On the main page of the website supporting the book, Schaller puts his case succinctly:
The South is no longer the "swing" region in American politics -- it has swung to the Republicans. Most of the South is beyond the Democrats' reach, and what remains is moving steadily into the Republican column. The twin effects of race and religion produce a socially conservative, electorally hostile environment for most Democratic candidates.
Spending valuable resources in Southern states is a dangerously self-destructive strategy that could serve to relegate Democrats to minority-party status for a generation. Political attitudes and demographic changes in other parts of the country are far more favorable to Democratic messages and messengers. The Midwest and Southwest are the nation's most competitive regions. There are opportunities to expand Democratic margins in the Mountain red states while consolidating control over the reliably blue northeastern and Pacific coast states. Before dreaming of forty nine state presidential landslides, the Democrats ought to first figure out how to win twenty-nine states. And that means capturing Arizona -- or even Alaska -- before targeting Alabama.
McCain may put Arizona out of reach for this electoral cycle, the maps show that neighboring states Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado are not. Obama's strength in the West is particularly embarrasing-not to mention debilitating-to McCain.
But it's also embarrasing to Obama, since it belies his earlier rationale in reaching out to religious conservatives, and his claims to be a mapchanger by drawing unprecedented numbers of blacks to the polls, and contesting Southern states Democrats otherwise would lose. It is not the religious conservatives dominating the South who have responded most to his calls, nor does he put more pressure on McCain there than Clinton does. His "unique" contribution is to do what Schaller mapped out as the natural thing for the Democratic Party to do, regardless of their nominee.
As I put it in a recent comment in the discussion of that diary:
When you have a rhetoric that says one thing, but a material reality that says another, it's always best to trust the material reality first, and seek to understand why that rhetoric works within that reality.
In this particular case, my explanation of why is simple...
[NOTE: Bugs in Soapblox have prevented me from publishing this in its original form earlier this morning. Now with JPEGs in place of HTML tables.... ]
Surprise! Surprise! The conventional wisdom around BOTH Democratic candidates is wrong.
Following up on Chris's post earlier this week, "New General Election Maps From Survey USA", here are a couple of maps visually displaying his breakdown into tiers, (and another pair of maps with furhter analysis in Part 2), with accompanying tables. The big winner is.... Tom Schaller (see Whistling Past Dixie).
Schaller's non-Southern Strategy of isolating the GOP as an extremist regional party of the South is significantly furthered by Barack Obama, despite Obama's Kumbayah rhetoric to the contrary. And this analysis will show just how much stronger this approach is than trying to win back the South as our top priority.
This is the one thing that's immediately evident--much more than with the simple who-wins-where maps. It's not just that Obama's strengths alone reflect Tom Shaller's Non-Southern strategy. It's a comparative thing: Clinton probably won't lose Oregon and Washington--those only lean McCain--but she'll have to fight for them, even as Obama continues the process of putting them away, while giving us a good shot at Nevada and beginning the process of solidifying New Mexico and Colorado. Obama is going with the natural flow that Schaller has laid out. In this sense, his strength is not that he's exceptional, but that his exceptional appeal is channelled in the normal direction for the Democratic Party to grow.
Clinton vs. McCain
Obama vs. McCain
OTOH, Clinton is clearly stronger in the South, winning two states to Obama's one, while putting Tennessee in play, just as he does North Carolina. Most tellingly, however, is how many Southern states are solid for McCain vs. Obama--TEN!--as opposed for McCain vs. Clinton--just one!
This result is particularly ironic, given (a) Obama's earlier claim that he could win Southern states that Clinton couldn't by increasing Southern black turnout and (b) the CW that Southern man are particularly hostile to Hillary Clinton, so she's death to the party in the South.
On the flip, tables to go with these maps. AND, making the case even strong, maps and tables showing a comparison of Dem gains--and losses from 2004, which makes the pattern even stronger.
Soapblox, the plaform on which Open Left runs, is screwed up. It has been screwed up ever since the site update a few weeks back. Every upgrade has bugs. It's just a fact of life. But, unlike the past, this time the problems are being ignored. I've repeatedly emailed Paul aka Soapy aka Pacified about some of these problems, cc'ing Chris, and I've gotten no response. I've found work-arounds. But this time it's bigger.
This time I can't even publish the diary I was working on. It keeps sending me back to an older version, saved as a draft, whose extended text it had wiped out. Even after I deleted the draft, it sent me to the message that the draft had been deleted. So I'm posting this diary, in hopes that (a) it will be published, and this will someone get me out of this hell mode I'm in, and (b) it will finally get some attention paid to the bugs I continue to encounter.
Comments welcome about any other bugs others may have encountered.
Glenn W. Smith, who works with George Lakoff and posts here sometimes has a new post up at the Rockridge Instute website, "Do Americans Believe in the Wisdom of the Public?" Originally conceived as a speech, it has the expansiveness that medium lend itself to, above and beyond the scope of the topic itself, which is more than the title itself implies, given that Smith approaches the question from a perspective informed by history and philosophy as well as Lakoff and others' work in revolutionizing our view of human reason.
For me, there are all sorts of nuggets in this speech to chew on, but what I want to direct attention to most is simply this: it helps to clarify the momentous importance of the most fundamental choice before us in this election cycle--a choice which is not between Democrat or Republican, vitally important though that may be, but rather, a choice between inclusive, bottom-up democracy or a mere changing of the guards at Versailles. This choice is no less fundamental and important simply because it does not appear on the ballot.
There are those who try to convince themselve (even more than others) that a vote for Obama is a vote for inclusive, bottom-up democracy. He certainly tells us that it is. But, then, all sorts of politicians promise us that their victory is actually our victory. It's one of the oldest lines in the book.
Realistically, however, as Matt and Chris have noted previouslty, there is very little in Obama's actual substantive record, or his proposals to back up such claims. As I have repeatedly argued, reaching out to conservative elites, rather than conservative voters fundamentally misses the point of the latent hegemony of liberal values that a truly transformative progressive movement would speak to, mobilize, and bring into the fold.
You've heard this all before, perhaps. And you've heard me say that we may still be able to create an opening to write this broader vision into the results of this election. But Glenn's speech offers a fresh perspective on this viewpoint--among considerable other perspectives and insights. For example, he says:
There is no privileged access to social and political wisdom. The unique experiences of the longshoreman, the barber, or the homeless man under the bridge have as much insight to give us as the political scientist's or the captains' of industry.
The idea that expertise should be politically privileged misses by a mile what is needed for us to collectively deliberate upon how to provide one another fulfilling and happy lives. I don't need to know how to transplant a heart to know in my heart that my neighbor's health is my moral concern.
You don't need to know how to manufacture a cruise missile to help us decide whether to go to war.
The philosopher Cheryl Misak said:
"In moral and political inquiry...we must be careful with the notion of an expert. Everyone who is engaged with others is engaged in moral and political deliberation. And anyone, whatever their formal training, might be very good at it."
American pragmatist thinker John Dewey wrote:
"A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not knowledge at all."
This is not an argument for one political season. It is an argument for the ages, ripened in this season. It is an argument for wisdom, dignity and value of us all.
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