with policies that actually deliver what Clinton promised.
One key aspect of Clinton's rhetoric deserves special note-his talk about people who "work hard and play by the rules." This is a formulation for a broadly inclusive counter-identity to set against conservative identity politics. It says nothing about who people are, in terms of race, religion, skin-color, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. It defines them by shared values-not values talk, but actual, real-life, day-to-day values. And this, of course, is what the promise of America has always been about. This is what liberals-and Democrats of all stripes-ought to be talking about every day. It's what underlies everything we want to do, which is why we should bring it up every time we talk about doing anything.
This is hardly a panacea, but it is a starting point, a foundation. Narratives of inclusion, based on shared aspirations are an antidote to narratives of exclusion. And a Democratic House-even if it stands alone-can be a perfect place to start launching such narratives, via legislation such as increasing the minimum wage, empowering bulk purchases of prescription drugs in Medicare Part D, increased spending on veterans' health care, etc. Above all, the House can become a place for holding hearings and staging debates-both about the widespread and systemic scandals and failures of Republican rule, and about what can be done to repair the damage done. and replace the policies that caused it.

Well, of course, the House as a whole did a terrible job of living up to its promise, even if some members, such as Henry Waxman, did a great deal of exemplary work. But, on the plus side, Barack Obama did articulate a narrative of aspirational, inclusive identity. And now we'll have another chance to get Congress back on the track it should have been on the last two years.

So I don't know that much about the smaller stuff--and I'm not pretending the small stuff isn't important. One damn hanging chad is important. Getting 60 Senate seats is important, rather than 57 or 58... even if Obama can "work with" a couple of Republicans here and there. He shouldn't have to be doing that. But what I mean by small stuff is simply this: If we have the vision and the narrative right, then everything else can follow from that. But if we don't, then everything will be a struggle. Including those last couple of senators. And it won't even matter if they're Republicans or Democrats. Because if you don't have the vision and the narrative right, then Mary Landrieu and Max Baucus and Ben Nelson can be just as hard for us as any Republican we might hope to pick up.

But with all that by way of caveat, okay. Here goes: I say we make 60 in the Senate without Lieberman: Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Alaska, Minnesota, Kentucky and Georgia. I say it not coming from my head, but from my heart--with the proviso that my head had a chance to veto it, and did not. Ditto the House: we pick up 33 seats. And Obama wins all the Kerry states plus Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Indiana.

My heart would like to add Montana, Arizona and Goergia, but my head has to veto something and so it vetoes those.

I really hope my head is wrong.

Palin: It All Started When He Hit Me Back!

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Palin Calls Media Criticism of Her Smears of Obama A First Amendment Threat!

Of course it goes without saying that Palin is utterly clueless about the First Amendment. But what tickles me most about this is how utterly typical of the rightwing bully mentality it is. Everything's fine until someone dares lift so much as a pinky finger in response to her bottomless venom. ABC reports:

Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights
October 31, 2008 11:25 AM
ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports: In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

You remember this from third grade, right? The way the schoolyard bully burst into tears when someone finally stood up to them and popped! them one in the old schnozzola?

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Oh, you pooooor wuddle thing!

Maybe we'll just have to throw you in prison for all the stealing you've been doing from the people you represent ever since you were first elected mayor of Wasilla. Safely in prison, the media won't have Sarah Palin to kick around any more.

You Betcha!

.
.
.

And, Singing Backup...

Now that the Bush Department of Justice is feeling the hot breath of history bearing down on it, and has started retracting its fangs, House Minority Leader John Boehner is very upset at the lack of political interference this portends.

Zach Roth reports at TPM:

Boehner: DOJ Politicized ... In Favor of Dems!
By Zachary Roth - October 31, 2008, 3:41PM
At last, a high-ranking Republican has admitted what many Democrats and independent observers have maintained since the scandal over the US Attorney firings -- that, under President Bush, the Department of Justice has been inappropriately politicized.
But according to John Boehner, the House GOP leader, that politicization was actually carried out ... by Democrats.
Boehner today released a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he complained about the department's decision no longer to include federal prosecutors in its teams of election observers, as it has done in previous years.
He also cited recent reports that some top officials in the department's voting-rights section had contributed to Barack Obama's campaign.
Writes Boehner:
Frankly, the real motive behind the Department's decision is undeniably suspect given that Obama partisans in key positions at the Department of Justice may well have played a pivotal role in making it.

Because, of course, the entire Bush Administration is over-run by Obama supporters, controlling everything from their bunkers in the annex of the Hidden Imam. Michael Mukasey never had a chance!

For added chuckles, here's the letter in full:

The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
Dear Mr. Attorney General:
I have just been advised of your department's decision to reverse its longstanding policy of assigning criminal prosecutors to serve on all federal election observer teams. I am deeply concerned about this decision, particularly in the wake of a steady stream of reports highlighting voter registration fraud and potential fraudulent voting activities that have dominated the news in recent weeks.
I am particularly dismayed to learn that several DOJ officials with important responsibilities for overseeing enforcement of the nation's voting rights laws - from access to the polls to protecting against voter fraud - are significant financial contributors to the Obama presidential campaign. According to published reports, approximately $250,000 has already been contributed by DOJ employees to the Obama campaign, including personal contributions from several senior officials in the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ. This news does nothing to inspire confidence by the American people in the DOJ's ability to assure fair elections and the equal application of the nation's voting laws.
Frankly, the real motive behind the Department's decision is undeniably suspect given that Obama partisans in key positions at the Department of Justice may well have played a pivotal role in making it.
On behalf of my Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives - who share my commitment to ensuring the fairness and integrity of the 2008 election - I strongly urge you to reverse the DOJ decision announced in September and immediately announce your intention to dispatch experienced criminal prosecutors as members of federal election observer teams nationwide.
The Department of Justice must use all means at its disposal to assure that every eligible citizen has access to the polls -- and to thwart attempts by persons or organizations seeking to fraudulently obtain, cast or count ballots in the 2008 election.
With November 4th just days away, it is imperative to move quickly and publicly to safeguard the integrity of this election. Accordingly, I ask that you notify me by close of business today whether you will restore the Department's longstanding policy of including federal prosecutors on each of its election observer teams.
Thank you for your attention to this critically important matter.
Sincerely,
John A. Boehner
Republican Leader

They actually let this guy near sharp objects?

Pencils?

Pens?

Doorknobs?

True, a doorknob's not that sharp.

But, then, neither is Boehner.

ACORN Fights Back - Stopping A Stolen Election

ACORN Communications — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:31:11 GMT

As everyone knows, John McCain and the GOP have been attacking ACORN for weeks. We've been pretty successful in recent weeks debunking their unfounded claims, but the traditional media's been so complicit in facilitating the attacks that they've largely missed the greater threat to a free and fair election this year: voter suppression and intimidation.

Already, reports from around the U.S. confirm the fact that voters are facing active campaigns to prevent their participation at the polls, coordinated by partisan operatives and now, insidiously involving law enforcement agencies at all levels, from the local all the way to the Department of Justice.

According to Project Vote, these instances of intimidation include everything from a county sheriff in Ohio announcing that he and his office were "seeking information" about hundreds of registered voters who voted during Ohio's five-day window of same-day registration and voting (despite recent court proceedings upholding the lawfulness of the practice) to a call issued by the GOP in Wisconsin to policemen, security personnel, and firefighters to serve as "volunteer poll watchers" in inner city precincts.

But ACORN and its allies are fighting back.
In New Mexico, two lawsuits have been brought against Justine Fox-Young; Al Romero, a private investigator; and John/Jane Does of the Republican Party of New Mexico for their attempts to intimidate voters. In fact, Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate, has recently joined with the ACLU in filing one of these suits against representatives of New Mexico's Republican Party. And the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is representing two Hispanic women against Pat Rogers, a lawyer of the Republican party in New Mexico who is accused of intimidating the women by sending a private investigator to question their eligibility to vote.

At a recent ACORN press conference, nineteen-year-old Francisco Martinez, a legal voter registered last spring by ACORN who is part of the ACLU suit in New Mexico, spoke out about the suspected illegal use by GOP members of his registration information in an attempt to intimidate him. Martinez spoke directly to those who misused his information, saying, "I won't be intimidated. In fact, I voted early, and my vote will count."

Steve Kest, Executive Director of ACORN, urged Senator McCain to make the first move in reining in the GOP. "Senator McCain needs to instruct his operatives and supporters to cease and desist," Kest said. "Nothing is more important to the fabric of our democracy than protecting the rights of American voters."

And what's happening in New Mexico is just an example of problems faced by voters across the country. Project Vote's diary on the front page of Open Left lists several other ominous instances of law enforcement's involvement in efforts to keep legitimate voters away from the polls. According to Project Vote:

Also in Ohio, county prosecutor Joe Deters initiated a grand jury investigation and issued subpoenas for unredacted personal information on 40% of the 671 new voters who cast ballots during Ohio's five-day window of same-day registration and voting. Deters-citing unspecified allegations of "voter fraud"-launched the investigation and took it upon himself to conduct some attempts to match these voters to government databases and investigate those he determined had problems.

And, in Wisconsin,

Last month, the Republican Attorney General of Wisconsin, J.B. Van Hollen-who is also co-chair of that state's McCain-Palin campaign-filed a lawsuit against the state's Government Accountability Board to force them to cross-check more than 240,000 voter registrations against driver's license records. The impact of the lawsuit would have been to force the voters to use provisional ballots, calling their votes into question and tying up the polls on Election Day.
A judge ruled against Van Hollen's lawsuit, but he and the Wisconsin Republican Party intend to appeal.

ACORN is fighting against these tactics. Not only has ACORN launched its first-ever TV ad, which targets voter suppression, but it is involved in a large-scale GOTV effort to ensure that the low-income voters, voters of color and young voters it helped register can get to the polls, vote, and have their vote counted.

You can help ACORN fight back by going here to sign the petition calling on John McCain to stop the baseless attacks on ACORN and new voters and then by making sure you spread the word, including with the ad and this video rebutting all of the Republicans' absurd and ridiculous claims about ACORN's work. Pass it on.

Cities in Dust: John McCain & The Last Days of Pompeii

Paul Rosenberg — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:30:00 GMT

One of the most annoying things about John McCain is the creepy way he has of saying, "My friends," as if he were Mafia don, insinuating a deep connection that you were never a willing party to.

But, then it dawned on me, that although that was clearly what eminated from his being, the universe had other things in mind, things I already knew very well, from a song that Souxsie and the Banshees released the same year that McCain was first elected to the Senate, a song that echoed with with the refrian, "my friend," a song--fittingly enough--about the destruction of Pompeii. And so, to exorcise the creepy insinuation McCain's most unwanted familiarity, I take this occassion, this Saturday Night, to share this antidote with you:

Cities in Dust
Siouxsie and the Banshees

Water was running; children were running
You were running out of time
Under the mountain, a golden fountain
Were you praying at the Lares shrine?
But ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

We found you hiding, we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands

But ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
your city lies in dust

Water was running; children were running
We found you hiding, we found you lying
Water was running; children were running
We found you hiding, we found you lying
your city lies in dust, my friend
ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes .......

Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend

Your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city lies in dust, my friend
Ohh oh your city...

Rightwing Moral Relativism On Terrorism Returns-Big Time!

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

"9/11 Changed everything" we were told, so many times it just had to be false.
But in one respect it almost seemed true. Under St. Ronnie, there were good terrorists and bad terrorists. It was the heyday of moral relativism when it came to blowing up or blowing away innocent civilians. Rape and murder some Maryknoll nuns? Assasinate El Salvador's Arhcbishop Oscar Romero? It's all good! "One man's terrorists is another man's freedom fighter!" was the Reaganite battle cry. First Terrorist George Washington was not amused.

But after 9/11, suddenly all terrorists were evil. In fact, they were "evildoers." That was their defining characteristic. It's what made them tick. They did evil because they were evildoers. End of story, end of explanation, end of discussion, when do we start bombing? Of course, it wasn't really that simple. When Cuban security agents came looking for anti-Castro terrorists in Florida, they were promptly arrested and jailed as if they themselves were terrorists. But this wasn't for public consumption outside of South Florida. It was an embarrassing contradiction, and not to be spoken of in polite company.

Now, however, the exceptional has abruptly shifted from margin to center: Bill Ayers, terrorist? You betcha! Abortion clinic bombers? Not so much, says Palin, as McCain looks on in zombie sleep:

This is, of course, the very essence of the "terrorist" narrative--it's entirely politicized. Words have no objective meaning. They mean whatever is needed at the time. We're all Through the Looking Glass now:

You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
`To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. `I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right -- though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now -- and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents --'
`Certainly,' said Alice.
`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'

Which is to be master? Indeed! And if it takes a little terrorism to settle that, we'll what's a little terrorism among friends?

Victims of anti-abortion "non-terrorism", from Mike Caulfield at Blue Hampshire (h/t MissLaura at DKos):

Donald L. Catron
Claudia Gilmore
Shot 12/28/91 at
Central Health Center for Women in Springfield, Missouri
Victims: Wounded

Dr. David Gunn
Shot 3/10/93 at clinic in Pensacola, Florida
Victim: Murdered

Dr. George Tiller
Shot 8/19/93 at clinic in Wichita, Kansas
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Wayne Patterson
Shot in Mobile, Alabama
Victim: Murdered

Dr. John Britton
James Barrett
June Barrett
Shot 7/29/94 outside clinic in Pensacola, Florida
Victims: Murdered (John and James) and wounded (June)

Dr. Garson Romalis
Shot 11/8/94 at home in Vancouver, British Columbia
Victim: Wounded
Terrorist: At large.

Shannon Lowney
Leanne Nichols
Shot 12/30/94 at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts
Victims: Murdered
Terrorist: John Salvi.

Anjana Agrawal
Antonio Hernandez
Brian Murray
Jane Sauer
Richard J. Seron
Shot 12/94 at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts
Victims: Wounded

Dr. Hugh Short
Shot 11/10/95 at home in Ancaster, Ontario
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Calvin Jackson
Stabbed 12/96 outside the Orleans Women's Clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana
Victim: Wounded

Unidentified Victims
4-7 victims of 2 bombs 1/16/97 outside the Northside Family Planning Services clinic near Atlanta, Georgia
Victims: Wounded

Unidentified Doctor
Shot 10/28/97 at home in Perinton, New York
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Jack Fainman
Shot 11/11/97 at home in Winnipeg, Manitoba
Victim: Wounded
Officer Robert Sanderson
Bombed 1/29/98 outside New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama
Victim: Murdered

Emily Lyons
Bombed 1/29/98 outside New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Barnett Slepian
Shot 10/23/98 at home in Amherst, New York
Victim: Murdered

Mike adds:

And here is where I got this list from -- an anti-abortion site. The title of this list over there is Aborted and Nearly Aborted Abortionists. If you scroll down that page you'll find a list of abortion providers' addresses, their spouse's names, police officers who are seen as hostile to demonstrations, judges and politicians who have ruled against them. In the context of a page that begins with a triumphant list of of aborted doctors, the intent is clear.
But this is not terrorism, according to Palin. This movement, which historically tracks nearly exactly with the Culture War rhetoric Palin embraces, which functions explicitly to scare doctors out of practice by killing and crippling them -- this is not terrorism.
Since 1993 there have been 7 assasinations of abortion clinic staff, 15 attempted assassinations, 14 successful bombings and 74 cases of arson committed by radical anti-abortionists, including a instance in 2000 in Concord, NH.
But this is not terrorism, according to Palin.

You betcha!

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

The Ashley Todd Hoax Is America's Hoax

Paul Rosenberg — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:43:46 GMT

From the very beginning, there were consistencies and inconsistencies in Ashley Todd's narrative about the alleged attack she suffered. The inconsistencies were within the story itself (the reverse "B" most obviously). The consistencies were with a long, long history of lies about blacks that are inescapably linked with racism in all its forms, from slavery, through segregation, through the "colorblind" racism of the present day. Both leaped out at me as the story exploded. Among the consistencies were the 4,742 identified lynchings from 1882 to 1964, for which the breakdown of "causes" reads:

"Cause"	Number	Percent
Homicides	1,937	40.84
Felonious Assault	205	4.32
Rape	912	19.22
Attempted Rape	288	6.07
Robbery and Theft	232	4.89
Insult to White Person	85	1.79
All Other Causes	1,084	22.85
Total	4,743	100.00

Speaking of "Insult to White Person," although not strictly a "lynching" per se, I thought as well about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy murdered for whistling at a white woman. You see, the history of lynching is a history of terrorism, a history of collective punishment and mass intimidation. One black does something, however trivial-or is alleged to-and some black, any black, must pay, without all that "due process" stuff that's reserved for white people.

This, quite naturally, puts the entire black community at risk. Which is, of course, the underlying point. A point that's very much alive today, as revealed in a blog post from Fox Executive Vice President Joe Moody, titled, with unintended irony, "Moment of Truth":

If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

At DKos, Meteor Blades asks:

Revisit their support for Obama not because they are racists? Why then? What exactly is it, Joe, that connects a blackety-black man who attacks a white female McCain volunteer with support or lack of it for the Senator?

It's not just racism is a generic sense, but the specific tradition of racial terrorism that's being invoked here. Any black at any time can be singled out for any reason, even if he's on the verge of being elected President of the United States.
Racism? Only someone who's a racist would see racism in that! That's part of the core formulation of contemporary "colorblind racism" (see Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva).

Here's a vivid example from just last week:

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.
The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."
....

The woman "responsible" (they're never responsible) tried to explain that it was Obama who was the racist here:

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."
Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.

It was "outrageous" that Obama would call attention to his race. It offended her!

She said she doesn't think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

Or, "some of my best friends are negroes" as the segregationists used to say.

And as for that other stuff? It didn't mean anything at all. She doesn't see things that way:

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

Watermelon? Fried chicken? "Just food"!

Food stamps?

She said she also wasn't trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

Of course! What else? Nothing racist in that! Only a racist would think otherwise! This is a core belief of the colorblind ideology-anyone who's the least bit conscious that racism still exists is themselves a racist. Only those who ignore racism are free from its stain!

Susan Smith-And Newt Gingrich

At the same time I thought of Emmett Till, I also thought of Susan Smith--and Newt Gingrich. Smith was a white woman who blamed a black man for a carjacking-with her two young children in the car. It created an national hysteria. And then, after several weeks, she confessed it was a hoax. She had killed her children herself.

Because it covered up the horrendous crime of killing her own children, this hoax carried with it a sense of primordial evil-something that white America can rarely bring itself to associate with racist acts. And this case was no exception. Instead of racism remaining central to the story, it became bizarrely inverted, as Newt Gingrich pounced on the incident in the closing days of the 1994 campaign, and blamed the murder on Democrats and the welfare state. As progressive columnist Norman Solomon wrote several months later:

Back in early November, the motor-mouthed Gingrich had much to say about the case -- offering a treatise so wrong-headed that it's almost laughable. Except there's nothing funny about the Susan Smith tragedy...or Gingrich's attempt to exploit it for election-eve advantage.
Here's what Gingrich said three days before last November's election -- in response to an Associated Press reporter who asked him how the campaign was going: "Slightly more moving our way. I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things."
Gingrich concluded, "The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days." Two days later, less than 24 hours before the polls opened, Gingrich defended his comments on the Smith case as no different than what he'd been saying for years -- that violence and related ills arise from a Democratic-controlled political system: "We need very deep change if we're going to turn this country around."
Asked if the change he was offering the country would stop killings like those in South Carolina, he replied, "Yes. In my judgment, there's no question."

As it turned out, of course, liberalism had nothing to do it. Quite the opposite. Smith had been molested by her stepfather, a local leader of the GOP and the Christian Coalition. Moreover, there was a profound contradiction in Gingrich's argument. As Ron Rosenbaum later wrote for the NYT Magazine, "Staring Into The Heart Of The Heart Of Darkness":

Newt Gingrich weighed in with his theory of Susan Smith's act. In Gingrich's view the real cause of Susan Smith's act was not Susan Smith; she was just the "efficient cause" in the Aristotelian sense. The formal cause was the 60's -- liberalism, the Great Society, the counterculture -- and the amoral social ethic they supposedly produced. It wasn't Susan Smith who pushed the Mazda into the lake; it was George McGovern.
Curiously, for an apostle of individual moral accountability, Gingrich was trying, however clumsily, to do what the Left, what Great Society liberals, have been accused of doing: he was blaming society for the evil deed of an individual.

This was not the only time Gingrich did this. There were a couple of other high-profile examples. James Ledbetter wrote about one of them in The Village Voice, on Dec 5, 1995 (available via Proquest at many public library websites):

Following the stabbing of an Illinois woman whose womb was ripped open, baby stolen, and children killed, Gingrich blamed welfare and the left: "Let's talk about what the welfare state is bringing. Let's talk about the moral decay of the world the left is defending. There's barbarity after barbarity. There's brutality after brutality. We shake our heads and say, 'What's gone wrong?'" The only confirmed welfare recipients in this story, by the way, were the victims.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There' much, much vaster history that this is only a tiny part of. But Gingrich was hardly a minor figure. Recalling the Susan Smith incident this week-but without the connection to the Ashley Todd hoax, Hilzoy wrote at Political Animal:

Some liberals were aghast. But Gingrich himself paid no price for what he said. (I imagine this is one reason he went on doing it.) He was reelected to Congress. Shortly thereafter, he was elected Speaker of the House. Just last year, David Broder wrote:
"If there is any politician of the current generation who has earned the label "visionary," it is probably the Georgia Republican and former speaker of the House."

As far as I'm concerned, anyone, of any political party, who blames the actions of someone like Susan Smith on his or her opponents shows that he or she is without shame. In a sane world, politicians who did this would be thrown out of office: their constituents might or might not agree with their political views, but they would be revolted by anyone who said such a thing.

But no, of course, he's a "visionary." The "Dean" has spoken. The bipartisan narrative is set. It is joined at the hip with the wingnut racist narrative. On close inspection, there is not a sliver of daylight between the two synergistic "opposing" narratives.

But, of course, close inspection is verbotten. Close inspection is "racist."

p.s. Of those 4,742 lynchings (or 4,743, tabulations vary), 1,297 victims were white. Two things were going on: One, it was very dangerous for whites to be too closely allied with blacks. Two, once you do away with the law for some people, it readily melts away for everyone.

Walking And Chewing Gum

Paul Rosenberg — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:03:36 GMT

Can a comparison be both illuminating and misleading? You decide.

Kos:

Douthat:

This is what a lot of conservatives are going to be telling themselves after election day: That Obama cheated, that the media cheated, that McCain wasn't a conservative anyway, and that the only reason Sarah Palin wasn't a hit with swing voters is that the press - with an assist from conservative quislings like Frum and Brooks and Parker and Noonan - poisoned the well. And in such thinking lies the seeds of years or even decades of defeat.

I took a lot of flack from my own side in late 2004 (or was it early 2005?) when I purged this site of those I called "fraudsters" -- people who blamed our 2004 loss on voting machines and other Republican trickery. While there was systemic disenfranchisement of our voters in key states (like Ken Blackwell's Ohio), no Diebold trickery was needed to steal that election. Yet the obsession on those conspiracy theories by too many detracted from the true reform our party needed to undertake before it could win again.

My take? This is hatchet-think when we need a scalpel. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Plus, Howard Dean was going to launch his 50-state strategy, with or without the help of 50 or 100 or 200 DKos diarists and their commenters and readers.

More fundamentally, the issues raised by the majority of "fraudsters" (myself among them) were not limited to claims that Kerry won, but touched on a variety of issues that even now have yet to be robustly addressed. Indeed, some never even claimed that Kerry won at all. Other issues included voters rights, election integrity, Democrats standing up to GOP bullying and criminality, and Kerry breaking his word about fighting to see that every vote would be counted. Georgia10 did a marvelous job of continually summarizing developments and articulating concerns, and her work alone was sufficient to demonstrate the complexity that Kos's mischaracterization seeks to erase. Additionally, I wrote a diary "OHIO & Lakoff: The Right Wing Power Grab Frame" in which I wrote:

What matters to me most about Ohio are 3 things: (1) Racism. (2) Voter Suppression. (3) The Right Wing Power Grab.

And another one, after that, "A Fighting Faith: OH, Democracy, Lakoff & Chris Bowers ", in which I drew on Chris's analysis that:....

(a) This was a battle of the bases, and the GOP won because it had a bigger base:...
(b) To level the playing field, we must grow the number of self-identified liberals and shrink the number of self-identified conservatives....
(c) This is not about the argument of whether the party should move left or right.... It is about strengthening the party's brand-a brand it has been running away from for almost 30 years, but can never escape....
(d) We have a major recruiting opportunity on the issue of political reform.

Here is that section of my diary, reproduced in full:

(2) The Bowers Analysis.

In the wake of the 2004 election, Chris Bowers went on an analytic tear, beginning with some very serious nitty-gritting number crunching, and then moving on to a broader analysis of what it all meant. Four points that he developed are relevant here:

(a) This was a battle of the bases, and the GOP won because it had a bigger base: There are more self-identified conservatives than self-identified liberals. Self-identified conservatives vote heavily for the GOP, self-identified liberals vote heavily for the Dems. This means that Dems always have to win self-identified moderates by a significant margin.

In "Conservatism Is Our Enemy" Bowers put it like this:

In all of my post-election analysis, when all of the tactical ideas are put aside, I keep coming back to a single, basic idea: conservatives are the enemy, and conservatism as an ideology is our main roadblock to electoral success.
We have long since left the era when the two parties could accurately be considered regional and ethnic coalitions rather than ideological coalitions. There are no longer any more conservative Democrats than there are liberal Republicans. A few of each kind manage to hang on, but the ideological vote in this election was clear:
   Bush Kerry Margin
Conservative 84    15       69
Liberal 13    85       72

Bowers also presented a state-by-state demonstration of what this meant in his storyWhere Is Liberalism?. The only states in which liberals outnumber conservatives are DC, MA, VT, RI, HI, NY, CT, and NJ. And, he commented in a followup story, "The difference between the number of liberals and the number of conservatives is so great in this country, that only in states worth 275 electoral votes is the liberal vote, plus a double-digit lead among moderates, enough to pull out a victory."

(b) To level the playing field, we must grow the number of self-identified liberals and shrink the number of self-identified conservatives. This entails a committed project of (1) vigorously attacking conservatism, (2) defining liberals in terms of a few short phrases that create strong, positive frames and (3) defending liberalism vociferously. These ideas were discussed in a number of stories Chris did, (such as "Conservatism Is Our Enemy", "Real Conservative Values", and "What is Conservatism and What is Wrong With It?") as well as MyDD's first "Book Discussion," which was actually about Phil Agre's essay, "What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong With It?"

(c) This is not about the argument of whether the party should move left or right, Bowers argued, particularly in stories such as "Moving and Moving, Part Two: If The Question is Wrong, The Answer Will Follow. It is about strengthening the party's brand-a brand it has been running away from for almost 30 years, but can never escape. To clarify: Democrats have to defend liberalism, whether or not they personally identify as liberals. This only seems hard or even contradictory because Democrats have been in denial and on the defensive for so long. Moderate Republicans do this sort of thing all the time with conservatism, which is a much harder sell.

(d) We have a major recruiting opportunity on the issue of political reform. Best just to quote from Chris's story "Eureka! Or How To Break the Republican Majority Coalition":

I believe it is possible to break the majority Republican coalition, which is primarily an ideological coalition of conservatives against liberals, and create a majority Democratic coalition that will last for at least two or three decades, by liberalizing / progressivizing the 10-15% of the population that is currently primarily reform minded and non-ideological (and thus has a strong tendency to support major third-party efforts). While it is currently non-ideological, this segment of the population, which has existed in large numbers since at least the 1880's, has an outlook on politics that is far more closely allied with liberalism than conservatism because of its emphasis on reform....
Our future success is not predicated upon moving to the left or the right, but rather in our ability to move from the inside to the outside in the national political frame. This is something we succeeded in doing in the past . This is something that Republicans learned immediately following the Perot movement of 1992, and executed so brilliantly in their 1994 "Contract with America," campaign. The Contract With America was filled almost entirely with reformist, rather than conservative, legislative proposals. Conservatives won, and are currently in power, because they swung the reformer vote their way, even though our coalition is a more natural fit for such voters. We can change this and set things right. Howard Dean as DNC chair is a darn good place to start.

While we've made enormous strides since I wrote that diary on January 04, 2005, we have yet to make the issue of political reform central to our work, and as a direct result, demonstably criminal elements of the GOP are mounting an attack on us the Democratic Party base of progressives and minorities, with a focal point on ACORN, the largest community-based organization in the country.

Our failure to come together decisively around this issue before this election has given the right an opening to attempt a re-run of their 1990s full-time campaign to delegitimize the Clinton Administration. This time, the stakes are much, much higher. It's not at all clear if our country, and the very idea of modern civilization will survive.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. In fact, we have no choice.

The only choise we have is spearmint or cinnamon.

Open Season on ACORN and the poor

mrburns17 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:43:02 GMT

Keeping track of all the recent Conservative attacks on poor people and their "lobby" (ACORN) is getting to be a bit of a task.
The latest "outrage du jour" involves these (oh so obviously fake) voter registration forms that a few idiots (?) decided to turn in.
A few things to consider here.....
There are several ways to explain this ACORN voter registration "controversy". The first one is obvious: Hiring someone to register people on a commission basis, although not illegal, basically provides an incentive to make up names in order to turn in as many completed forms as possible. Something like this will not effect election results unless the actual person filling out all these forms shows up to vote over and over and over. That's what a Homer Simpson caliber scam would look like; doomed to failure and guaranteed to make the culprit look like a boob. I'm sure that in the end it will be "Jimmy John's" vote (as in the midwest sandwich chain) that will decide this election (...). Mr. Burns on the other hand would purge the Michigan voter rolls of black people, and those who lost their homes to foreclosure (now there's a scam worth writing about, huh?).

The bogus registrations I saw on CNN were amateurish and obviously fake. State officials were doing their jobs by catching them and setting them aside. These registration forms however were filled out in a such a transparently stupid and pedestrian manner, that another more sinister explanation might be worth considering.

How difficult would it be for a few Republican operatives to infiltrate ACORN and pose as poor people or students in need of a temp job? And how long would it take ACORN to actually trace these fraudulent registrations to them? By the time someone actually figures out who was walking what neighborhood and what registration forms they turned in... the culprits are long gone, and good luck finding them. Damage done, P.R. stunt successful. You think ACORN is an organization with the funds to conduct thorough background checks, or verify everyones identity before they let them volunteer or get them to register voters for a dollar or two per form? They're an advocacy group for poor people; not exactly in the same league as the Energy Lobby, or the Club for Growth.

Let's not forget that in 2007-2008 a group of "Movement Conservatives" (love that term), were doing the exact same thing in California (paying people to collect signatures) while attempting to steal 22 of our state's Electoral Votes. This was the famous "Steal the State" Petition, that was illegally funded by Rudy Giuliani backer, and hedge fund giant Paul Singer. Hundreds of (mostly out-of state) Conservative operatives were unleashed on California last year, and were caught on camera paying and/or buying alcohol for homeless people in return for them signing the petition. They were also caught lying through their teeth when questioned by passers-by about what exactly this "Electoral College Reform" proposition would mean for California. Ultimately their efforts failed, because we have a vigilant Democratic base here; many of us contacted local papers, protested, and got the word out about these Conservative wingnuts and their sham petition. But these types never give up; fast forward to September-November 2008. Now it's the Mormon Church who has unleashed it's money and army of fundamentalists to try and pass Prop. 8.

The notion that ACORN is perpetrating a fraud, or is somehow involved in a grand conspiracy to tip the election to Barack Obama is beyond laughable. Stealing elections is a craft mastered by Conservatives, their corrupt State officials, and their U.S. Supreme Court appointees. No individual or organization will ever come close to damaging our democracy the way that Ken Blackwell, Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and the 5 Justices who decided Bush vs. Gore did.

But it's much easier for Fox News and Conservatives to attack ACORN. Poor people don't have the resources to defend themselves from right-wing smears. Conservatives even managed to find a way to blame poor people for our economic collapse.... nice going fellas.
There's a special place in hell for people like Sean Hannity and Michelle Bachman. The ultimately irony is that Bill Ayers probably won't be joining them there.

ACORN Slams McCain For Attacking Them, Cites History Of Working Together

Paul Rosenberg — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:52:37 GMT

My, my! John McCain, flip-flopping to engage in baseless character attacks! No one could have foreseen....

ACORN to McCain: Have You Lost That Loving Feeling?
Senator Allied with ACORN as Recently as 2006, Now Turns Cold Shoulder
October 13, 2008, Miami, FL - U.S. Senator John McCain's recent attacks on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), are puzzling given his historic support for the organization and its efforts on behalf of immigrant Americans. As recently as February 20, 2006, Senator McCain was the keynote speaker at an ACORN-sponsored Immigration Rally in Miami, Florida at Miami Dade College - Wolfson Campus....
Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer of ACORN, said, "It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN; he was for immigration reform before he was against immigration reform; and he was a maverick before he became erratic. We were thrilled to partner with him to help reform the outdated immigration laws in this country, and were pleased to work closely with him on this issue." [Emphasis added.]

The beauty part here, of course, is letting all the wingnuts know how close McCain has been to ACORN in the past.
Here's the press release in its entirety:

ACORN to McCain: Have You Lost That Loving Feeling?
Senator Allied with ACORN as Recently as 2006, Now Turns Cold Shoulder
October 13, 2008, Miami, FL - U.S. Senator John McCain's recent attacks on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), are puzzling given his historic support for the organization and its efforts on behalf of immigrant Americans. As recently as February 20, 2006, Senator McCain was the keynote speaker at an ACORN-sponsored Immigration Rally in Miami, Florida at Miami Dade College - Wolfson Campus.
The rally, co-sponsored by ACORN in partnership with the New American Opportunity campaign (NAOC), Catholic League Services - Archdiocese of Miami, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Miami Dade College, People for the American Way/Mi Familia/Vota en Accion, the Service Employees International Union, and UNITE/HERE, was intended to call attention to the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
Senator McCain spoke at the rally attended by hundreds of ACORN members, most of whom were dressed in the red shirts typical of its members. Senator McCain's speech focused on the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, a bipartisan, comprehensive reform bill, which McCain sponsored with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer of ACORN, said, "It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. Maybe it is out of desperation that Senator McCain has forgotten that he was for ACORN before he was against ACORN; he was for immigration reform before he was against immigration reform; and he was a maverick before he became erratic. We were thrilled to partner with him to help reform the outdated immigration laws in this country, and were pleased to work closely with him on this issue."
Lewis continued, "We expected Senator McCain to support our efforts to give voice to millions of American's who have never participated in an election before. We are surprised at his efforts to vilify an organization that, until recently, he saw as an ally. Maybe this surprise attack and change of heart is indicative of his state of mind, and the way he would govern."
Senator McCain and his campaign have recently launched a series of coordinated attacks on ACORN, the nation's largest community organization of low-and middle-income families.
Ms. Lewis went on to say that, "We are sure that the extremists he is trying to get into a froth will be even more excited to learn that John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN, at an ACORN co-sponsored event, to promote immigration reform."
Senator McCain was joined at the rally by Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), leaders from both political parties, immigrant communities, and members of labor, business, and religious organizations.

There was a time, not too long ago, when this wouldn't have been a problem. Back in 2000, candidate George W. Bush went right from South Carolina, where he slimed McCain like a... candidate sliming guy, and spoke at bigotry central, Bob Jones University, then hopped on a jet, and came out here in Los Angeles for a high-profile aura-cleaning event at the Museum of Tolerance. (I kid you not! Tho the aura-cleaning bit was metaphorical.)

While McCain/Palin still get away with an outrageous amount of totally contradictory BS, they are still getting called on it every time they turn around, and the sheer volume of people speaking out, as ACORN has just done, is seriously taking its toll.

We are not waiting for Democratic leaders or anyone else, for that matter, to "make the case" for us. We're calling bullshit wherever we see it, and in doing so, we're setting new standards for honesty and directness in our public discourse.

It's simple really: if it's something you wouldn't let your 4-year old get away with, then it's something you shouldn't let your elected representatives (or candidates) get away with either.

Now, how's that for a red-blooded, middle America, down-home, small-town approach to politics?

You betcha!